Cornell Aniversity Library oolumntoto. ar es | a “axis. | 65] ao University Library | 3 1924 028 791 818 | olin RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, POLITICAL 1865-1872 BY C. MILDRED THOMPSON, A. M. Instructor in History in Vassar College . SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE Facu.tty oF PouiticaL SCIENCE CoLumMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW. YORK 1915 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, POLITICAL 4865-1872 BY C. MILDRED THOMPSON, A. M. Instructor in History in Vassar College SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE CoLumBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK 1915 EM. a SS CopyYRIGHT, I9I5 BY C. MILDRED THOMPSON PREFACE THE material for this monograph would never have been collected had it not been for the kind assistance of many friends in Georgia. In Atlanta, Miss Sallie Eugenia Brown and Mrs. V. P. Sisson put at my disposal their interesting and valuable papers, and Mr. Clark Howell of the Adlanta Constitution helped materially in giving me access to newspaper files. Mrs. Maud Barker Cobb, Miss Dailey, and Miss Thornton of the Georgia State Library, have been untiring in their services. In Savan- nah, I am indebted to Mr. William Harden of the Georgia Historical Society Library, and especially to Mr. Wym- berly Jones DeRenne of Wormsloe for his generous hos- pitality in allowing me to use his unique and extensive collection of material pertaining to the history of Geor- gia. Iam under obligations to Professor Robert Pres- ton Brooks of the University of Georgia for helpful sug- gestions, and to Professor Uirich B. Phillips of the University of Michigan, who put at my disposal copies of valuable letters. To my colleague and friend, Professor Eloise Ellery of Vassar College, I am indebted for help in the joyless task of proof-reading. Without the con- stant encouragement and helpful criticism of my teacher, colleague and friend, Professor Lucy M. Salmon of Vassar College, this labor would not have come to completion. Anything of bias or inaccuracy or limited vision in this essay is the fault of the author. Anything of fair- ness or wisdom or truth that it may contain must be 4A 4B PREFACE ascribed to Professor William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University, in whom many students of Recon- struction History have found their guide and inspiration. C. MitpRED THOMPSoNn. PoucHKEeEpsik£, N. Y., Warch 15, 1915. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I.—ECONOMIC READJUSTMENT AND REORGANIZATION, 1865-1866 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR PAGE 1. Population... 1... 2... ee eae elie in G2 a) Seay & 13 2. Agriculture: « a ee ee ae sees. Sha ‘9x Undustriésy 6. econ a) we eke, SR ee kod he a ae 7 4. Commerce. <5 8 a8 ee RS we He es 4 ay else Ger Sex, fae as 20 Se Railroadsyic aero, seg. ated ta rahe ba, Sto oe aces ee SA te ve 23 6. Banks. 5 eb: er ee ee SR afaelen val tages ast mats 26 Ju tate finanGe. oa Sales 2) es ah ete, GG. (de eh ee we Sods 282- 8: War politics: 6 4-4 se Be woe ee ee YA a ew 3I g. Summary: Condition of Georgia at the close of the war. . . - 40 CHAPTER II TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 1..Problems of peacé: 2 22 is He ee 42° 2. The negro enjoying freedom. ...........- 3 capa) gS 3. Migration of negroes . . 2... ee ee ee ee ew en 44 4. Care of destitute freedmen. . 2... 2-6 0 2 eee ee ee 47 §. Control of vagrancy «1. - 1 ee ee ee eee ee 49 6. Rumor of insurrection. .. ...-... i> BES ane 50 7. Question of labor... 2... 0 fe ee ee ee ee 524— 8. Attitude of white people toward emancipation... ...... 53 g. Improved labor situation in 1866. ...... #....... BAe Io. Negroesin towns - .- ....... 2.25. bie Sak CBB 7 11. Freedmen on the SeaIslands .......... ab ea 57 12. Report of General Steedman and General Fullerton. .... 58 13. Experience of Frances Butler Leigh. ............ 60 14. General Tillson of the Freedmen’s Bureau... ....... 61 aS. Activities of the Freedmen’s Bureau... .......... 62¢ 16. Criticism of the Freedmen’s Bureau. .--........., 63 17. Address of H. V. Johnson before the Convention. ...... 66 5] 5 6 CONTENTS CHAPTER III Lazsor AND LanpD “1. Attempt of planters to continue the old system. ... . 2. Supervision of labor contracts .......... 3. Conditions in Southwest Georgia... .....-+-.... 4< Wagesin 1865 seb es SEO SS EES 5. Difficulties in money and share systems of payment. . ... 6. Standard of wages set by the Freedmen’s Bureau... . 7. Labor troubles... . 0... «2. ese eee vy 8. Negro land owners... .. «1. . #181 Goan cd «ha 9 Negrotenants.. 8 ...... Soe 8 ~ ro, The negro family as an industrial unit ........... Ir. Exodus of negro women from field labor. ........ 12. Failure of crops in 1865-1866. . . . Be” ence ncn Cee-ae 133 Créditesy stems: -se 3.46 aap es a Ro ee a a 14. Beginning of the break-up of plantations. ... ..... 15. Emigration and immigration. ............40.. CHAPTER IV CoMMERCIAL REVIVAL Ts Cotton tfadés. 2 6. gies) ee, Bel he ie we ES 2; CORON: PLICES sy 0 ke le ee ee ee SS 3. Business in citiesand towns. ............... 4. Resurrection of Atlanta. ...... §. Columbus jak. 8 i se Se RR RR ww 6. Cotton shipping in Savannah... ............. Fs ANGUS tas. ce eee ay ae ae SAN we ae lee leew he Ss 8. Macon, Athens, Milledgeville... 2... 2... g. Manufactures ........2.... Set fan aise)” Senay as, wi Sa to. Repair of railroads... 2... 2... ee eee ee Ts Banking << cece wd BG es A ae. SS ea ot 12, State: finance: ::.66 fs owe BS ee RA aa eee CHAPTER V SocraL READJUSTMENT Ts Poverty?.e Steps wets ab Ges ae Woe a doe ce, ed ,2. Shifting in social classes... 2... 2.007. ee # g, Rducation, «4666 eae ec va whee ed ete “4. First common-school law ............. Bed ee 5. University of Georgia... .......00....625%, 6. Education of freemen... 2. ......20.., x Sieray taps PAGE 79~ 95 97 98 101 1or 102 103 104 105 110 III 116 118 11g 121 122 124 7] CONTENTS 7 PAGE ~ 7. Attitude of Georgians toward Northerners .....- - re 127 “'%. Race relations «04% au eh ae aa eg Ae ee 129 g. Social disorder... 2... ....248.4 26 diy Ge Wey De He 131 CHAPTER VI PoLiTIcAL REORGANIZATION 1. Militaryrule.. .. 0. 1... is sarah ee eee 6) 2. Provisional government... . ©... ......02. 144 3. Appointment of Provisional Gavecnny Fohiean: to Bl ee tas 4. Members of the Constitutional Convention. ....... 148 5. Work of the Convention. ..........-2.-2..e008 150 6. Reorganized state government. .... ..-......06. 153 7. Election of United States Senators... ..... oe ae ASA 8. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. ........ 156 9. Freedmen’s Code Commission oe ge de ele foes AsF 10. Laws concerning freedmen. . f. apn gaa a4 158 11. Attitude of Georgia people toward Presidential Reconstruction f’ 160 12. Summary, 1865-1866 .......--.2-204- 165 PART II—MILITARY AND POLITICAL RECON- STRUCTION, 1867-1872 CHAPTER VII Miitary Rue 1. Public opinion on the Reconstruction Acts. ......... VI 2. Letter of ex-Governor Brown... ..-. «22... 17 3. Military rule under General Pope. ......... Sie 198 4. Newspaper and Jury Orders... .. a am iber aaah Rae gs ate (fel 177 5. Removal of General Pope. ........-.... -. . 178 6. Military rule under General Meade. ...-.. «1... 179 7. Relation of military to civil authority... 2... 2... 2... 180 8. Differences between General Meade and Governor Bullock . . 183 9. Registration. .. . ; ‘ sinh - 186 ro. Constitutional Convention, 1867-1868. .-. 2... .. . 