Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Experiment 9781400870196

Citation preview

ABRAHAM UNCOLN AND RECONSTRUCTION

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND RECONSTRUCTION THE LOUISIANA EXPERIMENT

by Peyton McCrary

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON.

NEW

PRESS

JERSEY

Copyright © 1978 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation This book has been composed in Linotype Caledonia Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

For Patricia, for Mother, and to the Memory of Giles and Vivian

Contents

Tables

ix

Preface

xi

Abbreviations

xvii

Prologue

"Mr. Lincoln's Model of Reconstruction"

3

I.

The Old Regime: Society and Politics in Antebellum Louisiana

19

War and Social Change: Benjamin F. Butler and the Assertion of Federal Power

66

II. III. IV. V.

VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. Epilogue

The Failure of Conciliation: Nathaniel P. Banks and the Planters

110

Between Slavery and Freedom: The Labor System of General Banks

135

Reconstruction as a Problem in Party Building: Thomas J. Durant and the Free State Movement

159

The Suffrage Issue: General Banks Takes Command

186

Radicals vs. Moderates: The Ideological Dimension of Unionist Politics

212

The Moderates in Power: The Constitutional Convention of 1864

237

Lincoln vs. Sumner: The Louisiana Question in National Politics

271

Counterrevolution: The Return of the Confederates

305

The Politics of Revolution

342

Appendix A Regression Analysis of Electoral Behavior in Antebellum Louisiana, 1840-1861

357

Appendix B The Occupational Background of Delegates to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention 370 of 1864 Appendix C A Scale Analysis of Voting Behavior in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, 1864

373

Bibliographical Essay

381

Index

401

Tables A-I Voter Turnout in Antebellum Louisiana

359

A-2 Electoral Realignment in Louisiana in the 1856 Presidential Election

360

A-3 Pattern of Electoral Stability and Change, 1840-1860

361

A-4 Electoral Realignment in Louisiana in the 1860 Presidential Election

362

A-5 Electoral Realignment in Louisiana in 1861

363

A-6 Variables Used in Multiple Regression Equations

365

A-7 Variables Set Aside to Avoid Multicollinearity

366

A-8 Social Background of Party Preference in the 1860 Presidential Election

367

A-9 Social Background of the Secession Convention Election, 1861

368

B-I Known Occupations of Convention Delegates

371

B-2 Public OfiBces Held by Convention Delegates

372

C-I Preliminary Set of 18 Roll Calls

374

C-2 Roll Calls Arranged by Percentage of Positive Responses

376

C-3 Final Set of 9 Scale Items

377

C-4 Voting Patterns of Delegates

378

Preface

ABRAHAM LINCOLN has been the subject of so many books that each new work bearing his name in the title should be required to justify its appearance. What the reader will find in the following pages is not, I hasten to explain, a biographical study centered on Lincoln himself. It is, rather, an examination of what Wendell Phillips liked to call "Mr. Lincoln's model of reconstruction"—the moderate Republican regime es­ tablished under his aegis in wartime Louisiana. Both the Presi­ dent and his critics regarded the Louisiana "experiment" as the crucial test case for his approach to reconstruction; as a result it was the focal point of virtually every debate over postwar policy in Congress. By appropriating the term model I do not mean to suggest that Lincoln had a general plan or theory of reconstruction. As David Donald makes clear in his essays on the Civil War president, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician whose decisions on policy matters took the form of ad hoc responses to the specific circum­ stances of each case. For this reason it is a mistake to see policy statements such as the "ten-percent proclamation" of December 1863 as the guidelines for a systematic plan. The President's search for an effective postwar policy must be viewed in the context of the events in occupied Louisiana which so often shaped his decisions. From this angle Lincoln appears much more tentative in his commitment to the moderate policies with which the public iden­ tified him, and, by contrast, more open to radical initiatives than historians have realized. The idea that a viable Republican Party could be built in wartime Louisiana among white Unionists—and that such a party could continue to win elections, presumably without the assistance of black votes, once the Confederates returned from the war—was not so much Lincoln's own strategy for reconstruction as that of his commanding general in the state, Nathaniel P. Banks. Before Banks seized control of the reorgani­ zation of civil government the President had cooperated fully with

PREFACE

the radicals of the Louisiana free state movement (whose declara­ tion of support for Negro suffrage in December 1863 seems to have triggered Banks' takeover). Lincoln acquiesced in the gen­ eral's policy (in part because Banks misled him about the essential facts of the case), but within a short time privately encouraged the new moderate government to adopt at least limited enfran­ chisement of blacks. After pushing unsuccessfully for over a year to secure congressional acceptance of the Louisiana regime, the President expressed his dissatisfaction with the tiny size of its constituency in the last public address of his life, and came out in favor of extending the ballot to freedmen in the postwar South. To the extent that Lincoln was open to a more radical policy, his willingness to move to the left reflected the practical advan­ tages which such a strategy might offer. A radical approach to reconstruction was more realistic than Banks' moderate policy, I argue, because the nation was in the midst of a revolutionary civil war, and in such crises only the forceful allocation of gov­ ernmental power by the victors can produce a stable postwar order. That the term revolution inevitably arouses controversy, I recognize from experience. In the hope of avoiding misunder­ standing I have tried to define with some care what I conceive to be the revolutionary characteristics of the war against slavery, and to explain their implications for the dilemma of reconstruction. During the last decade it has been fashionable to emphasize the conservatism and racial prejudice of the Republicans of the Civil War era. This historiographical tendency, which unites the New Left with the older consensus school, too often measures the poli­ tics of the 1860s by the ideological yardstick of the late 1960s. Although the thoughtful reader will detect an engage quality in my own interpretation, I have tried to view the ideology and political behavior of my subjects in the context within which they acted. In order to understand the politics of the war years fully, I begin with an examination of the antebellum social order and party sys­ tem. I have probed more deeply into the prewar background than I anticipated, but my findings help explain why southern Louisi­ ana, though offering the weakest support to secession of any rural area of the state, was unlikely to succumb to the blandishments of the conciliatory General Banks. I have described in some detail both the slave experience and the transition from bondage to the

PREFACE

contract labor system. My interpretation of these matters differs in slight, but important, respects from recent scholarship, and these nuances are essential to my discussion of the revolutionary dimensions of the Civil War. I am under no illusion that my analysis of the Louisiana ex­ periment is objective or value-free. At every step of the research, however, I have tried to make my assumptions explicit, to test hypotheses systematically, and to use quantitative methods when­ ever necessary to answer questions that otherwise defy resolution. Following the conventions of narrative history, I have concealed as much as possible of the methodological scaffolding used in the construction of the edifice, but readers interested in methodologi­ cal issues will find them discussed in footnotes and appendices. Much of the research, I should add, is based upon such traditional sources as personal correspondence, diaries, newspapers, pam­ phlets, convention proceedings, and the legislative record. I have merely correlated the evidence from these sources more system­ atically, and asked questions different from my predecessors'. That I have learned much from other scholars is also true, and I have built upon their work wherever possible. The idea for this book originated in a conversation with Willie Lee Rose, for whom I worked as a research assistant at the Uni­ versity of Virginia. My account of the Louisiana experiment dif­ fers in character from her own masterful study of the transition from slavery to freedom in the South Carolina sea islands, if only because in my area the white folks stayed around after the arrival of the Union army. That I became a historian at all is due in part to the exacting tutelage of Paul M. Gaston when I was his student in Charlottesville. At Princeton University, where this book began as a doctoral dissertation, James M. McPherson was a demanding, but con­ siderate, adviser, and every subsequent addition to the manuscript has passed his scrutiny first. His own work has exercised a per­ vasive influence on my interpretation of the Civil War as a revolu­ tionary experience. Jim has also been a valued friend, and without his unswerving support this book would never have been com­ pleted. Other members of the Princeton faculty played significant roles in the evolution of this book. Sheldon Hackney influenced my approach to legislative roll call analysis and offered valuable criticism as second reader for the dissertation. Lawrence Stone

PREFACE

shaped my understanding of social structure, and Theodore K. Rabb introduced me to quantitative methods of historical analy­ sis. In describing secession as a preemptive counterrevolutionary movement I borrow explicitly from the work of Arno J. Mayer; the influence of his teaching on my conception of ideology and political behavior is far greater than a single citation can indicate. At the University of Minnesota, where I taught for several years, three friends in the Department of Political Science— Terrence Hoppman, William H. Flanigan, and W. Phillips Shively—helped me find the right statistical method for analyzing electoral behavior, and Frank J. Sorauf influenced my interpreta­ tion of the Civil War party system. Two former colleagues in the Department of History, Kinley Brauer and George Green, read earlier versions of the manuscript and made useful comments. Anne Lee Gearhart, now with the American Historical Review, offered valuable stylistic suggestions. The most important influ­ ence at Minnesota was my collaboration with two former graduate students, research assistants, and coauthors, Dale Baum and Clark Miller, who read every word and gave essential advice. All my students deserve acknowledgment, in fact, for their pa­ tience as I tried out ideas and for their warm personal support over the years. Earlier versions of the book had the benefit of careful evalua­ tion by other scholars in the field. The most detailed and pains­ taking critique was that of La Wanda Cox, whose current re­ search deals in part with the Louisiana story. Her probing ques­ tions helped me clarify my interpretation; she still disagrees with certain aspects of my argument, I think, but I know the book is far better for her counsel. Richard 0. Curry offered commentary that was especially valuable because our interpretations differ significantly. I appreciate his encouragement, and that of William S. McFeely, whose research on Louisiana made him an especially knowledgeable reader. Geraldine McTigue, David Sumler, Kermit Hall, Geoffrey Loesch, and Cheryll Cody gave useful advice on specific points. I am, of course, responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that remain. A work based heavily on unpublished sources is impossible without the generous and expert guidance of archivists and li­ brarians. I am indebted to the staffs of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the New York Historical Society, the New

PREFACE

York Public Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard Univer­ sity, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Illinois State Historical Society, the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, the American Missionary Archives (then at Fisk University), Louisiana State University, the New Orleans Public Library, Tulane University, and Princeton Uni­ versity. The research and writing could not have been completed without generous financial assistance from Princeton University, the University of Minnesota, and Vanderbilt University. The editorial advice of Jeannette Hopkins was important at an earlier stage of the manuscript. At Princeton University Press, Lewis Bateman and Gail Filion have been skillful (and patient) editors, and Gretchen Oberfranc has copyedited the manuscript meticu­ lously. I am grateful for their confidence in the book. The support of my mother has never wavered; as testimony of her love, she was the dissertation s first lay reader (rooting all the while for the planters). My wife Patricia typed the manuscript, but more importantly, helped keep it in perspective. Without her, this book would have been neither possible nor, for me, worthwhile.

Abbreviations Repositories of Manuscript and Archival Collections AMAA DU HU HSP LC MHS NA NYHS UNC

American Missionary Association Archives, Dillard University, New Orleans Duke University Library, Durham, N.C. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston National Archives, Washington, D.C. New York Historical Society, New York Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill National Archives Record Groups

NA, RG 105, BRFAL Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Aban­ doned Lands NA, RG 366, 3STAL 3d Special Treasury Agency (Louisiana) NA, RG 393, DGBCA Department of the Gulf, Bureau of Civil Affairs Correspondence AJM Andrew Johnson Papers, microfilm edition (originals, LC) ALM Abraham Lincoln Papers, microfilm edition (originals, LC) BC The Private and Official Correspondence of General Ben­ jamin F. Butler, ed. Jessie A. Marshall, 5 vols. (Norwood, Mass., 1917) CC Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase (American Historical Association, Annual Report for the Year 1902, π [Washington, D.C., 1903]) CWL The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953)

ABBREVIATIONS

Published Documents and Party Records CG DCCL

Congressional Globe Debates in the Convention for the Revision and Amend­ ment of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1864) OR War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C., 18801901) PCFF Proceedings of the Convention of the Friends of Free­ dom (New Orleans, 1863) PCRPL Proceedings of the Convention of the Republican Party of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1865) Census Materials Louisiana Census (1857) In The Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts for the State of Louisi­ ana (Baton Rouge, 1859) US Census (1850), P The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853) US Census (1860), P Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1864) US Census (1860), A Agriculture of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1864) US Census (1860), S Statistics of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1866) Periodicals CWH Civil War History JSH Journal of S o u t h e r n H i s t o r y LH Louisiana History LHQ Louisiana Historical Quarterly M V H R Mississippi V a l l e y Historical R e v i e w NASS National Anti-Slavery Standard

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND RECONSTRUCTION

PROLOGUE

iiMr.

Lincoln's Model of Reconstruction99

XHE mist from the Potomac gave an eerie quality to the gas lights and torches that illuminated the White House on the evening of April 11, 1865. A crowd of several thousand jubilant citizens who had been celebrat­ ing the news of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox with two days of victory bonfires, torchlight processions, howitzer salutes, impromptu orations by cabinet officers, and bibulous revelries in the city's taverns now gathered on the lawn of the executive mansion to hear the promised speech of President Abraham Lincoln. When the tall, gaunt figure of Lincoln ap­ peared at the balcony the vast crowd erupted with a tremendous burst of applause and cheers. "There was something terrible in the enthusiasm with which the beloved Chief Magistrate was received," recalled his secretary, Noah Brooks. For a few mo­ ments the President spoke in the eulogistic tone his audience doubtless expected. "We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart," he began, "and the surrender of the principal insurgent army gives hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained." Lincoln praised the work of General Ulysses S. Grant and the men of the Northern armies for their gallant service, and promised to proclaim a na­ tional day of thanksgiving. Rather abruptly, however, the Presi­ dent's remarks took on a more serious note as he launched into what proved to be a major policy statement on the controversial issue of reconstruction. The crowd was "silent, intent, and per­ haps surprised," wrote Brooks: "this was not the sort of speech which the multitude had expected."1 1Lincoln, "Last Public Address," April 11, 1865, Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), viii, 399-405 (hereafter cited as CWL); Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln's Time (New York, 1895), 225-227; New York Times, April 11, 12,1865.

"MR.

LINCOLN'S MODEL"

The President's address was detailed, tightly argued, and subtle in its implications. Like many of Lincoln's speeches, it made a less favorable impression when delivered than when read in the morn­ ing newspapers. To careful observers it seemed to indicate that a significant change in the President's reconstruction policy was in the wind. Lincoln's remarks appear all the more critical in im­ port, moreover, because this was to prove the last public address of his life: three nights later came the fateful assassination at Ford's Theater. Most historians have assumed, until recently, that the speech foreshadowed a shift to the right, toward the same conservative program adopted by his successor, Andrew John­ son.2 A careful examination of the actual content of the address indicates that, on the contrary, Lincoln was moving toward a more radical policy, based primarily on his reappraisal of the re­ construction experience in the occupied South. To the surprise of his boisterous audience the President dealt almost exclusively with events in Louisiana, which abolitionist critic Wendell Phillips had dubbed "Mr. Lincoln's model of re­ construction." Louisiana had been the first state to hold elections under the President's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruc­ tion, the famous "ten-percent plan," which took its name from a provision allowing the reorganization of civil government once 10 percent of the antebellum electorate had taken an oath of fu­ ture loyalty. With Lincoln's authorization, General Nathaniel P. Banks had supervised the initiation of reconstruction in Louisi­ ana, seeking to create a viable Republican Party from the loyal white population and holding off the demands for participation by the articulate leaders of the New Orleans black population.3 2 Accounts which assume that Lincoln's speech hinted at a shift to the right include: James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 4 vols. (New York, 1945-1955), Vol. iv, with Richard N. Current, Last Full Measure, 361-362; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison, Wis., 1941), 370373; Reinhard Luthin, The Real Abraham Lincoln (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960), 583-584, 605; and Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Or­ ganized War to Victory, 1864-1865 (New York, 1971), 321-324. Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), 98-99, expresses ambivalence on this point. 3 Wendell Phillips to Edward Gilbert, May 27, 1864, Edward McPherson (ed.), The Political History of the Great Rebellion (New York, 1864), 412; Lincoln, "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction," CWL, vh, 53-56.

"MR.

LINCOLN'S MODEL"

Congressional opposition to Banks' activities had played an important part in the formulation of the Wade-Davis bill, which Lincoln had refused to sign into law. The practical effect of the bill would have been to postpone federal recognition of the new Louisiana government and emulation of the general's program in other occupied states until peacetime. Lincoln had continued to see the Louisiana experiment as a success, however, and after his triumphal reelection in November he used the full influence of his office to seek admission of the congressional delegation from New Orleans. Although stymied in the House, the President's efforts were almost victorious in the Senate, denied in the end only by Senator Charles Sumner's threat of a filibuster. Characterizing the new regime in Louisiana as "a mere seven-month's abortion, begotten by the bayonet in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste," the Massachusetts radical had forced the postponement of congressional recognition.4 That Lincoln now asked Sumner, the most vocal critic of his Louisiana policy, to appear with him on the White House balcony as he delivered his speech (and not General Banks, who had lobbied all winter on behalf of the Louisiana delegation on Capi­ tol Hill), is an important indication of how the President hoped his remarks would be interpreted. Sumner, to be sure, was dis­ trustful, despite his friendly personal relationship with the Lin­ coln family, and declined the offer. "I was unwilling," he ex­ plained to a friend, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, "to put myself in the position of opposing him at his own balcony or assenting by silence." Chase, on the other hand, read the President's address as a gesture of compromise toward radicals like himself and Sumner.5 Lincoln admitted to the crowd that his Louisiana policy had been the subject of great criticism from fellow Republicans. "I For a detailed account of Banks' intervention in Louisiana reconstruction, see below, Chap, vi and vn. 4 Congressional Globe, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 27, 1865), 1126 (hereafter cited as CG). For a discussion of the Louisiana question in national politics, see below, especially Chap. ix. 5 Sumner to Chase, April 12, 1865, Chase Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as LC); Chase to Lincoln, April 12, 1865, Abraham Lincoln Papers, microfilm edition (originals in LC), 41637 (here­ after cited as ALM).

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

am much censured," he said, for "setting up and seeking to sus­ tain the new state government of Louisiana," Although much of his speech was a defense of the policy he had followed, his tone was conciliatory, indeed, almost deferential, toward opponents of his approach. "I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable," the President pointed out, and "claimed no right to say when, or whether members should be admitted to Congress from such states." Lincoln also took some pains to show that he had consulted with his cabinet be­ fore issuing the proclamation on which the Louisiana experiment was based, and that, as he recalled, none of the secretaries had raised strong objections. He added that on the day the proclama­ tion was presented to Congress, "I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal; and not a single objection to it, from any professed emancipationist."6 When news of the reconstruction proclamation reached New Orleans in December 1863, recalled Lincoln, "General Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military cooperation, would reconstruct, substantially on that plan. I wrote him, and some of them to try it." Since that time "some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slaveholding state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union . . . held elections, organized a state government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and em­ powering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man." The Louisiana legislature, Lincoln added, "has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons," he concluded, "are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state— committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants."7 Lincoln's account of what had happened in Louisiana during the war was accurate—as far as it went. Radical critics, however, felt that the President had left out a most crucial aspect of the story. After reading the speech in the morning papers, Chief Justice Chase wrote Lincoln at great length to offer a dissenting 6 Lincoln,

"Last Public Address," CWL, vm, 401-402. 7 Ibid., 402-404.

" M R . L I N C O L N 'S M O D E L "

view of what had happened in that pivotal month of December 1863. At the time, Chase had been serving as Secretary of the Treasury. According to his memory of the cabinet meeting at which the ten-percent proclamation was discussed, he had ob­ jected to the exclusion of Negro suffrage from the President's plan. "I was anxious to have this question left open," Chase re­ marked, because even at that early date it was "my opinion that the colored loyalists ought to be allowed to participate in it."8 Chase had not made a strong objection to the suffrage provision at the time because he assumed that the question was, in fact, still open. In New Orleans, registration of voters and control of the Union Association were in the hands of a group of native white radicals whose Free State General Committee, Chase re­ minded the President, "had already shown itself disposed to a degree of liberality towards the colored people quite remarkable at that time. They had admitted delegates from the creole colored population into their free state convention," the chief justice con­ tinued, referring to the unofficial Friends of Freedom convention held in New Orleans two weeks after the issue of Lincoln's re­ construction proclamation. The Unionists of the state had been petitioning the military officials for weeks to call an election for delegates to a constitutional convention, to which, according to Chase, they proposed "to admit intelligent colored citizens of that class to the rights of suffrage." "I have no doubt," declared the chief justice, "that great and satisfactory progress would have been made in the same direction had not the work been taken out of their hands." Instead, General Banks had thrown the full support of the military occupation behind the moderate minority led by former congressman Michael Hahn, and in opposition to the idea of black voting rights. "I think General Banks' error, and I have said so to him," wrote Chase, "was in not acting through rather than over the Free State Committee." The general's arbitrary interference with the natural course of reconstruction "created the impression that the advocates of general suffrage were to be 8 Chase to Lincoln, April 12, 1865, ALM, 41637. Chase's memory was correct: see Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 132-134.

"MR.

L I N C O L N 'S M O D E L "

treated with disfavor by the representatives of the Government," concluded the chief justice.9 Confronted with a fait accompli in February 1864, the Presi­ dent had acquiesced in Banks' "coup" and become identified with a policy of reconstruction for whites only. Two months earlier, when he first authorized Banks "to give us a free-state reorganiza­ tion of Louisiana in the shortest possible time," Lincoln had, like Chase, assumed that Banks would cooperate with the radical committee. He had even remarked pointedly that the general should not "throw away available work already done for recon­ struction." The President had been aware that the New Orleans radicals favored limited Negro suffrage, yet, curiously, his in­ structions to Banks did not mention the controversial issue. Per­ haps Lincoln was willing to support the enfranchisement of blacks, if the initiative came from local leaders: after Banks' protege, Michael Hahn, was elected governor the President wrote to him privately to suggest that the new constitutional convention adopt some form of limited Negro suffrage. Yet Lincoln (like many of his critics on Capitol Hill) was unwilling to accept the political risk of giving public support to the idea of black voting rights.10 The greatest flaw in Lincoln's ten-percent plan was its optimis­ tic assumption that the "tangible nucleus" of loyal Unionists would inevitably acquire majority support among white South­ erners simply because it was the existing state government. The President's proclamation would allow the returning Confederates to participate in postwar elections once they had taken an oath of future loyalty to the Union and accepted emancipation. Yet there was little reason to assume that men who had fought bitter­ ly against the national government for years would suddenly undergo a conversion experience and throw their support to the tiny group of unconditional Unionists placed in power by Lin9 Chase to Lincoln, April 12, 1865, ALM, 41637. At the time of these events Chase had been in close touch with Louisiana affairs through several correspondents. 10 Lincoln to Banks, Dec. 24, 1863, Lincoln to Hahn, March 13, 1864, CWL, vii, 89-90, 243. For a careful analysis of the evolution of congressional attitudes toward Negro suffrage, see Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), 201-202, 217, 251-255, 263-266.

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

coin. What was to prevent the former rebels from reorganizing the state's Democratic Party and defeating those twelve thousand voters of whom the President boasted in his last speech? As Lincoln spoke from the balcony of the White House to a crowd celebrating the surrender of the major rebel army, the immediacy of this question could hardly have been more ap­ parent. "The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests," he admitted, "would be more satisfactory to all if it contained fifty, thirty, or even twenty thousand, instead of only about twelve thousand, as it does." The confession that his policy had failed to attract a potential majority of the white voters led the President, quite logically, to the issue of Negro suffrage: "it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man." Now at last Lincoln publicly endorsed the idea of enfranchising Southern blacks, on precisely the same terms he had advocated privately a year earlier in his letter to Governor Hahn. "I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent," he told his audience, by which he presumably meant those who could pass a literacy test, "and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana govern­ ment, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable," the President insisted. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, shall we sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it?"11 Lincoln was proposing a new compromise on the Louisiana issue, in short: congressional recognition of the existing regime coupled with the adoption of Negro suffrage.12 Lincoln's decision to support limited voting rights for blacks also opened a possible avenue for negotiation between radicals and moderates in Louisiana. The President made it clear that he would not be tied to an outmoded policy by the intransigence of the moderates he had placed in power. He had promised sup­ port to the Hahn administration, "but as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest." Lincoln concluded his address with the observa11

Lincoln, "Last Public Address," CWL, vih, 403-404. a previous effort to work out such a compromise during the pre­ ceding winter, see Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 251-266. 12 For

" M R . L I N C O L N 'S M O D E L "

tion that he was considering a new proclamation to deal with the reconstruction issue: "it may be my duty to make some new an­ nouncement to the people of the South."13 The President had, in fact, asked Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (whose views, he knew, were more radical than his own) to draft an executive order setting up military government in the former Confederate states. So encouraged was Stanton by the Louisiana speech, which he interpreted as a significant shift to the left, that he hurried to the White House the next morning to confer with Lincoln. Stanton, who was on closer personal terms with the President than any other cabinet member, took with him a new ally on the suffrage question, Attorney General James Speed. That Speed, a Kentucky Unionist and brother of Lincoln's old friend Joshua Speed, now favored the enfranchisement of blacks strengthened Stanton's argument. After a long discussion of suffrage and other issues related to reconstruction, the two cabinet officers felt that the President was leaning toward a more forceful postwar policy. The next day Stanton drew up, as Lin­ coln had requested, a tentative reconstruction proclamation.14 At the cabinet meeting of April 14 the President asked Stanton to read his completed draft, which then formed the basis for the morning's discussion. The secretary's proposal would set up oc­ cupation governments remarkably similar to the one employed in Louisiana before the creation of civil government by General Banks. A military governor was to maintain order with the aid of provost marshals while the civilian agencies of the national gov­ ernment reestablished Treasury offices, postal facilities, and fed­ eral courts. Once conditions in the occupied areas had stabilized, the military was to supervise elections for the reorganization of 13

Lincoln, "Last Public Address," CWL, vra, 402. Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962), 353-356. The other issue discussed with the President by Stanton and Speed was the revocation of Lincoln's previous order allowing the Virginia legislature to meet. The purpose of that order had been to permit the Confederate legislature to remove the state's troops from the war; following Lee's surrender at Appo­ mattox, the issue was moot. The President acceded to the request of the two cabinet officers. For a discussion of the Virginia question and its rela­ tionship to Lincoln's last speech, see Peyton McCrary, "Moderation in a Revolutionary World: Lincoln and the Failure of Reconstruction in Louisi­ ana" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1972), 386-392. 14

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

local and state governments. Stanton "left open" the question of Negro voting rights in those elections, he said, because he knew this would require extended debate before the President reached a decision. The cabinet discussed the document for a while, but after suggesting a few initial changes, Lincoln postponed further consideration of the issue until the following week. "He was never so near our views," Attorney General Speed told Chase, adding that the President admitted that he "had perhaps been too fast in his desires for early reconstruction."15 Although not mentioned in Stanton's draft, a new federal agency would inevitably play a central role in postwar occupa­ tion: the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, created on March 3, 1865, in the last hours of the 38th Congress. The army officers who were to man the bureau were expected to supervise the negotiation of contracts between plantation labor­ ers and landowners, much as the military had been doing in Lou­ isiana and other occupied areas. In addition, the bureau was given control of the confiscated and abandoned land seized by the government during the war; wherever feasible, its agents were to rent farms of up to forty acres to freedmen at nominal rates, with the possibility that lessees could buy the plots within three years. There is no evidence that Lincoln opposed this program of agrarian reform, and he readily signed the Freedmen's Bureau bill into law. Preoccupied with military affairs and absent at Grant's headquarters much of the time, the President had not yet decided whom to appoint as commissioner, but it is significant that all the names considered were men known to be sympathetic to freedmen.16 The only direct evidence concerning Lincoln's view of freed­ men's affairs at this time comes from a letter he wrote to Thomas W. Conway, the head of the wartime Bureau of Free Labor in Louisiana. Much criticized by radical abolitionists such as Wen15Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, 357-358; Howard K. Beale (ed.), The Diary of Gideon WeUes, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), n, 279-283. Speed's characterization of Lincoln's views is found in David Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1954),268. 16 On the initiation of the Freedmen's Bureau, see La Wanda Cox, "The Promise of Land for the Freedmen," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLV (Dec. 1958), 413-440 (hereafter cited as MVHR).

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

dell Phillips, Banks' labor system had indeed been more conserva­ tive than free labor programs in other occupied areas. Under Conway, however, the system had evolved in a more liberal di­ rection, winning the approbation of veteran abolitionist William LIoyd Garrison. Appointed first head of the Freedmen's Bureau for Louisiana in May 1865, Conway proved to be a radical pro­ ponent of land reform and Negro suffrage. When the President received a copy of Conway's annual report on the condition of the freedmen in Louisiana, he wrote that "your success in the work of their moral and physical elevation" gave him "much pleasure." Lincoln predicted that "we shall be entirely successful in our efforts," for he saw the wartime experiments leading to "an earlier and happier consummation than the most sanguine friends of the freedmen could reasonably expect."17 Though hardly to be classed as a radical spokesman for freedmen's rights, the President was clearly sympathetic to the work of the new bureau. In the months ahead Lincoln would control the reorganization of civil government and the direction of freedmen's affairs in the postwar South. Because the President's policies were in broad agreement with the views of his party's leaders on Capitol Hill, the fact that the new Congress would not assemble until Decem­ ber aroused little concern even among his radical critics. On the night of April 14, however, a Confederate sympathizer's bullet put the fateful presidential decisions on reconstruction in the hands of Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Although it is impossible to know precisely what shape Lin­ coln's postwar policy would have taken, it is almost inconceivable that he would have followed the strategy pursued by Johnson. The new President's reorganization of civil government placed political power in the hands of former Confederates, although relatively few of his appointed officials had been active secession­ ists in the 1860-1861 crisis. Johnson returned the confiscated estates of wealthy planters, thus placing them in a position to dominate the Southern economy once again. In addition to re­ turning the land which was to have financed the operation of the new Freedmen's Bureau, moreover, Johnson replaced agents 17 Lincoln

ix and x.

to Conway, March 1, 1865, CWL, vm, 325. See below, Chaps,

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

sympathetic to the interests of the freedmen, such as Conway, with conservatives more amenable to the idea of helping planters round up sufficient cheap labor. The result of Johnson's restora­ tion policy was to throw control of the South to the Democratic Party—his own party before the war, to which he was now re­ turning—and this presented a grave threat to continued Repub­ lican dominance of the national government.18 The idea that Lincoln would have presided over such a revival of Democratic fortunes when he, like most Republicans, regarded his own party as the guardian of the cause for which the North had fought the war strains credulity to the breaking point. Lincoln was a good Republican who throughout his political career had been a staunch defender of party regularity. He shared the basic values of his more radical critics within the party; like Sumner, Chase, Stanton, and Phillips, the President welcomed the abolition of slavery, and by the end of the war he had com­ mitted himself to the protection of freedmen's rights before the law. In supporting the Freedmen's Bureau, he was moving to­ ward a program of protecting their economic rights as well. Like other Republicans, Lincoln saw the preservation of his party's hegemony in national politics as essential both to the stability and the justice of government in the former Confederate states. From his point of view the only acceptable reconstruction policy was one which allowed the development of a viable Republican Party in the South. As the political necessity of Negro suffrage became more evident, the President and congressional Repub­ licans moved, at varying speeds, toward the adoption of such a prerequisite for restoration. The primary differences between Lincoln and his more radical critics involved the question of means, not ends.19 18 On Johnson's policy as implemented in Louisiana, see Chap, χ below. For the national picture, see La Wanda and John Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963); W. R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867 (New York, 1963); and William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968). For a different emphasis, see Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Recon­ struction (Chicago, 1960). 19 David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (New York, 1956), 57-81, 103-127; Donald, "Devils Facing Zionwards," in Grady McWhiney (ed.), Grant, Lee, Lincoln, and the Radicals (Evanston,

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

The essence of Lincoln's political skill lay in his celebrated pragmatism, his willingness to alter policy to fit the changing cir­ cumstances of a nation in the throes of a revolutionary civil war. How curious, then, that historians who praise his refusal to be bound by rigid guidelines and blueprints have focused on the ten-percent proclamation as the key to understanding Lincoln's "plan" of reconstruction.20 In fact, the President's approach to the problem of reorganizing civil government changed directions on several occasions to adjust to the alterations in the political situation. The decision-making process in the White House was less often a case of setting deliberate policy for his subordinates to carry out in the field than of responding, uncertainly, to the changing pattern of events in the occupied South. As Lincoln expressed it shortly after the initiation of political reconstruction in Louisiana, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."21 No state was so critical in shaping presidential policy and congressional deliberations as Louisiana, and for this reason it offers a valuable prism for a reappraisal of the reconstruction question during the Civil War.22 A proper test of Lincoln's "model of reconstruction" in LouisiIll., 1964), 72-91; Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard, for Racial Justice (New York, 1967), 266-304; Belz, Reconstruct­ ing the Union, passim; and Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1977). 20 This is especially true of Charles H. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Re­ construction (New York, 1901), and of Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 1-19, 31-33, 192-197, but the tendency pervades most general accounts of wartime reconstruction. 21 Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, CWL, vn, 282. William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1960), also argues that Lincoln's policies changed frequently in response to events in the field, but Hesseltine's survey of politics in the occupied South is based on the older secondary literature and written from a different viewpoint. 22 Recognition of the primacy of the Louisiana question in the debate over postwar policy is now widespread: see, for example, James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 243-245, 269-270, 289-295, 308-310; David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867 (Baton Rouge, 1967), 28-30, 83-84; Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 106-125, 143152, 189-195, 226-229, 232-235, 249-275; and Belz, A New Birth of Free­ dom,: The Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights, 1861-1866 (Westport, Conn., 1976), 41-48, 52-53, 58-63.

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

ana must focus on actual political behavior rather than on the policy statements of the President and General Banks. Since the central task of reconstruction was, in practical terms, that of building a viable Republican Party in the South, a careful exami­ nation of the process of party formation is essential. The social background of the political activists in the free state movement, the types of voter constituencies to which they appealed, the degree of popular support enjoyed by both radicals and moder­ ates, and the role of the military in political development require systematic exploration. The most controversial issue of recon­ struction was the place of black people in the postwar social order; thus the story must include an investigation of the freedmen's experience and of the special role of the New Orleans "free men of color."23 23 The published accounts of wartime reconstruction in Louisiana provide, at best, inadequate treatment of the problems posed here. John R. Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana Through 1868 (Baltimore, 1910), and Willie M. Caskey, Secession and Restoration of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938), are "unreconstructed" interpretations based primarily on the state's partisan newspapers. Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), portrays wartime Unionists as precursors of Populism and labor radicalism. Although Shugg discusses the social basis of politics, his research in city directories and census materials is quite unsystematic (and inaccurate: see below, Chap. VHI). Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), is perhaps the most influential account of wartime politics in Louisiana. Written from the vantage point of General Banks, it presents a distorted view of the split between radicals and moderates (although Harrington is equally cynical about both sides); heavy use of manuscript materials is marred by a cavalier attitude toward chronology. Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans Under the Federals, 1862-1865 (Lex­ ington, Ky., 1965), is more balanced, but relies almost entirely on earlier secondary accounts (especially Shugg and Harrington). Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), also relies on the existing literature for the wartime period. Only the black experience has received intensive research: see Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 65-115, John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), David C. Rankin, "The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans during Reconstruction," Journal of Southern History, XL (Aug. 1974), 417-440 (hereafter cited as JSH), and C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976). Ripley offers an excellent account of many aspects of the freedmen's story given little pre­ vious attention, and a chapter on politics in which he accepts the view of

"MR. LINCOLN'S MODEL"

The perceptions of the political actors themselves require par­ ticular attention. The goals they sought and the ideology they espoused shaped the behavior of radicals, moderates, and proslavery conservatives in conflicting ways. The sugar planters of the wartime conservative movement remained implacably op­ posed to everything the Republican Party represented, seeking only to protect their economic interests and the cause of white supremacy by cooperation with the military authorities; even so, loyal Confederates regarded them as rank collaborationists. Both radicals and moderates within the free state movement conceived of themselves as Republicans, but the effect of General Banks' intervention was to produce open political warfare between the two factions in 1864. Each wing of the free state movement de­ scribed the war against slavery as a revolutionary struggle—and each saw itself as revolutionary—but their views on the nature of revolution were far apart.24 The Louisiana story offers significant insight into the revolu­ tionary character of the American Civil War. The term revolu­ tion is used here in a straightforward way to identify a particular type of internal political violence. Civil wars become revolutions whenever radical social change—or the perceived threat of radi­ cal change—is the major issue separating insurgents from in­ cumbents. The war between North and South was such a strug­ gle. The goal of the secessionists in 1861 was to prevent an immediate assault on the South's "peculiar institution," a threat free state unity during 1863 presented in Chap, ν below (though not my analysis of the split engineered by General Banks). None of the above studies examines the Louisiana question in the context of national politics. 24 See below, Chap. VII. My interpretation of the revolutionary dimen­ sions of the American Civil War was originally stimulated by three par­ ticular works. C. Vann Woodward, "Equality: The Deferred Commitment," in Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1968), 69-87, still seems to me a seminal essay, despite Woodward's partial retraction in "Seeds of Failure in Radical Race Policy," in Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Boston, 1971), 163-183. Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianapolis, 1964), and McPherson, Struggle for Equality, demonstrate in impressive detail that many participants re­ garded the war as a revolutionary experience, and that in important respects they were right.

" M R . L I N C O L N 'S M O D E L "

they seriously overestimated.25 Yet the war initiated by the Con­ federates at Fort Sumter for the purpose of preventing revolu­ tionary change made possible for the first time the mobilization of a genuine commitment in the North to destroy the institution of slavery. As a slaveholding society the South was especially vulnerable to the social dislocation wrought by an invading army, particularly because of its dependence upon systematic police control of the labor force. Reluctant Union commanders found themselves functioning in a revolutionary role as thousands of slaves simply left their plantations and clustered around the camps of the invaders; rather than return them to the Confeder­ ates, the army quickly discovered that the black refugees could provide essential aid to the Northern cause. The longer the fight­ ing lasted, the greater were the changes imposed on the South. Rather than settling the central ideological conflict that had precipitated the war, the four years of bloody fighting intensified the polarization of values between North and South, Republican and Democrat, left and right, black and white.26 The scars of any internal violence are slow to heal, and when the ideological content of politics is as divisive as in the American Civil War, the stabilization of government after the surrender of the rebel armies is all the more difficult. The only realistic hope of creating a stable postwar order acceptable to the Republican Party lay in forceful allocation of governmental power by the victors, whether by military occupation or by the imposition of Negro suffrage in the South. Conciliation of Southern whites—the 25 In the Epilogue I characterize secession and the initiation of civil war by the South as "preemptive counterrevolution," a concept borrowed from Arno J. Mayer, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870-1956: An Analytic Framework (New York, 1971), 86-93. 26 As political scientist Harry Eckstein observes, all civil wars "tend to scar societies deeply and to prevent the formation of a !postwar] consensus indefinitely": "On the Etiology of Internal War," History and Theory, iv, (no. 2, 1965), 133-134. Two useful surveys of the theoretical literature of revolution are Lawrence Stone, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics, xvra (April 1966), 159-176, and Perez Zagorin, "Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography," Political Science Qtmrterly, LXXXVIII (March 1973), 23-52. The analysis of the nature of power and revolution in Ralf Dahrendorf, Essays in the Theory of Society (Palo Alto, Calif., 1968), 124128, 134-150, provides the best exposition of the theoretical position I have adopted on these issues.

"MR.

LINCOLN'S MODEL"

"normal" process of coalition building in the American party system—could only be purchased by ignoring the interests of the black and white Unionists who provided the logical Republican constituency. Even at that price, it seemed likely that the Demo­ cratic Party would be able to mobilize a voting majority in the white community with ease.27 In his anxiety to win the war, secure a constitutional amend­ ment abolishing slavery, and set up at least some form of civil government in the South before the fighting stopped, President Lincoln relied on a moderate strategy of reconstruction that chal­ lenged this radical assumption. The high cost of this moderate policy, which caused Lincoln to move toward a more radical ap­ proach in the last days of his life, can be most fully understood by examining the experiment that the President thought had the best chance of success: the wartime regime in Louisiana. 27

See below, Chap. x. This interpretation is shared, in many respects, by Michael Perman, Reunion Without Compromise: The South and Recon­ struction, 1865-1868 (Cambridge, 1973), although, since he deals with those states that did not experience wartime reconstruction, he has little to say about Louisiana.

CHAPTER I

The Old Regime: Society and Politics in Antebellum Louisiana N o revolution can be understood without an examination of the social order that preceded it. Louisiana's was the most dramatic embodiment of the slaveholding society of the deep South. Every curious Northern or European traveler sought out the "Creole" metropolis of New Orleans and the rich alluvial hinterlands supplied with unwilling labor by the city's slavetraders. Merchants dominated the urban economy and played a key role in its politics. In rural parishes (counties) the great planters controlled a disproportionate share of the wealth. The planter elite's hegemony in local politics was rarely questioned, and the apportionment system enabled it to exercise complete sway over the state government. Fear of slave revolt, racist feelings about black people, and xenophobic dis­ trust of outsiders made the majority of Louisiana whites ame­ nable to the proslavery views articulated by the planter class—and institutionalized in the ideology of the Democratic Party. Their control of the majority party enabled Louisiana planters to win a popular mandate for secession in 1861: it is a measure of their political skill that even in New Orleans the ballot box yielded a majority for the cause of disunion. The city that was to be the center of reconstruction politics dur­ ing the 1860s was the oldest and largest in the South. By the time of the Civil War, New Orleans boasted a history of one and a half centuries, and travelers remarked the Old World flavor of its ro­ mantic French Quarter. Semitropical weather added an artificial patina of age to its Latin architecture, observed the city's first great novelist, George Washington Cable: "in that climate every year of a building's age counts for ten." To the ballrooms of the St. Charles and St. Louis hotels the planter elite of the lower South came to purchase Virginia and Kentucky Negroes at auction, for New Orleans was the clearinghouse of the domestic slave trade.

THE OLD REGIME

Its bankers and commission merchants were the chief financiers of the plantation regime and marketed southern staples in the North and Europe. The enormous volume of trade that passed through New Orleans, including the corn, wheat, and livestock of the upper Mississippi Valley, as well as the sugar and cotton of the Southwest, made the "Crescent City" the nation's leader in the value of its exports in 1840. Americans increasingly dominated its business circles by this time, but their frequent intermarriage with the daughters of French Creole merchants reflected the increasing vagueness of the line between the two cultures.1 New Orleans was also a city of poverty: the Irish and German immigrants who settled in the city in the three decades before the war—38 percent of the 1860 population—did not enjoy the studied luxury of the planters and merchants. The lack of ade­ quate sanitation facilities and the proximity of acres of swamp­ lands exposed the unseasoned arrivals to yellow fever each sum­ mer. The mortality rate was high; for Irishmen employed in building new canals and railroads in nearby marshlands, the threat of disease was even greater. The levee was the scene of much labor violence, reflecting the bitter competition of native white, immigrant, and black stevedores. The rough Irish sections of the city were not always safe places to walk at night, par­ ticularly for members of the "inferior" Negro race. The immi­ grants themselves were the victims of systematic violence during the 1850s, when the nativist Know-Nothing Party dominated city politics through gangs of "plug-uglies." A city of immense wealth and appalling poverty, intimately tied to the plantation system despite being the largest urban conglomerate in the South, New Orleans was a society of contradictions in which violence, and even death, lay close to the surface of affairs.2 Yet some elements in this urban wilderness offered at least the 1 Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans Under the Federals, 1862-1865 (Lexington, Ky., 1964), 1-20, and Robert C. Reinders, End of an Era: New Orleans in the 1850's (New Orleans, 1964), provide good ac­ counts of the city on the eve of the Civil War. The quotation is from George Washington Cable, "The Dance in Place Congo" (1886), reprinted in the collection of his short fiction edited by Arlin Turner, Creoles and Cajuns: Stories of Old Louisiana (New York, 1859), 307. 2 Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), 38-41, 53-55; Earl F. Niehaus, The Irish in New Orleans, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 29-33, 44-54, 90-91.

THE OLD REGIME

potential for meaningful social change. The black community nourished the most deeply subversive tendencies. The poor black neighborhoods scattered throughout the city were a haven for runaway slaves: the anonymity of urban life was useful in escap­ ing detection. In Congo Square free blacks and slaves assembled for periodic dance fests of a distinctly African character, and the mysterious cult of Voodoo gave further evidence that the separate slave culture of plantation areas found its parallel in the city. New Orleans also boasted the largest, most prosperous, and best educated free Negro middle class in the South. Many blacks worked as domestic servants, stevedores, or in other "menial" occupations, but a significant proportion were artisans and shop­ keepers above the poverty line.3 The elite of the "free people of color," as they were called, were professional men or owned prosperous businesses and in­ vestments. There were several private schools for Negro children, and the wealthiest men sent their sons and daughters to the North or to France for an education. Protestant members of the black community patronized their own separate Methodist and Baptist churches, but Negro Catholics attended services along with whites: within the great St. Louis Cathedral there was no racial separation at all. New Orleans did not have a pattern of resi­ dential segregation, and it tolerated lapses in white supremacy etiquette that shocked rural Southerners. Some wealthy free blacks had Irish servants, and the white elite on occasion hired Negro tutors and music teachers for their daughters; the annual banquet of veterans of the Battle of New Orleans was integrated, and some wealthy white men even enrolled the children by their octaroon mistresses in public schools. To some degree, class differ­ ences separated the light-skinned elite from the black artisans and stevedores, but when the federal army occupied the city and presented an opportunity for self-assertion, the unity of race was to prove stronger for the free people of color than that of class.4 3 Robert

C. Reinders, "Slavery in New Orleans in the Decade before the Civil War," Mid-America, XLIV (Oct. 1962), 211-221; Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (New York, 1964), 214-215, 219-220; John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973),1-11. 4Donald E. Everett, "Free Persons of Color in New Orleans, 1803-1865" (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1952), 203-215, 241-242; Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 16-22; Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 123-124, 260-262.

THE OLD REGIME

The city's white middle class like,the merchant elite, contained many individuals of "Yankee" origin, but unlike the business community, it was not identified with the planter regime. This urban bourgeoisie was the moving force behind the city's thriving public school system in the 1850s. Its lawyers and doctors, small businessmen and clerks, newspapermen and schoolteachers were active in the opposition to secession in 1861. Although many of the urban middle class subsequently supported the Confederacy during the war, others remained staunch Unionists. The leader­ ship of the free state movement (both radical and moderate wings) was to be drawn overwhelmingly from the middle-class professionals of New Orleans. The presence of an articulate and prosperous black community in the city may have made the idea of Negro suffrage more palatable for such men than was generally true of nineteenth-century Americans.5 Because New Orleans provides the setting for much of the story presented in the following pages, it is helpful to visualize the layout of this unusual city. At the time of the Civil War, New Orleans huddled on a narrow belt of land between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi some 120 miles north of where the river enters the Gulf of Mexico. At that point the meandering river flows from west to east in a series of crescent loops. The eighteenth-century French settlement lay on the north bank at the top of one of these loops; beyond the walls of the old city marshlands stretched for several miles north to the lake. In the nineteenth century the arrival of the "Americans" expanded the city "uptown" (which is actually west). The Creole population "downtown" in the French Quarter spilled across Esplanade Avenue to the east and southeast (away from the Americans), and the newly arriving European immigrants often settled even further downtown on the eastern bank of the river. The pattern of municipal organization that prevailed at the time of the war reflected the ethnic antagonisms of the city. The first district (containing wards one to three) was predominantly 5 William

W. Chenault and Robert C. Reinders, "The Northern-born Community of New Orleans in the 1850's," Journal of American History, Li (Sept. 1964), 232-247; Reinders, "New England Influences on the For­ mation of Public Schools in New Orleans," JSH, xxx (May 1964), 181-195. The middle-class character of the free state movement during the war years is discussed below, Chaps, ν and vm.

THE OLD REGIME

Protestant in composition, although there were several Irish Catholic enclaves down near the levee and many German Cath­ olics scattered throughout the district. It contained much of the city's business community, the famed St. Charles Hotel, most of the public halls in which wartime political meetings were to be held, and a substantial American residential section. The first district was predominantly Whig in political affiliation until 1854, and Know-Nothing for the remainder of the antebellum period. Canal Street formed the boundary between the first district and the French Quarter all the way from the river to the swamps.6 The Democratic second district (containing wards four to six) was heavily Catholic in population, with Irish and German fam­ ilies scattered among the old Creole residences that gave the French Quarter its distinctive character. This district also claimed a portion of the New Orleans business community, and a sur­ prisingly large proportion of American merchants lived in Creole neighborhoods. Many of the city's leading banks were located along St. Louis Street near Royal.7 The St. Louis Hotel was the Creole's answer to the St. Charles, and the famed U.S. Custom­ house was under construction on the French side of Canal. Of the many landmarks in the Vieux Carre, few were so redolent of Latin influences as the St. Louis Cathedral and the Spanish Cabildo (or city hall) on Jackson Square, unless it was the earthy French market, where black vendors hawked the staples of Creole cook­ ing to shrewd domestics, and where the city's elite often sought an early morning coffee with chicory. 6 Leon C. Soule, The Know-Nothing Party in New Orleans: A Reappraisal (Baton Rouge, 1961), has been helpful in analyzing the ethnic and political makeup of the city, although he underestimates the degree of residential integration in each ward, to judge from the evidence in Niehaus, Irish in New Orleans, 27-30, 104-106. The pamphlet compiled by the Bureau of Governmental Research, Wards of New Orleans (New Orleans, 1961), and the street map in Duncans New Orleans Business Directory (New Orleans, 1865), have been invaluable in reconstructing the precise boundaries of city wards and legislative districts. 7 Addresses of banks, business firms, and merchants' residences are found in Cohens New Orleans Directory for 1855 (New Orleans, 1855), and Gardner and Wharton's New Orleans Directory (New Orleans, 1859). Ward three in the American district and ward four in the French Quarter were the center of the business community, containing 49% of the total value of property in the city: Louisiana Census (1857), in Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts (Baton Rouge, 1859), 168-169.

THE OLD REGIME

Across Esplanade Avenue from the French Quarter was the third district (wards seven to nine). The seventh ward contained the overflow of Creole residences from the old city, but Irish and German immigrants were dominant further out. This was by far the poorest district of the city: little business was established there other than a few large cotton presses, and the working-class citizenry possessed little taxable income.8 Like the Creole second district, the third was traditionally Democratic in affiliation, al­ though the Know-Nothing violence distorted that pattern during the 1850s by keeping potentially Democratic voters from the polls. The fourth district (ward ten), only annexed to the city in 1852, was the former city of Lafayette, far uptown above the American section on the western edge of New Orleans. It con­ tained much of the Garden District, that expansive residential suburb where the Protestant business elite built its stately man­ sions, but like most areas of New Orleans, it also contained im­ migrant areas down near the river. Although regarded as chiefly Whig and Know-Nothing, the fourth was actually a swing district, control of which could tip the balance in favor of either party. Merchants dominated the economy of the city, but by the mid1850s the labor movement had acquired considerable clout in municipal politics. The Know-Nothing Party, the successor to the Whig organization after 1853, used the native American working class as its shock troops in the violent campaign tactics that kept immigrant Democrats from the polls. Initially, the leadership of the secret organization seems to have been the merchant elite of the American district, and the officeholders it placed in power were drawn from the city's leading lawyers and businessmen. The continued reliance on political mobs, however, alienated some of the business leaders and gave a greater influence to those who commanded the street forces.9 In 1858 the Democratic opposition and disenchanted business­ men mounted an independent reform movement with Pierre Beauregard as its mayoral candidate; just before election day the 8 The value of property per capita in the immigrant wards was only $387, as compared with $587 in four prosperous middle-class wards (one, two, six, and ten) and $1,800 in the business section (wards three and four). 9 Soule, Know-Nothing Party in New Orleans, 85-120; Reinders, End of an Era, 51-64.

THE OLD REGIME

independents seized the state arsenal in the Cabildo and bar­ ricaded a large section of the French Quarter, declaring that they would ensure a fair election for the first time since Know-Nothing plug-uglies took over the city. The Know-Nothing forces proved stronger and elected virtually their entire ticket; after the election the independent "vigilance committee" quietly disbanded in frustration.10 The new mayor, Gerard Stith, was foreman of the composing room at the Daily Picayune and a leader in the city's powerful lithographer's union. His successor in 1860 was John Monroe of the stevedore's union. Monroe was reelected in 1862 as Confederate mayor, just before the city's capture by the Union navy, and was again chosen mayor in the first postwar elections under conservative control.11 The city's unique image of romance and evil was highly visible to the Northern public. Travel accounts and antislavery pam­ phlets, shipping news and popular novels like Uncle Torris Cabin kept "Old New Orleans" before the reader's eye. Representatives of the great New York and Philadelphia merchant houses visited the city regularly, and some stayed to make their fortunes in the booming economy of the lower Mississippi as factor, banker, cotton planter, or sugar baron. In a more humble capacity count­ less thousands of Western farmboys tried their hand at a flatboat voyage downriver to the Crescent City, disposed of their cargoes, broke up their boats to sell for lumber, and returned home in the opulence of a Mississippi steamboat. Abraham Lincoln's only personal exposure to plantation society came in just this fashion, on two voyages in 1828 and 1831 as a hired hand on Indiana flatboats. In New Orleans the future president witnessed a public slave auction, which may have given him a vague sense of what it meant for slaves to be sold "down the river," as one of his com­ panions recalled: "slavery ran the iron into him then and there."12 Despite its cosmopolitan air, the city's reputation was inevitably linked to the plantation system that generated so much of its business activity. 10 W. Darrell Overdyke, The Know-Nothing Party in the South (Baton Rouge, 1950), 249-252; T. Harry Williams, P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge, 1954), 43-44. 11 Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 147-148; Soule, Know-Nothing Party in New Orleans, 94, 111-113. 12 Quoted in Louis A. Warren, Lincoln's Youth: The Indiana Years (New York, 1959), 185.

THE OLD REGIME

In antebellum Louisiana the river system determined the loca­ tion of fertile land and afforded the chief avenues of communica­ tion with New Orleans. Shaped like a boot, the state is laced from top to toe by the Mississippi. New Orleans is just above the toe, and the state capital of Baton Rouge forms the ankle. Just above Baton Rouge the Mississippi and Red rivers form a Y-intersection, with the valley of the Red striking off at a 45° angle across the northern half of the state. In the southern parishes below Baton Rouge the Teche, Atchafalaya, and Lafourche flow through the rich alluvial soil of the coastal plain toward the gulf.13 The sugar country of the southern bayous was the most dis­ tinctive region of the state. The swamplands and Spanish moss, the vast cane fields and sugar mills, the French-speaking residents and Catholicism lent to these parishes an air of cultural and economic autonomy that carried over into politics.14 Cane country was the Whig stronghold during the Jacksonian period and con­ tinued to oppose the dominant Democratic Party right down to the outbreak of civil war. In the last elections before the war the area was more strongly opposed to immediate secession than any other in the state. Occupied by the federal army for the last three years of the war, the sugar parishes, along with the city of New Orleans, provided the setting for wartime efforts at recon­ struction. Most sugar plantations, especially in the older Creole regions on the Mississippi or Bayou Lafourche, were laid out in long, narrow strips, with the short side facing the river. The value of ready access to transportation and the greater productivity of 13 Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 1-19, describes the physical layout of the state and its various agricultural regions. Although the analysis of ante­ bellum social structure presented in the following pages is similar to Shugg's view, it is based largely on computations from original data. Shugg's own citations often provide little direct evidence to support his interpretation, a point emphasized (perhaps too mercilessly) by Joseph G. Tregle Jr., "An­ other Look at Shugg's Louisiana," Louisiana History, xvn (Summer 1976), 245-281 (hereafter cited as LH). 14 The population of the sugar parishes in 1860 was 73% Catholic: US Census (1860), S. Anglo-Americans held a dominant position in the eco­ nomic elite, however, for non-Creole planters held almost twice as many estates with more than 50 slaves as planters with French names: Joseph K. Menn, The Large Slaveholders of Louisiana in 1860 (New Orleans, 1964), 83-84, and Table 10.

THE OLD REGIME

land closest to the river placed a premium on river frontage. The plantations generally lay at an altitude below that of the river, so that protection from flooding was afforded only by raising the height of the river's natural levees, sometimes by as much as fifty feet. As a rule, a public road wound along the levee, beyond which the plantation lands sloped gradually downward and away from the river, ending in a swampy area at the back of the estate.15 Operating a sugar plantation required a large amount of capi­ tal. It was not uncommon for planters to invest from $25,000 to $50,000 in their sugar mill and warehouses. The cost of land was another major expense. In the 1850s land suitable for cane pro­ duction was worth $114 per acre, as opposed to only $59 per acre for other types of arable farm lands in the sugar parishes. The third major component of the investment was the slave labor force. Planters usually argued that at least fifty slaves were neces­ sary for the operation of an efficient sugar estate, and in fact, planters with fifty slaves or more produced three-quarters of the state's sugar crop in 1859. The cost of prime field hands hovered around $1,500 apiece during the late antebellum period, although the price of less. productive slaves was often no more than a fourth as high. A prospective sugar planter generally planned on a total investment of at least $150,000, but if he could obtain the necessary credit he had a good prospect of repaying the loan and clearing a handsome profit within five or six years.16 Sugar production was restricted to a small elite of wealthy planters as a result of the industry's capital-intensive nature. Only one landowner in five in the sugar parishes was able to try his hand at cultivating the great staple. This small group of planters controlled more than 40 percent of the region's acreage, accord­ ing to one estimate, and three-quarters of the arable farmland. Another study found an even greater concentration of land tenure patterns: one-fifth of the families in four cane parishes possessed 93 percent of the improved land. In these parishes half the slave 15 J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), 113-114; Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York, 1856), 658-673. 16 Sitterson, Sugar Country, 26, 48, 159-160, 164-165; Menn, Large Slave­ holders, 6; Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat (New York, 1969), 141.

THE OLD REGIME

labor force was employed on estates of one hundred or more slaves. In the thirteen sugar parishes as a whole, slaves averaged almost 60 percent of the population.17 Many of the small farmers, fishermen, or herdsmen who made up the remainder of the rural population in this region were of French-speaking background (often descendants of the Aca­ dian migration from Canada in the eighteenth century). These "Cajuns" were frequently resented by the elite, as one planter explained to Northern traveler Frederick Law Olmsted. The nonslaveowning habitants were "lazy vagabonds" who spent most of their "time in shooting, fishing, and play," complained the planter, who admitted that he "wanted very much to buy all their land, and get them to move away" because they "demoralized his negroes." He thought it best that slaves "never saw anybody off their own plantation," and he particularly wanted to prevent their contact with "white men who did not comiiiand their respect."18 Above the sugar country was a belt of parishes where both cane and cotton were grown on large plantations. Cotton can be grown profitably on a small scale, unlike sugar, and in these parishes there was a greater mixture of small plantations and family farms than in the cane region. The concentration of slaves in the popu­ lation was identical to the 60 percent figure for the sugar parishes, however, and one-third of the nine mixed-crop parishes had over 70 percent (East and West Feliciana, and Pointe Coupee). In religion as in agriculture, this region was transitional, containing almost equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants. Despite the presence of sugar planters (who might be expected to vote Whig because of that party's support for a high sugar tariff), most of the parishes in this area were solidly Democratic.19 17

Fabian Linden, "Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Ap­ praisal of Some Recent Views," Journal of Negro History, xxxi (April 1946), 140-189, esp. Table I; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 48; Louisiana Census (1857). 18 Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 673-674. Apparently the planter in question was Richard Taylor, son of the former president and himself a future Confederate general: see Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, 1973), 222. Compare Olmsted's de­ scription of the estate of "Mr. R." with Capt. Samuel W. Cozzens' detailed account of Taylor's plantation: Cozzens to Col. S. B. Holabird, May 15, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA. 19 Louisiana Census (1857); US Census (I860), S.

THE OLD REGIME

The northern half of the state constituted one of the richest areas of the antebellum cotton kingdom. On the Mississippi delta lands across the river from Natchez and Vicksburg lay four par­ ishes in which slaves constituted an extraordinary 87 percent of the population. Almost 17 percent of the adult white male population owned fifty or more slaves.20 The alluvial lands along the Red and Ouachita rivers were more recently settled; perhaps as a result, landholding was not as heavily concentrated there as in other black belt areas. Plantations owning fifty or more slaves controlled only one-third of the improved acres in the Red River parishes, and one-quarter of the improved acreage along the Ouachita, as compared with 75 percent of the improved acreage in the Mississippi delta parishes. Nevertheless, almost 60 percent of the population along the Red and Ouachita were slaves.21 The pattern of life in the black belt cotton parishes was varied. Many of the great cotton nabobs of the Mississippi delta parishes lived in Natchez or Vicksburg townhouses much of the year. Some of the absentee owners also had plantations in other parts of the South, and many held heavy investments in Northern manufac­ turing enterprises or in national railroads. In the other black belt areas of northern Louisiana, planters generally lived on their estates. James Madison Wells, the future governor of the state under Andrew Johnson, lived in a style common to wealthy planters along the Red River. He owned four separate cotton plantations in Rapides Parish, a large herd of dairy cattle, and a summer home in the cooler pine hills; his estate was valued at $400,000. Northern Louisiana was overwhelmingly Protestant (mostly Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian) and heavily Dem­ ocratic. Only three parishes regularly produced Whig majorities, and these were in areas of heavy slaveholding along the Missis­ sippi.22 There were three scattered pockets of poorer land in the state, 20Louisiana Census (1857); US Census (1860), P; Menn, Large Slave­ holders, 7. 21Menn, Large Slaveholders, 17-22; Louisiana Census (1857). The term black belt is used in this study to indicate parishes where slaves con­ stituted more than 40% of the population. 22D. Clayton James, Ante-bellum Natchez (Baton Rouge, 1968), 148159; Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1947), 6-20; US Census (1860), S.

THE OLD REGIME

and nine parishes counted less than 40 percent slaves in their populations. In the northern hills near the Arkansas border, in the marshes and prairies of southwestern Louisiana near the Texas border, and in the piney woods east of the Felicianas (the socalled "Florida" parishes), subsistence farming, fishing, livestock raising, and lumbering were the prevailing occupations. Even in these areas, however, an average of five estates per parish owned more than fifty slaves. Wherever good land was to be found, even in the hill parishes, was inevitably the scene of plantation slavery.23 The planter elite reaped substantial profits from the cane and cotton fields of Louisiana, and slavery contributed to that pros­ perity in a major way. Historians once believed slavery to have been relatively unprofitable, even for most large planters, because it tied up a large quantity of capital in an' inelastic labor supply and because it handicapped the diversification of the agricultural economy.24 More recently scholars have demonstrated that the opposite was true. The purchase of slaves did require a large investment in labor, but the investment amply rewarded the planters, not only in terms of the staple crops produced for the market by the field hands, but also in the reproduction of the slave labor force through natural procreation (which, of course, cost the owner nothing). Planters in the lower South received a higher return on their investments—from 9 to 11 percent on the average—than they could have gotten from any alternative busi23Louisiana

Census (1857); Menn, Large Slaveholders, 7, 430-431; Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 44-47, 95-98, 101-111; John Milton Price, "Slavery in Winn Parish," LH, vxn (Spring 1967), 137-148. Frank L. Ows­ ley, Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1949), 167-170, presents data which show a similar tendency: in Washington Parish, for example, 48% of the slaveowning landholders had estates of 500 or more acres, but only 10% of the nonslaveowners had this much land; in Calcasieu and Sabine parishes 21¾ of the slaveowning landholders had over 500 acres, compared with only 3¾ of the nonslaveowners. 24 The classic statement of the traditional view is found in Ulrich B. Phil­ lips, American Negro Slavery (New York, 1918), and in the collection of Phillips' major articles edited by Eugene D. Genovese, The Slave Economy of the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1968). Nevertheless, even historians using traditional methods, argue that Louisiana planters made extraordinary profits: see Sitterson, Sugar Country, 181-182, and Joe Gray Taylor, Negro Slavery in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 104-105.

THE OLD REGIME

ness. Similarly, the profits of the domestic slave trade boosted the returns of planters in the upper South to respectable levels, though few made such windfall profits as those in the lower Mississippi Valley.25 But what about the economy as a whole? Until recently his­ torians have assumed that slavery was profitable only for the planter elite: slavery and staple-crop agriculture handicapped the diversification of the rural economy, exhausted the fertility of the soil, and soaked up capital that could otherwise have been invested in industrialization. According to this view, slavery stunted the development of a consumer market because of its highly skewed distribution of income, and it minimized such social overhead investment as the financing of public school systems, thus failing to promote the training of a more highly skilled labor force.26 The latest research indicates that, on the contrary, plantation labor was efficient and productivity was high, whether due to the threat of the lash or to some type of incentive system. Furthermore, large planters were aware of the need to replenish the soil's richness and often let fields lie fallow for that purpose. In the late antebellum period there was also a growing trend toward self-sufficiency on large plantations as owners began to raise more corn and livestock to feed the slave population and sell on the local market. The absence of indus­ trialization was less a sign of economic backwardness than a 25 1

wish to emphasize that my interpretation of the profitability of slavery does not rely on Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 vols. (Boston, 1974)—which appeared after this chapter was written—but on the earlier work of econometric historians. Alfred Conrad and John Meyer, "The Economics of Slavery in the Ante-bellum South," journal of Political Economy, LXVI (April 1958), 95-130, launched the econometric analysis of this question, much of which is conveniently reprinted in Hugh G. J. Aitken (ed.), Did Slavery Pay? (Boston, 1971). The best critique of the Fogel and Engerman book is Paul A. David, Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright, Reckoning With Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York, 1976), al­ though the authors occasionally seem to push their argument implausibly far. 28 See Harold D. Woodman, "The Profitability of Slavery: A Historical Perennial," JSH, xxix (Aug. 1963), 303-325, Eugene D. Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York, 1965), 43-69, 85-105, 157-179.

THE OLD REGIME

testimony to the economic success of plantation slavery. With such high returns on their investment, planters had no incentive to invest in less profitable industrial pursuits.27 Per capita income in the antebellum South compared favorably with that of other areas, moreover, and the growth rate of Southern per capita income between 1840 and 1860 was substantially higher than the national average. Louisiana was the second highest state in the country in per capita income in 1840, and third in agricul­ tural income.28 Such statistics suggest that a reactionary form of economic modernization was at work, especially in the deep South, during the last years before the Civil War. The high level of per capita wealth can be deceptive, however, for such an index is no more than an arithmetic average. Income distribution was highly skewed in favor of the planter elite. Cor­ relation of the percentage slaves with per capita wealth for the rural parishes of Louisiana in 1857 produces a high coefficient of .80. In the sugar region the correlation was .90, in the area of mixed cotton and sugar production it was .93, and in the black belt cotton parishes it was .92. Parishes with a high proportion of slaves in their population, in short, almost invariably ranked high in per capita wealth, and as the degree of slaveholding declined, so too did the value of property per capita.29 27 Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, "The Economics of Slavery," in Fogel and Engerman (eds.), The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New York, 1971), 311-341; Robert E. Gallman, "Self-sufficiency in the Cotton Economy of the Ante-bellum South," Agricultural History, XLiv (Jan. 1970), 5-23; George D. Green, Finance and Economic Devel­ opment in the Old South: Louisiana Banking, 1804-1861 (Palo Alto, Calif., 1972), 180-181. Gavin Wright, "Prosperity, Progress, and American Slav­ ery," in David et al., Reckoning with Slavery, 302-336, suggests that this prosperity may have been a temporary phenomenon. 28 Richard Easterlin, "Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1840-1950," in National Bureau of Economic Research, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1960), Table A-l, 98; Fogel and Engerman, "Economics of Slavery," Table 8, 335. 29 The data on slave percentages and per capita wealth is calculated from the Louisiana Census (1857). Slaves are treated here as wealth, not as population. Hubert M. Blalock Jr., Social Statistics, 2d ed. (New York, 1972), 376-393, 397-405, explains the computation and interpretation of Pearson product-moment correlation. Correlation coefficients vary between 1.00 and —1.00, with coefficients from .30 to .60 indicating moderate cor­ relation, above .60 indicating stronger relationships, and around 0.00 indi-

THE OLD REGIME

The richest area in the state was the group of four delta parishes opposite Natchez and Vicksburg; there the value of property per capita was $7,639. The sugar country boasted a wealthy planter elite, but this region also contained a large population of small farmers, fishermen, and townspeople. The value of property per capita was only $1,850 (or roughly one-fourth the level of wealth of the Mississippi delta parishes). The region where both cotton and sugar were grown had a per capita wealth figure of only $1,607, while the Red River and Ouachita plantation parishes averaged $1,144 in per capita wealth. Lowest by far in value of property per capita—$407—were the parishes with less than 40 percent slaves in their populations. In Winn Parish, with only 18 percent slaves, the value of property per capita was a mere $176. By contrast, in Concordia Parish, where 90 percent of the popula­ tion were slaves, the per capita wealth was $9,665, or fifty-four times as high as in Winn. A large slave labor force was virtually synonymous with wealth in Louisiana.30 eating insignificant correlation. In all cases coefficients cited as meaningful in this study have significance levels better than .05, so that there is little chance the correlation is attributable to random error. 30 It appears that the tax figures on value of property reported in the state census greatly underestimated the actual market value of property. McWhiney, Braxton Bragg, 140, indicates that the appraisal of Bragg's sugar plantation by the tax assessor was approximately half the price the future Confederate general paid for the estate less than a year earlier. There is every reason to believe that the underassessment of property values was con­ sistent throughout the state, however, as suggested by U.S. census marshal Allen W. Hightower, of Jackson Parish, in 1860. According to Hightower, the Louisiana legislature set the level of appraisal of slaves at "about half what they would bring" on the market, and "the assessors appraise the other property in proportion to make all equal." It appears that Hightower and other marshals used the state appraisals as the basis for their census reports: US Census (1860), S (manuscript version, Duke University Li­ brary, Durham, N.C. [hereafter cited as DU]). The general thrust of my argument that income distribution was highly skewed in favor of the large planters is based, in addition to the above quantitative analysis, on Linden, "Economic Democracy in the Slave South," 140-189, and on two econo­ metric studies: Gavin Wright, '"Economic Democracy' and the Concentra­ tion of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850-1860," Agricultural History, XLIV (Jan. 1970), 63-93, and Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850-1870 (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 99-101, 124-146, 156-158, 166-170. Both Soltow and a case study by Richard Lowe and Randolph Campbell, "Slave Property and the Distribution of Wealth in

THE OLD REGIME

The political leaders who decided to take their state out of the Union in 1861 were not motivated by a widespread sense of eco­ nomic decline. The economy was not in trouble, and there is little evidence that anyone believed that prosperity was at an end. The more central concern of the secessionists was their fear that the institution of slavery might be undermined by political action— intervention by the federal government, a revolutionary assault by abolitionists, or insurrection by the slaves themselves. The slaves whose labor made possible the prosperity of the plantation system were a restive people. The day-to-day regimen of Louisiana plantations was physically exhausting, the discipline meted out by the overseer included liberal resort to the lash, and above the head of every slave hung the threat that families might be broken up by a simple bill of sale. Blacks resented white dominance, and they struck out at the system in every available way. They sabotaged the work of the plantation, they often fled into the swamps rather than submit to corporal punishment, and on rare occasions they retaliated by arson or murder. In a less dramatic but more fulfilling mode of resistance, the slaves also developed an alternative culture of their own, one antithetical in many respects to the dominant culture of their masters. This separate culture of the slaves syncretized the folk tradition in­ herited from earlier generations of slaves born in West Africa and the Christian religion first acquired from white society, fostering a system of values which helped maintain their integrity as human beings in the face of a repressive institution.31 Texas, 1860," Journal of American History, LXin (Sept. 1976), 316-324, use slaves as an indicator of wealth in a similar manner to my own com­ putations. 31 Raymond and Alice Bauer, "Day-to-Day Resistance to Slavery," Journal of Negro History, xxvn (Oct. 1942), 388-419; Sterling Stuckey, "Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery," Massachusetts Review, ix (Summer 1968), 417-437; Lawrence Levine, "Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness," in Tamara Hareven (ed.), Anonymous Americans: Ex­ plorations in Nineteenth Century Social History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), 99-126; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-bellum South (New York, 1972); Eugene D. Genovese1 Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). Since this chapter was written further confirmation has been provided by Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York, 1976).

THE OLD REGIME

The degree to which slaves were able to develop an autono­ mous subculture on the plantation was determined in part by the demographic context. In Louisiana most slaves lived on large plantations: over 70 percent of the slaveholding units in the state contained at least twenty slaves in 1860 and 49 percent had more than fifty.32 On such plantations the master and overseer were rarely able to extend their surveillance of the slave population beyond the workday. At night the quarters were largely free from white interference. The socialization of slave children in such a context was almost entirely in the hands of black people. The slave family appears to have been the primary unit of child-rearing on Southern plan­ tations, even though the law did not recognize the validity of slave marriages. Many planters found it convenient to allow their human property to live in nuclear family units: slaves were less likely to run away if escape meant leaving their loved ones be­ hind, and, of course, a stable family was a stimulus to the natural increase of the slave population (which put additional money in the owner's pocket). The inventory of one planter's estate in West Feliciana Parish reveals the extreme to which this mixture of slave wishes and, planter interests could lead. On his four plantations, each of which had over one hundred slaves, between 78 and 90 percent of all black people were Iiving in two-parent family units.33 More extensive records from two other large 32 Computed from data in Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1933), i, 530. The proportion of slaveholdings with 20 or more slaves grew from 65% in 1850 to 71¾ in 1860; the percentage with 50 or more slaves grew from 41¾ to 49% during the same decade. It appears, in short, that concentration of slaveholdings was increasing in Louisiana during the 1850s. 33 Calculated from slave lists, in which family membership is identified by individual, reprinted in Wendell Holmes Stephenson, Isaac Franklin: Slave Trader and Planter of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, 1938), Ap­ pendix 8, 165-186. To contend that stable family units stimulated the re­ production of the slave labor force is not to suggest that only stable families can produce natural increase. Jack E. Eblen, "Growth of the Black Popula­ tion in Ante-bellum America, 1820-1860," Population Studies, xxvi (July 1972), 273-289, demonstrates, however, that the rate of natural increase was so high among slaves that stable marital units seem the only plausible explanation. Nor does the existence of nuclear family units among the slaves necessarily indicate that planters practiced a conscious policy of encourag­ ing family life, although some evidence of this tendency among slaveowners is provided in Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 450-457.

THE OLD REGIME

plantations, one in West Feliciana and another in Concordia Par­ ish, reveal not only a similar tendency toward strong family units but also the importance of extended kinship networks among the slaves.34 Highly valued by the slaves, family and kin provided an important resource for the development of personal identity. During the day young children played under the care of an "auntie" too old to work in the fields. Mothers of infants either returned to the quarters for mid-morning and mid-afternoon feedings or nursed their children by the side of the field.35 After they were weaned, of course, children saw their mothers only at night, when the hands returned from the long day's work. Over­ seers and masters rarely bothered to visit the slave quarters at night, which gave fathers and "uncles" the opportunity to regale the children with the folk tales and music that provided the core of the slave subculture. Allegorical tales of animal heroes, like the familiar Brer Rabbit, who outsmart the stronger denizens of the forest by deception and wit have a demonstrable origin in the oral tradition of many West African cultures. In the Trickster John tales, moreover, slave artists dropped their allegorical masks to praise black men who deceived or defied their masters. Slave songs, which so often took passages from the Exodus story as their text, suggest the persistence of an escape motif in their attitude toward the plantation regime. Among their neighbors in the quarters adult slaves talked candidly of their dislike of overseer or master, and children learned that the mask of submission their elders wore before whites did not reflect their actual feelings.36 Although little concerned with life in the quarters at night, the 34 Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 17501925 (New York, 1976), 104-123, 155-159, 565-567, 571-572. For further corroboration, see Gutman, "Persistent Myths About the Afro-American Family," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vi (Autumn 1975), 181-210, Blassingame, Slave Community, 77-103, and C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 146-159, each of which employs quantitative evidence on postwar black families. 35 Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger (New York, 1953), 185-186, 248, 431. 38 Blassingame, Slave Community, 20-21, 25-27, 41-75; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 247-255, 581-583, 603-612. A significant number of relevant materials on the slave culture are gathered in Willie Lee Rose (ed.), A Documentary History of Slavery in North America (New York, 1976), 475-527.

THE OLD REGIME

white authorities of the plantation supervised the slaves closely during the workday. As soon as they were old enough to begin running errands to the field or around the house, children fell more frequently under the suspicious eye of master, mistress, and overseer. After the age of ten, young slaves were as a rule thrust into the fields and forced to conform to the exacting standards of the plantation work role. The penalty for lack of attention to their tasks or for an insufficiently deferential posture toward the overseer was often the lash. By this time their elders had usually managed to inculcate in young slaves the principle of complete subordination to whites—as long as whites were around to ob­ serve their behavior.37 Southern whites believed that black people were distinctly inferior beings and that without the discipline of slavery their lazy, superstitious, improvident, childlike natures would make Negroes worthless charges of the state. Planters also talked fondly of how content their slaves were with their lot, of how much they loved and respected kindly masters, of how loyal they could be if treated with a firm but gentle hand. On those infrequent oc­ casions when the master stopped to engage a field hand in per­ sonal conversation, the slave often bowed and scraped, shuffled his feet, scratched his head, and made every effort to persuade his employer that he really enjoyed being a slave. Those whites who wished to minimize the dependence of the regime on brute force took this theatrical performance by the slave as a reflection of his genuine acceptance of his lot.38 Whenever blacks crossed the boundary of deferential behavior in dealing with whites, failed to satisfy the varied demands of 37 Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante­ bellum South (New York, 1956), 57-58, 331; Blassingame, Slave Commu­ nity, 154-183. 38 Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959), 81-139, makes the same mistake. Eugene D. Genovese, "Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of the Elkins Thesis," Civil War History, XIII (Dec. 1966), 293-314 (hereafter cited as CWH), and Blassingame, Slave Community, 132-153, 184-226, offer more convincing psychological interpretations. Ironically, one of Elkins' chief historiographical antagonists, Kenneth Stampp, first offered the argument that some slaves were "infantilized" by the paternalism of the plantation regime; but Stampp saw "Sambo" more plausibly as a house servant rather than as a field hand (Peculiar Institution, 325-330).

THE OLD REGIME

master or overseer, or tried to escape from bondage altogether, physical violence was the inevitable response. Repression was open, and often brutal, in the antebellum South because masters thought it necessary tc the stability of the regime (as it un­ doubtedly was). The most striking aspect of the system is that the slave population retained a sturdy independence in the face of this overwhelming force and often performed heroic, if quite futile, acts of resistance. Autobiographies of former bondsmen, our most direct evidence of the slave's perceptions of the "peculiar institution," provide more information about this dimension of the plantation regime than any other. The most detailed and revealing record of any Louisiana slave is that left by Solomon Northrup, a New York Negro kidnapped by unscrupulous whites and sold south for a twelve-year sojourn on Bayou Boeuf in Avoyelles Parish. His first master, William Ford, used Northrup chiefly in his lumber business, where the slave's early experiences with log rafts on Lake Champlain made him a great asset. Unfortunately, Ford's finances took a plunge and Northrup was sold to a carpenter in the neighborhood, one John Tibeats, who proved both a vicious and irrational master. Once, when Tibeats tried to whip Northrup for some petty offense, the slave snatched the whip and assaulted the surprised white man. A month later Tibeats assaulted his independent slave with an axe, and again Northrup struck back. This time, after nearly choking Tibeats to death, he made off into the swamps along Bayou Boeuf.39 Rather than make his way to the camp of the maroons he had once seen in the area, Northrup, who still hoped to get word of his whereabouts to his family in New York, decided to ask the aid of his former master. Ford persuaded the surly carpenter to sell Northrup. The new owner, Edwin Epps, was a former overseer turned cotton planter, and was apparently a heavy drinker who liked to whip his slaves when on a spree. He also forced one of his female slaves to be his mistress, which threw his wife into a 39Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave (New York, 1853), 89-139. For confirmation of Northrup's accuracy, see the 1968 edition of the auto­ biography, prepared by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsden, and John W. Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Inter­ views, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, 1977), 288-295.

THE OLD REGIME

jealous rage. The hapless black victim, Patsey, suffered frequent retaliation for her unwilling sins by the order of Mrs. Epps, and subsequently was brutally beaten by Epps himself when he be­ came suspicious of the attentions paid her by a neighboring planter.40 Northrup recounted many cases of slave resistance: once a slave on a nearby plantation chopped the overseer to pieces with an axe rather than submit to punishment, then informed his master of the incident and died on the gallows without remorse. Several of Northrup's acquaintances attempted unsuccessfully to escape: one was killed by the pack of slave dogs that tracked him down. A female slave on the large sugar estate bordering Epps' plantation spent a summer hiding in a nearby swamp, subsisting on food from her fellow slaves but finally surrendering to her master after being attacked by wolves.41 A few years before his arrival, Northrup was told, "there was a concerted movement among a number of slaves on Bayou Boeuf." Although the conspiracy was betrayed by one of its leaders, "it has become a subject of general and unfailing interest in every slave-hut on the bayou, and will doubtless go down to succeeding generations as their chief tradition." Hoping to organize "a com­ pany sufficiently strong to fight their way against all opposition to the neighboring territory of Mexico," a large group of runaways gathered in a remote area of the swamp with a supply of mules, corn, and bacon stolen from various plantations. One of the ring­ leaders lost his nerve, according to Northrup, and betrayed the plan to his owner. The group of runaways in the swamp was duly rounded up by a large posse, taken to Alexandria, and hanged along with numerous accused slaves from plantations in the vicinity. The Mexican War raised the hopes of the slaves in Avoy­ elles Parish, wrote Northrup, because they thought perhaps a Mexican army would move into Louisiana. "There are not fifty slaves on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, but would hail with un­ measured delight the approach of an invading army."42 The records of the planter class corroborate the picture of life under slavery that emerges from Northrup's autobiography. Plan40 Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave, 139-200, 254-260. «Ibid., 224-225, 236-246. ^ Ibid., 246-249.

THE OLD REGIME

tation journals, masters' correspondence, newspapers, legislative and judicial records, and travel accounts describe frequent runa­ ways, maroon camps in the swamps, slaves who resisted the lash, brutal disciplinary methods cn some plantations, and widespread miscegenation involving masters who forced their attention on slave women, as well as actual common-law marriages of master and slave. Even the large-scale insurrection plot of 1837, which Northrup described from secondhand reports, has been verified from evidence in a planter's diary, contemporary newspapers, and the legislative proceedings in which masters were compen­ sated for the execution of their slaves.43 Close examination of a particular plantation journal for a period of years provides a vivid day-by-day record of the in­ evitable harshness of slavery and the resistance it sparked from the slave population. Bennett H. Barrow kept a daily record of affairs on his West Feliciana estate from 1836 to 1846. From his terse notations it is possible to reconstruct the activities of a resourceful and habitual runaway named Ginney Jerry, the most persistent of his many runaway slaves, who first appears in the journal when captured by a Negro hunter on October 1, 1837. Jerry apparently made his getaway again, for six weeks later Barrow noted that searchers had located his camp and shot at the slave twice without hitting him. Six months after his escape Jerry finally fell into Barrow's hands again, and his furious owner "cut him with a club in 3 places very bad," fuming to himself: "runaway 6 months, as perfect a sheik as ever lived." The resourceful Ginney Jerry ran away again three years later, but Barrow caught him quickly in the bayou behind the slave quarters and shot him in the thigh. The following year Jerry was being locked in his cabin at night, but still managed to steal a pig for extra rations, for which he was placed in the stocks. Breaking out of the stocks, Jerry managed to outrun the dogs and again lived in the swamps for six months before being recaptured. Two years later Ginney Jerry escaped once more, and Barrow "sent after a Pack of Negro dogs." The slave hounds treed Jerry, and 43 Taylor, Slavery in Louisiana, 220-221, corroborates every detail except the number of slaves executed. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York, 1943), 330, and Joseph C. Carroll, Slave Insurrections in the United States, 1800-1865 (Boston, 1938), 179, give slightly different accounts, but neither used Northrup's autobiography.

THE OLD REGIME

his exasperated owner "made the dogs pull him out of the tree, Bit him very badly, think he will stay home a while."44 Not only did Barrow have occasional problems with his own slaves, but he was also frequently called on to help his neighbors apprehend their runaways: during a two-year period from 1844 through 1845 his diary reads like the journal of a slave hunter. On April 19, 1844, sixteen of a neighbor's slaves openly defied him and ran off into the swamps. The fugitives were well armed and killed two dogs that pursued them. "All this grows out of his having preached to them for 4 or 5 years past—greatest piece of foolishness anyone ever guilty of," Barrow sputtered: "no true Christian among the church going Whites—how Expect to Preach morality among a set ignorant beings?" A few months later an­ other neighbor, a widow, called on Barrow to track down five runaways who had "run off from pure impudence founded in their 'Negroes religion,'" he commented. Barrow hired two Mississippi slave hunters and went out to search the swamps for several days; when all the runaways were caught, he went over to the widow's plantation to administer the lash. A year later, in the fall of 1845, Barrow helped two different neighbors track down several fugitives. Of one slave he observed: "Dogs nearly et his legs off" when they cornered him. A month later, when another fugitive was caught, the "dogs soon tore him naked." Barrow later "made the dogs give him another overhauling" before his fellow slaves (presumably to serve as an example of the treatment they could expect) because the man had been "drawing a knife and Pistol on persons about Town."45 Slaves often resorted to violence, even if it meant brutal re­ taliation. One man killed the detested owner of a pack of "negro dogs," Barrow recorded, and was immediately shot by the whites who captured him. In July 1840 a white man and a slave mur44Edwin A. Davis (ed.), Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836-1846: As Reflected in the Diary of Bennett H. Barrow (New York, 1943), 99, 102, 110, 239, 277, 288, 369-370. Similar problems with his runaways are noted on pp. 131-132, 134-136, 344. The interpreta­ tion of this plantation journal has received considerable attention of late because of its misuse by Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, I, 145-148: see Herbert G. Gutman, "The World Two Cliometricians Made," Journal of Negro History, LX (Jan. 1975), 68-85, 91-93, 95-97. My rendering of the saga of Ginney Jerry simply reinforces Gutman's point. 45 Davis (ed.), Barrow Diary, 323, 340-344, 371-376.

THE OLD REGIME

dered a planter, attacked another family, and set fire to a row of buildings in town. The slave turned state's evidence and escaped with his life, but as for the white man, Barrow noted ominously: "he died too easy a Death." Two years later a pair of runaways murdered an old man and raped his daughter, killed another man and carried off his wife and child into the swamps, where they raped them also. The whites caught the fugitives and burned them alive. In July 1841 the planters of the area discovered plans for an insurrection among the slaves of West Feliciana and con­ ducted an extensive series of interrogations. Several of the pre­ sumed ringleaders were turned over to the authorities for trial.46 The betrayal of a similar conspiracy in Lafayette Parish along Bayou Teche in 1840 resulted in nine executions; two years later, in the delta parishes opposite Natchez, rumors that some three hundred runaways lurked in the swamps led to the arrest of twenty, several of whom were hanged. In 1845 a New Orleans paper reported two actual outbreaks of violence in rural parishes, and in 1853 the city police arrested a white man and twenty slaves in connection with an alleged conspiracy. There were further panics the next year and in 1856; the secession crisis also pro­ duced frequent rumors of insurrection.47 Plantation slavery was a repressive institution that could only Continue in existence so long as the white population could devote full attention to its rigorous system of social control. Planter control of the state government was essential to the stability of the slave system. In Louisiana as in the rest of the nation, the fifteen years from 1837 to 1852 witnessed the sta­ bilization of a competitive two-party system. Party control of the legislature often changed hands, and the same was true of the two constitutional conventions of the period: the Democrats ran the 1845 convention, the Whigs the 1852 gathering. The two parties also alternated presidential victories in the state, each winning by only a narrow margin.48 Voter turnout was lower in Louisiana than in other Gulf states, primarily because of the extraordinarily low level of participation in New Orleans: be« Ibid., 204, 236-237, 262, 373. 47 Taylor, Slavery in Louisiana, 215-223; Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 337, 343-347. 48William H. Adams, "The Louisiana Whigs," LH, xv (Summer 1974), 213-228.

THE OLD REGIME

tween 20 and 32 percent of the city's adult white male population cast ballots in these elections. In the rural parishes turnout varied between 58 and 67 percent, which was compatible with participa­ tion levels in neighboring states.49 The interests of the planter class were well served whoever won, for the slaveholding elite dominated both parties at the leadership level. In the 1850 legislature, for which there is solid quantitative evidence, the Democrats were actually a bit wealth­ ier than the Whigs and boasted a higher percentage of large slaveowners. The Democrats controlled the governor's mansion during the last two decades before the war, and with the excep­ tion of one wealthy lawyer, every occupant was a planter with at least forty slaves. The Whigs had a similar proportion of well-todo planters, lawyers, and merchants, but it would be a mistake to label them as the "party of privilege," as in the conventional view, for the Democrats were just as privileged. Neither party was led by "the people," if that term is taken to mean farmers with few slaves and little land, or the middle and working classes of New Orleans.50 Both Democrats and Whigs depended heavily on black belt constituencies for electoral support; indeed, there were only nine rural parishes with less than 40 percent slaves. Although these low-slaveholding units usually fell into the Democratic column on election day, plantation parishes outnumbered them two-toone in the party's constituency. The Whigs rarely won outside the black belt regions, but even there they normally failed to carry 49 See Table A-I in Appendix A below. Election returns are taken from W. Dean Buraham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955), and for urban wards and municipal districts, from the Tribune Almanac and Political Register for each year. The number of adult white males in each county or district is taken from the published schedules of the U.S. Census for 1840, 1850, and I860; for each intervening year the adult white male population is interpolated by the growth rate conversion and compound interest rate formulas (for estimating curvilinear growth) in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Long-Term Economic Growth, 1860-1965 (Washington, D.C., 1966), 115. Unless otherwise specified, all references to party strength in the following pages designate the party's vote as a percentage of the adult white male population. 50 Ralph A. Wooster, The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850-1860 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1969), 42-46, and Ap­ pendix I, Table 3.

THE OLD REGIME

a majority of the parishes with more than 40 percent slaves.51 On a statewide basis there was only moderate correlation between partisan voting alignments and the percentage of slaves in the population.52 The most important economic influence on Louisiana voting behavior was sugar production. The great bastion of Whig strength was the cane country of the southern bayous, presum­ ably because the prosperity of the sugar economy was entirely dependent upon the protective tariff advocated by that party. Except for three rich cotton parishes north of Baton Rouge, the 51 Perry H. Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1971), 60-62, indicates those parishes in which the Democrats averaged over 50% of the votes cast in the gubernatorial elections of the Jacksonian period (1834-1852). By this standard all 9 parishes with less than 40¾ slaves were Democratic strongholds, but the party also controlled 20 black belt parishes. The Whigs averaged over 50¾ of the vote in only 19 black belt parishes. 52 This conclusion is based on a quantitative analysis in which each party's vote is computed as a percentage of the total potential electorate (see n. 49 above), which has the effect of treating those qualified to vote who do not cast a ballot in a given ebction as a separate "party," thus measuring the electoral impact of rising and falling voter turnout. An unascertainable number of unnaturalized immigrants are included in this esti­ mate of the potential electorate, but as they did not vote, this factor does not affect the results. (For citations to the literature justifying this pro­ cedure, see Appendix A.) In the gubernatorial election of 1850, for example, the correlation between the proportion of slaves in the population and the Whig vote was a significant .46 (although the Whig percentage of the two-party vote was correlated at a much lower .34). In contrast, the slave percentage was not related at all to the Democratic constituency, perhaps because of its negative correlation with the "party of the nonvoter" (— .32) —which means that in this election the level of voter turnout was higher in areas where slaves constituted a higher percentage of the population. (Here, and in all other computations involving agricultural or slaveholding vari­ ables, the five municipal districts of New Orleans are excluded in order to avoid distorting the results.) Howard, Political Tendencies, 64-66, argues that there was a strong positive relationship between the Whig percentage of the two-party vote and the proportion of slaves in the population, based on a rank-order correlation of .60 between the two variables. His cases are seven "voter-type areas" composed of groups of parishes with similar soils and agricultural products, rather than the state's 47 rural parishes. Because of the small number of cases and the heterogeneous character of the units, Howard's results are largely spurious.

THE OLD REGIME

Whigs' rural majorities came almost entirely from the region where sugar cane was the major staple crop.53 The religious composition of the sugar region, which was 73 percent Catholic, reinforced its Whiggish tendencies.54 By the same token, the more evangelical Protestant denominations— Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians—dominated the religious life of the cotton parishes, and evangelical strength was signifi­ cantly correlated with the Democratic vote.55 In short, the two parties were divided as clearly by religion as by staple-crop production: the sugar region, with a French-speaking Catholic 53 The source for the percentage of improved acres in sugar cane, cotton, and corn is the Louisiana Census (1857), for this is a more reliable index of the relative importance of each crop per parish than the production figures from US Census (1860), A. (Similar figures are available from the state census of 1853 and are correlated with the 1857 percentages at above .90. For simplicity's sake, only the latter are cited.) Figures from the guberna­ torial election of 1850 show a correlation of .48 between Whig voting strength and cane acreage, but no significant correlation between Whig sup­ port and cotton acreage. By contrast, Democratic support was correlated at .45 with the percentage of land devoted to cotton, and inversely related to cane acreage (— .50). These correlations might have been significantly higher, perhaps, except that a group of parishes where both sugar and cotton were grown voted disproportionately Democratic. 54 Data on religious composition are drawn from US Census (1860), S, in the manner described by Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1837-1861 (Princeton, N.J., 1971), 138-139. Formisano observes, quite accurately, that these data are not a completely reliable in­ dex of religious composition, but they are the best available. New Orleans was excluded from the following calculations because the religious variables were not published by ward (even the manuscript version, DU, provides a ward-level breakdown only for the American section and the French Quarter). In the city, moreover, there is less guarantee that churches drew their members entirely from the same geographical unit in which they were located. For the rural parishes the proportion of acreage devoted to cane production was correlated with the percentage of the population which was Catholic at a high .74, and Catholic strength was correlated with the Whig vote in the 1850 gubernatorial election at .42. 55 The percentage of church accommodations per parish belonging to these Protestant churches was correlated with cotton acreage at .60. Demo­ cratic support in the 1850 gubernatorial election was correlated with Baptist strength, for example, at .44, but was inversely related to Catholi­ cism (— .46). The correlation between Whig voting strength and the Baptist percentage of church accommodations was, predictably, negative (-.53).

THE OLD REGIME

population, normally voted Whig, and the evangelical Protestant parishes, mostly cotton plantation areas, usually went Demo­ cratic.56 In New Orleans it appears that the religious cleavage was precisely the reverse. The French Quarter and the immigrant section were heavily Catholic and normally Democratic. The American wards and suburbs of Lafayette and Jefferson City, by contrast, were more Protestant in character and generally Whiggish. The conflict between Creoles and Americans had long been a central feature in Louisiana politics: in the 1850s anti-Creole sentiment was augmented by anti-immigrant feelings, giving a nativist tone to New Orleans Whiggery.57 This pattern of ethno­ cultural cleavage is similar to that found in several Northern cities with significant immigrant populations.58 The competitive balance of this two-party system gave way rapidly with the collapse of the Whigs as a national party in 1854. As in the rest of the South, the Whig demise produced a major increase in the strength of the Louisiana Democracy, which con­ trolled the legislature and won every statewide election for the rest of the decade. Initially, it appeared that the nativist American Party might capture the erstwhile Whig constituency: its guber56 For each of the economic and ethnocultural variables cited here, the correlations with party preference variables in the 1852 gubernatorial and presidential elections were substantially lower than those cited for 1850, probably because the Whigs had begun to lose important elements in their constituency to the majority Democrats (a trend that continued for the next eight years). Partial correlation analysis of the social background of elec­ toral alignments in 1850 and 1852 provides no reliable indication that economic variables were significantly more important than ethnocultural ones (or vice versa) in determining party strength. For an earlier period see D.L.A. Hackett, "Slavery, Ethnicity, and Sugar: An Analysis of Voting Be­ havior in Louisiana, 1828-1844," Louisiana Studies, xin (Summer 1974), 73-118, although a careful reading indicates that his evidence requires further qualification of his thesis. 57 Soule, Know-Nothing Varty in New Orleans, 10-11, 37-38, 43-47. 58 See Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Re­ publican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (New Haven, Conn., 1969), 40122; Sam Bass Warner, The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia, 1968), 94-95, 143-156; Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties, 44-45, 91-92, 140, 146-147, 296-297. By the same token, the ethnocultural cleavage of Louisiana's rural parishes was the reverse of that found above the Mason-Dixon line.

THE OLD REGIME

natorial candidate ran a strong race in 1855 in traditionally Whiggish parishes and in New Orleans. Thereafter rural support for the Know-Nothings declined precipitately as its increasingly open anti-Catholicism antagonized the Creole voters of the sugar country. The nativist coalition nonetheless completely dominated New Orleans politics for the next six years, with the Democrats slipping from 56 percent of the two-party vote in the 1852 gubernatorial election to a mere 41 percent in the 1859 race. This Know-Nothing hegemony in the city reduced the dimensions of the Democratic landslide in Louisiana in 1859, but the nativists won only one rural parish, while the Democrats collected 62 per­ cent of the statewide vote.59 The decline of the two-party system gave the Democrats com­ plete control over state politics, and they immediately began to tighten the existing system of social control. In 1857 the legisla­ ture passed a law requiring the imprisonment of black sailors in New Orleans until the departure of their ships. On several oc­ casions during the 1850s the legislature had taken steps to make manumission of slaves by individual owners more difficult; in 1857 it capped this drive with a more comprehensive law declaring that "no slave shall be emancipated in this state." Two years later a supplementary act "to permit free persons of African descent to select their Masters and become slaves for life" (the alternative was leaving the state) brought the proscriptive legis­ lation to its logical conclusion. The effects of the increasing antiNegro legislation can be observed in the administration of an old law requiring the registration of all free people of color who had entered New Orleans since 1825. In the seventeen years between 1840 and the opening of the new proscriptive campaign, 854 people registered and "gave evidence of good character." Between 1857 and 1861 another 1,845 names were added (70 percent of the total). Under the circumstances it is hardly sur­ prising that some New Orleans blacks gave up hope for America. In June 1859 two hundred free Negro residents—mostly young, 59Howard, Political Tendencies, Appendix B, Tables 1 and 2, reprints the parish percentages as computed from the Tribune Almanac, and James K. Greer, "Louisiana Politics, 1845-1861," LHQ, xni (1930), 67-116, 257303, 444-483, describes the changing balance of power in state politics.

THE OLD REGIME

literate, well-to-do men with families—sailed for Haiti, where the all-black government welcomed them.60 Some proslavery extremists even went so far as to propose the reopening of the African slave trade to Louisiana. They argued that if slavery were a positive good for the South, then the existing federal prohibition of the transatlantic slave trade was wrong. Pending repeal of the federal law, proponents of the trade urged the state legislature in 1858 to authorize the importation of "apprentices" from Africa to augment the state's labor supply. Critics of the measure argued that even in this disguised form the importation of African laborers would be illegal. Reopening the slave trade would also drive a wedge between the upper South, which depended on the profits from the domestic slave trade, and the lower South, the great market for surplus Virginia and Kentucky bondsmen. Neither party lines nor regional blocs held firm in the confused alignments on the apprenticeship bill, but in the former Whig parishes of the sugar country there was virtual unanimity among legislators against the Democratic bill. What apparently killed the idea in the end was the report that the most powerful leader of the state's Democratic Party, Sena­ tor John Slidell, felt that the bill would prove a divisive issue within Southern proslavery ranks.61 Senator Slidell, an ardent exponent of Southern rights, became an important force behind the secession movement. He and the state's other senator, former Whig leader Judah P. Benjamin, had played a pivotal role in the nomination of James Buchanan at the 1856 Democratic National Convention. In 1858 Slidell had been the chief instigator of the administration's attempt to drive Stephen A. Douglas out of the party leadership after the Illinois senator broke with Buchanan over the Kansas question, and he was a determined opponent of Douglas' drive for the presidential nomination in 1860. The influence of Southerners like Slidell and Benjamin at the White House, the support for the proslavery constitutional doctrine by the Democratic majority on the Su60 Everett, "Free Persons of Color in New Orleans," 92-93, 104-105, 109-115, 128-130, 158-159. Η. E. Sterkx, The Free Negro in Ante-bellum Louisiana (Rutherford, N.J., 1972), 297-304, indicates that most of the emigrants were driven out of the Attakapas region by white vigilantes. 61 James P. Hendrix Jr., "The Efforts to Reopen the African Slave Trade in Louisiana," LH, χ (Spring 1969), 97-123.

THE OLD REGIME

preme Court, and the strength of proslavery Democrats in the Senate put the South in a dominant position in national politics by 1859.62 When John Brown led a small group of abolitionist zealots in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in October of that year, however, the event seemed to give credence to the most paranoid predictions of Southern proslavery orators. The long­ standing fear that an abolitionist vanguard would come south to instigate slave insurrection had been realized, and it hardly mat­ tered that Browns raid had been a dismal failure. Moreover, when Northern reformers began to eulogize Brown as a martyr, they seemed to most Southerners to be justifying the use of violent revolution to overthrow slavery. If a Republican had been in the White House, mused Southern political leaders in countless speeches, what was to guarantee that he would have dispatched federal troops to capture the revolutionary cadre as Buchanan had. In response to such concerns the Louisiana state senate passed resolutions declaring that if a "Black Republican" were elected to the presidency in 1860, Louisiana would con­ sider it grounds for secession.68 Senator Douglas appeared to be the front-runner for the Demo­ cratic nomination, despite the fact that he was persona non grata to the Buchanan administration and to most proslavery South­ erners. Like their Democratic colleagues throughout the region, the Slidell forces in Louisiana moved to secure control of their delegation to the Charleston convention and commit it to a series of nonnegotiable demands. If the national convention failed to adopt the doctrine of the proslavery Dred Scott decision as a part of its platform (despite its great unpopularity in the North), or if Douglas appeared to have enough votes to secure the presi­ dential nomination, the state party instructed its delegates to withdraw from the convention along with other similarly pledged 62 Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), 18-19, 26-27, 29-31, 170, 174, 228-229; Allan Nevins, The Emer­ gence of Lincoln, 2 vols. (New York, 1950), π, 175, 202. 63 Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, u, 110-111; C. Vann Woodward, "John Brown's Private War," in Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1968), 41-68; Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1970), 18-130; William L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1974), 165-170.

THE OLD REGIME

Southern delegations. That a split in the Democratic Party would virtually assure the election of a Republican president was a risk Slidell and his supporters were willing to take—and for some, perhaps, such an event may have seemed the best way to assure a majority of votes for the secessionist cause.64 The white-haired Slidell was one of the three field commanders of administration forces backing the nomination of John C. Breck­ inridge at the Charleston convention, and upon his arrival there he began to organize a "stop Douglas" coalition. At the same time, delegations from the lower South caucused and united on a platform demand for active federal protection of slavery in the territories. For several days the convention engaged in a bitter fight over this issue before a packed gallery of Charleston's viru­ lently disunionist citizenry. Although in the end the Douglas forces accepted a platform plank that differed only in a few un­ important phrases from the Southern demands, the voting re­ vealed that the Illinois senator may have had enough support to win the nomination. The delegations from the lower South then withdrew to form their own rump convention nearby, although many of them apparently hoped to be invited back by a chastened party, which would then remove Douglas' name. Instead, the con­ vention voted to recess for six weeks and reassemble in Balti­ more to decide the presidential nomination.65 Virtually all the bolting delegations decided to go to the re­ assembled convention. In Louisiana the party called its nominat­ ing convention back into session, endorsed the walk-out at Charleston retroactively, and renewed the instructions for the Slidell delegation. Pierre Soule, Slidell's most vociferous personal enemy, sought to persuade the party to appoint a new slate on which Douglas supporters might be represented. When that failed, Soule organized his own rump convention, which desig­ nated a competing delegation to challenge the Slidell group be­ fore the credentials committee. The credentials fight at Baltimore focused on the Louisiana and Alabama cases, and when the Douglas forces succeeded in seating Soule's delegation rather 64Willie

M. Caskey, Secession and Restoration of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938), 1-3; Nichols, Disruption, 245, 254, 279; Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, π, 175-176. 65 Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, n, 204-228; Nichols, Disruption, 292307.

THE OLD REGIME

than the Charleston list, the upper South joined the lower South in withdrawing from the convention. The Southern wing nomi­ nated Breckinridge in their rump meeting, and the Northerners then nominated Douglas. With the majority party irrevocably divided, the election of a Republican president appeared in­ evitable.66 "The course pursued by the Southern delegations," declared the aggressive New Orleans Daily Delta approvingly, "is the logical culmination of the principles universally avowed by the Southern Democracy, as well as an inevitable political necessity." The Douglas forces had tried to dominate the convention, the paper charged. "Submission to the rule of the sectional majority of the Convention," it argued, "would have been as fatal . . . as a submission to Black Republican domination." Three months later, when a series of major fires in Dallas and East Texas spread rumors that slave arsonists and abolitionist emissaries were at work, the Daily Delta declared that the conspiracy was "the logical and inevitable consequence of Black Republican teach­ ings," and that it demonstrated how fragile the fate of the South would be if the federal government were entrusted to a man like Douglas, or, worse yet, to the Republican nominee, Abraham Lincoln. "If Southern States are invaded, Southern property de­ stroyed, Southern towns delivered over to the merciless torch of the incendiary, while the government is still administered by a party friendly to the South, what are we to expect in case an avowedly hostile party . . . should gain control of the Federal administration?" Senator Slidell felt that Douglas was no more trustworthy on this score than Lincoln. Although Douglas stood no chance of winning, "his object now is very plainly to break down the Democratic Party, elect Lincoln, and place himself at the head of the Anti-Slavery party in 1864."67 The Douglas forces in Louisiana told the story quite differently. The New Orleans True Delta attributed the bolt of the Southern delegations at Charleston to "the schemers who have so long Nichols, Disruption, 308-318; Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, π, 226272; Caskey, Secession and Restoration, 3-5. 67 New Orleans Daily Delta, May 2, 1860; Donald E. Reynolds, Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis (Nashville, 1970), 115-116; Slidell to Edward George Washington Butler, Aug. 25, 1860, Butler Papers, DU. 06

THE OLD REGIME

controlled the imbecility and corruption of the Federal Govern­ ment," for they would have no other choice but "to retire into fitting obscurity" if Douglas were elected; their mendacity made them more willing to contemplate disunion than loss of patron­ age. Other bolters were secessionist fanatics: "that the destruc­ tion of the Union was the grand aim of the Yanceys," the True Delta asserted, "there can be no doubt." The New Orleans Bee, also a Douglas proponent, even had the temerity to say a few kind words for the moderation of the Republicans. "Instead of breathing hatred and persecution against the South," it commented, "the Black Republicans de­ nounce forays like that of John Brown in emphatic language, [and] disclaim the slightest intention of interfering with the in­ stitutions of the South." The nomination of Abraham Lincoln, who "belongs to the moderate wing of the Black Republicans," also served the Bee as evidence of that party's "determination to avoid extremes." Breckinridge supporters scathingly denounced the Bee as soft oil Republicanism. "It is not what is visible, but what is concealed that we have to fear," emphasized the Daily Delta. "No one, therefore, will be deluded . . . into the belief that the Black Republican Party is a moderate and conservative rather than a radical and progressive party. It is, in fact, essentially a rev­ olutionary party."68 The Douglas forces, according to the logic of the Breckinridge camp, were "soft" on Republicanism. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that, with one exception, every participant in the wartime Republican Party in Louisiana had been a Douglas supporter in the 1860 election. The most visible of these future Republicans in the Douglas camp was the promi­ nent lawyer Thomas J. Durant, a skillful orator associated with the Democratic Party since the 1840s, when he had been state attorney general. At a large Unionist rally just before the election the future radical leader "spoke for nearly two hours," according to the Bee: "his auditors were either wrapt in silent and close attention or roused to an enthusiastic expression of their satis­ faction and approval. The eloquent orator analyzed the argu­ es New Orleans True Delta, May 10, I860; New Orleans Bee, May 21, 1860; New Orleans Daily Delta, Nov. 3, 1860.

THE OLD REGIME

ments of the Disunionists and laid bare their sophism and folly."69 The other ostensibly antisecessionist ticket, the Constitutional Union forces headed by presidential nominee John BeII of Ten­ nessee, was more equivocal. It served primarily to give the former Whigs of the sugar country and the Know-Nothings of New Orleans a logical peg for their campaign hats, for Bell had been active in both organizations in his state. Although the Constitu­ tional Unionists stood little chance of winning the national elec­ tion, many old Whigs refused to vote Democratic under any circumstances.70 Each candidate had his own political clubs in New Orleans, both at the ward level and citywide. These ad hoc organizations were useful substitutes for party organization among the feuding Democrats and lent a nonpartisan gloss to the Know-Nothing influence in the Constitutional Union camp. In the city, the clubs sponsored marches with bands and floats, torchlight processions 69 New Orleans Bee, Nov. 3, 1860. My conclusion that the city's wartime Republicans were Douglas supporters in 1860 is based on the list of "vicepresidents" and "marshals" for mass political rallies or processions staged by each of the tickets, which I compared with similar lists from wartime meetings and marches. For the fall of 1860 I used the True Delta and the Bee, which were Douglas papers, the Picayune and the Crescent, which both endorsed Bell, and the Daily Delta, which backed Breckinridge. For the social background of wartime Unionists, see Chaps, ν and vin, and Appendix B. The only active participant in the free state movement of 18631864 who was not a Douglas Democrat in 1860 was William R. Fish (a close associate of Michael Hahn), who supported the Constitutional Union ticket. Most of those active in the conservative planters' movement in the sugar parishes during the war, on the other hand, had been in the BellEverett camp. 70 A case in point is Andrew McColIam, a sugar planter in Terrebonne Parish who later participated in the wartime planters' movement. "You see the old lion of Whiggery is always uppermost with me," he wrote his son in explanation of a special trip to New Orleans for the dedication of a monument to Henry Clay: Andrew McCollam to Andrew Jr., April 3, 1860, McCollam Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (hereafter cited as UNC). On the importance of this lingering Whig party loyalty, see the conflicting views of Thomas B. Alexander, "Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860-1877," JSH, xxvii (Aug. 1961), 305-329, and John Mering, "Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South: A Reconsideration," South Atlantic Quarterly, Lxix (Winter 1970), 124-143, as well as the discussion of party images in Barney, Secessionist Impulse, 54-60, 95-98.

THE OLD REGIME

and serenading parties at night, and mass rallies with hours of speeches by local politicos. In the rural parishes, clubs sponsored day-long barbecues, the traditional staple of antebellum political parties. Newspapers published long lists of citizens who agreed to serve as "vice-presidents" and "marshals" for a particular march or rally, thus lending their public endorsement to one of the three candidates.71 Considering the Know-Nothing strength in the city, it is not surprising that the Bell organization carried every district of New Orleans by almost a two-to-one margin over each of the other two tickets. The Douglas slate ran ahead of the Breckinridge Democrats in every district of the city as well, but in none was it able to capture as much as one-third of the votes cast. Outside New Orleans the Breckinridge forces won a clear majority, cap­ turing thirty-six parishes; Douglas carried only three (Pierre Soule's stronghold in the sugar region), and those only by plu­ ralities. The Constitutional Union slate won a majority in five erstwhile Whig and Know-Nothing parishes, and pluralities in three more.72 Voting behavior in the 1860 presidential election was to be an important issue in the wartime debate over reconstruction. Both President Lincoln and his congressional critics were to use the turnout figure for that election as a yardstick for determining when a "sufficient" number of voters had resumed their allegiance to the Union. Estimates of the strength of Southern Unionism during the war years, moreover, often employed the votes for Bell and Douglas in 1860 as an indicator of opposition to seces­ sion, as did Michael Hahn of New Orleans when defending his claim to a congressional seat in February 1863.73 Its crucial sig­ nificance justifies a closer scrutiny of both turnout and party identification in the November balloting. The level of participation was higher in the 1860 presidential 71 Jerry L. Tarver, "The Political Clubs of New Orleans in the Presidential Election of 1860," LH, iv (Spring 1963), 119-130; Gary E. Sanders, "The Election to the Secession Convention in Louisiana" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1968), 10-12. 72 The election returns cited in n. 49 above were supplemented for 1860 with ward and precinct returns from the New Orleans Daily Picayune, Dec. 4, 1860. ™ CG, 37 Cong., 3 Sess. (Feb. 17,1863), 1030.

THE OLD REGIME

election than in any previous vote. For the first time in Louisiana history more than a majority of the adult white males (52 percent) went to the polls. This statewide figure conceals a disparity be­ tween rural and urban turnout: a respectable 74 percent partici­ pated in the rural balloting, but in New Orleans only 25 percent of the potential electorate bothered to vote. Even so, this figure was higher than in the 1856 presidential election, when only 19 percent made it to the polls.74 The increased turnout helped Douglas far more than the other candidates.75 Half his constituency had not cast ballots in 1856. The group of new Douglas voters (most of them apparently New Orleans residents) accounted for over four-fifths of the total rise in turnout between the two elections. The rest of the Douglas vote came, as might be expected, primarily from the 1856 Demo­ cratic constituency. Breckinridge still managed to attract almost three-quarters of those who had cast ballots for Buchanan in 1856. A mere 8 percent of the Buchanan voters switched to Bell. The Breckinridge forces compensated for the defections to Douglas and Bell by converting roughly the same number of for­ mer Know-Nothing voters. Previous party preference was still extremely powerful, however, as both Breckinridge and Bell got four-fifths of their support from voters who had backed Buchanan and Fillmore, respectively, in 1856.76 Although party identification was invariably the most impor­ tant determinant of voting behavior, both economic class and ethnocultural factors had some influence, particularly in rural areas, over the distribution of electoral support. In New Orleans the influence of social background is uncertain: each of the three tickets ran as well in poorer wards as in well-to-do areas, and as well in immigrant wards as in those with a higher proportion of 74

See the turnout data in Appendix A. The following estimates of individual voting behavior in the 1860 and 1861 elections are computed by a statistical technique known as ecological regression analysis, the use of which is explained in Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, "Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861," Journal of Interdisciplinary His­ tory, viii (Winter 1978), 429-457. For citations to the literature justifying the use of regression analysis to estimate individual voting behavior from aggregate data, see Appendix A. 76 The contingency tables on which the analysis in this paragraph is based are reproduced in Appendix A, Table A-4. 75

THE OLD REGIME

native-born voters. In rural parishes, however, a complex pattern of social alignments can be discerned. Breckinridge ran best where most of the population was native-born and Baptist; many of these parishes were also cotton plantation areas with rapidly growing slave populations. Surprisingly, Bell fared little better than Breckinridge in Catholic parishes, because in southern Lou­ isiana—where the former Whig candidate should have been strongest—the turnout was lower than in the Protestant northern region. The Constitutional Union slate received greater support in cotton-producing parishes where a very high percentage of the electorate owned slaves. The parishes where Douglas did well tended to be among those with inequitable patterns of land dis­ tribution, and he was weakest in the newer cotton plantation areas. The problem of nonvoting was greatest in Catholic par­ ishes, especially in the small number where rice was an important crop. Turnout was highest in Baptist areas and in parishes where slaveholders constituted a large proportion of the electorate.77 Even before election day, rumors began to spread that Gover­ nor Thomas 0. Moore would call the legislature into special session to take Louisiana out of the Union. "I do not believe that the Union can be preserved for many years," confided Senator Slidell to a friend just before the election, "and I am convinced that we are relatively stronger now than we shall be at any later day." He admitted, however, that "a very large minority, perhaps even a majority, of the people of Louisiana do not share my convictions on this subject." Shortly after the election he wrote President Buchanan that "Louisiana will act with her sister states of the South." He predicted that "very many of the Bell party will act with us in our future movements," along with "a majority of the native citizens who voted for Douglas." Slidell admitted that New Orleans created a problem: "here in the city seven-eighths at least of the vote for Douglas were cast by the Irish and Germans, who are at heart abolitionists."78 77 This explanation of the social background of each party's constituency is based on multiple regression analysis: see Appendix A, Table A-8, and the accompanying explanation. 78 Slidell to Edward George Washington Butler, Nov. 1, 1860, Butler Papers, DU; Slidell to Buchanan, Nov. 11, 1860, reprinted in Louis M. Sears, John Slidell (Durham, N.C., 1925), 174. In his letter to the President, Slidell candidly admitted the probability of war: "I will do everything

THE OLD REGIME

After talking with Slidell, Governor Moore issued a call for the legislature to assemble in Baton Rouge on December 10. The True Delta was vigorously opposed to the governor's action, which it called "the first step in the march of disunion," but the Bee, which before the election had advocated a moderate view, now switched to the secessionist camp. Lincoln's victory was "the entering wedge to the series of hostile measures of which the South will be the victim if she remains within the Union," declared the Bee. The Crescent dragged out of the files some of the president-elect's speeches during the Lincoln-Douglas de­ bates, which it said "prove Mr. Lincoln to be a thorough radical Abolitionist, without exception or qualification." Even before the legislature met, advocates of immediate secession organized the Southern Rights Association to spread their point of view through­ out the state. Rifle clubs, "minute men," and militia units began to appear everywhere as a burst of anti-Republican enthusiasm swept Louisiana. By the time the legislature met, South Carolina had already seceded from the Union, and Governor Moore de­ clared in his official message: "I do not think it comports with the honor and self-respect of Louisiana as a slaveholding state, to live under the government of a Black Republican President." Without hesitation, the legislature ordered an election for dele­ gates to a constitutional convention to be held in less than a month to consider taking the state out of the Union.79 Unionists were clearly on the defensive now. So rapidly was the sense of crisis deepening that they were driven back to a compromise position, calling for a convention of all Southern states to consider the secession issue as a body. The principle advantage this strategy offered was that it postponed decision: Unionist leaders hoped that if they stalled for time the secessionist furor would subside and cooler heads would prevail. The idea of a pan-Southern convention appealed also to many Louisianans who were leaning toward disunion but were not yet ready to take the momentous step of immediate secession independent of in my power," he promised, "to avert any hostile action during your ad­ ministration." 79New Orleans True Delta, Nov. 15, 20, 1860; New Orleans Bee, Nov. 28, 1860; New Orleans Crescent, Nov. 12, 1860; Sanders, "Election to the Secession Convention," 18-27; Reynolds, Editors Make War, 153-154.

THE OLD REGIME

other slaveholding states. The two groups combined forces in a United Southern Action ticket to oppose the Southern Rights slate for the convention election. Thomas J. Durant was one of the five nominees for senatorial delegate seats from New Orleans, as were Pierre Soule and three representatives of the Constitu­ tional Union camp. W. T. Stacker, a future member of the 1864 constitutional convention, was a candidate from the second ward, and a few other unconditional Unionists from other areas of the city were also on the ticket. Michael Hahn, the future Republican congressman and governor, was a member of the city executive committee, as were three future delegates to the 1864 convention. The remainder of the group were either future participants in the conservative planters' movement of the war years, or were shortly to go over to the Confederate side.80 Andrew McCollam, a sugar planter who campaigned under the United Southern Action banner, expressed the view of many Unionist slaveholders: "if Lincoln is fairly and constitutionally elected, the South better abide by it, until he does some overt act." The secessionist stronghold of South Carolina was a "damphool" state that "deserves to be whipped into the traces," he told his nephew. During the campaign McCollam and his running mate, Gillmore F. Connelly, published their views forthrightly in "A Card to the Public," expressing "a hope that all the rights of· the South can be vindicated without a resort to the policy of dis­ union." The two pledged themselves "to guard intact the honor and every interest of Louisiana," but thought immediate secession would "weaken our moral position, invite aggression," and in all probability "eventuate in civil war." McCollam and Connelly were victorious in the election, but shortly afterward McCollam's son, who was away at college, joined a Confederate military unit: "he says it is grand exercise on Saturday morning."81 The secessionist fervor that captured young Andrew McCollam despite his father's disapproval had an ugly side. Convinced after Lincoln's election that abolitionist emissaries would come south 80 The New Orleans True Delta, Dec. 25, I860, printed the cooperationist slate. 81Reuben A. Rost to Andrew McCollam Jr. (quoting Andrew Sr.), Nov. 13, 1860, Connelly and McCollam, "A Card to the Public" (ms. in vol. 7), Andrew Jr. to his mother, Jan. 20, 1861, and Ellen McCollam to Andrew Sr., McCollam Papers, UNC.

THE OLD REGIME

to raise a black insurrection, the New Orleans Bee declared that it was "necessary to watch the negroes closely and keep informa­ tion out of the hands of slaves." At the end of November a patent medicine salesman was run out of town for expressing "Yankee" sentiments, and a vigilance committee was formed to drive out suspected abolitionists. In one particularly brutal episode, a care­ less traveler who failed to express sufficient sympathy for the Southern viewpoint was tarred and feathered in a river town and sent down the Mississippi to New Orleans tied to a raft.82 Unionists who remained openly opposed to secession of any kind courted popular wrath. James Madison Wells, a wealthy Whig planter in Rapides Parish who would become governor of the state in 1865, lost three hundred bales of cotton in an un­ explained fire on his estate in November, reportedly because of his political views. Although a lifelong Whig, Wells had cam­ paigned for Douglas in 1860 on the grounds that the Illinois senator was the strongest Union candidate. Later he helped or­ ganize the United Southern Action ticket in the parish. Madison Wells and his sons remained loyal to the Union even after secession, campaigned against local appropriations for military purposes in the spring of 1861, and even sponsored a "Jayhawker" guerrilla group in military activities against the Confederate army. His son Thomas M. Wells, who was to become a member of the constitutional convention of 1864, led the guerrillas against a rebel supply train at one point, and the future governor spent much of the war hiding out on his huge hunting preserve in the backwoods.83 Judge James G. Taliaferro and his sons had a similar experience in Catahoula Parish. A confirmed Whig who named two of his sons after John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster, Taliaferro was a parish judge for fifteen years and later presided over the police jury of the parish after leaving the bench. The judge was a small planter (twenty-seven slaves and real estate valued at $88,000), but was better known as a lawyer and local intellectual. His personal library of classical writers and legal scholarship was enormous for a backwater parish like Catahoula, and he owned his own newspaper, significantly named the Independent. On the 82

New Orleans Bee, Nov. 21, 29, Dec. 2, 11, 1860. "Madison Wells," 6-20.

83 Lowrey,

THE OLD REGIME

masthead of the paper, which one of his sons edited, was the sixty-two-year-old judge's favorite quotation from Cicero: "I defended the republic in my youth; I shall not stop as an old man."84 Taliaferro's unbending Unionist loyalties were well known to his neighbors, and secessionist sympathizers apparently decided to make an example of him. "Our gin burned at four o'clock this morning, together with all the cotton," wrote his son angrily, and the arsonists also destroyed "about three thousand feet of lum­ ber." Robert, who would later serve in the constitutional con­ vention of 1864, told his father that it would be useless to go to the authorities, but added: "I expect to kill some one about it yet." With the early morning fire, Robert felt his own bridges had also burned, and he was making plans "to leave by the first of January for the hills." Like young Tom Wells, he spent the next three years as a Jayhawker, once fighting a pitched battle against a Confed­ erate cavalry company. Robert's younger brother Henry resigned from the Louisiana State Seminary at Alexandria, where he was a student under superintendent William Tecumseh Sherman, and followed Sherman into the Union army. During the war Judge Taliaferro himself was dragged across country in the dead of winter to a Confederate prison, where he almost died. The Taliaferros' hatred for the Confederacy was so great that all became active Republicans in postwar politics.85 Considering the bitter hostility that confronted such Unionist families, it is hardly surprising that the immediate secessionist ticket swept to an overwhelming victory over the "cooperationist" United Southern Action slate on January 7,1861. The secessionists controlled eighty seats, the cooperationists forty-four, and six delegates had failed to take a clear-cut position before the public. The popular vote was closer than the apportionment would sug­ gest, it is true: the secessionists garnered 52.4 percent of the votes cast, both in the balloting for senatorial seats and in the parallel selection of delegates from individual parishes and city wards. 84Wynona G. Mills, "James Govan Taliaferro (1798-1876): Louisiana Unionist and Scalawag" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1968), 2-9. 85 Robert W. Taliaferro to his father, Dec. 9, 21, 1860, Taliaferro Papers, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (hereafter cited as LSU); Mills, "Taliaferro," 42-44.

THE OLD REGIME

If we recall that much of the cooperationist slate was at best equivocal in its loyalty to the Union, however, the overwhelming strength of the secessionist movement becomes more apparent.86 The most important determinant of the secessionist victory, predictably, was the party loyalty of Breckinridge Democrats, who cast two-thirds of the disunionist ballots.87 Only a tiny mi­ nority (1 percent of the potential electorate) switched from Breckinridge to cooperation. By contrast, the Bell constituency experienced massive defections: almost one-third of his supporters voted for secession rather than cooperation. Only the Douglas camp was immune to the contagion of separation; virtually all of the Illinois senator's backers who made it to the polls cast co­ operationist ballots. The level of voter turnout dropped from 52 to 40 percent between November and January. The decline was more precipitous in rural parishes (from 74 to 56 percent) than in New Orleans (from 25 to 20 percent). The effects of this dra­ matic decline in participation were mixed. Both the Douglas and Breckinridge constituencies were hard hit by abstentions, as ap­ proximately one-third of each group sat out the convention elections. In absolute numbers the Breckinridge dropouts were a much larger constituency, of course, so that a full mobilization of his presidential vote would presumably have increased the margin of victory for the secessionists. (There is some evidence, as noted in the following paragraph, that abstention among former Breck­ inridge voters was greater in less wealthy parishes where there were large numbers of Baptists.) The Douglas constituency was concentrated in New Orleans, on the other hand, and it may be 86Charles B. Dew, "The Long Lost Returns: The Candidates and Their Totals in Louisiana's Secession Election," LH, χ (Fall 1969), 353-369, provides the complete returns by parish and urban wards. I have averaged the vote for senatorial and representative district seats to obtain a single measure of the degree of support for immediate secession. 87 See contingency tables, Appendix A, Table A-5. Jerry C. Oldshue, "A Study of the Influence of Economic, Social, and Partisan Characteristics on Secession Sentiment in the South, 1860-1861" (Ph.D. diss., University of Alabama, 1975), 132-139, provides a rough sort of confirmation of this argument. Using multiple regression analysis, Oldshue finds that in Louisi­ ana, as in virtually every other Southern state, the percentage of the 1860 vote cast for Breckinridge accounted for a higher proportion of the variance than any other independent variable (from a long list of census variables similar to those employed below, Appendix A).

THE OLD REGIME

that its high abstention rate was a critical factor in the unexpected cooperationist loss of New Orleans. In the city a substantial victory margin for the Bell-Douglas camp in the presidential election was now transformed into a narrow win for the secession­ ists, who gathered twenty of the twenty-five metropolitan con­ vention seats as a result, leading one disunionist to exult to a South Carolina fire-eater: "we carried this city for Separation yesterday by a handsome majority."88 The social background of voting behavior in this election in­ volved an even more ambiguous pattern of economic and ethnocultural influences than in the presidential election two months earlier. Nonvoting was most pronounced, as usual, in areas with large Catholic and foreign-born populations. Turnout, by con­ trast, was higher in parishes with growing concentrations of slaves and with large proportions of slaveowners among the voters. The immediate secessionists ran as strongly in such areas, and in cotton parishes in general, as had Breckinridge. In parishes with especially large Baptist congregations, on the other hand, the cooperationists apparently picked up a significant portion of the Breckinridge constituency (a correlation of .49 between the Baptist percentage and the Breckinridge vote was converted into a slight relationship of .24 between Baptist and cooperationist strength). Turnout also dropped substantially in Baptist parishes, which usually boasted very high levels of participation (the cor­ relation declined from .45 to .27). Thus the secessionist constit­ uency was perhaps somewhat more dependent on black belt constituencies than Breckinridge had been, a tendency confirmed by the inverse relationship between cooperationism and the value of property per capita ( -.30).89 88 Alexander Walker to William Porcher Miles, Jan. 8, 1861, Miles Papers, UNC. Although the city's 11 wards provide too few cases for trust­ worthy regression estimates, I computed them out of curiosity on this point: the Douglas and Bell constituencies did, for what it is worth, tend to sit out the convention elections at a far higher rate than the Breckinridge voters. 89 See the multiple regression analysis reported in Appendix A, Table A-9. It should be emphasized, however, that the variables discussed in the text account for a substantially smaller proportion of the variance in the seces­ sionist and cooperationist votes than of the variance in the party con­ stituencies in 1860. Clearly, voting behavior in Louisiana does not fit the class analysis offered by Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Emergence of the One-party South: The Election of 1860," in Lipset, Political Man: The

THE OLD REGIME

The economic elite completely dominated the convention, which met in Baton Rouge on January 23, 1861. Of the 130 delegates, 82 percent owned slaves: at least 56 members (43 percent) boasted twenty or more slaves (28 percent owned more than fifty slaves). Twenty-four were cotton planters who pro­ duced over one hundred bales a year; another 23 were sugar planters producing at least one hundred hogsheads annually. The legal profession was the primary occupation of 39 delegates, al­ though others were licensed attorneys as well. Eight delegates declared themselves merchants. There were five physicians, but three of them were also planters with thirty slaves or more. Seven of the delegates made their living as public officials, in positions such as sheriff or court clerk; there was also an editor, an insur­ ance company president, and a statistician. The backgrounds of all except 10 of the delegates are known: of these 120 men, only 2—a nonslaveholding farmer with only thirty acres of land, and an overseer who owned a farm of the same size (along with two slaves)—could be called "working people" in any meaningful sense of the term. Interestingly enough, both represented parishes that were over 60 percent secessionist in sentiment, and both voted in line with the dictates of their constituents.90 As soon as the convention opened the secessionists demon­ strated their strength by electing their candidate as presiding officer by a margin of 81 to 43. Next they established a committee to draft "an ordinance providing for the withdrawal of the state of Louisiana from the present Federal Union." The following day New Orleans lawyer J. Ad. Rozier offered a substitute motion calling for a convention of all the slaveholding states to consider Social Bases of Politics (New York, I960), 344-354. Oldshue, "Secession Sentiment," 132-139, provides a similar multiple regression analysis. Once the Breckinridge vote is subtracted, his independent variables (all of which are economic) explain substantially less of the variance in the secessionist strength than do my combined ethnocultural and economic factors. One significant difference is that Oldshue uses the conventional percentage of votes cast, rather than the potential electorate, as a measure of party strength. 90 Ralph A. Wooster, The Secession Conventions of the South (Princeton, N.J., 1962), 101-120, provides an extensive collective biography of the Louisiana convention. Some of my figures are calculated from Wooster's individual data, as published in his earlier article, "The Louisiana Secession Convention," LHQ, xxxrv (April 1951), 103-133.

THE OLD REGIME

acceptance of the proslavery constitutional amendments then being debated as a compromise package by the U.S. Congress. That conditional Unionist proposal was crushed 106 to 24. A cooperationist motion to delay secession until after consultation with other Southern states also failed, although by a somewhat closer margin of 74 to 47. Even a motion to submit the secession ordinance to the voters for ratification was rejected by the disunionist bloc, and the convention then passed the fateful ordi­ nance by an overwhelming 113 to 17 vote.91 "You are no longer a citizen of our Glorious Republic," wrote a saddened Andrew McCollam to his wife after he left the con­ vention hall. "The friends of the Union tried all the means known to parliamentary tactics to procure cooperation of the Southern states, but all to no effect." He and seven other delegates from the sugar parishes had caucused, he reported, and "con­ cluded that to make any further resistance would impair our chance for further usefulness in the convention. We therefore voted for the ordinance." McCollam added, however, that "it was the bitterest pill I ever took."92 One delegate did not take the victory of the disunionist cause in stride, however. Old Judge Taliaferro, whose staunch Unionist views had provoked the secessionists of Catahoula Parish to burn his cotton gin and lumber yard, demanded an opportunity to. explain his vote when the clerk came to his name on the roll. While a few of the delegates openly displayed knives and pistols, he denounced the ordinance as an utter "folly" that would bring "future infamy" to the convention. The judge declared that South­ ern rights had more than adequate safeguards under the existing federal Constitution, and he predicted bluntly that "secession may bring anarchy and war." Finally, he challenged the legal authority of the convention to pass a secession ordinance and decried the disunionists' refusal to submit their action to the voters for ratification: "this convention violates the great principle of American government, that the will of the people is supreme."93 91

Wooster, Secession Conventions, 107-110. Andrew to Ellen McCollam, Jan. 27, 1861, McCollam Papers, UNC. 93 Mills, "Taliaferro," 32-36. Taliaferro's protest, which the convention refused to include in its proceedings, was published by Roger W. Shugg, "A Suppressed Co-operationist Protest Against Secession," LHQ, xix (Jan. 1936), 199-203. 92

THE OLD REGIME

Taliaferro's lonely voice was drowned in a sea of secessionist enthusiasm as Louisiana militia units armed themselves (with stolen federal arms and ammunition) for the coming struggle. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, the Creole army officer who resigned as commandant at West Point and came home to New Orleans after passage of the secession ordinance, secured an ap­ pointment as commanding general of the Confederate forces at Charleston Harbor. It was his fateful order to fire on the federal garrison at Fort Sumter that initiated the Civil War. Although in retrospect it is clear that the Confederates were the aggressors, most white Louisianans perceived the conflict as a war of defense. Andrew McCollam's son, who had joyously volunteered for the local militia some months earlier, now told his saddened father that he intended to enlist in a Confederate unit and head for the front. "I think that it is clearly and unmistakeably my duty to do so," he wrote, for "it is a time of fearful danger to the Con­ federacy." Young McCollam at least had no illusions about an easy Southern victory: "there can be no doubt that the most destructive and bloody war has been inaugurated at Charleston."94 The war was intended by Southern political leaders to be a preemptive strike against the threat of a revolutionary takeover. In Louisiana, as in the rest of the South, politics was dominated by slaveholding planters who used the fear of slave revolt as a specter to frighten the mass of white voters who might otherwise have seen little cause to break up the Union over a lost election. Secessionist control of the Democratic Party, coupled with the wide appeal of this antirevolutionary sentiment, produced a popular majority for secession in Louisiana, despite the opposition of the wealthy sugar planters of the bayou country. The war would soon bring an army of occupation to the state that would abolish slavery in the course of the struggle against the Con­ federacy. Ironically, the cooperationist planters found that their own parishes were the first occupied, their slaves the first freed, and their families the first to witness the revolutionary transfor­ mation of slaves into free men. 94 Andrew McCollam Jr. to his father, April 18, 1861, McCollam Papers, UNC.

CHAPTER II

War and Social Change: Benjamin F. Butler and the Assertion of Federal Power

RECONSTRUCTION was the crucial question of national politics—at least as a theoretical issue—from the moment the states of the lower South seceded from the Union. The compromise proposals of Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, which received serious consideration by the Congress in the winter of 1860-1861, were designed to promote a voluntary reconstruction of the Union by giving in to Southern proslavery demands. Voluntary reconstruction was predicated on a belief that the large reservoir of Unionist sentiment in the departed states could force the secessionists to accept the Crittenden pro­ posals. The establishment of an independent slaveholding Con­ federacy proceeded smoothly, however, and its leaders showed little interest in returning to the Union. The Crittenden compro­ mise also found little support within the Republican Party, particularly after President-elect Abraham Lincoln let it be known that he opposed most of its provisions. To Lincoln and most Republicans in Congress, acceptance of Crittenden's legis­ lative package meant repudiation of the free soil ideology on which their party was based.1 In the heated atmosphere of the sectional crisis party differences were more important than at any other time in the nation's history: the polarization between Re­ publicans and proslavery Democrats had reached the point where further compromise was all but impossible.2 1 David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven, Conn., 1942), 101-110, 156, 187, 219-248; Potter, "Why the Republicans Rejected Both Compromise and Secession," in George H. Knoles (ed.), The Crisis of the Union, 1860-1861 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 90-106; Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Repub­ lican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 223-224. 2 Ideological polarization between parties, a major component of any "critical realignment," was particularly acute in the period from 1854 to

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The man whose victory in the November election had trig­ gered the secession of seven states and who now stiffened his party against appeasement of the Confederacy was not, of course, the radical abolitionist that proslavery orators claimed him to be. Lincoln was a staunch believer in party regularity, first as a leader of the Illinois Whigs and subsequently as a Republican. He avoided close association with immediate abolitionists, re­ pudiated John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and publicly declared that as president he would have neither the authority nor the inclination to interfere with the institution of slavery where it already existed. As a result many conservative Republi­ cans were willing to campaign actively for him. Yet other ob­ servers within the party thought his early support for the idea of federal abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, his famous "House Divided" speech, and his refusal to compromise with the Douglas Democrats in Illinois placed him closer to the radical wing. In his speeches Lincoln proclaimed eloquently and often the moral basis of Republicanism, and it is significant that in responding to the Crittenden compromise he agreed to support the Fugitive Slave Act only if amended to provide due process for Negro residents of free states who were charged with being runaways. The new President stood squarely in the middle of the Republican Party, flexible and pragmatic in his approach to po­ litical negotiations, but firmly committed to the central ideological propositions of the Republican platform.3 The failure of compromise meant that the Confederacy faced northward as an armed camp when Lincoln entered the White House on March 4, 1861. The seceding states had seized federal customhouses, post offices, arsenals, and all military installations except Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, and Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. In his inaugural address the President re1861, as recognized by W. Dean Burnham, "Party Systems and the Polit­ ical Process," in William N. Chambers and Burnham (eds.), The American Party Systems: Stages of Poiltical Development (New York, 1966), 288289, 295-297. 3 Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 213-224; Lincoln, "Resolutions Drawn Up for Republican Members of the Senate Committee of Thirteen," [Dec. 20, 1860], CWL, iv, 156-157. See also the perceptive analysis of Lincoln's politics in Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's (Palo Alto, Calif., 1962), and Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1977).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

iterated his campaign pledge not "to interfere with the institu­ tion of slavery in the States where it exists," but added that he would enforce federal laws in the lower South "so far as prac­ ticable." His policy was to maintain the status quo: "the power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and all places belonging to this government" (that is, the two forts). Lincoln hoped "to collect the duties and imposts," as well as to deliver the mails, but he assured the South that wherever opposition to the federal government was too great, "there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people." The President proposed, in short, to maintain some symbol of federal authority in the departed states without giving the Confederates a casus belli. "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war."4 The Confederacy could hardly allow the continuation of a federal presence within its boundaries if it hoped to establish complete independence. The likelihood that the upper South would join the new slaveholding republic in the event of war also entered into the calculations. The addition of these states would double the size of the Confederacy and threaten the safety of the U.S. capital at Washington, while the sale of their surplus slave labor to the lower South would provide an essential element to the functioning of the regional economy. The Confederates ex­ pected to win any war in short order, uniting the entire South and compelling Northern recognition of their independence. Thus when Lincoln, in an effort to continue the status quo, informed South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens that he was sending a ship with more provisions for the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, the Confederate cabinet ordered the commanding general at Charleston to take action. General Pierre G. T. Beauregard demanded the surrender of the fort, as directed by the secretary of war, and when the Union commander refused to comply im­ mediately, the Confederates opened fire. After two days the gallant defenders were forced to surrender: the war had begun in earnest.5 4 Lincoln,

"First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861, CWL1 iv, 262-271. N. Current, "The Confederates and the First Shot," CWH, VH (Dec. 1961), 357-369; Grady McWhiney, "The Confederacy's First Shot," ibid., Xiv (March 1968), 5-14; James G. Randall, Lincoln the Presi­ dent, 4 vols. (New York, 1945-1955), i, 318-350. 5 Richard

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

With the approval of his cabinet Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress the rebellion, or­ dered a naval blockade of the Confederate coastline, and called a special session of Congress to meet on July 4. In response, the authorities in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas began to align their states with the Confederacy. The secession of Virginia and the agitation of Confederate sympathizers in neighboring Maryland placed the capital city in danger for sev­ eral weeks, particularly after a Baltimore mob prevented Union troops from passing through the city. After several days, however, Massachusetts and New York troops made their way to Washing­ ton via Annapolis and by boat; the moment of danger had passed. Nevertheless, the Lincoln administration was preoccupied during the early months of the war with defending the capital and preventing the secession of the border states.® The commander of the Massachusetts troops who outflanked the mob-ridden city of Baltimore, occupied Annapolis, and re­ opened the railroad to Washington was General Benjamin F. Butler, a Bay State Democrat before the war. His political skills were immediately put to the test. As his experiences in Maryland influenced his subsequent approach to the occupation of Louisi­ ana, they are worth a closer look. Governor Thomas Hicks of Maryland, nervous about the political mood of his state, asked Butler not to land in Annapolis. The general proceeded with his military objectives, stationing his troops at the U.S. Naval Acad­ emy and seizing the railroad whose tracks had been partially destroyed. As a gesture of good will to the nominally loyal popu­ lation, however, he offered the aid of his troops in the event a rumored slave insurrection materialized. The effect of his offer, Butler explained to Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, was to stimulate the resurgence of loyal sentiment. "The good but timid people of Annapolis, who had fled from their houses at our approach, immediately returned; business assumed its ac­ customed channels; quiet and order prevailed in the city."7 Under pressure from Southern sympathizers in Maryland, 6 Randall, Lincoln the President, i, 351-366; Benjamin P. Thomas, Abra­ ham Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1952), 257-269. 7 Hicks to Butler, April 22, 1861, Butler to Hicks, April 23, 1861, Butler to Andrew, May 9, 1861, in Jessie Ames Marshall (ed.), Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler, 5 vols. (Norwood, Mass., 1917), i, 26-27, 38-41 (hereafter cited as BC).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Governor Hicks called a special session of the legislature. As Butler had seized the railroad line giving access to the state capital at Annapolis, the legislature was forced to meet to the west in Frederick. The general wired his superiors in Washington for advice and was told to allow the legislature to meet. President Lincoln specifically directed that Butler should "watch, and await their action": if the legislators should pass a secession ordinance, "adopt the most prompt, and efficient means to counteract, even if necessary to the bombardment of their cities."8 Thus at an early date the general's inclination to use forceful measures to establish federal authority received encouragement from Lincoln himself. In the meantime Unionist sentiment began to reassert itself in Maryland. The Democratic legislature denounced the Lincoln administration's actions but did not attempt to secede. In Balti­ more the mob violence had created a backlash against the Con­ federate sympathizers. "A great reaction has set in," wrote Union­ ist Congressman Henry Winter Davis. "If we now act promptly the day is ours and the city is safe." When President Lincoln learned that Unionist city officials had assumed control, he re­ marked that "if quiet was kept in Baltimore a little longer Mary­ land might be considered the first of the redeemed."9 Called to Washington by the commanding general of the Union armies, General Winfield Scott, Butler learned that he was to participate in an elaborate scheme for occupying Baltimore, beginning with the takeover of a railroad junction just south of the city. After his reconnaissance revealed that there were no longer any hostile forces in Baltimore, Butler occupied the city ahead of schedule without informing his superiors. General Scott, outraged, demanded that Butler be relieved and trans­ ferred to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, to command the federal garrison at that strategic (but distant) point. The President agreed, but promoted Butler to major general, making him one of the highest-ranking officers in the army. Butler's vigorous activity in establishing federal control over Maryland had created favorable headlines in all the Northern papers, and his political 8 Winfield Scott to Butler, April 26, 1861, BC, i, 43; Lincoln to Scott, April 25, 1861, CWL, iv, 344. 9 Charles L. Wagandt, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862-1864 (Baltimore, 1964), 12-13; Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 16.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

influence as a War Democrat made him a dangerous person to insult.10 At Fortress Monroe General Butler wrought a major change in the government's policy on the slavery question, foreshadowing his approach to the "peculiar institution" in Louisiana. In a loyal state such as Maryland Butler had, as a matter of course, re­ spected the property rights of slaveowners. Virginia had seceded from the Union, however, and the Confederate capital was moving to Richmond. Thus when several slaves who had been employed on Confederate fortifications fled to his lines on his second day in command, Butler decided to confiscate them as "contraband of war." As he explained to General Scott, it would be standard procedure to seize "any other property of a private citizen which the exigencies of the service seemed to require," and he needed the labor of these blacks to build Union breast­ works. The next day a Virginia militia officer rode over from the Confederate lines to demand the return of the runaways. "When he desired to know if I did not feel myself bound by my constitu­ tional obligations . . . under the Fugitive Slave Act," Butler observed laconically, "I replied that the Fugitive Slave Act did not affect a foreign country, which Virginia claimed to be."11 Use of the term "contraband of war" as a legal rationale for confiscating the slaves of rebels spread to other occupied depart­ ments after the Lincoln administration approved Butler's action and the newspapers picked up the story. "There is often a great virtue in such technical phrases in shaping public opinion," ex­ plained one of Butler's soldiers, Edward L. Pierce, in the Atlantic Monthly. "The venerable gentleman who wears gold spectacles and reads a conservative daily is reluctant to have slaves declared freemen, but has no objection to their being declared contra­ bands." Pierce's abolitionist sympathies prompted him to volun­ teer to supervise the large number of "contrabands" who flocked to the Union camp once the word spread along the slave grape­ vine. General Butler employed all the fugitives in return for 10

Richard S. West, Lincoln's Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818-1893 (Boston, 1965), 64-76; Hans L. Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him BEAST! (New York, 1957), 73-76. 11 Butler to Scott, May 25, 1861, BC, i, 105-107; Maj. John Cary to Col. John B. Magruder, May 24, 1861, War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C., 18801901), π, 870-871 (hereafter cited as OR).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

rations and shelter for their families. By July there were more than 850 blacks within Union lines at Fortress Monroe.12 Meanwhile, the Unionists of northwestern Virginia took steps to organize a provisional government loyal to the United States, with the aid of federal troops who drove back a Confederate invasion force. Lincoln recognized the new regime headed by Governor Francis H. Pierpont as the legitimate government of Virginia, and Congress seated its senators and representatives.13 The use of military force played a more dramatic role in Missouri, where Governor Claiborne Jackson set up a Confederate regime along the Arkansas border. At Lincoln's direction, General Scott authorized his commanding officer in St. Louis to enlist ten thou­ sand men from the Unionist elements and to proclaim martial law if necessary. Control of most of the state fell to a Unionist pro­ visional government organized by the convention originally elected to decide the secession issue. Of dubious legality, it was nevertheless recognized by the Lincoln administration and com­ manded a majority of the voter support in the state.14 In Kentucky the Unionist elements moved much more cautiously, and during the early months of the war the state remained "neutral." The President decided to respect the state's ambivalent position until Unionist sentiment grew more confident; by June, Unionist can­ didates were able to win an overwhelming victory in congres­ sional elections. Neutrality was only a temporary expedient, however, because it allowed the Confederates to recruit soldiers in the state and to obtain food by trading with sympathetic farmers. This was "treason in effect," declared Lincoln, and in the following months Kentucky moved toward more active coopera­ tion with the Union war effort.15 12 Pierce, "The Contrabands at Fortress Monroe," Atlantic Monthly, vni (Nov. 1861), 626-640; Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband, to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 13-16. 13 Richard O. Curry, A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia (Pittsburgh, 1964), 38-45, 69-74. 14WilIiam E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 (Columbia, Mo., 1963), 15-47. 15 E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1926), 38-56, 81-110; Thomas Speed, The Union

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The maintenance of federal control in Maryland, the reorgani­ zation of loyal government in northwestern Virginia, and the establishment of a Unionist regime in Missouri all depended to some extent upon military force. The federal military presence did not drive loyal citizens into secessionist ranks (although in Missouri it may have flushed Confederate sympathizers into the open). On the contrary, the government's use of force appeared to bolster the confidence of loyal Unionists and encourage them to assert a stronger political role. In dealing with the question of slavery, however, both President and Congress were careful to differentiate between loyal and rebellious states. Lincoln had tacitly approved Butler's confisca­ tion of Virginia slaves employed on Confederate fortifications, and on August 6,1861, Congress applied this contraband formula to slaves in all the rebellious states. Yet when the new commander in Missouri, General John C. Fremont, announced the confiscation of all property belonging to those taking up arms against the federal government, thus emancipating their slaves, Lincoln ordered him to restrict his order to the enforcement of the recent Confiscation Act. Although the President's order prompted out­ cries from antislavery Republicans, Lincoln felt that in loyal slaveowning states such as Missouri and Kentucky an emancipa­ tion policy, even when restricted to individuals taking up the Confederate cause, would damage public support for the war.16 While the Fremont crisis was occupying the center stage of the political scene, General Butler's military career was entering a new phase. His troops took part in a naval expedition against two rebel forts on Cape Hatteras; the naval bombardment forced the capitulation, but it was Butler who rushed to Washington to report the news personally to President Lincoln. Receiving the general early one morning at the White House, the President, still dressed in his nightshirt, danced excitedly around the room with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox, who had been Butler's high school classmate. Once again in Lincoln's good graces, the general went north to raise more troops among fellow Cause in Kentucky (New York, 1907), 40-98; Lincoln, "Message to Con­ gress in Special Session," July 4, 1861, CWL, iv, 428. 18 Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, 274-276; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 60-62.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

New England Democrats. At the same time, plans for a major expedition against Confederate New Orleans proceeded under wraps at the Navy Department.17 After several months of active recruiting, Butler received orders to join a naval squadron in the Gulf of Mexico. Initially told that his troops would be stationed on Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi, Butler was actually scheduled to command the army units aiding the naval assault on New Orleans. The general's political connections were put to good use when cautious General George B. McClellan tried to withdraw Butler's troops from the venture. With the aid of his friend Fox (who knew the secret plans for the expedition), Butler persuaded Edwin M. Stanton, the new secretary of war, to overrule McClellan. Finally informed of the actual destination of the expedition, Butler departed for the gulf with more than fifteen thousand men—the troops that would form the basis for an army of occupation in southern Louisiana.18 In one of the most famous naval battles of the Civil War, Commodore David Farragut, assisted by Captain David D. Porter's mortar fleet and General Butler's troops, captured Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which straddled the Mississippi below New Orleans. Once the two forts fell into federal hands, the city was defenseless. Before Farragut could reach New Orleans, how­ ever, the Confederates put the torch to thousands of cotton bales and sugar hogsheads on the levee, to ships and steamboats in the harbor, and to the shipyards across the river at Algiers. Even with Farragut's gunboats standing off the city, Confederate Mayor John T. Monroe claimed he had no authority to surrender the city or haul down the rebel flags. Only Farragut's threat to bombard the city if his orders were not obeyed forced Monroe to give in.19 As Butler's transports sailed upriver from the forts, his men caught glimpses of "the endless cypress forests in the background, 17 Trefousse, Ben Butler, 80-93; John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (New York, 1973), 379-384. 18Trefousse, Ben Butler, 90-97; Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962), 171-172. 19John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 85-102; West, Lincoln's Scapegoat General, 124-128.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the vast fields of cane and corn, the abundant magnolias and orange groves and . . . the plantation houses showing white through dark-green foliage," as future novelist John W. De Forest noted in his diary. "Apparently this paradise had been nearly de­ serted by its inhabitants," continued Captain De Forest, for "we saw hardly fifty white people on the banks, and the houses had the look of having been closed and abandoned." The few white people visible on shore ignored the transports ostentatiously, but "the blacks, as might be expected, were more communicative." The captain observed that "when there were no whites near, they gave enthusiastic evidence of good will . . . waving hats or branches and shouting welcome." One older woman exclaimed loudly, "Bress de Lawd! I knows dat ar flag. I knew it would come." The attitude of the blacks led Connecticut Yankee De Forest to speculate that "perhaps some of the planters had fled the region in fear of slave insurrection."20 When the transports arrived opposite New Orleans, "the levee, for the whole length of the river front of the city was constantly crowded by a turbulent throng," observed a New York Times reporter. "The roughs, the low women, and the ragged urchins continue to hoot, jeer, swear, and call us evil names," added Captain De Forest, who was among the first to disembark. "We don't want you here, damn it!" yelled a red-nosed man at De Forest: "we wouldn't give you a cup of water." In response, however, "a ragged Irishman emerges from the crowd with a shillelah four feet long . . . God-damning to hell the red-nosed man, who hastily departs around the nearest corner." The Irish­ man then saluted the captain, took off his hat, and bowed to the Union colors, prompting other "better dressed people to follow his example." Another resident told one of De Forest's fellow officers that "if we want recruits, there will be plenty." As the captain noted in his diary, "obviously there are two parties in the city, and for aught we yet know, ours may be the strongest."21 In Maryland General Butler had learned the value of a vigor­ ous assertion of federal authority; there his troops had kept the 20 New York Times, May 22, 1862; De Forest, A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War, ed. James H. Croushore (New Haven, Conn., 1946), 17. 21 De Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 18-19; New York Times, May 22, 1862.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

state out of the secessionist camp, and the President had in­ structed him to shell the city of Baltimore if resisted. Now he was dealing with an openly rebellious population deep in Confederate territory, with no possibility of reinforcement save by the guns of the fleet. Under the circumstances he billeted most of his troops in the heart of the city, using the U.S. Customhouse, the mint, and City Hall as barracks and encamping other units in nearby Lafayette Square. "I thought it necessary to make so large a display of force," he explained to Secretary of War Stanton, because the streets were "completely under the control of the mob." Butler adopted a bold front, establishing his headquarters in the splendor of the St. Charles Hotel in the American business section: when the owner refused to serve him breakfast, the general threatened to confiscate the entire hotel. As a further demonstration of confidence he brought his wife from the safety of shipboard to the St. Charles. When a threatening mob gathered outside the hotel during a conference with Mayor Monroe, Butler ordered an artillery unit to clear the street. After a few such demonstrations of will, the mood of the city grew subdued.22 The proclamation by which the general established martial law in the city was a moderate document based, as Butler pointed out, on a Confederate precedent. On March 15, 1862, General Mans­ field Lovell had declared martial law, required all adult white males (except aliens) to swear allegiance to the Confederacy on penalty of exile, and set up a system of registration under the rebel provost marshals. Butler's proclamation of May 1 was almost identical in its provisions requiring allegiance to the Union, but added that the Confederate flag was outlawed and that the U.S. flag "must be treated with the utmost deference and respect by all persons, under pain of severe punishment." The general also imposed newspaper censorship by the army of occupation and emphasized that nothing "intended in any way to influence the public mind against the United States will be permitted." How­ ever, Butler guaranteed to all those taking the oath of allegiance "protection to their persons and property" from actions by his 22 Butler to Edwin Stanton, May 8, 1862, Sarah Butler to Harriet Heard, May 2, 1862, BC, i, 436-440, 452-455; Trefousse, Ben Butler, 107-108; Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans Under the Federals, 18621865 (Lexington, Ky., 1965), 60-62.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

troops, and he promised to execute any of his men who violated this order.23 The general's basic strategy, in short, was to assert federal power vigorously, but then reassure the local population that their cooperation would be rewarded with moderate policies. When the New Orleans True Delta refused to print his proclamation on May 2, Butler seized its presses and had his own men run off copies of the document; the next day, however, he allowed the paper to resume publication. The general grew annoyed at the blustering and posturing of Mayor Monroe and former Senator Pierre Soule, and he lectured them sternly on the necessity of submitting to the army of occupation. Yet he allowed the munici­ pal government to continue in operation for a time. In order to stimulate trade and secure food for the city he ordered that boats bringing agricultural goods from Confederate areas of Louisiana be given safe conduct in and out of Union lines, he seized the OpeIousas railroad, which tapped the rich agricultural region west of New Orleans, and requested his superiors in Washington to lift the blockade by the gulf fleet.24 Emergency measures to feed the city's population were essen­ tial. Under the Confederates prices had skyrocketed, while many food items had become scarce or nonexistent. Moreover, the effects of the federal blockade had thrown many men out of work. These economic pressures had promoted enlistment in the rebel armies, particularly after the authorities inaugurated the New Orleans free market to provide food for indigent families of Con­ federate soldiers. The city government also began to regulate the price of bread, in recognition of the social costs of inflation and scarcity. Part of the problem lay simply with faulty distribution mechanisms, for many country parishes in the northern half of the state had large surpluses of grains, vegetables, and livestock that could have alleviated the city's suffering and boosted rural income as well. The Confederate legislature had responded to the 23 Jefferson Davis Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1941), 101; "Proclamation of Gen. Butler," May 1, 1862, BC, i, 433-436. 2* Gen. Orders Nos. 17-20, 22, May 2-4, 1862, BC, i, 440, 442-443; New Orleans Daily Delta, Jan. 1, 1863 (a synopsis of day-to-day events during the Butler regime); Trefousse, Ben Butler, 108-110; Capers, Occupied City, 65-66.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

currency shortages of the rural parishes by passing a stay law de­ signed to make foreclosures on property more difficult, and by al­ lowing citizens to postpone payment of state taxes for a year (ex­ cept for "licenses on trades, professions, or occupations"). The planter-dominated legislature had also passed a revealing expres­ sion of class interest, however. The "Cotton Planters Relief Bill" proposed to authorize the state to issue treasury notes to planters, with their cotton crops as security. The notes would fall due one year after the lifting of the federal blockade. Governor Thomas O. Moore had vetoed the bill, ostensibly on constitutional grounds, but perhaps also in recognition of the political repercussions the legislation would have produced. It offered no protection to sugar planters (who had, after all, been lukewarm secessionists) and would further antagonize the small farmers and the city dwellers who were beginning to charge that this was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."25 In an effort to tap this discontent General Butler issued an order on May 9 designed to alleviate "the deplorable state of destitution and hunger of the mechanics and working classes of this city" by distributing to the poor a large quantity of beef and sugar seized by his troops outside the city. Butler offered a class analysis of the war, which flowed naturally from his sympathy for the labor movement in Massachusetts: "This hunger does not pinch the wealthy and influential, the leaders of the rebellion, who have gotten up this war, and are now endeavoring to prose­ cute it without regard to the starving poor, the workingman, his wife and child." The general charged that Confederate sympa­ thizers had attempted to ship the provisions, desperately needed in New Orleans, to the enemy. "How long will you uphold these flagrant wrongs, and by inaction, suffer yourselves to be made the serfs of these leaders?"26 To counter Butler's charges, Governor Moore issued a procla23 Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 74-96; Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), 171-172, 176-177, 185; De Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 21-22. The New Orleans Evening Delta, Jan. 25, 1862, claimed that cotton planters were furious about Governor Moore's veto: they had only supported the stay law on "the understanding that the 'Cotton Bill' would go through without opposition." 26 Gen. Order No. 25, May 9, 1862, BC, i, 457-459.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

mation that used traditional appeals to Southern honor, chivalry, and race prejudice. "He appeals to your selfishness," declared the governor, "as though he was addressing Yankees, whose sole as­ pirations are the acquirement of money and the triumph of fa­ naticism." Moore drew the usual contrast between South and North: "Southerners are a high-toned, chivalrous people," where­ as Yankees are "idolatrous worshippers of the almighty dollar" who made war "against slavery because its natural tendency is to keep up the price of white labor." The real issue, asserted the proclamation, was the preservation of the Southern social order. "Our people are fully aware that the triumph of the ruthless invader would be the ruin of the South," shrilled Moore, for men like Butler would "turn loose an ignorant and servile race, that would desolate the land when once freed from the restraint which they have learned to respect as well as fear." The governor also charged that the federal capture of the city had been aided by secret agents in Butler's employ. "He boasts of having had his spies among us for months," Moore warned, and "it may be true that our city has been betrayed [by] those whom we entrusted with its defense."27 Confederate sympathizers threatened dire consequences for those who collaborated with the enemy. Butler's troops rescued an outspoken Kentucky Unionist from a mob on the first day of occupation. A. P. Field, a future participant in wartime politics as a conservative Unionist, paid for a "card" in the Daily Picayune denying reports "that I had gone on board the Yankee fleet" and reiterating his "willing allegiance" to the Confederacy. When a Pennsylvanian serving with Butler visited an old family friend, Dr. William N. Mercer, he found himself an unwelcome guest. "Under any other circumstances I should have been delighted to see you," said the doctor: "you understand the position in which I am placed." Mercer went on to explain that "he had disapproved of the action of the South at the first, but after they were irrev­ ocably entered upon it, he sided with them." After a two-hour exchange of family news and pictures, the young officer rose to go. "When I was leaving I had the photograph in my hand," he wrote to his wife, but the doctor "told me to put them [sic] in 27 "Address

of Thomas O. Moore, Governor of Louisiana," BC, i, 459-463.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

my bosom . . . and he asked me to button up my coat." The sad little scene ended with Mercer "afraid to go to the front door with me."28 The citizenry was openly contemptuous of Northern soldiers. Some shopkeepers refused to sell to Yankees until Butler made an example of one merchant by confiscating his goods and selling them at public auction. The women of New Orleans were es­ pecially vicious in behavior, "grossly insulting" Butler's officers, jeering at the troops, even spitting on them occasionally. "Their insolence is beyond endurance, and must be checked," wrote the general's wife Sarah. Checked it was to be! On May 15, 1862, Butler issued his famous "Woman Order," which declared that "hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the U.S., she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." Whites in the city were outraged by this apparent authorization to rape; a Mississippi newspaper offered a $10,000 reward for his head; Confederate officers roused their men for battle by reading copies of the document; and Governor Moore declared that "the annals of warfare between civilized nations afford no similar instance of infamy."29 Mayor Monroe immediately denounced the order as "so extraor­ dinary and astounding that I cannot, holding the office of Chief Magistrate of this City . . . suffer it to be promulgated in our presence without protesting against the threat it contains." His previous agreement to cooperate with the army of occupation did not "anticipate a war upon women and children," Monroe went on, and he could "never undertake to be responsible for the peace of New Orleans while such an edict, which infuriates our citizens, remains in force." The mayor closed with a final flourish: "to give license to the officers and soldiers to your command to commit outrages . . . upon defenceless women, is in my judg­ ment a reproach to the civilization not to say Christianity of the age in whose name I make this protest." Butler immediately had 28 West,

Lincoln's Scapegoat General, 133-134; A. P. Field, "A Card to the Editors," New Orleans Daily Picayune, May 2, 1862; James C. Biddle to Gertrude Biddle, May 4, 1862, Biddle Papers, Historical Society of Penn­ sylvania, Philadelphia (hereafter cited as HSP). 29 Sarah Butler to Harriet Heard, May 15, 1862, and Gen. Order No. 28, May 15, 1862, BC, i, 486-490.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

his antagonist brought before him and declared that such inso­ lence would not be tolerated. If the mayor could not control the population, he would "be relieved of any responsibility for the tranquility of the City, and sent to a place of safety himself, to wit, 'Fort Jackson.'" Backing down, Monroe said he "only desired to vindicate the honor of the virtuous women of the City," but the commanding general replied that no "virtuous women" were affected by the order, since respectable ladies would not engage in insulting behavior toward his troops. The mayor then signed a formal apology, but withdrew the apology the next day. As a consequence, Butler carried out his threat to jail Monroe, and he appointed General George F. Shepley military commandant to supervise the municipal government.30 Almost as infamous to Confederate sympathizers as the Woman Order was the conviction and execution of professional gambler William Mumford, who had lowered the U.S. flag raised over the mint by Commodore Farragut and then bragged of his exploits. Butler's decision to make an example of Mumford was strength­ ened by a determination not to give in to the numerous threats to assassinate him if he tried to hang.this Confederate "martyr." Butler also ordered his troops to force entry to the Dutch con­ sulate, where they found several hundred thousand dollars worth of Confederate gold. Despite protests from all the foreign consuls in the city, the general refused to allow diplomatic immunity to protect Confederate property from legitimate seizure. The wife of a former Alabama congressman was jailed for laughing loudly at the funeral cortege of a Union officer, and a local gambler's wife was sent to Ship Island for attemping to incite a riot. Two men who boasted as souvenirs human bones allegedly from the corpses of Union soldiers were also incarcerated as Butler at­ tempted to stamp out open defiance of federal power.31 The public schools continued to display strong Confederate sympathies, with the singing of "Bonnie Blue Flag" and a course in "Confederate History" as daily features. "Found the Southern feeling still irrepressible among the teachers and pupils," noted 30 Monroe

to Butler, May 16, 17, 1862, and "Minutes of Interview Between Gen. Butler and the Mayor of New Orleans," May 19, 1862, BC, I, 497-501; Capers, Occupied City, 67-69. 31 West, Lincoln's Scapegoat General, 137-138, 150-154; Trefousse, Ben Butler, 114-118; Capers, Occupied City, 66, 69-70.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the president of the first district school board proudly in his diary on June 9. When General Butler ordered all teachers to take the oath of allegiance, this worthy went to protest the decision on behalf of the school board. General Shepley, to whom he was referred, began by saying that "he thought it would be a simple act of justice to send us to Fort Jackson, and put us in solitary confinement with ball and chain." The diarist sulked that "as far as we could judge, our crime has been that certain obnoxious songs are sung in the schools." During the summer the occupation forces unified the various district school boards under new per­ sonnel, made English the sole language used in classrooms, and imported textbooks from the North.32 Replacing Mayor Monroe with General Shepley gave Butler effective control over the day-to-day operation of local govern­ ment. Provost Marshal Jonas M. Frenchtook charge of the munic­ ipal police and replaced all Confederate sympathizers with men willing to subscribe to the Union cause. On June 4, 1862, Butler ordered Shepley to set up a public works project to employ two thousand men at wages of fifty cents per day plus full rations. Under the supervision of Colonel Thomas B. Thorpe, a former resident of Louisiana and a well-known writer and painter, the men were employed to clean the city's filthy streets, to clear drainage ditches and canals, and to scrape a decade's offal from the ground behind the stalls at the French Market. To conserva­ tive whites used to thinking of such menial work as fit only for "niggers" (or Irishmen), "it was a grotesque sight," said one woman, but everyone admitted that New Orleans had never been cleaner or healthier.33 The public works project was a new departure in social policy, to be sure, but the most controversial issue with which General Butler had to deal was the army's approach to the question of slavery. On this issue he was outflanked on the left by General 32 "Journal of a Louisiana Rebel," by the President of the School Board of the First District, June 9, 14, 26, 1862, New-York Historical Society, New York (hereafter cited as NYHS); Elizabeth Joan Doyle, "Nurseries of Treason," JSH, xxvi (May 1960), 161-165. 33 Butler to the Military Commandant and City Council of New Orleans, June 4, 1862, BC, i, 554-555; West, Lincoln's Scapegoat General, 146-148; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 113-114; Milton Rickels, Thomas Bangs Thorpe: Humorist of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, 1962), 215217.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

John W. Phelps, a Vermont abolitionist who commanded the forces at Camp Parapet above the city. In March 1862 Congress had prohibited the army from enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act; using this as justification, Phelps retained all blacks who sought refuge at his camp. Because of the shortage of rations and the complaints of ostensibly loyal slaveowners who went to Camp Parapet to obtain their runaways, Butler suggested at first that Phelps keep only those whom he could employ. Captain Edward Page, a conservative officer who saw things from the planters' point of view, charged that Phelps' men had rescued a slave confined to the stocks as punishment for "barn-burning" and "riotous conduct," in addition to freeing three others locked up on another plantation. "It is utterly impossible to call upon the negroes for any labor, as they say they have only to go to the Fort to be free, and are therefore very insolent to their masters." As a result, noted Captain De Forest, slaveowners began to take a more favorable attitude toward Butler. "If they ever feel disposed to grumble at him, they have only to remember the grim old abolitionist who commands our brigade, and their mouths are shut." Phelps told De Forest one evening that "we owe it to justice and humanity to proclaim the immediate abolition of slavery throughout the South."34 The conflict prompted General Butler to seek the advice of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. At Fortress Monroe the ques­ tion had been "easily settled," began Butler, because the black population had been deserted by their masters or used on Con­ federate fortifications. The same situation prevailed on the South Carolina sea islands. In Louisiana, however, most of the whites within his lines had been lukewarm secessionists and now were "attending to their usual avocations, and endeavoring in good faith to live quietly under the laws of the Union." His greatest problem, Butler wrote, was how to feed the contraband popula­ tion if it continued to grow at a time when he could not even feed the indigent white population. "Now, what am I to do?"35 The controversy dragged on as General Phelps continued to accept new arrivals in his contraband camp and slaveowners re34 Butler to Phelps, May 9, 21, 1862, Polycarpe Fortier to Butler, June 4, 1862, Page to Butler, May 27, 1862, BC, i, 456, 510, 524-525, 553-554; De Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 22-23. 35 Butler to Stanton, May 25, 1862, BC, i, 516-521.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

peatedly pressed Butler to return their property, or at least to forbid his troops from protecting the fugitives from recapture. In mid-June Phelps insisted that Butler forward their correspond­ ence on the matter to Washington, to which the commanding general agreed. "General Phelps, I believe, intends making this a test case for the Policy of the Government," wrote Butler to Stanton. "I wish it might be so, for the difference of our action upon this subject is a source of trouble." Butler observed point­ edly that if his own efforts to conciliate loyal slaveowners by allowing them to reclaim their bondsmen were still in line with the administration's policy, "then the services of General Phelps are worse than useless here." If his subordinate's more aggressive approach were preferred, on the other hand, "then he is invalu­ able, for his whole soul is in it, and he is a good soldier of large experience, and no braver man lives."36 The Lincoln administration did not wish to take a position on the controversial issue (although privately Stanton was sympa­ thetic to Phelps' view). "It has not yet," observed the secretary to Butler on June 29, "been deemed necessary or wise to fetter your judgment by any specific instructions." Stanton asked his friend Butler to cope with the situation in a way that would "avoid any serious embarrassment to the Government, or any difficulty with General Phelps." This response, as Butler interpreted it, "sus­ tained Phelps about the Negroes, and we shall have a negro insurrection here I fancy." The general felt that "the negroes are getting saucy and troublesome, and who blames them?" With more than seven hundred contrabands gathered at Camp Parapet by mid-July, even Phelps found the logistics of feeding and em­ ploying the fugitives exasperating. "In spite of indirect discour­ agements they are continually quitting the plantations and swarming to us for protection and support," noted Captain De Forest after a conversation in which the camp's provost marshal asked Phelps what to do with the most recent arrivals. " 7 don't know,'" the general had said, "as much bothered by the 'inevi­ table nigger' as if he were not an abolitionist."37 36

W. Mitthof to Butler, May 21, 29, 1862, Capt. Peter Haggerty to Phelps, June 7, 1862, V. Kruttschnidt to Butler, June 9, 1862, Butler to Stanton, June 18, 1862, BC, i, 509-510, 525-527, 564-565, 613-615; Phelps to Capt. R. S. Davis, June 1Θ, 1862, OR, xv, 485-490. 37 Stanton to Butler, June 29, 1862, Benjamin to Sarah Butler, July 25, 1862, BC, ii, 9-10, 109; De Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 31.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The idea of arming Southern slaves to fight in the Union army was growing more popular in antislavery circles, and Gen­ eral Phelps decided to organize the contrabands at Camp Parapet into five military companies. Initially, the new units drilled with­ out guns, but on July 30 Phelps precipitated a new crisis by for­ mally requesting arms and equipment for his new recruits. "Society in the South seems to be on the point of dissolution, and the best way of preventing the African from becoming instru­ ments in a general state of anarchy is to enlist him in the cause of the Republic," declared the abolitionist general. When Butler or­ dered him to employ the Negroes in clearing land and building fortifications between Camp Parapet and Lake Pontchartrain, Phelps dramatically resigned his commission. "While I am willing to prepare African Regiments for the defence of the Government against its assailants," he wrote Butler, "I am not willing to be­ come the mere slave driver which you propose."38 Butler peremptorily refused to accept his insubordinate briga­ dier's resignation: "I assure you I did not expect this either from your courage, your patriotism, or your good sense. To resign in the face of an enemy has not been the highest plaudit to a soldier." Camp Parapet was hardly facing the guns of a Con­ federate army (although a major battle was in the offing to the north at Baton Rouge), and Phelps' resignation was tendered in strict accord with military procedure (which he understood better than his superior). Yet Butler had a point. As he carefully ex­ plained to Phelps, "the President of the United States alone has the authority to employ Africans in arms as part of the military forces," and Lincoln had not "as yet" decided to do so. Butler reiterated his order to use the black units to clear the land for fortifications, which was a legitimate military objective of the sort often performed by white troops: "in so employing them I see no evidence of 'slave-driving.'" He then forwarded the entire correspondence to Secretary Stanton for arbitration and dis­ patched a local Unionist named Christian Roselius to explain the situation further.39 38 Phelps

to Davis, July 30, 31, 1862, Butler to Phelps, July 31, 1862,

BC, π, 125-127. 39 Butler to Phelps, Aug. 2, 1862 (two letters), Phelps to Lorenzo Thomas, Aug. 2, 1862, Phelps to Butler, Aug. 2, 1862, Butler to Stanton, Aug. 2, 1862, BC, n, 142-146.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

The issue of recruiting Southern blacks for the Union army had been for some time a matter of discussion in Lincoln's cabinet. With the tacit approval of Secretary of War Stanton, General David Hunter had drafted Negroes on the South Carolina sea islands in the spring, but when he accompanied this action with a proclamation emancipating all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the President had overruled him. In July Congress passed a confiscation act declaring all slaves of rebel owners to be free and authorizing Lincoln to employ such blacks as he saw fit to suppress the rebellion. At the next cabinet meeting, on July 21, Stanton presented a new request from General Hunter for au­ thorization to recruit freedmen, a request supported by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of State William H. Seward. "The President was not prepared to decide the ques­ tion," noted Chase in his diary, but agreed to discuss the issue at the next day's meeting. When the discussion resumed on July 22, Lincoln introduced a new proposal: a proclamation declaring that he would ask Con­ gress for a compensated emancipation bill and that all slaves in areas still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would henceforth be free. Stanton favored issuing the document immediately. Chase said that "the measure of emancipation would be much better and more quietly accomplished by allowing the Generals to organize and arm the slaves," and by authorizing "the Commanders of Departments to proclaim emancipation within their districts as soon as practicable." If the President did not wish to adopt this policy, however, Chase felt that Lincoln's proclamation was "much better than inaction on the subject." Seward's position was similar: he favored recruiting black troops, but suggested that the President postpone his proclamation until a new Union victory, which might smooth the reception of an emancipation policy by the public. In the end Lincoln postponed both the proclamation and the arming of Southern blacks.40 Although he took no official action, the President expressed his support for General Phelps a few days later in answering two letters critical of the course of events at Camp Parapet. Reverdy 40David Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1954), 95-100; Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, 233-240; Lincoln, "Emancipation Proclamation: First Draft," July 22, 1862, CWL, v, 336-337.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Johnson, on special assignment from the State Department to investigate the charges of foreign consuls against Butler, had written Lincoln that Phelps' actions were an obstacle to the growth of Union sentiment in Louisiana. A second letter, from prominent New Orleans lawyer Thomas J. Durant, expressed much the same message.41 In his responses President Lincoln vigorously defended General Phelps and criticized the timidity of Louisiana Unionists: "it is a military necessity to have men and money; and we can get neither, in sufficient numbers, or amounts, if we keep from, or drive from, our lines, slaves coming to them." The people of Louisiana "know how to be cured of General Phelps," declared Lincoln: "remove the necessity of his presence" by ending the war against the government as soon as possible. "If they can conceive of anything worse than General Phelps, within my power, would they not be better looking out for it?" he asked ominously. "Let them in good faith reinaugurate the national authority, and set up a State Government."42 It is also significant that the President entrusted his responses to Johnson and Durant to the hands of Secretary Chase—who had encouraged a policy of quietly authorizing commanders in the field to enlist black regiments—with instructions to forward the letters through General Butler. Although he could say nothing "positively," Chase wrote Butler, "I have heard intimations from the President that it may possibly become necessary, in order to keep the river open below Memphis, to convert the heavy black population of its banks into defenders." The secretary reminded Butler that in the War of 1812 Andrew Jackson had enlisted New Orleans free men of color to fight the British. "It would hardly be 41 The rather conservative position taken by Durant in the summer of 1862 stands in marked contrast to his radical stand during the next four years. The little evidence available makes it impossible to ascertain whether Durant was opposed to Phelps' actions as a matter of principle (subse­ quently changing his view of the slavery question) or simply on the grounds that Phelps made it difficult to mobilize Unionist sentiment (which seems to have been Butler's position). In any event, there is no substance to the wild charges of Confederate loyalties made by his political opponent, A. P. Dostie, in The Political Position of Thomas }. Durant (New Orleans, 1865), a polemical pamphlet often taken seriously by historians, perhaps because the charges are reiterated in Emily Hazen Reed, Life of A. P. Dostie: or, The Conflict in New Orleans (New York, 1868). 42 Lincoln to Johnson, July 26, 1862, Lincoln to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, CWL, v, 342-346.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

too much to ask you to call, like Jackson, colored soldiers to the defence of the Union." Chase also urged the general to "notify the slaveholders of Louisiana that henceforth they must be content to pay their laborers wages. This measure would settle it in the minds of the working population of the State that the Union General is their friend." The secretary recognized that Butler had a keen appreciation of the shifting winds of political opinion, for he observed pointedly that "the truth is, my dear General, that there has been a great change in the public mind within the last few weeks. The people are resolved not to give up their struggle for territorial integrity." If the institution of slavery "stands in the way of this determination," Chase emphasized, "it must be abolished. . . . Of one thing be assured—you can hardly go too far to satisfy the exigency of public sentiment now."43 Chase knew his man. With public opinion shifting to the left and even the President lecturing the Louisianans who complained about General Phelps' actions, Butler's opposition to the idea of arming the black population began to melt. Sheer military neces­ sity also entered into his calculations. As he toured hospitals crowded with wounded following the indecisive battle with the Confederates at Baton Rouge, the general knew that the war department had no troops to send him within the foreseeable future. If the rebels tried to mount a new offensive, Butler felt, he would need reinforcements desperately in order to defend New Orleans. Even without such a threat, his instructions to help open the Mississippi to the north demanded the recruitment of more troops in Louisiana.44 Another sort of pressure influenced the general as well. During early August there were several incidents that might loosely be termed slave rebellions, and these provided an incentive to shift black hostilities into the useful channel of military service. Butler wrote Stanton on August 2 that "an insurrection broke out amongst the negroes a few miles up the river" and that Union forces had quelled it by the threat of intervention. A violent out­ break occurred on the outskirts of New Orleans two days later, after "a speech of servile war," as one Confederate sympathizer 43Chase to Butler, July 31, 1862, BC, π, 131-135; Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln's Cabinet, 102. 44 Benjamin to Sarah Butler, Aug. 12, 1862, Butler to Stanton, Aug. 14, 1862, BC, π, 185-186, 191-192.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

heard it. "A stampede of negroes from several of the plantations below the city took place and about daylight some 40 of them armed with cane knives and bludgeons made their appearance near the barracks" (the customhouse and the mint, where federal troops were quartered). There they were met by members of the third district police force, but the whites were forced to re­ treat until reinforced by Union soldiers. "Several of the negroes were killed, and others dangerously wounded. Four of the police were also badly cut with the knives of the blacks." Treasury agent George Denison described the incident to Secretary Chase and added that "occurrences like that are not infrequent." To Denison, who favored arming black troops, the moral of the story was clear: "if untutored slaves fight thus for their liberty against the authorities, would they not do equally well, when disciplined, encouraged, and upheld by the authorities?"45 In making his decision Butler did not have to overcome a strong personal prejudice against blacks. "We have danger here of a negro insurrection," he wrote his wife, adding in a character­ istically ambivalent phrase: "I hardly know whether to wish it or fear it most." Earlier he had commented about the "saucy" be­ havior of the black population, but asked his wife "who blames them?" George Denison's analysis was to the point. "I believe General Butler's opposition to the enlistment of negroes by General Phelps was not a matter of principle," he wrote Chase, but because Butler "wanted the credit of doing it himself, and in his own way." Confronted by a genuine need for increased man­ power, with growing evidence of restiveness in the black popula­ tion, and with his rival John Phelps on his way out, the letters from Lincoln and Chase were evidently the decisive factors in converting Butler, ever the politician, to the cause of Negro troops.46 45 Butler to Stanton, Aug. 2, 1862, BC, π, 142; "Journal of a Louisiana Rebel," Aug. 4, 1862, NYHS; New Orleans Daily Delta, Aug. 5, 1862; Denison to Chase, Aug. 11, 1862, Chase Papers, LC. 46 Benjamin to Sarah Butler, July 25, 28, Aug. 12, 1862, BC, π, 109, 115, 117, 186; Denison to Chase, Sept. 9, 1862, in Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase (American Historical Association, Annual Report for the Year 1902, π [Washington, D.C., 1903]), 312-314 (hereafter cited as CC). In his able account of the Phelps-Butler controversy Dudley Taylor Cornish also treats Chase's letter as the critical influence on Butler's decision: The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York, 1956), 56-64.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

On August 12 he informed his wife of his shift: "I shall arm the 'free Blacks,' I think, for I must have more troops." Two days later he confided the same message to Secretary of War Stanton. Without waiting for authorization, however, he issued a general order on August 22, 1862, inviting all free Negroes who had served in the "Native Guards" authorized by the Confederate governor to enlist in the Union army. As Chase had suggested, Butler cited the precedent of Jackson's enlistment of free men of color in 1815. His proclamation also promised that the new units would be "paid, equipped, armed, and rationed as are other Volunteer Troops of the United States, subject to the approval of the President." Denison admired "the characteristic shrewdness with which General Butler has managed this affair. By accepting a regiment which had already been in Confederate Service, he left no room for complaint (by the Rebels) that the Government were arming the negroes."47 By the time news of the acceptance of Phelps' resignation ar­ rived in Louisiana, the new units were rapidly filling their ranks. Half of the first regiment were literate, skilled artisans, and their officers were well-educated men of property, most of them fluent in both French and English. Indeed, some of the officers had been educated in Europe, the North, or the West Indies; a few had served in the Mexican army. Major Francis E. Dumas, reputed to be one of the wealthiest slaveowners in the state, urged his bonds­ men to join the army. Dumas, Robert H. Isabelle, C. C. Antoine, Andre Cailloux, James H. Ingraham, and P.B.S. Pinchback were appointed captains or majors under Butler, although this practice was annulled the next year by his successor, Banks. The enlisted men in the second and third regiments were mostly illiterate laborers, often apparently contrabands from plantation areas. "In enlisting, nobody inquires whether the recruit is (or has been) a slave," noted the enthusiastic Denison. "As a conse­ quence the boldest and finest fugitives have enlisted."48 47 Benjamin to Sarah Butler, Aug. 12, 1862, Butler to Stanton, Aug. 14, 1862, Gen. Order No. 63, Aug. 22, 1862, BC, n, 191-192, 209-211; Denison to Chase, Sept. 9, 1862, CC, 312-313. 48John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), 35-39; Mary F. Berry, "Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The Louisiana Native Guards, 1861-1863," LH, vni (Spring 1967), 165-190; Denison to Chase, Aug. 26, Sept. 9, 1862, CC, 310-313.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Union officers like John De Forest were often fascinated by their first encounter with the New Orleans Negro elite. In Sep­ tember the captain and seven other Union officers were invited to dinner by Major Dumas' brother, a wealthy young businessman "who looks like a West Indian; his brother has the complexion of an Italian and features which remind one of the first Napoleon." De Forest, who had spent some time abroad and was conversant with the French language, was impressed that the Dumas brothers had "spent a great part of their lives in Paris, and speak good French, but nothing else. They did not differ in air and manners from the young Frenchmen whom I used to know." He thought Madame Dumas and her sister looked Jewish, and he described two sixteen-year-old cousins who had just returned from convent schools in Paris as "jolly little brunettes with slim figures and lively French manners." After dinner the family and the Union officers sang French and American songs and danced. "It was really delightful to gaze once more upon coquetry and courting," the captain remarked about the younger couples, and he added: "it was pleasant also to speak to an intelligent woman without being repelled by an angry stare."49 Not long afterward De Forest's regiment and the 1st Louisiana Native Guards were assigned to General Godfrey Weitzel's ex­ pedition into the plantation parishes of the Lafourche region west of New Orleans. "While the whites evaded us," observed De Forest of the march, "the negroes swarmed about us with excla­ mations of joy." The future novelist tried his hand at dialect here: " 'Oh, de Lawd's name be praised!—We knowed you'd come.— Ise a gwine 'long with you.' And go with us they did by hundreds, ready to do anything for their deliverers." The 1st Louisiana was given the task of guarding the railroad line where scouting parties had earlier been ambushed by Texas irregulars; thus they missed the major battle at Labadieville in which De Forest partici­ pated.50 General Weitzel did not wish to have the Negro troops under his command, arguing that their presence incited slave insur­ rections and terrified the women and children on the isolated sugar plantations, whose plight he found "heart-rending." This complaint prompted Butler to lecture his young subordinate on 49 De 80

Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 47-48. Ibid., 53-71; Winters, Civil War in Louisiana, 155-163.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the evils of civil war. Rebellious behavior by slaves and the fears of the white population were not, Butler suggested, caused by the arrival of a Negro regiment, but rather by the appearance of the federal army ready to do battle. "Did you expect to march into that country, drained as you say it is by conscription of all its able-bodied white men without leaving the negroes free to show symptoms of servile insurrection? Does not this state of things arise from the very fact of the war itself?" The only solution to the chaos Weitzel described, the commanding general went on, was to drive the Confederates from the region and establish con­ trol by a Union army of occupation. "If your negro or other regi­ ments commit any outrage upon the unoffending and unarmed people," they must of course be "most severely punished; but while operations in the field are going on I do not see how you can turn aside from an unarmed enemy," Butler concluded, to protect Confederate families "from the consequences of their own rebellious wickedness."51 General Phelps could hardly have phrased it more bluntly. White troops accounted for most of the disorder and pillaging, and it was Weitzel himself, ironically, who ordered the Native Guards to participate in foraging activities after his exchange with General Butler. "It is woeful to see how this lately prosperous region is being laid waste," commented De Forest. "Negroes and runaway soldiers roam everywhere, foraging for provisions, breaking into and plundering the deserted houses, and destroying furniture, books, and pictures in mere wantonness. If the planters had remained," the captain thought, "they would have been fur­ nished with military guards and would have fared much better." Subsequently De Forest served on a military court "trying various kinds of bad subjects, wandering soldiers, ornary Southerners, and loose Negroes. It is necessary to do something to put down the multifarious anarchy which we and the rebellion have brought upon this region."52 This was precisely the purpose of Butler's General Order No. 91, which sequestered all property within the Lafourche district 51 Weitzel to Butler, Nov. 5, 1862, Butler to Weitzel, Nov. 6, 1862, OR, xv, 164-166, 171-172. 52 Berry, "Negro Troops," 178-179; De Forest, Volunteer's Adventures, 73-75; Charles P. Roland, Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the American Civil War (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1957), 50-56.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

(all occupied parishes west of the Mississippi, except for the stabilized area around New Orleans). A special commission of three officers was to make a careful inventory, leaving the prop­ erty of loyal citizens and neutral foreigners who remained "in actual possession" in their hands, but bringing all personal prop­ erty, including crops, from all other estates "to be sold at public auction to the highest bidders" in New Orleans. The Sequestra­ tion Commission was also authorized to set up a free labor sys­ tem in the district, following the guidelines of a memorandum already in effect in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Loyal owners were required to pay wages to their former slaves and to employ them in working the plantations. If they refused, the army reserved the right to employ the workers and operate the plantation on its own account, or lease it to a loyal citizen willing to pay wages. All able-bodied males were to receive ten dollars per month, from which three dollars might be deducted for clothing; women and children were to be paid less. Planters were required, in addition, to "furnish suitable and proper food" and medical care, both for the laborers and for their children or parents if "incapacitated by sickness or age." The work day was officially defined as ten hours, and twenty-six days constituted a month's labor. Corporal punishment by planters or overseers was forbidden, but the provost marshals were to punish "any insub­ ordination or refusal to perform suitable labor." Overseers and planters were required, furthermore, to keep accurate accounts of their transactions with workers, "and any wrong or inaccuracy therein shall forfeit a month's pay to the person so wronged."53 President Lincoln heard "that some of the planters were mak­ ing arrangements with their negroes to pay them wages," and wrote to ask Butler "to what extent, so far as you know, is this being done?" Butler was able to report that on one plantation operated by the army more sugar was produced by blacks work­ ing for wages "than was ever before made in the same time on the plantation under slave labor." Of course, what this actually meant was that more was harvested and refined by free labor: 53 Butler, Gen. Order No. 91, Nov. 9, 1862, OR, xv, 592-595; New Or­ leans Daily Delta, Jan. 1, 1863. William F. Messner, "Black Violence and White Response: Louisiana, 1862," JSH, XLI (Feb. 1975), 31-33, empha­ sizes those aspects of the order which set up a system of social control over blacks and ignores those which aided the freedmen.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

the cane had been planted by slaves. According to George Denison, Butler's brother Andrew "bought the standing crop of a large plantation for $25,000, hired negroes at a fair rate per day— and will make a thousand hogsheads of sugar this year, from this one plantation." Visiting this plantation, Denison thought he "never saw negroes work with more energy and industry," and he concluded that "this single experiment refutes theories which Southern leaders have labored for years to establish." General Butler sent Lincoln a barrel of "the first sugar ever made by free black labor in Louisiana," noting editorially that "the fact that it will have no flavor of the degrading whip will not, I know, render it less sweet to your taste."54 The general was forced to admit, however, that most planters refused to participate in his labor system. "The planters seem to have been struck with a sort of judicial blindness, and some of them so deluded have abandoned their crops rather than work them with free labor." Their strategy, Butler surmised, was to "throw upon us this winter an immense number of blacks with­ out employment." As a result, he was trying "to get a stock of cane laid down on all the plantations worked by Government, and to preserve seed-corn and potatoes to meet this contingency." Butler added that he was using the 3rd Louisiana Native Guard, recruited primarily from the contrabands of the Lafourche dis­ trict, to perform this labor. As it happened, his labor regulations had very little effect: only a month after he issued General Order No. 91 Butler was replaced and a new set of guidelines was negotiated with the planters by his successor.55 President Lincoln had followed the evolution of Butler's policy toward slavery and the enlistment of blacks as an interested by­ stander, but he took a more active role in urging the reorganiza­ tion of civil government. Like Butler, he alternated the carrot and the stick. In responding to the criticisms of General Phelps, he had advocated early elections to set up a Unionist state gov­ ernment. When New York financier August Belmont forwarded a letter from a wealthy Louisiana planter urging "the restora­ tion of the Union as it was" (that is, before the war), Lincoln 54Lincolnto Butler, Nov. 6, 1862, CWL, v, 487; Butler to Lincoln, Nov. 28, 1862, BC, II, 447-450; Dendson to Chase, Nov. 14, 1862, CC, 329; Denison to Chase, Dec. 4, 1862, Chase Papers, LC. 55 Butler to Lincoln, Nov. 28, 1862, BC, II, 447-450. See below, Chap. in.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

replied that the fortunes of civil war had already wrought cer­ tain irreversible changes in the social order of the South. "Broken eggs cannot be mended," he declared in the first of a long series of egg metaphors he would use in discussing reconstruction. "Louisiana has nothing to do now but to take her place in the Union as it was, barring the already broken eggs. The sooner she does so, the smaller will be the amount . . . past mending."56 In order to speed up the process of reconstruction, the Presi­ dent sent former congressman John E. Bouligny, who had re­ mained in Washington when his state seceded from the Union, back to New Orleans on October 14, 1862. Bouligny was to en­ courage his fellow Unionists to hold "elections of members to the Congress of the United States particularly, and perhaps a legislature, State officers, and United States Senators." Lincoln specifically instructed both Butler and General Shepley, who had been appointed military governor of the state, "to aid him and all others acting for this object, as much as possible." Although the President did not say explicitly that the military should set the date for an election, this was implied by his instruction to "follow forms of law as far as convenient, but at all events get the expression of the largest number of the people possible." By this time Lincoln had issued his preliminary emancipation proclamation, declaring that slavery would be abolished in all states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, and he underlined the relevance of this issue to the proposed Louisiana elections. "All see how such action will. . . affect the proclamation." If elections were held, in short, the forthcoming presidential declaration of emancipation would not affect the occupied parishes of Louisiana.57 Despite the tremendous pressure of conservative opinion in New Orleans during the early months of the Butler regime, Unionist political sentiment had gradually come out into the open. The first public meeting to support the Union cause was held on May 31, 1862, in Lyceum Hall, the scene of most political rallies during the war years. A few days later, on June 4, the Union Association of New Orleans adopted a constitution that prevailed with few changes for the next eighteen months. The association's executive committee, composed of a president, four 58 Lincoln 57

to Belmont, July 31, 1862, CWL, v, 350, 351n. Lincoln to Butler, Shepley, and others, Oct. 14, 1862, ibid., v, 462-463.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

vice-presidents, and twelve delegates (three from each of the four municipal districts), was to call meetings, control the collec­ tion of dues, and decide all expenditures of funds. Fifty members were to constitute a quorum for each meeting of the association. At this time the stated goal of the organization was the restoration of federal and state laws "as they existed previous to the act of secession, on the 26th January, 1861."58 One member of the executive committee was Dr. Max F. Bonzano, a New Orleans Unionist who had been forced to leave the city by the Confederates and had returned as a Treasury agent to direct the activities of the U.S. Mint. The doctor, who had practiced at the New Orleans Charity Hospital in addition to holding public office before the war, was "strongly opposed to the institution of slavery," and, according to his colleague George Denison, "has purchased and emancipated several negroes during the last few years." Bonzano wrote Chase on June 10 that al­ though he had been nervous about his reception before he re­ turned, "this morning my heart leaped with joy to hear the news boys cry out the New York Tribune and other Northern papers in the streets." This he saw as a symbol of the freedom of expression that now existed in the city: "but a few months ago the possession of those papers would have been deemed sufficient reason for hanging any man." Bonzano thought the middle and working classes were Unionists at heart, but "they are afraid to come out openly for fear that even a temporary reverse to our arms might lead to a general massacre, especially of the Germans, who are bitterly hated for their Unionism and their innate aversion to slavery." (Bonzano was of German background.) Despite these fears, the Union Association held a public rally on July 4 to cele­ brate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and by August 20 it was able to mobilize what the Daily Delta described as "an immense Union meeting."59 Another active Union man driven from New Orleans during the Confederate period was Benjamin F. Flanders, who presided over the Fourth of July rally shortly after his return from exile. Born and raised in New Hampshire, Flanders had attended Dartmouth 58 New Orleans Evening Delta, June 4, 1862; New Orleans Daily Delta, June 7, 1862, Jan. 1, 1863. 59 Bonzano to Chase, June 10, 14, 1862, Chase Papers, LC; Bonzano to Butler, July 1, 1862, Butler Papers, LC; Denison to Chase, June 28, 1862, CC, 308; New Orleans Daily Delta, July 5, Aug. 21, 1862, Jan. 1, 1863.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

College and moved to New Orleans shortly after his graduation in 1842. The transplanted New Englander taught in the public schools, edited the New Orleans Tropic for a time, became super­ intendent of schools for the first municipality, and served for years as secretary-treasurer of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad. "All the Union men," wrote Denison, regarded Flanders as "an able, honest man" as well as a "good business man," and Secretary Chase subsequently appointed him to head all Treasury affairs in the Department of the Gulf. His opposition to secession and to the Confederacy made him "obnoxious to the ruling powers," and as a result of his exile, Denison thought, "in politics he is with the Republican Party."60 Denison himself was originally from Vermont but had moved to San Antonio, Texas, in 1854, where he taught school and prac­ ticed law. He married the widow of a planter whose Florida estate was worked by seventy slaves, but he remained an antislavery man. When his wife died in childbirth Denison brought his son to live with his family in Vermont, "not desiring that my child should be reared in the South." Returning to Texas, he took a strong stand against secession; after his adopted state joined the Confederacy he was forced to leave for the North. Chase ap­ pointed him acting collector of customs for New Orleans shortly after the capture of the city, and Denison took an active role in suppressing trade with the enemy. "His limited acquaintance with persons in this city when he first arrived I deem to have been of signal advantage to the government," Bonzano told Chase, "as it enabled him to discharge onerous and disagreeable duties with an impartiality that cannot be too highly admired." Denison and Bonzano also sought to stimulate Union sentiment by making it "a rule to employ no man that has not previously taken the oath of allegiance"; the doctor contended that "in this way we have in­ duced about 300 persons to take the oath." As Denison noted, it was important "to appoint to office such men and of such political opinions" as would provide "a strong nucleus for a Republican Party."61 The municipal government set up under General Shepley's 60 Erastus and Fanny Clark to Flanders, July 21, 1862, Boston Journal, Dec. 16, 1862 (enclosed in John D. Philbrick to Flanders, Dec. 16, 1862), Flanders Papers, LSU; Denison to Chase, June 28, 1862, CC, 307. 61 Denison to Chase, May 15, June 28, 1862, CC, 298-300, 308; Bonzano to Chase, June 14, Sept. 6, 1862, Chase Papers, LC.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

authority also provided a significant number of jobs, and the expansion of the army's public works program ordered by Gen­ eral Butler on August 4 was placed under the direction of a civilian relief commission headed by Flanders and Thomas B. Thorpe. The financial support for this program was augmented by a special assessment on those who had given money to the Confederacy before the capture of the city. In September, under the Confiscation Act passed by Congress two months earlier, Butler ordered all citizens to take the oath of allegiance or regis­ ter as enemies of the United States. During the last week before the order went into effect Confederate sympathizers flocked to take the loyalty oath and protect their property. In October the commanding general ordered tenants to cease paying rent to dis­ loyal landlords, but to pay the military instead. General Shepley also reorganized the district courts of the city, and the provost courts stopped hearing civil cases. By the fall of 1862, in short, the army of occupation had established federal authority on a secure enough footing to turn some of its administrative duties over to civilians who had, in turn, begun to side openly with the Union cause.62 When Bouligny arrived in New Orleans in late October with Lincoln's instructions to push for early elections, he was received, according to Denison, as an outsider who had been "in Washing­ ton looking after the loaves and fishes." Following Lincoln's re­ quest, General Shepley ordered an election to be held on Decem­ ber 3, 1862, to choose representatives for the two congressional districts in the New Orleans area. Flanders decided to run against Bouligny in the first district, which included the French Quarter and the immigrant section. "Mr. Bouligny will have the whole Creole vote and but little more," predicted Denison, who thought that the French-speaking whites "are half disloyal, but took the oath to avoid confiscation." He characterized Flanders as "an Abolitionist, but not of the blood-thirsty kind," and emphasized that "the whole real Union sentiment is in his favor."68 62 Butler,

Gen. Order No. 55, Aug. 4, 1862, Special Order No. 246, Aug. 7, 1862, BC, n, 152-153, 162-163; Butler, Gen. Order No. 76, Sept. 24, 1862, OR, xv, 575-576; Denison to Chase, Sept. 24, 1862, CC, 315-316; New Orleans Daily Delta, Jan. 1, 1863; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 135-136. 63 Denison to Chase, Nov. 29, 1862, CC, 334-335. Lincoln to Shepley, Nov. 21, 1862, reiterates the order of Oct. 14 and adds "do not waste a day about it"; CWL, v, 462-463, 504-505.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

In the second congressional district, composed of the uptown sections of the city and several nearby sugar parishes, the candi­ date of the Union Association was Edward H. Durell, who headed the Bureau of Finance of the municipal government ap­ pointed by Governor Shepley. Dr. Thomas Cottman, a sugar planter who had been a cooperationist delegate to the secession convention, was also a candidate until Butler "persuaded" him to withdraw from the race. As the general explained to President Lincoln, Cottman had voluntarily signed the secession ordinance and had never openly repudiated that action. After Cottman's withdrawal a German-born lawyer named Michael Hahn decided to run against Durell. Although he had participated in the Douglas and cooperationist campaigns, Hahn had not been active in the Union Association. Denison felt that "he was an original and continuous Union man" nevertheless, and was "understood to be unconditional in his loyalty."64 Speculation that General Shepley, in his capacity as military governor, would appoint two U.S. senators proved wholly in­ accurate, but it is interesting that Denison heard the names of two New Orleans Unionists mentioned as the probable appointees. Thomas J. Durant, who was in the next few months to become the undisputed leader of the Union Association, and J. Ad. Rozier, who had cooperated with Durant in trying to moderate some of Butler's sentences against offensive Confederate sympathizers early in the occupation, had been prominent cooperationists in 1861 and were regarded as among the most effective members of the New Orleans bar. Durant, in particular, had established a fast friendship with Butler and his wife, giving them a case of rare vintage Madeira and entertaining them at dinner. As Butler moved to the left in 1862, Durant also seems to have been strengthened in his commitment to the Union and to the antislavery cause.65 At the mass rally held on November 15 to celebrate the calling 64Denison to Chase, Nov. 29, Dec. 4, 1862, CC, 335, 337; Butler to Lincoln, Nov. 28, 1862, BC, n, 449; Amos Simpson and Vaughan Baker, "Michael Hahn: Steady Patriot," LH, xm (Summer 1972), 229-230, 232233. 65 Denison to Chase, Nov. 29, 1862, CC, 334-335; Butler to Stanton, June 10, 1862, Butler to Rozier and Durant, June 3, 1862, Benjamin to Sarah Butler, Aug. 12, 1862, Sarah Butler to Harriet Heard, Nov. 18, Dec. 10, 1862, BC, i, 568-569, 573-574, n, 185-186, 488-489, 530-531; Durant to Butler, June 26, July 5, Oct. 21, 1862, Butler Papers, LC.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

of a congressional election, Durant was the featured speaker. The ward clubs that made up the Union Association led a procession to the St. Charles Theater, where the crowd "filled the capacious galleries and pit," according to the newspaper accounts, and "hundreds went away unable to get in." General Butler received a standing ovation when he entered, followed by Governor ShepIey and Admiral David Farragut. Durant, whose oratorical skills were well known in New Orleans, was cheered when introduced by Rozier, and he delivered what Mrs. Butler described as "a finished, classical speech." His theme was a historical analysis of the rise of the Slave Power, and he took the constitutional position made familiar before the war by Republican orators such as Chase and Lincoln. There was no mention of the word slavery in the Constitution, said Durant, because "it was the intention of the founders of the Republic to provide for the gradual abolition of slavery," as exemplified by the ending of the African slave trade. Led by South Carolina, however, proslavery Southerners had blocked antislavery moves and expanded their demands for the protection of the "peculiar institution" for the next half-century, culminating in the secessionist conspiracy of 1861. In Louisiana at least, Durant insisted, disunionist leaders had suppressed the opposition to secession and carried their state into the Con­ federacy against the popular will. Following this and other speeches, there was a torchlight procession through the streets, climaxed by cheers for Butler and President Lincoln before the commanding general's residence.66 The election on December 3, 1862, gave Flanders a landslide victory over Bouligny (more than 90 percent of the 2,543 votes cast in his district). In the other contest, endorsed candidate Durell went down to defeat to Michael Hahn, but each ran far ahead of the two conservative candidates in the field (Hahn won 55 percent of the votes cast). Denison explained to Chase that Durell was "not popular" for some reason, and that many mem­ bers of the Union Association had voted for Hahn when given the choice. The high turnout was striking: the total vote in the two congressional districts (7,760) was 60 percent of the number cast for the two seats (13,424) in the last antebellum election, a sur­ prising figure considering the number of men from the area 66JVeti)

York Times, Nov. 30, 1862; New York Tribune, Dec. 1, 1862; Sarah Butler to Harriet Heard, Nov. 18, 1862, BC, π, 489.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

fighting for the Confederacy or "refugeeing" behind enemy lines. The impressive level of participation aroused much comment in the Northern press, which did not realize that the city of New Orleans had always had appallingly low voter turnout before the war (17 percent in the 1859 elections) .67 A year earlier a vigilance committee had visited Flanders' home and ordered him to leave the city, observed the New York Times reporter. Now he was returning to Washington not as an exile but as a popularly elected congressman. "Seldom is it that justice is so prompt or so poetical." The New York Tribune praised Hahn as well, contending that he "represents the laboring classes more completely than any man ever elected from the state of Louisi­ ana," although the reporter added that the German-speaking congressman-elect saw himself most particularly as a spokesman for "white men and their interests."68 When Flanders and Hahn arrived in Washington to present their credentials, their case became the focus for congressional discussion of a knotty constitutional issue: by what procedures should the reorganization of civil government begin? Virtually all Republicans agreed that reconstruction should be in the hands of "loyal" citizens only, but how was loyalty to be defined and how many loyal citizens were required to demonstrate that a state was ready to take its place in the Union? Should reconstruction begin with the election of delegates to a constitutional convention, or perhaps with the election of a governor and legislature? Could a single congressional district, once occupied and restored to loy­ alty, elect its representative to the House before the reorganiza­ tion of state government? What agent, moreover, could authorize the holding of elections while the governors who by law issued writs of election were in rebellion against the Constitution? Did Congress need to legitimize the process by establishing new elec­ toral procedures, or could the President authorize the balloting through his military commanders in the field?69 67 New York Times, Dec. 12, 1862; New York Tribune, Dec. 19, 1862; Denison to Chase, Dec. 4, 1862, CC, 336-337. On the low voter turnout in antebellum New Orleans, see Appendix A, Table A-l. 68 New York Times, Dec. 19, 1862; New York Tribune, Dec. 19, 1862. 69 My discussion of these issues is heavily influenced by Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Some observers expected Flanders and Hahn to be denied seats; during the previous session of Congress Henry L. Dawes' Committee on Elections had rejected certain claimants from Virginia and North Caroli ia. Moreover, Dawes introduced a reso­ lution on January 12, 1863, asking the President to explain the legal authority under which General Shepley had issued the writ of election in Louisiana. A week later the Republican caucus, which exerted a powerful influence on the actions of Congress, voted to contest the admission of Flanders, Hahn, and the other Southern claimants. On the other hand, the committee had sup­ ported the seating of Horace Maynard and Andrew Clement of Tennessee and Jacob Blair of Virginia, the only cases where the size of the vote represented a substantial proportion of the ante­ bellum electorate. On this ground there was reason to expect Flanders and Hahn to be seated; as Dawes subsequently pointed out to the House, the level of voter participation was more than a majority of the ballots cast in the last antebellum election in each of their districts.70 The aspect of the case that most troubled the committee was that the writ of election had been issued by the provisional military governor rather than by the regularly elected civil gov­ ernor (the Confederate executive, Thomas 0. Moore). Everyone agreed that the army of occupation had the legal authority to perform routine civil functions in their departments, insofar as these duties were necessary to maintain peace and order, collect taxes, and regulate commerce. However, there was no clear constitutional precedent for calling an election by military au­ thority. Lincoln's order to Shepley to issue his writ in the Louisi­ ana case seemed to many a dubious exercise of presidential initia­ tive. The committee decided that the constitutional ambiguity of the case should be overlooked, nonetheless, on the grounds that 70 Ibid., 45, 110-111; House Reports, 37 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 22 (Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Hahn), 8-12. Perhaps one additional influence in swinging Republican support behind the seating of the Louisiana claimants was Dawes' threat to resign his committee chairmanship over the issue. After the negative vote in the Republican caucus the Massachusetts congressman wrote his wife that "I have had a very rough time for the last two days," adding that he "thought yesterday I would resign." A few days later he wrote sheepishly that "the matter of resigning the Chairmanship was a little magnified in the papers" (Henry to Electa Dawes, Jan. 22, 27, 1863, Dawes Papers, LC).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Shepley's order was the only practical way of initiating the re­ construction process: "are this people to wait for representation here till their rebel governor returns to his loyalty and appoints a day for an election?" On February 9 chairman Dawes reported to the House that his committee had voted in favor of seating Flanders and Hahn.71 A number of the more radical House Republicans decided that they could not accept the recommendation of the committee, though they did not express vigorous opposition. Their central objection was that the President had no authority to regulate elections. If the regular procedures authorized by a state legisla­ ture, acting through the governor, could not be applied because of the rebellion, then the only other authority for calling an elec­ tion was that of Congress. On this point the language of the Constitution was unequivocal, as John A. Bingham of Ohio re­ minded the House: "the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations." In the radicals' view, the House should refuse to seat the Louisiana claimants, but should immediately initiate legislation authorizing the election of representatives from their respective districts.72 Bingham and Thomas D. Eliot of Massachusetts also briefly pursued another line of reasoning, one that would assume much greater significance in the future. The first step in the reconstruc­ tion process should be the election of delegates to a constitutional convention. Then let them elect a governor, legislature, and con­ gressional delegation, thought Bingham, and apply to Congress for readmission to the Union on the basis of their newly reorgan­ ized government.73 71 House Reports, 37 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 22, 9, 12-13. Complaining about the "judicial blindness of the Republican Party," Dawes told his wife: "the House is in very bad temper towards some of the newcomers, and towards the Committee for reporting in favor of them" (Henry to Electa Dawes, Feb. 2, 6, 1863, Dawes Papers, LC). 72CG, 37 Cong., 3 Sess. (Feb. 10, 1863), 862-863. The quotation by Bingham is from Article 1, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution. 73 Ibid., 864, 861. Eliot, Bingham, and other radicals, such as Thaddeus Stevens and James Ashley, subsequently voted against seating the two Louisianans: Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 115. In radical circles, both in Louisiana and in Washington, the constitutional convention was the pre-

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Also opposed to seating Flanders and Hahn were the con­ servative Democrats, who rejected the entire notion of "recon­ struction" in favor of restoring "the Union as it was." They deemed Shepley's election order strictly unconstitutional. The only legal authority of a "military commandant in an insurrec­ tionary district," argued Daniel Voorhees of Indiana, a minority voice on Dawes' committee, "is to keep peace until the people can have an opportunity of acting according to law, and thus securing their representation." A congressional election could only be authorized by the civil governor according to Louisiana law, continued Voorhees, and as the present executive was serv­ ing the Confederacy, "the first thing for the people to do in re­ turning to their allegiance is to fill the office of that civil gov­ ernor."74 The Indiana Democrat had simply begged the question, of course: the next problem was to discover how the people were to choose a new chief executive. "If a man runs away from an office which the people have selected him to fill," Voorhees went on, "they can, in their primary capacity [that is, sovereignty], call a constitutional convention, and refill that office." Here the con­ servative began to sound like the radicals: "the people must begin again de novo. They must begin down at the very foundation of civil government." Voorhees made clear that the kind of con­ vention he had in mind would do nothing more than select a new governor, however. As far as he was concerned, the old constitu­ tion of Louisiana should not be revised in any substantial way. "If you reduce a revolted state to obedience," Voorhees stipulated, it "must be taken back, if taken back at all, with all the laws unimpaired." At this point Voorhees' strict constructionist principles began to break down completely. He was unable to explain how the ferred mechanism for initiating reconstruction, and it was adopted in 1867 (when Congress finally passed its own measure) as the means of reorganiz­ ing civil government in the former Confederate states. Legal scholar John Alexander Jameson had already begun work on his monumental treatise, The Constitutional Convention (New York, 1867), which provided a con­ vincing academic argument for the radical approach (and went through four editions during the following 20 years). See Jameson to Charles Sumner, Dec. 25, 1862, Sumner Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard Uni­ versity (hereafter cited as HU). 7" CG, 37 Cong., 3 Sess. (Feb. 9, 1863), 835.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

election for delegates to a constitutional convention was to be called without stretching the law in some manner, and he refused to approve any procedure that was not strictly legal by his own reckoning. Finally, Republican Richard Harrison impaled the Indianan on the point of his own logic: what happened if the people of Louisiana were unable to devise a strictly constitutional mode of reorganizing their state government? "Would they not be compelled, if the rebellion could be totally suppressed to­ morrow," queried Harrison, "still to remain for a long period of time unrepresented in Congress, and continue substantially in a state of anarchy?" Voorhees did not even hesitate: "they must so remain rather than call upon us to prostrate and stab the liberties of the country."75 With the Democrats offering nothing more than Voorhees' ob­ structionist arguments, and the radicals unwilling to press their opposition (as they would do so forcefully two years later in similar circumstances), Dawes' defense of the Louisiana claims went rather smoothly.76 The master stroke of the defense was persuading the House to allow the applicants to speak on their own behalf. Flanders was campaigning for a Republican con­ gressman in his native New Hampshire, but Hahn gave an elo­ quent—if not altogether accurate—address on the success of reconstruction in Louisiana. Like General Banks, who was to be his chief patron for the next two years, Hahn had an infinite capacity for glossing over the most trying difficulties with the lush pastels of Victorian optimism. "The large majority of people in New Orleans and southern Louisiana," Hahn assured the House, "have never voluntarily done anything that could in any way taint them with disloyalty." To prove his case, he undertook a brief history of his constituency. 75 Ibid., 834-836. David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 18631867 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 10, 59-60, 74-75, discusses the role of Demo­ cratic obstructionism, and Allan G. Bogue, "Bloc and Party in the United States Senate, 1861-1863," CWH, xm (Sept. 1967), 221-241, reinforces the point in a more comprehensive analysis of voting behavior at the time of the Louisiana contest. 76 "We have been the last two days upon the Louisiana election cases," wrote the pessimistic Dawes to his wife: "the prospect is that they will be defeated. I feel it will be a bad thing for the fate of the Union cause in these rebel states" (Henry to Electa Dawes, Feb. 11, 1863, Dawes Papers, LC).