188 11. Personnel of the Convention. . ...... - se). 189 12. Work of the Convention. «2 0 6 2 ee 1. ee, 193 CHAPTER VIII ORGANIZATION OF THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 1. Political campaign, April, 1868... ... ie elt Sel 09 2. Democratic Conservative Party............. . + 200 8 CONTENTS [8 PAGE . Nominations by the Pee Committee. .... . oe + + 201 : Issues of the campaign. - - - php as Selah) tiles eld a fant 202 5. Election of R. B. Bullock as governor. ...-.-.++:+-> 204 6. Political composition of the legislature .-...- .- 2) orcas 207 7. Question of eligibility of members... - +--+ ++ +--+: 208 8. Election of United States Senators... - -- +--+ + + + 209 9. Expulsion of negroes from the legislature... . +--+. +++ 211 10. Personnel of the reconstruction government ......... 216 11. Influence of ex-Governor Brown .. .- 2. - + 6s ° 7 1 +s + 223 CHAPTER IX StaTE ECONOMY UNDER THE BuLLocK R&GIME 1. Charges of mismanagement against the Bullock government. . 226 2. Expenses... ..- em erties gd reteset sep Pa er Re DE ce - 227 3. Bonds: Gaacee ha evar eee Quace oe eS Bowe ae B29 4. Repudiation. ........ ah ah sao eo sass os cabace. 8) sass aes 234 5. State aid torailroads. . .... DANG da ee AS 235 6. Brunswick and Albany R. R. ...- eee ee eee eee 237 7. Corrupt management of the Western and Atlantic R.R.. . . 238 8. Investigating committees . . 2. - - ee ee ee te ee ee 241 g. Lease of the Western and Atlantic R. R... ..--. +e 245 10. Organization of the leasing company. . .... +--+ + + + + 247 Ir. Question of the fairness of the lease . . . . . 1 6 2 + se ee © 251 CHAPTER X REORGANIZED RECONSTRUCTION ; RESTORATION OF HoME RULE 1. Question of the admission of Georgia before Congress ... 255 2. Conditions in Georgia... 2... ee ee ee ee 257 3. Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment .... .. .. 260 4. Reorganization... 2. 0 2... eee eee eee - es 262 5. Terry's Purge «<2 22 42a 3 eS % ‘ teh ies ae eo Soe 263 6. Toombs’s views on the reorganization of the legislature .. 265 7. Attempt at prolongation of Republican control. ... ... 267 8. Final admission of Georgia, February, 1871 ......... 269 g. Restoration of homerule ... i sa Sauda get Pek Tahoe a’ gs, Seas aes ed 270 10. Democratic victory in the state election, December, 1870. . . 271 11. Resignation and flight of Governor Bullock ......... 271 12. Investigation by Democratic committees... ........ 272 13. Undoing of Reconstruction .......... Pie ioe? BG BIA 9] CONTENTS 9 PART IJ].—ECONOMIC PROGRESS AND SOCIAL CHANGES CHAPTER XI PAGE AGRICULTURE, 1867-1872 1, Marked changes in the agricultural system ......... 279 2. Number and size of farms . ee a. Ae Bae 280 3- Decrease in the size of the unit of cultivation. ........ 281 4. Lossin land values ..... 2... 0 «eee eee ee ne 283 53 Laborsupply 3s. seve eA cee ee Ae we 284 6. Methods of cultivation and employment ..........- 290 7. Process of disintegration of the plantation... . ... . 293 8. Rates of wages --- -. 2.2... sot. OM Ghee ae 295 9. Negro labor convention. ..........26. ..2.0. 207 ro. Effect of politics on labor... ........0-0. + + + 207 11. Production and price of cotton. ....... wees 6 298 12. Decrease in other agricultural products ........ e+ 303 CHAPTER XII Inpustry, COMMERCE, BANKING T.. Mantfactures 6: 3.6.0 sbi Bee ewe Re se 305 2. Increase in some industries ............ - 2s + 306 Gs Textiles: ie yee aie Sk a ew a Ee, ORE ES 306 4. Lumber .....-.- eee Ce Sie at oe ea eS ES 308 8. Industrial labors ice ec se eh i i, Bw a Eg 309 6. Woman and child labor... 2 2. ee ee 309 g. Railroads. . 2... 2 ees is Ns a aad paths CE A cena gat See ae 310 8. Central R. R. System... 2... 2-2. ee ee eee 311 g. Georgia R. R. and others... 2... 26 - ee ee eee 315 10. Enterprises of H. I. Kimball ..... 2... 2... 320 Iie Banks: sc, 0e & oe 3.68 Sb we a aS eee - 324 T2Trade. sok Ages Ae ee eae ea ee A ORS ek 326 73; City BTOWth: 6 secs aug Bos Sy Sire be Be a Be Ge 328 14. Savannah... 2... 2.6.22 eee CO ace te 330 15.Macon......-. ills See Sans, far Sade Seas tee Abas + se 6 © 330 16. Atlanta... ....-+.... gia RS a AE 331 CHAPTER XIII ScHoots, CHURCHES, CouRTS 1. Organization of the State Public School System .. . ce 335 2. Public schools in cities ...... slap ani soot e we £5 338 3. University of Georgia... 1... «2... ee eee G1. . 338 Io CONTENTS [10 PAGE 4. Emory and Mercer universities ............00-2 339 5. Educational work of the Freedmen’s Bureau. . . .% 2... . 340 6. Churches. ...... Se ay) Me ay eS PRE Aaa 343 7. Reconstruction in the Episcopal Church ........... 343 8. Continued division in otherchurches............. 344 g. Newspapers under reconstruction .....-....+-..... 347 Io, Changesin population... .. 2... ee ee ee ee eee 349 ar.Courts - ew we es wks Coal don ey nae ae dal eh 352 12. Judicial appointments... . 2... ee ee eee eee ee 354 13. Litigation after the war... 1... 2-2-2 eee eee 355 CHAPTER XIV Ku Kuvux anp Sociat DisorDER 1. ‘‘ Outrages’’ in two sections of the state. ...%..... 361 2. Conditions in the northwest... . 1... 2. 2 ee eee 362 3. Conditions in the easterncotton belt. ...-.....-2... 366 4. Organization of the Ku Klux Klan ............. 369 5. Disturbance in cities .........-..-02-802008. 376 6. Disturbance on the coast .. 2.0 7 7 we ee ee ee 381 7. Ogeechee insurrection . 2... ee eee eee eee 383 8. Camillasiots, & o. -ai a ke ee he Dee Ol als 384 9. Murder of G. W. Ashburn .......-... We ene 385 1o. Loyal Leagues .. 2 2. 1 et ee ee tt 386 11. Purpose of the Ku Klux movement .... . BE he a aes 388 CONCLUSION 1. Emancipation, the basic fact of reconstruction ........ 305 2. Beginnings of transformation in 1865-1872... .. ... . 3095 3. Effects of emancipation on agriculture. ........ - + 306 4. Comparatively slight industrial development. ........ 308 §. Social disturbance... 2... ee ee 399 6. Political results... 6.2... . ee. eee eee 309 7. Advance toward greater social democracy ... ...... 400 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........0.04. Pease, Gagan 402 PART I ECONOMIC READJUSTMENT AND REORGANIZATION 1865-1866 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR RECONSTRUCTION in Georgia can be understood only by seeing, in the first place, what were the effects of the war on the state—how population, white and black, was altered ; to what extent a war economy injured the great agricultural and commercial interests and developed or transformed in- dustrial enterprise; what were the resources of the state, its debit and its credit; and in what political temper the people of Georgia met the new business of statehood in 1865. The effects of the war on population can be determined only approximately, as no census was taken until five years after the close of the war. The census of 1870, however, shows a gain in the ten-year period of over one hundred thousand in the total population, a little less than twelve per cent increase, much less than in the preceding and the following decades—thirty-one per cent in 1840-50, sixteen per cent in 1850-60, and thirty per cent in 1870-80." Esti- mates of the loss in white population by war vary from thirty to forty thousand.” Apart from the consideration of actual numbers lost, the absence of thousands of adult white men in the armies seriously affected the producing capacity of the state during the war, and the ten or fifteen years after paid the price of the loss of young men from the 1U. S. Census, 1870, vol. i, pp. 4, 5. 3 Macon Telegraph, December 29, 1865; Joint Committee on Recon- struction, 1866, pt. iii, p. 131. 