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

"Why, sir, look at the vote of the last presidential election," expostulated Hahn, interpreting the combined vote for Bell and Douglas in the two southernmost districts—"an astonishingly large and overwhelming majority"—as an expression of uncon­ ditional Unionist sentiment. When the legislature ordered an election for delegates to the secession convention, moreover, the two districts chose "mostly out and out unconditional Union men," contended Hahn, ignoring the fact that the secessionists captured a majority of the ballots cast in the city. Neither they nor the people of the state as a whole could be held responsible for the secession ordinance, in Hahn's view, because "the con­ vention did not submit its work to the vote of the people for ratification or rejection." Should the loyal citizenry be denied representation now, as a result of the "wicked work" of the seces­ sionist conspirators?77 Nor had Hahn's constituency supported the Confederacy with any enthusiasm. "It is a notorious fact that the jails of New Or­ leans were crowded with the loyal citizens of Louisiana who refused to approve the treasonable doings and submit to the au­ thority of the rebel government." It was also "a notorious fact that many of our loyal citizens were ruthlessly driven from their homes and families and sent to the North." An account of his own willingness to serve as a notary public under the Confederacy might have been somewhat embarrassing at this point in the narrative, but Hahn could use Flanders' experience to good effect. "My own colleague," he reported, "was driven from his home" and exiled to the North for "furnishing the Union prisoners . . . from the battlefield of Bull Run with blankets and clothing."78 When the federal occupation forces anchored before the city in the spring of 1862, continued Hahn in flagrant disregard of the facts, "the crowd of citizens assembled on the levee of that great city shouted and threw up their hands with joy and delight at beholding again the old flag." As a further indication of their loyalty to the Union, Hahn reported that "the moment General Butler entered the city the people . . . gave proof of their fidelity to their government by renewing their allegiance by solemn " CG, 37 Cong., 3 Sess. (Feb. 17, 1863), 1030. 7 8 Ibid., 1031. Nathaniel S. Berry to Butler, March 25, 1862, Flanders Papers, LSU, corroborates the story of Flanders' exile; on Hahn, see Simpson and Baker, "Michael Hahn," 232.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

oath." Continuing in this cavalier disregard for the niceties of chronology, Hahn added that "they immediately formed Union associations for the purpose of developing the Union sentiment of that city." The most recent display of the people's loyalty was the election now being debated: "eight thousand good and loyal citi­ zens," he argued, "boldly, manfully, and patriotically, against the threats of secessionists, came up in broad daylight to the polls and sent their representatives to your Congress."79 At this point most Republicans were willing to agree with Henry Dawes that congressional elections provided a practical way to initiate the reconstruction process; Congressman Maynard had already introduced a bill to provide such an election in his own state of Tennessee during the summer. Relations with Presi­ dent Lincoln were particularly good at the moment, moreover. With the White House now committed to emancipation there seemed to be little point in holding the President to a strict defini­ tion of his powers as commander in chief. Furthermore, Flanders and Hahn were regarded as proteges of General Butler, and the Massachusetts radical had friends among those Republicans who had been disposed to vote against seating them. As a gesture of encouragement for the free state movement in Louisiana, the House finally voted 92 to 44 in favor of admitting the claimants.80 Although Flanders was still in New Hampshire, Hahn was sworn in and took his place in the House. The new representative was bold enough to introduce a bill only a week later to provide a congressional election for Louisiana on the same basis as Maynard had proposed for Tennessee. The Committee on Elections combined the two bills, and despite Democratic opposition, the measure passed the House. The session was drawing to a close, but the administration appeared to have enough votes to carry the Senate as well. Only a Democratic filibuster on the last day of the session prevented the election bill from becoming law, and thus thwarted the resolution of this tricky constitutional question.81 79CG, 37 Cong., 3 Sess. (Feb. 17, 1863), 1031. Compare with the ac­ counts cited in n. 21 above. 80 Ibid., 1035-1036; Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 100-101, 113, 118; Trefousse, Ben Butler, 136-138. 81CG, 37 Cong. 3 Sess. (Feb. 24, 1863), 1258, and (March 3, 1863), 1483, 1527. Sen. Garrett Davis of Kentucky explained the Democratic po-

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

By this time there was a new commanding general in the De­ partment of the Gulf. Butlers recall appears to have stemmed from his constant quarrels with foreign consuls who tried to protect the property of Confederate sympathizers, from the persistent (though apparently inaccurate) rumors of personal involvement in the financial corruption so rife in occupied New Orleans, and from his lack of military success in the campaign to open the Mississippi.82 The conventional view, that Butler's "radicalism" on the slavery question played a part in Lincoln's decision to replace him, is inconsistent with the evidence.83 As we have seen, the Massachusetts general's handling of the labor system and the recruitment of black troops dovetailed closely with the evolution of Lincoln's policy. On the other hand, recent arguments that Butler followed a conservative, proslavery strate­ gy in dealing with the contraband question are also exaggerated.84 The key to Butler's success had been his willingness to use the full power of the army of occupation. Often this meant com­ pelling the submission of Confederate sympathizers, taxing them to support his public works program, and requiring them to pay wages to former slaves. Yet the general also used the army to put down slave insurrection, to get black refugees back to work on plantations or fortifications, and even to maintain the discipline of the plantation labor force. The labor regulations set down for plantation parishes during the last month of his administration appear to offer the germ of the conservative labor policy followed by his successor during 1863, but it should be emphasized that the wages Butler stipulated were more than three times higher than the scale adopted for the following year. On balance, it is easy to understand why the freedmen might have viewed Butler more sympathetically than did the planters. Although not actively involved in the reorganization of civil sition on the election bill: " I intend to defeat this bill by any parliamentary proceeding that is allowable." 82 West, Lincoln's Scapegoat General, 186-200; Capers, Occupied City, 83-84, 98-102. 83 For the conventional view, see Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 85-86, and Capers, Occu­ pied City, 103. 84 For the argument that Butler pursued a proslavery policy in Louisiana, see Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 67-73, and Messner, "Black Violence and White Response," 19-38.

WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE

government or the December congressional elections, Butler was on friendly terms with local Unionists. Despite suspicion that his lax attitude toward speculation and graft reflected personal cor­ ruption, loyal residents praised his forceful assertion of federal authority and his refusal to allow open disrespect for the occupa­ tion forces. "Many of the local citizens express a fear that the new administration of affairs, will lack the vigor and ability of the former," Denison wrote Secretary Chase. "When he [Butler] arrived he was met by a hostile city government, a people prompt in the expression of bitter ill will against the Government of the United States," recalled the editor of the New Orleans Daily Delta. In the seven months of Butler's rule, "pestilence has been banished. The poor have been supplied with labor and bread. Good government tranquillity, and a revival of prosperity have displaced desolation, turbulence, and misrule." In the recent congressional election, continued the paper, "a thousand more votes were cast in New Orleans than were thrown for the seces­ sion of the State. The revolution is total."85 Total revolution may be a bit strong as a description of Butler's administration, but the Daily Delta may be forgiven this rhe­ torical flourish. The war had brought revolutionary change to Louisiana, after all, though the transformation had less to do with Butler's personal influence than with the inevitable consequences of waging war against a slaveholding society. The relief program in the city and the labor system in plantation parishes put the army in the business of regulating the social and economic affairs of a locality to an unprecedented degree. Former slaves were working for wages, whether paid by plantation owners or by the army; some were even fighting in the ranks against the military forces of the master class. The economic elite, which had dom­ inated politics in the old regime, was either "refugeeing" within Confederate lines or looking on helplessly as the middle-class Unionists of New Orleans dominated the reorganization of civil government. The forces of social change were in the ascendancy under Butler. 85

Denison to Chase, Dec. 17, 1862, CC, 339-340; New Orleans Daily Delta, Dec. 17, 31, 1862.

CHAPTER III

The Failure of Conciliation: JVathaniel P. Banks and the Planters GENERAL Nathaniel P. Banks cut

a striking figure as he stood on the upper deck of a military trans­ port winding its way up the Mississippi toward New Orleans. Slim and handsome, with dark hair and mustache, the general appeared too young to have served two terms as governor of Massachusetts and one as Speaker of the U.S. House of Repre­ sentatives. Watching with Banks as the ship glided past the great canefields and white-columned mansions of the Louisiana sugar country was Colonel David Hunter Strother, a Virginia Unionist who had served the general as a trusted scout in the recent Shenandoah Valley campaigns. Like most of Banks' officers, Strother found him a personable, easygoing, practical man of af­ fairs. The savoir faire that had made Banks popular with Lincoln's secretary John Hay, and, to all appearances, with the President himself, won him the allegiance of military men who usually held "civilian" generals in contempt. Strother, who disliked both the proslavery secessionists of his native state and the radical antislavery views of Massachusetts, was attracted as well by Banks' preference for the political center. "I have never heard anyone whose views agree more exactly with my own," Strother noted in his diary. "He says both sections have been governed by extrem­ ists who have carried their points because of the moral cowardice of the people." The goals of Banks' mission, as he explained to Strother, were twofold: the chief military objective was the opening of the Mis­ sissippi above Baton Rouge, but "the great moral motive of the expedition was the reunionizing of Louisiana." His approach to reconstruction would be less harsh than his predecessor's, Banks added pointedly. "On the supposition that Butler's rule was violent and high-handed and that the people were suppressed

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

rather than won over," recorded Strother, "our policy was fore­ shadowed as conciliatory. Kindness after the rod is a strong card." Despite his basic agreement with the general's moderate views, the Virginian confided to his diary that he was more pessimistic than Banks about the possibility of winning the allegiance of white Louisiana: "knowing the character of the population I am not sure but Butler's policy is the safest."1 The transports arrived opposite the French Quarter around sunset, and Banks debarked for an elegant night's rest at the St. Charles Hotel. The next morning, December 15, he visited Gen­ eral Butler's headquarters for an informal briefing on the diffi­ culties of governing Louisiana. Butler was scrupulously polite, but the peremptory manner in which he had been removed made a certain coolness inevitable. Colonel Strother was impressed with Butler, despite the general's famous disfigurement; "his drooping left eye gives his face a somewhat sinister expression," noted the Virginian, but he had, in contrast, "a striking profile not wanting in dignity and greatness." Somewhat to his surprise, Strother found Butler intelligent and articulate in conversation: "alto­ gether the impression he made on me was quite favorable and strong." The following day Banks returned in state for the official cere­ mony relieving Butler of command of the Department of the Gulf. After Banks departed Butler delivered a farewell message to his staff behind closed doors. He expressed satisfaction with the preceding nine months of occupation government, and pride in the men who had served under him. "Several officers wept during the reading," reported Strother, "and the general himself seemed much affected." A week later, after rendering further assistance to his successor, Butler sailed for the North.2 1 Cecil D. Eby Jr. (ed.), A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War: The Diaries of David Hunter Strother (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 22, 134-135. A similar view was expressed by another of Banks' officers, George H. Hepworth: "Our overcareful President was desirous to conciliate. There had been harsh measures enough in this department; and since Butler had stroked the cat from tail to head, and found her full of yawl and scratch, it was determined to stroke her from head to tail, and see if she would not hide her claws and commence to purr" (Hepworth, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword: or, the Gulf Department in '63 [Boston, 1864], 27-28). 2Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 135-136; Banks to Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Dec. 24, 1862, OR, xv, 618-619; New Orleans Picayune, Dec. 17, 1862.

Ill

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

"The streets during the last few days were gay with the popu­ lation of the city who have come out like gophers in the sunshine," noted Strother on December 24. "The cannon from the flagship proclaim that Butler has departed, and I suppose New Orleans will breathe freer." As a symbolic gesture of good will Banks reopened the churches that the "Beast" had closed for expressing Conferedate loyalties. In addition he released several prisoners arrested by Butler for flagrant contempt of the Union forces, eased restrictions on trade with the interior, and ordered the re­ turn of all improperly sequestered property in the city. Banks asked Strother to serve on the Sequestration Commis­ sion, which supervised the allocation of confiscated property. After his first day on the job the colonel vented his outrage in his diary: "the whole system has been one of enormous and unblush­ ing fraud and rapine." He reported several offers of bribery by men who seemed accustomed to paying large fees to army officers; he was determined to rid the commission of such prac­ tices in the future. The Picayune expressed the approval of con­ servative sentiment: "the course of Major General Banks and his subordinates is eliciting the approbation of our citizens. It is conceded to be honorable and liberal. People begin to breathe more freely."3 On New Year's Day President Lincoln was scheduled to an­ nounce his final proclamation of emancipation; whether the docu­ ment would apply to the occupied portions of Louisiana was still uncertain. The terms of the preliminary declaration in September were ambiguous. The fact that a state was "represented in the Congress" by members who were elected by "a majority of the qualified voters" was deemed prima facie evidence that the state was no longer in rebellion, and such states were to be exempted from the final proclamation. The two congressional districts around New Orleans had elected Benjamin Flanders and Michael Hahn to the House of Representatives, although the two dele­ gates had not yet been officially seated. Butler's removal was interpreted as an indication that slavery would be granted a reprieve, and conservative sentiment grew optimistic. The situa­ tion was further complicated, however, by rumors that a massive revolt was brewing in the contraband camps and on the planta3 Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 139-142; Gen. Orders Nos. 113, 117, 118, OR, xv, 615, 623-624; New Orleans Picayune, Dec. 28, 1862.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

tions. "The colored population fear the President will revoke his proclamation," wrote George Denison to Secretary Chase. "Threats of insurrection are frequent—in case the proclamation should not be made effective on the 1st January."4 "The events of the hour," wrote Banks to Lincoln on December 24, made it "necessary to relieve the people of their apprehensiveness as to outbreaks among the slaves." To quiet the rumors, the general issued a public statement emphasizing that "slaves are advised to remain upon their plantations until their privileges shall have been definitely established." In the document Banks expressed his view that the President would not abolish slavery in the occupied portions of Louisiana, though he did not think the institution could survive the dislocations of war. He suggested that planters adjust to the inevitability of emancipation by mak­ ing sharecrop arrangements with their workers for the coming year. The general tone of Banks' address was conservative: "no encouragement will be given to laborers to desert their employers, but no authority exists to compel them to return." One planter who had opposed secession but still clung to slavery felt the address would make a good impression in the sugar country, and he requested five hundred copies of the document to circulate in his parish.5 Banks was correct in his prediction that the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation would exempt southern Louisiana, but there was a last-minute effort in Washington to change the President's decision on this point. Lincoln had called a special meeting for the morning of December 31 to entertain revisions of the proposed text, and Secretary Chase arrived with a number of suggestions in hand, chief of which was that no exceptions be made for the occupied portions of Louisiana and Virginia. In the recent congressional election, Chase argued, Louisiana Unionists had operated under the assumption that slavery would be abol­ ished, even in occupied areas, no matter what the President felt he had promised in the September proclamation. The secretary 4 Denison

to Chase, Dec. 23, 1862, CC, 341; Herman Belz, Reconstruct­ ing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), 110-115. 5 Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 24, 1862, ALM, 20402; Banks to the people of Louisiana, Dec. 24, 1862, OR, xv, 619-621; E. E. Malhiot to James Tucker (Banks' secretary), Dec. 27, 1862, Banks Papers, LC.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

produced a letter from Congressman-elect Flanders expressing the hope that Lincoln would not "recoil" from emancipation, as rumored in conservative circles. "It seems certain/' Chase empha­ sized, "that no impression exists in Mr. Flanders' district that you are under any obligation to make an exception of Louisiana." The President was not dissuaded, however, and the famous document he signed on January 1, 1863, left slavery intact on the lower Mississippi.0 Lincoln's decision was motivated, as usual, by a reluctance to antagonize conservative sentiment. The exemption added a note of ambiguity to an already complex situation in the Department of the Gulf, however, and made Banks' task more difficult. The contrabands were "slaves de jure," he observed, but "not cle facto." His officers were prohibited by law from returning fugi­ tives to their masters, but proslavery spokesmen used the presi­ dential exemption as justification for ignoring this particular point of law. "Local police regulations" were still in effect, argued the Picayune: "we desire respectfully to call the attention of the authorities here to the very specific language of the Executive . . . on this subject." The police regulations to which the paper re­ ferred called for the arrest of slaves who appeared on the streets without passes from their owners. In the judgment of the Pica­ yune the army of occupation, having replaced the civilian govern­ ment entirely, was obligated to enforce the "Black Codes." The editors offered a word of appreciation to Provost Marshal Jonas M. French, who had ordered his men to return fugitives wherever possible to their legal masters. "The public now are expecting to see the laws enforced."7 The contraband camps were flooded with new arrivals, and the army allowed them to remain so long as they worked on fortifica­ tions or other projects. The conditions could be terrible in the 6 Howard K. Beale (ed.), Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, I960), i, 210-211; Chase to Lincoln, Dec. 31, 1862, ALM, 20638 (enclosing Benjamin F. Flanders and Thomas B. Thorpe to Chase, Nov. 29, 1862, 19183), and a subsequent letter from Chase to Lincoln, also dated Dec. 31, 1862, ALM, 20639; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York, 1890), vi, 405-435. 7 Nathaniel P. Banks, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana (Boston, 1864), 5-6; New Orleans Picayune, Jan. 22, 25, 1863; W. H. Gray to Banks, Jan. 17, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

camps, as Banks discovered when he traveled up the river to inspect the situation at Baton Rouge on January 21. The town had changed hands repeatedly but was then temporarily controlled by Union forces. Blacks from the surrounding plantations were busy constructing breastworks around the federal encampment, and at one point the general visited the squalid quarters in which they were housed. "Their condition was one of abject misery," he recalled: "150 men, women, and children . . . cooking, eating, drinking, sleeping, sickening, and dying, in one room with a fire built in its centre, on the floor, without a chimney." Strother, who had accompanied Banks to Baton Rouge, found his friend in a despondent mood that evening.8 On January 30,1863, a week after his return from Baton Rouge, Banks issued his famous General Order No. 12, establishing a free labor system for the occupied portions of Louisiana. "No person whatever, was consulted upon the subject, previous to the issue of the order," recalled the general, who liked to think of himself as a resourceful and independent administrator. The document translated into a direct command Banks' earlier suggestion that planters negotiate sharecrop arrangements with their work force: "the sequestration commission is hereby authorized and directed, upon conference with planters and other parties [presumably the blacks themselves], to propose and establish a yearly system of negro labor." Proprietors were to "provide for the food, clothing, proper treatment, and just compensation for the negroes, at fixed rates [wages] or an equitable proportion of the yearly crop." The army would ensure that "perfect subordination shall be enforced on the part of the negroes by the officers of the Government." Issuing the order was "the best act of my life," Banks confided to his wife that evening, savoring the role of emancipator. Charac­ teristically overconfident, he predicted that his new system would solve the slavery question "within three months."9 The task of hammering out the details of the new labor regula­ tions fell to the Sequestration Commission, and Strother's diary provides a revealing glimpse of this process. Colonel Strother 8 Banks to William Lloyd Garrison, Jan. 30, 1865, Liberator, Feb. 24, 1865; Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 146-147. 9Ofl, xv, 666-667; Banks to Garrison, Jan. 30, 1865, Liberator, Feb. 24, 1865; Banks to his wife, Jan. 30, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

found himself surrounded by anxious planters on the first day of business: "some of these seemed quite willing to accept the General's proclamation; others seemed outraged by it and thought it would ruin the country entirely." The Virginian had long been opposed to slavery, but he was skeptical about the Negro's will­ ingness to work without compulsion. Considering himself a prac­ tical man, Strother was more interested in the productivity than in the well-being of the work force, and thus he appreciated the dilemma of the planters. One of his fellow commissioners, Colonel Edward G. Beckwith, a West Point career officer, took the same view as Strother. The third member, Captain Sturgis Hooper, was a different breed: "the Captain is absolutely and decidedly at variance with Beckwith and myself," observed the Virginian, who thought the young Bostonian was "beginning to take views from the abolition standpoint." The commission, which was to set up the initial guidelines for the free labor system, was not unsympathetic to the interests of the planters, despite Hooper's dissenting vote. Strother found that the proprietors' first concern was to have their laborers re­ turned to the plantations, and he was inclined to favor their wishes on this point. That evening he checked with General Banks, who "answered fully and unreservedly that the planters should have their Negroes returned . . . from the camps, and wherever they were found." On the basis of that conversation Strother "felt fully authorized" to tell all inquirers "that their servants would be returned to them and forced to work for their living."10 "Hooper declines positively to accede to any such proposition," noted the colonel, "and insists that our plan does not recognize in any way the slaves as party to the contract." Many of the freedmen did not wish to sign agreements with their former owners, explained an observer whom Banks sent into the sugar parishes two weeks later, "because they have been too unmercifully used and abused by the overseers." Even going to work on a neighbor­ ing plantation, as many preferred to do, offered a symbolic ges­ ture of breaking with the old regime in the eyes of the freedmen. Strother dismissed Hooper's reasoning as pandering to "public opinion in Boston," which the young officer evidently thought was 10Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 148. Note that Strother continued to refer to the blacks as "servants" and "slaves."

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

"more important . . . than that the planters here shall be saved from ruin."11 The Virginian decided to bring General Banks into the con­ troversy on the third day of business, February 4. The general's views were closer to Strother's position, but he was on personal terms with Captain Hooper, whose father was a Republican congressman from Massachusetts. Strother and Hooper drew up summaries of their respective views for the meeting so that Banks could see the points of difference quite clearly. In the colonel's plan "the planter agrees to support the slave, and to give him of the crop one hogshead in twenty," or one-twentieth of any other staple raised. "The authorities agree to return all slaves to their places and enforce obediance and industry." Hooper's memorandum included "a clause requiring the assent of the slaves" to any contract, recorded Strother, who by now had little patience with the captain: "Hooper seemed to have no other ideas throughout than to guess how the thing would read to a Boston audience."12 "The General came in and read my proposition," continued Strother. He "assented to it as he had done to verbal statements of the same character." For a while, however, the Virginian feared that Banks would give in to Hooper's determined criti­ cisms. The general began to hedge: "he had no intention nor authority to force the slaves back to their masters. He depended solely upon moral suasion. He would advise them to go." Strother regarded the notion of "moral suasion" with some contempt: "it was now clear to me that. . . my effort to reconcile the Massachu­ setts idea of the Negro with the planter's practical knowledge of the same a:nimal was a total failure." Hooper overplayed his hand, however, when he tried to persuade Banks to take a clear-cut position. If the general relied upon moral suasion alone, then he must agree that freedmen had the right to reject a contract with a given employer, if, for example, they did not wish to work for their former owner. "This the General disapproved entirely," noted Strother with satisfaction.13 On the evening of February 5 Banks presented the regulations 11 Ibid., 147-148; Frank Barclay to Banks, Feb. 22, March 5, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA. 12Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 148; Banks, Emancipated Labor, 9n-10n. 13 Eby (ed.), Strother Diary, 149.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

drawn up by the Sequestration Committee to a meeting of forty planters at the St. Charles Hotel. The phraseology was ambigu­ ous, as the general apparently desired: "the officers of the Gov­ ernment will induce the slaves to return to the plantations where they belong, with their families." The verb induce was con­ sistent with Banks' idea of moral suasion, but the use of the noun slaves suggested that the techniques of persuasion might be more forceful than a mere paternalistic chat. Once the blacks were back on the plantations, continued the document, the army would "require them . . . to work diligently and faithfully for one year, to maintain respectful deportment to their employers, and perfect subordination to their duties." In return, the government asked that the employers "feed, clothe, and treat them properly, and give to them at the end of the year one-twentieth part of the year's crop, or a fixed monthly compensation, in cases where it may be more convenient."14 The wage guidelines provided that skilled workers—mechan­ ics, sugar-makers, drivers—were to receive three dollars per month, able-bodied male field hands two dollars, and ablebodied female field hands one dollar, in addition to food and clothing. (These wages were less than half those provided under Butler's system.) If the blacks worked on a sharecrop arrange­ ment, their collective one-twentieth of the crop was to be divided on a similar basis: skilled workers were to receive three shares, and field hands of either sex two shares. The document closed on a firm note: "all negroes not otherwise employed will be required to labor upon the public works, and no person capable of labor will be supported at the public expense."15 The regulations "gave great satisfaction to the planters," ob­ served Strother. "After some discussion they determined to ac­ cept the arrangement proposed and agreed to abide by it for one year," reported Thomas B. Gunn, Louisiana correspondent for the New York Tribune. Yet, Gunn continued, in the eyes of the planters at the meeting "the acceptance of the contract did not imply the surrender of any right of property in the slaves." Other planters would probably follow the lead of the St. Charles meet14 New York Tribune, Feb. 18, 1863; C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 48-49. 15 New York Tribune, Feb. 18, 1863.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

ing, he predicted, though "not, however, without much grumbling by those who are disposed to regard President Lincoln's excep­ tion of these parishes as authorizing their return to the old normal diabolism of Slavery."16 "In arranging the conditions of labor, the negroes were con­ sulted by men of their own color," recalled the general two years later. "I employed about 20 of the most intelligent and best edu­ cated free colored men to visit their people on the plantations. They were authorized to go anywhere, and to talk with anybody, and to carry arms." The new system provided many advantages to the freedmen, as Banks remembered it: education for their children, a choice of employers, and the right to cultivate land on their own account, in addition to the payment of wages or shares, the hallmark of their change of status. The planters, on the other hand, were presented with a fait accompli by the government; unlike the blacks, they were not consulted when the regulations were being developed. The meeting at the St. Charles Hotel "had nothing to do with perfecting and devising the system," according to the general's later version of events.17 Unfortunately, the evidence does not support the general's memory. Strother's diary and contemporary newspaper accounts detail the role of the planters in the development of the labor regulations, and although Banks did send a number of observers (some of whom may have been black) into the sugar country during the next few months (that is, after the fact), there are no archival traces of black participation in the decision-making process. Nor was Banks' recollection of the new system quite accurate with regard to details of operation. The regulations did not mention freedmen's schools; it was six months before the general ordered the establishment of public education for Negroes in occupied Louisiana, and yet another six months passed before teachers first appeared in many of the rural parishes. The regula­ tions were silent on the matter of freedmen cultivating small plots of land on their own account, though such a provision was added the following year. Despite Captain Hooper's vigorous efforts, moreover, Banks had refused to guarantee the laborers a free choice of employers. The labor system was made more equitable 16 Eby 17

(ed.), Strother Diary, 149; New York Tribune, Feb. 18, 1863. Banks to Garrison, Jan. 30, 1865, Liberator, Feb. 24, 1865.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

during its second year of operation, but at the outset it was heavily biased in the interests of the planters.18 The sugar aristocracy was not appeased by Banks' generosity, as George Denison reported to Secretary Chase on February 7: "a very strong feeling is arising among the planters against Gen­ eral Banks. The reason is that he is not sufficiently pro-slavery to suit them." Two weeks later the leaders of the planter move­ ment, conservative Unionists E. E. Malhiot and Thomas Cottman, assembled an even larger crowd at the St. Charles Hotel to prod the occupation forces into a tighter enforcement of police regula­ tions. The planters wanted the army to appoint new police juries—the most important unit of local government in Louisiana, roughly equivalent to the county court in other Southern states— from the local elite wherever a parish fell inside Union lines. Their major concern was that the police jury be permitted "to have patrols organized and paid, if necessary," so that all vagran­ cy laws could be enforced. The meeting adjourned for the eve­ ning after designating a committee to present their demands to George F. Shepley in his capacity as military governor of the state.19 Shepley's reply to the planters' committee was in line with Banks' conciliatory policy. He explained that all the occupied parishes had police juries, but that in making new appointments he would follow the suggestions made by the planters. It ap­ peared that the general would also allow local governments to reorganize the antebellum patrol system: "Governor Shepley said that whatever the Police Jury did . . . would be carried out," so long as its decision "was approved by the Provost Marshal." The implication of the military's conciliatory attitude was not lost on 18

Banks, Emancipated Labor, telescopes the initial labor regulations of 18Θ3 and the more judicious guidelines established the following year (Gen. Order No. 23, Feb. 3, 1864, OR, xxxiv, pt. ii, 227-231). Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 104105, follows the same procedure, giving the impression that the general instituted a more dramatic break with slavery than actually occurred in 1863. Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 65-115, on the other hand, leaves the impression that there was virtually no improvement in the labor system during the war. 19 Denison to Chase, Feb. 7, 1863, CC, 356; New Orleans Era, Feb. 20, 1863; New York Tribune, March 4, 1863.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

the planters: "the great point, therefore, is to get a suitable Provost Marshal."20 "Suitable" provost marshals were not difficult to locate in the army of occupation. A recent appointee in St. Charles Parish was just the kind of man the planters had in mind. Captain Edward Page had asked the local proprietors to "cooperate with and as­ sist him in maintaining order and tranquillity," noted the New Orleans Era, "in giving full protection to property, and in carry­ ing out the existing police regulations of the parish." The captain ordered that any black found off his plantation without a proper pass be arrested immediately and returned to his place of work, and Page made clear that he intended to keep the labor force close to home: "no passes will be granted at this office for negroes to visit the city."21 As a further indication of his desire to make peace with the planters, General Banks agreed to address the meeting at the St. Charles Hotel on its last evening. Though he said nothing specific about the implementation of the new regulations, Banks' appear­ ance before the group was widely interpreted as an implicit sanc­ tioning of the planters' demands. A reporter for the New York Tribune was particularly disturbed by this action, for he regarded the mild approach taken by General Banks as demoralizing to the troops. "This tendency of treason to grow rampant has not failed to attract the attention of the soldiers," he noted. "The testimony is undisputed that it is the product of the mild policy now pur­ sued." The troops at the front did not like to see "the fruits of their sacrifices here lost to the country, and treason springing up behind them." Louisiana Unionists were also angry, for it seemed that Banks was spending all his time "listening to the complaints of the secessionists," as George Denison phrased it. "General Banks is regarded by them as a gentleman," he added, and "this is not a good sign."22 The irony of the situation was that "true" Confederate sym­ pathizers also regarded the St. Charles Hotel meetings with suspicion. "General Banks and the planters met to-day," noted one aristocratic young woman in her diary, and the general 20

New York Tribune, March 4, 1863. New Orleans Era, Feb. 17, 1863. 22 Ibid., Feb. 20, 1863; New York Tribune, March 11, 1863; Denison to Chase, Jan. 16, Feb. 12, 26, 1863, CC, 350, 358-360. 21

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

"promised to do what he could, though fettered by his Govern­ ment, to send the slaves back to the plantations." Though she admitted that "he has received a great many compliments in re­ turn for his promise," Julia Le Grand thought that "many peo­ ple, myself included, disapprove of the whole affair." Like the Northern reporter, she worried about the demoralization of the troops (in this case the Confederates): "our dear boys are fight­ ing for our rights and many of their fathers are entering into terms with their armed invaders." One Confederate soldier com­ plained in a similar vein to a friend whose father was an active participant in the planters' meetings. It was rumored "that your father and Uncle John had taken the oath of allegiance and sold all the sugar to the Yanks," in return for which "the Yanks sent back all the negroes," he wrote. "But as you don't mention any­ thing of the kind of course it is not so."23 Tangible evidence of the persistence of Confederate loyalties in New Orleans was available at every hand. Ladies began to insult Union soldiers in the streets once again, and children were allowed to sing "Dixie" and "Bonnie Blue Flag" in their school­ rooms. In their sermons ministers no longer concealed their dis­ taste for the occupation forces, and bankers were reluctant to honor federal greenbacks or to cooperate with the government's effort to eliminate spurious currency. On February 20, 1863, a farcical episode revealed the extremes to which Confederate loyalties could be carried. A crowd of several thousand, mostly women, assembled on the levee to bid farewell to a departing shipload of Confederate prisoners, who were to be exchanged across the lines. When the supervising federal officer announced that only a portion of the rebels would be exchanged that day, the crowd became hostile. The women began to taunt the Union soldiers and wave their handkerchiefs in derision. Tactlessly, the officer in charge called for reinforcements to disperse the crowd, and a cavalry unit swooped down onto the levee, frightening the 23 Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. Croxall (eds.), The Journal of Julia Le Grand (Richmond, Va., 1911), 134; Reuben Rost to Andrew McCollam Jr., March 21, 1863, McCoIIam Papers, UNC. For evidence of the elder McCollam's participation in the conservative planters' movement, see William G. Minor, Andrew McColIam, Tobias Gibson et al. to Banks, Jan. 14, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA, and for further details, J. Carlyle Sitterson, "The McCollams: A Planter Family of the Old and New South," JSH, Vi (Aug. 1940), 347-367.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

women away. The ladies carried home tales of being insulted with bayonets and nearly trampled by the horses of the cavalry, as Julia Le Grand indignantly recorded: "the whole town is talk­ ing of the disgraceful behavior of the Federal authorities."24 "This is less a Union city now than when General Banks came here," complained George Denison to Secretary Chase a few days after the incident on the levee. He attributed the rise in public expressions of disloyalty to the caution and indecisiveness of the new commander. Denison was an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of Negro troops, and he had observed for some time that Banks was slow to increase the number of black regiments for fear of antagonizing conservative opinion. The general's solicitous attention to planter demands was not matched by consultations with the free state movement, moreover, and this breakdown in communications aroused the suspicion of Unionist leaders. "I am not familiar with Banks' political history," wrote Denison: "per­ haps he is a conservative! To a friend of mine General Banks the other day declared himself neither a pro-slavery nor anti-slavery man. What is he then?" In Denison's judgment the situation in Louisiana demanded a firm policy of punishing expressions of dis­ loyalty, providing a meaningful freedom to the black population, enlisting the former slaves in the Union army, and throwing the government's support wholeheartedly behind the free state move­ ment. Denison thought Banks incapable of administering such a policy: "The Department of the Gulf is too big a machine to be run by anyone except B. F. Butler."25 Interestingly enough, President Lincoln was of the same mind, and asked Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to devise a plan that would restore Butler's old command but not "wound the feel­ ings of General Banks." The best solution, it seemed, was to set up a new department for the Texas theater, to be headed by Banks, once the reopening of the Mississippi was accomplished. In the meantime, Butler would be the commanding general of 24Rowland

and Croxall (eds.), Journal of Julia Le Grand, 58-164, esp. 140; Emily Hazen Reed, Life of A. P. Dostie: or, The Conflict in New Orleans (New York, 1868), 45-58; Elizabeth Joan Doyle, "Civilian Life in Occupied New Orleans" (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1955), and Doyle, "Nurseries of Treason," JSH, xxvi (April 1960), 161-179. 25 Denison to Chase, Feb. 12, 26, 1863, CC, 358-362; Denison to Chase, Feb. 21, 1863, Chase Papers, LC.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

the Department of the Gulf; his nominal subordinate, Banks, would actually lead the army in the field. Lincoln drafted a letter to Banks explaining the change and assuring the general that he was not "indifferent to your feelings and your honor." The Presi­ dent did not think much of Butler's military competence, but he felt the general was best suited for the peculiar administrative and political demands of the New Orleans post. "We cannot longer dispense with General Butler's services," he concluded to Stanton.26 Butler was a favorite of the more radical congressional Repub­ licans and had the enthusiastic support of the influential Com­ mittee on the Conduct of the War. In addition to testifying before the committee, the unemployed general addressed sympathetic mass meetings in New York and Boston on his way home to Lowell. Within the cabinet Butler received a.vote of confidence from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, a conservative New Englander who would subsequently become a vigorous opponent of the general. Welles discussed the matter with Lincoln and observed that although Banks was a capable administrator, "he has not the energy, power, [or] ability of Butler." In his tenure at New Orleans Butler had shown "ability as a police magistrate," added the secretary, noting that the Crescent City was "a peculiar community to govern." It was Welles' judgment that "the officer in charge in that quarter must necessarily hold a taut rein."27 For some inexplicable reason, however, Lincoln's explanatory letter to Banks was never sent, and the transfer of command did not occur. Months dragged by with Butler awaiting a new assign­ ment; he dined at the White House and discussed the subject with Lincoln on several occasions. The general's petulance about his removal and the President's insistence that Banks' feelings be protected seem to have played a large role in the breakdown of their consultations. In any event, Lincoln left Banks in command of the Department of the Gulf, and thus of the reconstruction process in the pivotal state of Louisiana.28 26

Lincoln to Stanton, Jan. 23, 1863, CWL, vi, 76-77, and a draft of a letter from Lincoln to Banks of the same date, which was not sent (ibid., 73-74). 27 Beale (ed.), Welks Diary, i, 209-210; Hans L. Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him BEAST! (New York, 1957), 135-138. 28 Richard S. West Jr., Lincoln's Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818-1893 (Boston, 1965), 206-214.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

Spring comes early on the lower Mississippi, and at the begin­ ning of March Banks took his army into the field. While he had been negotiating patiently with the sugar aristocracy, his superi­ ors in Washington had grown restive at the delay in military activity. The first objective of the expedition, after all, was still the reopening of the Mississippi. Banks had close to forty thou­ sand men in the Department of the Gulf, but with the various duties of an occupation army to be managed in his absence and the need to protect New Orleans from sorties, he was able to assemble only fifteen thousand troops for combat operations. The army moved north to cooperate with General Ulysses S. Grant in enveloping the last two Confederate strongholds on the river, Port Hudson and Vicksburg. It would be four months before the federal siege finally wore down the two garrisons.29 As Banks prepared to take to the field for the spring campaigns, the leaders of the Union Association began a new offensive on the political front. While courting the favor of the sugar aristocracy, the general had ignored the city's Unionist political organization; the lines of communication developed by Butler lay unused. De­ termined to take the initiative by demanding the reorganization of civil government, the Union Association reinstituted its weekly meetings at Lyceum Hall. With the two congressmen-elect in Washington, the unchallenged leader of the movement was the radical lawyer Thomas J. Durant. "Tall, thin, sallow, [and] cadaverous," as one reporter de­ scribed him, Durant had been raised in Philadelphia and edu­ cated at the University of Pennsylvania. Coming to the city as a young man in the 1830s, he was now in his mid-forties, and his brilliant legal mind made him a respected (and well-paid) mem­ ber of the New Orleans bar. He was also a powerful orator, one "whom Northern men pronounce not unworthy of mention in the same connection with Wendell Phillips."30 The resemblance to Phillips went beyond Durant's flair for words and his command over crowds: it could also be seen in the clarity with which he articulated the radical view. The shrewd lawyer had an unusual 29John

D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963),

212. 30 Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 18651866 (New York, 1866), 232. For a similar view of Durant as an orator, see the New Orleans Negro newspaper, L'Union, June 4, 1863.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

knack for discovering effective constitutional arguments to justify the radical approach to reconstruction. At the association's first meeting on February 28 he outlined for the crowd at Lyceum Hall his view of the appropriate procedure for reestablishing civil government: the election of delegates to a constitutional convention.31 "It is now ten months since the Stars and Stripes were displayed in front of our city by the Federal troops," declared Durant, and during this time "no effort has been made to establish a state government." He proposed "that this Association, as the only rep­ resentative of the Union men of New Orleans, take the initiatory steps towards the formation of such a government." The Union Association should hold an election for delegates to a convention to rewrite the antebellum constitution, argued Durant. Once the influence of slavery was removed from the basic law of the state, the convention could establish regular procedures for electing the governor, legislature, and congressional delegation. He pre­ dicted that Congress would not hesitate to recognize such an achievement and that "Louisiana would thus be wheeled into line, and would become again in reality a state of the Union."32 Durant recognized quite clearly that he was advocating minor­ ity rule. The free state movement could not command a majority of the antebellum electorate, but he believed that the electorate itself had to be restructured. Those who supported the Confederacy had given up their right of suffrage, Durant argued; participation in the reconstruction process should be limited to unequivocal Unionists. Every parish in the state had a right to be represented at the constitutional convention, even if it could boast no more than ten loyal citizens: "if ten righteous men could have saved Sodom and Gomorrah, surely ten loyal men could save a parish." (This biblical analogy seems at first glance to resemble the tenpercent plan Lincoln would propose nine months later, but the President did not include disenfranchisement of Confederates as part of his proposal.) Durant pursued his analogy with Old Testa­ ment ferocity: the ten loyal men "would actually be the only citizens of the parish." In his view "the rest, being traitors, have 31

New Orleans Era, March 1, 1863. Ibid. Note the similarity between Durant's argument for a constitutional convention and that of Congressmen Thomas D. Eliot and John Bingham three weeks earlier (above, Chap. n ) . 32

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

forfeited all their rights of citizenship, of property, and even of life."33 "Mr. D. desired it to be distinctly understood that these were his own ideas," reported the Era, "made public for the first time, and that they were not prompted by any military or any other authority." Durant's claim that his proposal was independent of military influence is not hard to accept, considering the lack of communication between General Banks and the free state move­ ment at this point. There is no evidence that Banks knew any more than he read in the papers.34 Nor is there evidence of Treasury influence on Durant's proposal.35 No one in the Union Association seems to have questioned the wisdom of the convention idea itself, but there was considerable argument over the timing of the election. The disagreement mir­ rored neither factional differences nor deeper ideological con­ flicts. Two of the main disputants, for example, Judge Ezra Hiestand and Durant's law partner, Charles W. Hornor, were to remain firm allies in the radical wing of Louisiana Unionism for many years. Hiestand argued that reorganization ought to wait until the war was won: battles, he said, were more important than constitutions. Hornor, on the other hand, agreed with the com­ mittee: a staunch Unionist state government founded on a new antislavery basis could help consolidate federal control over the occupied areas, and thus actually help win the war.36 At this point President Lincoln sent his personal endorsement of the convention idea through Michael Hahn. Before a crowded meeting of the First District Union Association on April 11, Durant read a letter from the congressman, who was still in Washington. Lincoln had indicated, according to Hahn, that he 33 New Orleans Era, March 1, 1863. In this and the preceding paragraph I have taken the liberty of changing the tense of Durant's verbs when re­ quired by the sense of the passage. 34 The correspondence in the Banks Papers, LC, and in NA, RG 393, DGBCA, is preoccupied with administrative matters, freedmen's affairs, and military plans throughout the first half of 1863, with virtually no com­ munication between the general and the leaders of the Union Association. 35 In addition to Treasury affairs, Denison's letters to Chase are concerned with the new labor system and Banks' military plans: Chase Papers, LC (volumes for Jan. through June), and CC, 360-380. 36 New Orleans Era, March 8, 15, 1863; New Orleans Picayune, March 8, 15, 1863; New York Tribune, March 24, 1863.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

would instruct Banks and Shepley to cooperate fully with the Union Association. By a vote of 95 to 73 the meeting voted to in­ vite all the other district associations to send representatives to a Unionist convention as soon as practicable, in order to form a more permanent organization and mobilize support for an official constitutional convention.37 The decision "may fairly be considered an Emancipation triumph," thought the New York Tribunes correspondent, "since the purpose of the advocates of the measure has been clearly and boldly stated to be the repeal of the slave code and the establishment of immediate abolition." It was the reporter's judg­ ment that the New Orleans Unionists, whose meetings he had regularly attended, were more radical than their Republican counterparts in New York. In addition to voicing opposition to slavery, several speakers at the meeting spoke of the need for a long-term federal military commitment in the South. A desire for early resumption of civil government did not imply a desire for the removal of Northern troops: "it by no means follows that we seek to be released from Federal protection," declared Thomas J. Earhart. On the contrary, given the implacability of Confeder­ ate sentiment in the state, "a military force should be stationed here for the next twenty-five years."38 During the last week of April General Banks returned to New Orleans for two days. Whatever his limitations as a military strategist, Banks was a veteran of many political wars, and Lincoln's support for the free state movement had not escaped his attention. In quick succession he issued three general orders that indicated a major shift in his policy in the direction long advocated by the unconditional Unionists. Two concerned a stiff­ ening of federal sanctions against Confederate sympathizers. All registered enemies must leave the department within fifteen days; those who elected to remain must take the oath of allegiance. Anyone furnishing supplies to the Confederate army was liable to military trial and execution. The most controversial order con­ cerned the recruitment of Negro troops, which Denison and his friends had long urged the general to begin. Banks authorized the 37 New Orleans Era, April 12, 1863; New York Tribune, April 22, 1863. Reed, Life of Dostie, 83, paraphrases Hahn's letter to Durant at some length, but the document itself has not survived. 38 New York Tribune, April 22, 1863.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

recruitment of eighteen more regiments of Louisiana Negroes; the units already organized by Butler were to be incorporated into an expanded Corps d'Afrique. Leaving the city as abruptly as he had come, the general raced back to lead his troops against Confederate forces on the Red River, and then marched on to Port Hudson for the coup de grace. 39 George Denison forwarded copies of the new orders to Secre­ tary Chase, gloating that "they give great and general satisfac­ tion to all loyal persons. General Banks is taking hold in earnest," he noted, "and in civil as well as military matters, displays sur­ prising and unexpected vigor." Benjamin Flanders, who had re­ turned to New Orleans a few days earlier, agreed with Denison's assessment of the change in policy. "The Union sentiment here has been much depressed but it is now higher than ever," the congressman reported to Chase. "The recent brilliant success of General Banks [in the Teche campaign] has greatly elated Union men, and the rigorous policy foreshadowed in his late orders gives them great satisfaction." Michael Hahn had also arrived in the city, and he confided the same judgment to President Lincoln. "When I returned home I found considerable dissatis­ faction prevailing among the Union men with regard to what they termed the 'leniency' of the Federal officers here toward the secessionists." Now that Banks had shifted to a more aggressive policy, "the Union cause is going gloriously here."40 Delegates from the various Unionist clubs assembled in con­ vention at Lyceum Hall on the evening of May 8 to create a permanent free state organization; its first goal would be "to consider and propose a plan for calling a constitutional conven­ tion."41 The first evening's work was necessarily devoted to or­ ganizational matters. In addition to the citywide Union Associa­ tion, there were separate clubs representing each of the four municipal districts of New Orleans. The delegates elected Durant 39 Denison to Chase, Feb. 1, 26, March 7, 25, April 30, 1863, CC, 352353, 360-362, 365-366, 370-372, 383; Gen. Orders Nos. 35, 37, 40, OR, xv, 710, 716-717. 40 Denison to Chase, April 30, 1863, CC, 382-383; Flanders to Chase, April 30, 1863, Chase Papers, HSP; Hahn to Lincoln, May 9, 1863, ALM, 23388. 41 Beginning with the meeting of May 8, 1863, it is possible to trace in detail the week-by-week activities of the free state movement through the Minute Book of the Union Association of New Orleans, 1863, NYHS.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

chairman of the new organization and selected a committee to prepare a formal communication to General Shepley. In coming weeks the convention seated additional representatives from such groups as the Workingmen's Union League, the German-Ameri­ can Association, the First District Unconditional Union Club, and the Jefferson City Association.42 On May 21 the convention passed a set of resolutions calling on Governor Shepley to begin the regis­ tration of voters for the election of a constitutional convention.43 The first step toward the convention was to appoint commis­ sioners of registration for each parish and each municipal district in New Orleans; before registering, all prospective voters would be required to take an oath of future loyalty to the Union. After a sufficient number had registered, the next step would be to order an election for convention delegates; this could be done only by military authority. Durant and his colleagues specifically asked Shepley to reapportion the state for the election, using the white population of a parish (rather than its total population, as in the antebellum constitution) as the basis for determining the number of seats it would have in the convention. The prewar system had overrepresented the great slaveholding parishes by counting bondsmen in the apportionment of seats.44 By increasing the representation of New Orleans, the Union Association's plan would enable the occupied areas to form a quorum in the con­ vention; under the old scheme a quorum would have to wait until the army had gained control of a much larger portion of the state. Reapportionment would also strengthen the hand of the antislavery forces in the convention, whose purpose, as Shepley ex­ plained to Secretary of War Stanton, was to revise the constitu­ tion to conform to "the spirit of the age and policy of the Govern­ ment in relation to the institution of slavery."45 General Shepley agreed to do whatever he could to assist the movement, though he would have to confer with his superiors in Washington before actually calling an election. Shepley empha42 Political clubs were organized by municipal district, by ward, and by social group, such as "workingmen" and German-Americans. For the muni­ cipal district and ward structure of the city, see above, Chap. i. 43 Minute Book, 1-20, NYHS. 44 Minute Book, 20-22, NYHS. The proposed reapportionment was spelled out in table form; the subsequent apportionment of seats in the constitutional convention of 1864 differed only slightly from this proposal. 45 Shepley to Stanton, May 28, 1863, OR, 3d ser., in, 231.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

sized that he wished to stay in the background of the convention movement: "what the basis of representation to that convention should be is a question more properly to be decided by the people themselves than by me or any other military authority." When necessary, they could count on his cooperation, Shepley assured them lamely, but "the more directly this movement emanates from the people themselves . . . the more surely will the action of this convention command the acquiescence and secure the rati­ fication of the people of Louisiana."46 The general forwarded copies of his correspondence with the Union Association to Secretary Stanton, asking that he pass them on to Lincoln if it seemed advisable. The organization's proposal was such an important step, the general commented, that he wanted approval from Washington before calling an election. Louisiana "will probably be the first of the seceded states to re­ establish a state government," Shepley predicted, and thus "the question as to the mode of accomplishment becomes one of great importance."47 Two weeks later, on June 12, before hearing from Stanton, the general took the first step requested by the Union Association, naming Durant attorney general of the state and commissioner of registration. The radical lawyer was given authority to "make, subject to the approval of the military governor, such rules and regulations as may be necessary . . . for a full and fair registra­ tion." The stipulation that Durant's actions had to be approved by the cautious Governor Shepley proved to be a major obstacle to speedy reconstruction, but at least the army had placed the antislavery forces in control of the registration of voters.48 In the meantime, conservative Unionists had not been standing idly by: on the day after Banks' whirlwind visit to New Orleans at the end of April, Dr. Thomas Cottman and E. E. Malhiot had called a public meeting at the St. Charles Hotel to protest the general's shift in policy. At the meeting the conservative planters determined upon a method of counterattack. Cottman agreed to lead a delegation to Washington to confer directly with President Lincoln and to request an election for "all state and federal offi­ cers" in November, as authorized by the 1852 constitution. The 46 Shepley

to Durant and James Graham, May 25, 1863, ibid., 234-235. Shepley to Stanton, May 28, 1863, ibid,., 231. 48 Shepley, Gen. Order No. 24, New Orleans Picayune, June 14, 1863. 47

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

delegation was also to ask Lincoln to take "such action as, while restoring the state to the Union, will, as far as possible, secure the property of the loyal owners therein."49 The planters' sudden interest in the reorganization of state government was the result of "the recent change from a con­ ciliatory to a decisive policy," as George Denison saw it. Cottman was "a man of much influence in Louisiana," he told Secretary Chase, and despite the doctor's proslavery views, he was "a good and kind man." Cottman was also "devoted to Mr. Lincoln" and hoped to persuade the President to return to a more conservative policy. The doctor believed, like most planters, "that the state will be utterly ruined without slave labor," added Denison, and favored "the withdrawal of the President's proclamation in regard to the whole of Louisiana."50 The delegation's interview with the President was in vain. Through Michael Hahn Lincoln had openly endorsed the con­ vention movement; as a result, the military government had begun to cooperate with the Union Association. Furthermore, a recent letter from Hahn had clarified for the President the politi­ cal background of the dispute over constitutional issues. "The Union people of this state," said the former congressman, "are all in favor of a re-organization of a loyal state government. The only question on which they are divided is as to whether a new constitution should be made, or the old constitution adhered to." This dispute over a legal question merely reflected the political gap between right and left, Hahn continued. "Those in favor of a convention and a new constitution are the more radical or freesoil Union men," he asserted, whereas "others, whose interests are in the institution of slavery . . . are strongly opposed to a new constitution."51 Lincoln refused to strengthen the hand of the conservatives: committing the government to the existing state constitution could not "facilitate our military operations in Loui­ siana," emphasized the President, and "I really apprehend it might be so used as to embarrass them." Lincoln told the planters' delegation that he would continue to support the efforts of that 49 Louisiana planters to Lincoln, May 1, 1863, E. E. Malhiot, Bradish Johnson, and Thomas Cottman to Lincoln, May 1, 1863, ALM, 23254, 23255. 50 Denison to Chase, April 30, May 9, 24, 1863, CC, 382-383, 385-388. 51 Hahn to Lincoln, June 6, 1863, ALM, 23908.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

"respectable portion of the Louisiana people" who were working toward a constitutional convention.52 While the conservative delegation was attempting to bend the President's ear, General Banks' army had encircled the Con­ federate garrison at Port Hudson. After a few attempts to storm the rebel barricades had failed, Banks settled into a month-long siege. The Confederates made a gallant effort to hold their post, despite being cut off from supplies, but when word came that General Grant had captured Vicksburg, they had no alternative but to give up the fort. On July 7, 1863, General Franklin Gardner surrendered his sword to Banks. The Mississippi was at last open to the sea.53 In military terms, the first six months of the Banks regime had been successful: the capture of Port Hudson opened most of southern Louisiana to the occupation forces and allowed General Grant to concentrate his attack on the Confederate armies to the east. The strategy of political conciliation, however—the "moral motive" of the expedition, as Banks saw it in December—had proved a dismal failure. By ignoring the unconditional Unionists of the city's free state movement the general had slowed down the reorganization of civil government and demoralized the gov­ ernment's strongest supporters; by trying to woo the sugar plant­ ers of the rural parishes he merely encouraged their desire to retain the institution of slavery. The planters were willing to collaborate with the occupation forces, but only if the army would agree to get the "contrabands" back to work. They would not renounce their claim to property rights over the black population, no matter how clear it was to General Banks that slavery was dead. When the general shifted to the more vigorous policy of sending registered enemies across Confederate lines and expanding the recruitment of black troops, the leaders of the planters countered by appealing directly to President Lincoln. The White House, however, was committed to the convention movement and refused to have anything to do with the proslavery group. Despite their failure to win presidential support, the conservatives were not completely at odds with the 52 Lincoln to Malhiot, Johnson, and Cottman, June 19, 1863, CW, vi, 287-288. 53 Winters, Civil War in Louisiana, 242-283.

THE FAILURE OF CONCILIATION

military, which had given them control of the important police juries in the sugar parishes: their confidence was sufficiently healthy to retain a political organization independent of the Union Association throughout the war. Banks' conciliatory tactics had won no friends among the planter class for the cause of moderate social change. As an examination of the contract labor system he set up in Louisiana testifies, the general had made all the compromises.

CHAPTER IV

Between Slavery and Freedom: The Labor System of General Banks THE most difficult challenge of

reconstruction was the question of what life would be Kke for black people in the rural areas where slavery had been the back­ bone of the plantation economy. The war made it impossible for the planter elite to enforce property rights in slaves (outside the areas of Confederate control, at least). From the perspective of Louisiana sugar planters, revolutionary change had already ar­ rived. Under General Banks' labor regulations, the army required owners to pay wages to their former slaves or lease the land to someone who would agree to pay the labor force. It also pro­ hibited the planters from using corporal punishment or interfer­ ing with the family life of the freedmen. Laborers, on the other hand, had to sign contracts agreeing to work for a year's time on a single plantation; those who left their jobs would be arrested and charged with vagrancy. Banks' labor system granted the black population certain of the rights of free persons, but not others; it created, in short, a halfway house between slavery and freedom.1 Coordination of the new labor system was not an easy task, and Banks realized the need for special sources of information beyond the usual channels of the army bureaucracy. The actual enforce1

The best brief accounts of General Banks' labor system are Bell I. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, Conn., 1938), 210-222, and James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 289-293. Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 65-115, is a more detailed analysis based almost exclusively on the archival records of the army of occupation (which add a new dimension to the evidence). C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), is the most comprehensive treatment.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

ment of the regulations at the local level was in the hands of parish provost marshals, who reported to Provost Marshal General James Bowen. Captain Samuel W. Cozzens, detailed from the quarter­ master corps to oversee the leasing of abandoned and confiscated plantations, reported to Banks' quartermaster, Colonel S. B. Holabird. Not satisfied with indirect communication on this matter, the general ordered Lieutenant George H. Hanks, the superin­ tendent of Negro labor, who was to find jobs for unemployed freedmen and supervise the plantations operated by the govern­ ment, to report directly to him. He also sent two young antislavery chaplains, George H. Hepworth and Edwin M. Wheelock, to travel throughout the occupied parishes and inspect the operation of the system at the local level. Hepworth and Wheelock sub­ mitted regular reports in the spring and summer of 1863, giving the general detailed, if somewhat anecdotal, information about the plantations they visited and the conditions they observed.2 "I have visited every provost marshal between Thibodaux and Baton Rouge," wrote Hepworth on March 5. He had also in­ spected "between fifty and sixty plantations," he added, and "talked with the owners, the overseers, and the negroes." Hepworth, who considered himself an abolitionist, had been suspi­ cious of certain aspects of the regulations at first, especially the provisions forcing blacks to return to plantation labor. His travels convinced him that plantation labor was preferable to life in the crowded, disease-ridden contraband camps into which unem­ ployed blacks were thrust by the army. "At Thibodaux nearly a thousand negroes have been sent home," he reported. "They were living in squalor and misery, and unless some measures had been taken, they would have caused perhaps an epidemic. Even at this season of the year the children were dying very rapidly." There were 1,200 persons in the contraband camp at Baton Rouge, and 172 had died between December and the middle of March. "This terrible percentage of mortality proves conclusively that some measures must be taken at once to change their condition."3 2 George H. Hepworth, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword: or, the Gulf Depart­ ment in '63 (Boston, 1864), 25-31; Hepworth to Banks, March 5, 1863, Hepworth and Wheelock to Banks, April 9, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 25, 1863 (hereafter cited as NASS); Cozzens to Holabird, May 15, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA. 3 Hepworth to Banks, March 5, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; "Report of Rev. George H. Hepworth, March 24, 1863," NASS, April 25, 1863.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

To Hepworth's mind, the basic rationale of the labor system was to alleviate the physical suffering of the contraband camps by getting the freedmen back to work on a wage basis. In As­ sumption and Ascension parishes most of the planters "have entered into the arrangement," he informed the general, and "there is little if any trouble in that section." Hepworth had made a special effort to interview the freedmen on the plantations, and he recorded his impressions for the National Anti-Slavery Stand­ ard. "I have talked with several thousands, and I find them far more intelligent and better aware of the position of affairs than I had been led to expect." They understood, he thought, that Banks' labor system "really affords to the black man an experience which will do much to fit him for the freedom to which he is destined if the war continues."4 Accompanied by Wheelock, Hepworth next undertook a tour of the plantations south of New Orleans, where the absence of a military threat allowed more stable conditions. The two chaplains reported great variation from place to place, depending upon the disposition of the planter. On estates where the labor regulations "have been carried out in good faith," they observed, the Negro displayed "gratitude toward the government for the protection which it affords, and a cheerful, good-humored willingness at his task." Hepworth and Wheelock calculated that "these plantations constitute the majority we have visited." The picture was not always so cheerful. "On other estates we found the owners wed­ ded to the 'ancien regime,' unwilling to accept any terms short of absolute slavery, with the sacred right of unlimited power to starve, imprison, and flog." In such situations the blacks were naturally discontented and rebellious, "seizing any chance to run away."5 To give the general a more intimate sense of conditions, Hepworth and Wheelock described their visits to particular estates of each type. Magnolia Plantation was the home of EflBngham Law­ rence, a secessionist in 1860-1861, when he was both a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charleston and a mem­ ber of the Louisiana convention that took the state out of the Union. Lawrence was beginning to change his views; after the 4 "Hepworth Report," NASS, April 25, 1863; Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword, 25-27; Hepworth to Banks, March 5, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 5 Hepworth and Wheelock to Banks, April 9, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

war he became a member of the Republican Party. The two young abolitionists took an instant liking to Lawrence because of the manner in which he had acquiesced to the new labor system. As an incentive to keep his workers from leaving, according to his plantation journal, Lawrence divided $2,500 among his 150 laborers at the end of 1862. Hepworth and Wheelock reported that his former slaves were now "all at home, working cheerfully at their tasks, under the incentive of kindness, promises honestly kept, and of the prospective reward of one-fifteenth of the crop," a higher share than the army required.6 At the other extreme was Deer Range, the plantation of "Colonel" Maunsel White. White, who was almost eighty, had been one of the legendary merchant kings of New Orleans during the first half of the nineteenth century. As a penniless immigrant from Ireland he had come to the city when it was still a Spanish colony. He had founded a great commercial firm bearing his name, had been the cotton factor of Presidents Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, and had acquired a great sugar plantation in Plaquemines Parish, to which he retired in the 1850s. As a slave­ holder he believed in using both the carrot and the stick, giving his workers wine, whiskey, extra clothes, or money as rewards for extra labor, but punishing what he regarded as recalcitrance with whips, leg irons, stocks, or rations of dry bread and water.7 The old autocrat, whose son-in-law, Cuthbert Bullitt, was a Treasury official, had signed a labor contract with his former slaves as required by Banks' regulations, but Hepworth and Wheelock testified that he "daily violates its conditions. At the time of our visit his laborers were fed but twice daily, while the plantation whip was in full swing over male and female alike." The colonel's old-regime methods of discipline were carried out "under the eye and sanction of one Corporal Flood—a soldier 6 Ibid.; Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword, 68-73; J. Carlyle Sitterson, "Magnolia Plantation, 1852-1862: A Decade of a Louisiana Sugar Estate," MVHR, xxv (Sept. 1938), 197, 198, 206, 208; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 74. Another planter who seems to have followed Banks' guidelines scrupu­ lously (for fear that his laborers would desert him otherwise) was William J. Minor: see Charles P. Roland, Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the American Civil War (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1957), 105. 7 Clement Eaton, The Mind of the Old South, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1967), 69-89, provides the information for this discussion of Maunsel White.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

placed by the provost marshal on the plantation." The chaplains ordered the flogging stopped, "sought to enlighten the planter as to the true nature of the contract he had violated, and advised the marshal to remove his incompetent subordinate."8 A few miles downriver a similar regime held sway on the plantation of Bradish Johnson, an absentee owner who entrusted his estate to a veteran overseer named Decker. The slaves on this plantation had already demonstrated their independence by strik­ ing for wages in August of the preceding year. They crowded around Hepworth and Wheelock when the two inspectors ar­ rived, begging them to remove the overseer or to allow the men to enlist in the army and take their families with them. "They complained that their rations are unfairly curtailed by Decker, and that he is lecherous toward their women." After they left the estate, the two chaplains heard later, "Decker harangued the negroes, boasted of his unlimited power over them, used seditious and insulting language toward the government."9 Hepworth and Wheelock prided themselves on their inde­ pendence, and were at great pains to avoid being unduly in­ fluenced by the sugar aristocracy. "We have not always found it pleasant to stay with the planters," Hepworth informed Banks, "and have thought it best to remain at inns on the road" (despite the execrable quality of Southern hostelry). Local provost mar­ shals and officers garrisoned in the small towns of the sugar country were rarely so scrupulous about refusing planter hos­ pitality. Once it became clear that the Yankees were there to stay, even staunch Confederates like E.G.W. Butler and A. F. Pugh found it expedient to entertain the intruders and win their good will. Provost marshals in particular tended to see the Negro ques­ tion from the planter's point of view. In addition to keeping the laborers on the plantation, they often assisted the proprietor in maintaining discipline among his work force. One unusually vicious provost marshal, Captain Silas W. Sawyer of St. Bernard 8

Bullitt to Banks, April 7, 1863, Hepworth and Wheelock to Banks, April 9, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. "Friendship with a provost marshal might pay off handsomely in assisting a proprietor to keep discipline among his labor­ ers" (Roland, Louisiana Sugar Plantations, 88). 9 Sitterson, "Magnolia Plantation," 200, 207; Hepworth and Wheelock to Banks, April 9, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; Bradish Johnson et al. to Banks, Feb. 11, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Parish, put a Negro in the stocks for eighteen hours and then gave him twenty-five lashes for having run away to join the Corps d'Afrique. He punished another black plantation hand for stealing by tying him naked to a tree and exposing him to the swarms of evening mosquitoes. Sawyer was arrested and dismissed from the service for brutality, but other provost marshals were almost as vigorous in doling out discipline to plantation labor.10 OflBcers directly involved in the production of staple crops on government-operated plantations often came to appreciate the point of view of the sugar aristocracy, and thus to view their labors with a more calculating eye than did the antislavery chaplains. Such a man was Captain Samuel W. Cozzens. Of the fifty-seven abandoned plantations under his charge in the middle of May 1863, Cozzens operated fourteen directly with the aid of overseers. On each of these estates he furnished the Negroes clothing, medical attention, and food, in addition to the promise of a future portion of the crop. The weekly food ration consisted of corn meal and five pounds of either salt pork or bacon for ablebodied hands, half that for women, children, and others unable to work. Cozzens also supplied a tobacco ration of three-fourths of a pound per week and coffee as an extra incentive to good workers. He reported to his superior that "the overseers have assured me that the negroes labor better and more faithfully under the present, than under the old regime." On occasion, however, hands refused to work, and in the interest of production quotas, Cozzens felt "obliged to resort to the stocks." This method always had "a most salutary influence over the whole work force," he observed with satisfaction.11 Government-operated sugar plantations were almost invariably large units, for sugar could not be grown profitably on small farms. There was the added consideration that laborers had to be protected from Confederate guerrillas; defense was easier if the blacks lived together in numbers. The smallest units working under Cozzens' supervision were two plantations in Plaquemines Parish, with approximately 350 acres under cultivation and a 10 Hepworth to Banks, July 2, 1863, E.G.W. Butler to Banks, Feb. 27, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), 218; Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 93. 11 Cozzens to Holabird, May 15, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

labor force of less than 50 hands on each. Two others employed just under 75 able-bodied hands. The remaining ten plantations under his charge had over 100 workers, the largest being the former property of the wealthy sugar planter Duncan F. Kenner (295 hands) and the estate of Confederate General Richard Taylor (351). The Taylor plantation boasted a good sawmill and a fine cypress brake, reported Cozzens, and he was using a good many workers in the lumbering enterprise as well as in cultivating the 900 acres of sugar cane and 400 acres of corn.12 Lieutenant George H. Hanks directed the work of thirty-three plantations for the government as of July 1, employing more than 12,000 workers. Even more than was the case with Cozzens, Hanks dealt in large agricultural units: not one of his plantations had less than 125 Negroes. One plantation in Ascension Parish had 1,000 freedmen, two near Baton Rouge had a combined total of 3,000, and five estates under his direction had more than 400 each. The median size for Hanks' units was 242 hands. The num­ bers are deceptive, however, because, as superintendent of Negro labor, Hanks was less concerned with raising sugar efficiently than with getting the freedmen out of the contraband camps and onto the plantations. In some cases he used estates as little more than labor depots, finding temporary work for many whom he hoped to place on leased plantations before the season was out.13 Hanks was much more sympathetic to the freedmen than Cozzens or the provost marshals. He forbade physical punish­ ment on plantations under his charge and tried to abolish the lash on private estates as well, undertaking periodic inspection tours for this purpose. He issued passes to blacks on plantations and in the city quite freely, and he protested to Banks when other government officers interfered with his methods. Hanks was willing to let any man leave the plantations and go his own way if he could demonstrate a special skill that would enable him to make a living. The superintendent ordered the arming of the Ibid. Cozzens had charge of 14 plantations, representing a total of 7,643 acres under cultivation: 4,576 in sugar cane, 2,712 in corn, and 355 in cotton. This land was worked by 1,719 hands. Each estate had its own overseer, who received between $800 and $1,000 a year (with one princely salary of $2,000). 13 Hanks to Capt. M. Hawes, July 1, 1863, enclosed in Hanks to Banks, July 12, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA. 12

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

freedmen whenever there was any military threat in the neigh­ borhood of their plantation, and he was in favor of giving them a chance to fight in the Corps d'Afrique if they wished to enlist. The more conservative Cozzens disagreed on both counts. Yet Hanks protested bitterly when recruiting officers seized Negro youths against their will, both on the plantations and in the city. If he could not protect them from his own army, Hanks feared, his credibility with the blacks would be undermined completely.14 The impressment gang had come to be a serious problem for Louisiana Negroes by the spring of 1863. At the same time Banks stepped up enlistments in the Corps d'Afrique, General Daniel Ullman arrived in the Department of the Gulf with special orders from Lincoln to recruit a new brigade of black troops. Most of the eligible volunteers in the New Orleans Negro community were already in service, and in the rural areas Hanks was trying to place on plantations all the freedmen who had not already en­ listed. Ullman's recruiting sergeants found it difficult to locate volunteers and so resorted to unusually forceful methods of per­ suasion.15 At Brashear City, for example, where Banks had ordered Chaplain Samuel M. Kingston to establish a freedmen s camp on a nearby plantation, Ullman's agents dragged men unwillingly from their families, even though many of them were employed as laborers on federal fortifications. When Kingston and the officer supervising the construction of the fortifications complained to Ullman, the general dressed them down rudely and ordered them out of his office. Banks learned of the controversy and instructed Ullman not to interfere with Negro hands on government planta­ tions.16 Two months later Lieutenant Hanks intercepted an order 14 Hanks to Banks, April 8, July 12, Aug. 5, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA; Hanks to Banks, June 30, July 11, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; Hepworth, "The Free Labor Movement in Louisiana; A Vindication of General Banks," NASS, May 2, 1863. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 81, 94, 101102, presents a less sympathetic picture of Hanks, based on his subsequent dismissal from the service when charged with accepting bribes from planters in need of workers. 15 Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (New York, 1956), 100-103, 126-129; John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 209, 238, 312. 16 Ullman to Banks, May 13, 15, 1863, Kingston to Banks, May 13, 1863, Col. Henry Walker to Banks, May 14, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

issued by one of Ullman's recruiting sergeants in New Orleans, authorizing a squad to "patrol the city and bring in all ablebodied men of color who have no apparent business." Hanks complained to the commanding officer that the recruiting ser­ geants, who were themselves Negro, had seized men on business errands and had even entered their homes to capture unwilling volunteers. Passes from Hanks himself were disregarded in the interest of filling up the ranks of Ullman's brigade.17 The unpopularity of the recruiting agents should not be taken as an indication that Louisiana blacks were unwilling to fight. Both free Negroes from the city and freedmen from the planta­ tions enlisted enthusiastically when the first regiments were formed, but the southern half of the state had supplied an un­ usually large proportion of its population to the army by this time: Louisiana supplied more Negro soldiers for the Union cause than any other state in the country (twenty-four thousand by the end of the war). Nor was morale improved in the early spring when Banks began to reverse Butler's policy of appointing Negro officers for the Corps d'Afrique. The black regiments were anxious for an opportunity to prove themselves in battle, however, and put aside their resentment for the moment. Aside from a few preliminary skirmishes, their first chance came on May 27, 1863, in Banks' as­ sault on the besieged Confederate garrison at Port Hudson. Two regiments of native guards were ordered against an impregnable position, with artillery and entrenched rifle fire commanding the entire approach, which was littered with fallen trees to slow the progress of the charge. The black troops failed to take their target, just like all other units in the unsuccessful assault, but they distinguished themselves with a courageous willingness to with­ stand enemy fire and to attack until their ranks were literally decimated.18 The conduct of these troops under fire, the first Negro partici­ pation in a major assault of the war, greatly impressed observers. 17 Lt.

Daniel Mann, recruiting order, July 1, 1863, enclosed in Hanks to Banks, July 11, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. For further discussion of the con­ flict over impressment by Ullman, see Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 106113. 18 Cornish, Sable Arm, 142-143; Winters, Civil War in Louisiana, 250254.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

General Ullman reported that the black troops "made six or seven charges over this ground against . . . a terrible fire and were dreadfully slaughtered." He questioned the wisdom of the decision to attack the Confederate position but was sure that "the conduct of these regiments on this occasion wrought a marvelous change in the opinion of many former sneerers." Banks expressed similar enthusiasm in his report to General Henry W. Halleck in Washington. "Their conduct was heroic," he thought: "no troops could be more determined or more daring." The New York Times, previously skeptical of the Negro's willingness and ability to par­ ticipate in large-scale military actions, reprinted Banks' report to Halleck and confessed: "this official testimony settles the question that the negro race can fight with great prowess."19 Shortly afterward, black troops faced a second test of their military capacity at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana. Defending their position on the levee against a superior Confederate force that had been ordered to drive them into the Mississippi, the Negroes accounted themselves well in hand-to-hand combat and held their ground. A white unit fighting with them seems to have fared less well, for the Confederate general commanding the as­ sault reported that "this charge was resisted by the Negro portion of the enemy's force with considerable obstinacy, while the white or true Yankee portion ran like whipped curs."20 The federal commander, General Elias S. Dennis, noted in his report that his men were green troops of former slaves, with only a few days' drill behind them, and their rifles were "very inferior." The poor quality of their arms may explain why the blacks repulsed the main part of the Confederate attack by bayonets and rifle butts. In any case, General Dennis told Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana a day or so later that "it is impossible for men to show greater gallantry than the negro troops in that fight."21 Freedmen on government plantations in outlying areas some­ times had to defend themselves also. A week after the battle at Milliken's Bend "the enemy suddenly appeared in force at Plaque19 Cornish, Sable Arm, 142; Banks to Halleck, May 30, 1863, OR, xxvi, pt. i, 43-45; New York Times, June 11, 1863. 20 Gen. Henry E. McCulloch, C.S.A., Report, June 8, 1863, OR, xxiv, pt. ii, 467. 21 Dennis to Col. John A. Rawlins, June 12, 1863, OR, xxiv, pt. ii, 447448; Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War (New York, 1898), 86. See, however, the inexplicably disparaging remarks in Winters, Civil War in Louisiana, 199-201.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

mines," reported Hanks. The Confederate raiders began "devas­ tating all plantations cultivated under the direction of any govern­ ment agent," he told Banks, but they left plantations occupied by their owners unmolested. During a similar raid near Donaldsonville, "about fifty of my plantation negroes participated. They had been instructed in the use of firearms only one week," Hanks continued, but "they fought bravely and sustained their share of the casualties." He was particularly proud to report that "one of them killed the rebel major who commanded a party of the enemy."22 Conservative whites feared "nothing so much as the arming of the negro," declared B. Rush Plumly, a veteran Philadelphia abolitionist serving as a temporary Treasury agent in New Or­ leans. Plumly's son was an officer in one of the new black regiments, and the aging Quaker went down to see him off when his unit left for the field. "It was a sight worth seeing last night when the regiment was in order on the levee," Plumly wrote his friend Salmon P. Chase. There was a large crowd of blacks saying goodby to sons and husbands, and they "sang 'John Brown and several of their peculiar airs. Some tremor befell me as I gave my son his sword, and bade him 'Godspeed' in leading a negro regi­ ment to subdue their masters." He found it deliriously ironic that such a scene should take place on "the levee of New Orleans, the great slave mart. Such historic retribution is rare." With the arm­ ing of the blacks, Plumly was confident that emancipation would be a permanent reform. "Any attempt to re-enslave them would inaugurate a miniature St. Domingo."23 The creation of black regiments and the arming of plantation hands was, as Plumly suggested, anathema to the planters: such a policy seemed to invite slave insurrection. Even the army's willingness to use repressive police measures to control the plan­ tation blacks did not calm the fears of rural whites, for who could promise that the provost marshals and garrison troops would be sufficient protection. Once a black man had been taught to use a rifle against white men, would it be possible to reinstate him in his old subordinate position? An incident on the Bayou Teche in the spring of 1863 seemed to confirm the worst fears of the planters, although it also demon22 Hanks to Banks, July 12, 1863, NA, RG 393, DGBCA; Hanks to Banks (telegram), June 30, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 23 Plumly to Chase, July 4, 10, 1863, Chase Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

strated that in such circumstances the federal army was on their side. Hearing rumors of a slave revolt aided by black soldiers in St. Martin Parish, the provost marshal of nearby New Iberia instructed Captain L. M. Stone to go to the aid of the whites. "I proceeded to St. Martinsville yesterday with a force of thirty-two men," reported Captain Stone, "to aid in restoring quiet to that locality and suppress the ravages of straggling soldiery." Shortly after his arrival, "the alarm was given that a force of mounted and armed negroes was approaching across the bayou," Stone con­ tinued. "The citizens of the town had asked the privilege of assisting me, and as soon as the alarm was given they rallied to the bridge." As the black horsemen rode into view the whites opened fire, "killing two or three and wounding several." Five wounded Negroes were captured, and when "the citizens asked me if I claimed them," Stone reported, "I told them no, and that I should take no responsibility with regard to the disposal of them." As he crossed the bridge on his way out of town, the Captain "passed under the bodies of at least four negroes, who had been hung."24 The colonel of another regiment in the area described a similar encounter. In this case he reported four hundred armed Negroes and claimed seventeen casualties, although of course he may have exaggerated the numbers involved. His men captured several of the blacks, added the colonel, and the prisoners confessed that the groups had banded together, as he paraphrased it, "for the purpose of pillaging the country, killing the men and children, and ravishing the women." The whole area was apparently ter­ rorized, for the colonel reported that "I have been notified of similar outbreaks in several localities . . . which I have sent small bodies of soldiers to quell." Even if the rebels were no more than stragglers, as Captain Stone had thought, they aroused the classic Southern fear of insurrection. The incident created remarkable good will for the Union army among the staunchly Confederate citizens of the Teche country. "The people are in a state of great excitement, and express a willingness to take the oath of al­ legiance, or do almost anything to be protected."25 Now that he was in uniform, the freedman was more inclined 24 Stone to Capt. A. B. Long, April 25, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 98-99, provides additional details. 25 Col. Simon G. Jerrard to Banks, April 26, 1863, Jerrard to Col. Richard B. Irwin, April 28, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

to assert his dissatisfaction with the old regime. On numerous occasions black soldiers learned that their wives and children were being mistreated on the plantations and returned to remedy the situation on their own initiative. A squad removed fourteen hands from an estate in St. Charles Parish and placed them on a government plantation near Camp Parapet in the summer of 1863. Black soldiers carrying passes as "recruiters" demanded the sur­ render of their families from a St. Bernard planter in August, and then continued through the area, collecting large numbers of dissatisfied freedmen, along with assorted livestock to feed the group. Sometimes, but by no means always, such "recruiters" were arrested by the provost marshals. Since they were armed and trained to defend themselves, they were unlikely to submit willingly to arrest unless confronted by a superior force. Negro soldiers engaged in the customary military pastime of looting chickens on one plantation in September 1863 were confronted by the overseer armed with a Colt revolver and a double-barreled shotgun. There was some shooting, although apparently no one was hurt, and Colonel John S. Plumly went to investigate the inci­ dent in which his men had been involved. To the overseer's indig­ nation, the young officer confiscated his pistol and shotgun rather than arresting the Negroes.26 The swamps that lay behind the plantations of the bayou coun­ try had provided sanctuary for fugitive slaves in the antebellum period, and the great increase in runaways that followed the arrival of the Union army apparently swelled the population of the "maroon" colonies considerably. A soldier stationed on the Teche, for example, was several times given assignments that took him to the fringes of what local residents called "the Great Cy­ press Swamp." This wild area was "said to be the home of out­ laws, both white and black," noted the corporal in his diary. "They have homes there where they live undisturbed by the laws made to govern other people." He added that "runaway slaves find homes there, where they live and raise families." When the Yankees began to recruit Negro soldiers, many of the blacks left the swamp to join the Corps d'Afrique. One such man was Octave Johnson, a corporal interviewed by a government official investigating the living conditions of Louisiana freedmen. John26 Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 110-113; G. P. Bueknell to Banks, Sept. 24, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. For further discussion of black resistance in 1863, see Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 97-98.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

son testified that he had lived with a group of thirty other blacks in the swamps of St. James Parish for eighteen months before enlisting in 1862 along with most of his fellow maroons. When recruiting from the swamps, the Yankees naturally acquired some of the most rebellious blacks of the old regime.27 Blacks who remained on the plantation also began to assert their independence more forcefully. Planters complained that laborers refused to carry out orders, worked when they felt like it, and threatened to leave altogether. "Everything like subordina­ tion and restraint was at an end," wrote one overseer to his em­ ployer, Confederate governor of Louisiana Thomas 0. Moore. The hands even took to improving their diet on this plantation: "every morning I could see beeves being driven up from the woods to the quarter—and the number they killed . . . is impos­ sible to tell."28 If a proprietor was unwilling to sign the govern­ ment contract, or if he did not pay the stipulated wages on time, he sometimes found himself confronted with a strike by his Negro workers until he agreed to pay them. Moreover, freedmen often rebelled against overseers who tried to use physical punishment, which was no longer allowed under government regulations. In late 1862 the hands on one plantation erected a gallows and threatened to hang the overseer and the master's brother, who was managing the estate at the time. On another plantation near Carrollton in February 1863, and in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes later that spring, blacks armed with clubs and cane knives drove their overseers and employers away. In these three instances the military authorities came to the rescue of the pro­ prietors and restored order to their estates, but it was logistically impossible for the army to counter every instance of assertiveness on the part of plantation Negroes, even had that been its goal.29 27 Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man (New Haven, Conn., 1910), 194-197; James M. McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits: The Emancipated Slave Face to Face With His Old Master (New York, 1864), 8, 12; John W. Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, 1977), 394-395; Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 107. 28 Sitterson, Sugar Country, 210-211. Roland, Louisiana Sugar Plantations, 94-96, 106-108, offers more evidence of independent behavior by blacks. 29 Bayside Plantation Journal, May 4, 1863, Magnolia Plantation Journal, Oct. 21, 1862 (typescripts), UNC; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 212; Edmund J. Forstall to Col. John S. Clark et al., Sept. 1, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

The stated purpose of Banks' labor system, in its first year of operation, was to facilitate the transition from slavery to freedom, to improve the living conditions of the black population without disrupting the plantation economy any more than necessary. It did not recognize a condition of absolute freedom for the blacks. The requirement that they secure passes from employers or pro­ vost marshals was a serious restriction on the freedom of move­ ment of the former slaves, but Banks thought the restriction was necessary to keep a sufficient labor supply on hand. Similarly, he thought the requirement that Negroes sign a year-long contract with their employers was essential to the functioning of the sugar economy, at least until the freedmen had become accustomed to the responsibilities of their new status. If the blacks were not absolutely free, however, neither were they still slaves. According to the regulations of the labor system, they were no longer property and thus could not be sold. The legalizing of marriage relationships was strongly encouraged, and families were not to be separated by an employer. Physical pun­ ishment was prohibited, in theory, although, as we have seen, even government officers sometimes sanctioned the use of stocks or whipping. The most important symbol of all was the payment of wages for the labor of plantation hands, not as a reward from a generous master, but as a legal obligation backed up by the power of the government.80 Northern antislavery circles were keenly interested in freedmen's affairs in Louisiana and initially reacted to Banks' policy with hostility. George Hepworth, a self-styled abolitionist, under­ took to improve the general's image by a defense of the labor system, which he thought was "good for all parties." The young chaplain wrote Banks that "some of the Northern papers have misrepresented you," and he expressed the hope that "you will allow me to set them right."31 Hepworth wrote a vindication of Banks' labor system for the New York Tribune that was widely 30Banks, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana (Boston, 1864), 6, said that the goal of his labor system was "to prepare the negro for an independence as complete as that enjoyed by any other class of people" (which means that at the outset blacks were to be treated as dependents rather than as completely free). 3 1 N A S S , Feb. 21, 1863; Hepworth to Banks, March 5, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

reprinted in antislavery newspapers, securing a temporary lull in the anti-Banks editorials. Shortly afterward, he began work on a book treating the same theme at greater length; it appeared early in 1864 under the flamboyant title, Whip, Hoe and Sword. 32 The labor system worked to the great advantage of the freedmen, Hepworth emphasized. The general had been "a somewhat conservative Republican" before the war, he admitted, "but in this matter he has gone as far as the abolitionists even would desire." The young chaplain admitted that he had entertained some doubts initially, but testified that inspection of the planta­ tions had assuaged all his fears. "As a warm abolitionist, I have entered into the plan with all the enthusiasm I am possessed of, believing that it is precisely the thing to prepare the black man of Louisiana for the freedom .. . which I believe will be his before another twelve months are told." Hepworth did not claim that Banks' regulations granted absolute freedom to the blacks, but he saw nothing wrong with introducing a transitional phase between slavery and freedom. "The plan struck me as being very like the apprentice system in the West Indies between 1834 and 1840," he noted, although he felt that "the black man had more privi­ leges" under the present guidelines.33 Hepworth did not realize it, but his analogy between the Louisiana system and the apprenticeship program adopted in Jamaica in the 1830s was a damning criticism in the eyes of many abolitionists. Lydia Maria Child, Lewis Tappan, Richard J. Hinton, and Frank Sanborn all wrote about emancipation in the British West Indies during the first two years of the war. They used the experience of Antigua, where the planters opted against the apprentice scheme and granted their slaves immediate and unconditional freedom in 1834, as a counterpoint to the Jamaica experiment in gradual emancipation. Antigua became the most prosperous of the British island colonies, with a high percentage of landownership and literacy among the blacks, whereas the Jamaican economy faltered badly and the Negro population re­ mained in a depressed condition. Such a reading of comparative 32 Hepworth's letter to the New York Tribune was reprinted in NASS, May 2, 1863; for the next six months this abolitionist newspaper, which had been hostile toward the Louisiana system, adopted a neutral attitude. 33 NASS, May 2, 1863.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

history clearly suggested that Banks' approach would not work in Louisiana.34 Even men of more moderate antislavery views were unsym­ pathetic to the idea of apprenticeship. "I am not satisfied with the state of things in regard to slavery in New Orleans," wrote Boston Brahmin and art historian Charles Eliot Norton to his friend Frederick Law Olmsted. "The labor system that General Banks is introducing seems to be full of danger if taken as a model for other places." Norton had written about emancipation in the West Indies for the Atlantic Monthly before the war, and he was not persuaded that the program adopted in Jamaica was a good pre­ cedent. "It will not do for the United States to engage in a system of apprenticeship, or to guarantee labor to its employers." In such a halfway house he perceived a "risk of tyranny on the part of the masters [and] of the continuance of servile qualities among the slaves."35 Skeptical Northern intellectuals like Norton had been uncer­ tain at the beginning of the war whether the Negro was capable of immediate adjustment to freedom. Would former slaves work without physical compulsion, they wondered, and were the freedmen capable of being educated to the duties of citizenship? The capture of the South Carolina sea islands early in the war gave abolitionists a chance to demonstrate to their moderate friends that such questions could be answered with an unequivocal "yes." Several thousand slaves remained behind when their mas­ ters fled to the mainland, and young antislavery reformers went to the Port Royal Sound to serve as foremen of governmentoperated plantations and to conduct schools for the black children of the islands. They found that the freedmen worked voluntarily and effectively when paid wages and treated fairly, that they longed for land of their own to farm independently, and that they raised good crops of their own and made tidy profits selling vegetables and fruits to the military personnel on the islands 34James M. McPherson, "Was West Indian Emancipation a Success: The Abolitionist Argument during the American Civil War," Caribbean Studies, iv (July 1964), 28-34. 35 Norton to Olmsted, April 22, 1863, Olmsted Papers, LC; Kermit Vanderbilt, Charles Eliot Norton: Apostle of Culture in a Democracy (Cam­ bridge, Mass., 1959), 75-77.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

when allowed to use vacant land for truck gardening. The chil­ dren proved adept pupils in the hands of sympathetic Yankee schoolmarms, learning to read, write, and do arithmetic with the readiness of any white boy or girl growing up in Massachusetts. In the sea islands blacks proved their capacity for freedom, but observers were quick to point out that matters would be different in a situation where the white population remained to fight a rear-guard action for the mores of the old regime. "The experi­ ment at Port Royal is most satisfactory, as settling the 'educa­ tional' question," thought Norton, "but the experiment at New Orleans is far more important in its bearing on the relations here­ after to exist between the two races."36 Olmsted, famous for his travels and writings about the South before the war, was like Norton, a moderate Republican; unlike the Brahmin intellectual, however, he was a practical, businesslike expert on agricultural economics and viewed human affairs with a strictly pragmatic eye.37 Yet his interpretation of freedmen's affairs was more reminiscent of Wendell Phillips than of a mod­ erate businessman.38 "I fear the promise of peace, a jubilee-holi­ day with fireworks and a grand inflation of business, would reconcile a good many of us to the prospect of having Southern gentlemen back again in Washington society," Olmsted confi4ed to Norton. "If we can manage to keep the war along only one year more," in order to "get a hundred thousand negroes habit­ uated to working for wages, and have a few regiments of them stand up well side by side with the white ones in some great bat­ tles, the disintegration of Southern society . . . will be perma­ nently established."39 36 Norton to Olmsted, April 22, 1863, Olmsted Papers, LC; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianap­ olis, 1964). 37 George M. Frederickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1864), 101, 104, goes too far, how­ ever, when he labels both Olmsted and Norton conservatives, judging from the evidence here. 38 Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, 1973), 86-108, 152-153, 156-231, reveals an ideological streak in her subject's approach to the slavery question, and his willingness to accept a radical allocation of federal power in the South. 39 "Thank God we live so close upon it," he added: Olmsted to Norton, April 30, 1863, Olmsted Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Abolitionists had been urging the government for some time to create a special commission to examine the complex problem of freedmen's affairs; moderates like Norton and Olmsted joined in the chorus. In the spring of 1863 the idea was translated into reality when the administration appointed a three-man American Freedman's Inquiry Commission to "investigate the condition of the colored people" in the occupied areas of the South and to "report what measures will best contribute to their protection and improvement."40 The men appointed were all staunchly antislavery. Robert Dale Owen, an aide to the Republican governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, was a frequent contributor to antislavery publications during the first two years of the war. James M. McKaye was the self-made millionaire president of a tele­ graph company; he frequently entertained leading Garrisonian abolitionists in his home in New York City. Samuel Gridley Howe of Massachusetts, well known for his work with the blind, was a former free soiler and associate of John Brown, a member of the radical "Bird Club," which dictated the strategy of the Repub­ lican Party in that state, and a personal friend of Senator Charles Sumner.41 The commissioners sent questionnaires to officers in charge of contraband camps or Negro regiments, pored over the literature on emancipation in the West Indies, and interviewed men who had traveled in the occupied areas of the South. Howe and Owen visited contraband camps in the border states, and McKaye traveled to Port Royal in June to gather more evidence on the great radical experiment. At the end of June the commissioners submitted a preliminary report to Secretary of War Edwin Stan­ ton, but they continued their active work for another nine months.42 The most obvious lapse in the commission's research was the absence of solid information about the labor system in Louisiana. Senator Sumner, a close observer of freedmen's affairs in the oc40 McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 178-182; John G. Sproat, "Blueprint for Radical Reconstruction," JSH, xxni (Feb. 1957), 25-44. 41 Biographical information is from McKaye's unpublished memoir, McKaye Papers, LC. 42 McKaye to Sumner, Dec. 31, 1863, Sumner Papers, HU; Owen and McKaye to Howe, March 19, 1863, Olmsted testimony, April 22, 1863, American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission Papers, HU.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

cupied South, suggested to his friend Howe that all three com­ missioners go to New Orleans and investigate the situation first­ hand. Louisiana was the obvious counterpoint of the Port Royal experiment, and the only reports of affairs in that quarter were coming from correspondents of the great Eastern dailies, who focused most of their attention on politics. McKaye was particu­ larly keen to find out about Banks' system; in the end he had to finance his own trip to New Orleans during the last stage of the commission's work.43 Colonel McKaye arrived in Louisiana at the beginning of February 1864 and had an opportunity to evaluate the contract labor system at the close of its first year of operation. With Isaac G. Hubbs, a representative of the American Missionary As­ sociation who had recently come to New Orleans to open a freedmen's school, McKaye traveled to Port Hudson, Donaldsonville, Plaquemines, and some twenty plantations throughout the sugar country. He found that, as in Port Royal, freedmen worked with­ out compulsion as long as they were treated fairly. They sought to build a stable family life for their children and hoped to obtain farms of their own in the future. The young had little opportunity for education because few schools had been opened in the coun­ tryside as yet. In the city, at army posts, and on government plantations, however, they displayed the same enthusiasm and aptitude as children on the sea islands. "The difficulty is not with the emancipated slave," McKaye observed, "but with the old master."44 If planters were reconciled to the inevitability of free labor, noted McKaye, it was only because of the absolute power of the army of occupation. They had accepted Banks' labor regulations with obvious reluctance and sought to evade them whenever possible. Most of them set up rudimentary country stores on the plantation: by charging high prices and high interest rates for goods bought on credit they often managed to reclaim most of the hands' wages for the year. Some proprietors simply refused to pay their hands the wages due at the end of the season, claim­ ing that they had not made a profit on the crop. In many cases 43 Sumner to Howe, April 19, 1883, McKaye Papers, LC; McKaye to Sumner, Dec. 31, 1863, Jan. 20, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. 44 McKaye to Sumner, Feb. 5, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU; Isaac G. Hubbs to S. S. Jocelyn, Feb. 19, 1864, AMAA; McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits, 22, 29.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

planters received valuable aid from government officials: the provost marshals in many parishes sided with the proprietors whenever a labor dispute arose, and some permitted physical punishment of blacks to continue, despite explicit rules to the contrary. The federal wage controls may have also had the unintended effect of depressing wages for agricultural work, speculated McKaye, for there was such a labor shortage in the sugar country that market conditions might have forced planters to pay more than the wage level set by the military. The most detrimental as­ pect of the labor system, however, was its restrictions on the mobility of the blacks. The contract method required laborers to remain on the same plantation all year, and police regulations established by the provost marshals forced them to procure passes before leaving the estate, even for short visits. Such re­ strictions were reminiscent of the antebellum slave codes and were deeply resented by the freedmen." Despite these many shortcomings, however, the system also had its compensating features, thought McKaye. The determina­ tion of the army to place all able-bodied refugees in employment had alleviated much of the physical suffering experienced by Negroes in other areas where a dislocated economy, the absence of capital to operate plantations, and poor sanitary facilities in overcrowded contraband camps had brought unemployment, hunger, disease, and death. Wages were paid for the first time, and this fact had a symbolic value, even if the remuneration was low. The lash was far less prevalent than before, families were kept together as much as possible, and at least once a year the workers could shift employers, as many of them wished to do. Bad as the system was, in the commissioner's view it clearly represented an improvement over the horrors of slavery and marked only a first step toward a more equitable arrangement. The same federal power that sustained this "temporary" set of regulations could be employed to create a new social structure that would recognize "the freedmens right to intervene in his own affairs . . . and to the rights and duties of civilized life."46 45

McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits, 21-28. Ibid., 16-18, 24-28. McKaye's assessment of the Louisiana labor system, and of the potential for social change offered by the federal army, is com­ patible with my own view. 46

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

Just before McKaye had arrived in New Orleans, in fact, Gen­ eral Banks had issued a new order revising the regulations for the second year of the labor system. These had not yet taken effect when the commissioner made his inspection tour, but on paper the new provisions appeared considerably more favorable to the freedmen than those of 1863. Wages were twice as high, varying between three dollars per month for the lowest class of workers to eight dollars for the highest (in the preceding year the lower limit had been one dollar, the upper, three dollars). Furthermore, the new regulations granted to a prime field hand with a family the right to cultivate one acre of land for his own purposes. Other classes of labor were to be granted use of a half acre. The government also took steps to see that in the second year a planter would not be allowed to sell his crop until he supplied evidence that he had already paid his hands for the year's work.47 Another provision of the revised regulations pleased McKaye greatly. Planters were required to permit children under twelve years of age to attend the schools that the army was beginning to open in the rural parishes. Negro schools had been in operation in New Orleans since October 1863, and Commissioner McKaye visited several while he was in the city. He was very impressed and told the newspapermen accompanying his party that these schools were among the finest in the country. Some of the pupils were from the well-educated homes of antebellum free men of color, but most were the children of poor blacks and former slaves. George Hanks told him of the zeal with which the blacks struggled to secure an education for their children and of the earnestness with which soldiers in the Negro units responded to their newly appointed regimental teachers. General Banks was committed to the fledgling educational system he had set up in Louisiana, and McKaye saw this as the redeeming feature of his administration.4 8 The prospect of establishing freedmen's schools had rallied the support of many young antislavery officers who were aware of grave deficiencies in the labor system. Thomas W. Conway, a 47 The 1863 regulations were published in the New York Tribune, Feb. 18, 1863; the 1864 plan was Gen. Order No. 23, Feb. 3, 1864, OR, xxxiv, pt. ii, 227-231. 48 New Orleans Era, Feb. 26, 1864; McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits, 18, 28; Banks to McKaye, March 28, 1864, Banks Papers, LC.

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

chaplain who had been transferred from Port Royal to serve with the Corps d'Afrique, had urged Banks as early as June 1863 to set up schools for the blacks. "Mr. Hanks contemplated attending to this, but now he has more on his hands in superin­ tending the 'Labor' than one man can well do." Conway fell ill and went north on sick leave, but wrote Banks that if given proper authority he could bring school books, supplies, and teachers to New Orleans on the return voyage. He saw the idea of freedmen's education as the key to a program of radical social change. "We of the free states must remould . . . the entire Southern social system," he declared, and "the sooner we go to work the better."49 George Hanks, who had been given a colonelcy in a black regiment by this time, undertook the establishment of a school system for New Orleans Negroes in September 1863. To his surprise, he found that he would not have to rely on Northern volunteers to teach in the new institutions. "Public opinion is changing in our midst," he reported to General Banks, and "the loyal element is superseding the disloyal." When he announced that his office was recruiting schoolmarms, he "received 15 ap­ plications as teachers in the colored schools from young ladies of the highest respectability, nearly all of them graduates of the [white] high schools of this city." Shortly afterward, the principal of one of the girls' high schools brought over seven more recruits, "each of whom was desirous of getting the first school, in order that she might be a pioneer in the new work." By mid-October there were five schools in operation in the city, serving 575 chil­ dren and with sixteen native white Louisianans staffling the class­ rooms. "The teachers are engaging in the work with a commend­ able zeal and seem to be actuated by the noblest impulses," reported Hanks' subordinate, and "they find their pupils eager to learn."50 To expand the educational system into the rural parishes was no mean task, and Banks decided to reorganize the administra­ tion of the schools. Following Hanks' suggestion, he appointed a three-man Board of Education for Freedmen, with power to assess and levy taxes for the support of the schools. The coopera­ tion of the provost marshal in each parish was assured in order 49 Conway

to Banks, Aug. 13, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. Hanks to Banks, Sept. 26, 1863, Lt. W. B. Stickney, "Report of the . . . Public Schools for Colored People," Oct. 13, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 60

BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM

to help acquire school sites and to afford protection to the teach­ ers. The general appointed his friend B. Rush Plumly, Chaplain Edwin Wheelock, and Isaac G. Hubbs of the American Mis­ sionary Association to the board. Preference was given to loyal Louisianans in hiring, but by the spring of 1864 there was a small group of A.M.A. teachers from the North. By June 1864 the board reported fifty-two schools in the Department of the Gulf, eleven in New Orleans and the remainder scattered through the rural parishes. There were by that time 100 teachers and 6,400 students in the freedmen's schools.51 The creation of the freedmen's school system demonstrated the potential for radical social change offered by the presence of federal military power. General Banks was extremely reluctant to use the army as an agency of social reform, however, especially during his first year in Louisiana. His hopes of winning the polit­ ical support of the planters restrained his evident sympathy for Negro schools for several months; once he allowed Hanks and Conway to set up classrooms for the black community in New Orleans in the fall of 1863, moreover, Banks seems to have been fearful of further antagonizing conservative sentiment. In all his voluminous correspondence there is no evidence of overt racism in the general's personal attitude toward black people. His be­ havior reveals an acute awareness of the political liability of ap­ pearing sympathetic to freedmen's rights, however: Banks was never one to stake out an advanced position on a controversial issue, if it could be avoided. The general's insistence on political moderation operated, as we have seen, as a major constraint on his handling of freedmen's affairs. It was also an obstacle in the path of the free state movement, which was moving in the last half of 1863 beyond emancipation and toward an acceptance of Negro suffrage as a concomitant of political reconstruction. 51 Hanks to Banks, Feb. 24, 1864, Wheelock and Hubbs to Banks, March 28, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; Wheelock and Hubbs to Gen. James Bowen, June 7, 1864, NA, RG 393, DGBCA.

CHAPTER V

Reconstruction as a Problem in Party Building: Thomas J. Durant and the Free State Movement THE primary goal of political re­ construction, from a practical point of view, was the formation of a viable Republican Party in the South. This was a major challenge, considering that Abraham Lincoln had not even been on the ballot in most Southern states in 1860. Party formation in this case required either the conversion of voters who had supported another party before the war, or the mobilization of a constituency that had not participated in antebellum elections at all (the largest bloc of potential voters in this category, of course, was the black population). Throughout 1863 General Banks pur­ sued a conciliatory policy which assumed that a majority of Louisiana whites would support a moderate Republican program of emancipation and Negro education in return for the army's assistance in forcing plantation laborers to remain at work. The general's hope of wooing the sugar planters precluded, of course, even the most limited enfranchisement of blacks. When the free state movement began to consider that idea in the fall of 1863, Banks was confronted with a choice between altering his basic approach to reconstruction or opposing the most staunchly Unionist elements in Louisiana.1 The accident of geography gave Banks one advantage: the area under federal control had offered the greatest voting support for "Unionist" candidates in the secession crisis. The sugar parishes, traditional bastions of the Whig Party, had been carried by the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell, in the presidential election of 1860. The city of New Orleans had voted even more strongly for Bell, and the Northern Democratic ticket headed by 1 The idea that party formation was the key to political reconstruction is explored in more general terms in both the Prologue and Epilogue.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Stephen A. Douglas had run ahead of the Southern Rights Demo­ crat, John C. Breckinridge. Similarly, in the election for delegates to the secession convention most of the cooperationist strength had come from the southern half of the state. For the time being at least, the parishes that had given the most enthusiastic support to the disunionist ticket were still in Confederate hands. Nowhere else in the deep South had conditional Unionism been as strong among the planters as in the Louisiana sugar country: if the con­ ciliatory approach were to work anywhere, then presumably this was the place. In no other area were unconditional Unionists as numerous as in New Orleans, on the other hand: the free state movement in the city was the essential nucleus around which a viable Republican organization must be formed.2 During the war the Louisiana party system was, strictly speak­ ing, in a state of suspended animation: neither the planters' move­ ment nor the Union Association was a political party, as that concept is normally defined. Political parties are structures within which individuals band together for the purpose of electing par­ ticular candidates to offices in the government, usually with the intention of obtaining particular programmatic goals and some­ times to advance a particular ideological interest. Party structure has at least three distinct dimensions. The organizational appara­ tus that plans and coordinates electoral campaigns is manned by the party activists, citizens whose loyalty to the party goes beyond the mere casting of ballots. A second dimension, the most visible, is the party-in-government; the officeholders whose election or appointment is the first goal of party activity provide the medium through which the party influences governmental policy. The voters who identify with the party and support its candidates on a regular basis over the years constitute the most essential dimen­ sion of party structure; unless it is able to mobilize a large, dur­ able constituency, a would-be political party is no more than a pressure group or a forum for the articulation of grievances against those who actually control the government.3 As long as 2 Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, "Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vin (Winter 1978), 429-457. 3 Frank J. Sorauf, "Political Parties and Political Analysis," in William N. Chambers and W. Dean Burnham (eds.), The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York, 1967), 33-55.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

civil government in occupied Louisiana was under the control of the army, political groups there could only aspire to party status as a future goal. The role of the army would clearly be a crucial element in the process of party formation. In 1863 most of the functions of civil government were performed either by army officers or by civilians appointed by the military (the major exceptions were Treasury officials, but this involved only a small number of appointments). In addition to controlling the bulk of the patronage in the state, the army was responsible for such essential matters as the regula­ tion of voters and the timing of elections. With many Louisiana Unionists enlisting in the federal army, moreover, the influence of the soldier vote might become an important consideration (and the army would determine in which parishes this vote would be tallied). The political group aided most by the army would, almost inevitably, win any wartime election. The great question confronting General Banks was how to maximize the growth of a durable Republican constituency.4 In another sense as well, the army played a decisive role: no voters could be registered or elections held in rural parishes until they were secure from attack by the rebel army or guerrilla bands. The Confederates counterattacked aggressively whenever Banks tried to expand the zone of federal occupation, and guer­ rillas were a constant threat in peripheral parishes. Port Hudson was the last major military success of the general's military career. The stalemate that set in during the last half of 1863 assured that more than half of the state's population would be unable to participate in wartime reconstruction.5 Following the appointment of Thomas J. Durant as state attor­ ney general on June 10, 1863, the Union Association continued to press the military governor for assistance in the registration of prospective voters. Registrars had to be paid for the time-consum­ ing (and perhaps dangerous) task of ascertaining the political loyalty of the rural citizenry. The association nominated com4James

G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, rev. ed. (Urbana, 111., 1951), 215-234, 323-328, is of assistance in understanding the structure of the occupation government, but my observations are drawn primarily from the experience of the occupation forces in Louisiana. 5John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 284-300.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

missioners of registration for New Orleans, the suburbs of Jeffer­ son, Carrollton, Gretna, and Algiers, and many of the sugar parishes. Durant also appointed three members of the association to determine whether registrars should be appointed for the more distant parishes of Lafourche and Terrebonne, while awaiting official confirmation of the proposed commissioners by General Shepley. Funds for the registration process could be obtained from existing sources, argued the association, by eliminating the office of Registrar of Voters in New Orleans, which paid its in­ cumbent a $5,000 salary plus $500 a month for expenses. The present registrar was still requiring the old loyalty oath, more­ over, merely scratching out "Confederate" and substituting "United" States of America. This oath also required citizens to "swear allegiance first to the state, and then secondly to the United States," complained Durant, who felt that this symbolized the continued primacy of the old state rights doctrine. The ante­ bellum constitution was now "a nullity," added the attorney general: at the moment there was "no such thing as the constitu­ tion of Louisiana."6 General Shepley, the cautious man in the pivotal role of military governor, is among the most misunderstood figures in the historiography of Louisiana reconstruction. Previous accounts have portrayed him as the mastermind of antislavery radicalism in New Orleans following the departure of his "mentor," General Butler, and one author goes so far as to identify Durant as "one of his followers."7 The records of the Union Association make abundantly clear, however, that Durant and his colleagues were constantly frustrated by Shepley's unwillingness to take any action at all. The general refused to appoint new registrars, to remove the incumbent commissioner of New Orleans, or to ap­ prove a new loyalty oath (drawn up by the association) until he had had an opportunity to check with his superiors. Shepley 6 Minute Book of the Union Association of New Orleans, June 5, 12, 19, 1863, pp. 26-27, 31-38, 45-46, NYHS. 7 Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 100, is the chief source for this view. Among those accounts that follow Harrington are Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans Under the Federals, 1862-1865 (Lexington, Ky., 1965), 129-130, 178, William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1960), 68, and Reinhard Luthin, The Real Abraham Lincoln (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960), 477 (the source of the quotation).

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

went to Washington in July to confer directly with Secretary of War Stanton; he did not return with the necessary instructions until the end of the summer. In the meantime, the work of recon­ struction ground to a halt.8 While Shepley was on his way to Washington, the Union Association decided to appeal directly to General Banks. It adopted resolutions praising the capture of Port Hudson, and after Banks' triumphal return to the city it authorized Durant to request the general's assistance in the reorganization of civil government. The attorney general explained to Banks that the Union Association was officially committed to the idea of a constitutional convention that would abolish slavery throughout the state; he also complained about Shepley's extreme caution, which was delaying the voter registration process. "Hitherto, General, the important military operations in which you have been engaged," Durant continued, "have forbidden us to trouble you." With the Port Hudson campaign over, "we are in hopes you may have sufficient leisure to ... give us the aid of your counsel in our undertaking." The timing of the convention election was an especially im­ portant question, Durant observed. It would be ideal if all the parishes of the state could be represented by loyal delegates chosen by popular election. Given the military situation, how­ ever, "it is not likely nor is it essential, that every parish should be represented." The proper moment to hold the election, in Durant's judgment, would be "as soon as so many parishes as contain a majority of the population of the state can have an opportunity of being represented." This was not an unrealistic expectation at the time: the thirteen parishes that had participated in the recent congressional elections in 1862 (and were thus exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation) contained almost 310,000 people, only 50,000 short of a majority of the state's population in 1860. If the military situation were to continue to improve, then pre­ sumably a majority would soon be within Union lines. Banks refused to intervene, contenting himself with a brief note: "I approve the general purpose and objects of the Union Association of New Orleans and Jefferson City and shall be happy to render them all the aid in my power." All the situation re8 Minute Book, June 19, 26, 1863, pp. 42-43, 47-49, NYHS; George Denison to Chase, Sept. 12, 1863, CC, 407.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

quired initially was authorization and funds for the appointment of registrars by Durant. The general was preoccupied with the planning of a new expedition to Texas, however, and preferred to leave the entire matter in Shepley's hands.9 In Washington the confusion of authority was quickly re­ solved—or so it appeared. On August 5, 1863, after talking with Shepley, President Lincoln issued an important policy statement on Louisiana reconstruction in a letter to General Banks. The President expressed his pleasure that Louisiana Unionists were ready "to make a new constitution recognizing the emancipation proclamation and adopting emancipation in those parts of the state to which the proclamation does not apply." He urged Banks to "confer with intelligent and trusty citizens of the state, among whom I would suggest Messrs. Flanders, Hahn, and Durant" (to whom he sent copies of the letter). Shepley had told him that Durant was supervising the registration of voters, which Lincoln approved. The President then stressed to Banks that speed was of some importance: the convention "should be pushed forward, so that if possible its mature work [that is, a new constitution] may reach here by the meeting of Congress" in December.10 The clear implication of this letter was that Banks should take an active role in aiding the convention plan, in cooperation with General Shepley, the Union Association, and Attorney General Durant. Despite Lincoln's urging, however, the general did nothing to aid the registration of voters. Three weeks later, after talking with Lincoln, Secretary of War Stanton issued detailed guidelines to General Shepley about voter registration and apportionment. "The loyal citizens of 9 Minute Book, July 10, 17, 24, Aug. 14, 1863, pp. 59-65, 69-93, 107, NYHS. 10 Lincoln to Banks, Aug. 5, 1863, CWL, vi, 364-366. Instrumental in persuading Lincoln to move ahead with the reorganization of civil govern­ ment in Louisiana was George S. Boutwell, a close friend of Banks, a former governor of Massachusetts, and subsequently an influential radical congressman and senator. Boutwell dropped by the White House on August 5 to share with the President a letter he had just received from the general about Louisiana affairs. Banks' reply to Lincoln was that "there will be no serious difficulty in the restoration of this state to the Union . . . during this year," but he admitted that "it will be necessary to defer action, public action I mean, for a brief time." Boutwell to Banks, Aug. 5, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; Banks to Lincoln, Sept. 5, 1863, ALM, 26055.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Louisiana desire to form a new constitution, and to re-establish civil government," began the secretary: "to aid them in that pur­ pose the President directs the following instructions to be given you." Shepley was to "cause a registration to be made in each parish . . . of all the loyal citizens of the United States," beginning with areas already under federal control and extending to new parishes "as soon as it can conveniently be done after the people are relieved from the presence of rebel troops." As the Union Association had asked, the President directed that the registration lists should include "only such as have taken an oath of allegiance to the United States," and the oath should specify that it was taken "voluntarily for the purpose of reorganizing a state gov­ ernment in Louisiana." The President's instructions gave Shepley full authority to appoint commissioners of registration, to order an election "when the registration is made as far as practicable," to designate elec­ tion officials to administer the balloting, and to count the returns himself when the election had been held. The guidelines from the White House included specific apportionment figures for the convention: "one delegate for every 2500 of the loyal citizens" of each parish. The term loyal citizens used by Secretary Stanton left out the modifying adjective white. This could have been in­ terpreted as an authorization of Negro voting, for according to the U.S. attorney general, black people were to be regarded as citizens of the United States (despite the Supreme Court's earlier ruling in the Dred Scott case). Loyal citizens was the term used in future Negro suffrage legislation by the Congress. There is no evidence that Lincoln and Stanton intended to enfranchise blacks in Louisiana, however, nor that Durant registered Negro voters under the new instructions.11 It is nevertheless an interesting oversight. Shepley returned to New Orleans in the middle of September with instructions to cooperate fully with the Union Association. In the meantime, the military stalemate had continued, and the provost marshals still appointed representatives of the planters' movement to the police juries in the sugar parishes. Confronted with the hesitation and indifference of the army, Durant and his 11 Stanton to Shepley, Aug. 24, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York, 1890), vm, 422-423.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

colleagues concentrated on the difficult task of converting the Union Association into something approaching a political party. The active participants in the convention movement provided ample manpower for the organizational apparatus of a new party. In order to promote the mobilization of free state sentiment in the city, Durant suggested that the association keep its rooms open to the public on a daily basis, and his colleagues agreed. This provided a place "where all who feel an interest in their efforts can meet and counsel together," noted the correspondent of the New York Tribune approvingly.12 Political parties in nineteenth-century America depended heavily on having their own party newspapers for presentation of their program and candidates to the voters. The New Orleans Era was a Unionist paper, to be sure, but members of the free state group were not satisfied with its editorial policy, and it had displayed little interest in working closely with the association's leaders. The Era was operated by two Northern journalists; its sentiments were clearly Republican, but it appeared more inter­ ested in publicizing the military exploits of General Banks and building its circulation figures than in aiding the convention movement. Judge Ezra Hiestand, one of Durant's more radical friends, headed a committee to establish a more suitable news­ paper but was unable to secure the necessary financial backing.13 The Union Association might have had greater success in this project had not some of its potential sources of funds been used toward the creation of the New Orleans Times in September. The Times' finances were controlled by Treasury agent George Denison and a wealthy Unionist sugar planter named Thomas P. May, and at first some of May's fellow planters held a portion of the shares. The editor of the new paper was a former correspondent 12 Minute Book, July 3, 24, 1863, pp. 53-55, 94, NYHS; New York Trib­ une, Aug. 8, 1863. is Minute Book, Aug. 21, 28, 1863, pp. 117, 123, NYHS. The New Or­ leans Era, which had been established in February 1863, using the office and press of the former Delta, was closely associated with Banks, according to Thomas B. Gunn in the New York Tribune, March 4, 1863. Col. Alfred C. Hills, previously a New York Herald reporter and subsequently a member of the Louisiana constitutional convention of 1864, was one of the editors, and his partner was Capt. Alfred G. Hills, formerly of the Boston Traveler: see the Era, Feb. 15, 1863.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

of the moderate New York Times, John R. Hamilton, and its first issues were anything but radical. "It lacks that earnest, out-andout kind of style that many expected," commented one reporter. Although the new journal was less closely tied to General Banks, it did not serve the needs of a "party" newspaper as the Union Association wished,14 Money was a serious problem for the association, in fact. The dues of its members could meet the normal expenses of renting a hall for meetings or posting advertisements in the local papers, but any new undertakings would require additional funds. The committee Durant appointed to visit the rural parishes would have to pay its own expenses, for example, and the registration of voters was so time-consuming that none of the members could afford to undertake the job without compensation. The association's com­ mittee on ways and means wrestled with the question of financing throughout the summer and decided that it was necessary to appeal for assistance to Northern Republicans. Anyone from the association who was going to New York, Philadelphia, or Boston on business should be authorized to solicit funds, the committee recommended. The New York Tribune reporter tendered editorial support for this idea in his dispatches; "the men of the East and North should do for Louisiana what they did for Kansas" in the 1850s, that is, "contribute liberally out of their abundant means."15 Several participants in the free state movement did appeal for the cause while on Northern visits. Judge Hiestand, Charles Hornor (Durant's law partner), and Congressman Michael Hahn spoke to political rallies in New York City, and Alfred Jervis spent several months soliciting funds in eastern cities during the fall and early winter. James E. Tewell was selected as correspond­ ing secretary by the association, and he tried to mount a wider appeal through the mails. A few contributions trickled into the organization's pool of resources, and they were gratefully ac­ knowledged, but Northern philanthropy generally turned its at­ tention elsewhere. Most prospective donors were already com­ mitted to freedmen's aid groups, medical relief agencies, or " Denison to Chase, Sept. 21, Oct. 23, 1863, CC, 408-409, 412-413; New York Tribune, Oct. 5, 1863. is Minute Book, Aug. 7, 28, 1863, pp. 103, 105-107, 125, NYHS; New York Tribune, Aug. 8, 1863.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

propaganda societies such as the Union League. The association would have to rely almost entirely on Louisiana sources.16 Few men in the movement could afford large contributions themselves, for the association was fundamentally a middle-class organization. Its members were, virtually without exception, lawyers, doctors, government officeholders, small businessmen, and artisans. One planter, Thomas P. May, was considered wealthy; as one of the top lawyers of the New Orleans bar Durant could afford to donate his salary as state attorney general to charity. For the most part, however, the well-heeled members of the Louisiana body politic were to be found among the op­ position.17 The most active members, and those most often falling into leadership roles, were lawyers: Durant, Thomas J. Earhart, Rufus Waples, Henry W. Train, Ernest Wenck, Ezra Hiestand, Charles Hornor, and Michael Hahn. Also active were doctors or dentists, including Anthony P. Dostie, William H. Hire, and J. W. Allen. James Graham, the secretary of the association, had been com­ missioner of deeds, representing twenty-five Northern and West­ ern states in New Orleans before the war, and he later returned to that position after several years as U.S. marshal for the city during the occupation government. Benjamin Flanders, once a high school principal, had been active in the railroad "movement" of the 1850s and had served as an official of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad. He was the highest-ranking Treasury official in occupied Louisiana. Two artisans, John McWhirter, a tailor, and William R, Miller, a carpenter, were also active in the com­ mittee work of the association. There were a few commission merchants, wholesale grocers, apothecaries, and lumber mer­ chants among the membership, but none of them took an active role, and none of them seem to have been at all wealthy.18 ie New York Times, Sept. 23, 1863; New York Tribune, Oct. 1, Nov. 30, 1863; New Orleans Times, Nov. 3, 1863; Jervis to Chase, Dec. 17, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; Durant to Jervis, Jan. 7, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS. 17 Durant to Sidney Thezan, Feb. 1, 1864, Durant to Mrs. J. H. Field, Feb. 1,1864, Durant Papers, NYHS. 18 Data on the occupational background of the association's members is from personal correspondence, archival records, newspaper advertisements, news items, the manuscript returns of the US Census (1860), P, and from the following city directories; Cohen's New Orleans Directory (1854); ibid.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Under the circumstances the need for financial support by the federal government was obvious. The registration of voters in the countryside was a governmental responsibility, and it was essen­ tial that the military governor appoint and pay free state regis­ trars. The printing contracts afforded by the army of occupation were as invaluable for financing a party newspaper as govern­ ment printing had been in the antebellum years. Patronage was essential to the party-building process, and the only two dispen­ sers of government jobs in occupied Louisiana were the Treasury department and the federal army. Treasury officials had a certain number of positions at their command in the customhouse, the mint, the lighthouses along the coast, and the internal revenue service, but the lion's share of patronage was in the municipal government appointed by the military command. The coordina­ tion of all these influences behind a single free state political organization would have created a powerful boost for the progress of reconstruction. Previous accounts of wartime reconstruction in Louisiana have pictured the free state forces as divided into two factions by their conflicting desires for federal patronage. Moderate Unionists such as Michael Hahn were allied with General Banks, according to this interpretation, and radicals like Durant were tied to Treasury patronage or to the offices under the control of General Shepley. Each side had its journalistic forum: Banks sponsored the estab­ lishment of the Era, and in response, the radicals founded their organ, the Times. The Treasury officials, all working behind the scenes to promote the presidential ambitions of Secretary Chase, were allied with former proteges of General Butler in the army, of whom Shepley was the most powerful. The military governor was an active participant in the affairs of the radical faction, according to this view, as were his numerous appointees in the municipal government. "The City Hall machine of Thomas B. Thorpe, who as municipal surveyor ran the Butler labor gangs," as Banks' (1855); Gardner and Wharton's New Orleans Directory (1858); ibid. (1859); Duncans New Orleans Business Directory (1865); Gardner's New Orleans Directory (1866); ibid. (1867); and Graham's Crescent City Di­ rectory (1867). For a more systematic breakdown of the constitutional convention of 1864 (with similar findings), see Chap, vm and Appendix B.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

biographer phrases it, is considered an important part of radical political strength.19 There is little evidence to support this view, which interpolates backward from the political struggles of 1864 and thus misunder­ stands the period of consensus in the Union Association during 1863. At this early point there were no visible manifestations of the moderate faction that Michael Hahn was to lead to victory the following year. Although his sentiments were certainly less radical than Durant's, Hahn went along with the decisions of the association's leadership. There were a few dissenting votes in meetings, but rarely more than a 20 percent minority on any question.20 The association presented a united front. Nor is there much evidence of the supposed collusion between radicals of the Union Association, Treasury officials, and Butler's friends in the municipal government, as far as patronage matters were concerned. The Treasury agents disagreed among them­ selves about political questions. Flanders was active in the as­ sociation, but Cuthbert Bullitt, who had managed to cultivate the acquaintance of both President Lincoln and Secretary Chase dur­ ing a sojourn in Washington, was friendly with the conservatives of the planter movement. Bullitt's brother-in-law, Hu Kennedy, edited the virulently anti-Republican New Orleans True Delta. George Denison's views were radical, but he took little active part in politics. B. Rush Plumly, a veteran Philadelphia abolitionist sent to New Orleans by his friend Secretary Chase, was on good terms with both Shepley and Banks, and soon accepted a military appointment that would involve him in freedmen's affairs, unlike the Treasury position.21 19 Harrington, Banks, 100; Capers, Occupied City, 129-130, 178; Luthin, Lincoln, 477; Hesseltine, Lincoln's Plan, 68. Even the recent study by Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 18-32, follows this interpretation. 20 Unfortunately, the votes of individual members were never tabulated in the Minute Book, only totals. An indication of Hahn's views at this time is provided by his comment in a letter to Lincoln, Aug. 11, 1863, ALM, 25535: "I am anxious for a state government—I am willing that it should be under a free-soil constitution, or (if that is not practicable) I am willing to fall back on the constitution of 1852." This position was more conservative than any expressed in the meetings of the Union Association. 21 Plumly to Chase, June 16, 20, July 4, Aug. 1, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; Denison to Chase, July 10, 15, 24, Aug. 12, Sept. 12, 1863, CC, 393402, 406-408.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Neither the Union Association nor the Treasury officials had close contacts with the members of the municipal government, whether appointed by General Butler or by Banks. When relieved of his position as city surveyor by General Banks, Colonel Thomas B. Thorpe, supposedly Butler's "boss" of the levee, tried to take the job of U.S. marshal for New Orleans, then held by the secre­ tary of the association, James Graham. Benjamin Flanders, an acquaintance of Thorpe since the 1840s, wrote Chase of the "ob­ jectionable features of the Colonel's character—his lack of sense and direction."22 A minor scandal over corruption in the munici­ pal government developed during the summer, and it was the future editor of the Times, John R. Hamilton, who first warned General Banks privately about the problem. Durant and his col­ leagues were aware of rumors, and at one point they undertook an investigation of all officeholders in the city. Just after that story broke in August, General Banks decided to reorganize the muni­ cipal courts, and he solicited Durant's advice as state attorney general.23 In short, although there was a high degree of consensus within the Union Association, there was a minimal level of coordination outside it. Treasury agents were generally sympathetic, but they failed to cooperate with the association in establishing a radical newspaper. Municipal officeholders proved embarrassments, or in the case of the city registrar, actual obstacles, to the growth of Union sentiment. The most powerful force of all, the military, was singularly uncooperative throughout the long summer months, despite President Lincoln's instructions to Banks and Shepley to cooperate fully with Durant and his colleagues to produce a speedy reconstruction of the state. Exasperated at the interminable delay, Durant wrote directly to Lincoln on October 1, 1863—two months after the President had urged General Banks to cooperate with the Union Association 22 Flanders to Chase, Aug. 12, 1863, Chase Papers, HSP. Flanders had known Thorpe during the latter's sojourn in Louisiana during the 1840s, selling him an interest in a New Orleans newspaper: Milton Rickels, Thomas Bangs Thorpe: Humorist of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, 1962), 117. Despite Thorpe's influence over the hiring of large numbers of manual laborers while city surveyor, he does not seem to have acquired much power in local politics and none whatever in radical circles. 23 Hamilton to Banks, Aug. 6, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; Minute Book, June 19, 1863, pp. 43-45, NYHS.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

and one month after Shepley had received specific orders to institute voter registration in the rural parishes. "Much progress has been made in New Orleans," reported Durant, but not in plantation country: "the means of communicating with a large portion of the state are not in our power." The military stalemate was a major handicap. "Before the commencement of a registra­ tion we ought to have undisturbed control of a considerable ter­ ritory," argued the attorney general, "at least the two congres­ sional districts proclaimed [by Lincoln himself in the emancipa­ tion proclamation] as not being in rebellion." The essential problem in the occupied parishes was military indifference. "If the officers and all authority in the country parishes would lend their cordial aid, a registration of voters could be had very soon" in the southern portion of the state. When a sufficient percentage of the electorate had taken the oath and declared its willingness to participate in reconstruction, an election could be held for delegates to a constitutional conven­ tion. Once that convention had rewritten the antebellum con­ stitution and abolished slavery, it could provide for a governor and a legislature. The reapportionment that followed the census of 1860 required that Louisiana be redistricted to provide five rather than four representatives, Durant noted. Either Congress or a reconstructed state legislature could carry out the reappor­ tionment, but until then no congressman could legally be elected from the old districts. "But to effect all this, all public officers"— and here Durant gave special emphasis to the local provost marshals—"should be urged and required to . . . promote the formation of a free state government." This, of course, the President had done two months earlier, to no avail. In his August 5 letter to General Banks, Lincoln had expressed the hope that a new constitution could be ready by the time Congress convened in December. "How long it will take to effect our object it is difficult to say," speculated Durant, but he thought that because of all the previous delays "it is not possible to have the work completed by the next session of Congress." He realized that the program he had outlined would prevent the replacement of Flanders and Hahn until the following year, but to Durant this seemed a small price to pay for abolishing slavery in a man­ ner that would permit no constitutional challenge. "It is not likely that any serious evil may result from the absence, for a

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

time, from the House of Representatives, of members from Louisiana," he concluded blithely. "In the meantime all can devote their energies to a more important object, that of re­ organizing a state government on the basis of freedom."24 By this time the President was impatient for visible signs of reconstruction in Louisiana. Michael Hahn, who was in Washing­ ton in early October, gave Lincoln the impression that the blame lay with the Union Association, not with General Banks.25 Three weeks later Benjamin Flanders was in Washington as well, and in an interview the President "complained that the work was too slow." The Treasury official reiterated the Union Association's view that "there was not a sufficient amount of territory and of the population of Louisiana under the occupation and protection of the forces of the United States to justify an election."26 Lincoln replied, according to Flanders, that "the necessity for immediate action was so great that he would recognize and sustain a state government organized by any part of the state we then had con­ trol of," and he instructed Flanders "to say so on his return to Louisiana."27 Lincoln fired off an angry letter to General Banks. He had assumed that Durant "was taking a registry of citizens, prepara­ tory to the election of a constitutional convention," the President began. "I now have his letter, written two months after . . . saying he is not taking a registry; and he does not let me know that he personally is expecting to do so." He added that Flanders was "now here, and he says nothing has yet been done. This disap­ points me bitterly." The President stressed that he had given General Shepley "special instructions from the War Department," and urged Banks to work closely with the military governor and the Union Association. "Without waiting for more territory," Lincoln emphasized, "go to work and give me a tangible nucleus which the rest of the state may rally around as fast as it can, and 24

Durant to Lincoln, Oct. 1, 1863, ALM, 26839. Hahn to Banks, Oct. 3, 10, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 26 American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of 1863 (New York, 1864),590-591. 27 Ibid. So anxious was Lincoln for some visible evidence of reconstruc­ tion that he wrote to Flanders a few days later to suggest that Louisiana hold a referendum on whether or not to hold a convention (which would, presumably, postpone an election even further): Lincoln to Flanders, Nov. 9, 1863, CWL, vii, 6. 25

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

which I can at once recognize and sustain as the true state gov­ ernment."28 Although the President was not aware of it, a few days after Durant mailed his letter and Flanders left for Washington, General Shepley had at last issued a general order authorizing the registration of all loyal voters in the occupied portions of Louisiana. A procedure was established by which the registrars were to be reimbursed by the army, as Durant had requested in June. "I am actively engaged in preparing books of registration for the parishes, selecting proper persons to act as registers of voters, and perfecting all preliminary arrangements," explained Durant to Banks on October 25. The great difficulty, of course, was in finding free state registrars for the rural parishes. In the sugar country, there was still a widespread belief that slavery might somehow be retained.20 In his letter to General Banks the President justified his im­ patience by pointing to the possibility of counterattack by proslavery forces: "Time is important. There is danger, even now, that the adverse element seeks insidiously to pre-occupy the ground." He expressed concern that "a few professedly loyal men shall draw the disloyal about them" and try to "set up a state government, repudiating the emancipation proclamation, and re-establishing slavery." Lincoln observed that he would not recognize their government, for he was unequivocally committed to emancipation in Louisiana; yet an attempted proslavery coup would prove a great embarrassment to the administration.30 The Conservative Unionists were, in fact, attempting to under­ cut the free state forces at that moment. The planters had not given up after Lincoln's refusal in June, and during the summer they had gained several new recruits from the Union Association. J. Ad. Rozier had resigned on July 17, when the association passed a resolution approving "the course of the Union men of Missouri, and the noble act of their state convention in abolishing 28

Lincoln to Banks, Nov. 5, 1863, CWL, vn, 1-2. Gen. Order No. 33, Oct. 9, 1863, New Orleans Times, Oct. 13, 1863; Durant to Banks, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. The procedure for compensating registrars is detailed in Durant to Shepley, Dec. 22, 1863, Jan. 1, 1864, and Durant, authorization of payment, Dec. 25, 1863, Durant Papers, NYHS. 30 Lincoln to Banks, Nov. 5, 1863, CWL, vn, 1-2. 29 Shepley,

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

human slavery."31 James L. Riddell added his resignation a week later, when the association adopted an oath pledging its mem­ bers to seek a free state government in Louisiana. J.Q.A. Fellows was impatient for an early restoration, as he confided to Lincoln in an interview, and became convinced that the slow-moving Union Association was detrimental to the cause of the govern­ ment. He asked the President to order an election for governor on the traditional first Monday in November, under the ante­ bellum constitution, but of course Lincoln ignored the request.32 At a meeting on September 18 in the Masonic Hall, presided over by Fellows and Riddell, the conservatives delegated a com­ mittee to present the same plan to General Shepley. "We were specifically instructed to ask Your Excellency . . . to issue to the proper officers in the several parishes of Louisiana, writs of elec­ tion, for the first Monday of November, next, for state officers and the legislature," indicated Christian Roselius, spokesman for the committee. Shepley declined to order an election "until after the state should be redistricted under the census of 1860, in ac­ cordance with a law of Congress requiring such apportionment," reported the committee to the reconvened meeting the following evening.33 Despite the negative response of both President Lincoln and General Shepley, the meeting set up a provisional executive com­ mittee, which was to be composed of two delegates from each rural parish represented and two from each legislative district in New Orleans. Its stated purpose was to secure "as speedily and effectively as possible the reestablishment of a civil government in Louisiana on the basis of the constitution and laws as they stood on January 1, 1861." The membership of the committee included Fellows and Field, prosperous lawyers from the city, and Riddell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Louisi­ ana and former postmaster of New Orleans. Treasury agent 31 Minute

Book, July 17, 24, 1863, pp. 65, 67, NYHS. The action of the Missouri convention that Rozier protested was, it should be noted, merely a gradual emancipation plan: see William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 (Columbia, Mo., 1963), 145-146. 32 Minute Book, July 24, 1863, p. 68, NYHS; Fellows to Lincoln, Sept. 5, 1863, ALM, 26069. 83 Memorandum, Conservative Unionists meeting, Sept. 18, 19, 1863, Roselius et al. to Shepley, Sept. 19, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY HUILDING

Cuthbert Bullitt was also involved, but he was not listed with the executive committee. Rural members included many of the planters involved in earlier meetings who had been appointed to police juries in their parishes by local provost marshals: Wil­ liam J. Minor, E. E. Malhiot, Thomas Cottman, and Andrew McCollam.34 The conservatives tried to keep their proceedings as quiet as possible for the moment, but by October 9 the Union Association had gotten wind of their proposal to Shepley. Durant was in­ structed to designate a group "to wait upon the Governor, and declare the sentiment of this committee as opposed to all elec­ tions prior to the formation of a new constitution." General Shep­ ley had made it clear that he would not order the election desired by the conservatives, but rumors continued to circulate in the city that something was afoot. "I am informed that a secret or­ ganization exists in this city which holds its meetings in the Masonic Hall," Shepley declared to General Banks on October 24. "By means of a secret grip known only to the members," he confided, they "exclude the public from their deliberations." The purpose of the group was "to make a pretence of a state elec­ tion," announcing their slate of nominees "a few days before the election so that only the initiated can have any chance to elect any candidates."35 "A speaker at their meeting stated that they were acting under your sanction," complained Shepley to the commanding general, "and that you had agreed to protect them in holding such an election." This view was corroborated by "several respectable gentlemen," he added. "I have deemed it my duty to call your attention to it." Durant had also heard the rumor, and he put the question to General Banks the following day. The conservatives "intend to proceed . . . in defiance of the wishes of the military governor," he declared, and "they say that they have your ap­ proval and assistance. This boast is giving them great strength in the community, but I refuse to believe in its truth."36 34 Memorandum, Conservative Unionists meeting, Sept. 19, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. A list of police jury positions held by these conservative planters is provided in CG, 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (Jan. 29, 1864), 413. 35 Minute Book, Oct. 9, 1863, p. 157, NYHS; Shepley to Banks, Oct. 24, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 36 Shepley to Banks, Oct. 24, 1863, Durant to Banks, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks Papers, LC.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

"No persons have received any authority or countenance from me in the matter of the election to which your letter refers," replied General Banks to Durant. "I have never been consulted in any manner," he added: "I had no knowledge of it until Sun­ day morning, when it was incidentally mentioned to me in con­ versation." He had communicated the information to General Shepley within an hour, Banks explained, because the subject of elections "pertains more exclusively to your own department of the government." Banks gave Durant full authority to say pub­ licly "in my name, as you request, that I have not been con­ sulted, and have given no countenance whatever to this move­ ment."37 Banks took this opportunity to deliver a lecture to both the attorney general and the military governor on the need to move more quickly on reconstruction matters. "This movement con­ firms the opinion that I have expressed before, that some prepara­ tions for a reorganization of the government are necessary," he wrote Durant. "The friends of the administration, and those who act with the Republicans of the country, suffer by its postpone­ ment." He was more specific in his recommendation to Shepley: "I am in favor of an immediate organization of the government by the people, and the earliest possible elections in the con­ gressional districts." Banks concluded, somewhat ambiguously, with the opinion that "no election will contribute to the perma­ nent restoration of the Union feeling in this state, that does not bind in some degree the leading men of the different political parties."38 The conservatives went ahead with their plans, publishing in the newspapers their "Address to the Citizens of Louisiana," calling on the people of the state to "go to the polls and cast your vote as usual" for congressmen, legislators, and state officers. The address did not specify how the voters were to perform this action, given the fact that there were no civil officers to operate the polls. The citizenry was merely told that "the military will 37 Banks to Durant, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks to Shepley, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. 38 Banks to Durant, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks to Shepley, Oct. 25, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. By this the general presumably meant that the election should be held on a basis that would include supporters of the Conservative Union movement.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

not interfere with you in the quiet exercise of your civil rights and duties." Despite Lincoln's denial of their request, the con­ servatives ventured to "assure you that your action in this respect will meet the approval of the national government." The address evoked a sense of crisis: "fail to make this little effort, and your last opportunity for renewing civil state government in accord­ ance with legal provisions, will fruitlessly pass with the probable destruction of republican institutions." The Congress sought to turn the Southern states, indeed "the whole country," into ter­ ritories, declared the conservatives, "and we charge this design upon a certain faction here." Among the most bizarre aspects of the entire episode was that the conservatives then wrote to that "certain faction," the Union Association: "we cordially invite you to join us." Needless to say, Durant declined the offer on the be­ half of the association.39 General Shepley ordered that any attempts to hold an election be halted. All was quiet in the city on November 2. The conserva­ tives claimed to have conducted elections in several rural par­ ishes, however, and at a meeting on November 6, A. P. Field and Thomas Cottman announced their intention to go to Washington and press their claims on the House seats formerly occupied by Flanders and Hahn. "The party that has learned nothing and for­ gotten nothing in Louisiana seeks to put slavery on its ancient throne," wrote Durant to Chase on the same day. It was rumored, moreover, that the Clerk of the House, Emerson Etheridge, had agreed to put the conservatives' names on the roll when Congress convened. In his official capacity as state attorney general he had written to Etheridge denying the validity of the claims, Durant noted, and he hoped the House would not take the matter seriously.40 Durant's information was correct. Etheridge, a Tennessee Unionist who had drifted into bitter anti-Republicanism as the party of Lincoln had moved toward emancipation, had indeed promised to aid Cottman and Field in their claims.41 In fact, the clerk had conceived the idea of a masterful bit of political in39

New Orleans Times, Oct. 28, 31, 1863. Orleans Times, Nov. 7, 1863; Durant to Chase, Nov. 6, 1863, Durant to Etheridge, Nov. 6, 1863, Chase Papers, LC. 41 Herman Belz, "The Etheridge Conspiracy of 1863: A Projected Con­ servative Coup," JSH, xxxvi (Nov. 1970), 556. io New

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

trigue. He planned to leave the names of a dozen Republican congressmen-elect off the roll, add those of Cottman, Field, and Joshua Baker, another Louisiana conservative who had been elected with them, and create an artificial Democratic majority in the House. This would make it possible to elect minority leader Samuel S. Cox of Ohio as Speaker of the House. Etheridge based his attempt on an act passed at the end of the preceding Con­ gress, providing that the clerk "shall make a roll of the repre­ sentatives elect, and place thereon the names of all persons, and of such persons only, whose credentials show that they were regularly elected in accordance with the law." The purpose of the act had been to bar just such improper applicants as Cottman and Field, but its wording unintentionally left Etheridge "master of the position," as Maryland radical Henry Winter Davis correctly perceived.42 President Lincoln learned of the situation on October 23, and he immediately wrote to Republican congressmen asking them to secure additional documents from their governors following the exact form stipulated by the clerk. At a party caucus the day before Congress convened the House leadership prepared to deal with the obstinate Tennessean if he should attempt to carry out his stratagem, and Henry Dawes of Massachusetts tried to per­ suade Etheridge to drop the matter. There was even talk of physically carrying the clerk out of the chamber if he should persist in defiance of the House.43 Lincoln's personal secretaries went over to Capitol Hill on the appointed day "expecting a taste of scrimmage but we were dis­ appointed. Etheridge was very quiet and reasonable." The testy clerk attempted his coup, leaving off the names of sixteen Union­ ist or Republican representatives when he read the roll and add­ ing Cottman, Field, and Baker (who had not even bothered to come to Washington). He backed down, however, when Davis moved that the members from his state of Maryland be added to the list. The Democrats protested that Davis' motion was out of order, but Etheridge ruled in its favor. The vote on this key motion revealed that several Northern Democrats, and ironically enough, A. P. Field as well, had sided with the Republicans. The rest was anticlimactic: the names of the remaining delegations ^ Ibid., 553-554.

43

Ibid., 558-561.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

were added to the roll to give the Republicans a clear majority. "Colfax was elected and made a neat speech," noted John Hay in his diary, "and we went home."44 The particular case of the Louisiana claimants was, as a matter of course, decided in the negative. It is surprising that the House allowed Cottman and Field to take seats even provisionally; Thaddeus Stevens objected to this, but the claimants were even permitted to participate in the speakership contest. Cottman nominated Francis P. Blair of Missouri, and the two Louisianans gave Blair his only two votes. Cottman left shortly, but Field remained in the House and gave an impassioned defense of His claim. There was never the slightest doubt of the outcome, not only because of the irregularity of his "election" and the miniscule number of votes he had received, even by his own claim, but also because of a constitutional issue. The House ruled, precisely as Durant had advised President Lincoln, that Congress must first pass a bill reapportioning Louisiana, in accordance with the census of 1860, to provide five congressional districts instead of four. Then, and only then, would it be possible to elect repre­ sentatives from the state.45 Once again a conservative attempt to go over the head of the army of occupation had failed. Their involvement in the Etheridge plot revealed the inevitable political destination of the former Whigs who ran the planters' movement: their antebellum enemy, the Democratic Party. The collapse of the Whig Party in 1854 had left the sugar planters without a political home; their parishes had flirted with the Know-Nothing organization, per­ sisted under the "Opposition" label for a few years, and staunchly supported Constitutional Union candidate John Bell in 1860. In wartime politics their commitment to slavery and the white supremacy cause left the planters no alternative but alliance with the Democrats: the polarization wrought by secession had created an unbridgeable gap between right and left.46 44Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 130-131; CG, 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (Dec. 7, 1863), 4-7; Belz, "Etheridge Conspiracy," 561-562. 45CG, 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (Jan. 29, 1864), 411-414. Thaddeus Stevens expressed his regret that the House had not considered this point in con­ nection with the seating of Flanders and Hahn in the preceding session. 46 For a discussion of ideological polarization in the Civil War party system, see the Epilogue below.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Shortly after the "Masonic Hall" elections, the issue of Negro suffrage surfaced in the political arena of the free state move­ ment. As early as June 5, 1863, the Union Association had desig­ nated L'Union, the small weekly owned and edited by the New Orleans free men of color, as the French-language publisher of its political announcements, and the black community had fol­ lowed the activities of the convention movement with great in­ terest. On November 5 an interracial political rally heard several speakers discuss the question of equal suffrage. The first speaker was a visiting Texas Unionist, a former slaveholder, who gave a vigorous antislavery speech but closed with paternalistic advice to blacks "to be content for the present with achieving their freedom from bondage—not to ask for political rights." There was, explained the Texan, "a vast amount of prejudice to remove before the question of franchise could be considered." This view was immediately challenged by the free men of color, whose legal status had not been affected by emancipation. P.B.S. Pinchback, a former captain in one of Butler's Negro units and one of the leading blacks in reconstruction politics after the war, bluntly rejected the Texan's gradualistic advice. If blacks were citizens, they had a right to vote, argued Pinchback, and in light of their efforts on the battlefield it was only justice to en­ franchise Negro soldiers at least. If they were to be liable to the draft, blacks should be welcomed at the ballot box.4T Franyois Boisdore, long a leader of the New Orleans free men of color, supported this view and proposed immediate en­ franchisement by the military governor before the convention election. "Why should we wait for the establishment of a free state government?" he asked. The federal government had as­ sumed the authority to require a special oath of all voters, to apportion the state on the basis of white population rather than the antebellum calculation of total population, and to call an elec­ tion through a military governor. If it could make these con­ stitutional adjustments, argued Boisdore, then the federal govern­ ment had the legal power to grant equal suffrage. Following this line of reasoning, the group adopted a resolution appealing to i7 New Orleans Times, Nov. 6, 1863; New York Times, Nov. 19, 1863. Agnes G. Grosz, "The Political Career of P.B.S. Pinchback," LHQ, xxvn (April 1944), 530-531, describes Pinchback's own bitter experience in being forced out of the army by General Banks only two weeks after this rally.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

General Shepley to order the registration of Negro voters who had been free before the war.48 Boisdore was not hostile to the Union Association, however. The men of color offer the whites their cooperation in the task of revising the constitution and setting up a free state govern­ ment, he declaimed: "will they refuse it?" Dr. Anthony P. Dostie, an active member of the association, followed Boisdore to the podium. The dentist was known for his radical views, and his response to the challenge drew applause. He was reluctant to see the blacks press the suffrage question, admitted Dostie, but he personally would support their efforts if they insisted on going ahead.49 By this time Durant was highly favorable to the idea of Negro suffrage. As he explained to Secretary Chase, "I have had long and intimate business relations with the leading freemen of African descent in this city, and I believe that I enjoy their con­ fidence to as great an extent as any other in the city." The attorney general told Chase that "these men have petitioned Gov­ ernor Shepley to allow them to be registered" but that the gen­ eral had not responded to their request. "They think that the per­ sons of African descent born free before the rebellion . . . should be admitted to the registration. I think the claim well founded in justice."50 Predictably, Governor Shepley did not respond to the call for Negro suffrage; nor did he name a date for a convention elec­ tion. Flanders returned from Washington with Lincoln's blunt words about the need for quick action ringing in his ears, and with a copy of the President's letter urging General Banks to assist the convention movement in every way. Lincoln's call for speed "has had the desired effect," Flanders wrote Secretary Chase: "all departments of the government now appear on the same side." The Free State General Committee, as the Union Association now renamed itself, went to Shepley's office and asked him to name a date for a convention election. They sug­ gested the date of January 25, 1864: "the opinion of our commit­ tee is that we can elect an entire delegation from New Orleans in favor of the abolition of slavery," said Durant, and considering 48

New Orleans Times, Nov. 6, 1863; Annual Cyclopedia, 1863, 591-592. New Orleans Times, Nov. 6, 1863. 50 Durant to Chase, Dec. 4,1863, Chase Papers, LC.

49

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

the limited number of rural parishes within Union lines, "this would give us a majority."51 Shepley continued to stall, but Dr. Dostie announced at a pub­ lic meeting that a convention election would probably be held on the suggested date of January 25. His words were greeted with tremendous applause, according to the newspaper account, and someone struck up "Yankee Doodle." "Even if we do not have the whole state," wrote James S. Whitaker to Chase, "it will be best to get what we can in this moment, as a grand rallying point."62 A few days later, on December 3, 1863, Durant broached the the subject of Negro suffrage in public for the first time. The radical lawyer chose as an appropriate forum a meeting of the Workingmen's National Union League, which was headed by his friend Thomas J. Earhart. Durant shared the podium with John Hutchins, a friend of Secretary Chase who had until recently been a Republican congressman from the fiercely antislavery Western Reserve. The crowd was "one of the largest that has been known at Lyceum Hall this season," reported the New Orleans Times, and it was befitting the name of the organization that "the workingmen were out in force."53 "The applause of the audience, with which Mr. Durant was greeted as he advanced to the platform, testified to their apprecia51 Flanders to Chase, Dec. 12, 1863, Chase Papers, HSP; Durant to Chase, Dec. 4, 1863, Flanders to Chase, Dec. 4, 1863, Chase Papers, LC. 52 New Orleans Times, Nov. 29, 1863; Whitaker to Chase, Nov. 30, 1863, Chase Papers, LC. For a comment on the hesitation of many New Orleans Unionists to undertake an election before more of the state was occupied by the federal army (and the voter registration lists more substantial), see the New York Times, Dec. 21, 1863. 53IVeu) Orleans Times, Dec. 4, J 863. For a similar assessment of the social composition of the group, see the New York Times, Dec. 21, 1863: "the Workingmen's National Union League is composed mainly, as its name implies, of workingmen." The Times correspondent added that its purpose was "to revolutionize the social condition of this state." A Northern visitor had a different comment about the social background of the audience: "it was largely attended by substantial and intelligent men" (John F. Morse to Chase, Dec. 12, 1863, Chase Papers, LC). This particular organization had more working-class participants than most Unionist groups, it would seem, but it also contained many like lawyer Earhart who simply identified with the social class from which they had risen. Unfortunately, it is not possible to compile membership or attendance lists for the organization.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

tion of the principles which he advocated," continued the Times, "and it was continued throughout his eloquent speech, which en­ chained their attention for an hour and a half." This was all the more remarkable, commented the reporter, in that "he assured them in the outset that he was a radical Abolitionist." Durant was at his oratorical best as he talked about the process by which the slavery issue had swept the nation into civil war. It was a fallacy to argue that the antislavery radicals at the North were respon­ sible for the breakup of the Union, he thought, for secession was due to the unwillingness of proslavery Southerners to abide by the results of a fair election. It was the secessionists who started the war, argued Durant, and they were to blame for unleashing the forces of revolution in the South. Slavery was a casualty of the war, for "revolutions never leave nations as they find them."84 The radical lawyer then hinted, somewhat ambiguously, that more changes were yet to occur. He called the attention of the audience to a decision advanced by U.S. Attorney General Ed­ ward Bates a year earlier, to the effect that all Negroes who had been free before the war were citizens, despite the view of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.53 Former slaves were not included in Bates' decision, of course, "but as to those who had been born free, Durant believed they were "equally entitled, with any other class, to all the rights, civil, educational, political, and religious, of American citizens in full." To this, according to the newspaper account, there was "immense applause." John Hutchins followed Durant to the platform and remarked that the evening had convinced him that Louisiana "is equal to Ohio in radicalism."56 54

New Orleans Times, Dec. 4, 1863. decision is described and quoted in Annual Cyclopedia, 1862,

55 Bates'

752. 59 New Orleans Times, Dec. 4, 1863; New York Times, Dec. 31, 1863; Durant to Chase, Dec. 4, 1863, Chase Papers, LC. In a letter to Chase three days later Hutchins said that he and Durant had spoken "with as much freedom and plainness as I would have on the Western Reserve," and he added: "I have made up my mind to reside here" (Hutchins to Chase, Dec. 6, 1863, ibid.). "There was as much abolitionism in Mr. Durant's address as the most earnest hater of the peculiar institution could desire," noted John F. Morse. "What surprised and delighted me was the enthusiasm with which the audience received the expression of every word directed against the existence of human slavery" (Morse to Chase, Dec. 12, 1863, ibid.).

RECONSTRUCTION AND PARTY BUILDING

Now the die was cast. The free state movement, prodded by the New Orleans free men of color, was moving toward accept­ ance of at least limited enfranchisement of blacks. This approach would obviously antagonize the conservative whites to whom General Banks sought to appeal, but the "Masonic Hall" election in November had dramatized for Durant and his colleagues the implacable opposition of proslavery elements to cooperation with the Republican Party. Whether out of a change of heart or due to his sense of political arithmetic, Durant was now prepared to take a major step to the left—and this decision antedated the introduction of the first Negro suffrage proposal on the floor of Congress by almost two weeks. The long delays in the reorganization of civil government— largely the result of the army's refusal to assist the free state movement—were at an end. Under increased pressure from the White House, Banks or Shepley would now have to act. The President had long supported the convention idea, and the unity within the free state movement gave promise of rapid success once the military lent its support. The pressure was on General Banks now: he was being forced to choose between right and left, for thus far his efforts to build a new constituency of the political center had come to naught. At this critical juncture President Lincoln issued his famous ten-percent proclamation of reconstruction. It would have an enormous—and unintended— impact on the course of events in Louisiana.

CHAPTER VI

The Suffrage issue: General Banhs Tahes Command

THE turning point in wartime re­ construction, at least in Louisiana, was December 1863, when President Lincoln issued his famous ten-percent plan for the reor­ ganization of civil government in the South. His proclamation served as a catalyst for the split between radicals and moderates in the Louisiana free state movement, although that was not Lincoln's intention. General Banks used the proclamation to legit­ imize his own intervention in Louisiana politics, taking power out of the hands of the radical leadership and swinging the full sup­ port of the military behind the moderate minority. The central issue in the split was the conversion in December of the radical wing to the cause of Negro suffrage, which Banks saw as a threat to his moderate strategy of reconstruction. At this critical junc­ ture the general misinformed Lincoln about the political 'situa­ tion in Louisiana in order to win the President's support for his moderate "coup." Ultimately, Lincoln acquiesced in Banks' ac­ tions and committed himself (for the duration of the war) to a policy of suffrage for whites only. Had it not been for the dra­ matic intervention of General Banks, Lincoln's approach to the politics of reconstruction might have evolved in a quite different direction in Louisiana. Thus the rush of events in this crucial period must be examined with great care. On December 9, 1863, the President's personal secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, brought his annual message to Capitol Hill to be read to the Senate and the House along with his ten-percent proclamation. In his diary Hay noted that he and Nicolay "watched the effect" of the proclamation "with great anxiety" as it was being read in the Senate. The reception of the President's views on reconstruction left them pleasantly amazed. "Whatever may be the results or the verdict of history the im­ mediate effect of this paper is something wonderful," Hay mused.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

"Men acted as if the millenium had come." Among the radicals, "Chandler was delighted, Sumner was beaming, while at the other political pole Dixou and Reverdy Johnson said it was highly satisfactory." Hay added that Massachusetts radical Henry Wil­ son "came to me and, laying his broad palms on my shoulders, said, 'The President has struck another great blow. Tell him for me, "God bless him."' ":1 "In the House the effect was the same," Hay noted. "Boutwell was looking over it quietly, and saying, 'It is a very able and shrewd paper. It has great points of popularity, and it is right.'" The old antislavery radical Owen Lovejoy reflected quietly, "I shall live to see slavery ended in America." Lincoln's secretaries returned to the White House, and "All day the tide of congratula­ tion ran on. Many called to pay their personal respects. All seemed frankly enthusiastic." That evening Nicolay and Hay were sitting around "talking politics and blackguarding our friends in the Council Chamber" with Lincoln's old Illinois friend Norman Judd. The President dropped by and joined in the conversation, talking confidentially about the political position of the powerful Blair family. The sub­ ject drifted to the message and proclamation, and Judd observed shrewdly that "the opinion of people who read your message to­ day is that on that platform two of your ministers must walk the plank—Blair and Bates." Postmaster General Montgomery Blair of Maryland and Attorney General Edward Bates of Missouri were, along with Secretary of State William H. Seward, consid­ ered to be the most conservative members of the cabinet. Lincoln reported that although radical Salmon P. Chase had raised some objections to various points, both Blair and Bates "acquiesced in it without objection." It was, momentarily at least, a triumph of consensus politics.2 1Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 131-132. The senators partially identified by Hay were Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, James Dixon of Connecticut, and Reverdy Johnson of Maryland. For the "Annual Message" and the accompanying "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction," Dec. 8, 1863, see CWL, vn, 36-56. 2Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 132-134. Note that Secretary Chase, ac­ cording to Lincoln, objected to certain aspects of the ten-percent proclama­ tion. As noted in the Prologue, n. 8, this supports Chase's memory of the

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

The position the President assumed in his proclamation, as constitutional historian Herman Belz has demonstrated, "agreed more with the radical than with the conservative position of De­ cember, 1863." Lincoln went on record in favor of a proposition that was the fundamental demand of the antislavery Republicans: the recognition of emancipation was to be the first prerequisite for restoration. Before being allowed to participate in elections, in fact, every voter was required by the President to swear an oath not merely to uphold the U.S. Constitution but also to "abide by and faithfully support" all congressional acts and presidential proclamations regarding slavery.3 The very act of requiring an oath of all citizens, including those who claimed to have remained loyal, was more in keeping with radical thinking than with conservative views. Lincoln observed, in words that echoed the phrasing of radicals, that "an attempt to guaranty and protect a revived state government, constructed in whole, or in prepondering part, from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test," he insisted, "by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound." The President felt that his oath was "a sufficiently liberal one, which accepts as sound whoever will make sworn recantation of his former unsoundness," and he was insistent that some evidence of loyalty be required "as a test of admission to the political body."4 Lincoln's oath was more exacting, interestingly enough, than that required by Durant and his registrars in Louisiana. The oath drawn up by the Union Association and approved by the President in August simply forced the prospective voter to repu­ diate the Confederacy, swear future loyalty to the federal govern­ ment, and express willingness to participate in the reorganization of state government. The association adopted a more radical oath for its members during the summer, requiring them to in­ dicate their commitment to emancipation as well as to civil govcabinet meeting in question rather than Lincoln's recollection (in April 1865). 2 Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), 162, 155-167; Lincoln, "Proclamation," Dec. 8, 1863, CWL, vn, 54. 4 Lincoln, "Annual Message," Dec. 8, 1863, CWL, vn, 51; Belz, Recon­ structing the Union, 163.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

ernment. This act antagonized conservatives, even though the oath was not designed for voter registration.5 The radicals were happy to be able to switch to the President's oath in December. Historians once emphasized the "leniency" of Lincoln's amnesty oath, as contrasted with the "ironclad" version favored by con­ gressional Republicans. It is true that after the passage of the Wade-Davis bill six months later, and the President's veto of that bill, the form of the oath did become a point of controversy. At the time of the proclamation, however, the ironclad oath barring individuals who had ever aided the Confederacy in the past was only applied to federal officeholders; no one suggested its use in registering the electorate. Nor did any radical congressman object to that feature of the President's plan.6 Once Southern voters had taken the oath, Lincoln's plan en­ couraged them to participate in the reorganization of state gov­ ernment. However, they would also have to meet the qualifica­ tions specified by "the election law of the state existing immedi­ ately before the so-called act of secession"; "all others" were ex­ cluded. Although some states such as Louisiana barred soldiers and newly arrived immigrants from voting, the primary purpose of this provision was to allow state prohibitions of Negro suffrage to continue in effect. Any other position on this sensitive question would have been truly radical. The first Negro suffrage bill pro­ posed in Congress was to come in the weeks after the proclama­ tion, and was fated to die a quiet death in committee. Six months later Congress passed the Wade-Davis bill without enfranchising the black population of the South. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, and William Lloyd Garrison were demanding the ballot for freedmen by this time, but the Repub­ licans on Capitol Hill were still silent on the issue.7 Lincoln did not specify what he meant in the proclamation by the term state government. What was to be the first step in the reconstruction process: a convention to revise the antebellum 5 Minute

Book of the Union Association of New Orleans, July 24, 1863, pp. 67-68, NYHS. 8 Harold M. Hyman, Era of the Oath: Northern Loyalty Tests during the Civil War (Philadelphia, 1954), 21-26. 7 Lincoln, "Proclamation," Dec. 8, 1863, CWL, VII, 55; James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 239-241, 245-246.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

constitution, the election of a governor and other state officers, the election of a legislature, or all three? The President stipulated only that the state must have "a republican form of government." Congressional Republicans had given this phrase a particular constitutional interpretation throughout most of 1863, however, and Lincoln's use of the term implied to them acceptance of that interpretation.8 Senator Ira Harris of New York, a friend of the President, had introduced a bill in February using Article 4, Section 4, of the Constitution as the basis for congressional authority over recon­ struction. In the Harris bill the federal guarantee of a republican form of government was to be implemented by the mechanism of a constitutional convention. Maryland radical Henry Winter Davis had popularized this approach in a speech at Philadelphia in September; James M. Ashley used it as the basis for recon­ struction in a bill he submitted to the House two weeks after the President's proclamation. Lincoln had approved the con­ vention movement in Louisiana, moreover, and its goals were in line with the thinking of these congressional radicals. Though not explicitly endorsing the convention idea in his proclamation, the President certainly viewed it as compatible with his plan.9 Perhaps the most novel feature of the proclamation was Lin­ coln's designation of a quantitative minimum of participation. If a minimum of 10 percent of the state's antebellum voters took the oath and qualified with the electoral laws in all other ways, the President was willing to recognize the regime they estab­ lished as "the true government of the state." Lincoln did not indicate why he chose a percentage as small as 10 percent as an acceptable minimum. On this point alone he differed from previous congressional practice. The House had consistently rejected the results of war­ time elections in Virginia and North Carolina in which a similar­ ly small proportion of the antebellum electorate had participated. Only where a majority of the antebellum electorate of a district had come to the polls—as in the cases of Horace Maynard and Andrew Clement of Tennessee, and the two Louisianans, Flan­ ders and Hahn—did congressional Republicans agree to seat the 8 Lincoln, "Annual Message," Dec. 8, 1863, CWL, VII, 50-51, and "Procla­ mation," Dec. 8,1863, ibid., 55. 9 Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 122-125, 133-135, 176-184.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

claimants. In these, as in every other election case, the Demo­ crats were solidly opposed to the recognition of minority rule in the South. Insistence on majority rule was by no means undeviating, however, and in an early stage of what became the WadeDavis bill, congressional radicals agreed to go along with the President. BeIz surmises that "Lincoln probably thought that Congress would agree to reconstruction according to the 10-per­ cent plan, as long as the right Unionists controlled the process on the local level."10 The primary reason for designating a minimum figure of 10 percent was the President's desire to initiate provisional govern­ ments as soon as possible, if his attitude toward the course of affairs in Louisiana is any indication of his mood. The fewer voters required to participate, the quicker the elections could be held. In his annual message Lincoln noted that reconstruction efforts had bogged down in some states: "the elements for re­ sumption seem ready for action, but remain inactive, apparently for want of a rallying point." By assuring hesitant Southern Unionists that their efforts "will not be rejected here" (provided they met the modest requirements of the proclamation), he hoped to convince them "to act sooner than they otherwise would."11 Two features of the President's proclamation were clearly pleasing to Democrats and conservative Republicans. The procla­ mation began with a pledge of pardon for all Confederates, ex­ cept for a small class of oflBceholders. Conservatives had been urging such an amnesty, though without Lincoln's exceptions, throughout much of the war. In addition, the President's insist­ ence on emancipation was softened for conservatives by his willingness to accept a temporary apprenticeship system for the freedmen, provided that such a system "recognize and declare their permanent freedom, and provide for their education."12 Despite these aspects of the President's plan, it is not surprising that the Democratic newspapers of the country attacked it with the same venom they always used for Republican policies. The New York World offered left-handed praise for the apprenticeship 10 Ibid., 164-165, 11 Lincoln, "Annual Message," Dec. 8, 1863, CWL, VII, 52. 12 Lincoln, "Proclamation," Dec. 8, 1863, ibid., 55. This is, presumably, a reference to Gen. Banks' labor system as it operated during 1863.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

plan, suggesting that a five-year period of guardianship for the blacks would provide the necessary time for conservatives to carry a legal challenge of the emancipation proclamation to the Supreme Court. That tribunal would, of course, find the abolition of slavery unconstitutional, thought the editor. The Democratic World was harshly critical of the President's earlier reliance on the republican form of government clause: "it is an odd kind of republicanism which divides a community into two classes by presenting an odious oath which a majority are certain to reject, and then erect the minority into a privileged class, investing them with all political power." The proclamation was, above all, "Mr. Lincoln's trump card for the Presidency." It was intended to placate the radical wing of the Republican Party, calculated the World, and to add the electoral votes of several Southern states to Lincoln's presidential cause.13 The Detroit Free Press was less restrained: "there never was a message from a President of the United States so weak and puerile as this." The Chicago Times assured its readers sarcas­ tically that Lincoln's proclamation was his own work: "it is in his style, and his is a style that nobody imitates. Slipshod as have been all his literary performances, this is the most slovenly. If they were slipshod, this is barefoot." The traditional Democratic theme of white supremacy was sounded by the New York Metro­ politan Record: "ye war Democrats, what do you think of being told that the black soldier is just as good as the white, for this is the amount of the President's message? What next? Shall we look among the black race for the President's successor?"14 James Gordon Bennett claimed that his New York Herald was an independent newspaper, but on questions relating to recon­ struction he generally sided with the Democrats. The Herald predicted that the proclamation would "silence all cavilling on the part of the radical faction of the Republican Party" by ac­ ceding to their demands, and it joked about the ten-percent plan: "we dare say that our Father Abraham's 'one-tenth' proposition was suggested by the proposition of the original Father Abraham of the ten righteous men in Sodom." Bennett predicted that "the 13

New York World, Dec. 10, 1863. Detroit Free Press, Chicago Times, New York Metropolitan Record, quoted in Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 4 vols. (New York, 1939), H, 490-492. 14

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

result will be the same" with the President's plan of reconstruc­ tion: "the righteous men necessary to save the South from hellfire and brimstone will not be found." He appreciated the political skill with which Lincoln used the proclamation to compromise the differences within his party. "The art of riding two horses is not confined to the circus," as Bennett phrased it. "President Lincoln has been riding two horses with the skill of an old cam­ paigner"; with the announcement of his reconstruction message "the radical horse is a 'leetle ahead.' "15 On Capitol Hill, radicals Thaddeus Stevens and Henry Winter Davis cooperated on December 15 in establishing a House select committee to consider the issues raised by the President's pro­ posals on reconstruction. Speaker Schuyler Colfax named Davis chairman of the nine-man committee. A few days later radical James Ashley of Ohio, who had also been placed on the Davis committee, introduced a bill to provide a detailed blueprint for the reorganization of state government in the South. Ashley's bill was similar to the provisions of Lincoln's proclamation in many respects, and it incorporated much of Ira Harris's reconstruction proposal from the preceding session of the Senate, relying for its constitutional justification on the republican form of government guarantee. With one crucial exception—the question of Negro suffrage—it was also a description of the way in which the re­ organization process was working in Louisiana under Durant's leadership.16 In Ashley's bill the President was directed to appoint a military governor for each state once it was occupied, which of course he had been doing for some time; when the loyal people signified their desire to reorganize a state government, he was authorized to order the registration of "all loyal voters." That was the phrase used in Stanton's August directive to General Shepley regarding Louisiana, but now it was clearly understood that Ashley had in mind the enfranchisement of Negroes as well as whites. This would require a change in the process of voter registration in Louisiana along the lines Durant was advocating. Ashley's bill stipulated that all prospective voters must take the amnesty oath provided by Lincoln's proclamation, but former 15

New York Herald, Dec. 8, 10, 1863. Reconstructing the Union, 176-187. A copy of the bill can be found only in the National Archives (176n). 16Belz,

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

Confederate soldiers, officers, and public officials were prohibited from registering. Once the number of registered voters equaled 10 percent of those participating in the election of 1860, the military governor was to order the election of a constitutional convention. The new constitution had to meet certain basic re­ quirements, as previously specified by Ira Harris: the disfran­ chisement of Confederate officeholders, the repudiation of the rebel debt, and the repeal of all previous laws regarding slavery. The revised document was to be submitted to the people for ratification, and if it was approved, the President was to issue a proclamation "declaring the government formed to be the con­ stitutional government of the state." Ashley's bill was said by friends and critics alike to be compatible with Lincoln's plan of reconstruction, aside from the important difference over Negro suffrage, and at this point the President seemed amenable to compromise with the congressional radicals.17 At the very moment Ashley was drafting his bill in Washing­ ton, Durant and his colleagues in New Orleans were preparing to place the Union Association on record in favor of Negro suffrage. The initiative for this move was local, just as the convention movement as a whole had been the inspiration of Louisianans. The black community in New Orleans had been watching the efforts of the free state advocates carefully for over six months, and during this time the radicals had drifted quietly, almost imperceptibly, in the direction of a closer alliance with the men of color. The tempo of political activity in New Orleans increased dra­ matically in late November and early December as the partici­ pants in the convention movement sought to convince ShepIey to order an election. "The free state cause is gaining rapidly," wrote Hutchins in amazement. "Meetings are held in some part of the city almost every night." Slavery was denounced in Lyceum Hall with as much force as in Cooper Union, commented John R. Hamilton in the New York Times: the free state movement "will, ere long, like an overwhelming avalanche carry everything before it."18 " Ibid., 176-187. 18 New York Times, Nov. 11, Dec. 14, 1863; New Orleans Times, Nov. 14, 15, 26, Dec. 7, 10, 11, 1863; New Orleans L'Union, Nov. 28, Dec. 1, 1863; Hutchins to Chase, Dec. 6, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; Flanders to Chase, Dec. 12, 1863, Chase Papers, HSP.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

The radicals called for a mass meeting on December 22 "to ratify the action of the committee in calling on Governor Shepley to order an election." The Era contrasted the restraint of the free state men with the precipitate action of the Masonic Hall clique, who had tried to hold their own election without military sanc­ tion. Only General Shepley, it emphasized, had the proper au­ thority to order an election. The Era was technically correct, but as the New York Times correspondent pointed out, the pressure to speed up the reconstruction process "comes from a source far higher than Governor Shepley."19 The radicals could not order an election, but they could hold a party convention. B. Gratz Brown, the Missouri radical who had just been elected to the U.S. Senate, issued an election call to all the "friends of freedom" in the border states to join together in a convention at Louisville, Kentucky, on January 8, 1864. The avowed purpose was to combine efforts to eradicate the last traces of slavery from those areas exempted from the Emancipa­ tion Proclamation, but Brown's biographer contends that it was also conceived as an early move to promote the presidential can­ didacy of John C. Fremont as an anti-Lincoln Republican. Durant never mentioned the presidential aspect of the proposed conven­ tion, but he was interested in using the Friends of Freedom as a means for building something like a party apparatus in Louisiana. The Free State General Committee, as the Union Association had renamed itself, issued a call for delegates of the district clubs to meet together in convention on December 15. The purpose of the meeting would be to choose delegates for the Louisville conven­ tion, but it was actually to serve a far more significant function in the political calculus of the free state movement.20 Among other things, the "party" convention would serve to bring some of the country registrars to the city. Two of the five representatives from the Regeneration Club of Lafourche, Terre­ bonne, and Assumption parishes, Alfred Rougelot and Justin Sarta, were registrars appointed by Durant, as was Seth Lewis, 19

New Orleans Era, Dec. 3, 1863; New York Times, Dec. 21, 1863. New York Tribune, Oct. 24, 1863, reprinted Brown's circular, and the New Orleans Times, Nov. 26, 1863, the call for the Louisiana conven­ tion. For the claim that the Louisville gathering was designed to boost Fremont's presidential candidacy, see Norma L. Peterson, Freedom and Franchise: The Political Career of B, Gratz Brown (Columbia, Mo., 1965), 134. 20 The

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

of St. Mary Parish, who accompanied them.21 The registrar in Baton Rouge, a prosperous old Polish emigre named Stanislas Wrotnowski, had been instrumental in getting a delegation from that city to New Orleans for the convention. Wrotnowski had a special commitment to the cause, for his three-hundred-acre cattle farm and his house in Baton Rouge had been destroyed by the rebels, his two sons had enlisted in the Union army, and one had died at Port Hudson. Durant thanked Wrotnowski for his help, and he noted candidly that "it is highly important that the convention should be attended by as many from country parishes as we can possibly secure, in order that our action may have influence upon public opinion."22 There were still great difficulties in communicating with the people in many of the so-called "occupied" parishes, and Durant often found that his "appointments" were slow in responding. He wrote to a surgeon stationed with the Corps d'Afrique at Port Hudson, for example, asking his assistance in securing a registrar for nearby West Feliciana. Durant had offered the appointment to John Aberger, formerly the postmaster at Port Hudson and reportedly an "unconditional Union man," but had received no answer. The attorney general requested the surgeon to call on Aberger and ask him about the matter. If this man were not willing, Durant noted, other suggestions would be appreciated. "I prefer to have a civilian as register of voters," he added, "be­ cause I wish to avoid all appearance of military influence."23 Despite these efforts, only 9 of the 166 delegates who attended the Friends of Freedom convention at Lyceum Hall on December 15 were from rural parishes. This was to be primarily a city affair. 21 Durant to Shepley, Dec. 22, 1863, Durant Papers, NYHS. This col­ lection consists of one letterbook containing a heavy load of correspondence, dealing largely with voter registration and the convention movement in December 1863 and January 1864. 22 Durant to Wrotnowski, Dec. 14, 18, 1863, Durant Papers, NYHS. The biographical information on Wrotnowski is from the New Orleans Era, Feb. 14, 1864. 23 Durant to Robert K. Smith, Dec. 17, 1863, Durant to Gen. James Bowen, Dec. 25, 1863, Durant Papers, NYHS. For a similar request, see Durant to Col. W. O. Fiske, Dec. 18, 1863, ibid. Elsewhere the situation was more promising: Durant to James H. Kennedy, Dec. 22, 1863, Durant to William Jones, Dec. 24, 1863, and authorizations for payment for Alfred Rougelot (Terrebonne Parish), Dec. 25, 1863, and for Seth Lewis (St. Mary), Dec. 26, 1863, ibid.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

The meeting chose a committee on credentials, which, after a short recess, reported in favor of seating 148 delegates. The ma­ jority of the five-man committee had voted against the participa­ tion of 18 delegates from two Negro organizations in the city.24 Durant immediately objected to this decision and moved that the report be referred back to committee. Thomas J. Earhart asked that the committee chairman read the names of the two Negro organizations and their members, and the list was read. Anthony Fernandez, the old Creole who had headed the first Unionist club in the city after Butler's arrival, remarked that "many of the delegates whose names had just been read were personally known to him; they were gentlemen," he murmured, "men of education. This was a Convention of the Friends ol Freedom, and he saw no reason for excluding these men." Durant's motion was accepted, and the committee on credentials seated the Negro delegates.25 After resolving this touchy question with equanimity, the con­ vention proceeded to elect a permanent chairman. Earhart moved that Durant be chosen by acclamation. The motion was adopted, and as Earhart and Dr. James Ready escorted him to the chair, the attorney general "was received with immense applause." He spoke to the convention with the eloquence to which the Union­ ists of New Orleans had become accustomed, and his theme was the great cause they had made their own this day: "This conven­ tion is the first deliberative body in Louisiana that will have proclaimed the freedom of all men. No matter with how dark a hue their skins may be embrowned, beneath the surface there is the soul of a man, and therein," Durant urged, "we recognize the great principle of equality and fraternity. It is the assertion of this principle which will lead to the reconstruction of our country."26 21 Proceedings of the Convention of the Friends of Freedom (New Or­ leans, 1863) (hereafter cited as PCFF), is the source for the following ac­ count. The convention was reported, less fully, in the New Orleans Times, Dec. 16, 20, 1863, and in the New York Times, Dec. 27, 1863. 25 PCFF, 5-6. The New Orleans Times, Dec. 16, 1863, reported that "a number of free men of color were among the delegates; much the larger portion of them occupied seats in a body on the right of the chair, but several were scattered through the chairs on the other side, promiscuously with the white delegates." 26 PCFF, 7.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

After Durant's address, Earhart moved that the Reverend Stephen W. Rogers, a member of the Negro delegation, be asked to deliver the invocation. This was a strange matter to contest, perhaps, but some of the convention delegates who were reluctant to move so rapidly on the touchy issue of "equality" moved to table the motion. The division was close—fifty-two in favor of tabling Earhart's motion, fifty-six opposed—and almost as close on the original motion, which was passed by a vote of sixty-two to fifty-three. Reverend Rogers then "stepped up on the platform and offered a very eloquent and appropriate prayer." The conven­ tion adjourned for several days following Rogers' words, agreeing to select delegates for Louisville at the next meeting.27 Despite the radical nature of the decision made on December 15, Durant maintained the overwhelming support of the conven­ tion movement. At a meeting of the Free State Union Association a few days later the radical lawyer was the main speaker, and his wholehearted appeal for Negro suffrage received warm applause, according to the newspapers. At the reconvened Friends of Freedom meeting on December 21, opponents tried three times to overturn the decision of the preceding week. James Tewell first offered a resolution calling for another convention, in which only "the associations now represented in the Free State General Com­ mittee" (that is, white groups) would participate. Disturbed by this indication of resentment among some of the whites, Reverend Rogers announced that the Negro delegation "had attended with the intention of remaining quiet, and did not propose to take any part in the proceedings." Durant ruled Tewell's motion out of order, and when this ruling was appealed to the floor, the delegates upheld the chairman by a vote of seventy-seven to nineteen. Twice more, opponents tried to persuade the convention to re­ consider the seating of the Negroes, and twice more Durant's ruling was sustained, by a voice vote and by a tally of eighty-five to nineteen. Finally, the meeting proceeded to select delegates for Louisville, and the radicals demonstrated flexibility by agree­ ing to send two of the opposition, Dr. James Ready and editor 27 Ibid., 8. No individual votes were recorded, just totals. The Rev. Rogers had been born a slave, but his master had freed him in his will; for further biographical information, see David C. Rankin, "The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans During Reconstruction," JSH, XL (Aug. 1974), 421-422.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

Alfred C. Hills of the Era, along with six others. Durant could afford to be generous: he had been backed by 80 percent of the convention in his conversion to support of Negro suffrage.28 John Hutchins was transported: "it seems to me as though I was in a new world. The progress of antislavery sentiment is astounding." He told his old friend Chase about the meetings and remarked of the Louisiana free state advocates that "a large majority are as radical as we ever were. A colored delegation of intelligent free men were admitted, which was more than would have been done in Ohio." The next evening a mass meeting was held at the St. Charles Theater, with Durant and moderate Michael Hahn sharing the platform, to urge Shepley to order a convention election. Hutchins was invited to speak but declined for fear "it would look like Northern influence."29 In the meantime, the registration of voters continued at an accelerated pace, with Durant urging his commissioners "to push the work forward in your parish." Shepley had agreed to pay registrars one dollar per voter, but the attorney general soon discovered that "in some of the parishes where but a small num­ ber of persons are willing to inscribe themselves as voters, the proposed compensation will be mournfully inadequate." He singled out the case of "the obstinate proslavery parish of St. Mary, to which we sent Mr. Lewis" as an experiment "to ascertain what number of persons would voluntarily inscribe themselves as friendly to a loyal state government." Durant had the editors of L'Union publish as a pamphlet a speech given at Baton Rouge by Stanislas Wrotnowski: "I design it for circulation in the country parishes where, it seems to me, it will produce a good effect." On the whole, he remained optimistic, and he predicted in a letter to Congressman William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania that "we will very soon have a sufficient number of voters regis­ tered to hold an election of members of a constitutional conven­ tion."30 Had General Shepley immediately ordered the election, as requested by the Free State General Committee and the Friends 28

PCFF, 10-15; New Orleans Times, Dec. 20, 22, 1863. to Chase, Dec. 22, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; New Orleans Times, Dec. 23, 1863. 30 Durant to John Payne, Dec. 30, Durant to Gen. James Bowen, Dec. 31, 1863, Durant to Shepley, Jan. 1, 1864, Durant to L'Union, Jan. 4, 1864, Durant to Kelley, Dec. 27, 1863, Durant Papers, NYHS. 29Hutchins

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

of Freedom convention, the course of reconstruction in Louisiana might have continued in a radical direction. Instead, he decided to write to Washington one last time for permission to call an election—permission he had been granted in writing four months earlier. "About forty-two hundred names have been registered," he wrote to the secretary of war on December 31, 1863, "and the work is going on. Registers of voters are acting in fourteen parishes of the state," which was "all the parishes in the occupa­ tion of our troops." Shepley wrote the President that he was "anxious to conform to your views" and wanted to reassure him­ self that everything was in accord with the Proclamation on Reconstruction. He had immediately instructed Attorney General Durant to adopt the President's oath in place of the older version. He would have all the delegates take the new oath after the convention met, if the President thought it appropriate. In the meantime, all Lincoln had to do was say the word and Shepley would issue the election order. "I feel the greatest solicitude to see a civil government on the right basis established in this state at the earliest possible moment, and I have full confidence in the speedy accomplishment of this result."31 Although Shepley did not know it at the time, this was to prove his last communication with Washington on the subject of recon­ struction. A week earlier the impatient Lincoln had authorized General Banks to intervene directly in Louisiana politics in the hope of speeding up the progress of reorganization. It is a meas­ ure of Shepley's poor grasp of political reality that he did not know about this change until he read it in the papers two weeks later. Banks had been brooding for some months about the radical direction taken by the free state movement. He was preoccupied with military affairs much of the fall, but in late October he had written the President a long letter about reconstruction in order to get matters off his chest. He did not send the letter because the news about the conservative election scheme had broken the next day.32 Banks returned to the field in hopes of pulling off an 31 Shepley to Lincoln, Dec. 31, 1863, Shepley to Stanton, Dec. 31, 1863, ALM, 29036, 29038. 32 This unsent letter has not been found; I have accepted as accurate Banks' mention of such a letter in a subsequent communication to Lincoln, Dec. 6, 1863, ALM, 28454.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

invasion of Texas, but the Confederates managed to counter every move successfully. All the while, rebel troops under General Kirby Smith kept firm control over the Red River parishes of Louisiana and kept the federal army from occupying any more of the state. By the first of December, when Banks received the President's annoyed letter urging him to cooperate with the efforts of Shepley and Durant, cold weather and rain had put a halt to any major military operations. With more time to devote to civil affairs, the general determined to intervene in the convention movement in an active way, but to do this he needed more authority from Washington.33 The general played on Lincoln's sense of urgency in his request for greater power. "From the first I have regarded reorganization of government here as of the highest importance, and I have never failed to advocate everywhere the earliest development of this interest." The problem lay with Shepley, Durant, and their associates, he told the President, and when he offered to assist in "the completion of this duty by the quickest methods . . . I found these gentlemen . . . slightly disposed to encourage my participa­ tion in the affair." The work of reconstruction was no more diffi­ cult than "the passage of a dog law in Massachusetts," Banks assured blithely, and "had the organization of a free state in Louisiana been committed to me under general instructions only, it would have been complete before this day. It can be effected now in sixty days—let me say, even in thirty days, if necessary."34 The general's letter reached the White House shortly after the President had talked with two of the Masonic Hall leaders, Thomas Cottman and James Riddell. "I expressed my belief," reported Riddell to Banks on December 23, "that if permitted and encouraged to do so, the citizens of Louisiana would accept the provisions of the proclamation, provided they could come back to civil government under their constitution and laws." 33John

D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 299-300; Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 6, 1863, ALM, 28454. 34 Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 6, 1863, ALM, 28454. Banks wrote again to the President on Dec. 16, 1863 (28710), complaining in greater detail of his difficulties with Treasury officials and military subordinates, and emphasizing that "I am only in partial command here." Although the letter was written the day after the seating of Negro delegates at the Friends of Freedom convention, the general did not mention this momentous development to the President.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

This would mean, Riddell had told the President, that "negroes, persons in the United States army and navy, and residents under a year could not vote. I also assured him that the plans of Gover­ nor Shepley and attorney-general Durant, admitting such illegal votes, would not be voluntarily concurred in by the loyal citizens throughout the state." Riddell had then proposed to Lincoln that he "encourage the election to fill state offices, etc., under the state constitution of 1852, and in accordance with the provisions of his proclamation of December 8, 1863. After mature delibera­ tion, he said to me that he would very soon write you a letter," noted the conservative leader. The letter would authorize Banks "to take full, entire, and exclusive charge of all these matters, and that the citizens of Louisiana would have the opportunity which I asked for them."35 Lincoln wrote the promised letter the next day (Christmas Eve), making Banks "master of all" and urging him to "give us a free-state reorganization of Louisiana in the shortest possible time." The President did not, however, give Banks a carte blanche. "What I say here is to have a reasonable construction. I do not mean," emphasized Lincoln, "that you are to throw away avail­ able work already done for reconstruction." The logical implica­ tion of this comment is that the President expected Banks to work with the Free State General Committee. Contrary to Riddell's expectation, Lincoln did not suggest holding a gubernatorial election under the old constitution. Presumably, he wished Banks to call an election for a new constitutional convention, as Durant and his colleagues had been planning, with Lincoln's approval, for more than six months. Nor did the President mention the controversial issue of Negro suffrage, although Cottman and Riddell had told him that the free state leaders favored the en­ franchisement of blacks. Had he wished to prohibit such a radical move, it would have been logical for him to instruct Gen­ eral Banks accordingly.36 35 Riddell to Banks, Dec. 23, 1863, Banks Papers, LC. See also, Riddell to Lincoln, Dec. 15, 1863, ALM, 28699, and Lincoln to Cottman, Dec. 15, 1863, CWL, vn, 66-67. 36 Lincoln to Banks, Dec. 24, 1863, CWL, vn, 89-90. Judging from John Hay's diary, the decision to turn Louisiana reconstruction over to Gen. Banks occupied center stage in the presidential office on December 23. Hay para­ phrased Banks' two letters extensively and transcribed Lincoln's reply in its entirety in his private diary. See Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 140-143.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

Although there is no evidence that Banks was negotiating a deal with the conservatives of the planters' movement, it is a striking coincidence that in his next letter to Lincoln the general proposed the very plan suggested by Riddell. "The only certain and speedy method of accomplishing your object," Banks wrote, was "that an election be ordered of a state government," rather than a constitutional convention. This gubernatorial election would take place "under the constitution and laws of Louisiana," as the conservatives desired, "except so much thereof as recog­ nizes and relates to slavery." General Banks would simply declare the slavery provisions "inoperative and void." Only after the inauguration of the new civil governor would the convention election be ordered.37 General Banks justified his alternative plan as faster than the convention proposed by Shepley and Durant. Although the free state spokesmen had been calling for an election on January 25, 1864, Banks told the President that "the election of delegates can­ not be called before March," and thus "the convention could not sit before April." This deliberate distortion of the facts was neces­ sary to the general's argument, for it would not do to let Lincoln know that the radicals wished to hold an election in less than a month. There was yet another advantage to his proposal, Banks added in a bit of curious reasoning. "The people of Louisiana will accept such a proposition with favor," he thought. "Offer them a govern­ ment without slavery and they will accept it as a necessity re­ sulting from the war," as long as they did not have to pretend to like it by voting for it at the polls. "Their self-respect, their amour propre, will be appeased if they are not required to vote for or against it." He was in favor of immediate emancipation, Banks declared, "but it is better to secure it by consent than by force."38 One can only guess Lincoln's reaction to the general's tortuous logic: proslavery Louisianans would consent to the aboli­ tion of their "peculiar institution" if forced to do so by military order, but would reject the effort of the radicals to force them to vote for emancipation voluntarily. Banks did not entrust his letter to the mails but sent it by a new convert to his moderate faction—Treasury agent George 37

Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 30, 1863, ALM, 28970.

38

Ibid.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

Denison. For almost a year Denison had criticized the general's spinelessness and incompetence and had consistently disapproved Banks' moderate policies. Now he sailed for Washington on of­ ficial business for the Treasury, bearing another, quite unofficial, assignment to confer with the President on behalf of General Banks. "He understands fully the situation of affairs here," noted Banks, and "will give you information in regard to the organiza­ tion of a state government."39 The story behind Denison's "conversion" is one of backroom politics and is recorded by the old Philadelphia abolitionist B. Rush Plumly, whose ideology was sometimes overshadowed by his love of political intrigue. "For eight months I have been trying to bring Denison and General Banks into confidential relations," he wrote to his friend Secretary Chase on January 2, 1864. "They have just left here," confided Plumly: "it is long after midnight, therefore I shall go to help Denison pack for the steamer, which I asked the General to hold a day." He added that "the plan of restoration that Denison has, is the only hope."40 What attracted Plumly and Denison was the possibility of securing Louisiana's votes at the Republican national convention for the presidential candidacy of Salmon P. Chase. The secretary's ambitions were well known in Washington, and at this point many considered him a formidable threat to Lincoln's renomination. "The General has promised me the delegates from this state" once the state was restored to the Union, Plumly boasted. He estimated that early restoration would give Chase the support of between seven and twenty convention votes from former Con­ federate states. "With 20 Southern delegates, from the South restored, we can hold the national convention against the world. I pray you, send the order back by Denison for all he asks."41 39

Banks to Lincoln, Jan. 2, 1864, ALM, 29158. to Chase, Jan. 2, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. The letter is incor­ rectly dated as Jan. 2, 1863 (an understandable mistake for Plumly to make after midnight on the second day of the new year). Flanders to Chase, Jan. 14, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP, confirms that Plumly, Denison, and Banks were conferring at Plumly's house until 2:00 a.m. 41 Plumly to Chase, Jan. 2, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. The same optimistic view of the secretary's presidential prospects is expressed in an earlier letter from Plumly to Chase, Dec. 12, 1863, ibid. PIumIy argued that the New Orleans business community was sympathetic to Chase because of the ac­ tivity of Treasury officials in the city, and that "the political management of 40Plumly

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

Denison delivered his message to the President. In his answer, which he sent to New Orleans with the Treasury agent, Lincoln indicated that he was "much gratified" to know that Denison "understands your views and will give you his full and zealous cooperation." The President hoped that "all others holding au­ thority from me shall do the like," and he asked Banks "to make this known to them." Lincoln added that if the general had not already ordered the proposed election on the authority of his previous letter, "please, on receiving this, proceed with all pos­ sible dispatch using your own absolute discretion in all matters." The President was accustomed to Banks' bubbly optimism, and he maintained even now a certain skepticism. "Your confidence in the practicability of constructing a free state government speedily for Louisiana, and your zeal to accomplish it, are very gratifying," but the difference between "the words 'can' and will' was never more precious."42 "There seems to be considerable satisfaction around town the last day or two, among the pro-slavery party here," observed the New York Tribune correspondent in New Orleans on January 8, 1864. "Upon what they build their hopes I do not know," he mused. "Some of them believe that an election will shortly be had upon the basis of . . . the old constitution," and perhaps for state officers rather than a convention. "Some of the Union men fear that there may be some truth to this," admitted the reporter, but he added that "I can hardly think it possible. If so, the work of the Union men for the last six months will go for naught."43 the people must depend upon Denisons office"—as commissioner of internal revenue Denison had lots of patronage and affected the lives of many private citizens through his regulation of trade and taxes—"and on his and my management." Plumly also thought that "the military, the Provost Marshals, the Chief of Police," and other municipal officeholders were sympathetic to Chase's candidacy, though it is impossible to say how he obtained this illusion. "I don't see how we can be beaten," he concluded: "if we win here, we shall surely win in the great national contest." 42Lincoln to Banks, Jan. 13, 1864, CWL, vn, 123-124. Denison told his mother that "Mr. Lincoln was as kind to him as he would have been to his own son," and that he had been "very successful in the business upon which he came North" (Mrs. E. S. Denison to D. C. Denison, Jan. 15, 1864, Denison Papers, LC). 43 New York Tribune, Jan. 21, 1864. Cuthbert Bullitt to Banks, Jan. 8, 18Θ4, Banks Papers, LC, suggests the foreknowledge of conservative Union-

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

On the same day General Banks dropped by Durant's law office on Carondolet Street and informed the radical leader that he had received an important letter from the President. "It was agreed that I should go to his private quarters the same afternoon," Durant wrote to Congressman Henry L. Dawes, where "General B. read me the letter." The attorney general was shocked by the contents and concluded that Lincoln must have received a dis­ torted picture of Louisiana affairs in the preceding months. "After reading the letter General Banks informed me that he intended to order an election of state officers and members of Congress, and that the Governor to be elected could appoint two senators." Durant protested that preparations for a convention election were nearing completion and that a mass meeting was to be held in a few hours to petition General Shepley to order the polls opened on January 25. Banks replied, according to Durant's account, that "such a course would take too long and . . . could not be perfected before August." The attorney general reminded the general that he had been registering voters for seven months, and "I was sure it could be done long before that; but he replied in a peremptory tone that it could not."44 "As to the election of members of Congress," continued Durant, "I suggested that the state had not been divided into districts according to the U.S. statute passed since the census of '60," aftd in the absence of a state legislature, Congress had to reapportion the state before representatives could be chosen. "The General insisted that my argument had no force, and that he would order a congressional election" anyway.45 Apparently Banks recon­ sidered his views on this question, for no congressional election was ordered. That night the mass meeting at the St. Charles Theater reiter­ ated the desire of Louisiana Unionists for "a constitutional con­ vention first and the election of state officers second." Durant thought it was "one of the largest ever held in New Orleans," and he was pleased to see that "The country parishes were numerously ists: "I learn with much pleasure that our worthy President has given you power of such a character as will insure the bringing back of this state into the Union." Bullitt added that "I cannot but exult at your triumph over extreme radicalism." 44 Durant to Dawes, Feb. 8, 1864, Dawes Papers, LC. 45

Ibid.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

represented." The Times estimated that 3,500 to 4,000 people filled the theater. Flanders presided over the meeting, and in his opening remarks he stressed the degree to which loyal citizens from all occupied areas of the state were represented. The crowd then called for Durant, greeting his appearance with tremendous applause, according to the Times, and he spoke passionately for over an hour. Even the Era had to admit that "it was one of his best efforts."46 A few days later, on January 11,1864, Banks issued a proclama­ tion ordering the election of a governor, lieutenant governor, at­ torney general, superintendent of education, and auditor of public accounts on February 22. This was a month later than the date suggested by the radicals for the election of a convention, which adds a certain irony to the general's claim that his plan was designed to speed up reorganization. He also ordered a second election for a constitutional convention, but that was not to be held until April, a month after the inauguration of the new civil governor. Not only did Banks reverse the timetable of the indig­ enous free state movement, but he also proclaimed the ante­ bellum constitution still in effect, except for the provisions con­ cerning slavery. On his own authority as military commander he declared those provisions inoperative, on the grounds that "the fundamental law of the state was martial law."47 What Banks had done was to alter the entire course of re­ construction in Louisiana, taking power out of the hands of the radical leaders and assuming the direction of affairs himself. It was far easier for an outsider to organize a ticket for a guberna­ torial election than to draw up a slate of one hundred convention delegates, and the general already had his candidate for the governor's office. Michael Hahn was one of Banks' circle of intimates; as a former congressman he had cultivated an acquaint­ ance with President Lincoln as well. Hahn had never been among the prominent leaders of the Union Association, however, and his views were distinctly more moderate than those of Durant, Flanders, Earhart, and Hiestand. By a striking coincidence, Hahn purchased a daily newspaper 46 Ibid.; New York Tribune, Jan. 21, 1864; New Orleans Times, Jan. 10, 1864; New Orleans Era, Jan. 10, 1864. 47 Banks' proclamation "To the People of Louisiana," Jan. 11, 1864, OR, 3d ser., rv, 22-23. See also, Banks to Lincoln, Jan. 11, 1864, ALM, 29347.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

immediately after Banks decided privately to order an election. The proslavery editor, Hu Kennedy, brother-in-law of conserva­ tive Treasury agent Cuthbert Bullitt, suddenly decided to retire from a twelve-year career in journalism and sell the New Orleans True Delta to his "much esteemed and greatly prized friend," Michael Hahn.48 With both the Era and his own newspaper backing him, with Bullitt, Plumly, and Denison swinging much of the Treasury influence on his behalf, and with the voting support of the sizable German community forming behind his candidacy, the moderate former congressman was virtually assured of elec­ tion, thanks to that veteran of antebellum coalition building, Nathaniel P. Banks. Patronage and military power were not the only advantages Hahn enjoyed. The Negro suffrage issue had not split the free state movement in December, but some dissent had been notice­ able even at the Friends of Freedom convention. As long as Durant spoke with the appearance of unified federal power be­ hind his radical views he could command much support for equal rights. If that power were to be thrown on the side of anti-Negro sentiment, however, which was at least as strong in Louisiana as in those Northern states that turned down Negro suffrage proposals in the 1860s, there was no question that the state's Unionists would follow the lead of the government.49 General Banks wanted the largest possible number of voters to participate in the election, of course, and he could now count on the conservatives to join in the balloting. They were to nomi­ nate their own candidates to oppose the Hahn ticket, of course, but the general apparently calculated that they would boost the level of participation (which by the President's proclamation had to be at least five thousand) without posing a serious threat. Some of the planters might be persuaded to vote for Hahn, more­ over, for in addition to being "right" on the suffrage question Banks' candidate had an acceptable position on plantation eco48 New Orleans True Delta, Jan. 2, 1864; Bullitt to Lincoln, Jan. 2, 1864, ALM, 29162. 49 On the power of racist sentiment in the North, which was concentrated in the ranks of the Democratic Party, see V. Jacques Voegeli, Free But Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro during the Civil War (Chicago, 1967), and George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The De­ bate Over Afro-American Destiny, 1815-1914 (New York, 1971), 175-197.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

nomics. "Stringent and effective vagrant laws can be passed by the state legislature," Hahn assured concerned planters, "which will secure their labor to the state" if the newly freed slaves "do not work otherwise."30 Under the circumstances it is not surprising that the radicals should be outraged by the general's election order. For more than six months they had watched the progress of voter registration frustrated by Banks' failure to bring more of the state under federal control. Moreover, the local provost marshals under his authority had favored the conservative planter movement in many of the rural parishes rather than assisting the free state cause. Under pressure from the President the radicals had deter­ mined to move ahead with the convention plan, and at the very moment they were urging the cautious General Shepley to issue the election order, power was snatched from their hands by the commanding general who was partly responsible for their ear­ lier difficulties. Immediately after the publication of General Banks' proclama­ tion, Durant resigned his position as attorney general and com­ missioner of registration, because he wanted to be free to attack the government without being accused of disloyalty.51 The man who had led New Orleans Unionism in its year-long drift to the left, who had swung a majority of the Friends of Freedom con­ vention behind the goal of Negro suffrage, and who had won the confidence of leading Republicans in Washington was forced by the intransigence of General Banks to oppose the administration he had served so well. Banks' ideological differences with the radicals centered on the question of Negro suffrage, which he feared would antagonize many potential supporters of the free state movement. In addi­ tion, the general wished to take a more active role in the decision­ making process. Banks was a political veteran whose ambitions did not stop short of the White House itself. He was considered a dark-horse candidate for the Republican nomination in 1864 if Lincoln's prospects should falter, and because of his relative youth would be available in 1868 as well. The general seems to have agreed with those of his friends who felt that a successful 50 The quotation is from Hahn's one lengthy speech of the fall, New Orleans Era, Nov. 15, 1863. 51 Durant to Shepley, Jan. 13, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

reconstruction program in Louisiana would be a valuable feather in his presidential cap. Ambition reinforced ideology for General Banks, and he determined to assume control of Louisiana affairs before the radicals acted without him. It is not entirely clear what Lincoln's motivation was in throw­ ing power into the general's hands. Banks had deceived him about the situation: the President did not know that the radicals were ready to hold an election within a month. Yet Lincoln may have shared the general's reluctance to countenance Negro suffrage in Louisiana for fear of antagonizing conservative opinion. He acquiesced in Banks' strategy, whatever his private assessment, and thus incurred the anger of the Louisiana free state radicals. "Mr. Lincoln has lost by his letter to General Banks much of the friendship he previously enjoyed among the loyal men here," declared Flanders, and the President "will find, if I am not greatly mistaken, that he has another Missouri case on This hands."52 The analogy with the Missouri situation was instructive in cer­ tain respects. The bitter conflict between radicals and moderates in that state had been a vexing problem for Lincoln throughout 1863. The radical faction criticized the President's attempts to smooth over the conflict, and in the fall elections they succeeded in gaining control of the state government. Lincoln was pleased with the radicals' triumph because "they are nearer to me than the other side, in thought and sentiment, though bitterly hostile 52 Flanders to Chase, Jan. 14, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 166168, sees Lincoln, rather than Banks, as primarily responsible for the shift to the right, and he explains the President's motivation as follows: "Chase's presidential aspirations best explain why Lincoln abandoned the Louisiana radicals. . . . Politically, Lincoln could not allow Louisiana, which was test­ ing his reconstruction program, to fall to a radical Republican challenger." For a similar argument see Ludwell H. Johnson, "Lincoln and Equal Rights: A Reply," CWH, xm (March 1967), 66-73. This explanation ig­ nores Banks' "deal" with Plumly and Denison, together with Denison's mission to Washington to confer with Lincoln. Nor does Ripley deal with the crucial endorsement of the idea of Negro suffrage by the Friends of Freedom convention and the primacy of Durant—who was not committed to a particular presidential candidate—among Louisiana free state advocates. Ripley fails to see, finally, that General Banks played the pivotal role in forcing the action in Louisiana, and that even in his crucial letter of Dec. 24, 1863, the President had encouraged Banks to continue working through Durant and his colleagues.

THE SUFFRAGE ISSUE

personally," as he explained to his secretaries. Though the Mis­ souri radicals were "the unhandiest devils in the world to deal with," added the President, "after all their faces are set Zionwards."53 Lincoln may have been as willing to cooperate with the "Friends of Freedom" in New Orleans, who were in touch with B. Gratz Brown's radical faction in St. Louis, even after their adoption of Negro suffrage. That must remain in the realm of speculation, however, for Banks' "coup" forced the President to choose sides—and he moved to the right. 53Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 108 (Oct. 28, 1863). See also a similar comment by the President on Dec. 10, 1863 (ibid., 135-136).