13] 13 14 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [14 workers, made up only in part by immigration from the North. Moreover, progressive citizenship suffered not only from the death of thousands of young men in battle, but also from the lack of education and peaceful training which was the cost of four years of military service to many youthful volunteers. Effects of the war on the blacks can be even less accurately computed. Some of the negroes wandered off with the Northern armies in 1864, compara- tively few, however, out of the total number; some were transferred by their owners to plantations in the South and the West, but on the whole, their number was probably not much less in 1865 than in 1860. Georgia, an agricultural, exporting state, found difficulties during the war not so much in raising a crop, for her terri- tory was practically free from invasion until the last year of the conflict, as in marketing what she raised. Under normal circumstances the greatest agricultural asset of Georgia was cotton, produced in the broad belt of rich black land stretching across the central part of the state, diagonally from southwest toward northeast. To the north and west of this belt was the grain-producing area and to the southeast, piny barrens, with sea-island cotton and rice along the coast lands and islands. When a state of war closed the Northern market and when the extension of actual blockade of Southern ports became effective, need of agricultural adjustment was apparent. In the season of 1861, the Georgia planter was not deterred by any fear of war from putting his usual acreage in cotton. The com- mon attitude, as reflected in the newspapers, was that the Yankees would not fight, and even if they did the South could whip them in short order. Then, too, that cotton was king was the chief article in the creed of every South- ern planter. If a fight should come on, the need of North- ern manufacturers and the necessity of England would soon 15] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 15 aid Southern arms in restoring peace on the South’s own terms. But by the end of the first year, the gravity of the situation called for a resolution in the state legislature, recommending planters to reduce the cotton crop for 1862, and plant more grain for home consumption and for the Confederate armies. This advice was not followed to any appreciable extent, for by 1862 the agricultural problem of Georgia was rapidly growing serious. During the year the Federal army cut off connections with Kentucky and a large part of Tennessee, the source of much of the grain and meat consumed in Georgia, and at the same time two cotton crops on hand presaged low prices, even if the con- stant expectation of a removal of the blockade by English intervention should be fulfilled. In response to a request for his views, Governor Brown wrote a public letter in February, 1862, at the beginning of the planting season, urging the people of Georgia to reduce the cotton acreage so as to double the usual crop of Indian corn, produce a larper crop of potatoes and yams, increase the usual amount of beets, turnips, peas, and pay more attention to raising hogs and cattle.” In December, 1862, the legis- lature made its recommendation of the previous year man- datory in an act “ To prevent and punish the planting and cultivating, in the State of Georgia, over a certain quan- tity of land in Cotton during the war with the Abolition- ists.” The amount was limited to three acres to each hand between fifteen and fifty-five years, and of hands older or younger two should be counted as one. Violation was de- clared a misdemeanor with a fine of $500 for every acre over and above the amount allowed, one-half of which was to go to the prosecutor or informer and the other half for 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, p. 137. Letter of Gov. Brown to Linton Stephens, February 25, 1862, in Brown Scrap Books. 16 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [16 the support of indigent soldiers in the county.’ It is impos- sible to determine how far this law had effect. The comp- troller general attempted to collect crop statistics, but re- turns were too incomplete and unsatisfactory to print.’ Still other official measures were taken to protect the food supply of the state. On February 28, 1862, a proclamation of the governor ordered all distilleries closed and instructed the management of the state road (Western and Atlantic R. R.) not to transport whisky, and recommended other railroads to follow the instruction.* The proclamation was followed by an act of the legislature, intended to prevent unnecessary consumption of grain by prohibiting distilla- tion, except for medicinal, chemical, hospital, and mechan- ical purposes.* Supplementary laws to enforce this act in 1863 show that the matter was not one to be settled by a single legislative measure. In the northern part of the state in regions where transportation was especially diffi- cult, the only way by which the farmer could dispose of his grain to advantage was by distilling it, as he found more certain sale and easier transportation for whisky than for corn in bulk. Recognizing this hardship on the farmer in remote districts, the act of November 22, 1862, provided that distillation allowed under contract for the Confederate government must be carried on at places at least twenty miles from a railroad or navigable stream.® Labor difficulties played no great part in the agricultural problem of Georgia until the end of the war. Practical unanimity of opinion testifies that the slaves continued 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, p. 137; 1862, pp. 5-6. * Report of the Comptroller General, 1863, p. 28. 3 Southern Confederacy, March 4, 1862. * Acts of the General Assembly, 1862, p. 25. 5 Tbid., p. 26. 17] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN ' THE WAR 17 faithful during the years of war, causing no disturbance until 1864, and then only in the path of Sherman’s invasion, where droves of them wandered away from the plantations to follow the soldiers. In the northern part of the state, where there were few blacks, a dearth of labor was caused by the drain of the armies on the white population, and women worked in the fields in the place of the men of the family who had gone to the war. The cultivation of rice and sea-island cotton was practically abandoned after 1862. Many of the planters transported their slaves inland, and the fields and rice swamps were left to themselves or to the negroes that remained in actual freedom. On these abandoned coast lands General Sherman established colo- nies of free blacks in 1865. The decade before the war saw the beginning of many new mills and factories of various kinds in Georgia. But when trade with the North was cut off, those already in existence were quite inadequate to the demands for war supplies, cannon, guns, ammunition of all kinds, cloth and clothing, and the multitude of manufactured articles that had long come into the South from Northern factories and shops. New cotton mills were not opened during the war, but those already equipped were run to their fullest capacity. Manufacturers were hindered by the scarcity of cards for carding cotton and other machinery for their plants. In 1862 the state came to the rescue by advancing $100,000 for the manufacture of woollen and cotton cards for fac- tories and for procuring machinery and materials for the manufacture of cards.” That there was no conspicuous in- crease in the number of cotton mills during the war seems 1 Southern Confederacy, April 22, 1862. 