CHAPTER VII

Radicals vs. Moderates: The Ideological Dimension of Unionist Politics THE schism in the ranks of the free state movement could have been bridged had General Banks and Michael Hahn been willing to compromise with the radicals in hammering out a new coalition. The strategy followed by the moderates ruled out such negotiations, however, for the Hahn forces had decided to seek an open confrontation with the leader­ ship of the Free State General Committee. What ensued was a period of angry debate that revealed a surprisingly wide ideologi­ cal gap between radicals and moderates, not so wide as their common differences with the conservatives, but important none­ theless. This internecine warfare in New Orleans, in turn, had a major influence on the split between the White House and Capitol Hill over reconstruction policy. Congressional opponents of the Louisiana experiment began to hammer out a new pro­ gram for the reorganization of civil government in the South, culminating somewhat ineffectually in the Wade-Davis bill in the early summer of 1864. It was during this period that Wendell Phillips first labeled Louisiana "Mr. Lincoln's model of recon­ struction," reflecting the growing public association of the Presi­ dent with the electoral strategy of his political general in the Department of the Gulf.1 On the day after the publication of General Banks' election order the Free State Committee met to take stock of the situation. "The meeting was a full one," observed the correspondent of the New York Tribune, "and I could not fail to notice that the com­ mittee was composed entirely of old citizens of this state," many 1 Phillips to Edward Gilbert, May 27, 1864, in Edward McPherson (ed.), The Political History of . . . the Great Rebellion (New York, 1864), 412; Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), 189-195.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

of whom were "widely reputed for their wealth, public spirit, and loyalty." The committee members were perplexed, the re­ porter added: "it is feared that the election of these officers will in some way recognize the old constitution of the state." Benjamin Flanders wrote to Secretary Chase that "the members were unanimously against General Banks' plan," but nevertheless "re­ solved to go into the election." The committee voted to call a nominating convention for February 1 to select free state candi­ dates for the seven positions.2 Flanders was optimistic about the chances of standing up to Banks, but he feared "dissension in our own ranks, prompted by the General." He added, quite accurately, that "we have no papers under our control." The Era was "under his thumb," noted Flanders, and "the True Delta is in the hands, nominally at least, of Hahn and not to be depended upon." The Times, under the influence of Denison and Plumly, came out in favor of Banks' proclamation: "it disposes of all the vexed questions con­ nected with a free state election in Louisiana. To us it seems, in­ deed, to sever by one keen, dexterous stroke, the gordian knot of all our difficulties." The radicals lost another powerful ally when Dr. Anthony P. Dostie came out in favor of the plan. "The labors of the Free State Committee had been lost," the popular dentist declared at the meeting of a district club, "but the mode provided by General Banks' proclamation would reach the de­ sired result just as soon." Besides, thought Dostie, there was no choice: Louisiana Unionists must "submit to it as a power over which they had no control."3 The committee decided to seek a compromise with the general. Three days later they drew up a petition requesting him to order the convention election to be held on the same day as the ballot­ ing for state officers.4 When the delegation from the free state 2 N e w Y o r k T r i b u n e , Jan. 23, 1864; Flanders to Chase, Jan. 14, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. 3 Flanders to Chase, Jan. 14, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP; New Orleans Times, Jan. 12, 13, 1864. 4 The Free State General Committee actually preferred "that the election of state officers should be postponed till . . . after that of the delegates to a convention," explained U.S. District Attorney Rufus Waples to Banks, but settled for requesting simultaneous elections because "one might fail by asking too much" (Waples to Banks, Jan. 19, 1864, Banks Papers, LC). See also New Orleans Times, Jan. 17, 1864; New York Tribune, Feb. 1, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

organization talked with him on January 16, Banks agreed to hold both elections simultaneously. For a brief moment it seemed that compromise might be possible: "Unity of Action," urged the Times' headlines, "One Ticket."5 "I have just heard a report that you intended to modify your proclamation," wrote Michael Hahn to Banks on the day of the compromise meeting. "If this is so, I regret it, and I feel pretty confident that I could convince you of the impropriety of such a course, were I to see you a few moments." Apparently Hahn got to the general for a few moments, for Banks soon decided that his compromise agreement was indeed in need of revision. "Gen­ eral Banks will not order the election for a convention," Flanders reported to Chase on January 21. Although Banks had originally told the subcommittee that "the time of election of delegates was to me a matter of indifference," he now told the Free State Gen­ eral Committee that "a more careful consideration of the subject satisfied me that there was not time to make the proper arrange­ ments."6 "Our friends are much discouraged," wrote Flanders to Chase. "We have four-fifths of the Union men with us, but the power is now all against us." He lamented wistfully that "with half a chance left" the free state men would "beat the copperhead con­ servative faction out of sight. But they are not to have such a chance." Flanders admitted that the old leadership would lose because "Hahn is Banks' candidate for governor." He placed particular stress on a new group of voters who were not qualified to cast ballots under the old constitution but whom the general planned to enfranchise by martial law. Hahn was "to be put in by the soldiers enlisted here, voting in their camps"; although he had not announced it publicly, "the General has sent out a private order for the soldiers to be registered." The leaders of the free state movement expected Banks to issue a specific order to this effect shortly before the election, but they thought he would 5 Waples to Banks, Jan. 19, 1864, Banks Papers, LC, refers to "the as­ surances you gave the sub-committee on Saturday," and the Louisiana Staatszeitung, Jan. 22, 1864, quotes the delegates as saying, "we are happy to report that all we asked was granted." 6 Hahn to Banks, Jan. 16, 1864, Banks to the Free State General Com­ mittee, Jan. 29, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; Flanders to Chase, Jan. 21, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

"purposely leave the matter in doubt" until then. Although they sought to avoid any "public expression" of hostility, Flanders added, "the feeling among the old Union men against General Banks for the course he has taken is getting to be intense."7 "It gives me great pleasure to report the progress making in the state elections," reported Banks to the President on January 22, as if unaware of radical discontent. "All parties participate in the selection of candidates and a very handsome vote will be given." By now the general was confident enough to predict a winner: "the indications are very strong that Mr. Hahn will be elected governor." At this stage Banks still intended to hold congressional elections in the two southernmost districts, which were occupied by federal forces, and to order the election of representatives on an at-large basis for the congressional districts still in rebel hands. He also planned for Hahn to appoint two senators to re­ place Confederates John Slidell and Judah P. Benjamin, and it was rumored that Durant was to be appeased with one of these seats. "By the middle of April, you will receive a full delegation in both houses of Congress," the general predicted confidently to Lincoln.8 To build his public support Hahn needed the kind of organiza­ tional base afforded by the political clubs of the Free State Gen­ eral Committee. His relative lack of clout with the existing groups prompted his supporters to establish three new organizations: the Hahn Club, headed by former police chief John McClelland; the Young Men's Union Association, headed by lawyer James P. Sullivan; and the Pioneer Lincoln Club, headed by commis­ sion merchants Henry M. Summers and John M. G. Parker. Banks also appointed Valere Daunoy, a vice-president of the third club, as chief of police, replacing a potential Flanders supporter. As we shall see, Daunoy used the powers of his office to good po­ litical effect.9 7

Flanders to Chase, Jan. 21, 23, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. to Lincoln, Jan. 22, 1864, ALM, 29710; George Denison to Chase, Jan. 29, 1864, B. Rush Plumly to Chase, Feb. 26, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; Flanders to Chase, Jan. 23, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. At-large congressional elections had, in fact, been outlawed in June 1862: Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 102n. 9James P. Sullivan to Banks, Jan. 19, 1864, Shepley to Banks, Jan. 24, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans L'Union, Jan. 19, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Jan. 21, 1864; New York Tribune, Feb. 1, 1864. 8 Banks

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

Ward caucuses were scheduled for January 25 to select dele­ gates for the nominating convention a week later. The Era and the Times urged that the caucuses and the convention be kept open to interested and loyal citizens whether they were already members of free state organizations or not, a policy that would, of course, make it easy to "pack" the nominating session. Had the selection of delegates been restricted to those active in the movement during the past year, the likelihood of Hahn's nomi­ nation would have been slim indeed. The slate of five delegates chosen by the caucuses for each ward of the city included a gen­ erous sprinkling of new faces, most of whom were to be active in Hahn's organization in the weeks ahead. Of course the list also included many seasoned veterans of the Union Association.10 It was widely rumored that Hahn was 'Iaooked for the race as an independent candidate" in the event that he was not the nominee of the Free State General Committee. The reporter for the New York Tribune expected Durant to be the choice of the convention on February 1, as did the correspondent of the New York Times, who thought Durant's "chances of being nominated would be excellent, and if nominated he would be almost assured of being elected." After the radical leader made clear his inten­ tion not to participate in the campaign, both reporters decided that Rufus Waples was the likely nominee.11 The New Orleans Times thought Waples' candidacy was weakened by his "tendency toward extreme radicalism," but mentioned as another possible nominee Thomas J. Earhart, who was perhaps even more radical than Waples. Judge James S. Whitaker had considerable sup­ port, if one were to believe the list of forty "citizens of the state of Louisiana" who urged him through a newspaper advertisement to run for the governorship. It should be noted, however, that the list included Philadelphian B. Rush Plumly, who was secretly backing General Banks' scheme.12 The more radical candidates there were in the field, of course, the more favorable were Hahn's 10 New Orleans Times, Jan. 24, 25, 1864; New Orleans Era, Jan. 24, 1864; Louisiana Staatszeitung, Jan. 27, 1864; New Orleans L'Union, Jan. 29, 1864. 11 New York Tribune, Jan. 23, Feb. 8, 1864; New York Times, Feb. 8, 1864; Durant to Henry L. Dawes, Feb. 8, 1864, Dawes Papers, LC. 12New York Times, Jan. 25, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Jan. 19, 22, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

chances for the nomination. George Denison surveyed the situa­ tion in a letter to Secretary Chase on January 29 and estimated that "Hahn and Waples are decidedly the favorites, and Hahn is clear ahead of Waples." He added, significantly, that Hahn "is supported by General Banks, and . . . I regard his election as almost certain whether he receives the nomination or not."13 Two days before the nominating convention a meeting of the Unconditional Union Club of Western Louisiana was held in New Orleans. It was dominated by a group of exiles from Rapides Parish in the Red River cotton country whose homes were located in Confederate territory. Several of these men had participated in Jayhawker activities against the rebel army throughout the last year. Their leader was the former Whig planter James Madi­ son Wells, a staunch Unionist who had refused to cooperate with the Confederates and had financed a partisan group that worked with Banks' army in the 1863 campaigns. He and his son Thomas had been forced to hide out at his hunting retreat, "Bear Wallow," when the rebel authorities decided to arrest them; they finally made their way to New Orleans in December. The group chose the younger Wells, Anthony Cazabat, and John A. Newell as delegates to the nominating convention, and they hinted at the availability of Madison Wells himself for higher office.1' "We have meetings every night, numerous speeches from good and bad orators, committees and clubs distributing documents, and indeed all the machinery of politics in full play," commented the New York Tribune reporter. The registration of voters had picked up speed in the preceding four days, he added. Perhaps one reason was that the registrar in New Orleans was enrolling voters who had taken neither the Union Association nor the presi­ dential oath.15 "I am sorry to say that evidence is already beginning to multiply of an organized attempt to convert the free state convention—a body hitherto supposed to embrace all the concentrated loyalty 13 Denison to Chase, Jan. 29, 1864, Chase Papers, LC (this letter was misdated by Denison as Jan. 29, 1863, but correctly dated in the endorse­ ment by Chase on the back). 14 Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1947), 18-24, 27. 15 New York Tribune, Feb. 8, 1864; New York Times, Feb. 8, 1864; Louisiana Staatszeitung, Jan. 29, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

of the state of Louisiana—into a packed organization for carry­ ing out the objects of mere political gamblers," reported John R. Hamilton of the New York Times on January 30. Indeed, thirty-two delegates from outside the city were claiming seats in the convention, as opposed to only fifty-five regularly elected by the ward caucuses of New Orleans. Some of these rural claimants were men of undoubted loyalty, like the group from Rapides, and Robert W. Taliaferro of Catahoula Parish, another Jayhawker, whose father had fought against secession at the 1861 convention and refused to sign the ordinance. Others were "spurious dele­ gates, pretending to represent parishes outside the Union lines and under the control of the rebels," Durant felt. Only a few had been chosen by their fellow citizens in regularly scheduled meetings, in any case, and the radicals considered many of them "plants" of the Hahn faction. Many of the New Orleans delegates were "diametrically opposed to Hahn's election," observed Ham­ ilton, who agreed with Durant's view that the former congress­ man did not enjoy "the confidence of the earnest Union men, who consider him a trimmer and trickster." The Times correspondent predicted that "should Michael Hahn be nominated by the con­ vention then we shall have reason to expect a great fight, as that would invariably make a split in the convention itself."16 The predicted fight did ensue when the convention met in Lyceum Hall, "that great sanctum-sanctorum of liberty," as the New York Times phrased it. W. H. Crane was elected temporary chairman. When it became clear that not only the rural delegates but a good many outsiders were present as well, the radicals moved the appointment of a committee on credentials. This touched off loud protests from the audience, which continued despite Crane's efforts to restore order. When the committee on credentials presented its report, the chair could not subdue the crowd long enough to secure a vote. After perhaps two hours the radical leadership reluctantly decided to adjourn the convention "in consequence of their utter inability to proceed to business in the pandemonium," according to the account in the New Orleans Times. Crane announced that the convention would reconvene in 16 New York Times, Feb. 8, 1864; Durant to George S. Boutwell, Feb. 25, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS. The New York Tribune, Feb. 10, 1864, printed a list of the 87 delegates, 17 of whom were from parishes outside Union lines or in areas disputed by rebel guerrillas.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

the rooms of the Free State General Committee, which were large enough to accommodate all the regularly elected delegates.17 As soon as the convention leadership and its supporters de­ parted, Lyceum Hall became quiet again. A police officer who had done nothing to help Crane restore order during the earlier part of the evening now ordered all "outsiders" to leave the scene, and a fair portion of the crowd adjourned to the Marble Hall saloon across the street, reported the Daily Picayune. Wil­ liam R. Fish, Hahn's former law partner, then assumed the chair, and the moderates proceeded to nominate Hahn for governor and the recently arrived Madison Wells for the second spot on the ticket. When the radicals had assembled in the committee rooms, they also nominated a ticket for the seven offices. Flanders had not been an announced candidate, but he agreed to run for gov­ ernor, and with him the group decided to nominate Wells for lieutenant governor. Neither the radicals nor the moderates knew Wells' political views, according to his biographer, but both saw him as an ideal choice to appeal to rural Unionist sentiment. By midnight, after "four hours of discordant sounds," as the weary New Orleans Times reporter phrased it, both meetings adjourned. The free state forces were officially split into two competing organizations.18 The Era offered a highly partisan explanation of the night's events, placing all responsibility on the radicals. Its account saw the presiding officer trying to "railroad" the meeting: "He at­ tempted to stifle the will of the majority of the convention by arbitrary rules, and named a committee on credentials of like mind." The committee in turn "attempted to rule many of Mr. Hahn's friends out of the convention." Crane had refused to recognize any motion "which was not made by an avowed enemy of Mr. Hahn, or to allow any discussion whatever on the report of the committee." It was the chair's highhanded procedures that elicited the protest of the delegates, as the Era viewed it, and 17 This description of the February 1 convention is drawn from the fol­ lowing accounts, not all of which agree on every detail: New Orleans Times, Feb. 2, 1864; New Orleans Era, Feb. 2, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Feb. 3, 1864; Durant to Boutwell, Feb. 25, 1864, Durant to Henry Winter Davis, March 31, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS. 18 In addition to the above sources, see on this point Lowrey, "Madison Wells," 27-28.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

after the radicals left "the proceedings during the remainder of the session were harmonious, orderly, and enthusiastic."19 The identity of the "outsiders" is not clear from the surviving evidence, but every newspaper except the partisan Era men­ tioned them. Durant was sure that Hahn had "gathered to his support the rowdies of the city, who had formerly in KnowNothing times ruled it by violence and bloodshed." He pointed out that John McClelland, former police chief under KnowNothing and Confederate mayor John Monroe, was now presi­ dent of a Hahn district club, and he asserted that McClelland brought many of his "ruffians" into Lyceum Hall and "broke up the nominating convention." The report of the pro-Confederate Daily Picayune, that the police quickly and quietly ushered the nonmembers across the street to a well-known bar, lends credence to Durant's charges. The function of the disruptions was to leave the Hahn forces in control of Lyceum Hall, giving an aura of le­ gitimacy that his candidacy needed. That the radicals were forced to leave the hall physically added a superficial credibility to the Era's claim that they had "bolted" the convention, even though the official leadership had gone with the "seceders." It is diffi­ cult to imagine that this happy turn of events for the moderates was purely fortuitous.20 Hahn would probably have run for governor anyway, thought the New Orleans Times, and John Hutchins agreed. "I think it was foreordained in the military councils," he wrote to his friend Chase, "that Mr. Hahn should be a candidate whether nominated by the free state convention or not." Another Ohio friend visiting New Orleans offered Chase a similar assessment: "General Banks was a politician before he became a general and seems disposed to resume his former vocation before finishing up the work of the last one."21 The secretary of the Treasury, who was considered a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination until his withdrawal from the race in March, was receiving conflicting 19

New Orleans Era, Feb. 2,1864. to Boutwell, Feb. 25, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS; New Or­ leans Times, Feb. 2, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Feb. 3, 1864. 21 New Orleans Times, Feb. 2, 1864; Hutchins to Chase, Feb. 12, 1864, John F. Morse to Chase, Feb. 12, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 20 Durant

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

testimony from his correspondents in Louisiana. Plumly and Denison had assured him in January that Banks' plan would bring early restoration and the addition of Louisiana's convention votes to Chase's column. His old friend Hutchins, until recently a member of Congress from the Western Reserve area of Ohio, regarded this assumption as unrealistic. "If Mr. Plumly and Denison suppose that the controlling military influence here will favor you, I think they are mistaken."22 In fact, Plumly and Denison were finding that their strategy of cooperation with Banks forced them to swallow a good bit of distasteful activity by their associates in the Hahn camp, Hutchins added. "The Era, which is supposed to be the military organ, is making use of all the proslavery slang," he pointed out, "to prejudice the ignorant against Mr. Flanders." The Era's account of a Flanders rally two days later illustrates Hutchins' contention. The galleries of Lyceum Hall were crowded with Negro faces, which "illuminated the House with a brilliant display of ivory," commented the reporter for the Era sarcastically. "The colored gentlemen were accompanied by their ladies, who were as anx­ ious as their husbands to hear what the white folks had to say about Negro equality."23 Derision was the keynote of the Era's attitude toward the radicals, whether it referred to their presumed espousal of "so­ cial equality" for blacks or to the size of their crowds. "The seceders from the free state convention had a grand pow-wow last evening," it noted of one Flanders outdoor rally, "and the poor African was well-represented." When the main speaker, Durant, came to the platform, "one excited individual called for three cheers for Durant—and gave them," continued the Era. "At this point the speaker took a lower portion of the stand, probably in order to reach the mind of his admirers more readily." A few days later it offered a similar account. "A magnificent brass band paraded the streets last evening, accompanied by thirteen ablebodied voters, four gentlemen who are disqualified . . . on ac­ count of their complexions, seven small boys . . . and a half 22 Denison to Chase, Feb. 5, 1864, Hutchins to Chase, Feb. 12, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 23 Hutchins to Chase, Feb. 12, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; New Orleans Era, Feb. 14, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

dozen torchlights." The reporter then marshaled his best wit: "altogether it was one of the most imposing the bolters have as yet favored us with."24 By contrast, the paper's report of a torchlight parade organized by the Hahn forces made the squat former congressman seem a bit like a conquering Caesar entering Rome. "As the long line, stretching as far as the eye could reach, passed with regular and orderly step through the different streets, cheers and encouraging words were given by the thousands of ladies who had flocked from all parts of the city." The torchlight did honor a general (if not a Caesar), stopping briefly before Banks' confiscated house on Coliseum Place, where each band paused to serenade the departmental commander whose influence was responsible for their candidate's success.25 The torchlight procession was a favorite tactic of the Hahn campaign. On one occasion a meeting was held across the river in working-class Algiers, and Hahn clubs from the city paraded down to the levee with torches flickering in the brisk winter night before boarding a chartered ferry to cross the harbor. Another meeting was held in Congo Square, where bonfires were built around the speaker's stand. The military was a prominent factor in swelling Hahn's crowds, for soldiers were often en­ couraged to attend his rallies, officers sometimes spoke on behalf of his candidacy, and military bands were available to augment his musical artillery. The Flanders forces also held two torch­ light processions. One evening a crowd of several thousand serenaded Durant's home after he spoke at a rally; they could not match the resources of the Hahn camp, however. Both candi­ dates enlisted speakers in German and French to appeal to the blocs of voters who spoke only those languages, but of course Hahn himself could address his countrymen in good German. Hahn was also able to make a swing through the countryside with military assistance, stopping at Houma in Terrebonne Parish, Thibodaux Courthouse in Lafourche, Donaldsonville in Ascen­ sion, and twice at Baton Rouge. "Quite a large number of Louisi­ ana's sons who are at present wearing the blue of Uncle Sam 24 New Orleans Era, Feb. 12, 14, 16, 1864. The Louisiana Staatszeitung, Feb. 13, 1864, gives a difEerent account of the first rally, which it says was attended by more than 1,000 spectators. 25 New Orleans Era, Feb. 21, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

swelled the gathering with their presence," noted the Era of the Thibodaux meeting. At Baton Rouge Hahn shared the platform with his candidate for secretary of state, Stanislas Wrotnowski, one of Durant's former registrars, who was both more radical than Hahn and owned more impeccable credentials of opposition to the Confederacy. Hahn's superior resources for mobilizing crowds, his virtual monopoly of press support, and the obvious approval of his candidacy by the army of occupation gave an air of success to the campaign from the beginning.26 The schism in free state ranks aroused the hopes of the con­ servatives, and they put a full ticket into the field. First they nominated for governor the haughty lawyer and legal scholar Christian Roselius, a German emigre who had achieved respect­ ability in antebellum social circles by a fortunate marriage. Rose­ lius had been an opponent of secession in the 1861 convention, but he refused to participate in politics at all during the war. After Roselius turned down the nomination, the conservatives turned to another well-to-do lawyer, J.Q.A. Fellows. Named after John Quincy Adams, Fellows had also opposed secession but took a proslavery position and worked closely with the planters' move­ ment in 1863. J. Ad. Rozier, the candidate for attorney general, was also a Unionist lawyer of conservative views. The other faces on the ticket were new to wartime politics. The conserva­ tives had put forward a slate designed to attract as broad a coali­ tion as possible.27 Although it had originally approved Banks' proclamation, the New Orleans Times remained neutral in the split between Hahn and Flanders. For almost two weeks after the fatal convention it tried to forge a compromise settlement that would reunite the free state forces. Denison, who was part owner of the paper along with Thomas P. May and two other Treasury agents, was embar­ rassed at his bedfellows in the procrustean confines of the Hahn campaign. John Hutchins and a more recent Chase envoy to the city, Frank E. Howe, encouraged the idea of an entente cordiale 26 Ibid., Feb. 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 1864; New Orleans Times, Feb. 9, 11, 18, 20, 21, 1864; New Orleans True Delta, Feb. 12, 18, 21, 1864; Louisiana Staatszeitung, Feb. 13, 14, 19, 1864; New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, Feb. 16, 19, 21,1864. 27 New Orleans Times, Feb. 3, 5, 1864; New Orleans Era, Feb. 14, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Feb. 16, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

between the two camps and between military and Treasury of­ ficials. Durant and Flanders were willing to discuss the prospects of compromise, and the Free State General Committee adopted a resolution to that effect on February 13. The attitude of the Hahn forces was completely disdainful, as indicated by the re­ sponse of the Era: "when they find themselves and their im­ practicable ideas and schemes unsupported by the majority of the people, they begin to preach the beauties of unity."28 More than simple factional differences, however, divided the radicals and moderates. The electoral struggle revealed a degree of ideological conflict within the ranks of the free state movement that had remained dormant in the period of radical hegemony. Both camps liked to talk about the "revolution" against slavery, but their assumptions about the nature of politics and of revolu­ tion were very much at odds. They were closer to one another than to the conservative Unionists, to be sure (not to mention the Confederates), and it is important to remember the extent to which they were in agreement. It is also possible to attach too much significance to ideological pronouncements uttered in the heat of an electoral campaign. Despite these caveats, there can be no doubt that the ideological issues in the dispute were critical considerations for the participants in the free state movement, and they warrant careful examination. General Banks had his philosophical moments, and he had given some thought to the nature of this revolution the country was experiencing. "The history of the world shows that revolu­ tions which are not controlled and held within reasonable limits, produce counter-revolutions," he declared in a letter to President Lincoln. "We are not likely to prove an exception to this general law."29 This assumption had obvious implications for reconstruc­ tion policy, Banks explained to his friend George Boutwell: "if the policy proposed be too conservative or too radical it will bring a counter-revolution, which will bear the seeds of infinite revolu­ tions and anarchy." The general rejected the conservative ap28 Denison to Chase, Feb. 5, 19, 1864, CC, 430-432; Hutchins to Chase, Feb. 12, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; Durant to Alfred C. Hills, and the en­ closed resolution of the Free State General Committee, Feb. 13, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS; New Orleans Times, Feb. 17, 1864; New Orleans Era, Feb. 16, 17, 1864. 29 Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 30,1863, ALM, 28970.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

proach of the planters' movement, which wanted to retain slavery or obtain gradual and compensated emancipation. "The restora­ tion should be upon the the basis of instantaneous and universal emancipation." He regarded the views of men like Durant as "too radical," on the other hand, especially after such men began to advocate equal suffrage for blacks. This approach would alien­ ate many potential supporters of the administration, he thought. Hahn's moderate views offered a middle ground between the extremes, and by making the former congressman his picked candidate for party leader, Banks hoped to control the revolution "within reasonable limits."30 The editorials of the Era expressed similar views of the political dynamics of the situation. "The fact that extremes sometimes meet was never more forcibly illustrated than in the case of Mr. Flan­ ders and Roselius/' wrote editor Hills just after the conservatives nominated the latter for governor. Both were "working for the same object in this political campaign—namely to defeat Mr. Hahn." The Era stressed that "there is no practical issue on the slavery question" dividing Flanders and Hahn: "the free state men, then should distinctly understand that in the approaching election their votes will tell either for or against the Copper­ heads. If they vote for Mr. Flanders, they virtually support Mr. Roselius; for every vote thrown for Flanders takes so much from the strength of the free state party." Duty required that Flanders withdraw from the race, said Hills, but Flanders was an ex­ tremist who would sacrifice everything for the sake of vanity: "if 30Banks to [George S. Boutwell], Dec. [11], 1863 (letterbook), Banks Papers, LC. The addressee and date of this letter are matters of conjecture because it is a poor letterpress copy with several pages missing (the letter­ book was paginated), no signature, no greeting, no address, and an inde­ cipherable date. Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 143, 251, identifies it as a letter from Banks to Lincoln, Dec. 21, 1863. This seems unlikely because Lincoln is referred to in the third person by the author of the letter, and there is no original of that date in the Lincoln Papers, LC. Boutwell to Banks, Dec. 21, 1863, Banks Papers, LC, on the other hand, refers to a letter from Banks dated Dec. 11, which seems to be the letter in question. The precise identi­ fication of the letter makes little fundamental difference, unless both Har­ rington and I are wrong in attributing its authorship to Banks. The letter is, in any case, consistent with the general's views on the revolutionary charac­ ter of the war.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

he cannot be governor of free Louisiana, he would not have Louisiana free."31 The major dispute between the two candidates, in terms of substantive issues, was that "while Mr. Flanders believes that the right of suffrage should be extended to the negroes, Mr. Hahn believes that the time has not yet arrived," explained the Era. There was, for instance, the matter of practical politics: the radical candidate "must well understand that more than nine­ teen out of every twenty voters in this state are against him on this question." In addition, the moderate editor expostulated that social change must be attempted gradually (even, presuma­ bly, in a revolutionary situation). "The fetters have been stricken from the limbs of every slave in Louisiana, and schools have been instituted for the universal education of the oppressed children of bondage. Is not this enough for the present?" The paper em­ phasized that "we cannot set aside the prejudices of generations in a single day." Nor was an informed citizenry created in a day, thought the Era; at present "the masses of the blacks in this state are unfit to exercise the elective franchise." Hills closed his edi­ torial on a gradualist note: "no race of men who have been crushed by a long and cruel oppression, and deprived of all the means of education, is fit at once to participate in the government of a civilized people."82 The moderates, in short, assumed that normal political proc­ esses were still at work in the midst of the abnormal situation of revolution. They expected to stay "within reasonable limits," as Banks had phrased it, and they expressed concern lest trying to move too fast antagonize too many prospective voters. They clung to the optimistic assumption that a majority of white Louisianans could be persuaded to accept the "revolution" if only it moved gradually enough. Even the planters could be brought around, Banks continued to believe. "Those who have been slaveholders in this state will gladly consent to a government upon the basis of im­ mediate freedom," he wrote George Boutwell. "I do not mean that they prefer this. Not at all!" They would accept emancipa­ tion and a free state government, however, "if urged upon them, 31

New Orleans Era, Feb. 9, 10, 13, 1864. Ibid., Feb. 9, 1864. "The educated and enlightened among them are as well aware of this fact as we are," added Hills. 32

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

in a spirit not unfriendly—upon the idea that slavery is further impossible as it is—and not merely upon the idea that it is a sin."33 The radicals, on the other hand, adopted a power analysis of revolutionary politics. The only sound basis for reconstruction was to force acceptance of a free state government, they as­ sumed, for the Confederates and their sympathizers could not be conciliated. The rebel army had to be thoroughly beaten in the field, first of all, and federal military power maintained in the state until loyal forces could command the obedience of the "secesh" by an effective police apparatus and by control of the ballot box. The radicals were insistent that the right to vote be restricted to the unequivocally loyal citizens. Although they did not insist on an ironclad oath, they wanted staunch Unionists to control administration of the registration process. They were willing to move slowly in registering voters and scheduling elec­ tions because they felt that time was on their side, and they wanted to reconstruct the political fabric thoroughly while they were at it. "The administration has fallen into the error of trying to hurry a civil reorganization at too rapid a rate," complained Durant.34 Their desire to begin reconstruction with a constitutional con­ vention reflected this view: the radicals wanted to restructure the political regime by overhauling its basic laws, particularly those that favored the interests of the old planter elite. A convention could assume the authority to carry out such changes, unlike a governor or legislature, because ultimate sovereignty resided in such constituent assemblies of the people. A convention would legitimize the revolution with a sense of constitutional perma­ nence unavailable to any other method of reconstruction.35 Until this was done, Durant argued in a letter to Secretary Chase, restoration was premature. In light of the President's willingness to settle for halfway measures, "Congress should assume control 33Banks to [Boutwell], Dec. [11], 1863, Banks Papers, LC (see n. 30 above). 34 Durant to Chase, Feb. 21, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 35John Alexander Jameson, The Constitutional Convention (New York, 1867), takes the same view of the constitutional issues of reconstruction expressed by Durant.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

of the whole matter and fix on an immutable basis the civil and political status of the population of African descent, before any state shall be readmitted to the Union."36 Like the moderates, Durant and his colleagues viewed the war against slavery as a revolutionary movement, but their interpre­ tation of the nature of revolution was quite different. "There could be no middle ground in a revolution," as radical John C. Collins, a Treasury agent, declared in a speech to a Negro po­ litical club in New Orleans. "It must work a radical change in society; such had been the history of every great revolution." Durant agreed: "The General's newspaper organ violently and coarsely denounces us as radicals and fanatics, which epithets we, or I at least, may possibly deserve." If that was the case, Durant thought, then "the supporters of the General's candidate are cer­ tainly reactionary . . . hostile to liberty and to the objects of the revolution."37 The victory of these false revolutionaries would have disastrous long-term consequences, thought the radicals. "Should such a party be placed in power, through General Banks' success in electing Mr. Hahn, they may thence acquire strength enough to control the election of members of a convention to frame a new constitution," Durant feared, "and thus fasten upon us a form of state government founded on no higher sentiment than the 'epi­ dermic prejudice.'" Banks' approach to reconstruction was "hos­ tile to the welfare and rights of the race to be emancipated" because it placed power in the hands of "men who hate and fear . . . the improvement and elevation of the colored man." It was particularly ironic, thought Durant, that the general should "con­ ciliate rebels and their sympathizers, [but] wield the whole force of the government to overwhelm the earnest, radical, and original Union men."38 The radicalism of Durant and his colleagues was primarily po­ litical in character, at least up to this point. They rarely talked about the problems of the freedmen during 1863 and had little personal contact with the labor system in the countryside. To 36

Durant to Chase, Feb. 21, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. New Orleans Times, Jan. 6, 1864; Durant to Chase, Feb. 21, March 5, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. Durant took the same position in a speech reported in the Ncic Orleans Era, Feb. 9, 1864. 38 Durant to Chase, Feb. 21, March 5, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 37

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

some extent this can be attributed to their preoccupation with the tasks of voter registration and to the fact that freedmen's affairs were handled almost exclusively by the military, which relied on Northern officers of antislavery views to work directly with the blacks. The single-minded concentration of the Louisi­ ana radicals on the political aspects of revolutionary change is, nevertheless, a point worth noting. Their advocacy of Negro suffrage, however, drew the radicals into closer association with the New Orleans free men of color. Several white radicals were invited to speak at a meeting of the Union Radical Association in Economy Hall on January 5, 1864, before the schism occurred in free state ranks. B. Rush Plumly was there, for his association with the moderates was not yet public knowledge; the other speakers—Flanders, Dr. James Ready, and Treasury agent John C. Collins—were all radicals. Flanders urged the free men of color to do away with their feel­ ings of superiority to former slaves and to work as allies of the rural freedmen. Collins assured the audience that when the con­ vention movement produced a new "constitution on the broad basis of human rights, there would be no question as to the right of every citizen of Louisiana having a seat on the floor of a de­ liberative body." Immediately after the split UOnion sided with the radicals of the Free State General Committee, and when some of the white moderates charged Durant with arrogance and wounded pride for resigning his position as attorney general, the Negro paper defended him as a man of conviction and integrity, one who had the respect of the black community.39 A mass meeting of the free men of color at Economy Hall on January 19 determined to send two delegates to Washington to present to the President and Congress a petition demanding the right of suffrage for the Negro population of Louisiana. Plumly spoke to the gathering, and he sounded very different on this oc­ casion from the calculating politician he played at other times. "We are passing through a revolution," he declared, and a last­ ing settlement would only be obtained on "the principle that all men are born free and equal." Durant wrote a letter introducing the two delegates, engineer Jean Baptiste Roudanez and wine merchant Arnold Bertonneau, to President Lincoln and con39

New Orleans Times, Tan. 6, 1864; New Orleans L'XJnion, Tan. 16, 23, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

curring in their request for equal suffrage. "Unable to obtain a favorable hearing from those in authority in this quarter," he observed pointedly, "they deem themselves justified . . . in ap­ pealing for relief to the representatives of the nation" on Capitol Hill and to the White House.40 Shortly before Roudanez and Bertonneau left for Washington there was another mass meeting of the Negro community on February 10. Usually the free men of color met in Economy Hall, but now for the first time they were able to obtain the largest room in the city, Lyceum Hall. "The city authorities have always refused permission to the negroes to hold meetings there," noted the reporter for the New York Tribune, "and in this instance it was obtained only upon the order of Governor Shepley, at the request of Colonel [James M.] McKaye," who was one of the speakers for the evening.41 McKaye was visiting Louisiana on a fact-finding tour as a member of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. He had been in New Orleans for a few days, interviewing leading spokesmen of the black community, in addition to talking with the federal officers in charge of freedmen's affairs. The colonel had visited the Negro schools of the city, which impressed him greatly, and he planned to leave soon on a trip through the plantation country to examine Banks' labor system in operation. McKaye was a special guest at the Lyceum Hall meeting that evening, and he spoke briefly about the work of the commission and the task of bringing true freedom to the recently emanci­ pated population.42 The commissioner immediately perceived the ideological di­ mensions of reconstruction politics in Louisiana. Although Plumly and others associated with freedmen's affairs were supporting Hahn in the campaign then raging in the city, McKaye sided with Durant and Flanders. "I have been here but a few days," he wrote Senator Charles Sumner, but that "was long enough to have 40 New Orleans L'Union, Jan. 21, 1864; Durant to Lincoln, Feb. 10, 1864, ALM, 30417. I have translated Plumly's remarks from the French version in L'Union; they were doubtless delivered in English. 41 New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1864; New Orleans L'Union, Feb. 11, 1864. 42 McKaye to Sumner, Feb. 5, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU; New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1864; New Orleans L'Union, Feb. 11, 1864.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

my mind and heart filled with anxiety and sorrow." The colonel explained that "here, as so often before, the government seems to have repudiated the support of its only earnest and true friends." He equated Hahn and the moderates with the conservative Blair faction in the national party and voiced his judgment that "the free state association of which Mr. Durant is president embodies all the disinterested and thorough supporters of the govern­ ment."43 The Union cause also had a reservoir of potential support in the freedmen of the plantation country and the free men of color in New Orleans. The high level of education, the social grace, and the prosperity of the latter group made a mockery of the tradi­ tional Southern claims of white supremacy, thought McKaye, and the treaty ceding Louisiana to the United States in 1803, which appeared to have enfranchised them in law, strengthened their petition for suffrage.44 The Negroes of the city understood the drift of politics as clearly as white observers, but, more surpris­ ingly, the rural blacks also seemed to have an instinctive grasp of the dynamics of the situation. Amid the dislocations of war and "the trials of the great revolution," McKaye assured Sumner, "only the colored people seem entirely sane."45 After his tour of the rural parishes, McKaye drew up an as­ sessment of federal policy in Louisiana. The commissioner was not unfair to General Banks: he recognized that the contract labor system had alleviated much physical suffering by emptying the contraband camps and securing food, clothing, shelter, med­ ical treatment, and wages for the freedmen. In 1864 wages were to be doubled, moreover, and the laborers were to be granted the right to send their children to school once freedmen's educa­ tion was extended to their parishes. As a stopgap measure, Banks' system had its merits, thought McKaye, so long as the regulations were viewed as strictly temporary. However, the federal govern­ ment must move toward a policy that would "recognize the freedman's right to intervene in his own affairs" and to share in "the rights and duties of civilized life." Without the right to negotiate 43 McKaye

to Sumner, Feb. 5, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. presented their claim very forcefully in a letter to the editors of the New York Evening Post, March 1, 1864, reprinted in NASS, March 12, 18Θ4. 45 McKaye to Sumner, Feb. 5, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. 44 McKaye

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

his own contracts, to sue and to testify in court, to acquire prop­ erty, to bear arms, and to move about freely—civil rights severely circumscribed by Banks' provost marshals—Louisiana blacks could hardly be described as completely free. It was also essen­ tial, thought McKaye, to guarantee blacks "the right to the elec­ tive franchise," for without the ballot they would be defenseless once civil government was reestablished.46 In one respect the commissioner went beyond the ideas thus far advanced by the New Orleans radicals. "No such thing as free, democratic society can exist in any country where all the lands are owned by one class of men and are cultivated by an­ other," thought McKaye. A sound reconstruction policy must therefore rest upon "the ultimate division of the great plantations into moderate sized farms, to be held and cultivated by the labor of their owners." In less than a year the idea of land reform would be a frequent item of discussion in Louisiana radical circles, but as yet both Negro and white opponents of Banks' policy focused their attention on the goals of civil and political equality. Even in Washington the cause of land redistribution was far from realization. The House passed both George W. Julian's bill extending the Homestead Act to abandoned lands in the South and Thomas D. Eliot's bill creating a new Freedmen's Bureau, but both failed to clear the Senate.47 By the summer of 1864 the House and Senate were able to agree on a congressional reconstruction bill, and the course of events in Louisiana played a pivotal role in its formulation. After Banks refused to compromise with the Free State General Com­ mittee, Durant telegraphed an immediate protest to Republican leaders in Washington. During the weeks that followed he and Flanders continued to write various congressmen and cabinet members, hammering home the same theme: Banks' intervention was unconstitutional, inexpedient, and reactionary, and Congress 46 McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits: The Emancipated Slave Face to Face with His Old Master (New York, 1864), 34-36. For a more extended discussion of McKaye's assessment of the labor system, see Chap. iv. 47 McKaye, Mastership and Its Fruits, 3-4, 36-37; Patrick W. Riddleberger, "George W. Julian: Abolitionist Land Heformer," Agricultural History, ν (July 1955), 109-110; La Wanda Cox, "The Promise of Land for the Freedmen," MVHR, XLV (Dec. 1958), 431-432.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

should take action to stop the proceedings in Louisiana until it passed its own comprehensive reconstruction legislation.48 Henry Winter Davis, the radical congressman from Maryland who headed the select committee on reconstruction, was particu­ larly incensed by Lincoln's policy. The military commander in Arkansas had recently authorized the election of a constitutional convention, as requested by the Unionist political clubs of that state, and through a highly irregular procedure these clubs had carried out the "election" themselves. In addition to revising the state constitution by declaring secession null and void, abolishing slavery, and repudiating the Confederate debt, this convention took upon itself to name a congressman. Their claimant presented his irregular credentials to the House just as the radical protests from New Orleans were making their influence felt. Davis object­ ed to referring the Arkansas claim to the Committee on Elec­ tions on the grounds that this might be regarded as a tacit sanc­ tioning of administration policy in the Department of the Gulf, where Lincoln "has called on General Banks to organize another hermaphrodite government, half military and half republican, representing the alligators and frogs of Louisiana."49 In response to the pleas of Durant and his colleagues, Davis had introduced his own reconstruction bill the day before (Feb­ ruary 15, 1864) and had had the bill referred to his committee. As this was, with some modification, the measure that became known as the Wade-Davis bill, it is worth attention. With two exceptions its terms were similar to those of the bill introduced in December by James Ashley of Ohio and to the program of 48 Whitelaw Reid (under the pen name "Agate"), wrote of Durant's telegrams in an article dated Jan. 23, 1864: see the collection of his dis­ patches for the Cincinnati Gazette (Vol. iv), Reid Papers, LC. Examples of the heavy load of correspondence from Louisiana radicals to Republican leaders in Washington are: Durant to Henry L. Dawes, Feb. 8, 1864, Dawes Papers, LC; Durant to George Boutwell, Feb. 25, to Thaddeus Stevens, Feb. 29, to Henry Winter Davis, March 31, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS; Durant to Chase, Jan. 16, Feb. 21, March 5, 1864, John Hutchins to Chase, Feb. 24, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; Flanders to Chase, Jan. 14, 21, 23, Feb. 16, 26, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. 40 CG1 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (Feb. 16, 1864), 680-682; John G. Nicoky and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York, 1890), vra, 411-415; Thomas S. Staples, Reconstruction in Arkansas, 1862-1874 (New York, 1923), 15-35.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

the Louisiana radicals. The oath that Davis would require of pro­ spective voters was the ironclad version previously stipulated only for officeholders, rather than merely a pledge of future loyalty as prescribed by Lincoln's proclamation, by Ashley's proposal, and by Durant's registration procedures in Louisiana. The second major change was the elimination of the Negro suffrage clause proposed by Ashley and the Louisiana radicals. In committee the Davis bill was amended to require registration of a majority of the antebellum electorate before the reorganization of civil government could be initiated. Initially, however, it permitted elections to be held when 10 percent of the state's voters had subscribed to the ironclad oath.50 "If the Select Committee's plan . . . is sanctioned by the Con­ gress, then this state will be relieved of the peril which is upon it," wrote John Hutchins from New Orleans. "If General Banks' plan . . . shall be approved by Congress," on the other hand, he feared that "it will put in jeopardy the immediate abolition of slavery in this state." The radicals had to turn to Washington because there was no longer any doubt that the moderates were going to carry the election on February 22. "The whole power of the government is now against us, and of course we shall be defeated," admitted Flanders. Banks would win the first round, Durant observed, but "it remains to be seen whether the friends of liberty in Congress will tolerate it."51 In the closing days of the campaign Banks spurred the army's efforts to mobilize a large vote. He published an order that all qualified citizens would be expected to participate in the elec­ tion: "men who refuse to defend their country with the ballot box or cartridge box have no just claim to the benefits of liberty." In what he viewed as a metaphorical usage, Banks added that "indifference will be treated as a crime, and faction as treason."52 Banks also introduced a fundamental alteration in voter quali­ fications, ruling, as predicted by the radicals, that the antebellum proscription on voting by soldiers was no longer valid. The gen50

Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 200-213. to Chase, Feb. 24, 1864, Durant to Chase, Feb. 21, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; Flanders to Chase, Feb. 16, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP. 52 Gen. Order No. 23, Feb. 3, 1864, OR, xxxiv, 230-231. For Banks' inter­ pretation of his order, see Banks to Frank E. Howe, March 6, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. 51 Hutchins

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

eral ordered ShepIey to appoint extra registrars, who should keep their offices open until 10:00 p.m., and he instructed the provost marshal general to appoint traveling registrars for the rural parishes. He requested his quartermaster to permit "loyal voters that may be employed on the transports in this Department to stop at any precinct where a poll may be established on the day of election"—which opened the door for fraudulent voting prac­ tices, such as multiple voting. Two judges in the recorder courts of the city "kept open house until a late hour" to register voters, according to the Era, and the registration books all over New Orleans were left open until the polls closed on election day. Finally, the general saw to it that most of the election officials (in this city with a history of corrupt ballot counting) were Hahn supporters.53 With such systematic use of military power on his behalf, Hahn won the election on February 22, 1864, by a wide margin over his two opponents. He received 6,183 votes to 2,996 for the conservative Fellows; Flanders was third with 2,232. The rest of the ticket ran behind Hahn by slight margins, except Wells, who was nominated for lieutenant governor on both free state tickets and won by a vote of 8,410 to 2,944.54 The Era proclaimed "a glorious victory" and pontificated that "the people of Louisiana have spoken." Ignoring the vast organizational muscle behind the Hahn campaign, the paper declared that "the vote is an ef­ fectual answer to the charge of the bolters that they had a major­ ity in the convention." The ballots revealed that "the people were not deceived" by radical propaganda: "They thoroughly under­ stood the whole issue, and have endorsed the action of their delegates. The radicals have no appeal from the verdict." Cuthbert Bullitt, one of the conservative Hahn supporters, expressed himself more vigorously. "Our people are willing that the state 53 Gen. Order No. 24, Feb. 13, 1864, OR, 3d ser., iv, 96-98; Banks to Shepley, Feb. 9, 1864, Banks to Gen. James Bowens Feb. 9, 1864, Banks, Letterbook, LSU; Banks to Col. S. B. Holabird, Feb. 20, 1864 (letterbook), Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Era, Feb. 16, 20, 1864. 54These figures are from the manuscript returns of the election, Banks Papers, LC, and differ slightly from the fragmentary totals published in the newspapers. The returns are reproduced in Peyton McCrary, "Moderation in a Revolutionary World: Lincoln and the Failure of Reconstruction in Louisiana" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1972), Appendix I. An analy­ sis of the voting patterns is reserved for the following chapter.

RADICALS VS. MODERATES

should be free," he wrote Lincoln's conservative friend Orville H. Browning, "but they cannot stand radicalism,."55 Mrs. Banks celebrated the victory by throwing a great bal masque at the Opera House. Her soirees had won the general a degree of popularity even in conservative circles in the three months she had been in the city, but this was the most impressive display of all. The wearing of masks may have made it easier for respectable New Orleans socialites to attend, for the newspapers reported seeing even noted Confederate sympathizers at the affair.56 One can only wonder whether Mrs. Banks appreciated the irony of celebrating the moderate camp's victory with a masquerade ball. 55 New Orleans Era, Feb. 23, 1864; Bullitt to Browning, Feb. 25, 1864, ALM, 30911. 5s New York Times, March 4, 1864; New Orleans Era, Feb. 23, 1864.

CHAPTER VIII

The Moderates in Power: The Constitutional Convention of 1864

AT dawn on March 4, 1864, the citizens of New Orleans were awakened by a one-hundred-gun salute as the army of occupation opened the celebration of Michael Hahn s inauguration day. Within a few hours the sev­ eral thousand school children freed to attend the official cere­ monies began to crowd into Lafayette Square opposite City Hall. The authorities had constructed an immense amphitheater of wooden seats in the square, encircling a platform fifty feet in diameter where the dignitaries would assemble. A band of three hundred instruments was playing for the waiting crowd, and two regiments in full dress marched in to add to the spectacle shortly before General Banks, Hahn, and their entourage climbed to the platform. Edward H. Durell, recently confirmed by the Senate as U.S. district court judge for Eastern Louisiana, administered the oath of office to the new governor, after which the band struck up the "Star Spangled Banner." Hahn's inaugural address depict­ ed Louisiana as the first of the former Confederate states back in the Union and predicted that it would be the first to abolish slavery of its own accord. General Banks also spoke briefly to the crowd, and from the newspaper accounts he seems to have re­ ceived more applause than the new governor, which was per­ haps fitting in view of his role in the election.1 Not far away, on Esplanade Street in the Creole residential section, a quite different ceremony took place. Caroline Deslonde Beauregard, the wife of the Confederate general who initiated the war at Fort Sumter, had died on March 2 after several years 1

New York Times, March 14, 1864; New Orleans Era, March 5, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 5, 1864; Emily H. Reed, Life of A. P. Dostie: or, The Conflict in New Orleans (New York, 1868), 95-98.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

of lingering illness, and her funeral had been scheduled for the same day as the inauguration. The day after Mrs. Beauregard's demise Alfred C. Hills of the Era commented editorially, with a callousness befitting a former employee of James Gordon Ben­ nett, that it was a pity the poor lady had been left to her death by a traitorous husband off at the wars. Public reaction to the editorial increased the size of what would have been a large body of mourners in any case, and turned a private sorrow into a pub­ lic protest. "A larger throng was never assembled at any private funeral in this city," observed the Daily Picayune, and the New York Times reporter estimated the crowd at six thousand. The archbishop of the diocese performed the rites, and pallbearers then carried the casket down to the riverfront, where a steamer waited to transport Mrs. Beauregard's body to her old home in St. John the Baptist Parish for burial. Behind the casket "the cortege was over one mile in length" as Confederate sympathizers offered a silent dissent from the gala affair on the other side of the Vieux Carre.2 Symbolically at least, Hahn's inauguration meant that the mod­ erates were now in power. In terms of the actual power of deci­ sion making, however, the state remained under military govern­ ment, and General Banks was still the final arbiter of all questions of civil affairs. The executive officers of antebellum Louisiana, like those of other Southern states in the mid-nine­ teenth century, had been granted very little actual power by their state constitution. The legislature had overshadowed the execu­ tive and judicial branches of state government before the war, and in March 1864 the election of a reconstructed legislature was still six months in the future. Hahn and his associates thus inherited very little real authority with their victory at the polls. In order to strengthen the position of the moderates, President Lincoln appointed Hahn military governor in place of ShepIey a few days after the inauguration ceremonies. This gave Hahn the power of appointment over the municipal officeholders of New Orleans, but it was also a tacit admission that the genuine locus of power in Louisiana was the army of occupation. There 2

New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 4, 5, 1864; New Orleans Era, March 3, 1864; New York Times, March 14, 1864; T. Harry Williams, P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray (Baton Rouge, 1954), 203-205. The steamer that transported the body upriver was provided by General Banks.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

was a large element of truth in Durant's characterization of the state officers as "but the fragment of a government." The radical leader insisted that "this election does not restore Louisiana to the Union."3 Hahn's appointive powers as military governor, however, cou­ pled with the wholehearted support of the commanding general, gave the moderates an enormous advantage in the election for convention delegates that Banks now ordered for March 28. Mil­ itary authority was the sole reason Hahn had been elected gov­ ernor, complained Durant to Lincoln, "and it is also perfectly clear that the same authority can carry any election whatever." The radical lawyer had once planned to run for a seat in the con­ vention, but he now decided to boycott the election. He also ad­ vocated this as a proper course for the Free State General Com­ mittee over which he presided, and the organization accepted his point of view. "Warned by the experience of the gubernatorial election that no members of the convention could be chosen save those who were approved by the military commander," Durant explained to Henry Winter Davis, "our committee refused to have anything to do with the convention election."4 This strategy may have been ideologically sound, but it seemed to some of Durant's chief supporters to offer little chance of suc­ cess. Charles W. Hornor, Alfred Jervis, Judge Hiestand, Dr. James Ready, Judge Whitaker, and a number of other radicals decided to seek election to the convention. Perhaps Congress would not repudiate the new constitution; in that event it seemed more rea­ sonable to participate in drafting the document than to allow the moderates a free hand. Since the Hahn forces enjoyed an enormous competitive advantage, the group decided that there was only one hope of winning places in the convention: an unholy alliance with the conservatives. The two camps agreed to form a "Free State Citizens' Ticket," with radicals opposing 3 Ralph A. Wooster, The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850-1860 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1969), 26, 50-51; Lincoln to Hahn, March 15, 1864, CWL, VH, 248; Durant to Henry Winter Davis, March 31, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS; Durant to Lincoln, Feb. 26, 1864, ALM, 30985. 4 Gen. Order No. 35, March 11, 1864, OR, 3d ser., rv, 170-172; Durant to Lincoln, Feb. 28, 1864, ALM, 31072; New Orleans Times, March 19, 1864; Durant to Davis, March 31, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

the moderate candidates in some wards of the city, conservatives in other wards.5 A glance at the results of the gubernatorial election should have indicated to the participating radicals just how slim their chances of practical success really were. Hahn's ticket had car­ ried all but one of New Orleans' twenty-three precincts, and that one, a rotten borough of only twenty voters, had gone to the conservative Fellows. The winning margin in those twenty-two precincts captured by Hahn varied between 50 and 80 percent of the vote, with a median figure of 61 percent per precinct. Flanders had carried the suburb of Algiers with 43 percent of the vote, but in most of the city's precincts he had run third, a shade behind Fellows. The city's 5,853 votes were almost half of the state total of 11,411, and Hahn had captured 62 percent of this urban bloc. If the pattern of voting on February 22 was any indicator, it was only reasonable to assume that Hahn's ticket would sweep virtually all of the city's sixty-three seats.6 The victorious candidate had managed to hold his own in the countryside as well. Both he and Fellows had captured majorities in six parishes, and in another the vote was a tie. Of the six outstate parishes in Hahn's column, two were largely urban: he car­ ried 94 percent of East Baton Rouge's 308 votes, and 66 percent of Jefferson's 866 votes. He also received 68 percent of the ballots in Plaquemines Parish, long regarded as the most "deliverable" in the state (for a price). Hahn carried three genuinely rural parishes, however, and the radical candidate took another. In each case the vote of Louisiana soldiers garrisoned in the parishes was an important factor, although never quite so dramatically as in East Feliciana, where the entire electorate consisted of soldiers stationed at Port Hudson. The miliary vote generally went to Hahn, but in the case of Port Hudson, Flanders received all but 14 of the 121 ballots.7 Only one soldier in the entire state is recorded as having voted for the conservative candidate. Fellows' 5 B. Rush Plumly to Chase, March 5, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; George Denison to Chase, March 5, 1864, CC, 432-435; New Orleans Times, March 17, 19, 1864; New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 27, 1864; New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, March 29, 1864. 6 See above, Chap, vn, n. 54. 7 Robert Smith et al., Official Election Returns, Port Hudson, East Feli­ ciana Parish, Feb. 22, 1864, and David R. Morgan et al., Statement of the Vote, Madisonville, St. Tammany Parish, Feb. 22, 1864, Banks Papers, LC.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

entire strength was in the rural sugar parishes, and there he rolled up lopsided majorities. Backed by his enormous city vote, however, Hahn's margin of victory was overwhelming: he cap­ tured 54 percent of the total vote; Fellows, 26 percent; and Flanders, only 20 percent. Although conservatives might win a few seats in the sugar parishes, and one of the army bases might send a radical delegate, the election returns indicated that the moderate ticket would dominate the convention completely. Durant and Flanders argued for a boycott of the election and an appeal to Congress to override General Banks. The radicals who joined the citizens' ticket preferred a coalition of the ex­ tremes against the middle as the more pragmatic strategy for the convention election. There was, of course, a third alternative. The radicals could return to the Hahn forces hat in hand and reunite the free state forces in return for a small proportion of the convention seats. This was the only likely way of gaining leverage in the convention, of bringing limited radical influence to the decision-making process. It depended, however, on the willingness of the moderates to grant the radicals appropriate concessions. Editor Alfred C. Hills of the Era, the president of the moderate Free State Executive Committee, called a meeting the night before Hahn's inauguration "to consider some plan by which to obtain the cooperation of all the friends of a free state, in order to secure a majority of the delegates in the constitutional convention." One of the committee members moved that a dele­ gation be appointed to confer with Durant's organization, but, for reasons that remain unstated in the newspaper account of the meeting, "after some little discussion the motion was with­ drawn."8 The victorious moderates were not in a conciliatory mood at this point, discovered Treasury agent Frank Howe when he tried to patch up differences between the two camps. "Mr. Durant, I doubt not, is an honest man and able in his 'profession," began General Banks condescendingly to Howe, but he was quite naive about politics. Flanders, on the other hand, was driven by ambition. Unwilling to settle for his high office as special supervising agent for Treasury affairs in Louisiana, com­ plained the general, he was "determined to add to this honor the office of governor. Nothing else would satisfy him." B. Rush 8

New Orleans Era, March 4,1864.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Plumly expressed similar feelings. Of Durant he commented that "his mind runs in the grooves of legal precedent, which unfits him for the sharp necessities of revolution." PIumly reserved even harsher words for his former ally Flanders. During the campaign the radical candidate had become rude and arrogant, wrote PIumIy to Secretary Chase, and if he had not occupied the most powerful Treasury post in the state, virtually all of his office-hungry supporters would have deserted him. "The vote he received is mainly owing to his official position, which he used wholly for his own advancement." The Hahn forces had no in­ tention of being magnanimous. The convention was "in our hands," gloated the Philadelphian, and the radicals were to be shut out completely. Howe had the Plumly family to dinner and entertained Flanders long after midnight on another occa­ sion, but his appeal for harmony fell on deaf ears.9 General Banks was too busy with military affaifs to take a hand in the election campaign, for a new spring offensive was under­ way on the Red River. Nevertheless, trusted subordinates, in­ cluding his secretary, James Tucker, Provost Judge A. A. Atocha, Plumly, and the newly appointed mayor, Captain Stephen A. Hoyt, were active behind the scenes. Hoyt was an old hand at urban politics, for he had once been mayor of St. Louis before the war. He was quickly becoming one of Banks' leading politi­ cal advisers, and his garrulous, ungrammatical letters kept the general posted on day-to-day affairs of the campaign. Like Howe, the mayor sought to persuade the Hahn forces to place a few radicals such as Hornor and Whitaker on the ticket: "I done what I could but was overruled." He thought the radicals' ap­ peal to Congress would be strengthened by this evidence of moderate inflexibility, even though in the short run there was no danger of losing control of the convention election. "Here it will not make trouble but may at Washington."10 One purpose of the Red River campaign was to open up more of the state to federal control, and the general hoped to conduct elections in a few parishes in time for the convention. He in9Banks to Howe, March 6, 1864 (letterbook), Banks Papers, LC; Plumly to Chase, Feb. 26, March 5, 1864, Howe to Chase, March 5, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 10 Hoyt to Banks, March 28, 1864, Tucker to Banks, April 1, 1864, Banks Papers, LC.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

structed the provost marshal to issue passes to Unionist refugees "to go to their respective parishes for the purpose of assisting in the election of delegates," provided they checked first with Hoyt or William R. Fish, one of Hahn's chief political lieutenants. Banks had already authorized Madison Wells to return to Rapides Parish to reclaim his property, purchase his neighbor's cotton, and organize for the election.11 There was considerable Unionist sentiment in Wells' home parish, as evidenced by the friendly reception accorded the in­ vading army. "The wimmen generally come out to see us pass," noted one soldier in his diary. "Most of them cheer us by waving handkerchiefs or bonnets. One house we passed flaunted the stars and stripes." This, he observed, was "something new in Louisiana when our troops are not in possession." Wells brought several hundred Jayhawkers out of the hills to enlist in Banks' command as scouts or cavalry. "The stories they tell of the wrongs they have suffered," wrote another Union soldier in his diary, "have made my blood boil with sympathy for them. They swear Alexandria shall never again be in possession of their enemies, for they will burn it to the ground before that happens."12 The convention election was scheduled for March 28 in the rural areas as in the city, but Banks ordered a special election in Rapides and three other parishes on April 2. C. W. Boyce and several other political allies of the lieutenant governor sent Banks a list of seventy-six citizens of the area "who claim protection from the United States Government and as such, should be com­ pelled to show their hand in the election which takes place to­ morrow." The general recorded in a later report of the balloting that some three hundred residents of the parish recorded their votes at Alexandria, which was about 20 percent of the normal antebellum total for the parish. The four men chosen, one of whom was Wells' own son, were solidly Unionist in their sym­ pathies and unequivocally committed to emancipation.13 11 Banks, "Pass for J. Madison Wells," Feb. 8, 1864, Banks to Gen. James Bowen, March 21, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. 12William H. Stewart, Diary, March 19, 1864 (typescript), UNC; Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man (New Haven, Conn., 1910), 294; Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1947), 34. 13 Gen. Order No. 41, March 29, 1864, OR, 3d ser., iv, 209; C. W. Boyce et al. to Banks, April 1, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. Banks' report of the elec-

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Election day in the city was cold and rainy, and the turnout was very low. Only four candidates not on the Hahn ticket were vic­ torious: Edmund Abell, a conservative lawyer from the Creole fifth district; the director of the U.S. Mint, Dr. Max F. Bonzano, from the sixth; and two Germans from the ninth, Edmund Gold­ man and H. Maas. All the remaining sixty-three delegates from Orleans Parish were in the Hahn camp. Two nights later they gathered at the governor's house for a victory celebration. "I regret to say that the character, ability, and standing of the dele­ gates is not such as could be wished," declared George Denison to Secretary Chase. Denison had become thoroughly disillusioned with Plumly's scheme of cooperating with Banks during the gubernatorial campaign and had subsequently gone over to the radicals. His view of the newly elected convention was shared by the reporter for the New York Times. "Although there were unquestionably many first-class names upon the victorious ticket," the newsman commented, radicals like Hornor, Whitaker, Hiestand, William Duncan, and Stephen Straight were "far more qualified to make laws for us" than the majority of the delegates elected, and would have reflected "far more credit on the state."14 The social composition and administrative experience of the constitutional convention has always been a matter of some dis­ pute among historians. The early works on Louisiana reconstruc­ tion, written in the conservative mold of William A. Dunning, pictured the convention as a motley assemblage of Yankee ad­ venturers and natives of low social status. The delegates were inexperienced and inept, if not positively venal, and their pro­ ceedings were little more than a drunken farce. Authors of this persuasion have emphasized the huge expenditures of the con­ vention, the high level of liquor consumption during its session, and its difficulty in maintaining a quorum as evidence that its members were both irresponsible and corrupt.15 tion at Alexandria, dated March 28, 1865, is in Senate Reports, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., no. 142 ("Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War"), pt. ii, 335. 14 Hoyt to Banks, March 28, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; Denison to Chase, April 1, 1864, CC, 435-437; New York Times, April 10, 11, 1864; New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, March 29, 1864. 15 John F. Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, Through 1868 (Baltimore, 1910), 67-87, and Willie M. Caskey, Secession and Restoration of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938), 116-140, are representative of this interpretation.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Another interpretation was established in the 1930s by Roger W. Shugg, who was influenced by the classic writings of Charles A. Beard. Shugg accepted the evaluation of earlier authors that many of the convention delegates were men of low social origins, but he gloried in the fact. As a New Deal liberal who sympathized with the poor white farmers and workers of the South, Shugg saw in the Louisiana convention the first expression of the economic grievances that would culminate in the Populist revolt and the rise of Huey Long. The convention delegates were not Yankees but native radicals, Shugg was quick to argue. The document they produced was far more progressive than any earlier constitution of the state, moreover, with its provisions for public education, wages and hours legislation, and more equi­ table reapportionment of the general assembly. The delegates had little sympathy for blacks, Shugg realized, but like most Beardian writers, he was indifferent to the race question. The real struggle was between white labor and the merchant-planter elite that dominated the state.16 The evidence does not sustain either interpretation. The con­ vention was an overwhelmingly middle-class body of Louisiana residents, recruited from the law, the medical profession, the city's educators, the business community, and what we may generously term civil service occupations. Many of the delegates had served as Treasury agents, sheriffs, tax collectors, postmas­ ters, municipal employees, or clerks of court before the war or under the federal occupation. There was, to be sure, one known Yankee, and perhaps 10 percent of the convention might be labeled farmers, workers, or artisans, although many of them were also officeholders. The social background of the delegates was strictly bourgeois, however, and the active leadership of the convention was drawn almost entirely from the liberal pro­ fessions.17 16 Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), 196-210. Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 147-148, adopts Shugg's view of the social composition of the convention, as does David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (New York, 1967), 114-116. 17 Data on the occupational background of the convention members were gathered from personal and archival correspondence, from newspaper ad­ vertisements and news items, from the manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, the U. S. Official Register (1855-1865), and from the following

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Antebellum New Orleans had many residents of Northern birth, and even the secession movement had not been free of the taint of Yankee blood. For this reason it is not surprising that there were many men in the convention who had grown up on the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line. They had all come to the city as young men to seek their fortunes, and most had been permanent residents for many years. The single exception was "Colonel" Alfred C. Hills, co-editor of the Era, who had come south as a war correspondent for the New York Herald at the end of 1862. Thomas B. Thorpe was, like Hills, accused of being a "carpetbagger," but in his case the charge was inaccurate. He had grown up in New York but came to Louisiana as a young man and raised his family in New Orleans and West Feliciana Parish during a residence of fifteen years. Thorpe was a writer and painter, and his frontier humor sketches made the back­ woods denizens of the lower Mississippi well known throughout the country. He was accepted into planter society, became in­ volved in politics, and was active in the campaign of Louisianan Zachary Taylor for the presidency. His oil portrait of the general hung in the capitol at Baton Rouge. Thorpe left the state a few years before the war to pursue his literary career, but he returned with Butler's army and served in the municipal government as city surveyor. He had a right to claim himself a Louisianan.18 A small contingent in the convention might have passed for working-class, although hardly of the numbers or significance asserted by Roger Shugg.19 Edmund Flood and O. H. Poynot city directories: Cohens New Orleans Directory (1854); ibid. (1855); Gardner and Wharton's New Orleans Directory (1858); ibid. (1859); Duncan's New Orleans Business Directory (1865); Gardner's New Orleans Directory (1866); ibid. (1867); and Graham's Crescent City Directory (1867). A complete tabulation of these findings is presented in Appendix B. 18 New Orleans Era, Feb. 15, 1863. Hills settled in the city after the war and practiced law (Gardner's [1867], 202). See also Milton B. Rickels, Thomas Bangs Thorpe: Humorist of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, 1962), and Thorpe's denial of the carpetbagger label in Debates in the Convention for the Revision and Amendment of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1864), 551-556 (hereafter cited as DCCL). 19 Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle, 209, identified only one "workingclass" delegate by name: Benjamin H. Orr, "former steamboatman." A closer inspection reveals that as early as 1855 Orr was a master pilot and captain of a steamboat (Cohen's [1855], 181). Shugg also declares that "among

THE MODERATES IN POWER

were carpenters, for example, and Patrick K. O'Connor was a laborer before the war, although each held office under the fed­ eral occupation, and O'Connor was operating a secondhand furni­ ture store by 1866.20 Martin Schnurr was a blacksmith in Port Hudson, and Peter A. Kugler was a master butcher in Baton Rouge. Louis P. Normand was a small farmer in the Acadian parish of Avoyelles, but he was also its sheriff.21 Four delegates held menial government jobs as poundkeepers and night watch­ men.22 None of these ten men participated in debate or com­ manded much influence in the proceedings of the convention. A larger proportion of the delegates can be identified as shop­ keepers and small businessmen. The wholesale supply of groceries and plantation stores was the business of several delegates: John T. Barrett, Terrence Cook, Edward Hart, John Payne, and Pat­ rick Harnan. In addition to his business, Harnan was also a city tax assessor for a time.23 Emile Collin and P. L. Dufresne oper­ ated "trade stores" in the sugar parishes, and before the war Dufresne had also been a postmaster. Edmund Goldman and J. Randall Terry were druggists in New Orleans, but each was those whose occupations may be ascertained were two steamboatmen, a few clerks, a tailor, decorator, fireman, and several mechanics and laborers" (p. 200). Checking the references he cites, and all other available materials, I have been unable to identify any of the above occupations among the delegates. Almost 16¾ of the convention delegates remain unidentified, however, and it is conceivable that proletarian origins lurk in that anonymous percentage. 20 Flood was harbormaster of the port of New Orleans as well as a car­ penter: Gardner's (1858), 118; Duncan's (1865), 125; Graham's (1867), 192. Poynot was an inspector of weights and measures: Gardner's (1859); Graham's (1867), 361; U.S. Official Register (1863), 95-96. For O'Connor, see Gardner's (1858), 237, Duncan's (1865), 118, and Gardner's (1866), 341. 21Manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P: Schnurr, East Feliciana Parish; Kugler, East Baton Rouge Parish; Normand, Avoyelles Parish. For Normand, see also Duncan's (1865), 125. 22 Xavier Maurer and J. J. Healy were poundkeepers for the municipal government, while John Sullivan and James Ennis were nightwatchmen at the U.S. Customhouse: Duncan's (1865), 128; U.S. Official Register (1863), 95-96. 23Barrett: Gardner's (1858), 31; ibid. (1867), 49. Cook: Duncan's (1865), 69; Graham's (1867), 144. Hart: Gardner's (1858), 147; Duncan's (1865), 79; Gardner's (1867), 193. Payne: Gardner's (1858), 243; ibid. (1867), 309. Harnan: Duncan's (1865), 127; Gardner's (1867), 192.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

also an officeholder: Goldman was an assistant alderman, and Terry held the powerful position of registrar of voters in the city.24 Louis Gastinel owned a shoe store and Howard Millspaugh a riding stable, but each held government employment as well. Gastinel later became president pro tem of the state senate and acting lieutenant governor. George W. Geier and Joseph G. Baum were coffeehouse proprietors, and Baum was also clerk of one of the city's district courts. Robert B. Bell was a contractor as well as a street inspector for the municipal government.25 Many of these small businessmen may have been quite prosper­ ous. Certainly there were other delegates who might appropriate­ ly be termed merchants. Perhaps the best known was George A. Fosdick, whose shipping firm was the agent for the leading New York and Boston lines. Robert V. Montague was a commis­ sion merchant who had offices in Vicksburg as well as New Orleans and owned a cotton plantation in Madison Parish. George F. Brott and J. B. Schroeder were also commission mer­ chants, and Schroeder served as a Treasury agent during the war.26 Delegates John Purcell and W. T. Stocker were partners in a lumber company of many years' standing; Purcell was also street commissioner of the city, and Stocker was a state tax col­ lector. Samuel Pursell, the leading auctioneer and real estate broker in the suburb of Jefferson, served as parish recorder after the war. William D. Mann was a well-to-do ice merchant in Baton Rouge who was shortly to be elected to Congress.27 24 Collin's store was in Ascension Parish: Duncans (1865), 107. Dufresne lived in Iberville Parish: Duncans (1865), 110; U.S. Official Register (1855), 215. Goldman: Gardner's (1858), 134; Duncans (1865), 28. Terry: Duncans (1865), 129; Gardner's (1867), 383. 25Gastinel was also a municipal tax assessor: Gardners (1858), 128; Duncans (1865), 127; Gardner's (1867), 168. Millspaugh was an assayer at the U.S. Mint: Gardner's (1858), 221; ibid. (1867), 282; U.S. Official Register (1855), 24. Geier: Gardner's (1858), 129; Duncan's (1865), 49; Gardner's (1867), 169. Baum: Duncan's (1865), 123; Gardner's (1867), 52. Bell: Cohen's (1854), 25; Gardner's (1866), 79; ibid. (1867), 57. 20 Fosdick: Cohen's (1854), 92; Gardner's (1857), 120; Graham's (1867), 195. Montague: Gardner's (1858), 223; advertisement, New Orleans Era, Feb. 9, 1864; Hahn to Lincoln, May 23, 1864, ALM, 33245. Brott: adver­ tisement, New Orleans Era, Feb. 9, 1864. Schroeder: Gardner's (1858), 280; Duncan's (1865), 117. 27 Purcell: Duncan's (1865), 126; Gardner's (1867), 323. Stacker: Gard­ ner's (1858), 295; Duncan's (1865), 124; Ralph A. Wooster, "The Louisiana

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Professional men were generously represented among the dele­ gates, and many of them played influential roles in the conven­ tion. Alfred Shaw and William R. Fish were former schoolmasters who went into politics; Shaw became sheriff of Orleans Parish, and Fish served as clerk of one of the city's district courts. Fish was also an attorney and a journalist; after the gubernatorial election he became the editor of Hahns True Delta and received the lucrative contract to print the convention debates.28 Dr. William H. Hire had practiced medicine for many years prior to the war, and under the federal occupation he became the coroner of New Orleans. Dr. Max F. Bonzano was another physi­ cian who went into government service. An attractive salary lured him into a position as refiner at the U.S. Mint as early as 1855, and during the war he became superintendent of the mint, in addition to serving as a federal direct tax commissioner. Bonzano would also be elected to Congress in September. Dr. Jansen T. Paine was post surgeon at Port Hudson after its capture from the Confederates, and he set up practice in New Orleans in 1865.29 Joseph Gorlinski, a young Polish immigrant, was a civil engineer in Baton Rouge before the war, where he also held the position of city surveyor. In 1862 he was deputy surveyor of New Orleans under Thorpe and subsequently the provisional registrar of state lands. Bavarian-born Joseph Stumpf, an old friend of Governor Hahn, was a musician and band leader in the city.30 The largest single profession represented in the convention Secession Convention," LHQ, xxxiv (April 1951), 130. Pursell: Gardner's (1858), 256; ibid. (1866), 519. Mann: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, East Baton Rouge Parish. 28Shaw: Gardner's (1858), 284; ibid. (1859); Duncan's (1865), 129. Fish: Gardner's (1859); Duncan's (1865), 122-129; Gardner's (1867); DCCL, 16-17. 29Hire: Cohen's (1854), 118; Gardner's (1858), 155; Duncan's (1865), 129; Graham's (1867), 239. Bonzano: U.S. Official Register (1855), 24; Gardner's (1858), 47; Duncans (1865), 120. Paine: Capt. E. D. Strunk to Maj. G. B. Drake, Feb. 15, 1864, NA, RG 393, DGBCA; Gardner's (1867), 309. 30Gorlinski: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, East Baton Rouge Parish; Duncan's (1865), 124; Gorlinski to Hahn, March 14, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; Gorlinski to Banks, July 18, 1863, NA, RG 393, DG, BCA. Stumpf: Hahn to Banks, Sept. 1, 1863, Banks Papers, LC; Gardner's (1858), 297.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

was the law, as is characteristic of virtually all elective bodies in American politics. Delegates R. King Cutler and John Henderson Jr. were law partners, and Cutler, who was soon to be nominated for a U.S. Senate seat, was also a justice of the peace. James Fuller was shortly to become New Orleans district attorney. Ernest Wenck, a lawyer from the German section of the city, was active in the radical Union Association. Edmund Abell, John P. Montamat, and Antonio Mendiverri were all lawyers of con­ servative persuasion from the Creole fifth district. After the war Abell became a district court judge, and Montamat was clerk of his court. Henry C. Edwards of Avoyelles Parish and Anthony Cazabat of Rapides, an old friend of the lieutenant governor, were both small town lawyers. Driven out of his home by the Confederates in 1864, Cazabat opened an office in New Orleans.31 Several lawyers in the convention were also judges. The pre­ siding officer was Edward H. Durell, who had recently been con­ firmed by the U.S. Senate as judge of the federal district court in New Orleans. Durell's father was a distinguished New Hamp­ shire jurist and his mother was a member of the powerful Wentworth family. He had graduated from Phillips Exeter and Har­ vard, had read law in his father's office, and was admitted to the bar in 1834. Shortly thereafter he set up practice in New Orleans, where he was a prominent attorney and sometime participant in municipal politics. During the war he became chairman of the city's Bureau of Finances and was one of the most powerful figures in the civil government.32 Rufus K. Howell had been judge of the city's sixth district court before the war and would be a member of the state su­ preme court in 1865. John W. Thomas, a former law partner of both R. King Cutler and of Michael Hahn, was judge of the 81Cutler: Cohen's (1855), 63; Gardner's (1858); Duncans (1865), 30; Gardner's (1867), 116. Henderson: Gardner's (1858), 151; Duncans (1865), 30. Fuller: Duncan's (1865), 30; Gardner's (1867), 163. Wenck: Duncans (1865), 31; Graham's (1867), 71. Montamat: Duncans (1865), 122; Graham's (1867), 325. Montamat had also been a Confederate officer: see Napier Bartlett, Military Record of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1875), 22. Mendiverri: Duncans (1865), 30. Edwards: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, Avoyelles Parish. Cazabat: New Orleans Era, Feb. 9, 1864; Gardner's (1867), 96. 32 Howard H. W. Knott's sketch of Durell in the Dictionary of American Biography is unusually thorough and accurate. The Edward H. Durell Papers, NYHS, are extensive, but deal almost exclusively with his later life.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

second district court. Edward Abell became judge of the first district court after the war, and Anthony Cazabat, the second district court in Jefferson Parish. Judge Henry J. Heard, a pros­ perous Baton Rouge lawyer and state senator before the war, presided over a district court in that city at the time of the convention.33 Of the judges in the convention, only Durell as presiding officer took an active part in the proceedings; most were busy in court on a regular basis. The planter class, which had dominated much of antebellum politics in Louisiana, was largely absent from the convention. Two younger sons of Unionist planters and political leaders were among the delegates, however. Thomas M. Wells, the son of the lieutenant governor, represented his home parish of Rapides. Robert W. Taliaferro was the son of Judge James G. Taliaferro of Catahoula Parish, who had been the most outspoken opponent of secession at the 1861 convention. Both families were well-to-do, and the sons had been involved in managing the estates before the war, but they were hardly typical planters. Young Taliaferro, who represented neighboring Concordia Parish because rebel units controlled his home parish at the time of the election, had commanded a Jayhawker group for much of the war. Both he and Wells would attend the Republican national convention as delegates in June, and both remained active in politics during reconstruction, although each continued to be overshadowed by his famous father. In neither case is it accurate to interpret their presence in the convention as a residue of strength for the old planter class.34 83Howell: Gardners (1858), 159; Graham's (1867), 244. Thomas: Gardner's (1858), 302; Duncan's (1865); Graham's (1867), 422; Thomas to Banks, April 26, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. Heard: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, East Baton Rouge Parish; DCCL, 371; New Orleans Daily Picayune, April 14, 1864. It should be noted that the boundaries of judicial districts in New Orleans were somewhat different from those of legislative districts. 34 On Thomas M. Wells, see Lowrey, "Madison Wells," 8-10, 35. On Robert W. Taliaferro, see Wynona G. Mills, "James Govan Taliaferro (17981876): Louisiana Unionist and Scalawag" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1968), 8, 43-45. Thomas Ong had been employed by a firm of commission merchants in the wholesale produce trade before the war (see Cohen's [1855], 180, 246, 263, 280) but seems to have become a planter by this time: see Ong to the Commission on Enrollment, Jan. 27, 1864, Banks Papers, LC.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Many of the delegates held some form of government office before, during, or after the war, along with private business or professional employment. Others derived their only income from government employment (or, for some, that is the only occupa­ tional data that survive). The office of clerk of the district court was a lucrative position, for example, and six delegates served in this capacity at various times during the 1860s.35 The sheriff was an important official in the rural parishes, and seven dele­ gates held this position: Robert W. Bennie of Terrebonne, Charles H. Gruneberg and J. H. Stiner (at different times) in Lafourche, Louis P. Normand in Avoyelles, John A. Newell in Concordia, Charles Smith (later a nominee for a U.S. Senate seat) in St. Mary, and Joseph Dupaty (later a newspaper editor) in Assumption.36 Joseph H. Balch had been an assistant marshal and census taker in Iberville Parish in 1860, and in 1864 he was the parish recorder there. Eudaldo G. Pintado, a Cuban emigre, had been postmaster and justice of the peace in Assumption Parish before the war; like Balch, he was parish recorder at the time of the convention. William H. Seymour was a justice of the peace in the suburb of Algiers.37 The U.S. Treasury had long been a lucrative source of em­ ployment in New Orleans, while state and municipal govern­ ments offered numerous positions as well. Cyrus W. Stauifer was a clerk who moved up in the hierarchy to the level of chief clerk of the naval office under Cuthbert Bullitt, later serving as reg­ istrar of voters in New Orleans and secretary of the city's board of currency. F. M. Crozat was a customs inspector before the war and became the city's recorder of births and deaths. Dele­ gate James Duane was employed in the customhouse, and J. B. 35 In addition to John P. Montamat and William R. Fish (already noted), Oliver W. Austin, Joseph G. Baum, J. V. Bofill, and Robert Morris also served as clerks of court: Duncans (1865), 123-125; Gardner's (1867), 44, 52, 67, 290. seDuncans (1865), 125-126; Graneberg to Banks, July 6, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Tribune, Feb. 2, 1865. 37Balch: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, Iberville Parish; Duncan's (1865), 125. Pintado: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, Assumption Parish; Duncan's (1865), 125. Seymour: Gardner's (1858), 283; Duncans (1865), 123; New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, March 29, 1864.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Bromley was a Treasury agent in Assumption and Lafourche.38 Robert J. Duke of Ascension Parish was a state tax collector; Ben­ jamin H. Campbell worked for the Bureau of Streets and Land­ ings in New Orleans; Michael D. Kavanagh was chief of the city police force during the federal occupation; and J. H. Flagg was constable of the suburb of Algiers.39 The convention did not include the old political elite of Louisi­ ana, which was almost entirely Confederate in its sympathies. Collectively, however, its members possessed familiarity with the law, the problems of the business community, and the day-to-day operation of local, state, and federal governments. The reservoir of experience among the loyal citizenry was not exhausted in the recruitment of delegates, of course, for many of the radicals excluded from the convention by political differences were law­ yers or government employees. The occupational profile of the convention was not strikingly different from that of twentiethcentury American state legislatures, except that there was a smaller proportion of lawyers and a larger number of government employees. With the few exceptions noted, the working class was not directly represented among its members, although there were numerous middle-class delegates who regarded themselves as spokesmen ,for the laboring man. Even a middle-class conven­ tion was revolutionary by antebellum standards, however, and it is hardly surprising that the old leadership should think of the men of 1864 as the lower sort. The convention met on April 6, 1864, in Lyceum Hall, which had been redecorated for the occasion and renamed "Liberty Hall." It had been expected that the convention would choose the eminent conservative lawyer Christian Roselius, a delegate from Jefferson Parish, as its presiding officer. Instead it chose Judge Durell. Roselius resigned on the second day of the conven­ tion because the body voted to require each of its members to take 88Stauffer: U.S. Official Register (1863), 95-96; Duncans (1865), 118. Crozat; U.S. Official Register (1855), 67-68; Gardner's (1858), 83; Dun­ can's (1865), 129; Graham's (1867), 150. Duane: Gardner's (1866), 162. Bromley: Bromley to Benjamin F. Flanders, May 17, 1864, NA, RG 366, 3STAL (3A-225). 39Duke: manuscript returns, US Census (1860), P, Ascension Parish. Campbell: Duncan's (1865), 127. Flagg: New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, March 29, 1864. Kavanagh: Duncan's (1865), 128.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Lincoln's oath of loyalty, which he thought unseemly. He may also have been annoyed that he was passed over in the balloting for president. After this preliminary skirmish the leadership pro­ ceeded to the organization of committees to undertake the main task of revising the constitution article by article, and much of the first month was occupied with administrative questions and preliminary reports from committees.40 The status of the Negro in the postwar order was the key issue before the convention, wrote Colonel Thorpe to Banks a few days after the session began. He was optimistic about some aspects of the question: "there seems to be but one sentiment regarding the emancipation clause," he observed, "and I am delighted to perceive that the country members can set an example of en­ thusiasm to some of our city delegates." The colonel was accurate in this assessment as it turned out, and his evaluation of the con­ vention's attitude toward the suffrage question also proved astute. The best deal that could be obtained from this group of dele­ gates, he told Banks, was partial enfranchisement of the Negro through some mechanism such as a property qualification. The convention might be persuaded to grant "all the immunities of free white men" to a small group of New Orleans free men of color but would never consent to universal suffrage. Personally, Thorpe preferred equal suffrage, but after talking with his fellow delegates he advised that the best strategy was to stake out "a middle ground" on the Negro question. If the liberal forces aroused the racist sentiment of the convention by demanding too much, he thought, there would be no steps at all in the direction of equal voting.41 40

DCCL, 3-15, 20-44. R. S. Abbott of the city's tenth district also re­ signed, claiming "pressing business" (ibid., 15). Sidney Lobdell of West Baton Rouge Parish never participated in the convention at all. There were two additional resignations later, but the sum total does not justify Willie M. Caskey's assertion that these departures handicapped the transaction of business: Caskey, Secession and Restoration, 120. Caskey also finds it un­ usual that the convention should compel attendance by law in order to maintain a quorum, but this was the standard practice of antebellum legis­ latures, as authorized by the constitution of 1852. The problem lay in the high quorum set by the convention (75): this was half the membership authorized for the convention but three-fourths the number actually elected, and proved a very high percentage of those actually in New Orleans for the duration of the session. 41 Thorpe to Banks, April 12, 1864, Banks Papers, LC.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

"Colonel Thorpe, I think, truly represents the sentiments of the convention upon the subject," thought Banks. "He is, I under­ stand, in favor of a just recognition of the rights of negroes, but states the difficulties in its way." Thorpe's preference for a mid­ dle ground was very much in line with the general's thinking, of course, and Banks' estimation of the writer, who had once been a staunch ally of General Butler, rose accordingly. The question of Negro suffrage was now before Congress, and Banks instructed his secretary to forward Thorpe's letter to an old friend on Capitol Hill. "I should be glad to have Governor Boutwell see this note, as he is interested in this question."42 President Lincoln was also interested in the idea of enfranchis­ ing the New Orleans free men of color. A month earlier Jean Baptiste Roudanez and Arnold Bertonneau had arrived in Wash­ ington with a petition signed by a thousand of their fellow Negro citizens and endorsed by Durant, Anthony Fernandez, and other members of the radical Free State General Committee. They presented their petition at the White House, and apparently made a deep impression on the President, although to Roudanez and Bertonneau he remained noncommittal. The next day Lincoln wrote to Michael Hahn backing, in a tentative way, the Negro petition. "Now you are about to have a convention," he began, "which, among other things, will prob­ ably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in—as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought in our ranks." Lincoln still did not wish to commit himself to this position, and he emphasized that "this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone." The in­ stinctive sympathy that prompted the President's letter was tempered by his politics. The time had not yet come for this radical change, and he preferred, he told Roudanez and Bertonneau, to wait for Louisianans to take the initiative.43 The two Negroes also gave copies of their petition to Charles Sumner, who presented it to the Senate on March 15. Shortly 42

The quotations are from the general's endorsement on the back of ibid. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York, 1962), 227-228; New Orleans L'Union, April 23, 28, 1864. The petition and a letter from Roudanez and Bertonneau to Lincoln were published in full in the Libera­ tor, April 1, 1864. For Lincoln's letter to Hahn recommending the limited enfranchisement of Louisiana Negroes, March 13, 1864, see CWL, VII, 243. 43

THE MODERATES IN POWER

afterward Roudanez and Bertonneau conitnued their journey to Boston, where they received a tremendous welcome from aboli­ tionists and radicals. Republican Governor John A. Andrew was toastmaster of a dinner given for the two Negro spokesmen at the Parker House, where William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass were among the guests. Roudanez and Bertonneau expressed their surprise and pleasure at the equality with which black men were accepted in Boston. "When we return to New Orleans," declared Bertonneau, "we shall tell our friends that in Massachusetts we could ride in every public vehicle, that the colored children not only were allowed to at­ tend public schools with white children, but they were com­ pelled by law to attend such schools." They had also "visited your courts of law," he added, "and saw colored lawyers defend­ ing their clients before the bar of justice." Their visit was a moving experience for Roudanez and Bertonneau, as they wrote to Sena­ tor Sumner: "we have met a reception we never expected, though we knew that Massachusetts is always ahead in everything that is good."44 At the moment, however, the question of Negro suffrage was not in the hands of Massachusetts Republicans but in those of the Louisiana convention. "I do not think there is much prospect that the convention will extend the elective franchise to free persons of color," observed George Denison gloomily. "If it is not done, the responsibility should rest on General Banks, for the convention is composed mostly of persons who would do what­ ever he should request." Denison s friend Plumly had persuaded him in January that Banks meant to undertake a radical program once the provisional government was initiated, but by this time Denison had lost all confidence in Plumly's optimistic view. Pri­ vately, the general did favor limited Negro suffrage, and he threw all his influence behind the most liberal bloc in the Hahn camp, which was thus able to assume the leadership of the con­ vention.45 Banks' grand strategy of moderate reconstruction had severely limited his options, however, for many of the rank and file of 4 4 NASS, March 19, April 23, 1864; Roudanez and Bertonneau to Sumner, April 19, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. 45 Denison to Chase, April 1, 1864, C C , 436-437; Banks to James M. McKaye, March 28, 1864, James Tucker to Banks, April 1, 6, 1864, Thorpe to Banks, April 12,1864, Banks Papers, LC.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

the convention were men attracted by the white supremacy ap­ peals Hahn had used against Flanders in the gubernatorial cam­ paign. The role of racial prejudice in their deliberations is best comprehended through a careful examination of voting behavior. The majority of the men who sat in the New Orleans conven­ tion were obscure individuals who made small impression on recorded history, even failing to register their opinions in the convention's extensive debates. Yet it was their votes that made possible the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a state school system for both races, just as it was their votes that pre­ vented more radical changes from taking place in the convention. A careful examination of these votes, employing Guttman scale analysis, can tell us much about the range of attitudes within the convention. The basic idea behind legislative roll call analysis is to exploit one of the rare forms of unambiguous data available to students of political behavior. The total record of roll calls in a delibera­ tive body provides a uniformly coded and easily quantified bank of information concerning each member's position on a given issue. An individual's voting behavior does not necessarily reflect his personal attitude, of course, but it does give a specific record of the political position he wishes to assume before the public.46 The most controversial aspect of the race issue, that is, the proposal for which it was most difficult to round up support, proved to be a motion to permit the legislature to enfranchise blacks.47 It was much easier to find votes for proposals to in­ corporate the freedmen's schools in the state educational system. The easiest aspect of the Negro question to support, as Thorpe had predicted, was emancipation.48 46For

a complete discussion of Guttman scaling as employed here, see Appendix C. See also Lee F. Anderson et al., Legislative Roll Call Analysis (Evanston, 111., 1966), 90-121, and Duncan MacRae Jr., Issues and Parties in Legislative Voting: Methods of Statistical Analysis (New York, 1970), 11-38. See Allan G. Bogue, "Bloc and Party in the United States Senate, 1861-1863," CWH, xm (Sept. 1967), 221-241, for a perceptive application of the technique. 47 The term controversial is also used to designate roll calls on which the legislature is most divided (i.e., those on which the division approaches a 50-50 split), but for clarity I prefer the usage in the text. 48 Of 18 roll calls that appeared to deal with the Negro question alone, half satisfied the requirements of the scale. On most of the nonscale votes the motion also involved the question of state aid to parochial schools (thus

THE MODERATES IN POWER

It is possible to isolate several different voting blocs in the convention. There was, first of all, a small group of fourteen lib­ erals whose votes were consistently "pro-Negro" on all nine roll calls, and another seven who deviated on only one measure. A second group of twenty-one delegates voted consistently liberal until they came to the three most controversial suffrage roll calls. This was the bloc, as we shall see, whose switch to the liberal column—after considerable behind-the-scenes pressure from Banks—made it possible to pass a "sneak" amendment (while conservative leader Edmund Abell was off the floor) authorizing the legislature to enfranchise blacks.49 On the opposite side of the political spectrum there were twelve delegates who never de­ viated from a hard-line conservative position; they even voted against the emancipation ordinance. Another nine voted con­ servatively on everything except the emancipation question. The remaining twenty delegates who voted frequently enough to be analyzed fell somewhere in the middle.50 The two committees that would handle the most controversial issues before the convention were under the control of undeviatingly liberal chairmen. Shipping merchant George A. Fosdick headed the committee on the legislative branch, which was re­ sponsible for the matter of Negro suffrage. Two other members of this committee were on the left wing of the convention, with four moderates and two conservatives making up the balance.51 Alfred C. Hills, who had used the white supremacy issue for strictly opportunistic reasons during the gubernatorial campaign, was actually quite liberal in his votes on the Negro question (within the limited context of the convention, of course). He chaired the committee on public education, which dealt with the touchy question of incorporating the Negro schools set up during the war into the state school system. Also on the comthe roll call was not "unidimensional"). The 9 surviving roll calls can be regarded as an accurate measure of the range of attitudes toward the race question within the convention. Of these votes, the 4 most controversial dealt with the suffrage issue, followed by 2 concerned with education, another suffrage measure, and 2 that dealt with emancipation. Specific citations are provided in Appendix C. 49 See below, pp. 262-264, and n. 64. 50 See Appendix C, Table C-4. 51 Liberals: Fosdick, Thorpe, and Hire. !Moderates: Wells, Stauffer, Cazabat, and Taliaferro. Conservatives: Schnurr and Knobloch.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

mittee were three moderates and six conservatives. Nevertheless, Hills managed to bring a favorable report out of his committee because four of the conservatives refused to participate in the work.52 Other important committees that dealt with the Negro ques­ tion were also in the hands of trustworthy chairmen, although they were men of somewhat more moderate views. Dr. Max Bonzano headed the emancipation committee, which drafted the provision for immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery. Hahn s partner, William R. Fish, was chairman of the committee on the executive branch, which in addition to its less controver­ sial work reported an amendment allowing blacks to participate in militia duty. WilHam D. Mann headed the committee on gen­ eral provisions, which drew up an amendment granting (in theory, at least) due process of law to all citizens, regardless of race.53 There were still other committees and still other issues before the convention, of course. Most of the committees made only minimal changes in their sections of the constitution, however, and few of these alterations were controversial. Engineer Joseph Gorlinski was chairman of the internal improvements committee, for example, and persuaded the convention to replace the old board of public works, an elective body that supervised state expenditures on construction projects, with a single expert: "a state engineer, skilled in the theory and practice of his profes­ sion," to be appointed by the governor. For such a position Gorlinski was, of course, a prime candidate. Legislative salaries were doubled, from $4 to $8 per day, and the governor s salary was set at $8,000.54 The convention removed the prohibition on state lotteries, introduced a slight change in the banking laws, moved the capital from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, and repudiated the Confederate debt. More controversy was occasioned by a change in the state judicial structure; the convention decided to have supreme court justices appointed by the governor, rather 52

DCCL, 60. of the amendments were successful. Identification of the revisions was obtained by an article-by-article comparison of the document produced by the committee (DCCL, 631-643) with the constitution of 1852, Journal of the Convention to Form a New Constitution for the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1852), 91-100. 54 Title X, Article 136; Title III, Article 32; Title IV, Article 50. 53 All

THE MODERATES IN POWER

than elected as before the war.55 Furthermore, in response to pressure from working-class organizations and a petition signed by several thousand laborers the convention added provisions setting maximum hours and minimum wages for men employed on state public works.56 Finally, the convention also debated ex­ tensively the question of state aid to parochial schools; despite strong Catholic and Lutheran pressure, it voted against the idea.57 On all these matters voting patterns were significantly different from those on questions of race. These issues were perfectly ger­ mane matters for the convention to undertake, but all were es­ sentially peripheral to the question that Colonel Thorpe had cor­ rectly identified as sine qua non: the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a meaningful condition of freedom for the Negro. The convention leadership faced vocal opposition from the right on virtually every aspect of this question. Edmund Abell, one of the few city delegates not elected on the Hahn ticket, was an articulate defender of the status quo ante bellum, and his elo­ quent discourses seemed to exert a powerful appeal in the con­ servative wing of the Hahn forces. When the race question first came up for debate on May 2, Abell launched into a vigorous defense of the rights of slaveholders, the dangers of emancipa­ tion, and the desirability of keeping the Negro in as subordinate a position as possible. The hour of adjournment arrived, but the convention voted to allow Abell to continue his remarks on the following day. For a week, in fact, Abell and his conservative allies tried to persuade the convention to make emancipation con­ tingent on prior federal compensation of loyal slaveowners, which would have postponed abolition of the institution indefinitely. On May 9 the liberal forces succeeded in tabling the proposal, by a vote of forty-five to thirty.58 55 Title

VII, Articles 116, 129, 130; Title V, Article 79. Title IX, Articles 134-135. The petition is printed in DCCL, 418-424, and a random sample of the occupations of individual signers supports the view that many were indeed manual laborers. Shugg, Origins of Class Strug­ gle, 207-210, gives special attention to this provision. 57 DCCL, 490-502, 522-531. 58 Ibid., 140-206. In terms of page numbers, Abell's speeches occupied precisely one-third of the debate (22 of 66 pages). On the May 9 roll call there was no quorum, but Durell ruled that the motion had carried (pp. 206-208). 58

THE MODERATES IN POWER

The liberals could line up a clear majority behind immediate and unconditional emancipation, but they were much more vulnerable on other aspects of the race question. The convention had been considering the amendments proposed by the commit­ tee on emancipation, and the next day the first order of business was a clause rendering the antebellum slave code null and void.59 Abell proposed an amendment to that clause, stipulating that the "legislature shall never pass any act authorizing free negroes to vote." The committee chairman, Dr. Max Bonzano, quickly moved to table the amendment, but this time Abell had the senti­ ment of the convention behind him, and the motion failed. By an overwhelming majority of seventy-five to fifteen the conven­ tion then approved Abell's amendment.60 By the next day the liberal leadership had managed to regain control of its forces. Cyrus W. Stauffer moved to strike out the entire clause, thus nullifying the conservative amendment, and this time the liberals had the necessary votes: fifty-nine to twentythree. Almost immediately the liberals moved to suspend the rules in order to come to a final vote on the emancipation section of the constitution; their motion carried by an overwhelming margin of seventy-two to twelve. The final vote was almost iden­ tical, and in view of the special nature of the roll call, the chair took the privilege of voting himself. "I vote 'yes,' gentlemen, with my whole soul," declared Judge Durell, and the delegates cheered enthusiastically. The first task of the convention, the abolition of slavery, had been accomplished.61 L'Union proclaimed that "May 11, 1864, will be a memorable date in the annals of Louisiana," and the New Orleans Negro community organized a great ball to celebrate the passage of the emancipation clause. Other blacks in the city read the situation more cynically. "The convention of the state of Louisiana has passed the act of emancipation," wrote William Vigert, the sec­ retary of the Union Radical Club, to Senator Charles Sumner, "but it was not done in the way it ought to have been done." Al59 Ibid., 210. eo Ibid., 210-212. Originally, Abell's amendment also prohibited black immigration into the state, but the convention voted to separate the two sections and vote on each independently. The immigration clause was debated but never came to a vote (pp. 212-218, 220-221). 61 Ibid., 221-224.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

though most of the delegates had been "elected on the free state ticket," observed Vigert, when the emancipation question came up," it was discussed for five days by men who call themselves Unionists and who stood up in Liberty Hall and said that slavery was a blessing, and that the slave was better off when held in a state of bondage than when free!" From the standpoint of the Union Radical Club, the role that men like Abell were permitted to play in the convention was emblematic of the fragile quality of the Hahn organization's commitment to black freedom.62 The liberals had managed to stave off the white supremacy advocates through shrewd parliamentary maneuvers. That 80 percent of the delegates had voted with Abell on the suffrage question on May 10 did not bode well for the recommendations of George Fosdick's committee on the legislative branch, how­ ever. Recognizing that an explicit guarantee of Negro suffrage would arouse the full ire of the conservatives, the committee re­ stricted the vote to whites. Nonetheless, in line with Thorpe's suggestion to Banks, its report included a compromise provision authorizing the legislature at some future date to enfranchise "such other persons, citizens of the United States, as by military service, by taxation to support the government, or by intellectual fitness, may be deemed entitled thereto." In accordance with this provision, the apportionment of seats in the legislature was based on "the number of qualified electors," rather than on the white population. The committee report also favored a literacy quali­ fication for white voters, but this recommendation proved very unpopular. When Samuel Pursell, one of Hahn's prominent sup­ porters, moved to strike out the literacy qualification, only nine of the staunch liberals in the convention were opposed. Shortly afterward Pursell moved to eliminate the clause allowing the legislature to enfranchise Negroes who could read and write, who owned property, or who had served in the federal army. This proposal was approved by a 70 percent margin, fifty-three to twenty-three, indicating once again the strength of racist senti­ ment in the Hahn camp.63 62 New Orleans L'Union, May 17, 1864; Vigert to Sumner, May 27, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. 63 DCCL, 144-148, 233-250. New Orleans Negroes complained bitterly about this vote, according to Vigert to Sumner, May 27, 1864, Sumner Papers, HU. See also Denison to Chase, June 17, 1864, CC, 438-440:

THE MODERATES IN POWER

Earlier in the convention the liberals' parliamentary expertise had enabled them to eliminate Abell's prohibition of Negro suf­ frage without bringing it to a direct vote. Once again they found it necessary to bypass the conservative opposition by legislative sleight of hand. While the white supremacy gadfly Abell was off the floor for a few minutes—a rare occurrence—on June 23, Joseph Gorlinski proposed an additional article to the section on general provi­ sions : the same limited suffrage provision that had been defeated a few weeks earlier. Irishman John Sullivan moved to table Gorlinski's proposal on the grounds that "that's a nigger resolution," but to no avail. Apparently the liberals had planned their move well: the vote was forty-eight to thirty-two in favor of the mo­ tion. By the time Abell returned to the floor the liberals had ob­ tained the best deal possible on the suffrage question from this "moderate" convention.64 "It is not perhaps all that could be wished," said George Denison of this vote, but to do more than this would have been an "exercise of more justice, generosity, and magnanimity than was possessed by the convention. And yet I think this is a great deal." In his correspondence with Chase, Denison explained that con­ siderable pressure was necessary to secure the reversal of opin­ ion. "At first the majority against this clause in the convention was overwhelming, and it was only by unremitting efforts by Governor Hahn, General Banks, and others that nearly forty votes were changed."65 "prejudice against the colored population is exhibited continually. The at­ tempt to induce such a convention to grant to colored men limited right of suffrage, or any other right, would be futile." 64 DCCL, 450. Abell's temporary absence from the convention floor is interpolated from the following bits of data: he answered the roll and intro­ duced a motion at the beginning of the daily session; he voted on a roll call later in the afternoon; but he missed this particular vote and another roll call a few moments earlier. That very day Abell wrote to Banks requesting an interview to talk about "two vital questions: the status of the colored race, and compensation of loyal owners" (Banks Papers, LC). It is not in­ conceivable that the crucial vote was taken while Abell was chatting with Banks. 65 Denison to Chase, Oct. 8, Nov. 25, 1864, CC, 449-455. Denison ex­ aggerated the number of changed votes (he almost doubled the figure) but was otherwise accurate.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

The next fight was over the question of education for blacks. Louisiana had a public school system for many years before the war, but even though their tax money went to support it, free Negroes were not given schools for their children. The well-to-do could establish private schools, employ tutors, or send their chil­ dren elsewhere for their education, but only a small part of the black community could afford these expedients. It was against the law, of course, to teach slaves to read and write. The first public education for blacks in the state was that set up by the army of occupation in New Orleans in 1863. This system gradual­ ly expanded into the rural parishes over the following year, and General Banks wanted to incorporate the government schools into the state educational system on a permanent basis. In the con­ vention the Hahn forces supported this effort far more readily than even a limited expansion of suffrage.66 The report of Alfred Hills' committee, introduced a few days after the "sneak" vote, provided "free public schools throughout the state for all children," although each race was to have its own separate schools. The educational system was to be financed by "general taxation on property" on a statewide basis, and the money "distributed to each parish in proportion to the number of children" of school age. The first attack was a frontal assault led by the white supremacy Irishman John Sullivan, who pro­ posed an amendment limiting education to white children only. The liberals successfully tabled this motion and carried the article as drafted by Hills with a majority of forty-nine to twenty-nine.67 Before the entire section on education could be approved, how­ ever, the convention became embroiled in a debate over the por­ tion that prohibited state aid to parochial schools. The Hahn forces were split badly on this question, and whether by design or by accident, the religious issue gave the conservative minority an opportunity to sabotage the support for Negro schools. Feel­ ings on the parochial school issue were strong enough that a portion of the Hahn camp joined the white supremacists in vot­ ing against the liberal committee report as a whole, which then lost by a narrow margin of thirty-six to forty-one.68 This made it necessary to draft a new section on public educa6eJohn W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), 11, 107-111. See also Appendix C, Table C-3. 67 DCCL, 474-475. s ibid., 476-479.

THE MODERATES IN POWER tion and bring it before the convention once again. In what seems

to have been a compromise measure designed to placate con­ servative opposition, Randall Terry, one of Hahn's lieutenants, offered a substitute for the offending clause a few days later. The revised version provided that schools for whites were to be financed by the taxes of white citizens and that schools for black children would be supported by the taxes of Negro citizens. The substitute passed without even the formality of a roll call.60 Since the convention had set up separate school systems for each race, to be financed by taxes collected separately from white and Negro citizens, declared Charles Smith of St. Mary Parish, with tongue in cheek, "it becomes necessary . . . that it should also define what degree of blood constitutes a colored person." Delegate Smith, who was also the sheriff of his parish, explained his reasoning: "I know that if an assessor goes to many families and assesses them as colored people, he will be liable to have the top of his head shot off." It was a very practical problem for those who must administer the tax system, he added, and he urged the convention that "now is the time to settle the question, though it is a mixed one."70 Smith's resolution was defeated, but it had served to poke fun at the compromise clause adopted by the convention. A few days later, during the final consideration of the section on education, Terry once again brought to the floor the original version of the disputed clause. This time the convention approved the clause by a wide margin, and with that vote, the work of revising the con­ stitution was essentially completed.71 The convention had abolished slavery, incorporated the freedmen's schools into the state educational system, and authorized the legislature to extend the franchise to Negro soldiers, prop­ ertied men of color, or blacks who could read and write, No doubt, this was less than Durant and the radicals would have settled for, but considering that the Hahn forces had cut the left wing of the free state movement out of the convention, even this record is impressive. It could not have been achieved, as we have seen, without the determined and effective parlia­ mentary leadership of that small group of liberal delegates to whom Banks and Hahn had thrown the full weight of patronage and influence. β» Ibid., 502.

"ο Ibid., 547-548.

71

Ibid., 547-548, 601.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

While the convention had been restructuring the constitutional fabric of Louisiana, the military hierarchy had also undergone a profound shift. General Banks' great spring offensive up the Red River, which had begun so auspiciously with an election at liber­ ated Alexandria, ended in ignominious failure at the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. Aside from its military significance, the defeat had two major political consequences. First of all, the hope that most of the state would come under federal occupation was dashed beyond repair. The lines of the two armies remained virtually unmoved for the last year of the war. Second, Banks' military failure precipitated his removal from the departmental command. General Grant replaced the political general with a sober professional, E.R.S. Canby. Banks stayed on in a subordi­ nate capacity handling civil affairs, while Canby restricted his attention to the forthcoming naval attaek on Mobile.72 An incident that occurred in the last week of the convention dramatized the fact that ultimate control of the army of occupa­ tion was no longer in the hands of General Banks. Thomas P. May, the young planter of antislavery views who was part owner and editor of the New Orleans Times, wrote a scathing denuncia­ tion of the convention on the grounds of corruption, incompe­ tence, and drunkenness. The convention charged May with con­ tempt and requested Banks to order his arrest, which the general was willing to do. The action may not have been politically ex­ pedient, and it certainly was not necessary, but it seems to have been quite legal. General Canby thought otherwise and ordered Banks to release May, on the premise that "the convention had no power to arrest, try, or punish any person not a member or officer of its body."78 The final vote on the adoption of the new constitution took place on July 22, with sixty-six voting in favor and sixteen conT2 Ludwell

H. Johnson, Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War (Baltimore, 1965), 113-169, 247-248; Max L. Heyman, Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E.R.S. Canby, 1817-1873 (GIendale, Calif., 1959), 201-203, 206-208, 212-217. 73Neu; Orleans Times, July 22, 1864; DCCL, 598-601; Banks' order and Canby to Banks, both dated July 23, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. Caskey, Secession and Restoration, 137-138, and Heyman, Canby, 275-278, adopt Canby's view. Lincoln disagreed with this interpretation: Lincoln to Stephen A. Hurlbut, Nov. 14, 1864, CWL, vrn, 106-108.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

servatives refusing to compromise even at the last.74 Three days later the document was printed in final form, and the convention prepared to adjourn. On this last day Governor Hahn addressed the convention, flattering the delegates with the sentiment that "there is but one position which I would be proud to fill beyond that of governor of the state, and that is, I would like to have been a member of this convention." The delegates had produced "an admirable constitution," Hahn declared, and he predicted that it "will not only meet with a warm response and an over­ whelming approval from the loyal people of Louisiana, but that it will come up to the expectations of all loyal men all over this great country." Two days later he left for Washington to present the document to President Lincoln. Acting governor Madison Wells ordered the polls to be opened on September 5, 1864, to ratify the constitution, to elect a legislature, and to choose con­ gressional representatives.75 "I have just seen the new constitution adopted by the conven­ tion of Louisiana," wrote Lincoln to General Banks on August 9, "and I am anxious that it shall be ratified by the people." The document was, in a sense, the first fruit of the President's mod­ erate reconstruction program, and he seems to have been rather proud of it: "an excellent new constitution," he wrote three months later, "better for the poor black man than we have in Illinois." Lincoln was prepared to exert considerable pressure to secure ratification. He instructed Banks to let all government officeholders in the state "know that this is my wish," and, he added pointedly, "let me know at once who of them openly de­ clare for the constitution, and who of them, if any, decline to so declare."76 General Banks had already begun to use the full powers of his office to influence the vote. He authorized convention delegates Charles Smith and J. H. Stiner, who were sheriffs of their par74 DCCL, 607. The centrality of the race question in the convention was so great that this vote satisfies the requirements of the Guttman scale re­ ported in Appendix C, unlike most other roll calls. 75 Ibid., 628-629; New Orleans Times, July 28, 1864; Hahn to Lincoln, Aug. 13, 1864, ALM, 35270. 76 Lincoln to Banks, Aug. 9, 1864, Lincoln to Hurlbut, Nov. 14, 1864, CWL, vii, 486, viii, 106-107.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

ishes, Thomas B. Russell, who was the district attorney for a rural circuit, and Daniel Christy, who had been active in getting voters to the polls in the February gubernatorial election, to travel any­ where within federal lines as campaign speakers or organizers. Christy also campaigned in the working-class neighborhoods of Algiers, where he "found some personal friends, all well disposed." Dr. A. P. Dostie, under Banks' instructions, employed fifty men at a rate of three dollars per day to canvass the city; by August 25, ten days before the election, he had already paid them $1,719.77 The general was intent on producing as high a level of par­ ticipation as possible, which meant that even opponents of rati­ fication should be encouraged to vote. "There should not be too strong a demand for affirmative votes upon the constitution," he wrote Dostie. Banks was confident that the constitution had the support of the majority of loyal citizens in Louisiana, "but it may meet serious opposition elsewhere," that is, in Washington. "The thrusts of our enemies will be as successfully parried . . . by a vote for congressmen and legislators, or by a negative vote upon the subject of the constitution, as by a vote in its favor."78 Dostie agreed with this assessment, and he urged Banks to in­ struct court clerks to expedite the naturalization process for prospective voters. The general wrote to Judges Thomas, Durell, Leaumont, and Seddon, asking them to carry out this task and offering extra clerical funds to assist in the work; of course they complied readily. He passed the word to the Louisiana units once again that soldiers would be expected to vote wherever they were stationed. The newspaper support for ratification was aug­ mented by the surprising endorsement of the New Orleans Times, despite the troubles of its editor. A new constitution was a neces­ sity, observed May, and the document that had finally emerged from the convention was good enough as a beginning: at least it would be easier to amend than the old constitution.79 77Banks, pass orders, Aug. 9, 1864 (letterbook), Banks to Col. S. B. Holabird (letterbook), Aug. 10, 1864, Christy to Banks, Aug. 18, 1864, Dostie to Banks, Aug. 25, 26, 1864, Banks to Dostie, Aug. 26, 1864 (letter­ book), Banks Papers, LC. 78 Banks to Dostie, Aug. 23, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. 79 Dostie to Banks, Aug. 23, 1864, Banks to Judges Thomas, Durell, Leaumont, and Seddon (under separate cover), Aug. 26, 1864, Charles

THE MODERATES IN POWER

May had intended to keep the Times officially neutral, reported George Denison, but General Banks had called together May, Flanders, and himself a week before the election to show them Lincoln's letter. May was also U.S. Treasurer in New Orleans, and he agreed with his two colleagues that despite their grave res­ ervations about the governor, the convention, and the legislative candidates nominated by the Hahn organization, the constitu­ tion itself was not a bad document. "Mr. May, Mr. Flanders, and myself had previously made up our minds to vote for ratification," Denison rationalized, "on the ground that the defeat of the con­ stitution would be regarded as a victory of the Copperheads— while the proper place to decide on the admission of the state is in congress." Their support for ratification was necessary to keep their jobs, the three reasoned, but it did not alter their opposition to the provisional government. "This whole civil reorganization in Louisiana is a cheat and a swindle and everybody knows it."80 The constitution was ratified by an overwhelming majority, 6,836 to 1,566. The level of participation, though substantially lower than in the gubernatorial election, was approximately the same as in the polling for convention delegates. The conservative opposition carried a few of the smaller rural parishes, but many opponents apparently stayed away from the polls on September 5. The soldier vote accounted for 1,178 of the total. In addition to the ratification question, congressional representatives for four districts of the state had to be chosen. There were close races in the two districts dominated by New Orleans and formerly repre­ sented by Hahn and Flanders. Dr. Max Bonzano nosed out the conservative leader, Edmund Abell, by less than 100 votes, 1,607 to 1,511. A. P. Field, a former conservative who had made his peace with the Hahn camp, edged Dr. Dostie by a more sizable margin, 1,357 to 1,023. In the third district William D. Mann of Baton Rouge received a practically unanimous vote, 1,900 of 2,000 votes cast. In the fourth district young Thomas M. Wells, the son of the lieutenant governor, received a similar proportion of the ballots, but because much of the area was outside federal Leaumont to Banks, Aug. 27, 1864, Durell to Banks, Aug. 28, 1864, John W. Thomas to Banks, Aug. 29, 1864, Banks to Holabird, Aug. 30, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Times, Sept. 1, 1864. 80 Denison to Chase, Sept. 6, 1864, CC, 444-447.

THE MODERATES IN POWER

lines, only 450 voters came to the polls. State senators and repre­ sentatives were elected at the same time, and many of the con­ vention members won seats in the first "reconstructed" state legislature, which was scheduled to meet at the beginning of October.81 In the first nine months of 1864 the provisional government desired by President Lincoln had come into being. Here was the first embodiment of the moderate approach to reconstruction, and in the next six months it would be scrutinized by Congress as the leading "test case" for Lincoln's postwar policy. The strong conservative opposition in the convention indicated that all was not well in the camp of the victors, as did the impressive showing made by Abell in the congressional race. Large numbers of Confederate sympathizers remained bitterly antagonistic to any collaboration with the Yankees, and as the war drew to a close their numbers were considerably augmented. Meanwhile, Durant and his fellow radicals had been actively working to persuade Congress to repudiate the President's experiment in Louisiana and to institute a more radical approach to reconstruction. Yet General Banks took solace from the mere fact that a state govern­ ment had been established, whatever the cost, and he rejoiced that the election had closed a major chapter in the struggle for the renewal of Southern loyalty. "History will record," he wrote Lincoln on September 6, "that all the problems involved in restoration of states and the reconstruction of government have been already solved in Louisiana."82 81 The official election returns were sent to the President on Nov. 23, 1864: ALM, 35947-35948. 82 Banks to Lincoln, Sept. 6, 1864, ALM, 35970.

CHAPTER IX

Lincoln vs. Sumner: The Louisiana Question in IMational Politics THE Louisiana question was the central focus for the national debate over reconstruction and freedmen's affairs during the last year of the Civil War. President Lincoln's commitment to the Hahn regime was the key to his controversial decision to pocket-veto the Wade-Davis reconstruc­ tion bill in July 1864, and opposition to his Louisiana policy was the major substantive issue dividing Lincoln from congressional radicals. Using the full influence of the presidential office after his successful reelection in November, Lincoln pressed for con­ gressional recognition of the Louisiana government in the winter of 1864-1865, offering at one point to require Negro suffrage in other states in return for seating the congressional delegation from New Orleans. Conflicting views of Banks' labor system tore the abolitionist movement apart, moreover, leading to an open break between those old radical allies, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. The political issue, in the end, came to a personal struggle between Lincoln and Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, whose adamant opposition to Banks' activities in Louisiana—both in politics and on the question of freedmen's rights—prompted him to filibuster against congressional accept­ ance of the President's policy. Wendell Phillips provided the most articulate critique of Lincoln's strategy in a speech he delivered frequently during the presidential campaign of 1864.1 "Mr. Lincoln's model of recon1 The speech was first recorded as a letter from Phillips to Edward Gilbert, May 27, 1864, which was read to the national convention of the short-lived Radical Democratic Party, just before it nominated John C. Fremont for the presidency; it was printed with the convention proceedings in the New York Tribune, June 1, 1864, and is reprinted in Edward McPherson, The Political History of . . . the Great Rebellion (New York, 1864), 412. The wide circulation of Phillips' views on reconstruction in abolitionist circles

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

struction is the experiment in Louisiana, which puts all power into the hands of an unchanged white race," declared Phillips, "and perpetuates slavery under a softer name." Southern whites were conservatives who had always hated "the laboring classes" and were even now "plotting constantly for aristocratic institu­ tions." They had not been changed by the verdict of war; they were, on the contrary, "soured by defeat." The only result of a conciliatory program of reconstruction would be "continuing the war in the Senate chamber after we have closed it in the field." Lincoln's strategy in Louisiana was to build a Republican Party on the basis of white suffrage only, but in Phillips' assessment "there is not in the rebel states sufficient white basis to build on." The abolitionist argued that "there is no plan of reconstruction possible within twenty years, unless we admit the black to citizen­ ship and the ballot," and, he added shortly, "the land." Phillips advocated such a program, "not for the black man's sake alone, but for ours—the nation's sake." The Negro was as useful an ally on the political battlefield of reconstruction as in the uniform of a Union soldier: "if we refuse this method we must subdue the South and hold it as [conquered] territory until this generation of white men have passed away, and their sons, with other feel­ ings, have taken their places."2 Lincoln helped make Louisiana an issue in his campaign for renomination by permitting Banks to send a delegation from New Orleans to the Republican convention in Baltimore in early June. Virtually the entire convention was pledged to the President, of course, but the delegations from the occupied South—Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Virginia—were particularly indebted to Lincoln because his reconstruction policy was entirely responsible for their presence in Baltimore. "Pa, I am going for Abe," wrote Robert W. Taliaferro, in terms echoed by the thirteen other delegates from Louisiana. "I think he is a great and good man, and one that will crush this unholy and uncalled for rebellion." The New Orleans group stopped by the White House to meet Lincoln on their way to the convention, and presidential secretary during the spring and summer of 1864 is detailed in James M. McPherson, The Struggk for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 242-246, 260-279. 2 MePherson, Political History of the Rebellion, 412. See the discussion of these issues in the Prologue.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

John Hay observed that Cuthbert Bullitt, the conservative Treas­ ury official who headed the delegation because of his personal acquaintance with the President, had "Louisiana in his trousers pocket."3 At the convention Thaddeus Stevens objected to seating the Southerners on the grounds that such an action would be inter­ preted as approval of the President's reconstruction policy, and the committee on credentials recommended that the delegations from the occupied states be seated without voting privileges. Nevertheless, Horace Maynard of Tennessee made an impassioned speech on behalf of Southern Unionists who remained true to their country "in the very furnace of rebellion." The convention voted by a margin of two to one to grant all the Southern delega­ tions full privileges, including the ballot, although there was strong opposition from New England, Pennsylvania, and Mary­ land.4 As a gesture of magnanimity to radicals in the party, Lincoln quietly passed the word to administration forces in Baltimore to seat the radical delegation from Missouri over the rival conservative group from that state.5 The greatest uncertainty at the convention was the vicepresidential nomination. The incumbent, Hannibal Hamlin, was not on close terms with the President, and more importantly, as a New Englander of radical inclination he was not likely to strengthen Lincoln's chances of cutting into the vast, discon­ tented, and conservative Democratic vote. The choice of a run­ ning mate, which was to have enormous consequences less than a 3 Robert W. to James G. Taliaferro, June 1, 1864, Taliaferro Papers, LSU; New York Times, May 31, 1864; Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), 135. The delegation included nine members of the Louisiana constitutional conven­ tion (who had simply taken a three-week leave of absence): Taliaferro, Edward H. Durell, Max F. Bonzano, William R. Fish, Thomas M. Wells, Anthony Cazabat, J. W. Thomas, Howard Millspaugh, and Robert V. Montague. B. Rush Plumly was among the group, as Michael Hahn explained to Lincoln, because "I thought that a man of his radical views might be useful in our delegation" (Hahn to Lincoln, May 23, 1864, ALM, 33245). 4 McPherson, Political History of the Rebellion, 405-406; New York Her­ ald, June 9, 1864; New York Tribune, June 9, 1864; Baltimore Sun, June 9, 1864; Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1865),554-556. 5 New York Times, June 9, 1864; McPherson, Political History of the Rebellion, 405-407.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

year later, was determined by this basic consideration. Several war Democrats were suggested for the second spot, of whom the two strongest were Daniel Dickenson of New York and Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee. Johnson took a com­ manding lead on the first ballot with 200 votes, compared with 145 for Hamlin and 113 for Dickenson (the Louisiana delegation was evenly split between Dickenson and Johnson). On the second ballot the convention made it virtually unanimous for the Tennessee Democrat.® The work of the Baltimore convention only assured that Lincoln would be the nominee of his own party. To many ob­ servers in June 1864 it seemed to be an uphill race at best, for the Union armies had suffered a series of reverses, the casualty lists were growing longer, and disenchantment with the war seemed to strengthen the position of the Democrats inmost states. Within Republican ranks there was widespread dissension, not only because of a desire to switch to a candidate with a better chance of winning, but also because of opposition to Lincoln's recon­ struction policies.7 This opposition was reflected in the passage of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill a month after Lincoln's renomination. The frequent protests of the New Orleans radicals, augmented by Durant's personal influence during his visit to Washington in late June, had evidently persuaded a number of key congressional leaders that the Hahn regime should not be recognized.8 The 6James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 4 vols. (New York, 1945-1955), Vol. iv, with Richard N, Current, Last Full Measure, 130-134; Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1952), 428-429; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), 169-173. 7Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, 4 vols. (New York, 1959-1971), iv, 58-65; Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 112-117, 150-156, 168-181; William F. Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided (Norman, Okla., 1954), 105-107. 8 See Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), 198-243. Michael Les Benedict, A Com­ promise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 18631869 (New York, 1974, 71-73, disputes this view, however, insisting that "the situation in LouisiIana was not all that clear in the spring of 1864, as Congress considered the bill." Benedict's assumption that most congressmen were unaware of the course of events in Louisiana while considering the Wade-Davis bill stems in part from his misdating of the Louisiana constitu-

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

chief advantage of the bill, from the point of view of congressional opponents of the Louisiana strategy, was that it would effectively postpone recognition until the war was over by setting up strin­ gent requirements that no occupied state could meet. The novel provisions of the bill passed by the House were the requirement of the ironclad oath, which would effectively exclude from the voting rolls all those who had voluntarily borne arms against the United States, and the stipulation that the election of a constitu­ tional convention could take place only after a majority of the adult white males presently living in the state had taken Lincoln's amnesty oath. Unlike the bill introduced by James Ashley in December, the Wade-Davis bill restricted suffrage to whites.9 The session was rapidly drawing to a close when the House bill reached Senator Benjamin F. Wade's Committee on Terri­ tories. The Senate floor was still occupied by debate over the admission of senatorial claimants from Arkansas. Lyman Trum­ bull wanted to secure a final vote on the Arkansas question be­ cause he was confident that the two claimants would be denied seats. The moderate Trumbull argued forcefully against any tional convention, which he says was not scheduled to meet until July (p. 72). Actually, the convention began its work in mid-April and had virtually completed the new constitution by the time the reconstruction bill passed Congress (see Chap, vm above). Its proceedings were widely reported in Northern newspapers, as were the protests of Durant and the New Orleans black community. Benedict also portrays Durant as something of a crank who merely "claimed to represent radical opinion," and argues that Republican leaders "dismissed the charges" made by New Orleans radicals because they were "accustomed to factional carping"—although he cites no evidence of this view. His additional contention that the "widespread concern in antislavery circles" about the conservatism of Banks' labor regulations stemmed from the publication in July of James McKaye's report to the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission ignores the central importance of the Louisiana contract system as an issue in the debate between Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison at the meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in May: see McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 268-269, and the speeches reported in the Liberator, June 3, 10, 1864, and NASS, June 4, 1864. 9 CG, 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (May 4, 1864), 2107-2108; Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 200-203, 210-213. Benedict, A Compromise of Principle, 73, 77-79, argues that the defeat of the Negro suffrage provision in a bill estab­ lishing a territorial government for Montana influenced Davis at this point: "the decision probably stiffened his resolve to exclude blacks from any part in his process of restoration, and in this the radicals had to acquiesce."

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

recognition of the provisional government in Arkansas, which had a much weaker claim to legitimacy than the Louisiana regime, and the Senate complied by voting twenty-seven to six against admission.10 Finally, on July 1, 1864, the Senate began consideration of the reconstruction bill. The Committee on Territories had removed the racial restriction before sending the House bill to the Senate floor. Wade argued that any change in the House version would endanger the possibility of its passage because of the limited time remaining in the session, and he moved that his own committee's amendment giving suffrage to blacks be rejected. The motion carried, but then Wade's hopes of rushing the Davis bill to a final vote were upset by a drastic amendment. Missouri Senator B. Gratz Brown, one of the five radicals who had voted in favor of the Negro suffrage provision a few months earlier, proposed a substitute amendment for the entire bill, one that would postpone the reconstruction question until the next session. This would accomplish one of Wade's purposes by denying any of the former Confederate states the right to participate in the November presidential election. Brown's amendment passed by a single vote, seventeen to sixteen.11 The disputed measure then went back to the House. Pennsyl­ vania radical Thaddeus Stevens argued that the Brown substitute was better than nothing, and that with the session drawing to a close it would be almost impossible to iron out differences in a conference committee. Davis insisted on keeping the House version. Somehow, late in the afternoon of July 2, Wade man­ aged to persuade the Senate to accept Davis' original draft, against vigorous Democratic protest. Congress then sent the Wade-Davis bill to President Lincoln's desk for signature.12 The frenzied activity of the last days of a session always en­ genders a sense of crisis, but on this occasion there was an added note of drama in the air. Radical Salmon P. Chase had submitted his resignation from the cabinet a few days earlier over Treasury squabbles, and to his surprise Lincoln had accepted the offer. On Capitol Hill there was considerable anger among radicals at the President's action, but moderate Senator Edwin D. Morgan of 10 CG, 38 Cong., 1 Sess. (June 29, 1864), 3360-3368. 11 Ibid. (July 1, 1864), 3449, 3460. 12 Ibid. (July 2, 1864), 3518, 3491.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

New York told Lincoln's secretary that Wall Street would be pleased. The President asked William P. Fessenden of Maine, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, to assume Chase's position, and as might be expected, his colleagues con­ firmed Fessenden's appointment readily. Yet Congress was dis­ turbed by this sudden switch, complained Banks' friend, Repre­ sentative Samuel Hooper of Boston: "this imbroglio will slough off from the Union Party a large and disastrous slice."13 "In the President's room we were pretty busy signing and re­ porting bills," noted John Hay in his diary on July 4. Charles Sumner and George Boutwell dropped by and noticed with some concern that Lincoln still had not signed the Wade-Davis bill. They did not like the measure's restriction of suffrage to whites only, but were willing to accept it as the best compromise pos­ sible at this late date. Congress was ready to adjourn, and Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan joined the two Massachusetts radicals. He told Lincoln that "it would make a terrible record for us to fight [in the coming election] if it were vetoed," recorded Hay. The President turned to him rather petulantly: "Mr. Chandler, this bill was placed before me a few minutes before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way." The Michigan radical persisted in his argument for a few moments, discussing particular aspects of the bill, but Lincoln was adamant. "Mr. President, I cannot contro­ vert your position by argument, I can only say I deeply regret it," declared Chandler, and he left the room.14 The news spread rapidly through the Capitol, and the im­ mediate reaction of many congressmen was anger. Henry Winter Davis, the primary author of the bill, was the most furious of all: "at his desk, pale with wrath, his bushy hair tousled, and wildly brandishing his arms," recalled one observer, the Maryland congressman "denounced the President in good set terms." This anger was compounded a few days later when Lincoln issued a proclamation explaining why he had not signed the bill. First he repeated his complaint to Chandler, that the bill was passed too late for careful inspection. He doubted the constitutionality of the clause abolishing slavery by simple congressional statute; he 13Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 198-201. See also Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 180-188. 14 Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 204-205.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

preferred to wait until next session, when it might be possible to secure the necessary two-thirds vote to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln also disagreed with the central purpose of the bill: he did not wish "to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration." If the rigid provisions established by Con­ gress could not be met by any of the former Confederate states, explained the President, he wanted to be able to assist the re­ organization movement on a provisional basis, under the war powers of the presidency. Most important of all to Lincoln was that adoption of the bill would mean "that the free-state constitu­ tions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana, shall be set aside and held for nought."15 "What an infamous proclamation!" thundered Thaddeus Stevens. "The idea of pocketing a bill and then issuing a procla­ mation as to how far he will conform to it." The bill's sponsors were so enraged at Lincoln's pocket veto message that they de­ cided to issue a similar document. If Lincoln insisted on a public explanation of why he did not like their bill, Davis and Wade would tell the people why they did not like his pocket veto. They threw out a number of spurious charges at the President, but their attack contained one central proposition, which was at the heart of the congressional dispute with Lincoln: his approach to re­ construction was wrong.16 "The President persists in recognizing those shadows of gov­ ernments in Arkansas and Louisiana which Congress formally declared should not be recognized," argued the two radicals. It was a useful strategy for them to associate the Louisiana case with that of Arkansas, which had only the most dubious claims to legitimacy, but the two situations were not really comparable. Congress had indeed rejected by a formal vote the delegation sent by the provisional government at Little Rock. However, in the case of the Masonic Hall clique, whose claims had been re­ fused by the House at the beginning of the session, these repre15 Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 225-227; Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, rv, 190-191; Lincoln, "Proclamation Concerning Reconstruc­ tion," July 8, 1864, CWL, vii, 433-434. 16 Stevens to Edward McPherson, July 10, 1864, Stevens Papers, LC; New York Tribune, Aug. 5, 1864. The full text of the "manifesto" is con­ veniently reprinted in an anthology, Harold M. Hyman (ed.), The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861-1870 (Indianapolis, 1967), 139-147.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

sentatives had not been sanctioned by the military authorities in New Orleans, and their "election" had taken place before the provisional government had been established. Thus Congress' rejection of the proslavery claimants was in no sense a formal declaration that the moderate regime in Louisiana should not be recognized. Wade and Davis were too angry, however, to worry about details.17 Banks' action in taking power out of the hands of Durant and his colleagues, they declared, was as culpable as the impromptu activities of the army in Arkansas, and they regarded both re­ gimes as the natural results of the President's policy. Both governments "are mere creatures of his will. They are mere oligarchies imposed on the people by military orders under the form of election, at which generals, provost marshals, soldiers, and camp followers were the chief actors, assisted by a handful of resident citizens, and urged on to premature action by private letters from the President." The manifesto did not rely exclusively on hyperbole: its authors also cited more concrete data, supplied in part by Durant.18 "In neither Louisiana nor Arkansas," Wade and Davis pointed out, "did the United States control half the territory or half the population" at the time of the elections. In the case of Louisiana, only sixteen of the state's forty-eight parishes were in Union hands, "and in five of the sixteen we held only our camps. The eleven parishes we substantially held had 233,185 inhabitants; the residue of the state not held, 575,617." Within the small area ol occupation the army had exerted considerable pressure to get out the vote, and the two authors of the manifesto estimated, inac­ curately, that perhaps four thousand of the eleven thousand ballots were cast by soldiers or other illegal voters.19 "Such is the free constitution and government of Louisiana; 17

"Wade-Davis Manifesto," Hyman (ed.), Radical Republicans, 140. See for example Durant to Davis, March 31, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS. The New Orleans radical was in Washington at the time, lobbying against recognition of the Hahn regime: David Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1954),232 (July 5,1864). 19"Wade-Davis Manifesto," Hyman (ed.), Radical Republicans, 140-141. Note the similarity between the data cited in the manifesto and in Durant's pamphlet, Letter . . . to the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, October 27, 1864 (New Orleans, 1864). 18

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

and like it is that of Arkansas. Nothing but the failure of a mili­ tary expedition deprived us of a like one in the swamps of Florida; and before the presidential election," added the two radicals pointedly, "like ones may be organized in every rebel state where the United States army have a camp." The crux of the matter, as Wade and Davis saw it, was that without strict control of the reconstruction process by Congress, these puppet regimes would be toppled by the returning Confederates when the war was over. "It was the solemn resolve of Congress," de­ clared the manifesto, "to protect the loyal men of the nation against three great dangers: (1) the return to power of the guilty leaders of the rebellion; (2) the continuance of slavery; and (3) the burden of the rebel debt." The authors concluded that "if the supporters of the government fail to insist on this, they become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke."20 There were several reasons for Republicans to feel some dismay at the pocket veto. The Wade-Davis bill was the only major legislation dealing with emancipation or reconstruction to win passage during the long session. The proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery had failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote, and the Freedmen's Bureau bill had been stymied by the irreconcilability of the House and Senate versions. The war was going badly, and when Lincoln was forced to issue a call for 500,000 more volunteers ten days after his pocket veto mes­ sage—with a proviso that a draft would be scheduled for Sep­ tember 5 if the necessary numbers failed to volunteer—the antiwar sentiment on which the Democrats hoped to capitalize was enormously strengthened.21 On August 18 Henry Winter Davis went to New York to rally support for a most unusual plan: Lincoln's withdrawal in favor of a more radical, and presumably more electable, Republican can­ didate. "I find only one opinion among people I meet," he wrote a friend, "that Lincoln is a defeated man." Senator Wade, Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, Mayor George Opdyke of New York, and businessman David 20 "Wade-Davis Manifesto," Hyman (ed.), Radical Republicans, 141, 144-145, 147. 21 Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 198-202; Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, 440-441; Lincoln, "Proclamation Calling for 500,000 Volunteers," July 18,1864, CWL, vn, 448-449.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

Dudley Field were among the backers of this scheme, but each recognized that the plan would only work if Lincoln were willing to withdraw gracefully in favor of the new choice. Davis took heart from the fact that "Lincoln's best friends are impressed with his loss of strength and will be induced easily to urge him to get out of the way."22 Davis had gauged the sentiment in the Lincoln camp ac­ curately. One of the President's leading supporters, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Henry J. Raymond, wrote to him on August 22 that "the tide is setting strongly against us." Raymond quoted Elihu B. Washburne, Thurlow Weed, Simon Cameron, and Oliver B. Morton as saying that the party was likely to lose in each of their four critical states if the election were held now.23 Disturbed by such advice, Lincoln drew up a memorandum on August 23, expressing his appre­ hension that "this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards."24 The opponent Lincoln had in mind was General George B. McClellan, whom he accurately predicted would be nominated by the Democrats at their convention on August 29.25 McClellan's selection was accompanied by a platform favoring a compromise settlement with the South. Almost immediately after the Demo­ cratic announcement, the climate of the election was transformed by Sherman's capture of Atlanta and Sheridan's dramatic victories in the Shenandoah Valley. Suddenly the public mood seemed to observers to shift in favor of the President once again; the radicals grudgingly admitted that Lincoln was likely to be reelected, and the authors of the Wade-Davis manifesto actually took to the 22 Davis to Adm. Samuel F. Du Pont, Aug. 18, 1864, John D. Hayes (ed.), Samuel Francis Du Pont: A Selection from His Civil War Letters, 3 vols. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), III, 369-371; Donald, Sumner, 185-188; Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided, 110-117. 23 Raymond to Lincoln, Aug. 22, 1864, CWL, vii, 517n; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York, 1890), κ, 221. 24 Lincoln, "Memorandum Concerning His Probable Failure of Re­ election," Aug. 23, 1864, CWL, VII, 514. 25 Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 237-238.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

stump on his behalf (though spending most of their energy attacking the Copperheads). The party rallied to the cause in a surge of Republican harmony that carried the President to a resounding victory in the November election.26 Lincoln and his party survived the fall election, but the recon­ struction question remained in dispute. It was, in fact, the central issue of the lame-duck session that began in December, and much of the discussion revolved around the key state of Loui­ siana. General Banks left New Orleans in late September for what was to prove a six-month leave of absence, during which Lincoln had him lobbying in Washington for recognition of the provisional government and admission of its senators and repre­ sentatives. Louisiana was the critical test of his postwar policy, and at this point the President threw his full influence behind the campaign for congressional approval.27 Just before he left New Orleans, Banks had the Unionist newspapers of the city publish a lengthy letter he had written to Senator James H. Lane of Kansas, who was backing Lincoln's efforts to secure congressional sanction of the Louisiana regime. The letter, soon to be printed in pamphlet form for wider circula­ tion, was a lengthy attempt to demonstrate that the reconstruction policy pursued by the general in the last nine months was not only legal, politically desirable, and successful, but also perfectly consistent with the requirements of the Wade-Davis bill.28 "From the intensity of the discussion and the asperity of the allusions to the state of Louisiana" in the congressional debates, the general began, he had expected his course of action in New Orleans to be very much out of line with the guidelines set by the controversial legislation. "You will imagine my surprise when I found, upon an attentive perusal of the bill, that here, at least, every material provision had been anticipated, every substantial guarantee had been recognized and established."29 26 Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 216-232. Louisiana did not participate in the balloting for president. 27 Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), 163-164; Benedict, A Compromise of Principle, 84-85. 28Banks, The Reconstruction of States (New Orleans, 1864). Alfred C. Hills seems to have helped polish the general's prose: Hills to Banks, Sept. 2, 1864, Banks Papers, LC. Originally published in several New Orleans news­ papers on Sept. 24, it was widely quoted in the Northern press as well: see for example, New York Times, Oct. 1, 1864. 29 Banks, Reconstruction of States, 4-5.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

In order to understand how thoroughly Banks managed to obfuscate the issues, it is helpful to summarize the basic guide­ lines laid down by the Wade-Davis bill. As a first step, the bill required the President to appoint a provisional governor, whose nomination had to be confirmed by the Senate. Once Confederate military resistance within the state had ceased, the provisional governor was to "enroll" all white male citizens residing there; when a majority of these individuals had taken Lincoln's amnesty oath, the governor was to order an election for delegates to a constitutional convention. The right to vote, however, was re­ stricted to those who could take the ironclad oath certifying that they had not aided the Confederacy. The bill set three conditions to be met by the convention in revising the state constitution: slavery was to be abolished, the Confederate debt repudiated, and all Confederate officeholders and military officers above the rank of major disfranchised. The revised constitution was to be submitted to the voters for ratifica­ tion. If the ironclad electorate approved the document, the pro­ visional governor was to notify the President, who was, in turn, to ask the consent of Congress to recognize the regime. Should the new constitution not meet the conditions set by the bill, Congress reserved the right to reject it, and a procedure for electing a new convention was spelled out. Only after congressional approval were elections to be held for a state legislature and for members to the U.S. House of Representatives.30 The procedure by which Michael Hahn had been elected civil governor and appointed military governor differed considerably from the. stipulations of the Wade-Davis bill, but General Banks emphasized that in lieu of Senate confirmation Hahn had received "the formal approval of the people, expressed at a regular election by a large majority of loyal voters." The bill prescribed that no elections were to be held until all Confederate military resistance was "suppressed" in the state, but Banks ignored this point entirely. The census of white adult males envisaged by the bill had not been carried out in Louisiana, even within Union lines, but the general argued that the enrollment of draftable males by the army was a convenient substitute. The bill required that all elec­ tions be authorized by the civilian governor, and Banks had to 30The bill, H.R. 244, is conveniently reprinted in Hyman (ed.), Radical Republicans, 128-134.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

resort to an outright lie in order to claim that this stipulation had been met, for he himself had ordered two of the three elections held in Louisiana.31 The general also had to stretch the truth considerably on the question of the ironclad oath. At first he stated point-blank that the stringent congressional oath had in fact been required of all voters. A few sentences later he hedged a bit, blithely treating the presidential and congressional versions as if they were synony­ mous.32 Actually, only Lincoln's moderate oath had been used in Louisiana elections, even while Durant was in control of voter registration. The key difference between the presidential and congressional plans was the proportion of the electorate required to participate in elections. In order to demonstrate that he had complied with the Wade-Davis requirement of 50 percent, Banks first took the number of white male citizens listed in the military enrollment of the occupied parishes, which he claimed was twenty-three thou­ sand. Of these, "from fifteen to eighteen thousand voters," he asserted, "have been registered under the iron-clad oath," or in other words, well over a majority. The number enrolled on the military lists did not include all the white adult males in the state, of course, and Banks next undertook to estimate that missing figure. Three pages of demographic extrapolations, speculations, and fabrications, spliced together by some dubious arithmetic, led the general to the astounding conclusion that in all of Louisi­ ana at the present moment there were only twenty-five thousand white male citizens of voting age. This meant that in the twothirds of the state still outside Union lines there were, excluding the Confederate army, only two thousand potential voters!33 The new constitution drafted by the Louisiana convention had fulfilled two of the three requirements of the Wade-Davis bill by abolishing slavery and repudiating the rebel debt. "The only pro­ vision of the bill not embodied in the constitution is that which denies the elective franchise to men who have borne arms against the United States," Banks admitted, but he offered an explanation calculated to embarrass the radicals. At least one prominent gov­ ernment employee in New Orleans, a high Treasury official placed 31 Banks,

Reconstruction of States, 7-8, 16-17. Ibid., 7. There is no evidence that the ironclad oath was ever used in Louisiana elections. 3 3 Ibid., 7, 12-15. 32

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

in his position by Salmon P. Chase, "once held a commission in the rebel army."34 Banks was undoubtedly referring to Thomas P. May. The young planter had joined the Confederate army as a private, under threat of his life by his neighbors, he claimed; two months later, when Butler occupied New Orleans, he had de­ serted and rowed down the river from Memphis to the federal lines.35 The reference may have been embarrassing to Chase, but it was hardly a satisfactory answer to those for whom the dis­ franchisement of the Confederate elite was a genuine concern. The last stage required by the Wade-Davis bill was that of congressional recognition prior to the election of legislators and representatives. In Louisiana the anxious moderates had not even waited for the constitution to be ratified, much less for formal approval from Capitol Hill, before holding the September elec­ tions. As in every other case where the bill demanded congres­ sional involvement in the reorganization process, Banks refused to take the wishes of Congress seriously: "this is a question of tim[ing], not of principle, and is, therefore immaterial."36 Banks' pamphlet was too obvious a target for Durant to miss. The radical leader had been in Washington at the time of the bill's passage and pocket veto. In a public letter to Henry Winter Davis, which was printed in the New York Evening Post on the same day as the famous manifesto, he had written that "the friends of freedom in Louisiana, thwarted in their efforts by the acts of the Executive at Washington, had placed their hopes on the bill guaranteeing us a republican form of government." Now he wrote a second letter to Davis, published in the newspapers and in pamphlet form, attacking Banks' argument that the mod­ erate regime in Louisiana had been established in accordance with congressional demands. "An account of what was actually done in Louisiana," Durant began, "will convince you that neither the provisions of the act of Congress, nor the constitution and laws of the state . . . supposing them to be in force, were complied with."87 The reconstruction bill required that elections wait until Con34

Ibid., 8. May to Chase, Nov. 14, 1864, J. S. Whitaker to Chase, Nov. 18, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. 36 Banks, Reconstruction of States, 9. 37 Durant to Davis, July 26, 1864, in New York Evening Post, Aug. 5, 1864; Durant, Letter to Davis, 3. 35

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

federate military resistance had ceased, the radical leader ob­ served, but "the rebels had undisputed control of far more than half the territory of the state during the whole time of these proceedings." Durant had great sport with Banks' speculative population figures and argued that the absurdity of the general's calculations merely demonstrated the necessity of conducting "an enumeration of the people, not conjectural but actual" before reapportioning the state for a constitutional convention and legislature. Not only had Banks failed to require a census, continued Durant, but he had not even insisted that voters register before casting their ballots. Such a situation made illegal voting easy, and Durant produced ample evidence to suggest that the gen­ eral's election officials had padded the rolls. Throughout the pamphlet Durant emphasized that it was Banks who was in basic control of the reorganization process. Even after Hahn's inaugura­ tion as civil governor the general had issued the order for the convention election; subsequently, in order to grant a bit of actual power to the new "chief executive" of Louisiana, President Lincoln had named Hahn to replace Shepley as military governor. Between them, Banks and his protege had continued to use mili­ tary authority to carry out the basic functions of local gov­ ernment.38 In addition to a specific attack on the general's pamphlet, the radical leader made two general points about the Louisiana ex­ perience. First of all, the moderate regime did not command a large body of support in the state and could not survive a single election once the Confederates returned home and began to take the lenient presidential oath. A corollary of this proposition, in Durant's view, was that the necessary votes for a Republican vic­ tory could be found only by including the black community in the electorate. Here he skirted the issue cautiously. The Wade-Davis bill did not enfranchise Negroes, and it was embarrassing for Durant to admit that his political allies in Congress had not met the standard he would apply to the Louisiana moderates. He touched briefly on the provision of the state constitution that authorized the legislature to grant the ballot to some Negroes in the future, but emphasized the difficulty with which Banks had persuaded the convention to reverse itself on this issue. 38

Durant, Letterto Davis, 4-6, 11-25.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

Durant's second major point was that "the reorganization of civil government in the insurrectionary states . . . designed to sur­ vive the war" was a task for which constitutional authority "does not exist in the executive department, but belongs exclusively to Congress." Thus the only logical solution to the Louisiana conun­ drum, as he saw it, was congressional overthrow of the moderate regime and the initiation of a more radical program of recon­ struction.39 Shortly after the publication of Durant's pamphlet the Louisi­ ana radicals drew up a formal protest against recognizing the Hahn regime, seating its congressional representatives, or count­ ing its electoral votes. Durant asked Henry Winter Davis to see that the petition, signed by thirty of the city's leading radicals, be presented to both House and Senate. The protest stated Durant's central points in succinct fashion and supplied a brief survey of the process of secession and restoration in Louisiana to counteract the official version given to Congress by Governor Hahn. The document closed with a request that, in order to begin the work of civil reorganization on a more proper footing, Con­ gress pass a reconstruction measure during this session, modeled on the former Wade-Davis bill.40 Ohio radical James Ashley introduced just such a measure to the House at the beginning of the new session on December 15. Two important amendments had been added to the bill since July. The first was a revision calculated to please the radicals within the party: the vote was to be given to "the loyal male citizens" of the state, with no racial qualifications. The second modification was a bow to Lincoln's wishes: the bill recognized the provisional government in Louisiana.41 The two amendments were part of a compromise package worked out between the President and congressional radicals a few days earlier. The presidential campaign had brought a greater degree of unity to the Republican Party than was charac3» Ibid., 2-3, 6, 18-25, 28-29. 40 Durant to Davis, Nov. 18, 1864, Durant Papers, NYHS; Senate Miscel­ laneous Documents, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., no. 2 ("Memorial of Citizens of Loui­ siana," Nov. 18, 1864). The preceding document, "Letter of the Governor of the State of Louisiana," Oct. 10, 1864, constituted the official credentials of the delegation. 41 See the copy of the bill, H.R. 602, together with the President's mar­ ginal notations, ALM, 39293.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

teristic of the preceding session, and at the same time it had strengthened Lincoln's hand considerably. He looked forward to another four years in the White House, with a smashing victory over his Democratic opponent as a mandate for his policies. The President had assured radicals of his good will, nonetheless, re­ placing two conservative cabinet members, Montgomery BIair and Edwin Bates, with more acceptable choices: William Dennison of Ohio, a Chase ally, and James Speed of Kentucky, an active member of the radical Friends of Freedom convention to which Durant and his colleagues had hoped to send delegates at the beginning of the year.42 The choice of veteran antislavery leader Salmon P. Chase to replace the late Roger Taney as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court won the particular gratitude of archradicals like Benjamin Wade and Charles Sumner. In his annual message, furthermore, Lincoln indicated that he was considering the withdrawal of his blanket offer of amnesty to Confederates: "the door has been, for a full year, open to all," he remarked, "but the time may come—probably will come—when public duty shall demand that it be closed."43 By exchanging recognition of Louisiana for Negro suffrage in other states, the President and Congress seemed to offer clear evidence of their willingness to compromise their ear­ lier differences and pass a viable reconstruction bill before the end of the war.44 42 NASS, Dec. 24, 1864. Speed had written the platform of the Friends of Freedom convention, in fact. The selection of a Southern radical who had only a local reputation for the cabinet was surprising, and lends some plausibility to the rumor that Lincoln might replace Bates with Durant: see James S. Whitaker to Chase, Nov. 18, 1864, Chase Papers, LC. Speed's brother was a personal friend of the President, however, which probably explains his selection. 43 Lincoln, "Annual Message to Congress," Dec. 6, 1864, CWL, vm, 151152. Lincoln had also appointed a special commission to investigate the army of occupation in Louisiana, prompted by the friction between Hahn and Banks' conservative successors in the Department of the Gulf. Some historians see this as a sign of declining confidence in the Hahn regime: Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 249-251; Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962),347, 461. 44 My treatment of the compromise effort follows that of McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 308-309, Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 246-252, and Donald, Sumner, 195-196.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

In actuality, however, there had been some misunderstanding on the precise nature of the compromise. A few days after Ashley introduced his bill General Banks dropped by the White House to talk with the President about reconstruction matters. He ex­ pressed his conviction that the Negro suffrage provision must be dropped: "It would simply throw the government into the hands of blacks, as the white people under that arrangement would refuse to vote." The general thought that the sentiment of the House was supportive of his view and predicted that the "whites only" provision of the Wade-Davis bill would be re­ stored. Lincoln agreed with Banks, according to secretary John Hay, and also objected to the clause abolishing slavery by con­ gressional statute, which had been his rationale for vetoing the original bill. "The President and General Banks spoke very favor­ ably, with these qualifications, of Ashley's bill," noted Hay, but perhaps this was because the general interpreted the measure "as merely concurring in the President's own action in the one im­ portant case of Louisiana and recommending the observance of the same policy in other cases."45 Banks' prediction was almost entirely accurate. On December 20 the Committee on the Rebellious States reported Ashley's bill with an amendment restricting suffrage to white male citizens, except for persons "in the military or naval service of the United States," which provided a limited mechanism for enfranchising Negroes. In line with Lincoln's wishes, another change was added: the emancipation clause was amended so as to affect only areas covered by the presidential proclamation of January 1, 1863, and it took as its constitutional authority the war powers of the executive rather than any congressional claim. These changes brought the measure in line with the thinking of Banks, Lincoln, and many of the more moderate congressmen in the party, but to radicals the alteration of the suffrage provi­ sion came close to a repudiation of the compromise agreement as they understood it. New England abolitionists chided political 45 Dennett (ed.), Hay Diary, 244-246; Banks to his wife, Dec. 18, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; New York Times, Dec. 19, 1864. Benedict, A Compro­ mise of Principle, 90, sees Lincoln as the stronger proponent of restricting the vote to whites: "he insisted that the black suffrage provision be stricken, and Banks concurred, despite his assurances to radicals that he favored black enfranchisement."

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

allies like Sumner, Davis, Ashley, and William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania for political naivete, for they regarded the recogni­ tion of Louisiana as the pivotal part of the bill. It created a pre­ cedent for other states, thought Wendell Phillips, and the Boston Commonwealth agreed: "if Congress allows the President to determine the conditions on which Louisiana shall return to the Union, what resistance can it make when he brings Florida and Alabama along?"46 When Congress returned from Christmas recess, Ashley sub­ mitted two further amendments. The first, a requirement that the revised constitutions of the former Confederate states guar­ antee "equality of civil rights before the law . . . to all persons," was almost identical to a clause in the Louisiana constitution, which had been passed without controversy.47 Ashley's second amendment, however, was a drastic alteration; if accepted, it would abrogate the possibility of compromise entirely. It pro­ posed to recognize the Louisiana and Arkansas regimes on condi­ tion that they fulfill two of the requirements the bill demanded of other states undergoing the reconstruction process. Their con­ stitutions must include disfranchisement of high-ranking rebels, and they had to undertake the registration process outlined in the bill. If a majority of the voters enrolled took the amnesty oath, then the President could ask Congress to recognize the Louisiana and Arkansas provisional governments and, presum­ ably, to seat their representatives.48 William D. Kelley, a Pennsylvania iadical who had married into an abolitionist family, was one of the earliest proponents of Negro suffrage on Capitol Hill, and he quickly proposed an amendment that would add to the voting rolls those Negroes who could satisfy a literacy qualification, along with those who had served in the Union army. In defense of his amendment Kelley delivered a lengthy address on the question of black po­ litical rights. He demonstrated through specific citations that free 46 Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 255-257; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 308-309. 47 Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 258-259, argues that it is "doubtful" that the amendment "would have been acceptable to the President and his congressional supporters." The Louisiana moderates had not objected to the idea of equality before the law, however, as long as civil rights were not understood to include political rights. *8 CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Jan. 16, 1865), 280-281.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

Negroes had voted in many states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that disfranchisement in at least two states, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, had come as late as the 1830s, and that the vote had been illegally withheld from Louisiana free Negroes, whose right to suffrage was supposedly guaranteed by the treaty of 1803. The Philadelphian also argued that Negro suffrage was a prac­ tical necessity for reconstruction because not enough loyal whites could be found to maintain a Unionist party in a system of free elections. "Thomas J. Durant, Benjamin Flanders, Rufus Waples, and Alfred Jervis have had thousands of adherents and coworkers among the whites of Louisiana," he asserted, but they were the first to admit that unconditional Unionists were only "a minority of the white people of that state." They had called for congres­ sional intervention and equal suffrage, and now Kelley reiterated their appeal before a crowded House.49 The President's supporters counterattacked. In the wake of the fall elections the increasing sympathy for Lincoln within the party had produced a limited degree of factional realignment. Thomas D. Eliot, normally a leading House radical, moved to back the President's Louisiana policy by a drastic amendment to Ashley's bill. In Eliot's version the reconstructed state constitu­ tions would be required only to abolish slavery and guarantee "to all persons freedom and equality before the law." As the Louisiana constitution already included these provisions, it was not surprising that the second clause of Eliot's substitute was a proposal that "Louisiana is hereby permitted to resume its polit­ ical relations with the government." This moderate version, which eliminated all other prerequisites for readmission, was in line with the President's dislike for rigid guidelines in the reconstruc­ tion process, and it would produce his major goal of immediate recognition for the moderate regime in New Orleans.50 The Republican majority in the House was hopelessly divided on the question of reconstruction, despite the mood of harmony 49 Ibid., 289. Kelley received the New Orleans Tribune on a regular basis and mentioned the Negro paper in the course of his remarks, giving its Northern circulation a boost. Biographical references are from Ira V. Brown, "William D. Kelley and Radical Reconstruction," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXXV (July 1961), 316-329. so CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Jan. 17, 1865), 298-300.

LINCOLN VS. SU'lNER

with which the session had opened. The Ashley bill did not have sufficient support to pass. A motion to postpone further discus­ sion of the measure for two weeks carried by a margin of 103 to 34, with unequivocally radical congressmen such as Thaddeus Stevens joining Eliot and the moderates against Ashley, Kelley, and Davis. Much the same pattern was observable a month later when another motion to table, passed by a margin of 91 to 64, closed debate on the bill for good.51 Historian Herman Belz has interpreted this as an indication that "as Lincoln's political strength increased after his election to a second term, and as the end of the war approached, most Re­ publicans drew back to more modest reconstruction plans." This is probably an accurate description of some of the shifts in voting patterns. As David Donald has pointed out, however, some radi­ cals like Stevens voted against Ashley's bill because they pre­ ferred to postpone all congressional reconstruction bills until the more radical 39th Congress assembled in December.52 There was a third factor involved as well. The phrasing of Ashley's measure was awkward and ambiguous, as moderate critics like Henry L. Dawes delighted in pointing out, and the bill would have added considerable confusion to the recon­ struction picture had it been enacted into law. Perhaps some votes were lost because of its sheer unworkability.53 Whatever the reasons for the shift, the many radicals who had come to favor Negro suffrage by this time shed few tears over the defeat of the bill.54 Stalemate was no solution to the dilemma of reconstruction, however, as Davis caustically pointed out. When the next Con­ gress assembled in December, "at our doors, clamorous and dictatorial, will be sixty-five representatives from the states now in rebellion, and twenty-two senators claiming admission." In the absence of a congressional program, the field was open for the si Ibid., 301, and (Feb. 21, 1865), 970-971. 52 Belz, Reconstructing the Union, 266; David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 30. McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 308-309, demonstrates that even Ashley, who naturally tried to salvage his bill, privately agreed with Stevens that, as now amended, the measure would probably do more harm than good. 53 See the comments of Eliot and Dawes, CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Jan. 17, 1865), 298-300, and (Feb. 20, 1865), 934-937. 54 McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 308-310.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

President to pursue his own policy. "Suppose that the fruitful example of Louisiana shall spread like a mist over all the rest of the southern country, and that representatives like what Louisi­ ana has sent here, with such a backing of votes as she has given, shall appear here at the doors of this hall?" Davis continued. "Whose representatives are they?" he asked rhetorically: "in Louisiana they are the representatives of the bayonets of Gen­ eral Banks and the will of the President." On the other hand, he added, if Lincoln were to adopt a lenient policy of allowing exConfederates to participate freely in elections, the claimants would be the very men against whom the Union had fought dur­ ing four years of civil war.55 With the defeat of the reconstruction bill, the field was open for Lincoln to secure congressional recognition of the Louisiana regime and the admission of its senators and representatives. This was General Banks' main task during his lengthy sojourn in Washington. In addition to personal lobbying with friends from his own days as Speaker of the House, the general presented his case in lengthy testimony before Lyman Trumbull's Senate Judi­ ciary Committee early in January. There he developed the same arguments as in his pamphlet, adding further wild guesses about population loss outside Union lines (of 40,000 men who had en­ listed in the Confederate army from Louisiana, Banks estimated that no more than 1,500 were still alive). He now claimed that 75 percent of the state's population was within Union lines. Trumbull sent the President a copy of Banks' testimony for com­ ment, and Lincoln backed his political general to the hilt. He urged the powerful senator from upstate Illinois (an old acquaint­ ance, if not a personal friend) that recognition and admission of the Louisiana delegation was the best method of restoring the state's "proper practical relations with the Union."56 The administration forces also received reinforcement from a most unusual source: the most famous veteran of thirty-five years of abolitionist agitation, William Lloyd Garrison. The respect and influence gained by the abolitionist movement during the war 55 CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 21, 1865), 9Θ8-970. 56 Banks' testimony before the Judiciary Committee is reported in NASS, Jan. 21, 1865. For the exchange between the President and Trumbull, see Lincoln to Trumbull, Jan. 9, 1865, CWL, vm, 206-207. See also the com­ ments of Banks to his wife, Jan. 7, 1865 (misdated 1864), Banks Papers, LC.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

had worked a powerful change in Garrison's outlook on politics and society. Given the ear of leading figures in the House, the Senate, and even the White House, the old agitator had softened in his attitude toward the seat of power. His criticisms became less harsh, his sympathy for the practical concerns of Republican officials more apparent, under the lulling sensations of his new role. The radical who had once foresworn all political parties because of their conservatism now backed Lincoln against the efforts of Wendell Phillips to rally support for a radical third party. By the winter of 1863-1864 Garrison had even come to the point of approving Banks' labor system in Louisiana, to the dismay of most abolitionists, and his increasing conservatism threatened to disrupt the unity of the movement altogether.57 An important influence on Garrison's view of the labor system in Louisiana was B. Rush Plumly, the veteran Philadelphia aboli­ tionist who had served on the New Orleans Board of Education under General Banks. As described earlier, Plumly had become good friends with Banks shortly after his arrival in Louisiana and had acquired a fascination with politics and a love of politi­ cal intrigue quite out of keeping with his Garrisonian past. He had been an enthusiastic backer of the general's seizure of power in January 1864, and his friendship with Durant and Flanders had dissolved in bitter vituperation during the gubernatorial cam­ paign. He had also broken with Salmon P. Chase in March, and the same bitterness characterized his attitude toward his former chief. Plumly was in John Hay's office at the White House on June 30 when Lincoln told his secretary he had decided to accept Chase's resignation. "That is right," gloated PIumly: "the judg­ ments of God are sure." He wrote two glowing accounts of Banks' labor system for the Liberator in the fall of 1864, and he at­ tacked Durant as a hypocrite disappointed by his failure to procure a political office.58 Plumly also took a potshot at the New Orleans Tribune, the radical daily that had replaced L'Union as the journal of the city's black community, or, as Plumly preferred, "the alleged organ of the free colored Creoles." The Tribune rejoined that Plumly had deserted blacks to join with the white supremacy advocates 57

McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 89-90, 266-267, 271-272, 287-307. (ed.), Hay Diary, 198; PIumly to Garrison, Sept. 6, Oct. 20, 1864, printed in the Liberator, Sept. 23, Nov. 11, 1864. 58Dennett

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

of the Hahn campaign, and it added pointedly: "our readers will particularly notice that the Major endorses all the acts of the excommander [Banks] which are well-known and will be long remembered here." A letter to the editor prayed "Lord! Save us from our friends."59 The Tribune was very critical of the contract labor system, for it favored a more radical program of social change than General Banks. "The old plantation system should have been summarily abolished, the plantations divided into five acre lots, and parti­ tioned among the tillers of the soil . . . at a nominal price." The paper also urged that freedmen "should be armed, equipped, and drilled," which, together with the education they were beginning to receive, would give them the opportunity "to act as free men and loyal citizens." In light of the Tribune's radical views, it was ironic that the moderate Plumly should defend Banks and accuse the black newspaper of considering only the interests of the Negro aristocracy. "We have too many white ad­ visors who love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues."80 The Tribune also defended Durant against Plumly's charges. It referred to the radical lawyer as "our estimable and honorable citizen" and as "the Demosthenes of the Louisiana bar."61 The paper ranked Durant among the most honored friends of the black man, along with "those great apostles of liberty Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips." New Orleans blacks held a state convention early in January to organize a chapter of the National Equal Rights League, under the inspiration of black radical James H. Ingraham. The convention invited Durant to become a member. A motion to issue a similar invitation to Plumly was defeated on the grounds that he was a political opponent of Durant. Durant was drawing closer to the black community during this last winter of the war, and he joined Benjamin Flanders in form­ ing the Freedmens Aid Association early in 1865. The associa­ tion's main goal was to supply capital on an interest-free basis for farmer cooperatives organized and sponsored by the Third African Church of New Orleans. A committee sent by the asso59

New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 11, 12, Dec. 6, 7,1864. Ibid,., Sept. 24, Dec. 6, 1864, March 7, 1865. « Ibid., Oct. 11, 20,1864. 80

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

ciation to sound out freedmen on the plantations reported "the desire of laborers to go to work on their own account" and noted that even a small outlay per group would enable cooperatives to be established immediately in some areas of the state.62 The black community of New Orleans was seething with crea­ tive activity during the winter. In addition to the organization of the Equal Rights League and the farmer cooperative movement, the Tribune led a campaign against segregated streetcars.63 The Tribune had a most unusual editorialist by this time, a talented Belgian astronomer named Jean-Charles Houzeau, who had been forced to leave his native country during the 1850s because of his political radicalism. Dr. Louis C. Roudanez, the owner of the paper, hired Houzeau as an editor in November 1864, and under the assumed name of Charles J. Dalloz the Belgian wrote for both the French and English editions,64 The Tribune and the Equal Rights League opposed an effort by a more conservative group of the free men of color to petition the state legislature for partial suffrage for Negroes based on property or educational qualification. The cause of the wellto-do Negro of antebellum pedigree was inescapably linked by a common barrier of prejudice with that of the newly freed slaves in the plantation country, argued the radical blacks, and the petition would not only fail to win approval in the whitesupremacy legislature, but would divide the black community by a class line. The Tribune staked everything on universal suffrage and the hope of congressional intervention. "Times of revolution are not like times of peace," it editorialized. "The laws which govern the march of passing events, during the agitated period 62 Ibid., Dec. 31, 1864, Jan. 11, 12, Feb. 3, 23, 24, 28, March 1, 7, 1865; John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), 56-57. 63 New Orleans Tribune, Jan. 4, 7, 10-13, Feb. 2, 28, 1865. 64Jean-Charles Houzeau, "Le Journal Noir, aux Etats-Unis, de 1863 a 1870," Revue de Belgique, vn (May 1872), 1-28, (June 1872), 97-122, is a memoir of an improbable career in Louisiana journalism. It was called to my attention by Finian Patrick Leavens, "L'Union and the New Orleans Tribune and Reconstruction" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1966). Leavens accepts Houzeau's claim that he was chiefly responsible for the radical editorial policy of the Tribune, but the basic editorial policy of the paper had been set on its radical course long before the Belgian arrived in New Orleans in November 1864.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

of social transformations are not the same which regulate the quiet course of transient incidents in time of peace."65 Despite criticism from New Orleans blacks, Plumly and Gar­ rison continued to support the moderate policies of Banks and Lincoln. General Banks gave a series of public addresses in New England during the fall of 1864, defending his labor system and reconstruction policy against the attacks of radical abolitionists like Wendell Phillips. Garrison published one of his best efforts in the Liberator, and another was published as a lengthy pam­ phlet, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana. Garrison and Banks corresponded on the subject as well, and the general's lengthy defense of his treatment of the freedmen appeared in the Libera­ tor at the height of the congressional debate over Louisiana.66 The differences between Garrison and Wendell Phillips over the Louisiana question brought about a memorable confrontation at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on January 26, 1865. Garrison argued that the contract labor sys­ tem had smoothed the path to freedom for Louisiana blacks; on the matter of reconstruction, he took the view that forcing Negro suffrage on the South was not only hypocritical, as long as Northem states denied the Negro the ballot, but would also lead to a white boycott and an all-black government. In response, Phillips pointed critically to the restrictions on mobility of plantation hands, the treatment of blacks in the courts, and the low wages that prevailed under Banks' system. If the government readmitted Louisiana to the Union at this stage, he emphasized, it would lose the power to force changes in these discriminatory practices. The Hahn government was still very conservative in its attitude toward blacks, he pointed out, drawing on a recent letter by Durant in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and would undoubtedly be replaced by a frankly re­ actionary regime when the Confederates returned to the polls after the war. Nor did Phillips accept the idea that Congress should make an exception for Louisiana, in the hope that Lin­ coln would set more rigorous standards for future states. "The re68

New Orleans Tribune, Jan. 3, 24, 26, Feb. 5, 10, 19, 21, 1865. Liberator, Nov. 11, 1864; Banks, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana (Boston, 1864); Garrison to Banks, Jan. 21, 1865, Banks to Garrison, Jan. 30, 1865, Banks Papers, Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield. The latter was reprinted in the Liberator, Feb. 24, 1865. 66

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

construction of Louisiana is the model which the Executive sets to other states."67 The split between Garrison and Phillips strengthened the chance of securing congressional approval for Lincoln's policy by contributing to the division in radical ranks. Administration forces in the House hoped to seat the five Louisiana representa­ tives during the session as a gesture of recognition for the provi­ sional government. The chances of Thomas M. Wells were not good because the district he represented was largely controlled by Confederates and only a few voters had participated in the September elections. The cases of William D. Mann of the third district and of the two New Orleans claimants, Dr. Max Bonzano and A. P. Field, were stronger because the level of participation had been much higher in their areas. Henry Dawes' Committee on Elections reported favorably in these three cases, citing the same reasons it had given two years earlier with its recommenda­ tion that Flanders and Hahn be seated.68 Unfortunately for Lincoln's policy, "Colonel" Field chose this moment to get roaring drunk at Willard's Hotel. On the evening of January 22, 1865, Field had been imbibing heavily in the hotel dining room, and began to swear vigorously at William D. Kelley, who had recently made his stirring address to the House on be­ half of Negro suffrage and who was opposed to the seating of the Louisiana claimants. When Kelley objected to the colonel's pro­ fanity, the Louisianan tried to pick a fight with him. Field was approaching sixty, and the tall, muscular young radical refused to accept the old man's invitation to brawl. He tried to brush past his drunken challenger, but Field lashed out with a pocket knife and slashed his arm. Kelley was not badly hurt, but politically speaking, the colonel had dealt a death blow to the Louisiana delegations prospects for admission.60 The failure in the House made the seating of the senatorial claimants all the more important for the administration. The 67 NASS, Feb. 11, 1865; Liberator, Feb. 10, 1865; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 298-299. 68 CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 17, 1865), 870. The committee reports on the three candidates were published as House Reports, nos. 13, 16, and 17. 69CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 21, 1865), 971-974, and House Reports, no. 10 ("Assault Upon Hon. William D. Kelley"). See also Banks to Dawes, Jan. 26, 1865, Dawes Papers, LC.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

Judiciary Committee favored seating R. King Cutler and Charles Smith, reported Lyman Trumbull to the Senate on February 18, but it wished to postpone such action until Congress passed a joint resolution recognizing the Hahn regime as "the legitimate government" of Louisiana, "entitled to the guarantees and all other rights of a state government under the Constitution." If this resolution were passed, the committee's qualms about the constitutionality of seating the claimants would be assuaged, Trumbull's report continued. As far as the representativeness of the government was concerned, the committee accepted General Banks' interpretation of the degree of public support it enjoyed. The report adopted the general's substitution of the military en­ rollment for the political census envisaged by the Wade-Davis and Ashley bills, and it used his figures in arguing that well over a majority of the voters in the occupied parishes had taken the oath of loyalty. It disregarded the form of the oath, and rather than accepting Banks' analysis of the absence of adult males in Confederate territory, it simply ignored the existence of the rebel army. The President's efforts at persuasion had apparently brought Trumbull over to the administration side.70 Charles Sumner was not willing to accept the administration line on Louisiana. Long troubled by Banks' conciliatory program in the Department of the Gulf, the senator had urged the Ameri­ can Freedmen's Inquiry Commission to investigate the labor sys­ tem of the lower Mississippi. He had taken a keen interest in the petition of New Orleans Negroes for the suffrage, which he him­ self presented to the Senate in 1864, and the Tribune kept him up-to-date on the treatment of blacks by the provisional govern­ ment. Although Sumner was a personal friend of both Lincoln and his wife, joining them at the theater or for dinner at the White House several times during the session, he and his politi­ cal associates in Massachusetts were also on good terms with Wendell Phillips and the radical wing of the abolitionist move­ ment. The senator was a pioneer advocate of racial integration and remained firmly committed to Negro rights on every level, from integrated schools to land redistribution among the freedmen. He placed a high priority on equal suffrage as a prerequisite for reconstruction. Sumner saw that with white radicals like Durant 7 0 CG,

38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 18, 1865), 903; Senate Reports, no. 127 ("Charles Smith and R. King Cutler"), 1-3.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

and Flanders, an articulate group of black radicals like Roudanez, Bertonneau, and Ingraham, and a virtual majority of blacks in the state's population, Louisiana provided real potential for a radical party. Although he had been willing to seat the Hahn regime in exchange for a general requirement of Negro suffrage at the beginning of the session, the fate of that compromise agreement left Sumner in a mood to fight. When Trumbull called up the joint resolution for debate, Sumner responded with a substitute proposal that would post­ pone recognition until armed hostility had ceased in the state. Only seven other radicals voted with him on this counterresolution, which suggested that Trumbull probably had the necessary majority to pass his motion if it came to a vote. Sumner's only hope was to stall until the press of business in the last days of the session forced the Senate to table the resolution. Conservative Democrats also opposed the President's policy, preferring a simple restoration that would throw power into the hands of the return­ ing Confederates, and Lazarus Powell of Kentucky helped Sum­ ner by leading off with a lengthy speech opposing recognition. For the most part, however, the filibuster was a radical show, with Jacob Howard of Michigan adding a lengthy peroration to assist Sumner's garrulousness.71 The moderates struck back at Sumner angrily. John Henderson of Missouri commented sarcastically on the irony of the Mas­ sachusetts radical and the Kentucky conservative agreeing on the Louisiana question: "truly the lion and the lamb have laid down together." "Who is the lion, and who is the lamb?" asked War Democrat Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, who also favored rec­ ognition. Henderson replied: "that is for the gentlemen them­ selves to settle." Sumner next introduced a second lengthy sub­ stitute amendment, which would have required the Southern states to guarantee "that in every re-established state . . . all men shall be equal before the law" and to grant suffrage to blacks and whites on an equal basis: "as their muskets are needed for the national defense against rebels in the field, so . . . without their support at the ballot box the cause of human rights and of the Union itself will be in constant peril."72 71 Donald,

Sumner, 197-204; CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 23, 1865), 1012, (Feb. 24, 1865), 1061-1070, (Feb. 25, 1865), 1091-1099, 1101-1111. 7 2 CG, 38 Cong., 2 Sess. (Feb. 24, 1865), 1066, (Feb. 25, 1865), 1091.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

Tempers began to wear thin as the debate stretched into an evening session. Henderson and Johnson forced Sumner to admit that he was measuring Louisiana by a radical standard that not all Northern states could meet. But in trying to discomfort the Massachusetts radical and controvert his arguments, the mod­ erates used almost as much time as the resolution's opponents. Finally, Trumbull intervened to try and bring the resolution to a direct vote before midnight. "It is manifest now by the course being pursued by the Senator from Massachusetts . . . that he is in a combination here with a fraction of the Senate to delay the important business of the country." Benjamin Wade inter­ rupted him, but Trumbull went ahead with his denunciation of Sumner: "does he hold in his hand the Senate of the United States, that in his omnipotence he is to say when votes shall be taken and public measures shall be passed? Has it come to this?"73 "There was a Senator from Illinois once in this chamber," re­ sponded Sumner, whose "name was Douglas. He, too, brought forward a proposition calculated to bring discord upon the coun­ try," referring, of course, to the Kansas-Nebraska Act he had once stigmatized as "the crime against Kansas." Douglas had "brought that proposition in precisely as my friend from Illinois now brings this in, proudly, confidently, almost menacingly, say­ ing that he was to pass it—was it not in twenty-four hours." Trumbull recognized, no doubt, that replying to his opponent's invective would simply use valuable time to no avail, and he admitted sourly that "we can get no vote tonight." The Senate adjourned, but returned to the debate two days later. "We can take a vote on this question at this time," declared administration supporter Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, if "my colleague does not desire to make a protracted speech." Once again Sumner stuck to his guns: "I assure the Senator it is utterly impossible to take a vote."74 Now the radicals received help from moderate John Sherman of Ohio, chairman of the Finance Committee, who insisted that Trumbull give up the Louisiana resolution so that the Senate could vote on a series of critical revenue bills. Trumbull fought ™lbid. (Feb. 25, 1865), 1107. ™lbid. (Feb. 25, 1865), 1109-1111, (Feb. 27, 1865), 1126.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

desperately to bring the resolution to a quick vote and get on with other business, but the senator from Massachusetts was adamant. Sensing victory, he rose to new heights of invective in denouncing the Hahn regime, which the administration was try­ ing to "cram down the throats of the Senate." It was "an oligarchy of the skin," he cried, "a mere seven-month's abortion, begotten by the bayonet in criminal conjunction with the spirit of caste, and born before its time, rickety, unformed, unfinished—whose continued existence will be a burden, a reproach, and a wrong." Shortly afterward the Senate gave in and postponed Trumbull's resolution for what proved to be the duration of the session.75 Sumner had almost single-handedly prevented the Senate from approving Lincoln's reconstruction policy in Louisiana. "We have watched your white plume with a fearful delight," wrote Wendell Phillips. "Could we only hope this defeat would be final, our joy would be unmixed." Radical leader Frank Bird of Massachusetts added his praise of Sumner's "gallant fight," and abolitionist Elizur Wright declared it was "worth any three average military victories."76 The stalemate between the most radical Republicans and those who favored recognition of Lincoln's provisional government in Louisiana meant that the last session of the 38th Congress would pass no legislation affecting the reorganization of civil govern­ ment. The proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States, which had passed the Senate during the previous session, had a happier fate. Some Northern Demo­ crats argued that their party's future prospects would improve if the slavery question were resolved by passage of the amendment, although most of the Democratic congressmen remained ada­ mantly opposed to emancipation. With Republicans unanimous in its favor, the addition of several Democratic votes—secured by presidential arm-twisting, generous use of patronage, and rumors of a little graft here and there—gave the amendment the neces­ sary two-thirds majority in the House on January 31, 1865. With cheers resounding in the gallery, the House immediately ad­ journed for the day, and soon the booming of cannon testified to 75

Ibid.

76 Donald,

Sumner, 204-205; Bird to Sumner, Feb. 28, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, 4 vols. (Boston, 1894), iv, 228-229.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

all Washington that the cause of freedom had won a great victory." In the closing days of the session the two-year struggle for a Freedmen's Bureau culminated in victory. Under the aegis of the war department a new federal agency was given control of "all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen" for one year following the end of the war. In addition to supervising labor relations, the bureau was to control all abandoned and confiscated lands, and it was to rent farms of up to forty acres to freedmen or white Unionists on liberal terms, with the possibility of purchase after three years. The precise nature of the bureaus work was not spelled out in the bill, but that work, like the process of reorganiz­ ing civil government, would be in the hands of the President during the next nine months.78 So long as Lincoln occupied the White House, control of re­ construction and freedmen's affairs was safe in Republican hands. The President believed that it was important to retain the loyalty of radical critics like Sumner, and the Massachusetts senator was a personal guest of the first family at the inaugural ball not long after the climactic debate over the recognition of Louisiana. Escorting Mrs. Lincoln, Sumner entered the hallway directly behind the President and Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax as the band played "Hail to the Chief." The New York Herald exaggerated greatly when it interpreted this symbolic gesture as a presidential endorsement of Sumner's view of reconstruction, but the event did suggest Lincoln's continued commitment to uni­ fying the Republican Party in its postwar policy.79 Despite his wholehearted support for congressional acceptance of the Hahn regime, the President was aware during the last months of the war that all was not well in New Orleans. The newspapers were full of charges that votes were bought and sold 77

Randall and Current, Lincoln the President, iv, 302-313; La Wanda and John H. Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963), 1-30. 78 La Wanda Cox, "The Promise of Land for the Freedmen," MVHR, XLv (Dec. 1958), 413-440. Lincoln's interest in the work of the proposed Freedmen's Bureau can be inferred from his note to the head of Banks' Bureau of Free Labor (who was shortly to become the first commissioner of the new federal agency in Louisiana): Lincoln to Thomas W. Conway, March 1, 1865, CWL, vin, 325 (see Prologue). 79 Donald, Sumner, 205-209, 212-215.

LINCOLN VS. SUMNER

every day in the new legislature, and even the tenuous popularity the moderate Republicans had achieved under General Banks was now slipping away: "the guiding hand is wanting," grieved one of his supporters. Banks' successor, General E.R.S. Canby, and the officer in charge of civil affairs, General Stephen Hurlbut, were at loggerheads with both governor and legislature. Lincoln directed Canby and Hurlbut to cooperate with the civil authorities, but a sense of drift continued to dominate the Louisiana scene.80 Lincoln was not prepared to admit that his "model of recon­ struction" was a failure, but as a practical politician he recog­ nized the need to build a more viable Republican regime in Loui­ siana. Thus his last public speech forecast a new approach to reconstruction, one that would include at least limited enfran­ chisement of blacks in that troubled state, and perhaps in the South as a whole.81 With the surrender of the Confederate army in the spring of 1865 the issue of postwar policy was transformed from a theoretical question to an immediate matter for action in the ten remaining Confederate states. By that time, ironically, the Hahn forces had lost control of Louisiana affairs, and the state that had once seemed the most "reconstructed" in the South fell into the hands of a frankly conservative faction headed by the new governor, James Madison Wells. In the only terms practical politicians respect—survival in office—the Hahn regime had proved to be a failure. The counterrevolutionary strategy pur­ sued by Hahn's successor received, in turn, the blessings of President Andrew Johnson only a month after John Wilkes Booth put a bullet in Lincoln's head. 80 Harai Robinson to Banks, Oct. 31, 1864, Banks Papers, Illinois State Historical Society, Springfield; J.V.C. Smith to Banks, Oct. 15, 29, 1864, March 18, 1865, Plumly to Banks, Oct. 8, 1864, Hahn to Banks, Oct. 28, 1864, Stephen Hoyt to Banks, Dec. 3, 1864, Banks Papers, LC; J. P. Tucker to Chase, Dec. 10, 1864, Chase Papers, LC; Lincoln to Gen. Hurlbut, Nov. 14, 1864, Lincoln to Gen. Canby, Dec. 12, 1864, CWL, VIII, 106-107, 163164, 165n; New Orleans Times, Dec. Θ, 28, 1864, Jan. 14, 28, Feb. 8, 14, 18, 1865; Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1867 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 54, 56-58. The only significant action taken by the legislature during this period was to ratify the new Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Con­ stitution by unanimous votes in both houses, Feb. 17, 1865. 81 See the discussion of this speech in the Prologue.

CHAPTER X

Counterrevolution: The Return of the Confederates

J N the spring of 1865 Andrew Johnson possessed extraordinary power to shape the reconstruc­ tion process in the defeated South. With Congress adjourned until December, control of the army of occupation lay in his hands; civil government was suspended in the former Confeder­ ate states, with the partial exceptions of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and the provost marshals of each command were performing the essential tasks of maintaining order. Any de­ cisions about the restoration of local or state authority would be made by the President, with the advice of his cabinet. The direction Johnson's reconstruction policy might take was any­ one's guess when he assumed the White House. A Southern Democrat before the war, he had always been an exponent of his party's state rights point of view and had supported the institution of slavery as the cornerstone of Southern society. Johnson had opposed secession, on the other hand, and remained in the Senate when his home state of Tennessee left the Union in 1861. During the conflict he had sided with Republican congress­ men demanding more vigorous prosecution of the war effort, and after Lincoln appointed him military governor of occupied Tennessee he ruthlessly suppressed Confederate opposition to his authority. Though poorly educated and of low social origins, Johnson was a shrewd and effective politician who had held pub­ lic office continuously after 1843 in a state normally run by wellto-do planters or lawyers. Despite an initial lapse when he got drunk at his own inaugural as vice-president in March 1865, Johnson continued to demonstrate his political skill during his first year as President. The first illustration of this dexterity was his ability during the early months of his administration to per­ suade almost everyone, from pro-Southern Democrats to the most

COUNTERREVOLUTION

radical exponents of Negro rights in the Republican Party, that he was on their side.1 In conversations with Republican leaders following Lincoln's assassination Johnson spoke frequently of the need to punish "traitors." He supported the summary trials of the participants in John Wilkes Booth's conspiracy and the incarceration of several leading Confederate officials, as desired by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. When he and his cabinet learned on April 21 of the lenient terms granted the surrendering Confederates by General William T. Sherman, who proposed, subject to approval from Washington, that the rebel governments be recognized as the basis for restoration of state authority, the President con­ curred in the unanimous view that Sherman's truce must be disavowed. So long as the issue was related to the destruction of the hated Confederacy, Johnson was willing to support the most vigorous action by the federal government.2 The question of political reconstruction was another matter altogether. In the first lengthy cabinet meeting on April 16, Secretary Stanton introduced the reconstruction proclamation he had drafted at Lincoln's request and presented to the cabinet the day before the assassination.3 Once again the issue was post­ poned after some discussion; the only opinion expressed by Johnson, according to Gideon Welles, was that he "is not disposed to treat treason lightly, and the chief Rebels he would punish with exemplary severity." That evening Welles was still discussing some mutual business with Stanton at the war department when Senator Charles Sumner and Congressmen Henry Dawes, Schuy­ ler Colfax, Daniel Gooch, and John Covode dropped by. Follow­ ing Lincoln's technique of sounding congressional opinion on proposed executive documents, Stanton read the latest draft of the reconstruction proclamation to the group. Sumner and Colfax pressed the secretary to include Negro suffrage in the proposal, and after much discussion Stanton agreed. Because the issue of 1 My interpretation of Andrew Johnson's role in reconstruction politics fol­ lows that of La Wanda and John Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963), but see also Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960). 2 Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962), 405-435. 3 See the discussion of this document in the Prologue.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Sherman's truce intervened, however, the reconstruction procla­ mation did not come up in the cabinet again for three weeks.4 On April 22 Sumner took Chief Justice Chase with him to urge the Negro suffrage issue upon President Johnson himself. A few days earlier Chase had written the President to ask that he "make Florida and Louisiana really free States with universal suffrage, and then let other States follow." As Sumner reported the con­ versation to Massachusetts radical leader Frank Bird, Johnson was "well-disposed" to their views and saw "the rights and necessities of the case." The President argued, however, that it would be best for Negro suffrage to be proposed by the Southern states themselves, which neatly avoided committing Johnson himself to take immediate action. Chase leaped to offer his services: in the course of his proposed tour of the former Con­ federacy he would inform Southern whites that this was the desire of the chief executive. Johnson ended the discussion by telling the two radical leaders that "there is no difference between us." A few days later Senator Benjamin F. Wade raised the specific issue of whether Lincoln's commitment to the Hahn re­ gime should be continued, and he told Sumner that "the President does not disguise his hostility to the Louisiana scheme."5 Little did Wade know that Johnson found Lincoln's moderates too liberal, not too conservative. When Secretary Stan ton proposed to the cabinet on May 9 that the forthcoming North Carolina proclamation enfranchise all "loyal citizens," Johnson still took no part in the discussion. Gideon Welles objected to the idea on the grounds that Lincoln's ten-percent proclamation had restricted the vote to whites, setting a wartime precedent, and that in peacetime the deter­ mination of suffrage was a right reserved to the states by the 4Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, 402-404, 444; Howard K. Beale (ed.), Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), n, 290-291, 301; John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy (New York, 1973), 497-499. 5Sumner to Bird, April 25, 1865, Bird Papers, HU; Chase to Johnson, April 18, 1865, AJM; Chase to George Denison, April 25, 1865, Denison Papers, LC; Sumner to Francis Lieber, May 2, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), 219-220. The President also told Carl Schurz that he hoped to persuade the South to initiate the enfranchisement of blacks: Schurz to Sumner, May 9, 1865, Schurz Papers, LC.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Constitution. At Stanton's suggestion the President called for a poll of the cabinet, which resulted in an even split. Taking the conflicting views under advisement, Johnson did not issue the proclamation for another three weeks. To the surprise of the radicals, he then sided with the conservative view advocated by Secretary Welles.6 Republican leaders did not know that Johnson had opened secret negotiations with his old party, the Democracy. After the embarrassing spectacle of Johnson's drunken speech at the inau­ gural in March, the Blair family had taken the Tennessean under its wing at its Silver Springs estate. The Blairs, who had recently decided to return to the Democratic Party, served as a conduit for Johnson's assurances to Northern party leaders that he op­ posed Negro suffrage and intended to replace military occupation with civilian rule in the former Confederate states as soon as possible.7 The first tangible sign that Johnson meant to follow a conservative reconstruction policy was his decision in mid-May, two weeks before the issuance of the North Carolina proclama­ tion, to back the destruction of Lincoln's moderate regime in Louisiana by the state's new governor, James Madison Wells. Wells had become governor in March, when Michael Hahn resigned to accept the U.S. Senate nomination offered by the legislature. Recognizing the small electoral base of the Hahn forces, Wells decided to go over to the conservatives. On March 21 he began by removing Banks' friend Stephen Hoyt as mayor of New Orleans and replacing him with Hu Kennedy, the former owner and editor of the New Orleans True Delta. Kennedy pro­ ceeded to throw the incumbents out of most positions in the municipal government, replacing them with participants in the Masonic Hall movement, registered enemies, and returning Con­ federates. The governor next appointed conservative convention leader Edmund Abell as judge of the first district court in the city, named former rebel major Paul Theard as judge in the fourth district, and filled police juries with conservative planters and active Confederates in those few rural parishes where moderates had been in power during the war.8 6Beale

(ed.), Welles Diary, n, 301-304; Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, 444-446; Niven, Gideon Welles, 502-504. 7 Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 50-67. 8Wells to Gen. Hurlbut, April 11, 1865, Samuel W. Behrman (detective) to Banks, April 23, 1865, Judge James K. Belden, order, April 28, 1865,

COUNTERREVOLUTION

The only hope of the Hahn forces lay with the possibility that General Banks might overrule Wells when he returned from Washington to "resume command of the Department of the Gulf," as ordered by President Lincoln. While awaiting Banks' arrival the moderates sought to patch up their quarrel with the radicals in order to present a united front against the new threat from the right. At a mass meeting celebrating Lee's surrender, members of each faction appeared on the same platform for the first time in over fourteen months. Hahn was the presiding officer and Durant the featured speaker.9 The New Orleans Tribune saw the course of events as a vindica­ tion of its criticisms of Banks' moderate policy. "The 'Free State' party has proved a failure," declared the editor, and as a result "the Commanding General will have to intervene more and more every day." The conciliatory approach had not worked because "all injustices against races, classes, or sets of individuals had to be removed by the strong arm of power." The only solution, as the Tribune saw it, was that "the colored man will have to be called to the ballot box, as he had been called to the ranks" of the Union army during the war. "The radical party of Louisiana," it con­ cluded, had "a far better understanding of the practical conditions of the question."10 When news of Lincoln's assassination reached New Orleans, the Republicans held a memorial meeting at which Durant was the first speaker. The radical leader also displayed a bust of Lincoln prominently at his home on Canal Street. "Brethren, we are mourning for a benefactor of our race," declared the Tribune, despite its previous criticisms of Lincoln's moderation. "No man can suppress his feeling at this hour of affliction. Lincoln and John Brown are two martyrs, whose memories will live united in our bosoms." Banks arrived in the city with his wife on April 21, and after a large crowd of well-wishers escorted them to their residence the general delivered a brief, touching eulogy to the fallen President. That night there was another unity meeting of Stanislas Wrotnowski to Banks, May 1, 1865, A. P. Dostie, memorandum, May 5, 1865, Dostie to Banks, May 6, 1865, Michael D. Kavanagh to Banks, May 3, 1865, Robert W. Bennie to Banks, May 5, 1865, Banks Papers, LC. 9 Lincoln, "Endorsement Concerning Nathaniel P. Banks," March 20, 1865, CWL, νιπ, 366; Adjutant General's OfiSce, Special Order No. 132, March 18, 1865, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Times, April 16, 1865. 10 New Orleans Tribune, March 29, 30, April 1, 6, 1865.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

the Republican forces, addressed by both Durant and Anthony P. Dostie. Afterward Dostie gave an impromptu speech from the balcony of his office, calling for Negro suffrage and a new state election.11 When Mayor Kennedy announced that the municipal govern­ ment was cutting the wages of city laborers as an economy move, the Hahn forces held a mass meeting to protest the action, which even the increasingly conservative New Orleans Times declared would create real hardship for the workers. Benjamin Orr, John Henderson, and John Sullivan, three members of the 1864 con­ stitutional convention who had identified themselves with the rights of municipal laborers, pointed out that Mayor Kennedy's action was a specific violation of the state constitution. State Auditor Dostie also addressed the rally and denounced Governor Wells as well as the mayor. After the -rally a procession of workingmen marched to serenade Banks at his home, and a band played "Hail to the Chief."12 In order to augment his authority, Governor Wells wrote to President Johnson to request that he be appointed to "the Mili­ tary Governorship as my predecessor was." Wells justified his removals by charging that they only affected corrupt individuals who were "enriching themselves" at public expense and who "openly proclaim . . . their purpose to overthrow my government." The governor also rid his government of a few more Hahn sup­ porters, removing J. Randall Terry from his position as registrar of voters, declaring the old rollbooks null and void, and ordering a completely new registration of voters to begin on June 1. He then removed Alfred Shaw, the sheriff of Orleans Parish, and State Auditor Dostie (who had thrown down the gauntlet the night before in his speech). Shaw and Dostie refused to give up their positions and challenged the governor's right to remove them. Mayor Kennedy ordered Police Chief Michael Kavanagh to have his men carry the incumbents from their offices by force, but Kavanagh appealed to Banks for guidance. Secretary of State 11 New Orleans Times, April 20, 22, 23, 1865; New Orleans Tribune, April 20, 1865; New Orleans Black Republican, April 22, 1865. 12 New Orleans Times, April 28, 1865. See also the petition to Banks, May 2, 1865, Banks Papers, LC, which specified the provision of the 1864 constitution violated by Mayor Kennedy and which was signed by several hundred local Unionists.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Stanislas Wrotnowski stalled for time by refusing to put the official seal on Wells' appointments until he checked with the general.13 Banks decided to throw the full weight of his authority against Wells. On May 5, 1865, he countermanded all the governor's removals and replaced Mayor Kennedy with a new military ap­ pointee, Captain Samuel M. Quincy. The grandson of a longtime mayor of Boston, Josiah Quincy, the young Brahmin had recently been serving as an officer in a Negro regiment. "It was a delightful scene this A. M. when I ousted the civil government," wrote Quincy to his mother. "The Governor was enraged, and has gone to Washington to protest against military despotism."14 When Quincy arrived with his troops, Governor Wells was in the mayor's office and protested bitterly. He immediately dashed off a letter to Johnson, laying his own office on the line. "I feel that if this act of General Banks is sustained by you, Mr. Presi­ dent, and he is retained in power here, there is no necessity whatever for keeping up the shadow of civil authority." Wells and Kennedy decided to go to Washington personally, moreover, taking with them a glowing letter of introduction from the mayor's brother-in-law, Cuthbert Bullitt, who had met Johnson before. "Governor Wells, like ourselves, was a refugee from his home," wrote Bullitt, "and may be considered as thorough a Unionist as we have in this country." He characterized Wells as just the man "to harmonize and bring back all parties into line."15 General Banks appealed to his own political connections in Washington, such as his old friend Samuel Hooper, the wealthy Massachusetts congressman in whose Washington home President Johnson was living (awaiting Mrs. Lincoln's departure from the White House). To Hooper, and to the President's warm personal friend, Preston King, Banks charged that Wells had removed loyal Unionists "and put in their places the worst of Rebels and 13 Wells to Johnson, April 28, 1865, AJM; Shaw to Banks, May 1, 1865, Wrotnowski to Banks, May 1, 1865, Banks to Kavanagh, May 1, 4, 1865, Kennedy to Kavanagh, May 4, 1865, Terry to Banks, May 4, 1865, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Times, May 4, 1865. 14 Banks to Kennedy, May 5, 1865, Quincy to Banks, May 5, 1865, Banks Papers, LC; Quincy to his mother, May 5, 1865, Samuel M. Quincy Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (hereafter cited as MHS); New Orleans Times, May 5, 7, 1865. 15 Wells to Johnson, May 5, 1865, Bullitt to Johnson, May 5, 1865, AJM.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

secessionists." The general gave them a list of the Confederate connections of Wells' appointees as supporting evidence for his charges. The effort was to no avail, however, for on May 17 Johnson reorganized the military departments of the Southwest, depriving Banks of his command. He also sustained Governor Wells and gave him a free hand in reorganizing civil authority in Louisiana. Wells wrote his wife on May 23 that he was "highly pleased with President Johnson," and that the South would find the reconstruction policy of Lincoln's successor to its liking. "Tell the boys," he gloated, "they shall not again be troubled with further Yankee adventurism."10 Young Thomas M. Wells broke with his father at this point, however. "The returned rebels, if allowed all the rights and privileges of loyal citizens, will no doubt soon have the ascend­ ancy," the younger Wells wrote Banks on May 16, "unless checked by the voice of the colored people of the southern country." He had protested to his father against the appointment of conserva­ tives and former Confederates, but to no effect. While differing with him politically, Wells defended his father against the old charges dragged up by State Auditor Dostie, who claimed that in 1840 while serving as state tax collector the senior Wells had defaulted on his bond. "I am not wanting in that affection that a child should bear towards a parent."17 While Governor Wells was on his way back to New Orleans, President Johnson issued his first reconstruction proclamation and a special order for the reorganization of civil government in North Carolina. In strict constitutional terms his proclamations were similar to Lincoln's wartime policy: a provisional governor was to order an election for a constitutional convention, and later, a second legislative and gubernatorial election. The suffrage re­ quirements were also in line with Lincoln's, using the same oath and allowing the participation of ex-Confederates, although those with estates valued at over $20,000 were required to obtain 16 Banks to Hooper, May 6, 1865, Banks to King, May 6, 1865, AJM; Lloyd P. Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage (New York, 1929), 208; James Madison to Mary Arm Wells, May 23, 1865, quoted in Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1947), 52-55. 17 Thomas M. Wells to Banks, May 16, 1865, Dostie to Paul E. Theard, May 12, 1865, Banks Papers, LC.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

special presidential pardons. If the constitutional terms were similar, however, the political context of Johnson's policy was drastically altered by the return of large numbers of former Confederates, who quickly dominated the postwar governments and reestablished the Democratic hegemony of the old regime.18 To Northern radicals the North Carolina proclamation revealed more clearly than the confused events in Louisiana that Andrew Johnson would not follow the reconstruction policy they desired. Thaddeus Stevens wrote Sumner that the document "sickens me," and he despaired of influencing the President to reverse his pol­ icy: "by the time Congress meets all will be passed [sic] remedy I fear." Carl Schurz still thought it was possible to change John­ son's mind, but he admitted to Sumner that his own efforts had been unsuccessful. Johnson had shown an earlier draft of the proclamation to Schurz at the time the general resigned his com­ mission, and when Schurz encouraged him to include a Negro suffrage provision, the President "listened so attentively that I was almost sure he would heed my advice." Admitting sadly that "the Executive order shows the drift of things," Schurz observed that "Southern delegations are crowding into Washington, and I fear the President permits his judgement to be controlled by their representations."19 In another effort to influence the President, Schurz wrote Johnson that "the course of policy you have followed with regard to North Carolina you cannot apply to her neighbor South Carolina." In response Johnson asked Schurz to go on a tour of the former Confederate states for him, in order to discover what conditions were actually like in the field. "You must go," Sumner urged Schurz, "but before you go, make one last effort to arrest the policy of the President." Attorney General Speed wrote hope­ fully to George Boutwell that the precedent of the North Carolina proclamation need not be applied to other states, but Secretary of the Interior James Harlan admitted to Sumner a few days later that Johnson would apply the same conservative formula to 18 Andrew Johnson, "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction," and "Proclamation on North Carolina," both dated May 29, 1865, in James D. Richardson (ed.), A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1896-1899), vi, 310-314. 19 Stevens to Sumner, May 30, 18Θ5, Sumner Papers, HU; Schurz to Sumner, June 5, 1865, Schurz Papers, LC.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

the rest of the South. Numerous Republican leaders descended upon Washington to seek an alteration of the President's policy, but within six weeks Johnson had announced almost identical proclamations for the remaining rebel states.20 Initially, Louisiana Republicans had shared the hope that Johnson would pursue a radical policy. Before Governor Wells returned from Washington the Hahn forces held a mass meeting in support of the President, on the assumption that Johnson would back General Banks. In addition to Thomas B. Thorpe and Dostie, the crowd heard from another of Banks' wartime ap­ pointees, Henry Clay Warmoth, a former army officer from Missouri who had decided to settle in the city. Warmoth had met Johnson before and expressed great confidence that the new President would pursue an acceptable program of reconstruction. He drew applause when he declared that during his recent trip to Washington many Republican congressmen had said they would not admit a delegation from Louisiana "until you give them some assurance that the state will never fall back into the hands of the country's enemies." Following young Warmoth's advice to "elevate to the ballot box those men to whom you have given the cartridge box," the meeting endorsed the principle of civil and political equality for blacks, seeing nothing inconsistent in linking these radical goals with approval of Andrew Johnson.21 The incongruity soon became painfully clear. After his con­ ference with the President, Wells wrote the city comptroller and city treasurer to cease payment of Quincy's appointees in the municipal government. Although Banks countermanded this order, Wells asserted his new authority over the general when he arrived in early June. "My head is not off yet," wrote Quincy on June 5, "though I hold myself in readiness for instant decapita20Schurz

to Johnson, June 6, 1865, Johnson to Schurz (telegram), June 8, 1865, Sumner to Schurz, June 22, 1865, Schurz Papers, LC; Boutwell to Sumner, June 12, 1865, Harlan to Sumner, June 15, 19, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congres­ sional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), 108110; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 7. 21 New Orleans Times, May 18, 19, 1865; New Orleans Black Republican, May 20, 1865; Henry Clay Warmoth, Diary, May 24, 25, 30, 31, Aug. 5, 12, 1864, April 5, 6, 16, May 6, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC. Warmoth received encouragement for Negro suffrage in a conversation with Chief Jus­ tice Chase and from hearing Lincoln's last speech (Diary, March 14, April 12, 1865).

COUNTERREVOLUTION

tion." Banks no longer had any power to stop the governor, and Kennedy's new appointees on the police force carried the pro­ testing Terry and Dostie bodily into the street in front of their offices.22 After consolidating his control of New Orleans, Wells set out to extend his regime throughout the rest of the state. In several southern parishes loyal Unionists who were not allied with the governor were removed from positions as sheriff or tax collector and replaced with dependable conservatives. On June 10 Wells issued a proclamation to the citizens of the thirty-five parishes that had been administered by Confederate officials until the final surrender of the rebel army under General Kirby Smith eight days earlier. They were to be allowed to elect their own local officials without interference. Under General E.R.S. Canby, Banks' successor, the federal military commanders in the state aided Wells' policy, often asking Confederate officials to be re­ sponsible for law and order until Union troops could be stationed in their parish. President Johnson had ordered Canby on May 28 to give "all proper assistance" to Wells, and the apolitical gen­ eral wrote the governor that he would "divest myself as soon as possible of all questions of civil administration . . . and commit them to the care of the proper officers of the civil government." Thus the reorganization of local government in the parishes for­ merly within Confederate lines (approximately two-thirds of the state) took place without interference either from Wells or from the military.23 Conservatives held a mass rally of support for Governor Wells in Lafayette Square on the night of June 17. The chief executive was introduced on the platform by J.Q.A. Fellows, the Conserva22 Quincy to Banks, June 1, 1865, Banks Papers, LC; Quincy to his mother, June 5, 7, 8, 1865, Quincy Papers, MHS; New Orleans Times, June 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 1865. The police action was directed by the acting mayor, Glendy Burke, because Kennedy had remained in Washington to obtain a presidential pardon for his involvement with the Confederacy; New Orleans Daily Picayune, July 2, 1865. 23 Gen. Canby to Wells, June 19, 1865, Canby to Stanton, June 20, 1865, Wells to Canby, June 23, 1865, Canby to Schurz, Sept. 8, 1865, Senate Executive Documents, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 2 (Schurz, "Report on the Condition of the South"), 53-56; New Orleans Daily Picayune, June 9, 11, 18, 20, 1865; Max L. Heyman Jr., Prudent Soldier: A Biography of Major General E.R.S. Canby (Glendale, Calif., 1959), 271-273, 280-282; Jefferson Davis Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1941), 308-312.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

tive Unionist candidate for governor in 1864. The long lists of "vice-presidents" sponsoring the meeting included many citizens who had just returned from the Confederate army. Wells spoke of his visit with President Johnson, whom he characterized as "a Southern man and a Democrat," and as a "bulwark between the South and Northern abolitionism," according to the account of former Pennsylvania Congressman John Covode, who was present at the rally. The governor explained that he had been given authority over civil affairs and the support of the military to carry out Johnson's policy. He pledged himself to rise above party, even going so far as to declare (with what honesty the future was to judge) that he was not a candidate for reelection. Wells closed with a denunciation of proponents of Negro suffrage: "if, after taking this country from the red man, and holding it for more than a century, you have become so chaTitable as to give it back to the black man, I can only submit to the will of the people." To judge from the rousing ovation given the governor at this point, there was little inclination in the crowd to submit to what he called "the Radical Abolition party."24 After this speech the lines of battle were unequivocally drawn. "It was the first clear demonstration that the Union men had received that the Governor had betrayed them, and it completely discouraged them," observed Covode. "Seeing that the Rebels are the strongest party," Covode explained to Senator Wade, Wells "has put himself fully into their hands." As a result, "the returned rebels are now being registered rapidly and preparing to vote and of course will carry and control the state unless the Government supersedes him." Covode had been dispatched by the secretary of war to investigate conditions in Louisiana, and he reported emphatically to Stanton that "the enfranchisement of the colored man is no longer a matter of taste but of necessity."25 The Pennsylvanian found that many local Unionists were of the same view. A week before the governor's speech the wartime 24 New Orleans Times, June 18, 1865; Covode, testimony, March 3, 1866, House Reports, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 30 ("Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction"), pt. iv, 114 (hereafter cited as Covode, testimony); Lowrey, "Wells," 58-60. 25 Covode, testimony, 115; Covode to Wade, July 11, 1865, Wade Papers, LC; Stanton to Covode, May 25, 1865, Covode, "Report to Secretary of War Stanton" (undated manuscript), Covode Papers, LC.

CO UNTER RE VOLUTIOIV

radicals had joined with the articulate Negro leaders who backed the New Orleans Tribune to found an organization called the Friends of Universal Suffrage. The executive committee was composed of five representatives from each district, at least one of whom was to be Negro (the one-to-five ratio roughly approxi­ mated the proportion of the city's population that was black). In light of the governor's open opposition to Negro suffrage, W. R. Crane proposed on June 22 that the organization undertake "the registration of the citizens of color" for what might be termed a parallel election to be held simultaneously with the official bal­ loting for congressional seats in the fall. "This registration is not intended for Louisiana, but for the National Congress," Crane emphasized. The representative chosen in this parallel election "will not be admitted on the floor of Congress, but he will be received as a delegate of a territory." Under Lincoln's policy, Crane continued, "Louisiana was intended to become the pillar of reconstruction. The prediction has not been fulfilled," he de­ clared, "but if we act as proposed, she will become the true pioneer , . . in the work of reconstruction on the broad principle of the Declaration of Independence."26 Covode addressed the Friends of Universal Suffrage on June 29 and predicted to loud applause that "until the people of Louisiana adopt the policy advocated here tonight, no represent­ atives of your State will ever be admitted on the floor of Congress." When he returned to Washington, Covode promised, he would report to "the Government" that judging from the situation he had observed, "all loyal men ought to vote." In his room at the St. Charles Hotel the Pennsylvanian also talked with James G. Taliaferro, the old Unionist hero of the secession con­ vention, who warned him that Negro suffrage might prove a "two-edged sword" if planters controlled the vote of their labor­ ers. "The rebel party it is clear have hopes of governing again," the judge wrote to his daughter in disgust. "Their effrontery is astonishing. They have the press of the city under their control." 26 New Orleans Tribune, June 17, 18, 1865; Proceedings of the Conven­ tion of the Republican Party of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1865), 1-3 (here­ after cited as PCRPL). The latter is a pamphlet that documents the evolu­ tion of the Republican Party from two earlier organizations, the Friends of Universal Suffrage and the National Union Republican Club, during the period from June 10 to September 26, 1865.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

In another example of conservative effrontery, Governor Wells declared to Covode that the federal government should, in his judgment, provide compensation to Southern planters for the financial losses they had incurred as a result of emancipation.27 Another Northern visitor to New Orleans at this time, journalist Whitelaw Reid, talked with Durant about the prospects for the fall election. The radical leader predicted that "a legislature will be chosen which wouldn't hesitate at sending John Slidell and Judah P. Benjamin to the Senate again." Reid walked down Carondolet Street in the business district where Durant had his law office: "it was impossible to approach within a couple of squares of the Provost Marshal's office, so great was the throng of returning Rebel soldiers, applying for their paroles. It was a jolly, handshaking, noisy, chattering crowd," thought Reid, for "the men who had been fleeing before Sheridan, or surrendering under Lee, soon found it easy to forget how badly they had been beaten."28 Confederate General Pierre Beauregard received encouraging news from an old friend in New Orleans: "should Hugh Kennedy be continued as Mayor he might, if so disposed, place you at once in charge of the first drainage district," the salary for which would help repair the general's fortunes. Beauregard's friends were also working to secure his election to the presidency of the New Or­ leans and Jackson Railroad, a scheme that required Wells' sup­ port. "You will doubtless see the Amnesty proclamation and can judge of its stringency of which there is considerable show on the surface, but like many other characteristics of that people"—that is, the Yankees—"there is much Smoke and but little fire." To the returning private soldier without Beauregard's connections, the picture often looked somewhat bleaker. "It is hard to get back after four years of hardships and find niggroes with arms in hand doing guard duty in the city and to see a white man taken under 27

PCRPL, 3-4; Covode, testimony, 118; Taliaferro to his daughter, June 24, July 15, 1865, Taliaferro Family Letters, microfilm, LSU; Quincy to his mother, June 28, 1865, Quincy Papers, MHS. 28 Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 18651866 (New York, 1866), 237-240, 262. For a similar comment see Warmoth, Diary, May 14, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC: "The city is full of returned rebel soldiers and officers. . . . I suppose they expect to go into business and take part in governmental affairs as if they had always been loyal citizens."

COUNTERREVOLUTION

guard by one of those black scoundrels," noted Emile Delseries. "I hope the day will come when we will have the upper hand," he added, "and we will have no mercy for them. We will kill them like dogs."29 Such vehement sentiments by returning soldiers confirm the impressions of Northern travelers like Covode and Reid that the lives of white, and especially black, Unionists were not safe without the protection of federal bayonets. Reid was in New Orleans with the party of Chief Justice Chase, which was on the final leg of a two-month tour of the former Confederate states. While in the city, the party stayed at the home of planter-politi­ cian Thomas P. May, whom Chase had appointed assistant U.S. Treasurer for the state a year earlier. May took them to his sugar plantation upriver, secured invitations to visit the freedmen's schools, and introduced them to the leading Unionists of the city.30 Reid was very impressed with May and his friends, especially with Thomas J. Durant. "Mr. Durant is an intense radical," he observed, and "in Boston he would be an Abolitionist of the Abolitionists. He speaks at negro meetings, demands negro suf­ frage, unites with negroes in educational movements, champions negroes in the courts." Reid added that the "resident Rebels hate him with an intensity of hatred due only to one whom they regard as an apostate; but all are glad to avail themselves of his legal abilities, and he is daily compelled to reject business he has no time for." The Chase party attended a fund-raising affair given by the free men of color for the benefit of the freedmen's schools, and the young bachelor Reid was quite taken with the ladies of the Negro community. "There were elegantly dressed ladies, beautiful wilth a beauty beside which that of the North is wax­ work; with great, swimming, lustrous eyes, half-veiled behind long, pendant lashes, and arched with coal-black eyebrows." They had complexions "no darker than those of the Spanish senioritas one admires in Havana," Reid added: "many of them had been educated in Paris" and were so intelligent, cultivated, and socially graceful that "they might be presented to the Empress Eugenie" 29J. M. Reid to Beauregard, June 4, 1865, Beauregard Papers, DU; Delseries to Marguerite E. Williams, May 6, June 20, 1865, Williams Papers, UNC. 30 Reid, After the War, 228-278.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

at Louis Napoleon's court. "Yet every one of these was 'only a nigger'" in the eyes of New Orleans conservatives. A few days later Durant brought a group of Negro leaders to chat with Chief Justice Chase, and Reid had a similar reaction: "it was hard to realize that these quiet, well-bred gentlemen, scarcely one darker than Mr. Durant himself—many of them several shades whiter— were negroes, to be seen walking with whom on the streets of New Orleans was social disgrace."31 Following the example of the radicals, the wartime moderates of the Hahn camp formed their own political organization, the National Union Republican Club, and included Negroes in the leadership structure. Young Warmoth, who had been one of the first moderates to announce publicly that he favored the en­ franchisement of blacks, was elected president of the club on June 30. The group's first action was to plan a big celebration of the Fourth of July, at which it asked General Banks to speak. Warmoth, Dostie, and two leaders of the 1864 constitutional convention, Alfred Shaw and William H. Hire, drew up the ar­ rangements and roused editor William R. Fish out of bed to print their announcement in the True Delta the next morning.32 The Independence Day celebration was held at the U.S. Cus­ tomhouse. Banks wrote his wife that it was very difficult to collect his thoughts for this address, which is understandable, consider­ ing that he was adopting the radical position he had criticized for several years. Now that "we have crushed, we hope forever, a conspiracy and a rebellion," the general asked, "in whose hands shall political power be vested?" He was willing to allow the re­ turning Confederates "the opportunities to retrieve shattered fortunes, but their right to resume political power, to control the destinies of the nation, or to decide what questions have been solved by the war, I solemnly deny." The solution he proposed was "ENFRANCHISEMENT FOR ALL!" Banks' justification for this reform was essentially pragmatic: "the political advantages to be derived from the just and wise extension of this fundamental democratic principle . . . will ensure its success." He issued a stirring defense of the freedmen's trustworthiness as voters. "No class of Americans with whom I have been brought in contact si Ibid., 232-233, 243-245, 259-260. 32 Warmoth, Diary, June 24, 30, July 2, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

during the period of the revolution better understands the diffi­ culties of their situation or what is necessary for their welfare," the general asserted, "than the colored population of the South."33 Despite President Johnson's support for Governor Wells, Banks persisted in his loyalty to the chief executive. "We trust in him as the leader appointed by destiny . . . upon, whom has fallen the mantle of President Lincoln." His letters to his wife indicate that he continued for another month to believe that Johnson would reverse his policy. "Let us discard the thought," he concluded, "that upon trivial considerations, after a revolution like that just closed, we can safely yield to the spirit of resistance to the administration."34 The general basked in the assurances of his longtime sup­ porters that "my speech was the best I have ever made," and he wrote his wife of the rumors that he would be nominated for governor or appointed district attorney. "The meeting at the Custom House shattered the Durant faction," Banks predicted unrealistically. "Even his friends abandon his lead as too narrow and purposeless. He cannot last long." The general continued to believe that acceptance of the Hahn regime during the war "would have settled the questions that now vex the people," adding plaintively: "it now seems incomprehensible to me why it was prevented." Although still nominally in the army, Banks "argued a case before Judge Durell against the rebels being allowed to practice at the bar," and afterward the judge told him his legal argument was perfect. Before his release from the army and his subsequent return to Massachusetts, Banks also attended a few meetings of the moderate Republican club, although not the Friends of Universal Suffrage, which was dominated by the still-powerful Durant.35 The radicals, on the other hand, encouraged their erstwhile moderate opponents to cement their new-found agreement by active cooperation in building a unified political organization. 33 Nathaniel P. Banks, An Address Delivered at the Customhouse, New Orleans, on the Fourth of July, 1865 (New Orleans, 1865), 2, 6-7, 9-11, 1314. 34 Ibid., 6-7, 14-15; Nathaniel to Mary Banks, July 7, 16, Aug. 5, 1865, Banks Papers, LC. 35 Nathaniel to Mary Banks, July 7, 16, 22, Aug. 12, 1865, Banks Papers, LC; New Orleans Times, July 12, 1865.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Durant invited Warmoth, the presiding officer of the rival club, to join the Friends of Universal Suffrage, which had elected him corresponding secretary. Warmoth accepted membership but declined the proifered office, explaining modestly "that I did not feel qualified for the position." The young Missourian began at­ tending meetings of both groups regularly, and his liaison role smoothed the path toward eventual fusion. Another close as­ sociate of General Banks now welcomed in the radical camp was Thomas W. Conway, the wartime head of the contract labor system who was the first state commissioner of the new Freedmen's Bureau. "I am convinced that it is our duty to unite as firmly as we can and make as bold a front as possible," he wrote Benjamin F. Flanders. "I told Mr. Durant last night when with Mr. Chase that no effort of mine would be spared in the struggle to secure for the colored men of the country the right of suf­ frage."36 Conway was now in a position of great importance, for the Freedmen's Bureau was the only federal authority capable of preventing a total conservative takeover in the rural parishes. The army wished to play only a limited role in civil affairs, although when pressed by Conway, General Canby occasionally backed up the bureau in a dispute with local officials or Governor Wells. In the summer of 1865 Conway's first task was to expand the war­ time labor system throughout the state by appointing agents for the parishes that had been controlled by the Confederacy. He opened new regional offices in Opelousas, Alexandria, and Shreveport, and by September could report to General Oliver Otis Howard, the national director of the bureau, that "the state is very well occupied by my agents."37 Agent W. B. Stickney, a former superviser of education in the Corps d'Afrique, had one of the most difficult assignments be­ cause the eight parishes supervised by his Shreveport office had never been occupied by the Union army during the war. Before 36 Warmoth, Diary, July 1, 6, 7, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC; Conway to Flanders, June 13, 1865, NA, RG 366, 3STAL. 37 Conway to Howard, June 6, 9, 15, July 5, 23, Aug. 5, Sept. 23, 1865, Commissioner Howard, Letters Received, NA, RG 105, BRFAL. Howard A. White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970), is useful on the administrative history of this critical federal agency, although its topical organization makes the chronology of developments hard to follow, and it ignores many of the issues discussed here.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Stickney arrived on June 17, the federal commander in the area, General Francis Herron, had instructed freedmen to remain on plantations and employers to draw up labor contracts with their former slaves. The initial contracts were incredibly varied in their terms; some were little more than a continuation of slavery, with the planter agreeing to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, but no wages, for the freedmen. Herron cooperated with Stickney by appointing provost marshals to handle freedmen's affairs for each parish until bureau officers could be se­ lected through channels. During the first month these provost marshals negotiated the signing of 3,105 contracts (using bureau forms to assure uniformity), covering 27,830 laborers.38 Planters came daily to tell Stickney that their laborers were indolent and would not work without compulsion. They wanted the military to help keep blacks on plantations and make them work. Freedmen, on the other hand, felt that "if they remained upon the old place, their rights would be compromised." Their reluctance to sign contracts, as Stickney saw it, stemmed from the fact that "they had no confidence whatever in the word of their old masters," which he thought showed good sense. During the first two months the regional office fined several planters for mistreatment of their employees and arrested twenty-two freed­ men for breach of contract, stealing, or assault. Stickney reported sixty assaults by whites on freedmen, five of whom died as a result. "The negro will work well when he is well paid and kindly treated," the agent wrote Conway on August 26, but "the planters are disposed to pay the freedmen the least possible sum for their labor." The blacks compensated for their low wages, in turn, "by working as little as possible" (which reinforced the white stereo­ type of the lazy freedman). "To acknowledge the right of the negro to freedom, and to regard him as a free man entitled to the benefits of his labor and to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship," concluded Stickney, "is to throw aside the dogmas for which the South has been contending for the last thirty years." Emancipation, he declared, was "too unpalatable a truth for the aristocratic planter to comprehend without the interposition of the stern logic of the bayonet in the hands of a colored soldier."89 38 Stickney to Conway, July 2, 12, Aug. 26, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisiana), Letters Received, NA, RG 105, BRFAL. 39 Stickney to Conway, July 2, Aug. 1, 26, 1865, ibid.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Other bureau agents, such as Stickney's successor in the Shreveport office, tended to see things from the vantage point of the planter. "I find affairs here in a very unsettled state," wrote Daniel H. Reese to Conway on October 11, and he placed the primary responsibility on the freedmen. "In some instances they become very insolent and exasperate their employers beyond endurance." Reese suggested that discipline should be imposed by setting up a bureau "colony" on an abandoned plantation to "make examples of the very worst characters as would convince them that it were preferable to labor peacefully for wages." For army officers like Reese, stationed in small Southern towns with little social life aside from that afforded by conservative whites (unless they were so bold as to bridge the color gap), the penalty of ostracism was a powerful threat. Bureau agents who shared the racial assumptions of the returning Confederates were all the more likely to echo their complaints about the freedmen. "In remote localities the planters are very fearful of an insurrection among the freedmen," reported Reese a few weeks later, and he sympathized with this trepidation because blacks constituted "nearly the whole of the population." He had heard that "the negroes have a secret organization among them," although he admitted that "the nature and purposes of it are not known." The root of this particular problem, perhaps, was that "many of the freedmen possess firearms, to the terror and dismay of the planters."40 Just as the attitude of individual agents toward their work varied greatly, the reports flowing into Conway's office revealed much disparity in the views of employers. "Some planters seem in­ clined to treat the freedmen as though they were free, and to pay them fair wages," observed L. S. Butler shortly after his arrival in Governor Wells' home parish of Rapides. "Others talk and act as though they were determined to get their labor for nothing." Many employers complained of the labor shortage and demanded that the bureau force the freedmen back to work, Butler continued, but some, such as the governor's brother, Montfort Wells, "refuse to hire their former slaves at any price."41 40Reese to Conway, Oct. 11, 1865, Reese to D. G. Fenno, Oct. 31, 1865, ibid. 41 Butler to Conway, July 10, 1865, ibid.