2 Acts of the General Assembly, 1862; Executive Order, February 9, 1863.—Brown Scrap Books. 18 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [18 apparent from the census figures, showing 33 mills with 85,186 spindles in operation in 1860, and 34 mills with 85,602 spindles in 1870. Woollen mills, of which 30 were listed in 1860, increased in the following decade to 46.* The greatest industrial growth occasioned directly by the war was in foundries, rolling mills and factories for making army supplies of all kinds, situated mostly in the inland towns, Macon, Atlanta, Athens, Augusta, and Colum- bus. These enterprises, more and more necessary to the security of the state and the Confederacy, were gradually impressed by one government or the other. In Macon more than 350 workmen were constantly employed in making cannon, shot, shell, saddle harness, and leather articles, while the laboratory and the armory kept as many more busy in the manufacture of smaller weapons and cartridges. In 1862 the arsenal at Savannah was moved to Macon. Macon also had smaller establishments for the manufacture of but- tons, enamelled cloth, wire, matches, soap, and other neces- saries.”, Columbus profited by unusual business activity. The city was filled with transient residents who found em- ployment in factories that worked night and day, employ- ing two sets of hands. Many laborers were kept busy at the Confederate Naval Works under military command. Some new industries sprang up in Columbus, such as a cap factory and a sword factory, and others were greatly stimu- lated. The Columbus Foundry and Machine Works had to increase its working force to meet the great demand for machinery and war supplies. Many women and girls, 1U. S. Census, 1860, Manufactures, p, 82; 1870, vol. iii, pp. 488-9, 508, 506-7, 630. The increase in woollen manufactures was in wool carding more than in the manufacture of woollen goods, * Butler, Historical Record of Macon and Central Georgia, pp. 257-8; Von Halle, Baumwollproduktion und Pflanzungswirtschaft in den Nordamerikanischen Siidstaaten, vol. ii, pp. 58-9. 19] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 19 mostly wives and daughters of soldiers, found employment in the quartermaster’s establishment in Columbus.* At- lanta was one of the military supply depots of the Confed- eracy, where arms, ammunition, alcohol, vinegar, spirits of nitre and other necessaries were manufactured for the gov- ernment. The city was headquarters for the Confederate quartermaster and commissary, and as a chief hospital point, it gave employment to a large labor force and stimu- lated trade through large disbursements. Before 1861 its manufacturing interests were comparatively small, with four machine shops, two planing mills, three tanneries, two shoe factories, a soap factory and a clothing factory. Dur- ing the war its industry was increased by the special de- mands of the time, but after the evacuation by Sherman’s army nearly all the factories were in ruin. During the war the Atlanta Machine Works, managed by a Unionist, J. L. Dunning, refused to cast shells for the Confederacy, where- upon the works were seized by the government.* Athens had three second-rate cotton mills of limited capacity, all of which flourished under the excessive demand for cloth and yarn.® The dearth of coal, iron and other minerals, occasioned by the war, seemed to offer opportunity for good investment in mining in North Georgia, and between 1861 and 1863 at least eight different companies were incorporated by the state legislature to carry on mining operations in the north- ern counties.* But capital was too scarce to make such ven- tures immediately profitable and no important results came from any of these operations. 1 Martin, Columbus, Georgia, pp. 142-3, 166. 2 Clarke, Atlanta Illustrated, p. 41, et seq.; Reed, History of Atlanta, pp. 456, 458. 3 Hull, Annals of Athens, p. 390. 4 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, 1862, 1863. 20 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [20 Thus, the war greatly stimulated industrial enterprises in Georgia, but the most thriving industries were those of a temporary character, fostered by the special needs of war, only to subside as soon as peace returned. Many such fac- tories, too, were destroyed in 1864-5. Industrial activity served partially to offset agricultural depression when the cotton market was stagnant and helped in the readjustment of labor by giving occupation to women and girls, whose support was removed when husbands and fathers were in the army. Still another result of the industrial activity of this period, important later in the dominant interests of the state, was the formation of a new class of rich men whose wealth did not rest in land and slaves.* Before the war, the great bulk of Georgia’s exports, bound eventually for European markets, was shipped from Savannah, Brunswick, or Charleston, to Northern ports, and thence across the ocean. A very small per cent of the shipping from Savannah was bound for England direct. This commercial dependence on the North loomed up full of dangers in the fall of 1860 when war was brewing, and plans were agitated for securing direct trade with Europe from Savannah, at first by private initiative, then by gov- ernmental sanction and aid. Governor Brown’s annual mes- sage to the legislature in the fall of 1860 called attention to the fact that the Cotton Planters’ Association of the state, in making efforts to establish direct trade with Europe, had sent a commissioner to Europe. The governor recom- mended in aid of the enterprise a law like one in Alabama, to exempt from all state, county, and corporation taxes all goods from any foreign country imported directly into Georgia through any of the ports of the Southern states.” 1Cf. infra, p. 118. * Journal of the House of Representatives, 1860, p. 23. 21| INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 21 No action seems to have been taken under this recommen- dation, but through the incorporation of the Belgian American Company, a further move was made for direct trade between the Southern states and Europe, the state guaranteeing for five years five per cent interest on the capi- tal stock ($100,000), and supervising the company by a commissioner appointed by the governor.* For a short time after secession vessels from the North continued to come to Savannah with goods on which custom duties were collected. In the spring of 1862, when the fall of Fort Pulaski below Savannah closed that port, and other ports on the Georgia coast were effectually blockaded, com- mercial difficulties became very serious.” The state sent Mr. T. Butler King on a mission to Europe to try to carry into effect the act of December, 1860, for the purpose of establishing direct intercourse with Europe. The Belgian American Company refused the terms offered, but the French government was more amenable, and changed in favor of Savannah, a subsidy previously granted a line to New York. In England a contract was made with Fred- erick Sabel, of Liverpool, for a direct line to Savannah on the payment of a subsidy of $100,000 as soon after peace as possible. This latter contract was not ratified, and in- deed the possible benefits of Mr. King’s mission came to nought, for by the autumn of 1862 the Federal blockade of the Georgia coast was so effective that none but the most daring blockade runners could break through.’ The coast blockade, by severing connection with the North, shut out manufactured articles in general usage, as well as machinery of all sorts, cloth and clothing, fine gro- 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1860, pp. 7-10. 2 Wilson, Historical and Picturesque Savannah, p. 199. 3 Southern Confederacy, December 4, 1862. 22 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [22 ceries, medicines, and other articles of household consump- tion, at the same time shutting in the cotton that went to pay for these imported articles. Georgia’s other avenue of approach to the outside world was by railroads to the North and the West, by which came a large part of the grain and meat supply of the state. In the winter of 1861 food ran short, and in the next year, when Northern armies occupied Kentucky and part of Tennessee, conditions, al- ready serious, were aggravated by a failure of the corn crop in part of North Georgia. Moreover, in these first two years of the war planters did practically nothing toward ad- justing themselves to the situation by planting more grain and less cotton. In the short market speculation was rife. The legislature tried to control this abuse by enacting laws against monopoly and extortion, declaring it a misdemeanor with heavy fine as penalty to attempt to corner the market or artificially to raise prices in breadstuffs or other articles of general use and consumption.» Under such conditions mercantile business was at a standstill, many stores were closed or used as headquarters of various departments of the government.? Prices for all articles of ordinary con- sumption began to rise rapidly in December, 1860, when banks suspended specie payments, and continued upward as the double effect of a scarcity of commodities and an in- flated currency. A salt famine early threatened the people of the state when the blockade stopped the importation of this very nec- essary commodity. So serious was the difficulty as the pack- ing season approached that the state legislature took meas- ures to provide salt. To encourage the manufacture of salt 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, pp. 66-7; Southern Confederacy, February 5, 1862. * Hull, Annals of Athens, p. 257; Wilson, Historical and Picturesque Savannah, p. 201; and newspapers. 23] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR Pa in Georgia, the legislature in 1861 appropriated $50,000 to be advanced as a loan without interest. In 1862 the gov- ernor offered a reward for the discovery of salt wells in the state, and in December of that year a legislative appro- priation put $500,000 in the hands of the governor to pro- vide salt for the packing season.” The state entered into a partnership with the Planters’ Salt Manufacturing Co. and the Georgia Salt Manufacturing Co. to manufacture salt in Washington and Smythe counties in Virginia, and the gov- ernor was authorized to impress cars and engines to trans- port the salt in the state.* Georgia, prior to 1861, was ahead of the other Southeast- ern states in the completeness and efficiency of its trans- portation system.* The Western and Atlantic R. R., owned and operated by the state, brought food supplies from Tennessee, Kentucky and the West for distribution through the cotton belt, and the Georgia R. R. and.the Central of Georgia R. R., together with branch feeding lines in the cotton region, carried cotton from the producing area to the sea-ports. The extent of these railway lines in Georgia is seen by the following table: ° 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, pp. 7-8. 2 Southern Confederacy, April 6, 1862 (Proclamation of March 3ist) ; Acts of the General Assembly, 1862, p. 6, et seq. 5 Tbid., pp. 105, 108. 4 For a full and valuable account of the development of transporta- tion facilities in Georgia before the war, see Phillips, History of Trans- portation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860. 5 Ibid. and Sherwood, Gazetteer of Georgia, 1860, p. 6 et seq. 24 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [24 RAILROADS IN GEORGIA IN 1860 Georgia R. R. Augusta to Atlanta 171 mi. Branches: Camak to Warrenton Cumming to Washington Union Point to Athens Western and Atlantic R. R. Atlanta to Chattanooga 138 mi. Branches: Dalton to Cleveland, Tenn. Kingston to Rome Central of Georgia R. R. Macon to Savannah IgI mi. Branches: Millen to Waynesboro to Augusta Gordon to Milledgeville to Eatonton Macon and Western R. R. Atlanta to Macon 103 mi. Branch: Barnesville to Thomaston Atlanta and West Point R. R. Atlanta to West Point 87 mi. Southwestern R. R. Macon to Eufaula, Ala. and to Albany 163 mi. Branch: Smithville to Fort Gaines and Georgetown Muscogee R. R. Macon to Columbus 100 mi. Savannah and Gulf R. R. Savannah to Thomasville (completed in 1860 as far as Valdosta) 150 imi. Other roads, chartered, surveyed, and partially con- structed before 1861, were held up during the war by lack of capital and were not completed until later. Of the Macon and Brunswick R. R., about fifty miles were built. The Air Line R. R., to connect Atlanta with the Northeast, chartered in 1856, was surveyed into South Carolina before 1861. Construction was delayed until 1868, and five years later the road was completed to Charlotte, N. C. The Bruns- wick and Albany was chartered, a part of the grading done 25] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 25 and some miles of track laid. Later, aided by state endorse- ment of its bonds, the road was finished as far as Albany.* Between 1861 and 1865, practically no progress was made in railway extension further than the granting of charters to some new companies, the Ocmulgee River R. R. from Macon to Griffin, the Atlanta and Roswell R. R. to connect with the Western and Atlantic R. R., and the Columbia and Augusta R. R.? The policy of Georgia toward railroads in the two decades before the war was one of active aid and encouragement, by subscribing to the stock of railroad companies and by favorable tax agreements. Not until 1850 was any state tax levied on railroad stock, and the companies chartered before that year were secured against a tax greater than one-half of one per cent on the net annual income. After 1858 all roads were taxed alike at this rate.* In general, railroads prospered in the years just before the war. In 1859, the dividend declared by the Georgia R. R. was 8 per cent; by the Macon and Western, 16 per cent; by the Central of Georgia, 20 per cent;* and in 1860, under the efficient management of Governor Brown’s régime, the state road paid into the treasury 10 per cent on the whole sum paid out by the state and raised by bonds.*® The invasion of Georgia by Sherman’s army in 1864 wrought terrible havoc on railroads. In the northern and central parts of the state the main lines of transportation were broken up for almost two years. Sherman’s march of destruction followed the line of the Western and Atlan- 1Janes, Handbook of Georgia, pp. 173-6. 2 Acts of the General Assembly, 1862, pp. 219-222; 1863-4, pp. 137-148. 8 Report of the Comptroller General, 1860, pp. 20-21. 4 Sherwood, Gazetteer of Georgia, 1860, pp. 149-154. 5 Governor Brown, Annual Message, 1860, Journal of the House, 1860, pp. 7-9. 