COUNTERREVOLUTION The same pattern of variation characterized the school system the bureau inherited in June from the wartime Bureau of Edu­ cation for Freedmen. At the time of the transfer there were 226 teachers and 13,550 students, but all of them were located either in New Orleans (74 teachers and 4,280 pupils) or in the sugar parishes. Throughout this region a majority of the school-age black children were attending classes regularly, according to the detailed monthly reports of the superintendents. After the surrender Conway began to expand the school system into the Red River country and up the Mississippi, beginning with the parishes containing the largest black population. It was not until the spring of the next year that the bureau was able to set up schools in the hill parishes north of the Red River; the scat­ tered pattern of black settlement made it difficult to find a suit­ able central location, explained inspector B. F. Burnham. "Law­ less, hostile parties" had threatened the lives of teachers. Burn­ ham felt, however, that nine out of ten planters in this low-slaveholding area "concede the schools to be essential to their own interest." In other regions agents reported more widespread hos­ tility among whites, and because many of the schools were located on plantations, there was often friction with unsympathetic land­ owners. Vandalism in the classrooms, usually by young whites of the neighborhood, was a frequent complaint, and teachers were ordinarily ostracized from polite society.42 The most revealing description of the classroom scene in the Louisiana school system is that of visiting journalist Whitelaw Reid. Although he was impressed with the star pupils shown off by eager teachers, such as a young prodigy who had learned to spell and read proficiently in eight days, the picture he presented was closer to that of Tom Sawyer's classroom experiences—boys 42 John A. Watkins to Edwin M. Wheelock, May 24, 1865, Report of Schools (Board of Education for Freedmen), June 1865, Burnham to H. R. Pease, Sept. 30, 1865, John S. Chapman to Pease, Oct. 5, 31, Nov. 30, 1865, Η. M. Robert to Pease, Nov. 22, 1865, Louisiana, Misc. Letters Received, William Fiske to Wheelock, Feb. 5, 1865, Burnham to A. G. Studer, March 13, 1866, Louisiana, Supt. of Education, Agents Reports, all in NA, RG 105, BRFAL. Conway's testimony, Feb. 22, 1866, House Reports, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 30 (Joint Committee on Reconstruction), pt. iv, 80, emphasizes the white hostility toward the schools, which does appear to be the dominant theme of his agents' reports.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

trading "five alleys for a bright-colored glass one" and pinching each other while the teacher's back was turned—than to the model of decorum presented in official reports. One young school­ mistress "had taught at the North, and she saw no difference in the rapidity with which whites and blacks learned to spell and read. There were dull scholars and bright scholars everywhere." Reid's account is dotted with stereotypical descriptions of the physical appearance of Negro pupils ("the wooly head . . . a row of pickaninnies"), and he observed that their geography lessons and skill with long division left much to be desired. "Yet with all the allowances, it was a fair average school," he felt, and students did quite well, considering the poor quality of some of their mentors. Reid was especially critical of the native whites teaching in the school ("coarse, ill-dressed, rude-looking, slatternly"). He also noted that the black principal of one school had "an amus­ ingly consequential air" but praised his success in teaching what the man called "contrabans." Reid reserved his highest compli­ ment for a young quadroon woman whose volunteer work in the schools had produced an exemplary classroom, and for an old freedman attending school industriously in order to learn how to read: "to me there seemed nothing more touching or suggestive in all the sights of New Orleans."43 In addition to supervising labor contracts between employers and freedmen and taking over the Negro schools created by Gen­ eral Banks, the bureau took an active role in protecting blacks from discriminatory actions by the civil authorities of the new regime. The police jury of the town of Opelousas, the Confederate capital of the state during the war, passed a viciously anti-Negro ordinance that prohibited freedmen from entering the town with43 Reid, After the War, 246-256. Corroborating evidence for Reid's picture of the schools is found in the correspondence of teachers in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Thibodaux, where the American Missionary Association had teachers. See, for example, Eliza Conway to George Whipple, June 3, 1864, Frank H. Greene to Whipple, July 7, Aug. 12, Sept. 23, 1864, Feb. 16, 1865, Josiah Beardsley, "Testimony of a Teacher," Feb. 15, 1865, Myra B. Buxton to Whipple, June 30, 1865, AMAA. The best account of the freedmen's schools of Louisiana is C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 126-145, 185-189, but see also William F. Messner, "Black Education in Louisiana, 1863-1865," CWH, xxu (March 1976), 41-59.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

out permission from employers, from residing in the town if "not in the regular service of some white person," from holding public meetings of any kind (including worship services other than those conducted by "established ministers"), and from carrying firearms or selling "any articles of merchandise" without a license. General Canby as well as Conway expressed outrage at this revival of the antebellum black code. "Canby in an evil hour, looking for somebody to send after the Opelousians with a sharp stick, lighted upon me, and off I go tomorrow," wrote Colonel Quincy to his mother. The new bureau agent in St. Landry Parish reported to Conway that the Bostonian's latest political mission had been a success: "the famous Ordinance died by the hands of Colonel Quincy." Citing this case and the similar ordinance passed by the town of Franklin, Conway wrote Commissioner Howard that it was difiBcult for "the old slaveholders to under­ stand that their police juries, their courts, and their mayors . . . have no right to revive slave laws of any kind."44 Most confrontations between the bureau and local authorities involved specific cases of arbitrary arrest. Conway freed eleven black stevedores, for example, who had been arrested on va­ grancy charges though gainfully employed. A freedman named John Martin, whose employer, Tobias Gibson, had allowed him to come to New Orleans because of flooding on his Terrebonne Parish plantation, suddenly found himself jailed by the city police on charges of vagrancy and theft. When he heard the story, Conway quickly investigated and subsequently ordered Martin freed from the workhouse, ignoring Mayor Kennedy's ap­ peal for support to President Johnson. Another case involved a woman named Jane Drew, who raised vegetables on a plot of land allotted by her employer. The planter gave the woman per­ mission to borrow a cart and horse to take her produce to market, but the authorities of the suburb of Jefferson, where vendors were required to obtain licenses for their carts, arrested her for violat­ ing this regulation. The local provost marshal, William Dough44 The Opelousas ordinance of July 3, 1865, was published in PCRPL 1 6-7. J. B. Clark to Conway, Aug. 7, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisiana), Letters Received, and Conway to Howard, July 21, Aug. 12, 1865, Com­ missioner Howard, Letters Received, both in NA, RG 105, BRFAL; Quincy to his mother, July 19, 1865, Quincy Papers, MHS.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

erty, used armed guards to free Jane Drew, arousing vigorous protest from Governor Wells' newly established organ, the Southern Star. 45

The resumption of civil courts under Johnsons policy placed the legal fate of the freedmen in the hands of conservative white judges and juries. Planters found the idea of Negro testimony against whites outrageous, reported one of Stickney's agents, but freedmen often "conduct a case with uncommon shrewdness" despite the evident prejudice of the courts. Conway set up a special bureau court for legal cases involving freedmen in St. Martin's Parish, where judicial proceedings were reported to be particularly arbitrary. Governor Wells protested vigorously that "if any persons exercising judicial functions under the State have refused the testimony of freedmen, or made a distinction to their prejudice, under the law, the proper course was to have brought the matter to my notice and I should have applied the remedy." The governor's previous actions did not inspire confidence in this "remedy," nor did his bland assurance that the citizens of Louisi­ ana "recognize the freedman as under the protection of the law equally with the white man," or his declaration that planters "desire his elevation and improvement," persuade Conway to rescind his action.46 The most controversial aspect of the bureau's mission was the goal of land reform, which was authorized by Congress on March 3, 1865. Conway was taking steps in the summer of 1865 to in­ augurate such a program, even before receiving formal instruc­ tions from Commissioner Howard. Flanders, whose Treasury agency had controlled the abandoned and confiscated lands of the state during the last winter of the war, turned over more than $5 million worth of property to Conway, who in turn leased over sixty-two thousand acres of farm land to freedmen and used the 45 William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. 0. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968), 167-172; Conway to Kennedy, July 7, 10, 1865, Kennedy to Conway, July 8, 1865, Conway to Howard, July 21, Aug. 3, 1865, Commissioner Howard, Letters Received, and Wil­ liam Dougherty to D. G. Fenno, Oct. 23, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisi­ ana), Letters Received, both in NA, RG 105, BRFAL. 46 Thomas Callahan report, quoted in Stickney to Conway, Aug. 26, 1865, Wells to Conway, Sept. 27, 1865, and Conway to Wells, Sept. 30, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisiana), Letters Received, NA, RG 105, BRFAL.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

rents from houses in New Orleans leased to third parties to finance the bureau schools.47 Conway's move toward a land reform program was greatly strengthened, or so it seemed, when Commissioner Howard is­ sued his controversial Circular 13 on July 28, authorizing his as­ sistant commissioners to distribute bureau-controlled land to the freedmen in forty-acre plots. These were to be leased for three years at an annual rental of no more than 6 percent of the ap­ praised value of the land in 1860, with the provision that the renter might purchase his land within that period for the ap­ praised value. Although President Johnson was already restoring some of the land in question when granting amnesty to its orig­ inal owners, Howard specifically declared that "the pardon of the President will not be understood to extend to the surrender of abandoned or confiscated property."48 "I am taking steps to secure a division of the land in accordance with the law and your orders," Conway reported to Howard on August 18. In addition to protecting freedmen already settled on the land from hostile court action or the restoration of lands to pardoned planters, Conway collected information from his agents about still-abandoned plantations suitable for leasing. The bureau officer in Monroe, Louisiana, for example, volunteered that "there are three or four plantations that would make excellent places to cut up and rent to the intelligent and self-reliant freedmen." Soon the New Orleans Tribune was printing Conway's announcement that fitfy-eight thousand acres were available for redistribution on a rental basis, and freedmen s cooperatives representing ap­ proximately 150 families quickly submitted applications.49 The land reform program, so promisingly initiated, was almost immediately scuttled by President Johnson and his sympathizer on Howard's Washington staff, General James S. Fullerton. Dur47 Conway to Howard, July 25, Aug. 12, 1865, ibid.; White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana, 48-49, 56-57. Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 77-81, 84, presents new evidence on black landownership in 1865. 48McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 103-105. 49 Conway to Howard, Aug. 18, 1865, Commissioner Howard, Letters Received, and Frank Morey to Conway, Aug. 28, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisiana), Letters Received, both in NA, RG 105, BRFAL; New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 28, 1865 (and following); White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana, 56-57.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

ing Howard's vacation in August, Fullerton instructed bureau agents in the field that Circular 13 might not be sanctioned by the White House. When Howard returned to Washington in early September, President Johnson called him on the carpet and forced him to rescind his land reform order and cooperate in the return of all confiscated property to pardoned Confederates. At Johnsons insistence Commissioner Howard also acquiesced in the removal of bureau officials who, like Conway, demonstrated too great a commitment to protecting the freedmen's interests.50 Initially, Howard had encouraged Conway's vigorous approach to freedmen's affairs. "Don't let slavery get the upper hand in any particular whatever," he urged on July 17, and two weeks later he authorized Conway, after consultation with General Canby, to arrest "planters who threaten their employees with re-enslave­ ment." Conservative complaints mounted throughout the sum­ mer, however, and gradually began to make their influence felt. Conway's liberal policies tended to "demoralize the negroes," ac­ cording to Governor Wells, who cited Conway's public support for Negro suffrage as evidence that he "cannot perform the part of an impartial agent." Aware of conservative demands for Con­ way's removal, the radical Freedmen's Aid Association urged Commissioner Howard to retain "this officer who by his energy and zeal in favor of the freedmen has earned the good wishes of this board and of all friends of freedom." General Fullerton, on the other hand, thought that cooperation with the White House required Conway's sacrifice. "I fear Conway will bring us into trouble," he cautioned Howard: "he is working, it appears, against the President's policy in the restoration of Civil Govern­ ment in Louisiana."51 If participation in Republican politics constituted grounds for dismissal, then Conway was indeed treading on thin ice. In the summer of 1865 he served as a member of the executive com­ mittee of the Friends of Universal Suffrage, which was registering voters of both races for the election of delegates to a party con­ vention. (He subsequently ran as a representative of the city's 50

McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 107-133. Howard to Conway, July 17, Aug. 4, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisi­ ana), Letters Received, and W. R. Crane to Howard, Aug. 14, 1865 (ac­ companied by a petition), Commissioner Howard, Letters Received, both in NA, RG 105, BRFAL; McFeely, Yonfcee Stepfather, 172. 51

COUNTERREVOLUTION

second ward on the unity ticket that was elected without opposi­ tion on September 16. This coalition slate included representa­ tives of the moderate club headed by Warmoth as well as the more radical group.) The summer of 1865 was "the first time that whites had decided to sit down publicly and on a regular basis with blacks," recalled Jean-Charles Houzeau a few years later, and "those who so dared were immediately discredited and put on the 'black list' by white society."52 The black man most active in the Friends of Universal Suf­ frage at this time was Oscar J. Dunn, a literate Negro of Englishspeaking background who chaired the committee responsible for drafting the platform. "All discrimination on account of birth or origin is repugnant to the principles of our Government," de­ clared Dunn's committee, which then recommended universal suffrage on the grounds that "liberty is but a word as long as taxation, elections, and the whole political machinery are con­ fined in the hands of an inimical race." Also active were Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez, a physician educated at Dartmouth and in Paris, and his brother Jean Baptiste, an engineer and building contractor who published the New Orleans Tribune. The free men of color provided a large reservoir of educated and articulate political leaders in the city, and in the first flush of interracial enthusiasm they worked effectively with the white radicals who had committed themselves to bridging the color gap. Neither group had much experience with the rural freedmen whose polit­ ical mobilization was so critical for the formation of a viable Re­ publican Party. As a first step toward meeting this challenge, James H. Ingraham, the former army officer who had founded the 52 PCRPL, 8-12; Jean-Charles Houzeau, "Le Journal Noir, Aux EtatsUnis, de 1863 a 1870," Revue de Belgique, VII (June 1872), 98. Under an assumed name (Charles Dalloz) Houzeau was serving as an editor of the New Orleans Tribune, as a member of the board of directors of the Freedmen's Aid Association, and as a delegate from the fourth ward at the Friends of Universal Suffrage Convention in September. Charles Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana During Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1976), 25, asserts that there were two individuals editing the Tribune, the white Belgian astronomer Houzeau and a black man from Texas named Charles Dallas (presumably a misspelling of Houzeau's assumed name). Rudolphe L. Desdunes, Our People and Our History, trans. Sister Dorothea O. McCants (Baton Rouge, 1973), 133, identifies the Belgian astronomer as "Mr. Dalloz."

COUNTERREVOLUTION

state chapter of the National Equal Rights League a few months earlier, journeyed to Shreveport to head a voter registration drive in the Red River parishes.53 The delegates to the Convention of the Friends of Universal Suffrage were chosen in Louisiana's first interracial election on September 16. In New Orleans the coalition slate followed the recommendation of the committee on registration "that one-half of those delegates be white, and one-half colored," but the men elected from the rural parishes were apparently all white.5'1 Thomas J. Durant was elected president of the convention by acclamation and was escorted to the chair "amidst enthusiastic cheering." In his opening remarks the radical leader declared that "there is but one remedy which could heal the country's wounds: it is universal liberty and universal suffrage." Attacking the constitutional and moral legitimacy of the Wells regime, Durant emphasized that it was folly to hope that the governor would compromise on the question of enfranchising blacks. "The only thing left," he argued in familiar terms, "is to appeal to the decision of the United States Congress."55 This strategy had. unanimous support in the convention. The only matter of serious dispute on the first day, in fact, was a semantic squabble over the proposal of Bernard Soulie, a Negro commission merchant associated with the Warmoth faction, that the Friends of Universal Suffrage be renamed "the Republican Party of Louisiana." Robert Cromwell, a black physician from Wisconsin who had moved to New Orleans during the war, "ob­ jected in an emphatic manner" that the Republican Party in the 53 PCRPL, 4-5, 8-9. David C. Rankin, "The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans During Reconstruction," JSH, XL (Aug. 1974), 417-440, provides the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched collective biography of black political leaders during the early phase of reconstruction (1863-1865). Also useful for some details is Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana, 33, 39-41, although its primary focus is the decade following the congressional enfranchisement of blacks in 1867. 54 PCRPL, 9-13. Houzeau, "Le Journal Noir," 99-100, recalls that the dele­ gates "were equally divided between Caucasians and Africans," and a com­ parison of the membership list with the Appendix to Rankin, "Origins of Black Leadership," 436-440, indicates that this was true for the city. None of the rural members, however, all of whom were elected from sugar parishes, can be identified as Negro. 55 PCRPL, 14; Warmoth, Diary, Sept. 25, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

North was not unequivocally committed to the cause of universal suffrage, a view reiterated by white radical Alfred Jervis. Warmoth defended Soulie's proposal by referring to "several well known political men of the North who had emphatically declared themselves in favor of the very reform the Convention wishes now to carry." The issue was postponed until the second day of the convention, by which time a compromise had been reached.58 The most important advocate of compromise on this matter, ac­ cording to the Belgian Houzeau, was the presiding officer of the convention. "The name Friends of Universal Suffrage was so dear to the men engaged in this arduous cause that it required all the personal influence of Mr. Durant to obtain the change (I almost said the sacrifice)." In return for agreeing to accept the name proposed by the Warmoth group, the majority faction added a resolution recommending to the "Republican Party of the United States, and all friends of equal laws and equal rights, the pro­ priety of holding at an early day a National Convention, without distinction of race or color, to adopt a national platform on the basis of universal suffrage."57 The radical point of view was also clearly reflected in the "Address to the People of Louisiana" drafted by Benjamin F. Flanders. After defending the principle of political equality at some length, the document repudiated the legitimacy of the 1864 constitution, which had been "adopted by a fragment only of the people of the State," and it emphasized that "Louisiana has not yet been recognized as a State readmitted to the Union. Senators and representatives, setting up claims to seats in Congress, have not gained admittance." (Former Governor Michael Hahn was conspicuous by his absence from the convention, although many of his political associates were delegates.) Even the tenuous va­ lidity of the wartime constitution, continued the address, was undermined by Governor Wells, who observed some of its provi56 PCRPL, 15; New Orleans Tribune, Sept. 26, 1865. Biographical in­ formation on Soulie and Cromwell is from Rankin, "Origins of Black Leader­ ship," 437, 440, and Vincent, Black Legislators, 51. 57 Houzeau, "Le Journal Noir," 100; PCRPL, 15-17. Even with Durant's support for the compromise, some delegates (both black and white) fought the name change on the grounds that the national party was too moderate on the suffrage issue; their amendment lost by a relatively close margin of 41 to 34.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

sions but repudiated others at will. Thus, "legally speaking," no state government "now exists in Louisiana."58 At this point the impetuous Warmoth introduced a startling proposal: "that this Convention do now proceed to the formation of a constitution to be submitted to the people for their ratifica­ tion or rejection, at the next election, preparatory to the admis­ sion of Louisiana into the Union as a state." The only substan­ tive change he proposed was to revise the suffrage provision of the 1864 constitution to enfranchise blacks. "During the latter portion of his eloquent speech," according to the published pro­ ceedings, "Mr. Warmoth was interrupted every now and then by the most enthusiastic applause; and when he sat down, it was amidst stamping of feet, clapping of hands, and lusty cheers." When Warmoth's resolution was debated the next day, how­ ever, Rufus Waples launched a devastating attack on its logic. This convention had even less authority to adopt a constitution than its predecessor in 1864, he began, and all its members had just agreed that no legitimate government now existed in Louisi­ ana. "Even if we had the power it would be highly impolitic and almost suicidal to exercise it," Waples continued: "the present state of the public mind is not favorable to such action at the present time. The colored people have the right to vote, but they would be disturbed in the exercise of that right." Without the protection of federal troops, Louisiana Unionists of both races "will inevitably be subjected to taunts, persecutions, denials of free speech, and to all the embarrassments under which they labored at the beginning of the war." The violence of conserva­ tive whites would drive the black population "to the last resort— and who wants a war of races? None but a madman." The sup­ port of the federal government was essential, concluded Waples, who emphasized once again that "our hope is in Congress." Warmoth tried briefly to defend his proposal, assisted by Dr. Cromwell, but the convention firmly tabled the issue by referring it to the Central Executive Committee, which buried it.69 The major item of business before the convention was the nomination of a Republican candidate for "territorial delegate" from Louisiana. The nominee was to run for the symbolic office in a second "voluntary election" scheduled for November 4, 58 PCRPL, 18-20.

59 !bid., 21-29.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

1865, the same day as the official balloting for governor and con­ gressional seats ordered by Governor Wells. Durant's name was immediately proposed, but the radical leader refused to be con­ sidered on the grounds that "when the movement of universal suffrage was commenced" he had publicly "resolved to accept no office, honor, or emolument connected with it in order to be entirely untrammeled with personal interest in the matter." No such reluctance to enjoy the perquisites of office troubled Henry Clay Warmoth, who was nominated for the post by sixty-four of the seventy-five votes cast. "The wildest excitement and con­ fusion followed," he noted proudly in his diary, with "members of the convention and audience all rising and cheering."60 With the Republicans boycotting the official election, only three political groups put forward candidates for the fall cam­ paign. The Conservative Union Party included many members of the 1864 constitutional convention, but it should be emphasized that virtually all these delegates had voted consistently antiNegro in that body, despite the arm-twisting of General Banks.61 For the two congressional seats in the New Orleans area the party's nominees, appropriately, were Judge Edmund Abell (the proslavery orator of the 1864 convention) and A. P. Field (whose unseemly behavior in Willard's Hotel had embarrassed the Lou­ isiana claimants in February). The platform repudiated the doc­ trine of secession and the idea of repaying the Confederate debt, prompting more conservative politicians to characterize this con­ vention as "manifestly Republican," but it also attacked the. radi­ cals as the "great opponents" of the Conservative Union Party and endorsed Governor Wells for reelection.02 By far the most powerful group in the state's political arena was the National Democratic Party, which met in convention on October 2, 1865, and chose former governor Robert C. Wickliffe as its presiding officer. Largely a reincarnation of the dominant eoIbid., 20-21, 29-31; Warmoth, Diary, Sept. 26 (misdated), 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC. 61 See the individual voting records listed in Appendix C, and compare with the list of delegates to the Conservative Unionist nominating conven­ tion in the New Orleans Times, Oct. 10, 1865. 62 Ibid., Oct. 8, 10, 15, 1865; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Oct. 15, 1865. The convention also nominated staunch Unionist James G. Taliaferro for lieutenant governor without his knowledge: Taliaferro to his daughter, Nov. 1, 1865, Taliaferro Family Letters, microfilm, LSU.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

antebellum party, the group gave "unqualified adhesion to the National Democracy . . . the only agent by which Radicalism can be successfully met," adding that "we emphatically approve of the views of President Johnson with regard to the South." The platform included a petition that Congress grant compensation for slaveowners, and it openly appealed for white supremacy. "We hold this to be a Government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive political benefit of the white race," emphasized the Democrats, reiterating the constitutional view set forth in the Dred Scott decision "that people of African descent cannot be considered as citizens." Their convention also nominated Wells for reelection as governor, largely because he had the blessing of Andrew Johnson. Most of the remainder of its nominees for state and national office were ex-Confederates, how­ ever, such as Wells' running mate, Albert Voorhies, and Wickliffe, who was chosen to run for a congressional seat.63 The National Democratic Convention had no delegates from twenty-one rural parishes, mostly in the northern half of the state. There a group called the Conservative Democrats nominated the last Confederate governor of Louisiana, Henry Watkins Allen, to oppose Wells. Largely a protest movement among irreconcil­ able rebels, it did not have authorization from Allen, who was in exile in Mexico. His candidacy seems to have been the work primarily of the "Young Men's Allen Associations" organized by Confederate veterans.64 During the campaign conservative Louisianans learned with delight that President Johnson had ordered the removal of Freedmen's Bureau commissioner Conway, after frequent protests against bureau policy by Governor Wells. Conway's temporary successor was General James Fullerton, who immediately began the restoration of thousands of acres of land to recently pardoned Confederates, along with buildings used for freedmen's schools and orphanages (whose young charges were to be bound out to white employers as servants). Following Johnson's direct in63 New Orleans Times, Oct. 3, 4, 1865; Warmoth, Diary, Oct. 3, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC; Hahn to Sumner, Oct. 5, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU. The convention also heard a "warm eulogy of Jefferson Davis" and resolved to seek the Confederate president's release from prison. 64 Willie M. Caskey, Secession and Restoration of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938), 178.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

structions, Fullerton also suspended the collection of the special school tax so unpopular with conservative whites—and so essen­ tial to the continuation of the cherished public schools. The new commissioner also closed the bureau courts Conway had set up in a few recalcitrant parishes, and he instructed bureau agents to cooperate with the city police in enforcing a vigorous antivagrancy policy directed at unemployed freedmen.65 Following Fullerton's lead, bureau agents in rural parishes began to inform freedmen that the land reform program an­ nounced by Conway would not occur. Perhaps to assuage their own disquiet about the drift to the right, agents such as Daniel Reese attributed to the freedmen "the illusion that on the first of January next a general division of property will take place, by which they will come into a small farm, ready stocked with animals and implements." It is impossible to know whether the freedmen merely expected the division of abandoned property by rental, which is what the bureau had promised and Conway had begun to carry out, or, as agents like Reese declared, by gift, which no one had ever proposed. It was easier to joke about "their simple minds," however, than to admit that the bureau's promise of land for the freedmen had been betrayed.66 On the day before the fall elections the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, General Howard, arrived in New Orleans at the close of an inspection tour. Addressing a large crowd of Negroes and white Republicans, the commissioner tried to rationalize the con­ servative drift of bureau policy. Howard argued that special bureau courts were no longer necessary because black testimony was now allowed in the civil courts, and he expressed his belief that the restoration of lands to whites would promote racial harmony. Stressing the virtues of hard work and urging blacks to save their money in the proposed Freedmen's Savings Bank, the general urged: "let us put down our pins and hold on to what we have and be sure we have got it before we push ahead any fur65 McFeely,

Yankee Stepfather, 173-180; White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana, 23-24, 80, 82-83, 137. On the school tax issue, see Messner, "Black Education," 48-49. 66 Reese to D. G. Fenno, Oct. 31, 1865, and similar letters from Frank Morey to Fenno, Nov. 1, 1865, L. S. Butler to Fenno, Nov. 30, 1865, and J. H. Wisner to Fenno, Nov. 30, 1865, Asst. Commissioner (Louisiana), Letters Received, NA, RG 105, BRFAL.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

ther." The campaign struggle had reached its high point, with Republicans making meticulous plans for their "voluntary elec­ tion" and the two parties that had nominated Wells for reelec­ tion using brass bands and fireworks to drum up support for the remainder of their respective tickets ("Dixie" was the theme song of the National Democrats). On the platform with Howard were publisher Jean Baptiste Roudanez of the Tribune and the Re­ publican candidate for "territorial delegate," Henry Clay Warmoth. Yet the commissioner refused to comment on the political situation. "I have not touched on any political topic. I deprecate it now."67 Political activity had, after all, been a major reason for Conway's dismissal. The official election resulted in an overwhelming landslide for the National Democrats. Wells, who was the candidate of two conventions, won over 80 percent of the votes cast. The victory margin of the other candidates on the National Democratic ticket for state offices was almost identical, and the Democrats won al­ most every seat in the state legislature. With little competition and with fragmentary organization in many rural parishes, the turnout was abysmal even by Louisiana standards: less than 28,000 votes were cast in the entire state, as opposed to more than 50,000 in the presidential election of I860.68 In the parallel elec­ tion Warmoth received a plebiscitory vote of over 19,000 (only 3,000 less than Governor Wells received in the official balloting), and apparently another 2,500 white write-in votes in the official election.69 The governor immediately called the new legislature into ses­ sion. In short order the Democrats demonstrated that they intend­ ed to restore white control over the black population. A new va­ grancy law authorized local authorities to arrest any unemployed person (this designation was understood to apply only to 67 New Orleans Tribune, Nov. 6, 1865; New Orleans Times, Oct. 24, 25, Nov. 6, 7, 1865; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Nov. 4, 1865; White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana, 57-58. 68 Caskey, Secession and Restoration, 14, 178-179; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Nov. 7, 9, 10, 1865. 69 PCRPL, 49, provides the "official" returns as accepted by the Central Executive Committee of the Republican Party. These figures are confirmed by the nominal secretary of state, Stanislas Wrotnowski, to Henry Clay Warmoth, Nov. 16, 1865, and reiterated in Warmoth, Diary, Nov. 18, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC, which also provides the estimate of 2,500 white votes.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

Negroes) and either hire him out to a private employer or force him to labor on a public works project; in each case the duration of the sentence was to be one year. Other laws prohibited blacks from carrying firearms on plantations without the permission of the owner, allowed imprisonment for up to one month for tres­ passing, and set up an apprenticeship system for orphans and children of indigent families. The Louisiana "black codes" were not quite so harsh as those passed by other state legislatures in the fall of 1865, but they provided sufficient governmental sup­ port to enable the more powerful white population to have its will with the impoverished freedmen.70 Such actions reinforced the message sent north by frantic Southern Republicans, teachers in the freedmen's schools, and Northern travelers in the summer and fall of 1865: President Johnson had restored the antebellum elite to power and negated many of the social changes of the war years. One of the most influential travelers was Carl Sehurz, whom Johnson himself had dispatched on an inspection tour of the Southern states. "The proslavery element is gaining the upper hand everywhere," Sehurz wrote his wife from New Orleans, "and the policy of the government is such as to encourage this outcome." Like Whitelaw Reid a few months earlier, Sehurz was deeply impressed by the city's free men of color, and in conversations with local white Unionists he gathered information about the Confederate affilia­ tions of Governor Wells' appointees. When Sehurz returned to Washington in October, he told Secretary of War Stanton, "the President received me with civility, but with demonstrative cold­ ness." During the next month Sehurz drafted a comprehensive report on his investigations of Southern conditions, together with a lengthy appendix of supporting documents. "Sumner tells me the President is not at all favorable to me on account of my re­ port," Sehurz confided to his wife: 'Tie wanted to use me as the official support of his policy and he is now angry that the results of my journey are a hindrance to him."71 70 Caskey, Secession and Restoration, 187-191; Joe Gray Taylor, Louisi­ ana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 99-102. Governor Wells vetoed two anti-Negro bills that were even harsher than those adopted. 71 Sehurz to his wife, Sept. 2, 12, Nov. 24, Dec. 5, 1865, in Joseph Schafer (ed.), Intimate Letters of Carl Sehurz, 1841-1869 (Madison, Wis., 1928), 348-354; A. Delage and Robert W. Bennie to Sehurz, Sept. 3, 1865, Sehurz

COUNTERREVOLUTION

His evidence led Schurz to the conclusion that Johnson's policy had allowed the forces of counterrevolution to gain ascendancy in the midst of what he called a revolutionary situation. "The gen­ eral government of the republic has, by proclaiming the eman­ cipation of the slaves, commenced a great social revolution in the South, but has, as yet, not completed it," he argued. Although freed from legal bondage, the black population was not entirely free "in point of fact" because during "this critical period of transition the power which originated the revolution is expected to turn over its whole future development to another power"— the Confederate planter elite—"which from the beginning was hostile to it." The result of this sudden reversal of the revolution­ ary process, which Schurz found virtually unprecedented in his­ tory, was to leave "the class in whose favor it was made com­ pletely without power to protect itself." The most practical solution, in Schurz's judgment, was to strengthen the Freedmen's Bureau so that it might protect the black population from dis­ crimination and violence, and to enfranchise the Negroes of the former Confederate states so that they too might express their own self-interest. "I would entreat you," he asked the President, to whom the report was nominally addressed, "to take no irre­ traceable step toward relieving the States lately in rebellion from all national control, until such favorable changes are clearly and unmistakeably ascertained."72 That was precisely the strategy the Republican Congress decid­ ed to follow when it assembled at the beginning of December. As suggested by Wendell Phillips six months earlier, House clerk Edward McPherson did not call the names of claimants from the former Confederate states when reading the roll at the opening of the session. Thaddeus Stevens quickly moved the creation of a Joint Committee on Reconstruction to consider the claims of the Southern delegations, as previously agreed by the Republican caucus.73 Thus Congress finally initiated the process of oversight that Louisiana radicals had been requesting for almost two years. to Stanton, Oct. 17, 1865, Schurz to Sumner, Oct. 17, 1865, Schurz Papers, LC; Conway to Howard, Sept. 2, 1865, Commissioner Howard, Letters Received, NA, RG 105, BRFAL. 72 Carl Schurz, "Report on the Condition of the South," 38, 40, 42-44, 46. 73 James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 330331; McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 258-259.

COUNTERREVOLUTION

The only Southerner admitted to floor privileges, ironically, was Henry Clay Warmoth, who was accorded the same courtesies as delegates from Western territories. When Warmoth arrived in Washington, Michael Hahn and Alfred Shaw took him to the office of the House clerk, where McPherson was sitting with Thaddeus Stevens, by now an aging semi-invalid. "Old Thad says I am the only man who will be admitted from the Southern states," exulted Warmoth. Congressman John Bingham of Ohio confirmed Stevens' prediction, and Charles Sumner offered War­ moth the privilege of the Senate floor. Nothing infuriated con­ servative Louisianans more than to learn that while the official claimants cooled their heels in the galleries, this arrogant young Republican pretender was lolling on a sofa on the floor of the U.S. Senate.74 More than simply an example of Thaddeus Stevens' sardonic wit, Warmoth's red carpet treatment was an unmistakable sign that Congress intended to reverse the counterrevolutionary policy instituted by Andrew Johnson and place the South once again in the hands of those black and white Republicans who had stood courageously with the Union in the crucible of civil war. The ground lost during the preceding nine months could be regained only at a terrible cost, however, and only time would tell whether the moral capital of the national was sufficient to underwrite the expenses of the congressional program. 74 Warmoth, Diary, Nov. 30, Dec. 1, 2, 5, 13, 1865, Warmoth Papers, UNC; New Orleans Times, Jan. 22, 1866.

EPILOGUE

The Politics of Revolution

THE political distance between Louisiana's "territorial delegate," Henry Clay Warmoth, and the state's last antebellum senators, John Slidell and Judah P. Ben­ jamin, must be measured in light years. Warmoth's name was anathema to the Democrats who regained control of Louisiana politics in 1865 under the aegis of Governor Madison Wells; they had remained loyal to the proslavery ideals.of Slidell, Benjamin, and the planter elite who had carried the state out of the Union four years earlier. The goal of the Democrats in 1865 was to re­ store as much as possible of the old system of racial control, to recoup their economic losses due to emancipation and land con­ fiscation, and to eliminate the political influence of the wartime Unionists whose regime had been the model for Lincoln's ap­ proach to reconstruction. A systematic effort to turn back the clock of social change would not, of course, have been necessary had the war years not wrought a major transformation of the social order. The Louisiana story reveals in microcosm both the revolutionary dimensions of the Civil War and the extraordinary durability of the counterrevolutionary forces at work in the South. The great irony of this revolutionary civil war is that it was initiated by the conservative planter elite of the deep South for explicitly counterrevolutionary purposes. The ideology of the secessionist movement revolved around the notion of an immi­ nent "Black Republican" revolution, that is, a violent assault on Southern society by slave rebels, instigated by the abolitionist vanguard of the North and enjoying either the tacit acceptance or direct support of the Republican Party. Whether the leaders of the disunionist forces actually believed their assertions that revolution was imminent is not clear from the evidence. The im­ portant point is that they justified secession as a preventive meas­ ure to avoid such an occurrence, and that in the context of the proslavery sentiment that had long been a staple of Southern

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

politics, this argument had great appeal to the white populace whose votes and guns they needed. The war was a necessary con­ comitant of secession, designed to unite the upper and lower South in a slaveholding confederacy whose borders could then be sealed off from future abolitionist contagion of the sort so dramatically symbolized by John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. As an expression of the class interest of the planter elite, this preemptive counterrevolutionary strike made great sense, at least to those who accepted the dubious assumptions that a serious political threat to the institution of slavery actually existed and that a preventive war against the North could be won quickly and decisively.1 Secession was not inspired, at least in Louisiana, by fear of economic decline or internal political conflict. The plantation sys­ tem that dominated all but a handful of rural parishes was highly prosperous during the 1850s. A small elite controlled the lion's share of both land and slaves, and its holdings were located on the richest land with the best access to the essential river trans­ portation of the state. Despite dramatic evidence of slave dis­ content, which heightened fears of potential insurrection, the antebellum system of police control was extremely effective, both because nonslaveowning whites shared the racial values of the planters and because the economic elite dominated local and state government. In the early phases of the Jacksonian party system the Whigs had often controlled public office, but during the 1850s the Democrats achieved a position of unchallenged supremacy in Louisiana, as in most other Southern states. The leaders of both parties belonged to the planter elite, in any case, and depended heavily on the votes of black belt constituencies (although in the late 1850s the nativist Know-Nothing Party drew its strength primarily from the city of New Orleans). The 1 The concept of preemptive counterrevolution, and the suggestion that whichever side fires the first shot is unimportant to an understanding of the dynamics of a revolutionary experience, are drawn from Arno J. Mayer. Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870-1956: An Analytic Frame­ work (New York, 1971), 46-93, with some modifications. Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1970), and William L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in I860 (Princeton, N.J., 1974), demonstrate that fear of abolitionist support of slave insurrection was an important element in the counterrevolutionary ideology of 1861.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

Democrats were a broadly based majority party that provided an established institutional framework for the development of seces­ sionist sentiment. For many Democratic voters party loyalty ap­ parently legitimized the idea of disrupting the Union. The small Unionist fragment that supported the presidential candidacy of National Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in 1860 voted solidly against secession two months later, but the Constitutional Union­ ist constituency of John Bell, and those Democrats in low-slaveholding areas (who had little direct incentive to support the proslavery position), were more ambivalent. The tendency of these potentially Unionist voters to sit out the election helped throw the victory to the better organized and more aggressive politicos of the secession movement.2 The hegemony of the Democrats in the party system was a crit­ ical fact of political life that reconstruction policy makers would ignore at their peril. (Its importance was potentially greater for the other Southern states, where the Democrats commanded larger majorities than in Louisiana.) The areas of Louisiana con­ trolled by the Confederates for the duration of the war had given the Breckinridge and secessionist tickets overwhelming majorities, providing the rebel state government the political security of a one-party system.3 Barring some extraordinary development, the return of these northern parishes to the postwar electoral system would renew the Democrats' status as the majority party in Loui­ siana. The operative assumption of the conciliatory strategy pur­ sued by General Nathaniel P. Banks—in which President Lin­ coln acquiesced—was that the Republicans could win over a majority of the white voters of the state. The area controlled by the federal army during the war included most of those parishes where Bell and Douglas had won in 1860 and where the opposi­ tion to immediate secession had been strongest in 1861. Even in these parishes, however, Banks' conciliatory approach failed to lure many planters, judging from the Masonic Hall movement and the rural strength of the Conservative Union ticket in 1864. Chap, ι above. Eric McKitrick, "Party Politics and the Union and Confederate War Efforts," in William N. Chambers and W. Dean Burnham (eds.), The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York, 1967), 117-151, argues, however, that the absence of party competition was a handicap to the Confederacy. 2 See

3

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

In the fall of 1865 the revitalized Democratic Party won most of these old Whig parishes handily while sweeping to landslide vic­ tories in the rest of the state.4 At the electoral level it is impossible to say with any confidence what the antebellum political origins of the white Republicans, or "scalawags," actually were. The small number of parishes and urban districts involved in the wartime elections is a severe handicap to statistical analysis. Moreover, many of the individuals who had voted in those localities before the war left to live in the Confederacy during the war or to join the Union army; and in 1865 the Republicans boycotted the official elections and ad­ mitted blacks to the voluntary polls for territorial delegate. Thus the electorates to be compared were totally different groups of individuals.5 At the leadership level, however, the participants in the New Orleans Union Association of 1863, the delegates to the constitutional convention of 1864, and the white members of the Republican Party in 1865 were drawn, almost without exception, from the 1860 camp of Stephen A. Douglas.6 Paradoxically, the war initiated by the Confederates for the pur­ pose of perpetuating slavery made revolutionary change possible for the first time. Since much of the white population was drawn into the rebel armies, the level of plantation supervision was re­ duced to an ineffective level. Whenever Union armies entered a region, the number of runaways increased sharply, although a few slaves remained loyal to their owners until the end (and thus became cherished figures in the legend of the Lost Cause). Black fugitives made themselves useful to the reluctant emancipators of the Union army by supplying information about Confederate troop movements and working on federal fortifications. After the 4

See Chap, x above. Regression estimates of the sort used in Appendix A to explain ante­ bellum voting alignments cannot be made for the 1864 elections because of the small number of cases involved (16 rural parishes and 5 urban districts). Some of the rural parishes had only a handful of voters, moreover, or only those cast by Louisiana soldiers stationed there at the time. Preliminary correlation analysis revealed absolutely no relationship between the votes for either Michael Hahn or Benjamin Flanders (or the two combined) and support for antebellum candidates. See above, Chap, i, n. 69. This is consistent, of course, with the strong association between voting for the Douglas ticket in 1860 and voting for the cooperationist position in 1861, as reported in Appendix A. 5

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

occupying armies secured an area from Confederate military threat, they set up free labor systems by operating confiscated plantations for the government or compelling planters within Union lines to pay wages to their workers. In some cases land­ owners tried to resist the changes imposed by the army. If the military failed to enforce the new regulations in their area, freedmen sometimes used sit-down strikes or threats of violence to bargain for the payment of wages, better living conditions, and the right to operate garden plots of their own. By 1863 the fed­ eral government began to recruit freedmen for the Union army. In addition to fighting in open battle against their former masters, the black soldiers sometimes used their new status in unauthor­ ized ways to protect Negro civilians. In Louisiana, for example, freedmen in uniform led plantation laborers into nearby parishes to unite families separated by slavery or the dislocations of war. Violent attacks on whites were rare, but a new posture of inde­ pendence replaced the old patterns of deference for many of the freedmen.7 The separate culture nourished quietly in the slave quarters before the war now sustained an embryonic revolu­ tionary movement among the plantation masses. The army of occupation in Louisiana responded uncertainly to the impetus for emancipation. During the early phase of Gen­ eral Benjamin F. Butler's command, official policy was to return fugitive slaves to loyal owners and to compel blacks to work, either in the cane fields or on Union fortifications. Nevertheless, Butler's abolitionist subordinate, John W. Phelps, encouraged blacks to leave the plantations and began to drill a prospective Negro regiment on an unofficial basis in the summer of 1862. The controversy that ensued with General Butler prompted Phelps to resign from the service. After Phelps' departure, however, Butler himself moved to recruit both free men of color from New Orleans and plantation laborers from the sugar parishes, and he instituted a new set of labor regulations that required planters to pay wages to their hands.8 Butler's successor, Nathaniel P. Banks, retained the free labor regulations but sought to woo the political support of the planters 7

In addition to the discussion of these issues in Chap, iv above, which deals with occupied Louisiana, see the more general account by Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, Conn., 1938). 8 See Chap, π above.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

by lowering the wage scale for plantation laborers. General Banks also used his provost marshals in a more systematic way to force blacks to sign year-long contracts with employers and to prevent mobility within the plantation region, He continued the recruit­ ment of black regiments, but as compensation to more conserva­ tive sentiment he replaced all Negro officers with whites. In the fall of 1863 Banks set up Negro schools in New Orleans under military aegis, but staffed the classrooms as much as possible with native white teachers rather than antislavery Northerners, as had been done in other occupied areas. The general's compromises were welcomed by planters but had no effect on their hostility toward the Republican Party and all it stood for.9 The development of a free state political organization (the pre­ cursor of the state's Republican Party) took place without active involvement by General Butler, although of course he sanctioned the effort to bring Unionist political sentiment out into the open, holding elections at Lincoln's request in December 1862. The movement for a constitutional convention, led by Thomas J. Durant and the Union Association in 1863, owed even less to General Banks. Active military support for voter registration, ap­ pointment of unconditional Unionists to positions in local govern­ ment, and efforts by the provost marshals who administered the rural parishes to aid the expansion of the Union Association into the sugar country were recognized to be essential to the success of reconstruction. Every letter from President Lincoln to military personnel or civilians in Louisiana during 1862 and 1863 demon­ strated his desire to have the army cooperate fully with local Unionists such as Durant. In the summer of 1863 he explicitly ordered the military to aid the Union Association's voter registra­ tion drive. Not only did Banks allow his subordinate, General George F. Shepley (who was nominally in charge of this task in his capacity as military governor), to sit on his hands through­ out most of 1863, but he also allowed his own provost marshals to aid the planters of the Conservative Union movement by appoint­ ing them to police juries in the rural parishes and by helping employers enforce discipline among their laborers. Whether ac­ tive military support would have produced a substantial increase in unconditional Unionist sentiment among rural whites is un9

See Chaps, HI and iv above.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

clear, but surely the major responsibility for the slow course of re­ construction in Louisiana belongs with General Banks rather than with the Union Association.10 A major turning point in wartime reconstruction occurred in December 1863, when General Banks decided to seize control of the reorganization of civil government in Louisiana. The precise chronology of events in this critical month is important. The gen­ eral asked Lincoln to grant him full authority over reconstruction on December 6, before learning of the President's ten-percent proclamation—but after Durant had openly advocated the lim­ ited enfranchisement of blacks. Lincoln's proclamation was de­ livered to Congress, moreover, before he received Banks' request; nothing in the document necessitated the substitution of Banks' new plan for a continuation of the existing program of reorganiz­ ing civil government through a constitutional convention. The sole issue involved was Lincoln's impatience with the slow pace of voter registration, which Banks attributed to the incompetence of Shepley and Attorney General Durant. In none of his cor­ respondence with the President did Banks mention the con­ troversial issue of Negro suffrage; nor did Lincoln comment on the question when authorizing the general to take charge of re­ construction, even though representatives of the sugar planters had just told him in his White House office that Durant was al­ ready registering the free men of color. The President's instruc­ tions to Banks on December 24 did not preclude the adoption of Negro suffrage; in fact, they suggested that the general continue to work with the leaders of the Union Association. It was Banks' idea to throw down the gauntlet to the New Orleans radicals and offer the full weight of military influence and patronage to the moderate minority within the Union Association.11 General Banks' intervention produced a major schism in the ranks of the free state movement and forfeited the party unity Lincoln prized so dearly. The ideological debate between radi­ cals and moderates that dominated the gubernatorial campaign of 1864 provides detailed evidence of how the participants per­ ceived the revolutionary dimensions of the Civil War. Both groups of Louisiana Republicans were on the political firing line, so to speak, and viewed the struggle against the Confederacy 10 See

Chap, ν above.

11

See Chap, vi above.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

(and against its fellow travelers in the Conservative Union or­ ganization) as a war between revolution and counterrevolution. The moderates differed from the radicals most clearly in their perception of the best means to build a political organization that would allow supporters of "the revolution" to remain in power. Banks and his followers argued that a gradual program of social change could be pursued without alienating a majority of Louisiana whites, if advanced in a conciliatory tone and bal­ anced by military guarantees of social stability in the plantation parishes. If the free state movement tried to alter traditional so­ cial patterns and prejudices too fast, the moderates believed, it would forfeit the prospect of building a majority party. Their frustrations in trying to mobilize Unionist sentiment through voter registration made Durant and his allies less sanguine about the idea of a natural Republican majority in the white population. In their view the gap between right and left in a revolutionary situation is, by definition, unbridgeable. No matter how con­ ciliatory and gradualist the approach, the Republican goal of social change was antithetical to the interest of the planter class, and traditional racial prejudices allowed this economic elite to mobilize majority white sentiment behind the cause of counter­ revolution. Efforts to placate racist opinion and woo the rural planters only strengthened the forces of reaction, according to the radicals; the only solution to the dilemma was to give the vote to the black population, which could be counted on to provide overwhelming support for the Republican Party.12 With the help of General Banks the Hahn forces won an easy victory in the gubernatorial election of 1864 and an even greater sweep in the balloting for a constitutional convention, which most radicals boycotted in protest against military intervention. Hahn's appeal to race prejudice during the gubernatorial campaign and his refusal to compromise with the radicals, on the other hand, proved a distinct liability for Banks' program of moderate social change in the convention. The general found it difficult to per­ suade some of his own faction to support the incorporation of the freedmen's schools into the state educational system, and he had to use all his political muscle to win passage of a clause authorizing the legislature at some future date to extend the 12 See

Chap, VII above.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

suffrage to specially qualified Negroes. (Banks' efforts to secure this legislation imply that he was beginning to realize the prac­ tical necessity of obtaining Negro suffrage.) The convention was more sympathetic to the needs of the urban working class, ap­ proving a nine-hour day and setting a high minimum wage for laborers on public works projects. Contrary to previous interpre­ tations, however, the convention members were not themselves of working-class background. The lawyers, officeholders, and small businessmen of the Hahn camp who sat in the convention were simply trying to strengthen their appeal to the labor vote, which was so essential to Banks' hopes of building a white Republican majority. Their wartime voting strength in the city suggests that, at least in the short run, the moderates were successful in ob­ taining labor support, but it did not last into the postwar years and was restricted to urban areas. Despite the racial conser­ vatism displayed by Banks' supporters in the convention, most whites outside New Orleans remained implacably opposed to cooperation with the Republican Party.13 Cut off from influence with General Banks and the Hahn regime, the Louisiana radicals appealed to powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill to secure passage of a congressional reconstruc­ tion bill that would, in effect, postpone the reorganization of civil government (and recognition of the Louisiana scheme) until the end of the war. Better a continuation of frankly military rule than the shadow government of Michael Hahn, which depended on army support even in the day-to-day administration of civil af­ fairs in the rural parishes, not to mention the matter of labor contracts and freedmen's schools. Durant and his associates at­ tacked the Hahn regime's lack of popular support among whites; without Negro suffrage it had little chance of surviving free elec­ tions once Confederate areas were restored to the state after the war. They also criticized the treatment of blacks under General Banks' labor system and the appeal to race prejudice by the Hahn camp. Moreover, in establishing his moderate state govern­ ment, the radicals charged, Banks had violated the state constitu­ tion far more than their approach would have required. Banks had exercised constitutional authority that should have been reserved for Congress. The general and his allies complained that 13 See

Chap, vm above, and Appendices B and C.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

these were excessively legalistic criticisms and attributed them to Durant's lawyer mentality. Legalistic the charges were, to be sure, but they were politically safer than asking Congress to overthrow the Hahn regime because it did not enfranchise blacks. The Wade-Davis bill passed by Congress on July 2, 1864, did not, after all, include a provision for Negro suffrage. Had it become law, it would have accomplished the initial request of the Louisi­ ana radicals by ending the de facto recognition of the Hahn government by the military and the White House and by begin­ ning anew the process of civil reorganization." Lincoln's refusal to sign the Wade-Davis bill prolonged the life of the Hahn government, to the anger of congressional radi­ cals, and the debate over the Louisiana question resumed when the lame-duck session assembled in December 1864. The trium­ phantly reelected President used his full influence to secure con­ gressional recognition of his "model" state government, bringing General Banks to Washington to lobby in support of their policy. Lincoln was willing to compromise with congressional radicals like James Ashley by exchanging recognition of the Louisiana regime for adoption of Negro suffrage in other states, but Banks' arguments against the idea helped dissuade the President. Ulti­ mately, congressional opponents were able to block any form of recognition both in the House and Senate. Congress did not pass a reconstruction bill of any kind, however, which left the reor­ ganization of civil government in the hands of the President. In his last public address Lincoln suggested the desirability of en­ franchising at least some Negroes in Louisiana, and in additional states as loyal governments were organized under military au­ thority. His assassination two days later makes it impossible to know precisely what direction his proposed shift in policy might have taken.15 The President's differences with the more radical critics of his reconstruction policy, even more clearly than the dispute be­ tween moderates and radicals in the Louisiana free state move­ ment, lay in disagreement over the optimal means of achieving common ends. Both sides agreed that as a practical matter the first prerequisite for the reorganization of civil government was the creation of viable Republican parties in the postwar South. 14

See Chap, ix above.

15

See the Prologue and Chap. ix.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

Great heat was often generated by the arguments over means, of course, for virtually all important decisions on the pivotal issues of slavery and reconstruction were hammered out within the bosom of the Republican Party. The unity of the Republicans when it came to voting on these issues was quite extraordinary, and the Democratic minority in each house was even more highly disciplined in its opposition to the Republican program. The polarization between the two major parties on the central issues of the 1860s gives ample testimony to the ideological character of the Civil War party system.16 In periods of relative stability American political parties are usually noted for their ideological eclecticism, diversity of social composition, and weak organizational discipline. For this reason parties normally make little direct impact on governmental deci­ sion making in the American system, it is said, in contrast to the important policy-making role of European parties. Bipartisan coalitions, sectional divisions within the party organizations, and (during the past century) the development of the seniority sys­ tem all tend to undermine the role of parties as policy-making institutions.17 The great exception to this pattern, according to the standard view, is the phenomenon of "critical realignment." Periodically, the rise of new issues that cut across existing cleavages disrupts the party identification of significant numbers of voters. For a brief time politics is charged with ideological significance, issue orientation increases among the voters, and the new balance of power in the party system results in important changes in govern­ mental policy. "Critical realignment," says political scientist 16 This assessment of the degree of party unity in congressional voting rests on the comprehensive scale analyses of Allan G. Bogue, "Bloc and Party in the United States Senate: 1861-1863," CWH, xin (Sept. 1967), 221-241, and John L. McCarthy, "Reconstruction Legislation and Voting Alignments in the House of Representatives, 1863-1869" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1970). See also the perceptive discussion in David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867 (Baton Rouge, 1965). 17 For one of the clearest expositions of this interpretation, see Theodore J. Lowi, "Party, Policy, and Constitution in America," in Chambers and Burnham (eds.), American Party Systems, 238-276, and the classic state­ ment of Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and. Activity in the Modern State, 2d English ed. (New York, 1963), 63-71, 359-362.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

W. Dean Burnham, "may well be regarded as America's surrogate for revolution."18 The ideological intensity usually associated with periods of critical realignment was, in fact, institutionalized as a regular feature of the American party system from the mid-1850s to the mid-1870s.19 During that period, in contrast to the "normal" pat­ tern of American politics, the function of parties was to make policy—without conciliating the other side of the aisle—and to carry out decisions. When policy is hammered out entirely within the party that controls the government, and when two parties are as ideologically polarized as in this twenty-year phase, it makes all the difference in the world which party wins elections. Following the realignment of the 1850s the majority Democrats were more heavily pro-Southern than ever. Both James Buchanan, in his Kansas policy, and the Democratic Supreme Court, in its controversial Dred Scott decision, sought to expand federal pro­ tection of the rights of slaveholders and declared that the argu­ ments of the Republican Party on the issue were unconstitutional, if not treasonable. Even this was not enough to satisfy the South­ ern Rights wing, which split the party rather than surrender con­ trol to the unreliable Stephen A. Douglas. The election of a Re­ publican to the presidency in 1860 would hardly have been deemed grounds for secession if American political parties were as indistinguishable as Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. Further­ more, the compromise proposals offered by John J. Crittenden 18 Burnham, "Party Systems and the Political Process," in Chambers and Burnham (eds.), American Party Systems, 278-279, 288-289, 295-297. For further discussion of these issues, see Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1970). 19 This phase of the party system begins, quite clearly, with the realign­ ment of the 1850s, perhaps the most dramatic example of electoral trans­ formation in our history. The terminal date of the mid-1870s is chosen on the grounds that the "redemption" of the Southern states from Republican control—which we might term realignment at gunpoint—together with some drift toward the Democrats in a majority of Northern states following the depression of 1873, produced a critical alteration of the balance of power, shifting from a party system in which the Republican Party exercised hegem­ ony to an evenly balanced, competitive phase, which lasted until the mid1890s. I have discussed these issues in a paper presented to the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta, November 1976: "The Civil War Party System, 1854-1876."

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

during the secession crisis were rejected by the Republicans be­ cause they spelled the total surrender of the party's ideological position, and the Confederates were not interested anyway.20 The Democratic Party retained its ideological identity during the war years, although patriotic pressure to rally behind the government prompted a limited number of "War Democrats" to adopt a posture of bipartisan cooperation. Few Democrats were openly disloyal in their opposition to Republican war aims, yet the Democracy's demand for a restoration of "the Constitu­ tion as it is and the Union as it was" represented virtually total disagreement with the point of view of the Lincoln administra­ tion and the congressional majority. Overwhelmingly racist in outlook, Democrats all over the North tended to sympathize with Southern determination to preserve a subordinate labor system, if not slavery itself, in the postwar world. In 1864 the party nominated General George B. McClellan for the presidency on a platform advocating a negotiated peace with the South that might allow the South to return to the Union with slavery intact. The approach of the Democrats toward the reorganization of civil government was in line with their own self-interest. They wanted the "natural leaders" of the South, that is, the Democratic planter elite who had run antebellum politics, led the secession move­ ment, and governed the Confederacy, to control the state govern­ ments of the postwar South. The political group in Louisiana with which the Northern Democrats sympathized, as revealed by the Etheridge plot in the fall of 1863, was the Conservative Union movement emanating from the planters of the sugar parishes. Such a restoration policy would, if implemented, inevitably return the Democrats to their previous status as the majority party in the nation.21 When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency in 1865 he pursued a reconstruction policy antithetical to that of his prede­ cessor, if viewed in terms of its impact on the party system rather than in light of superficial constitutional similarities. Johnson's secret negotiations with the Northern leaders of his old party, the Ibid. See also Chap, ι above. See McCrary, "Civil War Party System," Chaps, n and ν above, and Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York, 1977). 20

21

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

Democrats, suggest where his ultimate intentions lay, but the first beneficiaries of his restoration policy were the Southern Democrats he placed in power in the former Confederate states during 1865. Nowhere was this more clear than in Louisiana, where the new President sided openly with the conservative planters whom Lincoln had opposed throughout the war and threw the moderate Republicans, quite literally in two cases, into the streets. Johnson's social policy also represented a conscious attempt to reverse many of the revolutionary changes of the war years by returning confiscated lands slated for agrarian reform under the new Freedmen s Bureau and using the agency's officers to help planters round up sufficient laborers to work their great estates. The head of the bureau in the state, Thomas W. Conway, had supervised the much-criticized labor system of General Banks during the war, winning Lincoln's praise while being denounced by the New Orleans Tribune. Conway refused to cooperate with Johnson's counterrevolutionary policy, making instead a vigorous effort to carry out the reform program authorized by the Re­ publican Congress. He too fell victim to Johnson's strategy of giving the planters what they wanted. The autumn elections in 1865, predictably, produced an overwhelming victory for the Democratic Party in Louisiana as in other former Confederate states. The contrast with the goals sought by President Lincoln could hardly be more striking.22 In terms of political survival, then, "Mr. Lincoln's model of reconstruction" proved a failure. Indeed, as long as President Lincoln stuck to the moderate strategy of party building em­ ployed by General Banks, it is difficult to see how it could have been otherwise. The general's assumption that a conciliatory approach would win the support of a majority of the white popu­ lation contradicted the elemental political arithmetic of Louisiana and defied what might be called the central rule of any civil war: the irreconcilability of insurgents and incumbents. The polariza­ tion between left and right that leads to the outbreak of a revolu­ tionary civil war is not "resolved" by the conclusion of armed struggle, except to the degree that the victors are able to force their ideological will upon the losers through the application of governmental power. The mobilization of popular support behind 22 See

Chap, χ above.

THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTION

the war effort of each side, to the contrary, intensifies the value conflicts between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries.23 The political dynamics of the American Civil War raised almost insurmountable obstacles in the path of the moderate recon­ struction policy with which Lincoln was associated. Without suggesting that the revolutionary strategy advocated by men like Wendell Phillips or Charles Sumner would have achieved all their hopes for racial justice and Republican rule in the postwar South, it does seem to be true that the radicals advocated a more practical approach than General Banks. During the last months of the war President Lincoln came to recognize the fragile quality of the Hahn regime's electoral support and became more com­ fortable with the prospect of Negro suffrage. As a pragmatic politician, if not as a man with a commitment to social justice for the freedmen, Lincoln could hardly have .escaped the conclusion that at the end of the war there was nowhere to go but to the left. 23 Harry Eckstein, "On the Etiology of Internal War," History and Theory, rv (110. 2, 1965), 122-123, emphasizes that all internal wars "tend to scar societies deeply and to prevent the formation of a [postwar] consensus in­ definitely," but this characteristic is particularly strong in revolutionary conflicts. The argument presented here conflicts with the thesis of Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 15-21, that "victory itself, at least for the victor, functions powerfully as a solvent for hatreds." As he sees the Civil War, all that most Northerners needed to sustain this conciliatory mood in 1865 were a few "symbolic requirements" or "ritual proofs" that the cause for which they fought had been vindicated. Southerners were also ready for conciliation, McKitrick continues: their "widespread sense of shock, amounting virtually to apathy" and their "dull awareness of defeat" suggest to him that the rebels "accepted the situation" and would submit to the North's ritual demands because of a "desire for speedy reunion." For evidence to the contrary, at least in terms of the Louisiana situation, see above, Chap. x.

APPENDIX A

Regression Analysis of Electoral Behavior in Antebellum Louisiana, 1840-1861 REGRESSION ESTIMATES OF STABILITY AND CHANGE IN PARTY PREFERENCE THE discussion of electoral align­ ments in antebellum Louisiana presented in Chapter ι is based on a statistical inference technique known as ecological regression analysis. The first step in the use of this procedure is to partition the potential electorate—adult white males in this case—into those who voted for each of the parties on the ballot in a particu­ lar year and those who sat out the election. By including this "party of the nonvoter" in the picture, it is possible to incorporate the rise and fall of voter turnout into the measurement of stability and change. These proportions of voters and nonvoters in a pair of elections then become the dependent and independent vari­ ables for a series of multivariate equations. The resulting regres­ sion coefficients are used to estimate the degree of change in each party's constituency in the second election. I have explained the application of the technique in Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, "Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861," Journal of Interdiscipli­ nary History, vm (Winter 1978), 429-457. The more important literature on the use of regression estimates to infer individual voting behavior from aggregate data includes: Leo A. Goodman, "Some Alternatives to Ecological Correlation," American Journal of Sociology, LXIV (May 1959), 610-625; W. Phillips Shively, "Ecological Inference: The Use of Aggregate Data to Study Individuals," American Political Science Review, LXIII (Dec. 1969), 1183-1196; Gudmund R. Iverson, "Estimation of Cell Entries in Contingency Tables When Only Margins Are Ob­ served" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1969); and Donald E.

APPENDIX A

Stokes, "Cross-Level Inference as a Game Against Nature," Mathematical Applications in Political Science, iv (1969), 62-83. J. Morgan Kousser, "Ecological Regression and the Analysis of Past Politics," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, iv (Autumn 1973), 237-262, is a clear explanation of the technique by a historian, and the same author s The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South (New Haven, Conn., 1974), provides the most extensive application of the method (in its bivariate version) to the study of nineteenth-century voting behavior. Kevin Sweeney, "Rum, Romanism, Representation, and Reform: Coalitional Politics in Massachusetts, 1847-1853," Civil War History, xxn (June 1976), 116-137, and Dale Baum, "The Political Realignment of the 1850's: Know-Nothingism and the Republican Majority in Mas­ sachusetts," Journal of American History, forthcoming, employ multivariate regression estimates. Computation of the potential electorate for the census years 1840, 1850, and 1860 is provided by the published returns for each county; for the intervening years the computations required interpolation by the growth rate conversion and compound in­ terest rate formulas (for estimating a curvilinear pattern of growth) in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Long Term Economic Growth, 1860-1965 (Washington, D.C., 1966), 115. Presidential and gubernatorial election returns for each county and for the municipal districts of New Orleans are taken from the Tribune Almanac for the appropriate year. Charles B. Dew, "The Long Lost Returns: The Candidates and Their Totals in Louisiana's Secession Election," Louisiana History, χ (Fall 1969), 353-369, provides the data for the 1861 convention balloting. All regres­ sion equations were weighted by the number of adult white males in each county or district so that heavily populated units would not be underrepresented in the analysis. For the weighting procedure, see Norman H. Nie, Dale H. Bent, and C. Hadlai Hull, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (New York, 1970), 79-81. The most striking characteristic of voter turnout in antebellum Louisiana was the disparity between urban and rural patterns. In the rural parishes the level of participation was respectably high, varying between 62 and 74 percent in presidential elections and between 58 and 71 percent in gubernatorial races (see

APPENDIX A

Table A-I). In the city of New Orleans the turnout was abysmal, apparently because of the high percentage of foreign-born and second-generation immigrants. The participation level there var­ ied between 19 and 32 percent for presidential elections and be­ tween 17 and 29 percent in gubernatorial balloting. The statewide average was relatively stable, but both urban and rural areas were more volatile when seen in isolation; often a rise in turnout in the rural parishes would cancel out the effects of a sharp drop in participation for New Orleans, as in 1855-1856. In such situations regression estimates provide the best possible measure of the impact of turnout differentials on the outcome of elections. TABLE A-I VOTER TURNOUT IN ANTEBELLUM LOUISIANA

Year

Rural Parishes

New Orleans

Statewide

(%)

{%)

{%)

1840 1844 1848 1852 1856 1860 (1861)

Presidential Elections 19 62 20 67 32 64 28 62 19 73 25 74 (20) (56)

40 45 47 46 48 52 (40)

1850 1852 1855 1859 (1861)

Gubernatorial Elections 29 67 28 58 24 71 17 66 (20) (56)

47 44 49 44 (40)

A closer look at the degree of realignment in the 1856 presi­ dential election (Table A-2) illustrates the type of findings pro­ vided by the regression technique. Fully 10 percent of the poten­ tial electorate switched parties, as compared with the 1852 race; this represents more than one-fifth of the votes cast for the two candidates, James Buchanan and Millard Fillmore. The Demo­ crat, Buchanan, with 6 percent, benefited more from this shift in party preference than the American or Know-Nothing standard bearer, who received only 4 percent. The proportion of the adult

APPENDIX A

white males entering or leaving the active electorate (20 percent) was double the percentage switching parties, however, with the following breakdown: 6 percent were 1852 Democrats boycotting the 1856 race, double the number of former Whigs who stayed at home (3 percent), while the Know-Nothing camp also suc­ ceeded in getting more of the 1852 nonvoters to the polls (6 per­ cent) than did the Democrats (5 percent). The net effects of all this volatility were minimal, however, as the margin of victory was approximately 2 percent for the Democrats in both 1852 and 1856. TABLE A-2 ELECTORAL REALIGNMENT IN LOUISIANA IN THE 1856 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (N = 52)

1852 Presidential Electorate 1856 Presidential Electorate

Democrats (%)

Whigs W

Nonvoters (%)

(Marginals) (%)

5

(25)

Democrats

14

6

Americans

4

13

6

(23)

Nonvoters

6

3

44

(53)

(54)

(100)

(Marginals)(%)

(24)

(22)

% Switching Parties: 10% Gross Change in Turnout: 20% (Gross Change in Turnout = the % of the electorate sitting out the first election but voting in the second, plus the % casting ballots in the first elec­ tion but failing to vote in the second.) NOTE: These figures represent the percentage of adult white males, not the percentage of votes cast. The marginals are the actual election returns (com­ puted as a percentage of the potential electorate). Thus, if the percentage voting for the Democratic candidate, Franklin Pierce, in 1852 ( 24%) is added to the percentage casting ballots for Whig Winfield Scott (22%), the sum equals the turnout for the 1852 election (46%). In all my calculations I carried the estimates to one decimal place, but in order to avoid the im­ pression that these regression estimates are actual numbers that can be measured with precision, I prefer to round off all figures in the tables to the nearest whole percentage. This rounding-off process creates what appear at first glance to be errors of addition, both here and in other tables.

Regression analysis supplies the sort of rich detail about each election that is the meat and drink of historians, but as a result it is easy to lose sight of the most important trends. Table A-3 sum-

APPENDIX A

marizes the central pattern of stability and change in the electoral alignments of antebellum Louisiana. Although these estimates demonstrate greater volatility in the 1840s than suggested by previous accounts, clearly the 1856 presidential election witnessed the peak of total electoral change (including turnout differen­ tials) in the antebellum party system. The 1860 presidential elec­ tion experienced an additional shift in party preference (11 per­ cent), although less change in the nonvoter column. In the 1861 convention balloting previous party identification played a stronger role than in the November presidential election in deTABLE A-3 PATTERN OF ELECTORAL STABILITY AND CHANGE, 1840-1860 (N = 52)

Election Pair

Voters Switching Parties (%)

Gross Change in Turnout (%)

Total Instability W

1840-1844 1844-1848 1848-1852 1852-1856 1856-1860 (1860-1861)

Presidential 7 3 1 10 11 (8) (7)

5 16 14 20 6 (13)

12 19 15 30 17 (14) (20)

1850-1852 1852-1855 1855-1859 (1859-1861)

Gubernatorial 4 9 7 (13)

20 17 6 (14)

24 26 13 (27)

NOTE: The American or Know-Nothing Party is treated as the Whig Party under another name. In the 1860 presidential election the Douglas Demo­ crats are considered a separate party; if 1856 Democrats voting for Douglas are regarded as repeating their old party preference, then the percentage switching parties in 1860 would be merely 8¾ rather than 11%. Voting for immediate secession in 1861 is treated as repeating a preference for South­ ern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, while casting a cooperationist ballot is seen as repeating a vote for either the Constitutional Union candidate, John Bell, or the National Democrat, Douglas. The percentage favoring secession or cooperation is an average of the vote in each parish or municipal district for both senate and house delegates. The figures in each column are sum­ maries of data derived from contingency tables like that illustrated in Table A-2.

APPENDIX A

termining voter choice. (The greater magnitude of realignment between the 1859 gubernatorial election and the secession vote of 1861 reflects the fact that most future Douglas supporters were still to be found in the Democratic camp in 1859.) The regression estimates for the complex electoral shifts of 1860-1861, which are interpreted in Chapter ι above, are presented in Tables A-4 and A-5.

TABLE A-4 ELECTORAL REALIGNMENT IN LOUISIANA IN THE 1860 PBESIDENTIAL ELECTION (N = 52) 1856 Presidential Electorate Candidates in 1860

Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) Bell (Constitutional Union) Douglas (National Democrat) Nonvoters (Marginals) (%) % Switching Parties: 11%

Democrats (%)

Americans Nonvoters (Marginals) (%) (%) (¾)

19

5

0

(23)

2

18

1

(21)

3

1

4

(8)

3

—2

47

(48)

(23)

(52)

(100)

(26)

Gross Change in Turnout: 6%

NOTE: The estimate for the percentage of the potential electorate voting for the American candidate, Millard Fillmore, in 1856 but sitting out the bal­ loting in 1860 is a negative number (-2¾). This can be regarded as a zero for purposes of interpretation. Some scholars prefer to set negative estimates artificially at zero and norm the percentages in other cells accordingly, but I prefer to leave them as they are. If negative estimates are quite large in a given case, in fact, then it appears likely that the necessary assumptions of the estimation procedure have been violated. See Shively, "Ecological In­ ference," 1190-1191, and Kousser, "Ecological Regression," 250-252.

APPENDIX A

TABLE A-5 ELECTORAL REALIGNMENT IN LOUISIANA IN 1861 (N = 52) 1861 Secession Convention Election Louisiana Electorate

Secessionist Candidates

(Marginals)

Cooperationist Candidates

Nonvoters

(%)

1856 Presidential Election* Democrats (%)

12

5

9

(26)

Americans (%) Nonvoters (%)

8 2

12 2

3 48

(23) (52)

(18)

(61)

(100)

(Marginals) (%)

(21)

1859 Gubernatorial

Electionb

Democrats (%)

14

8

5

(27)

Opposition (%)

5

8

4

(17)

Nonvoters (%)

2

3

51

(56)

(21)

(18)

(61)

(100)

(Marginals) (%) 1860 Presidential

Election0

Breckinridge supporters (%) Bell supporters (%) Douglas supporters (%) Nonvoters (Marginals) (%) a

14

1

8

(23)

6

14

2

(21)

0

5

3

(8)

2

-2

48

(48)

(18)

(61)

(100)

(21)

% Switching Parties: 13% Switching Parties: 13% c % Switching Parties: 7%

b%

Gross Change in Turnout: 16% Gross Change in Turnout: 14% Gross Change in Turnout: 13%

THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR, 1860-1861

The most satisfactory method of examining the social background of voting behavior using aggregate data is multiple regression analysis, because it enables us to consider the effect of an inde­ pendent variable on a dependent variable while simultaneously controlling for the effects of other independent variables in the equation. The type of regression estimates employed in the first

APPENDIX A

part of this appendix cannot be used here because the demo­ graphic, ethnocultural, and economic variables reported in state and federal censuses are not always measured in the same units. To compare the effects of the proportion of acreage devoted to cotton cultivation with that of the percentage of church accom­ modations held by Baptists, for example, involves different measurement units, whereas in ecological regression estimates we deal entirely with variables measured in terms of the proportion of adult white males. In multiple regression analysis standardized regression coefficients, or "beta weights," provide for each of the independent variables a measure of their relative influence on the distribution of the vote for each party, which minimizes this problem as much as possible. Beta weights tell us how much the dependent variable changes in response to a standardized change in one of the independent variables when the others are con­ trolled. The selection of independent variables for each equation can present difficulties. One of the most prominent pitfalls in multiple regression analysis is "multicollinearity," which stems from the inclusion in a single equation of two or more inde­ pendent variables that are themselves highly correlated. The more strongly related two independent variables are, the more difficult it becomes to separate the relative influence of each. Among econometricians a conventional rule of thumb is to elimi­ nate from consideration any variable correlated with another at .80 or higher. (See Donald E. Farrar and Bobert B. Glauber, "Multicollinearity in Begression Analysis: The Problem Bevisited," Review of Economics and Statistics, XLIX [Feb. 1967], 92-107, esp. 98.) I prefer a more cautious cutoff point of .70; thus the percentage of acreage devoted to sugar cane cultivation was excluded from most equations because it was correlated at above .70 with both % Catholic (positively) and % Cotton (negatively). Greater care in handling the problem of multicollinearity might eliminate much of the existing confusion over whether ethno­ cultural or economic variables were more important influences over nineteenth-century voting behavior. For general discussions of multiple regression analysis, see Hubert M. Blalock, Social Statistics, 2d ed. (New York, 1972), 429-433, 450-453, and Fred N. Kerlinger, Foundations of Behavioral Research, 2d ed. (New York, 1973), 611-631. I have used the SPSS step-wise regression procedure, which enters variables into the equation on the basis of their partial correlation coefficients. See Nie, Bent, and Hull,

APPENDIX A

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 180-181. I set an arbi­ trary cutoff point of 3 percent change in the cumulative R2 for the inclusion of additional variables in the equations presented in the following tables (though not at the exploratory stage). Table A-6 gives the definitions for the variables used in these equations, and those for the excluded variables are found in Table A-7. All TABLE A-6 VAMABLES USED IN MULTIPLE REGRESSION EQUATIONS

Names % Baptist % Catholic % Episcopal Religiosity % Corn % Cotton % Rice Value of property per capita Gini index" % Foreign-born Slaveholders/ voters Slave growth rate % Twenties

Definitions Accommodations of Baptist churches in 1860 divided by the total church accommodations Accommodations of Roman Catholic churches in 1860 divided by the total church accommodations Accommodations of Episcopal churches in 1860 di­ vided by the total church accommodations Total church accommodations in 1860 divided by the total population Number of acres of land in corn cultivation in 1857 divided by the number of improved acres Number of acres of land in cotton cultivation in 1857 divided by the number of improved acres Number of acres of land in rice cultivation in 1857 divided by the number of improved acres Total value of property in 1857 divided by the white population Gini index of unequal land distribution in 1860 Number of white, foreign-born males divided by the number of white males in 1860 Number of slaveholders in 1860 divided by the num­ ber of adult white males Average annual growth rate (in percentage terms) of the slave population between 1850 and 1860 Number of white males aged 20 to 29 in 1860 di­ vided by the total number of adult white males

" For the computation of the Gini index see Charles M. Dollar and Richard Jensen, Historians Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (New York, 1971), 122-125. Its use is possible here because the 1860 census tabulates the number of farms within different size brackets, but one must assume (arbitrarily) that the middle value for any given category constituted the average; for example, the mean landholding in the 10- to 20-acre category is assumed to be 15 acres. For an application, see Bruce M. Russett, "Inequality and Instability: The Relation of Land Tenure to Politics," World Politics, xvi (April 1964), 442-454.

APPENDIX A

data for the years 1850 and 1860 are from the published reports of the U.S. Census; for 1857, from the Louisiana State Census recorded in the Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts (Baton Rouge, 1859), 168-169. The metropolitan districts of New Orleans are not among the cases treated because relevant data is lacking. TABLE A-7 VARIABLES SET ASIDE TO AVOID MULTICOLLINEABITY

Names

% Methodist % Cane Slaveholders/ families Small slaveholders Large slaveholders % Slave % Free blacks % Small farms % Large farms

Definitions

Accommodations of Methodist churches in 1860 di­ vided by the total church accommodations Number of acres in sugar cane in 1857 divided by the total number of improved acres Number of slaveholders in 1860 divided by the num­ ber of white families Number of slaveholders owning less than 20 slaves in 1860 divided by the number of adult white males Number of slaveholders owning more than 20 slaves in 1860 divided by the number of adult white males Number of slaves in 1860 divided by the total popula­ tion Number of free blacks in 1860 divided by the total population Number of farms under 20 acres divided by the total number of farms in 1860 Number of farms of 500 acres or more divided by the total number of farms in 1860

The results presented in Tables A-8 and A-9 are interpreted in the text of Chapter ι above, but certain technical matters should be mentioned. Close attention to the cumulative R2 for each equation is important because some explain a great deal more of the variance in the vote than others and thus should be taken more seriously. Both of the Breckinridge equations account for over 40 percent of the variance, for example, and that for the "party of the nonvoter" in 1860 explains 57 percent of the vari­ ance. I included a second equation for the Breckinridge con­ stituency because only one economic variable had a high enough partial correlation to merit inclusion in the first, yet when con­ sidered separately from ethnocultural variables, economic factors were able to account for 41 percent of the variance and added substantively to the understanding of the sources of Breckin-

APPENDIX A

ridge's support. The magnitude of the beta weights does not vary greatly enough between ethnocultural and economic variables to demonstrate that one type of factor was clearly more influential than the other in shaping party preference. Nor when a separate equation was run for purely ethnocultural variables did it have a larger cumulative R2 than equation (2); it was in fact .40. In the equation for the nonvoter category there is again a slight tend­ ency for religious factors to appear more frequently and to have higher beta weights, but the differences are not substantial. The Bell equation has a cumulative R2 of only .32, but one striking fact merits special emphasis. Catholic strength, which had once been highly correlated with the Whig vote, was inversely related to the support for the Constitutional Union ticket (and % Catholic TABLE A-8 SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF PARTY PREFERENCE IN THE 1860 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Dependent Variable % Breckinridge (1)

% Breckinridge (2)

% Bell

% Douglas

% Nonvoters

Independent Variable % Catholic % Foreign-born Slaveholders/voters % Baptist % Episcopalian % Cotton Slave growth rate Value of property per capita Slaveholders/ voters % Catholic % Rice Slave growth rate Slaveholders/voters % Cotton Gini index % Twenties % Cotton % Catholic % Rice % Episcopal % Baptist Slaveholders/voters % Twenties

Beta Cumu­ Simple r lative R 2 Weight -.51 -.51 .27 .49 .05 .47 .44

.26 .37 .41 AS .48 .22 .30

-.19 -.17 .32 .42 .19 .43 .24

-.04 .27 -.35 -.29 .05 .21 .32 .41 -.28 -.36 .58 .33 -.17 -.45 -.22 -.19

.35 .41 .12 .19 .26 .30 .32 .17 .22 .25 .34 .42 .45 .49 .53 .57

-.40 .29 -.70 -.42 -.42 .30 -.27 .32 -.19 -.18 .38 .29 -.26 -.43 -.25 .22

APPENDIX A TABLE A-9 SOCIAL BACKGROUND OF THE SECESSION CONVENTION ELECTION, 1861 Dependent Variable

Independent Variable

% Secession (1)

% Catholic % Baptist % Foreign-born % Episcopal

% Secession (2)

% Cotton Slaveholders/voters Slave growth rate

% Cooperation

Value of property per capita Gini index % Baptist % Cotton

XNonvoters (1)

% Nonvoters (2)

Slave growth rate % Corn Value of property per capita S laveholders/voters % Catholic % Foreign-born

Beta Cumu­ Simple r lative R 2 Weight

-.39 .01 -.27 .22

.15 .22 .29 .32

-.51 -.43 -.33 .16

.44 .42 .37

.19 .27 .30

.26 .27 .20

-.30 .25 .24 -.24

.09 .11 .14 .18

-.01 .16 .31 -.26

-.27 .14

.07 .09

-.25 .26

.08 -.19

.15 .18

.39 -.23

.39 .29

.15 .17

.32 .17

has a much higher beta weight than any other variable in the equation). This seems to be closely tied to the prominence of this variable in depressing voter turnout (see the nonvoter equa­ tion). The best I could do was to explain 25 percent of the vari­ ance in the Douglas vote, perhaps because the Illinois senator received significant support only in a small number of parishes. Although the Gini index is significantly correlated with Douglas support, this seems to result from his good performance in three sugar parishes that had unequal land distribution (according to rumor, their leaders belonged to the faction headed by Douglasbacker Rerre Soule). Two equations are presented for the secessionist constituency, one for ethnocultural variables and one for economic or demo­ graphic variables. Each accounts for just under one-third of the variance, suggesting once again that each type of factor works in tandem with the other. I was able to explain only 18 percent of

APPENDIX A

the variance in the cooperationist vote, and the interpretation offered in Chapter ι should be viewed as extremely tentative. The same is true of the explanation for nonvoting in 1861. Note also that when ethnocultural and economic variables were run in separate equations, the cumulative R2 was equally insignificant for both. By comparing the nonvoter constituency in 1861 with that of the presidential election two months earlier, however, it is interesting to see that variables strongly related in 1860 were only weakly correlated a year later, or not associated at all. I have searched hard for more clear-cut patterns of social in­ fluence, whether of the ethnocultural, economic interest, or class variety. Considering the large number of variables employed and the number of statistical techniques used—Pearson product-mo­ ment correlation, partial correlation, and multiple regression anal­ ysis—it seems unlikely that one could improve on the explanation offered here. Perhaps this is not surprising; as we have seen, planters dominated both parties in antebellum Louisiana, and by 1860 the Democrats had eaten heavily into the erstwhile Whig constituencies of the Catholic sugar parishes, paving the way for the secessionist victory.

APPENDIX B

The Occupational Background of Delegates to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1864

APPENDIX B TABLE B-I KNOWN OCCUPATIONS OF CONVENTION DELEGATES

Occupation

Lawyers Doctors Journalists Other professionals

No. Delegates

% of Total Members (96)

13 2 3 4

13.5 2.1 3.1 4.2

~22*

22.9

4 8 4 3 6

4.2 8.3 4.2 3.1 6.3

~25

26.0

Planters' sons Farmers

2 1

2.1 1.0

Total agricultural occupations

3

3.1

Artisans Laborers Nightwatchmen, poundkeepers

5 1 4

5.2 1.0 4.2

Total working-class occupations

10

10.4

5 3 3 5 5

5.2 3.1 3.1 5.2 5.2

Total professional occupations Commission merchants Provision merchants Lumber, contracting, real estate Clerks Other businessmen Total business occupations

Sheriffs Clerks of court Justices of the peace Treasury officials City and state government Total officeholding (only occupation) Total Known Occupations Unidentified Occupations

ΊΪΓ

21.8

81 15

84.4 15.6

NOTE: In many cases two or more different occupations are known for a delegate. I have used the position held most recently at the time of the con­ vention as the basis for classification, with the exception of governmental offices. I have classified a delegate's occupation in terms of a public office held only when I had no other data (see Table B-2 for the distribution of public offices among convention delegates). The sources of information for this appendix are cited in Chapter VIII, nn. 17-39.

APPENDIX B TABLE B-2 PUBLIC OFFICES HELD BY CONVENTION DELEGATES

Office

Judges Sheriffs Clerks of court Justices of the peace Postmasters State tax collectors U.S. Treasury officials Municipal government Total Number of Officeholders

No. Delegates

% of Total Members (96)

6 8 6 5 3 3 7 15

6.3 8.3 6.3 5.2 3.1 3.1 7.3 15.6

~53

55.3

NOTE: In cases of multiple officeholding, I have classified each delegate by the highest-ranking office he occupied.

APPENDIX C

I Scale Analysis of Voting Behavior in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, 1864

THE selection of an appropriate quantitative technique depends upon the goal of the analysis. In the case of voting behavior in the 1864 Louisiana constitutional convention, I was interested in determining the range of attitudes within the convention on the question of race. The convention did deal with other issues and I have, of course, considered these matters while reading the debates and comparing the 1864 con­ stitution with the document it replaced, the 1852 constitution. These other aspects of the convention's work bear little relation­ ship to the basic issues of reconstruction, however, and, as I dis­ covered, the voting alignments on these issues were quite distinct from alignments on the race question. As I was interested chiefly in the distribution of attitudes toward a single issue area, the most useful technique proved to be Guttman scale analysis. For full discussions of this method, see Lee F. Anderson et al., Legis­ lative Roll Call Analysis (Evanston, 111., 1966), 90-121, and Duncan MacRae Jr., Issues and Parties in Legislative Voting: Methods of Statistical Analysis (New York, 1970), 11-38. (I should note here that this aspect of the research was completed in 1968; if I were pursuing a more comprehensive study of the convention, other approaches and the consideration of other issue areas would be necessary.) The first concern of Guttman scaling is to determine whether a set of roll calls actually measures a single dimension of legisla­ tive attitudes. If some delegates viewed a given roll call as deal­ ing with political reapportionment rather than the race question (to cite one example from the convention), then that particular vote would reflect legislative attitudes on two separate issues. I discovered, in fact, that half of the 18 roll calls I selected orig-

APPENDIX C

inally as measures of the delegates' positions on the race question were viewed differently by a portion of the membership. These multidimensional motions dealt with such questions as public education and involved attitudes toward state aid for parochial schools as well as freedmen's schools. These equivocal roll calls did not satisfy the requirements of the scale, which tests for unidimensionality, and were dropped from the analysis. The first step, after the preliminary selection of roll calls, is the coding of each vote according to a uniform standard of "posi­ tive" versus "negative" direction. In this case, a positive response was a vote in favor of Negro rights, and a negative response was a vote against the extension of those rights. (The necessity for coding is obvious: if one roll call deals with a proposal to table an amendment and another with a vote on the amendment itself, then "yes" means something different on each roll call.) Table C-I is a list of the 18 preliminary roll calls as coded for analysis, with a brief description of the contents of each. TABLE C-I PBELIMINARY SET OF 18 ROLL CALLS Roll Call No.

Espouses Positive

Negative

% Positive

71

19

78.8

Motion to reject minority report of com­ mittee on emancipation, which opposed abolition of slavery (pp. 196-197)

45

30

60.0

Motion to table proposal for compensated emancipation (p. 205)

62

16

79.5

Amendment: "the legislature shall make no law recognizing the right of property in man" (p. 208)

26

56

31.7

Motion to table a proviso that "the legis­ lature shall never pass any act authoriz­ ing free negroes to vote" (p. 211)

15 40

75 40

16.7 50.0

Vote on above proviso (pp. 211-212) Motion to table a proviso prohibiting Negro immigration into the state (p.

55

25

68.8

Motions Contents'

212) Motion to table a resolution striking out above prohibitions on Negro voting and immigration (p. 222)

APPENDIX C

(TABLE C-I cont.) Responses

Roll Call No.

Pos­ itive

Neg­ ative

% Pos­ itive

8 9

59 72

23 12

72.0 85.7

10

71

13

84.5

11

23

53

30.3

12

48

32

60.0

13

44

33

57.1

14

49

29

62.8

15

36

41

46.8

16

58

21

73.4

17

50

29

63.3

18

53

27

66.3

Motions Contentsa Vote on above resolution (p. 222) Motion to suspend rules to speed up final vote on emancipation (p. 223) Final vote on emancipation amendment (p. 224) Motion to strike out an amendment au­ thorizing the legislature to enfranchise certain categories of Negro citizens (p. 250) "Sneak" amendment reversing above vote, thus authorizing future enfranchise­ ment of certain categories of Negro cit­ izens (p. 450) Motion to table an amendment providing schools only for white children (pp. 475476) Amendment providing free public schools for all children, to be supported by gen­ eral taxation (p. 476) Vote on the report of the committee on public education, which dealt with freedmen's schools and parochial schools (p. 479) Resolution that all court decisions recog­ nizing the continued existence of slavery are in contempt of the convention (p. 556) Motion to table amendment providing public schools for both races, to be sup­ ported by general taxation (p. 601) Vote on above amendment (p. 601)

a Page numbers in parentheses following the description of each motion are from Debates in the Convention for the Revision and Amendment of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana.

APPENDIX C

The next step in the scaling procedure is to arrange the roll calls in a series, beginning with the measure having the lowest percentage of positive responses (the "hardest to vote for") and proceeding to that with the highest percentage of positive re­ sponses (the "easiest to vote for"). The order can be reversed, of course. Table C-2 presents the reordered roll calls. TABLE C-2 ROLL CALLS ARRANGED BY PERCENTAGE OF POSITIVE RESPONSES

RollCall No.

Responses Positive

Negative

% Positive

5 11 4 15 6 13 12 2

15 23 26 38 40 44 48 45

75

53 56 41 40 33 32 30

16.7 30.3 31.7 46.8 50.0 57.1 60.0 60.0

14 17 18 7

49 50 53 55

29 29 27 25

62.8 63.3 66.3 68.8

8

59

23

72.0

16

58

21

73.4

1 3

71 62

19 16

78.9 79.5

10 9

71 72

13 12

84.5 85.7

Issue

Voting Voting Voting Education Negro immigration Education Voting Compensated emancipation Education Education Education Negro voting and immigration Negro voting and immigration Court decisions on slavery Emancipation No rights to human property Emancipation Emancipation

In a perfect scale no delegate would vote negatively on a sub­ sequent roll call in the series that was "easier to vote for" than the one for which he had cast his first positive vote. Perfect scale pat­ terns are extremely rare, however, for legislators are seldom so consistent in their perceptions of practical measures. In the termi­ nology of scale analysis, legislators often commit "errors" in their voting patterns. A margin of error of 10 percent can be accom-

APPENDIX C

modated without destroying the validity of the scale; the lower the permissible margin of error, however, the more precise the scale will be as a measure of the range of attitudes within a delib­ erative body. In this study I have adopted an 8 percent cutoff point for scalability. Precisely half the original set of 18 roll calls satisfy the requirements of the scale, as indicated in Table C-3. TABLE C-3 FINAL SET OF 9 SCALE ITEMS Roll Call

Responses

Old No. New No. Positive

5 11 4 12 17 18 8 1 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

15 23 26 48 50 53 59 71 71

Negative

% Positive

75 53 56 32 29 27 23 19 13

16.7 30.3 31.7 60.0 63.3 66.3 72.0 78.9 84.5

Issue

Voting Voting Voting Voting Education Education Voting Emancipation Emancipation

Even a cursory examination of the scale items reveals that Negro voting was the most difficult measure for delegates to ac­ cept. Education for blacks was less radical, in the eyes of the convention's members, than black suffrage but harder to vote for than emancipation. Only hard-core conservatives voted against the abolition of slavery. With a valid set of scale items established, individual dele­ gates can be classified and ranked by their scale score, that is, the number of positive responses, when considering delegates with no errors, absences, or abstentions. In the case of nonresponses (absences or abstentions), the accepted procedure is to estimate a scale score. The investigator first lists all the possible scale scores that could be assigned if the delegate had in fact voted, but without assigning the individual an "error." The aver­ age of the possible scale scores provides the estimated score for the individual. (If the average lies between two scale scores, the investigator arbitrarily assigns the delegate the score nearest the median of the scale.) I have not included delegates who voted

APPENDIX C

on less than two-thirds of the roll calls because I dislike the tentativeness of estimating scores. Nor have I included delegates who made more than one error. In estimating scores for individuals with an error in their voting patterns, the same process used with nonresponses is employed; I am even more uncomfortable with the idea of reversing an actual vote cast than with guessing how a missing ballot might have been cast if present. For obvious reasons, the precision of scale scores as aSSigned in Table C-4 is weaker in cases where they had to be estimated than in those TABLE C-4 VOTING PATTERNS OF DELEGATES

(0

= positive [liberal] vote; X = negative [conservative] vote)

Scale Score Delegates

9

Austin Dupaty Hills Hire Shaw Thorpe Collin Gorlinski Pintado Goldman Cazabat 8 Davies Stauffer Wells Ennis Bonzano Bromley Paine, J. T. 7 Flood Schroeder Fish Murphy, E. Spellicy Howes Bennie Taliaferro 6 Bell Cook, T. Duane

Votes on Scale Items

123 456 789

Delegates with Errors

123 4 5 6 789 Votes on Scale Items

000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 000000000 o 0000000 o 0000000 0000 000 000 000 o 0 00 0

xoooooooo xoooooooo xoooooooo xooooo 0 xoo 000 000 o 0 o 0 000 xxooooooo xxooooooo X xoooooo X xoooooo X xoooooo X

0

Smith

OX

Steiner Newell

xoxoooooo xxooxoooo

Cook, J. K. Barrett O'Connor

XXXOOOXOO XXXOOOOXO

000000

000000 000 0 000

xxo xxxoooooo xxxoooooo xxxoooooo 378

xxoxooooo

APPENDIX C ( TABLE

Scale Score Delegates

5

4 3

2

1

o

C-4 cant.)

Votes on Scale Items

Votes on Scale Items Delegates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 with Errors

xxxoooooo Foley xxxoooooo Haman xxxoooooo Healy xxxoooooo Terry xx 0 0 0 0 0 0 Cutler xxxoooo 0 Mann xxxo 0000 Purcell, J. xxxooo 0 Kavanagh X xo 000 Wenck xxxxooooo Burke xxxxooooo Payne, J. X xxooooo Beauvais X xxooooo Poynot X xxooooo Stocker X xxooooo Wilson xxxxoo 0 Baum xxx 0 0 Millspaugh XXX X0 0 0 0 Thomas XXXX 00 Bailey X xxooo Fuller xxxxxxooo Orr X XXXX 00 Morris XXXXXXXOO Edwards xxxxxxxoo Pursell, S. xxx xxxoo Ong XXXXXX Knobloch xxxxxxxxo Bonll xxxxxxxxo Montamat Murphy, M. W. XXXXXXXXO xxxxxxxxo Sullivan XXXXXXXXX Abell XXXXXXXXX Buckley XXXXXXXXX Decker XXXXXXXXX Dufresne XXXXXXXXX Gastinel XXXXXXXXX Gruneberg XXXXXXXXX Mayer XXXXXXXXX Mendiverri xx xx xx Campbell X XX XXX Duke XX XX XX Waters

1 2 3 4 5 6 789

xxxooooxo

Stumpf Seymour

XXXOOX

0

Geier

xxxoxoooo

Hart

xxxxoxooo

Heard

X

x

XXXOX

Ranking of delegates within each scale score is determined by: 1) the number of responses; 2) the proportion of those responses which are positive; and 3) the number of the scale item on which the first abstention occurs. NOTE:

379

APPENDIX C

instances where delegates voted on every roll call without error. A number of delegates either voted on fewer than six roll calls or made more than one error. As a result, they have not been assigned a specific scale score. Delegates Votes on Scale Items with Few Votes 1 2 3 456 789 Arial Balch Brott Gaidry Howell Montague

X

0

X

X

X

0 0

X 0

000 X 0 0

Votes on Scale Items

Delegates with Errors

12345 6 789

Flagg Crozat Henderson Maas Maurer Nonnand Schnurr Kugler

oxooooxoo xxxoxoxoo xoxoxoooo xooxxxo 0 xxxxooxxx xoxoxoxoo xoxxoxo 0 X ooxx 0

The coefficient of reproducibility provides a useful summary of the predictive success of a scale. The coefficient is derived by dividing the number of correct responses of all members of a deliberative body by the total number of responses. Of the 96 delegates in the convention, 82 voted on at least two-thirds of the roll calls and made no more than one error. Using their votes as the basis for the scale, the coefficient of reproducibility is .979 (1.000 is a perfect coefficient). If those individuals who voted less than two-thirds of the time are included and assigned scale responses, the coefficient of reproducibility is .968. Even if the delegates with more than one error are included, the coefficient is .955. All indicate a high degree of reproducibility, which confirms that the matrix is very revealing of the range of attitudes toward the Negro question. This is the basis for the discussion of voting blocs in the convention in Chapter VIII.