26 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [26 tic R. R. from Chattanooga to Atlanta, part of the Macon and Western R. R. between Atlanta and Macon, and almost the entire length of the Central R. R. to Savannah. The left wing of the army did serious damage to the Georgia R. R. between Madison and Augusta, and also to the Au- gusta and Savannah R. R. The line of march was marked by “ Sherman’s hairpins”’, 7, ¢., rails torn up, heated over burning cross-ties, then bent around trees. Yard houses and road-buildings were burned, bridges torn away, and rolling stock carried off or destroyed.» The Atlanta and West Point R. R. suffered like treatment at the hands of General Wilson’s raiders in 1865. The state road, the Western and Atlantic, had been the bone of contention be- tween the two armies, destroyed by each in turn. Later it was put in temporary running order by the Federal authori- ties, and in September, 1865, was turned over to the state, the United States government furnishing rolling stock, for which the state gave bond.” Thus, by the end of the war, the Western and Atlantic R. R., together with some por- tions of the Southwestern R. R. and of the Atlantic and Gulf R. R., constituted the usable parts of the transporta- tion system, though these roads, too, suffered heavily from loss of rolling stock. No kind of business suffered more heavily by reason of the failure of the war for secession than did banking. In 1860, twenty-five banks were doing business in Georgia with an actual capital of $9,028,078. Of these, nine were in Savannah, the commercial capital of the state, six in Au- gusta, two each in Macon and Dalton, and the others in Columbus, Atlanta, Rome, Athens, La Grange, and Ring- 1 Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, pp. 47-8; Trow- bridge, Picture of the Desolated States, pp. 501-502; New York Times, October 13, 1865, and November 23, 1865. 2 Acts of the General Assembly, 1866, pp. 14-15. 27] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 27 gold. The State of Georgia was not encouraging in its policy toward banking corporations, taxing them 39% cents on $100 capital stock paid in, about six times the rate paid by all other property, except railroads. In the fall of 1860, when threatening war put the banks under a severe strain, the legislature came to their relief by an act, passed - over the governor’s veto, legalizing the suspension of specie payments for one year, a privilege that was extended from time to time to the end of the war.? In a very short time after suspension, practically all coin disappeared from cir- culation, leaving a shortage in the currency in 1861. But by the following year there was a flood of paper money of all kinds, bank change bills in small denominations of 5, Io, 25 and 50 cents, bank bills in larger amounts, change bills issued by the state road, state notes and bills, Confederate notes, city and town currency, as well as bills and notes of individuals and firms, called “ shinplasters ”, many of which had better credit than public currency.* During the war banks invested their funds largely in Confederate bonds and state securities, so that, at the close of the war, when the securities in their vaults were worthless, the banks were almost entirely wrecked. In 1861, as a measure of relief to cotton planters, a bank was organized in Thomasville, known as the Cotton Planters’ Bank of Georgia. Its pur- pose, as stated in the law of its incorporation, was to give steadiness to the value of cotton, to make it the basis of a circulating medium, and to enable the planters to control their own cotton until the removal of the blockade. No one could hold stock except planters, who might subscribe in 1 Report of the Comptroller General, 1860, pp. 26, 27. 2 Acts of the General Assembly, 1860, p. 22; 1861, pp. 18-19, 25-7; 1862, pp. 19-21. 8 Tbid., 1862, pp. 19-21; Southern Confederacy, December 2, 1862. 28 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [28 cotton of their own raising at the rate of $30 per bale (500 Ibs.) of upland, and $45 per bale (300 lbs.) of sea-island cotton.t This was planned as an attempt to protect the planters from the grip of speculators. Georgia, under normal conditions, derived her income for running expenses from a general property tax, from special taxes on bank stock, railroads, lotteries, foreign insurance companies and foreign bank agents, and from the earnings of the state road. The assets of the state in 1860 included taxable property assessed at more than $600,000,000, the valuable state-owned railroad, the Western and Atlantic, and stock in various banks and railroads amounting to about $800,000. Over and against these assets was a public debt of $2,670,750 in bonds maturing between 1861 and 1880.’ During the first two years of the war, Georgia, like other states and like the Federal and the Confederate governments, showed unwillingness to meet war demands by increasing taxes, preferring the indirect method of bonds and paper currency. At the first session of the legislature after the war began, the state assumed the Confederate war tax, meeting the obligation by an issue of bonds; and the general appropriation bill of the same session authorized the governor to issue bonds or treasury notes to cover any shortage in the treasury for general appropriations.* The total debt in bonds incurred during the war was $3,308,500. In currency in the form of non-interest-bearing notes, treas- ury certificates of deposit and change bills, nearly fifteen millions were issued during the war, making a total indebt- edness in bonds and notes for war purposes of about $18,- 000,000. 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, pp. 20-22. ? Report of the Comptroller General, 1860, pp. 3, 4, 6, 11. 3 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, pp. 13, 79. 29] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 29 State Dest, 1861-1865 1 Bonds 7% bonds, issued under Act approved December 11, 1861, for payment of Confederate tax assumed by the state—due 1872 ........ccccc ene ce ccs eeeeeeee $2,441,000.00 6% bonds, for state defence—due 1881 ..............5. 25,000.00 7% bonds, for state defence—due 1881 ...............- 842,500.00 These two sets of bonds were issued February, 1861 and May, 1862, under Acts approved November 16, 1860 and December 16, 1861. Interest at 6% was too low to make bonds salable, so rate was raised to 7%. Total.an: bonds)4¢ xs ecsuteaseskneeees $3,308,500.00 Currency Non-interest-bearing treasury notes and treasury certi- ficates of deposit, payable in 8% bonds and specie six months after treaty of peace or when banks of Savannah and Augusta resume specie payment .... —_ 3,758,000.00 Treasury notes and treasury certificates of deposit, pay- able in specie or 6% bonds of the state six months after treaty of peace between the United States and the Confederate States ...............00000- 4,800,000.00 Treasury notes, payable in Confederate treasury notes if presented within three months after maturity; otherwise not redeemable except in payment of public dues (outstanding in 1865) ............... 5,171,500.00 Change bills, payable only in Confederate treasury notes (outstanding in 1865) .......... ee cee eee eee eee eee 997,775.85 Total in currency .............. ee eee eee $14,727,275.85 Total war debt < ccauseceesce esenes cae $18,035,775.85 Direct taxes, as a means of supporting the extra demands of war, were not increased until the end of 1862, when the legislature widened the scope of the general property tax, declaring cotton, grain or other produce held for barter or sale on April Ist of each year, not belonging to the original producer, to be merchandise, and hence subject . .. 1 Report of the Comptroller General, 1865, pp. 11-18. 30 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [30 to taxation as other property. The amount of the general tax levied on property was fixed at $1,000,000 for 1862, and for 1863 at $1,500,000. The first income tax was instituted by the legislature in special session in April, 1863. In its earliest form it provided for a graduated tax on the net income or profits of 20 per cent or more from the sale of goods, wares, merchandise, groceries, and from the dis- tillation and sale of spirituous liquors. This was aimed primarily at speculation and excessive profits, but the aim seems not to have been well directed, for the comptroller general reported that the law produced misunderstanding, dodging, and fraudulent returns. In December of the same year, at the regular session of the legislature, the income tax was extended and changed in basis. Profits, instead of being taxed by the per cent of gain on capital, as in the April measure, were taxed at the specific amount of profit, and the rate was increased with the amount of profit. All profits over 8 per cent were taxed in the following scale: ? Less than $10,000, taxed at 5% 10,000-15,000 " TAM. 15,000-20,000 “ “10% 20,000-30,000 a “ 12%4% 30,000-50,000 “15%, 50,000-75,000 “ WTA% 75,000- 100,000 - “20% over 100,000 * “25% A slight change in the Tax Act of March 11, 1865, freed profits of less than 10 per cent from any income tax.? Most of the tax collected under this item, $125,241.64 in 1863 and $455,593.98 in 1864, came from the fifteen counties 1 Acts of the General Assembly, 1861, p. 80; 1862-3, pp. 57, 59-60. * Ibid., 1862-3 p. 176, et seq.; 1863-4, pp. 80, 81; Report of the Comp- troller General, 1863, pp. 28-31. * Acts of the General Assembly, 1864-5, p. 66. art INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 31 out of the total one hundred and thirty-two, where ther were factories or large mercantile establishments. The comptroller general, who disapproved of the income tax, felt sure that there was much dodging and estimated the returns as only one-fifth of the legitimate number. As against 69,712 property tax payers, only 3,758 persons paid any tax on income.? The assessment of the general tax for 1864 and 1865 was left to the governor and the comptroller general, provided it did not exceed one per cent for all tax- able property estimated in Confederate currency for 1864, and one-half of one per cent for 1865.* In addition to these state-imposed taxes, each county, through the justices of the inferior court, issued bonds and levied extra taxes to equip volunteers and to support indigent families of sol- diers. In some counties the property of private soldiers was exempt from the extra county tax, and in others prop- erty less than $2,000 was exempt when the holder was in military service, and execution for default of taxes was de- layed in case of those serving in the army.* Popular opinion in Georgia supported the war with a fair degree of unanimity, though there was strong opposi- tion to secession in 1861, chiefly on the question of the ex- pediency of immediate state action as against co-operation with other Southern states.° After the beginning of hos- tilities the active Unionist element largely disappeared, fall- : Report of the Comptroller General, 1863, p. 7; 1864, pp. 6, 30-31. 1 Ibid., 1864, p. 30. 3 Acts of the General Assembly, 1864-5, p. 18 and 1863-4, p. 79. Act of March 11, 1865, authorized additional tax of two-fifths of one per cent on property. Acts of the General Assembly, 1864-5, p. 69. 4 Ibid., 1861, pp. 30, 76, 122, et seq. 5 For the secession movement in Georgia, see Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, chs. vii and viii. a2 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [32 ‘6 ing in line with the mass of individuals who “ went with their state”. Though Unionists were still numerous in the upper counties, they were not a real political power and offered no appreciable obstacle to the general spirit of fighting to be free, which marked the early period of the war.’ But during 1863 a spirit of querulous discontent with the Confederate administration developed strongly and widely. Georgia, through the action of her governor, presented the attitude of chronic objector, if not direct obstructionist, to the chief measures of the government at Richmond. At times the tension between the executives of the state and of the Confederacy was extremely high, particularly over the questions of conscription, suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and con- trol of the state militia. Two hostile groups were formed in the state, with Robert Toombs, Alexander Stephens and his brother, Linton, on the side of Governor Brown, up- holding the principle of state rights as against the extension of Confederate authority; while Howell Cobb, commander of the state troops, with H. V. Johnson and B. H. Hill, the two Confederate senators from Georgia, supported Jeffer- son Davis’s policy.” The state legislature was generally more conservative in action than either of these two fac- tions, watching jealously the centralizing tendencies of the Confederate government, and yet lagging behind the im- patient hostility of the governor to Confederate policy. Military as well as political dissatisfaction was rife. De- sertion from the army became threatening. The mountains in North Georgia were so infested with bands of deserters and stragglers that Governor Brown issued a proclamation 1 Rhodes, History of the United States since 1850, vol. v, p. 449. * Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens; New York Times, December 3, 1863, speech of Robert Toombs delivered in Atlanta. 43] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 33 in January, 1863, ordering them to disperse and return to military service.? The question then arises—Did this spirit of dissatisfac- tion and criticism mean a desire for peace and reunion? Discontent and a desire for reunion were not identical in the feelings of the people, though they tended to merge as time went on. The quarrelsome attitude of Georgia toward the Confederate power was, however, frequently misinter- preted by politicians and military commanders of the North, who regarded it as the presage of submission by independ- ent state action. A clearer reading of this disaffected state of mind is given in a letter written early in 1863 by Alex- ander Stephens, who was always keenly sensitive to the pulse of popular sentiment in Georgia. In this letter he writes : What do you suppose a Yankee paper would say over Gov- ernor Brown’s proclamation about bands of traitors and tories in our State that require the military to put them down? Nothing of that sort has occurred in any part of the North yet; and we know, or ought to know, how little confidence is to be attached to it from what we see among ourselves. The great majority of the masses, both North and South, are true to the cause of their side,—no doubt about that. The great majority on both sides are tired of the war; want peace. I have no doubt about that. But as we do not want peace with- out independence, so they do not want peace without reunion. There is the difficulty. I think the war will break down in less than a twelvemonth; but I really do not see in that any prospect for peace, permanent peace. Peace founded upon a treaty recognizing our separate independence is not yet in sight of me.? 1Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series iv, vol. ii, p. 360. * Johnston and Browne, op. cit., p. 435, a letter written by Stephens to R. M. Johnston, January 29, 1863. See Peace Resolutions intro- 34 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [34 In 1863 the leading apostles of discontent were the most ardent advocates of war to the goal of independence, but in the next year military disasters and threatened invasion of Georgia brought evident signs of weakening, and talk of reunion spread there as elsewhere. The idea was not pro- mulgated as the tenet of any particular group or party, and the discussion was more by covert insinuation than by out- right appeal or propaganda. The newspapers give little direct evidence of change of heart. However, growing re- union sentiment is inferable from the very loudness of the editorial calls for good cheer and the insistence of pub- lic speakers on the principle that nothing short of inde- pendence should be tolerated, even in thought.