380

Bibliographical Essay MN reconstructing the Louisiana experience during the 1860s I have relied almost entirely on my own analysis of the primary sources because I discovered at an early stage of the research that grave factual errors marred many of the existing secondary accounts of Civil War politics in the state. Thus it is appropriate to begin this essay with a discussion of the manuscript materials, published diaries and correspond­ ence, government documents, newspapers, travel accounts, city directories, census returns (both published and unpublished), and electoral data on which my interpretation is based. MANUSCRIPTS

Because there was no organized civil government or established party system in Louisiana throughout most of the period of this study, I had to rely heavily on manuscript sources to reconstruct even the basic patterns of political behavior. The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., which I used in the convenient microfilm edition, were invaluable both as a source of detailed informa­ tion about events in Louisiana and as an indicator of the communica­ tion flow between New Orleans and Washington. The Salmon P. Chase Papers, LC, served these purposes as well; in fact, the secre­ tary's correspondence is more revealing in regard to political affairs than is the President's. George Denison, B. Rush Plumly, John Hutchins, and other friends of Chase filled their letters with "inside" details that sometimes bordered on mere gossip but at other times led to major discoveries. (The Chase Papers at the Historical Society of Pennsyl­ vania, Philadelphia, were disappointing, except for the correspondence from Benjamin F. Flanders.) The George Denison Papers, LC, provide additional Chase correspondence of the same type. The Nathaniel P. Banks Papers, LC, were perhaps the most crucial for the reconstruction of the details of the occupation experience, and give the best insight into moderate political circles. The Benjamin F. Butler Papers, LC, are extensive; most of the wartime correspondence has been published in the five-volume edition cited below. The papers of Republican Con-

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

gressmen Henry L. Dawes, John Covode, Carl Schurz, Thaddeus Stevens, and Benjamin F. Wade, all in LC, were of great help on various points, as were those of Frederick Law Olmsted, James M. McKaye, and Whitelaw Reid. The Andrew Johnson Papers, LC, were essential for 1865. The Thomas J. Durant Papers and the Minute Book of the Union Association of New Orleans, 1863, both in the New-York Historical Society, New York, were perhaps the most surprising finds of my re­ search. Both are rich in detailed information about the free state movement during the period of radical control, and proved all the more valuable in that no earlier scholar had made use of them (C. Peter Ripley has since drawn briefly on these materials). Though ex­ tensive, the Edward H. Durell Papers, NYHS, were less useful because they deal mostly with the judge's later life and family background. The Journal of a Louisiana Rebel, NYHS, contains interesting glimpses of the conservative reaction to the Butler regime in 1862. At the Houghton Library of Harvard University I found much valuable material about freedmen's affairs and politics in Louisiana in the Charles Sumner Papers. I also made use of the American Freed­ men's Inquiry Commission Papers, the Samuel Gridley Howe Papers, and the Frank Bird Papers, all at the same location. The Samuel M. Quincy Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, give some insight into the struggle for power between General Banks and Governor Wells in 1865. The American Missionary Association Ar­ chives, which I used at Fisk University before their removal to the Amistad Research Center at Dillard University, proved valuable for insights into the experience of Northern teachers in the black schools of Louisiana in 1864 and 1865. The Henry Clay Warmoth Papers in the Southern Historical Collec­ tion of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, were an im­ portant source for the evolution of the free state movement into the Republican Party in 1865. At the same depository the Andrew McColIam Papers detail the experience of a sugar planter who was actively opposed to secession but went along with the Confederacy and sub­ sequently joined other planters in the Conservative Unionist organiza­ tion of 1863-1864. The Bayside Plantation Records, the Taylor Beatty Diaries, the Brashear Family Papers, and the Rost-Hermitage Papers, all at UNC, provided material on the planters' reaction to the Yankee invaders and their adjustment to free labor plantations during the war. The Marguerite E. Williams Papers, UNC, contain interesting cor­ respondence regarding the reactions of returning Confederate soldiers in 1865, and the William H. Stewart Diary, UNC, documents the life of a Union soldier in Louisiana. At Duke University the Nathaniel P.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Banks Papers provided little of use for my study, but the manuscript collections of P.G.T. Beauregard, E.G.W. Butler, and J.D.B. De Bow were helpful for the Confederate point of view. At Louisiana State University the papers of James G. Taliaferro and Family were valuable for the years 1860-1861 and 1865-1866. The Benjamin F. Flanders Papers, LSU, proved helpful on several points, and the Nathaniel P. Banks Letterbook at the same location filled some gaps in the general's correspondence. I also used the papers of William N. Mercer, William J. Minor and Family, and James G. Kilbourne at LSU. At the National Archives, Washington, D.C., the records of the Bureau of Civil Affairs, Department of the Gulf (Letters Received), located in Record Group 393, were invaluable in reconstructing the role of the occupying army in the day-to-day operations of civil matters during the war. For the years 1865 and 1866 the records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, proved richly informative, especially: Letters Received, Assistant Commissioners (Louisiana); Agents Reports, Superintendent of Edu­ cation; Miscellaneous Letters Received; and Letters Received, Com­ missioner 0. 0. Howard. The records of the Third Special Agency, U.S. Treasury, Record Group 366, contain some material of interest on Benjamin F. Flanders' tenure in that office. PUBLISHED CORRESPONDENCE AND DIARIES

Perhaps the most essential published primary source is Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Bruns­ wick, N.J., 1953), an expertly edited, comprehensive collection of the President's letters and speeches. Tyler Dennett (ed.), Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay (New York, 1939), is a rich source of information about Lincoln, recorded by a man who was on good terms with General Banks and kept an eye on Louisiana affairs. David Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln's Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1954), is valuable on a num­ ber of key points, and the letters of George Denison reprinted in the Diary and Correspondence of Salmon P. Chase (American Historical Association, Annual Report for the Year 1902, n [Washington, D.C., 1903]), are essential. Howard K. Beale (ed.), Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), was also of great help. Jessie A. Marshall (ed.), The Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler . . . , 5 vols. (Norwood, Mass., 1917), provides information about the first nine months of federal occupation. James H. Croushore (ed.), A Volunteer's Adventures: A Union Captain's Record of the Civil War (New Haven, Conn., 1946), is the fascinating diary of John

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

W. De Forest, one of Butler's officers, who later wrote a perceptive novel about Louisiana during the war, Cecil D. Eby Jr. (ed.), A Vir­ ginia Yankee in the Civil War: The Diaries of David Hunter Strother (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), proved essential for the origins of General Banks' labor regulations and offered a valuable personal appraisal of Banks' character and mannerisms. Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man (New Haven, Conn., 1910), and Joseph Schafer (ed.), Intimate Letters of Carl Schurz, 1841-1869 (Madison, Wis., 1928), were helpful on certain points. Kate Mason Rowland and Mrs. Morris L. Croxhall (eds.), The Journal of Julia Le Grand (Richmond, Va., 1911), reveals the response of a staunch Confederate family to the federal occupation of New Orleans, and Sarah Morgan Dawson, A Confederate Girl's Diary (Boston, 1913), is a similar document by a young resident of Baton Rouge. Edwin A. Davis (ed.), Flantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836-1846: As Reflected in the Diary of Bennett H, Barrow (New York, 1943), is an invaluable docu­ ment concerning slave life in the antebellum period, especially when linked with the slave lists in the Appendix to Wendell Holmes Stephen­ son, Isaac Franklin: Slave Trader and Planter of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, 1938). PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

In following the course of the Louisiana question in national politics I have relied on the Congressional Globe for debates and proceedings on Capitol Hill and used the House Journal and the Senate Journal to trace the legislative history of particular bills. The authoritative source for the text of those bills that became law is the United States Statutes at Large. For some aspects of the story, reports of committees or documents submitted to Congress were helpful. Carl Schurz, "Report on the Condition of the South," was printed in Senate Executive Docu­ ments, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 2. The "Letter of the Governor of the State of Louisiana" and the "Memorial of Citizens of Louisiana," Senate Miscellaneous Documents, 38 Cong., 1 Sess., nos. 1 and 2, were also of use. House Reports, 37 Cong., 3 Sess., no. 22, and House Re­ ports, 38 Cong., 2 Sess., no. 13, provide the reports of the Committee on Elections relating to Louisiana claimants Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Hahn (who were seated), and Max F. Bonzano, A. P. Field, and William D. Mann (who were not). House Reports, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., no. 30, "Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction," con­ tains useful documents relating to the Louisiana situation in 1865. James D. Richardson (ed.), A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897,10 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1896-1899),

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

was my source for the addresses and proclamations of Andrew Johnson. War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), contains much valuable correspondence on nonmilitary affairs. At the state level, the Proceedings of the Convention of the Friends of Freedom (New Orleans, 1863), privately published as a pamphlet, offers the only comprehensive public record of one of the pivotal political events in the wartime reconstruction process. Similarly, the Proceedings of the Convention of the Republican Party of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1865), is essential for understanding the evolution of the free state movement into an official state Republican Party. The voluminous Debates in the Convention for the Revision and Amend­ ment of the Constitution of the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1864), is a rich source of information on the moderate regime of 1864 and provides a solid documentary base for the roll call analysis re­ ported in Appendix C. The process of revision in 1864 can only be studied by a close comparison with the Journal of the Convention to Form a New Constitution for the State of Louisiana (New Orleans, 1852). I also used the Debates in the Senate of the State of Louisiana, Sessions of 1864-1865 (New Orleans, 1865). CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS, MEMOIRS, AND PAMPHLETS

Two slave autobiographies proved valuable in reconstructing the ante­ bellum background of freedmen's affairs: Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (New York, 1849), and Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave (New York, 1853). Also essential was Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York, 1856), and Arthur M. Schlesinger's edition of Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom (New York, 1953), which includes a splendid introductory essay. George Washington Cable, Creoles and Cajuns: Stories of Old Louisiana, ed. Arlin Turner (New York, 1959), contains useful recollections of New Orleans scenes. George H. Hepworth, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword: or the Gulf De­ partment in '63 (Boston, 1864), is a lengthy account of Banks' labor system by a sympathetic young antislavery chaplain who helped estab­ lish the free labor regime in the spring of 1863. Nathaniel P. Banks, Emancipated Labor in Louisiana (Boston, 1864), represents the gen­ eral's apology in the form of a lengthy pamphlet. James M. McKaye, The Mastership and Its Fruits: The Emancipated Slave Face to Face with His Old Master (New York, 1864), is a perceptive account by an abolitionist member of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. Percy Mackaye, Epoch: The Life of Steele Mackaye, Genius of the

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Theatre, 2 vols. (New York, 1927), provides some rare biographical information about the author's grandfather, James M. McKaye. Rudolphe L. Desdunes, Our People and Our History, trans. Sister Doro­ thea 0. McCants (Baton Rouge, 1973), is a useful memoir by one of the New Orleans free men of color. Helpful political pamphlets include Nathaniel P. Banks, The Recon­ struction of States (New Orleans, 1864), an attack on the radical view of Louisiana's moderate Republican regime, to which Thomas J. Durant, Letter . . . to the Hon. Henry Winter Davis, October 27, 1864 (New Orleans, 1864), offers a scathing rebuttal. Anthony P. Dostie, The Political Position of Thomas J. Durant (New Orleans, 1865), is a brief polemic whose charges were not substantiated by my research. Emily Hazen Reed's highly sympathetic biography, Life of A. P. Dostie: or, The Conflict in New Orleans (New York, 1868), takes its point of view from Dostie's pamphlet and attacks the wartime radicals because they opposed Dostie (a member of Banks' moderate faction). More useful was B. Rush Plumly and Edward M. Wheelock, Report of the Board of Education for Freedmen, Department of the Gulf, for the Year 1864 (New Orleans, 1864). Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Southern Tour (New York, 1866), provides for the immediate postwar period as perceptive a travel account as Olmsted offers for the antebellum years. Reid's analysis of his sojourns in Louisiana was important to my understanding of the counterrevolutionary resurgence of 1865. John T. Trowbridge, A Pic­ ture of the Desolated States; and the Work of Restoration, 1865-1868 (Hartford, Conn., 1868), and John Dennett, The South as It Is, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York, 1965), are also useful. Thomas W. Knox, Camp-fire and Cotton-field: Southern Adventures in Time of War (New York, 1865), contains a good account of a leased cotton plantation in Louisiana during the war. See also Augustine J. H. Duganne, Camps and Prisons: Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf (New York, 1865), Edward Bacon, Among the Cotton Thieves (Detroit, 1867), and Wickham Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during Two Wars, 1861-1865, 1870-1871 (New York, 1877). Henry Clay Warmoth, War, Politics, and Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana (New York, 1930), is an interesting memoir, although for my purposes the author's manuscript diary and correspondence were more valuable (see above). Jean-Charles Houzeau, "Le Journal noir, aux Etats-Unis, de 1863 a 1870," Revue de Belgique, VII (May 1872), 1-28, and (June 1872), 97-122, is a fascinating autobiographical account by a white Belgian astronomer who helped edit the New Orleans Tribune from late 1864 to 1868.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

The legal treatise by John Alexander Jameson, The Constitutional Convention: Its History, Powers, and Modes of Proceedings, 1st ed. (New York, 1867), provides an articulate expression of the radical interpretation of the constitutional issues involved in the reorganization of civil government in the South, and thus fits the technical issues raised by Durant into a more general context. Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States during the Great Rebellion . . . (New York, 1864), is a useful compilation of documents and speeches, as are the articles in Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events (New York, 1862-1865), which also provide good chronological summaries of events in Louisiana. NEWSPAPERS I have used the newspapers of the period extensively, but with some caution. The Louisiana press in particular was highly partisan in its reporting. For the crisis of 1860-1861 I used the New Orleans Bee, Daily Crescent, Daily Delta, True Delta, and Daily Picayune; all ex­ cept the latter identified openly with one political party or another. The New Orleans Era, which began publishing in early 1863 and ended its brief career in 1865, gave the most thorough reports of political events in wartime New Orleans, but it was by far the most partisan in its glorification of General Banks and villification of the radicals after the schism in free state ranks. The New Orleans Times, founded in the fall of 1863, was less clearly identified with a particular faction, although for its first year it was more sympathetic to the radicals than the Era. It underwent several changes in ownership, and by the spring of 1865 it was veering toward the conservative position. The New Orleans True Delta was a conservative paper under the editorship of Hu Kennedy but took on the same moderate persuasion as the Era after Michael Hahn purchased it in January 1864. On occasion I used the two German daily newspapers of the city, the Louisiana Staatszeitung and the New Orleans Tagliche Deutsche Zeitung, which were moderate Unionist papers. The New Orleans Daily Picayune was Confederate in sympathy but "neutral" in editorial policy, meaning that it rarely reported political news during the occu­ pation but devoted a great deal of attention to what it called "South­ ern news," that is, reports of events in the Confederacy. The first of the city's Negro newspapers, L'Union, was sometimes helpful for in­ formation, and more often for the general sense of the mood of the free men of color. Its successor, the New Orleans Tribune, which began publication as a weekly in July 1864 and as a daily in October of that year, was much more valuable. Especially in its daily editions (both

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

French and English), it offered useful data on black political activity and freedmen's affairs. The New Orleans Black Republican, which had a brief existence in 1865, was a moderate Negro competitor tied to the Banks faction. At the national level, I found the great New York dailies invaluable. Both the New York Times and the New York Tribune had good cor­ respondents working in Louisiana in 1862 and 1863, and sometimes their reports are more revealing than those in the New Orleans papers. The New York Heralds reports were also useful, but less frequently. All coverage of Louisiana affairs dropped off in 1864 because of the increasing volume of military news and the campaign for the presi­ dency. The abolitionist weekly newspapers paid more consistent attention to Louisiana, and the National Anti-Slavery Standard proved an invaluable source. I also made frequent use of William Lloyd Gar­ rison's Liberator, and the American Missionary contains useful material on the freedmen's schools of Louisiana. J. Cutler Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War (Pittsburgh, 1955), identifies many of the correspondents and their pen names. CENSUS MATERIALS, CITY DIRECTORIES, AND ELECTION RETURNS

Census materials were essential for much of the quantitative work in this study. The published reports of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1864), Statistics of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C., 1866), The Statistics of the Population of the United States . . . Ninth Census (Washington, D.C., 1877), and the Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, 22 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1883-1888), espe­ cially vols, ι, xi, xii, and xix, provided many of the demographic, ethnocultural, and economic variables employed. For some purposes, however, I found it necessary to use the manuscript Agriculture and Social volumes of the 1850 and 1860 censuses at Duke University. The Louisiana Census of 1857, which is available in The Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts for the State of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1859), proved extremely helpful in the analysis of antebellum wealth distribution and of electoral behavior. Voting returns at the parish and municipal district levels for presidential, gubernatorial, and convention elections were taken from W. Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955), from Charles B. Dew, "The Long Lost Returns: The Candidates and Their Totals in Louisiana's Secession Election," Louisiana History, χ (Fall 1969), 353-369, from

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

the Tribune Almanac and Political Register for the appropriate year, and in some cases from the New Orleans Daily Picayune. In compiling occupational data for the collective biography of rural delegates to the 1864 constitutional convention I used the manuscript population schedules of the U.S. Census of 1860, which are located at the National Archives and are also available on microfilm. Location of urban delegates in the census manuscripts proved impossible because the census wards and the representative districts (also known as wards) were not the same geographical units, as I discovered by com­ paring the population figures from the state census of 1857 with the federal returns. A pamphlet prepared by the Bureau of Governmental Research, Wards of New Orleans (New Orleans, 1961), was quite helpful in tracing the evolution of the city's political ward boundaries. The difficulty in working with the manuscript census makes the avail­ ability of city directories all the more important. Much of the occupa­ tional information for convention delegates was drawn from the following: Cohen's New Orleans Directory (1854); ibid. (1855); Gardner and Wharton's New Orleans Directory (1858); ibid. (1859); Duncans New Orleans Business Directory (1865); Gardner's New Orleans Directory (1866); ibid. (1867); and Graham's Crescent City Directory (1867). Information on officeholding was also drawn from the U.S. Official Register, which I searched for the years 1855-1865. SECONDARY LITERATURE

For an understanding of antebellum Louisiana society, the place to begin is Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1939), but see Joseph G. Tregle Jr., "Another Look at Shugg's Louisiana," LH, XVII (Summer 1976), 245-281. My own view of antebellum social structure is shaped by Fabian Linden, "Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Appraisal of Some Recent Views," Journal of Negro History, xxxi (April 1946), 140-189, Gavin Wright, " 'Economic Democracy' and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850-1860," Agricultural History, XLIV (Jan. 1970), 63-93, and Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850-1870 (New Haven, Conn., 1975). D.L.A. Hackett, "The Social Structure of Jacksonian Louisiana," Louisiana Studies, XII (Spring 1973), 324-353, provides useful aggregate data. A contrary view of antebellum social structure, which may apply more effectively to the upper South than to Louisiana, is that of Frank L. and Harriet Owsley, "The Economic Basis of Society in the Late Ante-bellum South," Journal of Southern History, vi (Feb. 1940), 24-45, Frank L. Owsley,

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge, 1949), and the study by Owsley's student, Harry L. Coles Jr., "Some Notes on Slave Ownership and Land Ownership in Louisiana, 1850-1860," JSH, ix (Aug. 1943), 381-393. Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1933), has a valuable discussion of every aspect of the agricultural economy in Louisiana. J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 17531950 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), provides extended and valuable treat­ ment of the economy and society of southern Louisiana, the area occupied by the Union army during the war. My discussion of the economics of slavery follows the prevailing econometric interpretation sparked by Alfred Conrad and John Meyer, "The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South," Journal of Political Economy, LXVI (April 1958), 95-130. See also: the essays collected in Hugh G. J. Aitken (ed.), Did Slavery Pay? (Boston, 1971); Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, "The Economics of Slavery," in Fogel and Engerman (eds.), The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New York, 1971), 311-341; and Robert E. Gallman, "Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South," Agricultural History, XLIV (Jan. 1970), 5-23. Richard Easterlin, "Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1840-1950," in Na­ tional Bureau of Economic Research, Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1960), also provides valuable data and information. For a different interpretation, se'e the essays in Eugene Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York, 1965). George D. Green, Finance and Economic Development in the Old South: Louisiana Banking, 1804-1861 (Palo Alto, Calif., 1972), is useful for understanding the relationship between agricul­ tural and commercial interests in the state. Joe Gray Taylor, Negro Slavery in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), serves as a good beginning for an analysis of the "peculiar institution" before the war. John Milton Price, "Slavery in Winn Parish," LH, vin (Spring 1967), 137-148, demonstrates how deeply plantation society had penetrated into the hill country of northern Louisiana. General works that provide specific information about Louisiana slavery in­ clude: Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York, 1956); John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-Bellum South (New York, 1972); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974); Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York, 1976); and Gutman, "The World Two Cliometricians Made," Journal of Negro History, LX

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

(Jan. 1975), 54-227. See also: Raymond and Alice Bauer, "Day-to-Day Resistance to Slavery," ibid., XXVII (Oct. 1942), 388-419; Sterling Stuckey, "Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery," Massachusetts Review, ix (Summer 1968), 417-437; Lawrence Levine, "Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness," in Tamara Hareven (ed.), Anonymous Americans: Explorations in Nineteenth Century Social History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), 99-126; Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1959); Eugene D. Genovese, "Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of the Elkins Thesis," Civil War His­ tory, xu (Dec. 1966), 293-314; Jack E. Eblen, "Growth of the Black Population in Antebellum America, 1820-1860," Population Studies, xxvi (July 1972), 273-289; Stanley Engerman, "Comments on the Study of Race and Slavery," in Engerman and Genovese (eds.), Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Prince­ ton, N.J., 1975), 495-530; and Paul A. David, Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright, Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York, 1976). The black community in New Orleans has been examined effectively by Donald G. Everett, "Free Persons of Color in New Orleans, 18031865" (Ph.D. diss., TuIane University, 1952), and by John W. BIassingame, Black New. Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973). See also Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820-1860 (New York, 1964), which contains a useful discussion of New Orleans. William W. Chenault and Robert C. Reinders, "The Northern-born Community of New Orleans in the 1850's," Journal of American His­ tory, Li (Sept. 1964), 232-247, Reinders, "New England Influences on the Formation of Public Schools in New Orleans," JSH, xxx (Nov. 1964), 181-195, and Earl F. Niehaus, The Irish in New Orleans, 18001860 (Baton Rouge, 1965), treat other aspects of the urban scene. Leon C. Soule, The Know-Nothing Party in New Orleans: A Reap­ praisal (Baton Rouge, 1961), is an interpretive work on the politics of the 1850s that has important implications for understanding the sur­ vival of ethnocultural tensions. On state politics, an old standby that is still useful is James K. Greer, "Louisiana Politics, 1845-1861," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, xu (1929), 381-425, 555-610, and xin (1930), 67-116, 257-303, 444483, 614-654. James P. Hendrix Jr., "The Efforts to Reopen the African Slave Trade in Louisiana," LH, χ (Spring 1969), 97-123, and William H. Adams, "The Louisiana Whigs," ibid., xv (Summer 1974), 213-228, are valuable studies of aspects of antebellum politics. Perry H. Howard, Political Tendencies in Louisiana, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1971), is

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

also useful, despite the flaws noted in Chapter ι above. Ralph A. Wooster, The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850-1860 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1969), contains valuable data on Louisiana and good comparative analysis of the relationships of party, economic interest, and officeholding in other slaveholding states. For similar approaches to the analysis of the antebellum party system that lead to similar conclusions, see: Richard P. McCormick, "Suffrage Classes and Party Alignments: A Study in Voter Behavior," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLVI (Dec. 1959), 397-410; McCormick, "New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics," American Histori­ cal Review, LXV (Jan. 1960), 288-301; and Thomas B. Alexander et al., "The Basis of Alabama's Antebellum Two-Party System," Alabama Review, xix (Oct. 1966), 243-276. D.L.A. Hackett, "Slavery, Eth­ nicity, and Sugar: An Analysis of Voting Behavior in Louisiana, 18281844," Louisiana Studies, xm (Summer 1974), 73-118, pursues issues suggested by Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (New Haven, Conn., 1969), and Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1837-1861 (Princeton, N.J., 1971). The secession crisis in Louisiana is treated in Jerry L. Tarver, "The Political Clubs of New Orleans in the Election of 1860," LH, iv (Sum­ mer 1963), Ralph A. Wooster, "The Louisiana Secession Convention," LHQ, xxxiv (April 1951), 103-133, Gary E. Sanders, "The Election to the Secession Convention in Louisiana" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1968), Wynona G. Mills, "James Govan Taliaferro (17981876): Louisiana Unionist and Scalawag" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1968), and Willie M. Caskey, Secession and Restora­ tion of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938). To understand the Louisiana experience in a more general context, see: Allan Nevins, The Emer­ gence of Lincoln, 2 vols. (New York, 1950); Roy F. Nichols, The Dis­ ruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948); Arthur Bestor, "State Sovereignty and Slavery: A Reinterpretation of the Proslavery Constitutional Doctrine, 1846-1860," Journal of the Illinois State His­ torical Society, LIV (Summer 1961), 117-180; C. Vann Woodward, "John Brown's Private War," in Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1968), 41-68; Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York, 1970); William L. Barney, The Secessionist Impulse: Alabama and Mississippi in 1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1974); Ralph A. Wooster, The Secession Conventions of the South (Princeton, N.J., 1962); Wooster, "The Secession of the Lower South: An Examination of Changing Interpretations," CWH, VII (June 1961), 117-127; Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Emergence of the One-Party South: The Election of 1860," in Lipset, Political Man:

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

The Social Bases of Politics (New York, 1960), 344-354; Jerry C. Oldshue, "A Study of the Influence of Economic, Social, and Partisan Characteristics on Secession Sentiment in the South, 1860-1861" (Ph.D. diss., University of Alabama, 1975); George H. Knoles (ed.), The Crisis of the Union, 1860-1861 (Baton Rouge, 1965); and David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven, Conn., 1942). For a comparison between Louisiana voting behavior and that of neighboring states, based on the same statistical techniques employed in this study, see Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, "Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vra (Winter 1978), 429-457. Jefferson Davis Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1941), and John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), are helpful on the Confederate experience. C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), contains an excellent examination of the "peculiar institution" in the Confederacy, and on the same subject Bell Irvin Wiley, South­ ern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, Conn., 1938), remains valuable. John R. Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana Through 1868 (Baltimore, 1910), Willie M. Caskey, Secession and Restoration of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1938), and Howard P. Johnson, "New Orleans Under General Butler," LHQ, xxiv (April 1941), 434-536, follow the conservative historiographical tradition of William A. Dun­ ning. In addition to presenting outmoded interpretations, these works are also untrustworthy on such basic facts as the names of Unionists active in the free state movement. Roger W. Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Labor­ ers during Slavery and After, 1840-1875 (Baton Rouge, 1939), is revisionist in sympathy but weak on research and thus inaccurate. The most influential revisionist account of wartime reconstruction in Loui­ siana is Fred H. Harrington, Fighting Politician: Major General N. P. Banks (Philadelphia, 1948), perhaps because the Banks Papers, LC, which the author mined thoroughly, added much new information not previously published. As explained in Chapters v-vn, my narrative dif­ fers fundamentally from Harrington's in basic details as well as inter­ pretation, but my research has been much influenced by his pioneering work; I also share his cynical view of the general. Two biographies of Banks' predecessor provide useful information: Hans L. Trefousse, Ben Butler: The South Called Him BEAST! (New York, 1957), and Richard S. West Jr., Lincoln's Scapegoat General: A Life of Benjamin F. Butler, 1818-1893 (Boston, 1965). Ludwell H. Johnson, Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton in the Civil War (Baltimore,

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

1965), is a thoroughly researched monograph. Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans Under the Federals, 1862-1865 (Lexing­ ton, Ky., 1965), is a good revisionist survey of wartime events in the city; it is based on little original research, however, and relies heavily on Harrington and Elizabeth Joan Doyle, "Nurseries of Treason: Schools in Occupied New Orleans," JSH, xxvi (May 1960), 161-179. Amos Simpson and Vaughn Baker, "Michael Hahn: Steady Patriot," LH, XIII (Summer 1972), 229-252, Philip D. Uzee, "The Beginnings of the Louisiana Republican Party," ibid., XII (Summer 1971), 197211, Joe Gray Taylor, "New Orleans and Reconstruction," ibid., ix (Summer 1968), 189-208, and Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 18631877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 1-58, provide useful accounts of wartime politics but differ significantly from my own in both narrative and interpretation. Federal policy toward the freedmen has received considerable atten­ tion, beginning with Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, Conn., 1938), which is still valuable. Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), offers a revisionist view, emphasizing the conservativism of army policy, especially in Louisiana. According to Gerteis, the military officials there were more interested in social control than social change. Much the same emphasis is found in William F. Messner, "Black Violence and White Response: Louisi­ ana, 1862," JSH, XLI (Feb. 1975), 19-36, and Messner, "Black Educa­ tion in Louisiana, 1863-1865," CWH, XXII (March 1976), 41-59. C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), offers much new information on the freedmen's schools during the war and on black efforts to obtain land in rural parishes. Mary F. Berry, "Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The Louisiana Native Guards, 1861-1863," LH, VIII (Spring 1967), 165-190, and John Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973), provide good discussions of blacks in the Union army in the Depart­ ment of the Gulf, as does the general account by Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 18611865 (New York, 1956). Donald E. Everett, "Demands of the New Orleans Free Colored Population for Political Equality, 1862-1865," LHQ, XXXVIII (Jan. 1954), is an important pioneering study, and Agnes S. Grosz, "The Political Career of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback," ibid., χχνπ (April 1944), 527-612, remains the most thorough biographical treatment of any Louisiana black leader during reconstruction. David C. Rankin, "The Origins of Black Leadership in New Orleans During Reconstruction," JSH, XL (Aug. 1974), 417440, offers an impressive collective biographical treatment of wartime

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

black leaders. Charles Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana During Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1976), deals primarily with a later pe­ riod. See also Roger A. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 1862-1877 (Urbana, III., 1974). Planter society has been thoroughly chronicled for the war years. J. Carlyle Sitterson, Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753-1950 (Lexington, Ky., 1953), contains a fine discussion of the disintegration of the old regime in the southern parishes. Sitterson treats the experience of specific families in greater detail in "Mag­ nolia Plantation, 1852-1862: A Decade of a Louisiana Sugar Estate," MVHR, XXV (Sept. 1938), 194-210, "The Transition from Slavery to Free Economy on the William J. Minor Plantations," Agricultural History, xvn (Fall 1943), 216-224, and "The McCollams: A Planter Family of the Old and New South," ]SH, vi (Aug. 1940), 347-367. See also Charles P. Roland, Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the American Civil War (Leiden, The Netherlands, 1957). Clement Eaton, "The Commercial Mind," in Eaton, The Mind of the Old South, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1967), 69-89, treats the plantation established by New Orleans merchant Maunsel White. Although I do not agree with these authors' emphasis on the point of view of the planters, I have found their research helpful. Joe Gray Taylor, "Slavery in Louisiana During the Civil War," LH, vm (Winter 1967), 27-34, is a more recent survey. Howard A. White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970), is useful on the administrative history of this im­ portant federal agency, but J. Thomas May, "The Freedmen's Bureau at the Local Level: A Study of a Louisiana Agent," LH, ix (Winter 1968), 5-20, gives a better picture of how the bureau actually worked. See also May, "Continuity and Change in the Labor Program of the Union Army and the Freedmen's Bureau," CWH, XVII (Sept. 1971), 245-254. The Louisiana case plays an important role in William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General 0. 0. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968), which illuminates the critical efforts of Governor Madison Wells and President Andrew Johnson to destroy the bureau's capacity to assist the freedmen. The political scene in Louisiana in 1865 has been badly misunder­ stood. Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells" (M.A. thesis, Louisiana State University, 1947), which was published under the same title in LHQ, xxxi (Oct. 1948), 995-1123, contains much useful information, as does F. Wayne Binning, "Henry Clay Warmoth and Louisiana Reconstruction" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1969). See also the discussion in Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge,

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

1974). Each of these works differs in emphasis and interpretation from my account. Michael Perman, Reunion Without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction, 1865-1868 (Cambridge, 1973), has little useful to say about Louisiana politics, perhaps because the reor­ ganization of civil government had already taken place in that state before his story begins. In addition to examining the dynamics of social change and political behavior in Louisiana, I have tried to use the Louisiana question as a prism to illuminate the process of reconstruction policy making in Washington. In this task I have built more heavily on the work of other scholars, for the politics of reconstruction at the national level has been the subject of much distinguished historical writing. For many years wartime reconstruction was subsumed under the rubric of Lincoln scholarship. Charles H. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (New York, 1901), a thorough, though not entirely accurate, narrative, is useful despite its assumption that Andrew Johnson subsequently carried out the same "plan" pursued by Lin­ coln. William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (Tusca­ loosa, Ala., 1960), is based on the older secondary literature and writ­ ten from a conservative point of view. The standard academic biog­ raphy, James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 4 vols. (New York, 1945-1955), is written in the same vein and exaggerates the conser­ vatism of Lincoln's reconstruction policy. Although briefer, Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham, Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 1952), and Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1977), are the best modern treatments. T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison, Wis., 1941), and William F. Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided (Norman, Okla., 1954), contain useful information but are bitterly antiradical in interpretation. James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lin­ coln, rev. ed. (Urbana, UI., 1951), is a mine of valuable information and insight. Benjamin Quarles, Lincoln and the Negro (New York, 1962, offers a thorough examination of the President's attitude toward blacks. See also the exchange between LudweIl H. Johnson and Harold M. Hyman: Johnson, "Lincoln and Equal Rights," JSH, XXXII (Feb. 1966), 83-87, Hyman, "Lincoln and Equal Rights for Negroes: The Irrelevancy of the Wadsworth Letter," CWH, XII (Dec. 1966), 258266, and Johnson, "Lincoln and Equal Rights: A Reply," ibid., xm (March 1967), 66-73. William D. Mallam "Lincoln and the Conser­ vatives," JSH, xxviii (Feb. 1962), 31-45, places the President's views against the background of those further to the right, as does V. Jacque Voegeli, Free But Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago, 1967). Thomas J. Pressly, "Bullets and Ballots:

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Lincoln and the 'Right of Revolution,'" American Historical Review, Lxvii (Dec. 1962), 647-662, is an interesting essay that sees the ques­ tion of revolution in a different light from my own definition. Two volumes of essays that have helped shape my thinking on the Civil War President are David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era (New York, 1956), and Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York, 1961). Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (Ithaca, N.Y., 1969), deals brilliantly with the con­ stitutional questions of reconstruction and relates them to the policy­ making process both in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Belz also offers the most accurate, though brief, account of wartime recon­ struction in Louisiana. Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Prin­ ciple: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), deals with these issues in both the Lincoln and Johnson administrations. Although I have differed with Benedict on occasion, particularly in regard to the Louisiana question, I have also profited from his prodigious research in manuscript sources. I have some res­ ervations about Benedict's use of Guttman scale analysis, but fortu­ nately the basic patterns of congressional voting on reconstruction and other issues have been thoroughly and carefully examined: see espe­ cially Allan G. Bogue, "Bloc and Party in the United States Senate: 1861-1863," CWH, xm (Sept. 1967), 221-241, and John L. McCarthy, "Reconstruction Legislation and Voting Alignments in the House of Representatives, 1863-1869," (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1970). See also David Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction, 1863-1867 (Baton Rouge, 1965), Edward Gambill, "Who Were the Senate Radi­ cals?" CWH, χι (Sept. 1965), 237-244, Glenn M. Linden, "Radicals and Economic Policies: The House of Representatives, 1861-1873," ibid., xm (March 1967), 51-65, and Linden, "Radicals and Economic Policies: The Senate, 1861-1873," JSH, XXXII (May 1966), 189-199. Also helpful on the relationship between Lincoln and his fellow Re­ publicans on the reconstruction question are David Donald, "Devils Facing Zionwards," in Grady McWhiney (ed.), Grant, Lee, Lincoln, and the Radicals (Evanston, 111., 1964), 72-91, Donald, Charles Sum­ ner and the Rights of Man (New York, 1970), and Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice (New York, 1969). Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York, 1977), adds a valuable dimension to the literature on Civil War politics. On the relationship between the Republican Party and abolitionist radicals, both black and white, the essential work is James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), which includes a perceptive analysis of Louisiana affairs. Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianapolis, 1964), is a masterful examination of abolitionists and the freedmen in the South Carolina sea islands, which represented the antithesis of the Louisiana "model" in some respects. John G. Sproat, "Blueprint for Radical Reconstruction," JSH, xxin (Feb. 1957), 25-44, deals effec­ tively with the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission. La Wanda Cox, "The Promise of Land for the Freedmen," MVHR, XLV (Dec. 1958), 413-440, perceptively relates the origins of the Freedmen's Bureau to wartime discussions of freedmen's affairs and illuminates its radical potential. For dissenting views, see Richard 0. Curry, "The Abolitionists and Reconstruction: A Critical Reappraisal," JSH, xxxiv (Nov. 1968), 527-545, Herman BeIz, "The New Orthodoxy in Recon­ struction Historiography," Reviews in American History, ι (1973), 106-113, and two works by George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: ISIorthern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1965), and The Black Image in the White Mind (New York, 1971). The interpretation of Andrew Johnson's role in reconstruction as presented in this study differs considerably from the analysis of Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960). Nevertheless, McKitrick raises important questions about the relation­ ship between the Southern question and the nature of the American party system. La Wanda and John Cox, Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865-1866: Dilemma of Reconstruction America (New York, 1963), presents a more detailed, believable picture of Johnson as a shrewd politician whose fundamental source of support was the Democratic Party, to which he had always belonged. Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lin­ coln's Secretary of War (New York, 1962), although valuable for the war years, is especially important for understanding the great differ­ ences between Lincoln and Johnson in their handling of the occupa­ tion experience in the South. John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln's Sec­ retary of the Navy (New York, 1973), and Michael Les Benedict, A Com­ promise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863-1869 (New York, 1974), also contain useful information on this problem. William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General 0. 0. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968), demonstrates Johnson's manipulation of the Freedmen's Bureau for conservative purposes. Although dealing primarily with the later phases of recon­ struction, Allen W. Trelease, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Con­ spiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York, 1971), offers impor­ tant evidence about the central role of political violence in the

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

conservative white response to the challenge of social change in the 1860s. The analysis of the revolutionary dimensions of the American Civil War presented in this book was originally stimulated by the seminal essay of C. Vann Woodward, "Equality: The Deferred Commitment," in Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, rev. ed. (Baton Rouge, 1968), 69-87, which I find more persuasive than the jaundiced "Seeds of Failure in Radical Race Policy," in Woodward, American Counterpoint: Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue (Bos­ ton, 1971), 163-183. My definition of the concept follows that of Harry Eckstein, "On the Etiology of Internal War," History and Theory, iv (no. 2, 1965), 133-163, and my discussion of "preemptive counterrev­ olution" follows that of Arno Mayer, Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870-1956: An Analytic Framework (New York, 1971). Two useful surveys of the literature on revolution by historians are Lawrence Stone, "Theories of Revolution," World Politics, xvm (April 1966), and Perez Zagorin, "Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiog­ raphy," Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVIII (March 1973), 23-52. The analysis of the nature of power and revolution in Ralf Dahrendorf, Essays in the Theory of Society (Palo Alto, Calif., 1968), provides the best exposition of the theoretical position I have adopted on these is­ sues. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democ­ racy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, 1966), treats the American Civil War as a revolutionary experience in his comparative history of the role of violence in modernization. Al­ though I share Moore's interest in comparative history, my interpreta­ tion of the American case is quite different. My interpretation of the role of ideology in the Civil War party system follows that of Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1969), James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Aboli­ tionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Prince­ ton, N.J., 1964), W. R. Brock, An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1867 (New York, 1963), W. Dean Burnham, "Party Systems and the Political Process," in William N. Chambers and W. Dean Burnham (eds.), The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York, 1966), 277-307, and Peyton McCrary, "The Civil War Party System, 1854-1876," a paper presented to the Southern Historical Association, Atlanta, November 1976.

Index Abbott, R. S., 254n Abell, Edmund, 244, 250-251, 258, 260, 261, 262, 263, 269-270, 308, 335 Aberger, John, 196 abolitionist movement, 67, 149-153, 256, 271, 2J5n, 289-290, 293294, 297-299; as an issue in the South, 49, 51-52, 56-57, 59, 65 absentee ownership, 29 African slave trade, effort to reopen, 48 Alexandria, La., 39, 60, 243, 322 Algiers, La., 74, 162, 223, 240, 252253, 268 Allen, Henry Watkins, 336 Allen, J. W., 168 American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, 153, 230, 299 American Missionary Association, 154, 158 Andrew, John A., 69, 256, 280 Annapolis, Md., 69-70 Antigua, 150 Antoine, C. C., 90 Arkansas, 30, 69, 233, 275-276, 278-280, 290, 305 army: role of, in reconstruction, 6, 10-H, 15, 17, 73, 75-76, 91-92, 101, 109,127,135, 145-146, 155, 161, 169, 171-172, 174, 185, 196, 199-200, 208, 220-223, 233-235, 237-239, 242-243, 278-279, 293, 302, 304, 306, 309-312, 314-315, 322-323, 346-347 Ascension Parish, 137, 141, 222 Ashley, James M., 103n, 190; recon­ struction bill, 1863, 193-194, 233-234, 275; reconstruction bill, 1864, 287, 289-292, 299, 351 Assumption Parish, 137, 252-253 Atlantic Monihly1Il, 151

Atocha, A. A., 242 Austin, Oliver W., 252 Avoyelles Parish, 38-39, 241, 250, 252 Baker, Joshua, 179 Balch, Joseph, 252 Baltimore, Md., 50, 69-70, 76, 273 Banks, Mary, 236, 320-321 Banks, Nathaniel P., 10, 15, 114, 121, 124, 127, 131, 141, 145, 154, 161,163, 169-170, 182, 19 In, 200n, 212, 215-216, 220221, 225n, 228, 237-239, 262, 295, 304, 310, 322, 326, 335, 346; seizes control of Louisiana recon­ struction, xi-xii, 4-8, 200-210, 211, 348; unrealistic optimism of, 105, 201, 205, 270; appearance and personality of, 110; adopts moderate policy of occupation, 110-112; first proclamation re­ garding slavery, 113; establishes free labor system, 115-120; fails to conciliate Confederate sym­ pathizers, 128-129; sets up ad­ ministrative structure for labor system, 135-136; sends Hepworth and Wheelock on inspection tour of sugar plantations, 136-140; impressment controversy with Gen. Ullman, 142-143; reverses Butler's policy of appointing Negro officers, 143, 181n; praises fighting ability of black troops, 144; labor system of, defended by Hepworth, 149-150; labor system of, evaluated by Northern intellectuals, 150-151, 154-156, 231-232; sets up freedmen's schools, 156-158, 347; hopes to build Republican majority among

INDEX

Banks, Nathaniel P. (cont.) whites, 159, 185-186, 344, 355; Lincoln urges to aid Union Asso­ ciation, 164, 171-174; backed by Era, 166-167; and "Masonic Hall" movement, 176-177; throws full support to Hahn, 207-208, 217, 222-223, 234-235; presidential ambitions of, 209-210; failure of compromise with radicals, 213214, 241-242; concept of revolu­ tion, 224-227, 349; intervention of, attacked by radicals, 232-234, 271, 279; on Red River campaign, 242-243, 266; and Negro suffrage issue at constitutional conven­ tion, 254-255, 263, 265; bears responsibility for conservatism of convention delegates, 256-257, 265, 349-350; secures support for freedmen's schools, 264-265; re­ placed in military command by Gen. Canby, 266; mobilizes elec­ toral vote for ratification, 267269; labor system of, as critical issue in Garrison-Phillips split, 271, 293-294, 297-298; lobbies in Washington for congressional recognition of Hahn regime, 282, 293, 297, 299, 351; writes pam­ phlet defending Louisiana recon­ struction, 282-285; persuades Lincoln that the Negro suffrage provision in the Ashley bill must be dropped, 289, 351; returns to New Orleans after war, 309; throws Wells' appointees out of office, 311, 314; removed from command by Johnson, 312, 315; comes out in favor of universal suffrage, 320-321 Baptists, 21, 29,56, 61-62 Barclay, Frank F., 116 Barrett, John T., 247 Barrow, Bennett H., 40-42 Bates, Edward, 165, 184, 187, 288 Baton Rouge, La., 26, 63, 85, 88,

110, 115, 136, 141, 196, 199, 222, 223, 246-249, 251, 259, 269 Baum, Joseph G., 248, 252 Bayou Boeuf, 38-39 Bayou Lafourche, 26 Bayou Teche, 26, 42, 129, 145-147 Beard, Charles A., 245 Beckwith, Edward G., 11Θ Bell, John, 53, 106, 159, 180; news­ paper support for, 53n; voter support for, I860, 54-56; be­ havior of constituency in secession election, 61-62, 344 Bell, Robert B., 248 Belmont, August, 94 Belz, Herman, 101η, 188, 191, 290n, 292 Benedict, Michael Les, 274n, 289n Benjamin, Judah P., 48, 215, 318, 343 Bennett, James Gordon, 192-193, 238 Bennie, Robert W., 252 Bertonneau, Arnold, 229-230, 255256, 300 Biddle, James C., 79-80 Bingham, John A., 103, 126n, 341 Bird, Francis W., 153, 302, 307 black codes, 1865, 326-328, 338339 Blair family, 187, 231, 308 Blair, Francis P., Jr., 180 Blair, Jacob, 102 Blair, Montgomery, 187, 288 Board of Education for Freedmen, 157-158,294, 325 Bofill, J. V., 252 Boisdore, Francois, 181-182 Bonzano, Dr. Max F., 96-97, 244, 249, 259, 261, 269,298 Boston, Mass., 117, 124, 167, 248, 256, 277, 311, 319 Bouligny, John E., 95, 98, 100 Boutwell, George S., 187, 255, 277, 313; confers with Lincoln on Louisiana reconstruction, 164n; and Banks' view of revolution, 224-225, 226

INDEX Bowen, James, 136, 235 Boyce, C. W., 243 Bragg, Braxton, 33n Breckinridge, John C., 160; splits Democratic Party, 1860, 50-52; newspaper support for, 53n; voter support for, 1860, 54-56; behavior of constituency in secession elec­ tion, 61-62, 344 Bromley, J. B., 252-253 Brooks, Noah, 3 Brott, George F., 248 Brown, B. Gratz, 195, 211, 276 Brown, John, 153, 309; raid on Harper's Ferry, Va., 49, 53, 67, 343; triggers Southern fear of revolution, 49, 343; Republicans disown raid, 52, 67 Browning, Orville H., 236 Buchanan, James, 48-49, 56, 353, 359 Bullitt, Cuthbert, 138, 208, 252; favors conservatives, 1863, 170, 176; criticizes radicals, 205n, 235; as delegate to Republican National Convention, 1864, 273; supports Wells, 1865, 311 Bureau of Finances, New Orleans, 250 Bureau of Free Labor, 11 Bureau of Negro Labor, 157 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. See Freedmen's Bureau Bureau of Streets and Landings, New Orleans, 253 Burke, Glendy, 315n Burnham, B. F., 325 Burnham, W. Dean, 353 Butler, Andrew, 94 Butler, Benjamin F., 73-74, 94-95, 99-100, 106-107, 143, 162, 169171, 197, 246, 255, 285, 346-347; occupation of Maryland, 69-70, 75-76; "contraband" policy at Fortress Monroe, 71-72; asserts federal authority in New Orleans, 75-82; controversy with Gen.

Phelps, 83-85, 87-89, 346; de­ cides to recruit Negro troops, 8890; lectures Gen. Weitzel on na­ ture of civil war, 91-92; orders payment of wages to blacks, 9293, replaced by Banks, 108-112; labor regulations of, compared with Banks' system, 118; Lincoln considers returning to command in Louisiana, 123-125 Butler, Edward George Washing­ ton, 139 Butler, L. S., 324 Butler, Sarah, 80, 100 Cabildo, New Orleans, 23, 25 Cable, George Washington, 19 Cailloux, Andre, 90 Calcasieu Parish, 30n Cameron, Simon, 281 Camp Parapet, 83-86, 147 Campbell, Benjamin H., 253 Canal Street, New Orleans, 23, 309 Canby, Gen. E.R.S., 330; replaces Banks, 266; clashes with Hahn regime, 304; cooperates with Gov. Wells, 315; supports Con­ way against Wells, 322; and Opelousas ordinance, 327 Capers, Gerald M., 15n Carondolet Street, New Orleans, 206, 318 carpetbaggers, 244, 246 Carrollton, La., 148, 1Θ2 Caskey, Willie M., 254n Catahoula Independent, 59-60 Catahoula Parish, 59-60, 64, 251 Catholics, 21, 23, 26, 28, 45, 46, 56, 260 Cazabat, Anthony, 217, 250, 251 Chandler, Zachariah, 187, 277 Charleston, S.C., 49-51, 65, 67-68, 137 Chase, Salmon P., 7n, 89-90, 100, 109, 123, 129,145, 178, 182183, 199, 213-214, 217, 220, 227, 242, 244, 263, 322; inter­ pretation of Lincoln's last speech,

INDEX

Chase, Salmon P. (cont.) 5-8; objects to white suffrage provision of ten-percent proclama­ tion, 7, 187; supports Louisiana radicals, 7-8; criticizes Banks' intervention, 7-8; stresses to Butler the political timeliness of recruiting black troops, 87-88; appoints antislavery Unionists to Treasury jobs, 97; tries to per­ suade Lincoln not to exempt southern Louisiana from Eman­ cipation Proclamation, 113-114; presidential ambitions of, 169171, 204, 221; personal envoys try to reunite radicals and mod­ erates, 223-224; resigns from cabinet, 276-277, 294; named chief justice, 288; interview with Johnson concerning Negro suf­ frage, 307; encourages Warmoth to advocate Negro suffrage, 314n; inspection tour in New Orleans, 1865, 319-320 Christy, Daniel, 268 City Hall, New Orleans, 76, 237 civil equality of blacks, as an issue, 13, 227-228, 231-232, 290291, 299, 328, 337 civil government, reorganization of, 4, 8, 10-12, 14, 94-96; via congressional elections, 96, 98101, 107, 215, 347; constitutional issues defined, 101, 107, 126; via constitutional convention, 103, 125-131, 163-165, 172-174, 182-183, 185, 190, 193-194, 199, 202, 206, 209, 213-214, 227, 229, 239, 241, 243-244, 283, 290, 34749; on basis of prewar constitu­ tion, 131-132, 175-178, 201-202, 205; voter registration for, 161162,164-165, 167, 169, 172-174, 182, 195-196, 199-200, 206, 209, 214, 227, 234-235, 275, 279, 283284, 286, 316-317, 347-349; on the basis of Negro suffrage, 184-186, 193-194, 202, 210, 229, 276, 286-

287, 289-291, 316-317, 348; and provisions of ten-percent procla­ mation, 188-191; gubernatorial election under prewar constitu­ tion with slavery provisions re­ moved, 203, 206-209, 213-214, 235, 237-239; provisions of Wade-Davis bill, 212, 233-234, 275-276, 282-287, 350-351; under Johnson, 305-308, 312-316, 335, 338-339; in northern Louisiana, 315, 322 Clement, Andrew, 102, 190 Colfax, Schuyler, 180, 193, 303, 306 Coliseum Place, New Orleans, 222 Collin, Emile, 247 Collins, John C., 228-229 Committee on Elections, U.S. House of Representatives, 102, 103, 104, 107, 233, 298 Committee on Territories, U.S. Senate, 275-276 Concordia Parish, 33, 36, 251-252 Confederacy and Confederates, 3, 8, 12-13, 25, 58-60, 65-69, 74, 76-81, 85, 88, 90-92, 96-98, 100102, 104, 106, 109, 122, 125-126, 128, 133, 135, 140-141, 143-146, 148, 160-162, 188-189, 194, 201, 204, 215, 217, 220, 223-224, 227, 233, 237, 249-250, 259, 276, 283, 285-286, 288-290, 293, 298-300, 304-306, 308, 312-313, 315, 316320, 322, 324, 335-336, 339-340, 344-346, 354-355 Confederate sympathizers, 70, 7582, 88, 98, 108, 112, 121-122, 126, 128, 225, 238, 253, 270, 282 Confiscation Acts, 73, 98 Connelly, Gillmore F., 58 Conservative Democrats, 1865, 336 Conservative Unionist Party, 1865, 335 Conservative Unionists, 1863-1864, 174, 223, 240-241, 315-316, 344, 347-348, 354 constitution of 1864 (Louisiana), 245, 266-269

INDEX constitutional convention, as basis of reconstruction. See civil govern­ ment, reorganization of constitutional convention of 1864 (Louisiana): social and political background of delegates, 244-253, 371-372; work of, 253-254, 256267. See also voting behavior, legislative constitutional conventions (ante­ bellum ): 1845, 42; 1852, 42, 259n; 1861, 63-64 Constitutional Union Party, 1860, 53-56, 159, 180, 344 Conway, Thomas W., 158, 325n; let­ ter from Lincoln concerning freedmen, 11-12; encourages Banks to set up freedmen's schools, 1863, 156-157; advocates radical altera­ tion of Southern social system, 157; establishes Freedmen's Bu­ reau in Louisiana, 1865, 322-325; fights with civil authorities under Wells, 327-328; land reform pro­ gram, 328-330; role in forming Louisiana Republican Party, 330331; removal ordered by Johnson, 336-338, 355 Cook, Terrence, 247 cooperationists, 57-60, 65; voting behavior of, 60-62; at secession convention, 63-64 Corps d'Afrique, 129, 140, 142-143, 147, 157, 322 correlation analysis, 32-33, 44, 45, 46n, 62, 345n; partial correla­ tions, 46n Cottman, Thomas, 99, 120, 131-132, 176, 178-180, 201-202 counterrevolution: preemptive, 1617, 65, 342-343; Banks on, 224227; Schurz on, 340 Covode, John, 306, 316-319 Cox, La Wanda and John, 306n Cox, Samuel S., 179 Cozzens, Samuel W., 136, 140-142 Crane, W. H., 218-219, 317

Creoles, 20, 22-24, 26, 46, 47, 98, 197, 244, 250 Crittenden, John J., 66-67, 353-354 Cromwell, Robert, 332-334 Crozat, F. M., 252 Customhouse, U.S., 23, 76, 252, 320-321 Cutler, R. King, 250, 299 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 17n Dalloz, Charles [pseud. Jean-Charles Houzeau], 296, 331, 333 Dana, Charles A., 144 Dartmouth College, 96-97 Daunoy, Valere, 215 Davis, Garrett, 107n Davis, Henry Winter, 70, 190, 193, 239, 275n, 290; and Etheridge plot, 179; attacks Lincoln's Louisiana policy, 233, 278-280, 292-293; Durant seeks aid of, 233, 285, 287; and Wade-Davis bill, 233-234, 276; attacks pocket veto of Wade-Davis bill, 277-278, 280; uses influence against renomination of Lincoln, 280-281 Dawes, Electa, 102n, 103n, 105n Dawes, Henry L., 206, 306; and admission of Flanders and Hahn, 102-105, 107; and Etheridge plot, 179; criticizes Ashley's recon­ struction bill, 292; favors ad­ mission of Bonzano, Field, and Mann, 298 Deer Range Plantation, 138 De Forest, John W., 75, 83-84, 91-92 Delseries, Emile, 318-319 Democratic Party, 9, 13, 18-19, 2324, 26, 28-29, 42-44, 45, 46-56, 67, 70-71, 74, 104-105, 107, 137, 159, 179-180, 191-192, 281, 288, 300, 302, 305, 308, 311, 335-336, 338, 342-345, 353-355 Denison, Mrs. E. S., 205n Denison, George S., 94, 113, 132, 170; assessment of Butler, 89-90, 100,123; background of, 97; and

INDEX Denison, George S. (cont.) election of 1862, 98-100; critical of Banks, 109, 120-121, 123, 128129; and establishment of New Orleans Times, 166; interview with Lincoln, 203-205; and Plumly plot, 203-205; changes view of Hahn camp, 208, 213, 217, 221, 223, 244, 256; view of constitutional convention, 256, 263; pressured by Lincoln to sup­ port ratification, 269 Dennis, Gen. Elias S., 144 Dennison, William, 288 Department of the Gulf, 97, 108, 111, 114, 123-125, 142, 158, 233, 288n, 299, 309 Desdunes, Rudolphe L., 331n Dickenson, Daniel, 274 Dixon, James, 187 Donald, David, xi, 292 Donaldsonville, La., 145, 154, 222 Dostie, Anthony P., 87n, 168, 183, 320; acquiesces to Negro demand for suffrage, 182; acquiesces to Banks' intervention, 213; active in ratification election, 268-269; attacks Wells' regime, 310, 312, 314; as state auditor, 312; re­ moved from office, 315 Dougherty, William, 327-328 Douglas, Stephen A., 57, 67, 106, 160, 301; as chief foe of Buchanan administration, 48-50; wins presi­ dential nomination, 1860, 50-51; unacceptable to South, 51-52, 353; supporters attack Breckin­ ridge camp as disunionist, 51-53; wartime Republicans drawn from camp of, 52, 53n, 345; voter sup­ port for, 1860, 54-56; constituency votes for cooperation, 1861, 6162, 344, 345n Douglass, Frederick, 189, 256 Dred Scott decision, 49, 184, 336, 353 Drew, Jane, 327-328 Duane, James, 252

Dufresne, P. L., 247 Duke, Robert J., 253 Dumas, Francis E., 90-91 Duncan, William, 244 Dunn, Oscar J., 331 Dunning, William A., 244 Dupaty, Joseph, 252 Durant, Thomas J., 164-165, 169170, 180, 182, 193, 201-203, 208, 216, 221-223, 255, 265, 275n, 288, 291, 297; active in Douglas camp, 1860, 52-53; as convention dele­ gate on cooperationist slate, 1861, 58; protests to Lincoln against Gen. Phelps, 87, friendship with Butler, 99-100; appearance and reputation of, 125; advocates re­ construction by constitutional convention, 126-127, 163, 347; elected chairman of Union As­ sociation, 129-130; appointed state attorney general by Shepley, 131, 161; urges Shepley and Banks to assist voter registration, 161-163; efforts to mobilize Union sentiment, 166-167; wealth of, 168; writes Lincoln to complain that military is not aiding voter registration, 171-173; letter angers Lincoln, 173-174; undertakes voter registration, 174, 199-200; warns of "Masonic Hall" move­ ment and contests legitimacy, 176-178; publicly advocates Negro suffrage, 183-185, 348; organizes Friends of Freedom convention, 194-196; successfully favors seat­ ing Negro delegations, 197-199; conservatives criticize in interview with Lincoln, 202, 348; addresses mass rally for convention election, 206-207; resigns as attorney gen­ eral to protest Banks' action, 209; accuses Hahn forces of pack­ ing nominating convention, 218, 220; willing to compromise with Hahn camp, 224; concept of revolution, 227-228, 349; develops

INDEX closer alliance with black com­ munity, 229-230; protests Banks' intervention to party leaders in Washington, 232-234, 239, 270; advocates boycotting convention election, 239, 241; criticized as legalistic by Banks, Plumly, 241242, 351; lobbies in Washington for Wade-Davis bill, 274, 279n; supplies data for Wade-Davis manifesto, 279; writes pamphlet attacking Banks' defense of Loui­ siana reconstruction, 285-287, 350; New Orleans Tribune de­ fends against Plumly's criticism, 294-295; helps form Freedmen's Aid Association, 295; Sumner sympathetic to, 299-300; speaks at Lincoln memorial, 309-310; tells Reid of Confederate control under Wells, 318; personal as­ sociations with Negroes, 319-320; effort to bridge gap between radi­ cals and Hahn camp, 321-322, 333; presides over first Republican convention, 332-335; refuses "ter­ ritorial delegate" seat, 335 Durell, Edward H., 99-100, 237, 250-251, 253, 261, 268, 321 Earhart, Thomas J.: on need for prolonged military occupation, 128; social background of, 168, 183n; heads Workingmen's Na­ tional Union League, 183; role at Friends of Freedom convention, 197-198; radical stance of, 198, 207, 216 East Baton Rouge Parish, 240 East Feliciana Parish, 28, 240 Eckstein, Harry, 17n, 356n ecological regression analysis, 43n, 55, 61-62, 345n, 357-363 Economy Hall, 229-230 Edwards, Henry C., 250 elections; mayoral, New Orleans, 1858, 24-25; gubernatorial, 1850, 44n, 45n, 46n; presidential, 1852,

46n; gubernatorial, 1852, 46n, 47; gubernatorial, 1855, 47; guberna­ torial, 1859, 47; presidential, 1860, 54-56; presidential, 1856, 55; secession convention, 1861, 60-62; congressional, 1862,100101; gubernatorial, 1864, 235, 240-241; constitutional conven­ tion, 1864, 244; constitution rati­ fication, 1864, 269; congressional, 1864, 269-270; presidential, 1864, 282; gubernatorial, 1865, 338; Republican "parallel," 1865, 338 electoral alignments; geographical basis of, 43-44, 45, 46-47, 54-56, 62, 240-241; in Jacksonian party system, 42-46 Eliot, Thomas D., 103, 126n, 232, 291-292 Elkins, Stanley M., 37n Emancipated Labor in Louisiana, 297 Emancipation Proclamation, 112114, 163, 195 Engerman, Stanley, 31n, 41n Ennis, James, 247 Epps, Edwin, 38-39 Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, 22, 24, 237-238 Etheridge, Emerson, 178-180, 354 ethnocultural awareness, 20, 22-26, 28, 45, 46, 47, 56, 82, 96, 98, 366-369 Farragut, David, 74, 81, 100 Fellows, J.Q.A.; impatient for early restoration, 175; interview with Lincoln, 175; gubernatorial nomi­ nee of Conservative Unionists, 1864, 223, 235; voter support for, 1864, 240-241; throws support to Wells, 1865, 315-316 Fernandez, Anthony, 197, 255 Fessenden, William P., 277 Field, A. P., 79; candidate of "Masonic Hall" movement, 1863, 175, 178; involved in Etheridge plot, 178-180; wins House seat on

INDEX Field, A. P. (cont.) Hahn ticket, 18Θ4, 269; knifes Kelley, 298; nominated for House by Conservative Union Party, 1865, 335 Field, David Dudley, 280-281 Fillmore, Millard, 55, 359 Finance Committee, U.S. Senate, 277, 301 First District Unconditional Union Club, 130 First District Union Association, 127 Fish, William R., 53n, 219, 243, 249, 252, 259, 320 Flagg, J. H., 253 Flanders, Benjamin F., 171, 172, 173n, 174, 178, 223, 230, 294, 300, 322; background, 96-97, 168; driven from New Orleans by Con­ federates, 96-97, 101, 106; wins seat in House, 98-100, 112; Denison characterizes as aboli­ tionist, 98; claims seat in House, 101-107, 180n, 190-191, 298; campaigns for Republicans in New Hampshire, 105, 107; hopes Lincoln will not exempt his dis­ trict from Emancipation Procla­ mation, 114; approves Banks' shift to more vigorous policy, 129; Lincoln urges Banks to consult, 164; misconceptions about role in political factionalism, 170-171; interview with Lincoln about re­ construction, 173, 182; presides over mass meeting demanding convention election, 207; tells Chase that Lincoln has lost much support by backing Banks' inter­ vention, 211; determined to fight Banks, 213-215; nominated for governor by Free State General Committee, 219; denounced as radical by Hahn forces, 221-222, 225-226, 241-242, 257; willing to discuss compromise with moder­ ates, 224; addresses rally of Negro political club, 229; protests to

Republican leaders about Banks' intervention, 232-234; runs third in gubernatorial election, 235; voting support analyzed, 240-241, 345n; pressured by Lincoln to support ratification, 269; praised by Kelley in House, 291; joins Durant in forming Freedmen's Aid Association, 295-296; turns over Treasury-controlled lands to Freedmen's Bureau, 328; role at convention founding Louisiana Republican Party, 333 Flood, Corporal, 138-139 Flood, Edmund, 246 Florida, 86, 97, 280, 290, 307 Fogel, Robert W., 31n, 41n Ford, William, 38 Formisano, Ronald P., 45n Fort Jackson, 74, 81-82 Fort Pickens, 67 Fort St. Philip, 74 Fort Sumter, 17, 65, 67-68, 237 Fortress Monroe, 70-72, 83 Fosdick, George A., 248, 258, 262 Fox, Gustavus V., 73-74 Franklin, Isaac, 35 Franklin, La., 327 Frederick, Md., 70 "Free State Citizens Ticket," 239240 Free State Executive Committee, 241 Free State General Committee, 7, 182, 195, 198-199, 202, 212-215, 219, 224, 229, 232, 239, 255 Free State Union Association, 198 freedmen, 267; terms of Banks' Gen. Order No. 12 provide partial emancipation, 115; not partici­ pants in shaping guidelines of Sequestration Commission, 115119; life in contraband camps, 136, 155, 231; willingness to work contingent on good treatment by employers, 137-138, 154, 323; punished harshly on some planta­ tions, 138-140; protest treatment

INDEX to Hepworth and Wheelock, 139; armed by Hanks and fight to defend homes, 141-142, 145; and impressment gangs, 142-143; conduct of troops under fire, 143145; armed insurrection by, 145146; reunite families by force, 147; independent behavior of, 148, 324, 346; treatment under Banks' regulations, 149, 155; in South Carolina sea islands, 151152; seek stable family life and landownership, 154, 296, 337; conditions of life improve in 1864, 156, 231; zeal for education, 156-157, 325-326; assaulted by whites, 323; mistreated in con­ tracts, 323; victimized in black codes, 326-328, 338-339; handle own cases in courts, 328; organize cooperatives, 328-329; vote for the first time in unofficial elections of Republican Party, 330-331, 338 Freedmen's Aid Association, 295296, 330 Freedmen's Bureau, 232, 280, 303; role in early reconstruction, 1112, 303, 322-330, 340; trans­ formed by Johnson, 12-13, 336337 Freedmen's Savings Bank, 337 Fremont, John C., 73, 195 French, Jonas M., 82, 114 French Market, 23, 82 French Quarter, 19, 22-25, 46, 98, 111, 238 Friends of Freedom convention, 7, 195-199, 208-209, 210n, 211 Friends of Universal Suffrage, 317, 321-322, 330-331, 332, 333 Fugitive Slave Act, 67, 71 Fuller, James, 250 Fullerton, James S., 329-330, 336337 Garden District, New Orleans, 24 Gardner, Franklin, 133 Garrison, William Lloyd, 189, 256,

275n; approves Banks' labor system, 12, 293-294; split with Phillips, 12, 271, 297-298 Gastinel, Louis, 248 Geier, George W., 248 German-American Association, 130 Germans, in New Orleans, 20, 2324, 56, 96, 99, 208, 222-223, 244, 249-250 Gerteis, Louis, 135n, 142n Gibson, Tobias, 327 Goldman, Edmund, 244, 247-248 Gorlinski, Joseph, 249, 259, 263 Graham, James, 168, 171 Grant, Ulysses S., 3, 125, 133, 266 Gruneberg, C.H.L., 252 Gunn, Thomas B., 118-119, 166n Gutman, Herbert G., 41n Guttman scale analysis, 257-258, 267n, 373-380 Hackett, D.L.A., 46n Hahn Club, 215 Hahn, Michael, 54, 106, 164, 169170,172, 178, 230, 243, 249-250, 259, 269, 271, 297-298, 303, 314, 320-321; serves on cooperationist executive committee, 58; runs for Congress, 99-100, 112; claims House seat, 101-107, 190-191; told by Lincoln of presidential support for convention idea, 127128, 132; analyzes constitutional issues for Lincoln, 129-132; speaks to rally in New York City, 167; social background of, 168; tells Lincoln that blame for slow progress of reconstruction rests with Union Association, 173; re­ ceives Banks' full support for gubernatorial campaign, 207-209, 220-223, 234-235, 349; buys True Delta, 207-208, 213; supports use of vagracy laws to keep blacks at work, 209; refuses compromise with leadership of Free State General Committee, 212-214, 216, 224, 241-242; campaign tech-

INDEX Hahn, Michael (cont.) niques, 215, 222-223; packs nominating convention, 216-220·, supporters mount racist campaign against Flanders, 221-222, 226, 228, 256-257, 349; wins gover­ norship, 235; inaugurated, 237; has little real authority, 238-239, 286, 350; Lincoln privately urges merits of Negro suffrage, 255; uses political influence to secure limited Negro suffrage resolution, 260, 262-265; addresses conven­ tion, 267; thinks Plumly's radical­ ism is useful window dressing for Louisiana delegation, 273n; changing congressional views of regime, 274, 299-302; supporters lose control of state and municipal governments to Wells, 304, 308310; Johnson expresses disap­ proval of regime, 307; resigns governorship to claim Senate seat, 308; introduces Warmoth to Stevens, 341 Halleck, Henry W., 144 Hamilton, Andrew J., 181 Hamilton, John R., 167, 171, 194, 218 Hamlin, Hannibal, 273-274 Hanks, George H., 142n, 156; as superintendent of Negro labor, 136, 141; sympathetic to arming blacks on plantations, 141-142, 144-145; opposition to impress­ ment, 142-143; establishes freedmen's schools in New Orleans, 1863,157-158 Harlan, James, 313 Harnan, Patrick, 247 Harrington, Fred H., 15n, 225n Harris, Ira, 190, 193-194 Harrison, Richard, 105 Hart, Edward, 247 Harvard University, 250 Hay, John, 110, 202n, 294; witnesses Etheridge confrontation, 179180; and ten-percent proclama­

tion, 186-187; on Louisiana con­ vention delegation, 272-273; witnesses pocket veto of WadeDavis bill, 277; and Ashley's re­ construction bill, 289 Healy, J. J., 247 Heard, Henry J., 251 Henderson, John, 300-301 Henderson, John Jr., 250, 310 Hepworth, George, 11 In; inspects plantations, 1863, 136-140; de­ fends Banks' labor system, 149150 Herron, Francis, 323 Hesseltine, William B., 14n Hicks, Thomas, 69-70 Hiestand, Ezra, 207, 244; favors prolonged military occupation, 127; active in Union Association, 1863, 166-168; social back­ ground, 168; seeks election to con­ stitutional convention, 239 Hightower, Allen W., 33n Hills, Alfred C., 166n, 199, 225226, 238, 241, 246, 258-259, 264, 282n Hills, Alfred G., 166n Hinton, Richard J., 150 Hire, William H., 168, 249, 320 Holabird, S. B., 136, 235 Homestead Act, 232 Hooper, Samuel, 117, 277, 311 Hooper, W. Sturgis, 116-117, 119 Homor, Charles W., 127, 167-168, 239, 242, 244 Houma, La., 222 Houzeau, Jean-Charles. See Dalloz, Charles Howard, Jacob, 300 Howard, Oliver Otis, 327; as com­ missioner of Freedmen's Bureau, 322; and land reform program, 328-330; and inspection tour in New Orleans, 337-338 Howard, Perry H., 44n Howe, Frank E., 223, 241-242 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 153 Howell, Rufus K., 250

INDEX Hoyt, Stephen, 242-243, 308 Hubbs, Isaac G., 154, 158 Hunter, David, 86 Hurlbut, Stephen A., 304 Hutchins, John, 183, 184n, 194; and Durant's support of Negro suffrage, 183-184; compares Loui­ siana radicalism with Ohio, 184, 199; observes Friends of Free­ dom convention, 199; on BanksHahn coup, 220-221; seeks to heal radical-moderate split, 223-224; favors congressional intervention, 234 Iberville Parish, 252 Illinois, 187, 267, 293, 301 Indiana, 104-105, 153 Ingraham, James H., 90, 295, 300, 331-332 Irish, in New Orleans, 20, 23-24, 56, 263, 264 Isabelle, Robert H., 90 Jackson, Andrew, 87-88, 90, 138 Jackson, Claiborne, 72 Jackson Parish, 33n Jackson Square, New Orleans, 23 Jamaica, 150-151 Jameson, John Alexander, 104n Jayhawkers, 59-60, 217, 243, 251 Jefferson City Association, 130 Jefferson, La., 162-163, 327 Jefferson Parish, 46, 240, 248, 251, 253 Jerrard, Simon G., 146 Jervis, Alfred, 167, 239, 291, 333 Johnson, Andrew, 327, 341; recon­ struction policy antithetical to Lincoln's, 12-13, 354-355; nomi­ nated for vice-presidency, 274; succeeds to presidency, 304; background, 305; political skill, 305-306; initially perceived as radical, 306-307, 314; criticizes Lincoln's Louisiana policy, 307; tells Schurz he hopes South will accept Negro suffrage, 307n;

North Carolina proclamation, 307-308, 312-314; opens secret negotiations with Northern Democrats, 308, 355; backs Wells' conservative takeover in Louisiana, 308, 310-312, 315-316, 355; sends Schurz on inspection tour of South, 313; conservatism of policy recognized by radicals, 313-314; praised by Wells and Louisiana Democrats, 316, 336; Banks refuses to criticize, 321; policy leaves blacks under con­ trol of conservative white court system, 328; orders cessation of Freedmen's Bureau land reform program, 329-330; orders Con­ way's removal, 336-337; disap­ proves Schurz's report on South­ ern conditions, 339-340; policy viewed as counterrevolutionary by Schurz, 339-340 Johnson, Bradish, 139 Johnson, Octave, 147-148 Johnson, Reverdy, 86-87, 187, 300301 Joint Committee on Reconstruction, U.S. Congress, 341 Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, U.S. Congress, 124 Judd, Norman, 187 Judiciary Committee, U.S. Senate, 293, 295 Julian, George W., 232 Kansas, 167, 280-281, 301, 353 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 301 Kavanagh, Michael D., 253, 310 Kelley, William D., 199, 290-292, 298 Kennedy, Hu, 310n, 315, 318, 327; supports planters' movement, 1863, 170; sells newspaper to Hahn, 208; becomes mayor in Wells' takeover, 1865, 308; cuts wages of city laborers, 310; visits Johnson with Wells, 311; seeks presidential pardon, 315n

INDEX Kenner, Duncan F., 141 Kentucky, 72-73, 288, 300 King, Preston, 311 Kingston, Samuel M., 142 Know-Nothing Party, 20, 23-25, 53-55, 180, 220, 343 Kugler, Peter A., 247 labor regulations, 92-94, 108-109, 115-120,135, 156, 323-324, 346347 Lafayette Parish, 42 Lafayette Square, New Orleans, 76, 237, 315 Lafourche district, 91-94 Lafourche Parish, 162, 222, 252253 Lake Pontchartrain, 22, 85 land values, 27, 33 landholdings, size of, 27-29, 30n Lane, James H., 282 Lawrence, Effingham, 137-138 Leaumont, Charles, 268 Leavens, Finian Patrick, 296n Lee, Robert E., 309, 318 legislative behavior: 47-49, 57, 6364, 77-78, 253-254, 258-260, 261267, 303-304, 338-339. See also voting behavior, legislative Le Grand, Julia, 122-123 Lewis, Seth, 195, 199 Liberator, 294, 297 Liberty Hall, 253, 262 Lincoln, Abraham, 71, 73, 89-90, 99-100, 123-124, 159, 170,175, 178-180, 207, 209, 210n, 225n, 227, 254, 266n, 275, 288n, 307, 312, 321; ten-percent proclama­ tion, xi, 4, 6-8, 14, 126, 185-193, 208, 234, 348; "model" of re­ construction, xi-xii, 4, 8-9, 13-14, 18, 212, 270-272, 290, 304, 317, 351, 355-356; as pragmatic poli­ tician, xi-xii, 13-14, 67, 304, 351-352, 356; open to more radical policy, xii, 4-6, 9-11, 13, 18, 70, 76, 87, 210-211, 356; dissatisfied with Hahn regime,

1865, xii, 9, 303-304, 351; last public address, 3-10, 303, 351; friendly with Sumner, 5, 299, 303; relationship with congres­ sional radicals, 5-6, 13, 187, 233, 271, 287-289, 351; "tangible nucleus" theory, 8-9, 173-174; publicly endorses Negro suffrage, 9, 351; proposes new reconstruc­ tion proclamation, 1865, 10-11, 306-307; last cabinet meeting, 10-11; view of freedmen's affairs, 11-12, 303n; witnesses slave auction in New Orleans, 25; as Republican presidential nominee, 1860, 51-52; Southern impressions of, 1860, 51-52, 57-58, 67; uses 1860 vote as yardstick for war­ time voter registration, 54; op­ poses Crittenden compromise, 66; seeks status quo during secession crisis, 68; policy toward border states, 69-70, 72-73; authorizes Butler to bombard Maryland cities if necessary, 70, 76; and Butler-Phelps controversy, 84-88; proposes preliminary emancipa­ tion proclamation, 86; criticizes timidity of Louisiana Unionists, 87; presses Butler and Shepley to facilitate political reconstruc­ tion, 94-95, 98, 101-102, 347; good relationship with Congress aids House decision to seat Flanders and Hahn, 107; friendly with Banks, 110; exempts occupied Louisiana from Emancipation Proclamation, 112-114, 119; en­ dorses idea of constitutional con­ vention as first step in reconstruc­ tion, 127-128; planters send delegation to ask presidential protection for slavery, 131-132; rebuffs planters, 132-133; urges Banks to aid Union Association, 164, 173-174, 182, 347; instructs Stanton to provide Shepley with guidelines for voter registration,

INDEX 165; angry with Durant, 171-173; tells Flanders that reconstruction must begin immediately, despite small area under occupation, 173, 182; authorizes Banks to take full command of Louisiana re­ construction, 200, 202, 205; misled by Banks, 203, 206, 210, 348; interview with Denison concerning Banks' plan, 204-205; appoints Hahn military governor to augment authority, 238, 286; receives Roudanez and Bertonneau, 255; urges Hahn privately to push for Negro suffrage, 255; urges ratification of new con­ stitution, 267, 269; renominated with Johnson as running mate, 273-274; pocket veto of WadeDavis bill inspired by need to retain Hahn regime, 277-279, 351; withdrawal from presidential race demanded, 280-281; reelec­ tion strengthens hand in dealing with Congress, 282, 287-288, 291-292, 351; uses Banks as a lobbyist for Louisiana recogni­ tion, 293, 351; gains Garrison's support, 294, 297-298; Sumner defeats Louisiana recognition strategy, 299, 302; uses political influence to secure passage of 13th Amendment, 302; memorial addresses for, 309; polarization between President and Demo­ crats on reconstruction issues, 354 Lincoln, Mary, 303, 311 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 62n Lobdell, Sidney, 254n Louisiana Native Guard, 90-92, 94 Louisiana Staatszeitung, 214n Louisiana State Seminary, 60 Louisville, Ky., 195, 198 Lovell, Mansfield, 76 LyUnion, 181, 199, 229, 261, 294 Lutherans, 260

Lyceum Hall, 95, 125-126, 129, 183, 194, 196, 218-221, 230, 253 Maas, H., 244 McClellan, George, 74, 281, 354 McClelland, John, 215, 220 McCollam, Andrew, 53n, 58, 6465, 122, 176 McCollam, Andrew Jr., 58, 65, 122 McCollam, Ellen, 64 McCulloch, Henry E., 144 McKaye, James M., 275n; back­ ground, 153; assesses Banks' labor system, 153-156, 230-232; sup­ ports Durant and his allies, 230231 McKitrick, Eric, 356n McPherson, Edward M., 340-341 McPherson, James M., 16n McWhirter, John, 168 Madison Parish, 248 Magnolia Plantation, 137 Maine, 277 Malhiot, E. E., 120, 131-132, 176 Mann, William D., 248, 259, 269, 298 Mansfield, battle of, 266 maroons, 38, 40, 147-148 Martin, John, 327 Maryland, 69-71, 179, 187, 190, 233, 273, 277, 300 "Masonic Hall" movement, 175-178, 181, 185, 195, 201, 278, 308, 344 Massachusetts, 69, 78, 102n, 103, 108, 110, 117, 152-153, 179, 187, 201, 256, 277, 280, 290, 301-303, 307, 311, 321 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 97 Maurer, Xavier, 247 May, Thomas P., 168, 285; finances New Orleans Times, 166, 223; conflict with constitutional con­ vention, 266; pressured by Lincoln to support ratification, 268-269; entertains Chief Justice Chase, 319 Mayer, Arno J., 17η, 343n

INDEX Maynard, Horace, 102, 107, 190, 273 Mendiverri, Antonio, 250 Mercer, William N., 79-80 Methodists, 29 Miles, William Porcher, 62 Miller, William R., 168 Milliken's Bend, battle of, 144 Millspaugh, Howard, 248 Minor, William ]., 138n, 176 Mint, U.S., 76, 81, 96, 244, 249 Mississippi River, 20, 25-27, 29, 31, 59, 74-75, 88, 108, 110, 114, 123, 125, 144, 299, 325 Missouri, 73, 187, 195, 210-211, 273, 276, 300, 314 Mobile, Ala., 266 Monroe, John T., 74, 76-77, 80-82,

220 Monroe, La., 329 Montague, Robert V., 248 Montamat, John P., 250, 252 Moore, Thomas O., 56-57, 78-80, 102, 148 Morgan, Edwin D., 276-277 Morris, Robert, 252 Morse, John F., 183η, 184n Morton, Oliver P., 153, 281 multiple regression analysis, 55-56, 61n, 62, 364-369 Mumford, William, 81 Natchez, Miss., 29, 33, 42 National Anti-Slavery Standard, 137, 297 National Equal Rights League, 295296, 332 National Union Republican Club, 317n, 320-321 nativism, 24-25, 46-47, 56, 82, 343 Negro suffrage, 208; issue triggers Banks' intervention, xii, 7-8, 186, 209-210, 224-225, 348; Lincoln endorses, xii, 8-10, 351; black demands for, 4, 181-182, 229-230, 255, 309; New Orleans radicals advocate, 7, 182-186, 197-198, 227-229, 348-350; Lincoln pub­

licly opposes during war, 8, 13, 186; proposed for new reconstruc­ tion proclamation, 1865, 10-11, 306-308; and ambiguous guide­ lines from Lincoln and Stanton, 1863, 164-165; Ashley includes in reconstruction bill, 193-194; as issue at Friends of Freedom convention, 197-199, 210n; Riddell denounces in interview with Lincoln, 202; Banks fails to tell Lincoln about, 202, 210, 348; moderates use as issue against radicals, 221-222, 225-226, 344; McKaye advocates, 231-232; Davis fails to include in recon­ struction bill, 234, 275, 351; Thorpe assesses prospects for in constitutional convention, 254255; Lincoln petitioned by Roudanez and Bertonneau, 255; Lincoln privately urges Hahn to support, 255; Sumner presents petition to Senate, 255; Denison assesses prospects for in conven­ tion, 256; as issue in constitu­ tional convention, 257-258, 261263, 349-350; linked to recogni­ tion of Louisiana, 271, 287, 289292, 351; Phillips advocates, 272; in Montana, 275n; added briefly to Wade-Davis bill, 276; Durant avoids issue in public letter to Davis, 286; included in Ashley's second reconstruction bill, 287, 289-292, 351; moderate Negro leaders support partial enfran­ chisement, 296; Republican leaders urge upon Johnson, 307, 313; absence of, in North Caro­ lina proclamation, 308, 312-313; Johnson assures Democrats of his opposition, 308; Warmoth ad­ vocates, 314; Wells denounces, 316; Covode advocates, 316-317; Friends of Universal Suffrage campaign for, 317, 330-332; Taliaferro on, 317; Durant de-

INDEX mands, 319; Banks supports, 320321; Conway advocates, 322, 330-331; first implemented in Republican "parallel" elections, 330-331, 334-335; attacked by Democrats, 336; Schurz advo­ cates, 340 Negroes (antebellum free people of color), 15; in antebellum New Orleans, 15, 21, 47-48; service in Corps d'Afrique, 90-92; Dumas family, 91; removed as officers of black troops, 143, 181; de­ mand suffrage, 1863, 181-182; representatives seated at Friends of Freedom convention, 197-199; participation at radicals' rallies derided by Era, 221-222; Union Radical Association rallies, 229230; dispatch Roudanez and Bertonneau to Washington and Boston, 229-230, 255-256; view of constitutional convention, 1864, 261-262; attack Plumly and defend Durant, 294-295; advocate land reform, 295; found National Equal Rights League, 295-296; found Freedmen s Aid Association, 295-296; campaign against segregated streetcars, 296; moderates petition for partial enfranchisement, 296; radicals favor universal suffrage, 296-297, 309; praise Lincoln, 309; rep­ resented proportionally in leader­ ship of Friends of Universal Suffrage, 317; interracial social gatherings, 319-320; and freedmen's schools, 326; support Con­ way as Bureau commissioner, 330; vote for first time in unof­ ficial elections of Republican Party, 330-331, 338; active par­ ticipants in formation of Repub­ lican Party, 331-334 New England Anti-Slavery Society, 275n New Hampshire, 96, 105, 250

New Orleans, 6-7, 15, 63, 145, 152, 154, 165, 175, 205, 282, 294; free men of color, 15, 21, 47; physical appearance of, 19, 2224; as marketing and credit center for plantation system in deep South, 19-20, 25; CreoleAmerican cultural conflict, 20, 2324, 46; violence in, 20, 24-25; immigrant population, 20, 2324, 56, 96, 99, 208, 222-223, 244, 249-250, 263-264; Northernborn population, 22, 25, 245-256; municipal districts, 22-23, 24; distribution of wealth, 24; labor movement, 24-25; antebellum municipal government dominated by Know-Nothing Party, 24-25, 47; image in North, 25; political clubs, 1860, 53-54; voting be­ havior, 1860, 54-56; cooperationists in, 58; voting behavior, 1861, 60-62; capture of, 74; Confederate sympathies in, 7476, 79-82, 121-122; Butler asserts federal authority in, 75-82, 108109; relief measures in, 78, 82, 109; municipal government ap­ pointed by military, 82, 97-98, 169-171, 238; recruitment of free men of color in, 87-90; slave insurrection in, 88-89; Unionist political activity under Butler, 94-101, 109; Banks takes over command, 110-112; convention movement in, 125-131, 163-165; Negro schools in, 157-158; voter registration in, 162, 174, 199-200, 234-235; free state movement in, 166-174, 194-199, 206-207; Negro political activity in, 181182; Durant proposes Negro suf­ frage in, 183-185, 197-199; Banks announces intervention, 206-207; free state movement splits into radical and moderate wings, 207220; gubernatorial campaign in, 221-229; gubernatorial election,

INDEX New Orleans (cont.) 1864, 235, 240-41; convention election in, 244; constitutional convention in, 245-254, 256-267; ratification election in, 267-270; black political activity in, 295296; campaign against segregated streetcars in, 296; reports of cor­ ruption in Hahn regime, 303304; Wells throws Hahn's men out of office, 308-310, 314-315; Lincoln memorial meeting in, 309-310; Hahn forces hold rallies, 310, 314, 320-321; Wells-Johnson rally, 315-316; Friends of Uni­ versal Suffrage in, 317, 322, 330331; return of Confederates, 317319; interracial social gatherings, 319-320; freedmen's schools in, 325-326; fight over racial restric­ tions in, 327; convention found­ ing Louisiana Republican Party in, 332-335; gubernatorial cam­ paign in, 1865, 335, 338; Howard's visit to, 337-338; Schurz's visit to, 339 New Orleans Bee, 52-53, 57, 59 New Orleans Charity Hospital, 96 New Orleans Crescent, 53n, 57 New Orleans Daily Delta, 51, 53n, 96, 109 New Orleans Daily Picayune, 25, 219-220, 238 New Orleans Era, 121, 127, 166, 169, 195, 198, 207, 208, 213, 216, 219-221, 223-226, 235, 238, 241, 246 New Orleans Times, 166, 169, 171, 183, 184, 207, 213, 215-216, 218220, 223, 266, 268-269, 310 New Orleans Tribune, 294-296, 299, 309, 317, 329, 331n, 338, 355 New Orleans Tropic, 97 New Orleans True Delta, 51-52, 53n, 57, 77, 170, 208, 213, 308 New York City, 25, 124, 153, 167, 248, 280

New York Evening Post, 285 New York Herald, 192-193, 246, 303 New York Metropolitan Record, 192 New York State, 38, 128, 190, 246, 274, 276-277 New York Times, 75, 101, 144, 167, 183n, 194-195, 216, 218, 238, 244 New York Tribune, 96, 101, 118, 121, 128, 149, 166-167, 205, 212, 216-217, 218n New York World, 191-192 Newell, John A., 217, 252 Nicolay, John, 186, 187 Normand, Louis P., 247, 252 North Carolina, 69, 190, 307-308, 312-313 Northrup, Solomon, 38-39 Norton, Charles Eliot, 151-153 O'Connor, Patrick K., 247 Ohio, 103, 179, 183-184, 193, 199, 220-221, 288, 301, 341 Oldschue, Jerry C., 61n, 63n Olmsted, Frederick Law, 28, 151153 Ong, Thomas, 251n Opdyke, George, 280 Opelousas, La., 322, 326-327 Orr, Benjamin H., 310 overseers, 37-38, 93, 136, 139, 148 Owen, Robert Dale, 153 Page, Edward, 83, 121 Paine, Jansen T., 249 Parker, John M. G., 215 Payne, John, 247 Pennsylvania, 199, 273, 276, 290291, 316 Pennsylvania, University of, 125 Perman, Michael, 18n Peterson, Norma L., 195n Phelps, John W., 83-89, 92, 94, 346 Philadelphia, 25, 145, 167, 171, 190, 204, 216, 242, 291, 294 Phillips, Wendell, 271n; on Lin­ coln's "model of reconstruction," xi, 4, 212, 271-272; criticizes

INDEX Banks' labor system, 11-12, 297; Durant compared with, 125, 295; Olmsted's views similar to, 152; demands Negro suffrage, 189, 272; welcomes Roudanez and Bertonneau, 256; split with Garrison, 271, 275n, 294, 297298; analysis of reconstruction, 271-272, 356; advocates land reform, 272; criticizes Louisiana experiment, 290, 298; praised by New Orleans Tribune, 295; on good terms with Sumner, 299; praises Sumner for filibuster against Louisiana recognition, 302; suggests parliamentary strategy for postponing restora­ tion of former Confederate states, 340; approach to reconstruction, 356 Pickens, Francis, 68 Pierce, Edward L., 71 Pierpont, Francis H., 72 Pinchback, P.B.S., 90, 181 Pintado, Eudaldo J., 252 Pioneer Lincoln Club, 215 plantations: slave, 26-33, 35, 4042, 75, 93-94; free labor, 121, 136-141, 147-148, 154-155, 319, 323-324, 327, 328-329; govern­ ment-operated, 136, 140-141, 144-145, 329 planters: political role of, 19, 34, 42-43, 53n, 58-60, 63-65, 75, 7778, 131-134, 165, 174-180, 201203, 208-209, 240-241, 251, 308, 335-336, 338-339, 342-343, 347348; slaveholding, 19, 27-33, 35, 37-38, 40-42, 83-84, 92-94, 109; after slavery, 116, 118-122, 136141, 145-149, 154-155, 323-325, 327-330 Plaquemines Parish, 93, 138, 140, 148, 154, 240 Pleasant Hill, battle of, 266 Plumly, B. Rush, 208, 213, 230, 297; as Garrisonian abolitionist, 145, 170; defines the war as a

revolution, 145, 229; friendly with Banks, 158, 170, 294; seeks to advance presidential ambitions of Chase, 204, 221; addresses black political club, 229; de­ nounces Durant and Flanders, 241-242, 294; serves as token radical in Louisiana delegation to Republican National Convention, 273n; important influence in winning Garrison's support for Banks' labor system, 294; breaks with Chase, 294; conflict with New Orleans Tribune, 294-295 Plumly, John S., 145, 147 political campaigns: presidential, 1860, 49-54; secession conven­ tion, 1861, 57-60; congressional, 1862, 95, 98-100; gubernatorial, 1864, 212-229, 234-235; con­ stitutional convention, 1864, 239, 241-243; constitution ratification, 1864, 267-269; presidential, 1864, 271-274, 280-282; gubernatorial, 1865, 335-338 Pomeroy, Samuel, 280, 301 Port Hudson, battle of, 125, 129, 133, 143, 154, 161, 163, 196 Port Hudson, La., 196, 240, 247, 249 Porter, David D., 74 Powell, Lazarus, 300 Poynot, O. H., 246 preemptive counterrevolution. See counterrevolution Presbyterians, 29 Protestants, 21, 23, 25, 28, 29, 46, 56 provost marshals, 120-121, 136, 138141, 147, 149, 155, 165, 323, 327328, 347 Pugh, Alexander F., 139 Purcell, John, 248 Pursell, Samuel, 248, 262 Quincy, Josiah M., 310 Quincy, Samuel M., 311, 314, 327 Radical Democratic Party, 27 In Rankin, David C., 332n

INDEX

Rapides Parish, 29, 59, 217, 243, 250-251 Raymond, Henry J., 281 Ready, Dr. James, 197, 229, 239 reconstruction: as a problem in party formation, xi, 4, 8-9, 13, 15, 18, 66-67, 159-161, 166-172, 174-180, 185, 195-199, 207-211, 214-232, 234-236, 239-245, 254-256, 260, 265, 267-270, 272-274, 295-296, 300, 303-304, 308-317, 320-322, 330-338, 344-345, 347-356; con­ gressional consideration of, 66-67, 73, 83, 86, 101-107, 178-180, 186-191, 193-194, 232-234, 255, 271, 274-276, 287-293, 298-303, 340-341, 350-352 Red River campaign, 242-243, 266 Reese, Daniel H., 324, 337 Regeneration Club of Lafourche, Terrebonne, and Assumption, 195 Registrar of Voters in New Orleans, 162

registration of voters. See civil gov­ ernment, reorganization of Reid, Whitelaw, 339; reports Durant's protest campaign against Bank's intervention, 1864, 233n; describes resurgence of reaction­ ary forces in postwar New Or­ leans, 318-320; characterizes Durant as radical, 319; criticizes racial prejudice in New Orleans, 319-320; describes freedmen's schools, 325-326 Republican Party (Louisiana), 16, 18, 53n, 159-161, 166, 177, 195, 204, 304, 309-310, 317n, 330-333, 337-338, 341, 345, 347-351 RepublicanParty (national), 13, 16-18, 49-52, 57, 66-67, 97, 101102, 103, 124,138, 153, 159,167, 177, 179-180, 183, 189-191, 195, 204, 209, 220, 232, 251, 256, 272, 280-281, 286-287, 294, 302-306, 308, 314, 333, 340-342, 350, 352-353 revolution: concept of, xii, 16-18,

355-356; American Civil War as, 16-18, 342-356; "Black Republi­ can," 49, 51-52, 79; Butler as agent of, 109; and blacks as revo­ lutionary mass, 145-146; Olmsted on, 152; Conway on, 157; Durant on, 184, 227-229, 349; Banks' idea of, 224-227, 349; Hills on, 225226; Collins on, 228; Plumly on, 229; McKaye on, 231; Phillips on, 272; Tribune on, 296-297; Schurz on, 340 Riddell, James L., 175, 201-203 Ripley, C. Peter, 15n, 210n Rogers, Stephen W., 198 Roper, Laura Wood, 152n Rose, Willie Lee, 16n Roselius, Christian, 85, 175, 223, 225, 253 Rost, Reuben A., 122 Roudanez, Jean Baptiste, 300; pe­ titions for Negro suffrage, 229230, 255-256; influences Lincoln's attitude toward Negro suffrage, 255; role in forming Louisiana Republican Party, 331; appears at rally with Howard, 338 Roudanez, Louis Charles, 296, 331 Rougelot, Alfred, 195 Rozier, J. Ad., 63-64, 99-100, 174, 223 Russell, Thomas B., 268 St. Bernard Parish, 93,139, 147-148 St. Charles Hotel, 19, 23, 76, 111, 118-121, 131, 317 St. Charles Parish, 121, 147 St. Charles Theater, 100, 199, 206 St. James Parish, 148 St. John the Baptist Parish, 238 St. Landry Parish, 327 St. Louis Cathedral, 21 St. Louis Hotel, 19, 23 St. Martin's Parish, 146, 328 St. Martinsville, La., 146 St. Mary Parish, 196, 199, 252, 265 Sanborn, Frank, 150 Sarta, Justin, 195

INDEX Sawyer, Silas W., 139-140 "scalawags," antebellum political background of, 52, 53n, 344 Schnurr, Martin, 247 Schroeder, J. B., 248 Schurz, Carl, 307n, 313, 339-340 Scott, Winfield, 70-72 secession. See counterrevolution, preemptive secessionists, 16, 56-60, 65, 342343; voting behavior of, 60-62; at convention, 63-64 Seddon, James, 268 Select Committee on Reconstruc­ tion, U.S. House of Representa­ tives, 234, 289 Sequestration Commission, 93, 112, 115, 118 Seward, William H., 86, 187 Seymour, William Henry, 252 Shaw, Alfred, 249, 310, 320, 341 Shenandoah Valley, 110, 281 Shepley, George F., 99-100, 102104, 128, 173, 183, 193, 201-203, 230, 235, 238, 286; named mili­ tary mayor of New Orleans by Butler, 81; receives delegation from Confederate school board, 82; appointed military governor of state, 95; sets up municipal government, 97-98; orders con­ gressional election, 1862, 98; tells planters' committee he will ap­ point police juries from local elites and allow patrols, 120, 347; Union Association asks authority to begin voter registration, 130; names Durant attorney general and commissioner of registration, 131; delays further action, 131, 162-163, 171-172, 182-183, 185, 347; ordered by Lincoln to ini­ tiate registration, order an elec­ tion, and count ballots, 164-165; authorizes payment of registrars by army, 174, 199; and contro­ versy over "Masonic Hall" elec­ tion, 175-178; asked by Negro

rally to order voter registration among blacks free before the war, 181-182; free state movement asks immediate order for convention election, 195, 206, 209; writes again to Washington for permis­ sion to order election, 200 Sheridan, Philip, 281, 318 Sherman, John, 301 Sherman, William T., 60, 281, 306307 Shreveport, La., 322, 324 Shugg, Roger W., 15n, 245-246 slaveholders, 65; economic role of, 27-33; attitude toward nonslaveholders, 28, 56, 65; attitude toward slave families, 35, 36-37; attitude toward slave personality, 37-38; willingness to use force, 38-42; dominate Louisiana poli­ tics, 42-43; voting behavior of, 56, 62, 366-369; Unionists among, 58-60, 64-65; dominate secession convention, 63; demand return of runaway slaves, 76-77, 83-84, 86-87; abandon plantations during war, 91-92; property sequestered in Lafourche district, 93; and labor system, 94; negotiate with Banks and Sequestration Com­ mission to retain property rights in slaves, 115-119 slaveholdings, size of, 27-30, 35 slavery; abolition of, 6, 18, 115, 302-303, 345-346; desire of seces­ sionists to preserve, 16-17, 34, 49, 56-59, 65, 68; destroyed by dis­ locations of war, 17, 71, 82-85; as cornerstone of Southern society, 19, 57, 65, 79; interstate trade, 19-25; as an economic system, 27-32; profitability of, 30-32; and distribution of wealth, 32-33; as an influence on voting behavior, 43-44, 56, 62; efforts to reopen African trade, 48; as issue in national politics, 48-52; Lincoln's policy toward, 67-68, 73, 84-87,

INDEX Slavery (cont.) 93-94, 112-114; Butler protects in loyal Maryland, 69; and con­ traband policy at Fortress Mon­ roe, 71-72; congressional policy toward, 66-67, 73, 83, 86; Butler respects rights of loyal slaveown­ ers, 76-77, 83-84; Phelps' attitude toward, 82-85; and Butler's Gen. Order No. 91, 92-94; opposed by Durant, 100; Emancipation Proclamation exempts occupied Louisiana, 112-114; proclamation leaves legal status of institution ambiguous, 114; ended by Banks' military authority in Gen. Order No. 12, 115 slaves, 65; resistance and runaways, 21, 34, 38-41, 42, 88-89, 92; as workers, 27, 31, 37-38; separate culture of, 34-38; stereotypes, 37; attitude toward Butler's troops, 74-75, 91; flee plantations, 83-84, 87-88, 114; debate on enlistment of, 86-89; in Louisiana Native Guards, 90; and Emancipation Proclamation, 112-113; urged by Banks to remain on plantations, 113; life in contraband camps, 114-115; Banks frees by military authority, 115 Slidell, John, 48, 215, 342; role in Buchanan administration, 48-49; attitude toward Douglas, 48-51; role in splitting Democratic Party, 1860, 49-51; influence on seces­ sion, 56-57; on the prospect of war in 1861, 56n Smith, Charles, 252, 265, 267, 299 Smith, Kirby, 201, 315 Soule, Pierre, 50, 54, 58, 77 Soulie, Bernard, 332-333 South Carolina, 57-58, 62, 68, 86, 100; sea islands of, 83, 86, 151154 Southern Rights Association, 57 Speed, James, 10-11, 288, 313 Stampp, Kenneth, 37n

Stanton, Edwin M., 74, 76, 88, 90, 130-131, 153, 339; drafts Lin­ coln's proposed reconstruction proclamation, 10-11; interpreta­ tion of Lincoln's last speech, 10; and Butler-Phelps controversy, 83-85; and question of arming blacks, 86; and idea of returning Butler to Louisiana command, 123-124; issues Lincoln's voter registration guidelines to Shepley, 163-165; and fate of Lincoln's reconstruction proclamation under Johnson, 306-308; dispatches Covode to investigate Louisiana affairs, 1865, 316 Stauffer, Cyrus W., 252, 261 Stevens, Thaddeus, 103n, 180n, 276, 292; objects to provisional seating of Cottman and Fields, 180; leads establishment of Select Committee on Reconstruction, 193; objects to seating Southern convention delegates at Baltimore, 273; denounces pocket veto of Wade-Davis bill, 278; critical of Ashley's amended reconstruction bill, 292n; denounces Johnson's North Carolina proclamation, 313; moves creation of Joint Com­ mittee on Reconstruction, 340; offers Warmoth floor privileges in House, 341 Stewart, William H., 243 Stickney, W. B„ 322-324, 328 Stiner, J. H., 252, 267 Stith, Gerard, 25 Stacker, W. T., 58, 248 Stone, L. M., 146 Straight, Stephen, 244 Strother, David Hunter, 110-112, 115-119 Stumpf, John, 249 Sullivan, James P., 215 Sullivan, John, 247, 263-264, 310 Summers, Henry M., 215 Sumner, Charles, 288, 290, 339; and Lincoln's last speech, 5;

INDEX urges AFIC to investigate Louisi­ ana freedmen's affairs, 153-154; approves ten-percent proclama­ tion, 187; McKaye writes con­ cerning Louisiana politics, 230231; presents Negro suffrage pe­ tition to Senate, 255-256; Vigert writes concerning constitutional convention, 261-262; leads con­ gressional opposition to Banks' Louisiana regime, 271, 299-302; and Wade-Davis bill, 277; New Orleans Tribune praises, 295; committed to complete equality, integration, and land reform for blacks, 299-300; filibusters Loui­ siana recognition bill, 300-302; personal friendship with Lincoln family, 303; presses Stanton to favor Negro suffrage, 306; inter­ view with Johnson on Negro suf­ frage, 307; urges Schurz to go on Southern investigation for John­ son, 313; offers Warmoth floor privileges in Senate, 341; ad­ vocates a more practical approach to reconstruction than Banks, 356 Taliaferro, Henry, 60 Taliaferro, James G., 59-60, 64-65, 251, 272, 317, 335n Taliaferro, Robert W., 59-60, 218, 251, 272 Taney, Roger, 288 Tappan, Lewis, 150 Taylor, Joe Gray, 15n Taylor, Richard, 28, 141 Taylor, Zachary, 138, 246 Tennessee, 69,102, 107, 178, 190, 272-274, 291, 305 Terrebonne Parish, 162, 222, 252, 327 Terry, J. Randall, 247-248, 265, 310, 315 Tewell, James, 167, 198 Texas, 30, 97, 123, 164, 181, 201 Theard, Paul, 308 * Thibodaux, La., 136, 222-223

Third African Church of New Orleans, 295 Thirteenth Amendment, 278, 302, 304n Thomas, John W., 250, 268 Thorpe, Thomas B., 82, 98, 169, 171, 246, 249, 254-255, 257, 260, 262, 314 Tibeats, John, 38 Train, Henry W., 168 Treasury, U.S., 7, 10, 96-97, 138, 168-171, 173, 204, 208, 223-224, 241-242, 245, 248, 252-253, 276277, 319, 328 Trumbull, Lyman: and admission of Arkansas delegation, 275-276; Lincoln urges support of Louisi­ ana recognition, 293; committee hears Banks' testimony, 293; fights against Senate filibuster, 299-302 Tucker, James, 242 Ullman, Daniel, 142-144 Unconditional Union Club of West­ ern Louisiana, 217 Union Association of New Orleans, 7, 95-96, 99-100, 125-126, 128132, 134, 160-168, 170-171, 173176, 178, 181-182, 188, 194-195, 207, 217, 250, 345, 347, 348 Union League, 168 Union Radical Association, 229, 261 United Southern Action ticket, 58-

60 Van Alstyne, Lawrence, 147, 243 Vicksburg, Miss., 29, 33, 125, 133, 248 Vigert, William, 261-262 Vincent, Charles, 331n, 332n Virginia, 69, 71-73, 102, 110, 113, 190, 281 Voorhees, Daniel, 104-105 Voorhies, Albert, 336 voter turnout, 42-43, 54-56, 61-62, 100-101, 102, 107, 235, 244, 269, 338, 344, 357-369 voting behavior: stability and

INDEX voting behavior (cont.) change in, 55, 61-62, 345, 359363; social background of, 55-56, 62, 366-369; legislative, 257-258, 260-261, 262-267, 373-380 Wade, Benjamin F., 288, 301, 316; obtains passage of Wade-Davis bill, 275-276; and Wade-Davis manifesto, 278-280; campaigns for Lincoln's reelection, 281-282 Wade-Davis bill, 5, 189, 191, 233234, 271, 274-278, 280, 282-287, 289, 299, 351 Wade-Davis manifesto, 279-281 Walker, Alexander, 62 Waples, Rufus, 291; social back­ ground, 168; compromise nego­ tiations with Banks, 213n; pro­ posed as gubernatorial candidate, 1864, 216-217; attacks Warmoth's proposal at convention founding Louisiana Republican Party, 334 War Department, 173, 306 Warmoth, Henry Clay: first wartime moderate to advocate Negro suf­ frage, 314, 320; initially approves of Johnson, 314; on arrogance of returning Confederates, 318n; leads formation of National Union Republican Club, 320; as liaison between Durant and Hahn forces, 322, 331; key role at convention founding Louisiana Republican Party, 332-335; elected territorial delegate from Louisiana, 335, 338; appears on platform with Howard, 338; accorded floor privileges in House and Senate, 341-342 Washburne, Elihu B., 281 Washington Parish, 30n wealth, distribution of, 24, 27-28, 32-33 Weed, Thurlow, 281 Weitzel, Godfrey, 91-92 Welles, Gideon, 124, 306-308 Wells, James Madison, 29, 309, 321, 324; victimized by secessionists,

59; active opponent of Confeder­ acy, 59, 217; organizes Uncon­ ditional Union Club of Western Louisiana, 217; as lieutenant governor, 219, 235; returns to home parish, 243; orders ratifica­ tion election, 267; becomes gover­ nor, 304, 308; pursues counter­ revolutionary strategy, 304, 342; removes Hahn's appointees, 308, 310-311, 314-315; appoints for­ mer Confederates to office, 308, 315, 318, 320, 339; requests that Johnson name him military gov­ ernor to augment authority, 310; protests Banks' order removing his appointees and threatens to resign, 311; appeals personally to Johnson, 311-312; stops payment on salaries of Banks' appointees, 314; extends authority into Con­ federate parishes and recognizes rebel officials, 315; addresses rally supporting policies, 315-316; de­ nounced by Republicans, 316-317, 332-334; believes federal govern­ ment should compensate planters for loss of slave property, 318; conflict with Conway, 322, 327-328; complains to Johnson of Conway's support for Negro suffrage, 330, 336; orders guber­ natorial, congressional, and legis­ lative elections, 1865, 333-335; nominated for reelection as gov­ ernor by Democrats and Con­ servative Unionists, 335-336; wins election, 338; vetoes anti-Negro bills, 339n Wells, Mary Ann, 312 Wells, Montfort, 324 Wells, Thomas M., 59-60, 217, 251, 269, 298, 312 Wenck, Ernest J., 168, 250 West Feliciana Parish, 28, 35-36, 40-42, 196, 246 West Indies, 90-91, 150-151, 153 Wheelock, Edwin M., 136-139, 158

INDEX Whig Party, 23-24, 26, 28-29, 42-44, 45, 46, 47-48, 53, 54, 56, 59, 159, 180, 217, 343 Whitaker, James S., 183, 216, 239, 242, 244 White, Howard Α., 322n White, Maunsel, 138-139 Wickliffe, Robert C., 335 Wilson, Henry, 187 Winn Parish, 33

Winters, John D., 144n Woodward, C. Vann, 16n Workingmen's National Union League, 130, 183 Wright, Elizur, 302 Wrotnowski, Stanislas, 196, 199, 223, 310-311 Young Men's Allen Associations, 336 Young Men's Union Association, 215

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

McCrary1 Peyton, 1943Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: the Louisiana experiment. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Reconstruction—Louisiana. 2. Louisiana— Politics and government—Civil War, 1861-1865. 3. Lincoln, Abraham, Pres. U.S., 1809-1865. I. Title. F374.M32 976.3Ό6 78-51181 ISBN 0-691-04660-3