* Evidence is too scant to conclude that disaffection in Georgia went so far as to lend itself to the organization of secret peace so- cieties, such as existed in North Carolina, Alabama, and elsewhere. Such societies may have existed along the Ala- bama border, but they seem to have played no decisive part in organizing a peace movement in Georgia.* The results of the gubernatorial election of 1863 throw some light on the extent of this peace feeling. The leading opponent to the re-election of Governor Brown was Joshua Hill, one of the strongest Union men in the state and one of the few leaders who had not gone with the state in sympathy after secession was voted. Mr. Hill’s platform was a defence duced by Linton Stephens in the Georgia Legislature, approved March 19, 1864. Acts of the General Assembly, 1864, p. 158; Waddell, Bio- graphical Sketch of Linton Stephens, pp. 271-4. 1 Speech of A. H. Stephens at Charlottesville, Va., July, 1863. Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. vii, pp. 216-7; letter of Robt. Toombs to A. Bees of Americus, Ga, in New York Times, September 12, 1863; extract from a Macon newspaper of August, 1863 in Annual Cyclo- pedia, 1863, p. 448. ? Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series i, vol. xxiv, pt. ili, p. 588; series iv, vol. iii, p. 393. 35] | INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 38 of his Union policy in 1861 and a declaration of the futility of the war, while Governor Brown stood out against any- thing short of independence as the aim of the war. The outcome of the vote was the re-election of Governor Brown by a large majority, but the fact that the outright Unionist candidate carried more than one-fourth of the total vote cast shows that the people of Georgia in 1863 were by no means unanimous in wishing to push the war to the end of independence, dubious of achievement as it then seemed.* In 1864 a more definite peace sentiment developed. After all expectation of foreign intervention had vanished, there appeared to be two means by which peace might be attained, directly by military success of the Confederate armies, and vicariously by the triumph of the Northern Democrats in the election of 1864. When the military victories of the Southern armies became infrequent and when lines of Fed- eral advance pushed farther and farther upon the soil of the Southern states, hope of peace by the first means was lost to all except the constitutionally sanguine. Then the Southerners who still clung to the idea of independence put their trust in the Northern Democratic party. The Demo- crats, however, did not promise to sanction the separation of the sections, but declared officially for restoration on the basis of the federal union of the states.” But whatever were the words of the platform, both South and North felt that the election of McClellan and Pendleton would mean that the vast body of people in the North were weary of the war to the point of abandoning the attempt to whip the re- calcitrants into submission. This regard for political con- ditions in the North and the hope for the overthrow of the Lincoln government played an important part in determin- 1 Annual Cyclopedia, 1863, pp. 447-8. 2 Platform of the Democratic Party in McPherson, Political History of the Great Rebellion, p. 419. 36 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [36 ing the character of the peace feeling in Georgia in 1864.* By September, however, it became evident that no depend- ence could be placed on the success of the Northern Demo- crats. At the same time came a far more potent factor in developing the desire to end it all. The march of Sher- man’s army through Northwest Georgia, culminating: in the fall of Atlanta, weakened the courage of the most stout hearted. The path of desolation which Sherman left be- hind him was a most terrifying threat to the rest of Georgia. It was no wonder that many began to cower and murmur peace in less exacting terms. The capture of Atlanta by the Federal army had a strongly depressing effect in the state and reunion talk was less disguised. Appeals were made to A. H, Stephens and H. V. Johnson for their views as to the propriety of attempting a peace movement, but both ad- vised against it. While they were eager for peace, neither was disposed to head a movement toward independent state action.” The critical point in the direction of the reconstruction sentiment came after General Sherman’s occupation of At- lanta. Sherman thought that by playing upon the discord- ant feelings in Georgia toward the Confederate govern- ment, and by pointing a menacing finger toward the line of ruin from Chattanooga to Atlanta as a threat of what awaited the rest of the state, he might lure Georgia away from her confederate states. He wrote in a letter to Lin- coln, September 17, 1864: “It would be a magnificent stroke of policy if we could, without surrendering principle or a foot of ground, arouse the latent enmity of Georgia 1 Avery, History of the State of Georgia, p. 314; Reed, History of Atlanta, p. 174; letter of H. V. Johnson in New York Times, October 22, 1864. * Avery, op. cit., p. 286; Rhodes, History of the United States, 1850- 1877, vol. v, p. 65. a7 INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 37 against Davis.” * Using Joshua Hill and William King, prominent Unionists, as intermediaries, Sherman invited Alexander Stephens and Governor Brown to an interview in Atlanta, suggesting that the state would be spared if the Georgia troops were recalled from the Confederate armies.” Stephens and Brown both refused to meet General Sher- man, on the ground that neither he nor they had competent authority to settle such a matter. But before indicating his rejection of Sherman’s proposition, Governor Brown called a special session of the legislature, and issued an order de- claring a thirty-day furlough for the state militia under. General Hood’s command near Atlanta. This summons of an extra session of the legislature was not in itself a sign of weakening, for the extraordinary conditions arising from the pressure of an invading army might necessitate the meeting of the assembly. But the Governor’s recall of the militia and the grant of a furlough are inexplicable un- less they be taken as preliminary moves toward peace. His own explanation is entirely unconvincing, that the state troops, turned over to General Hood for the defence of Atlanta, were needed at their homes which they had left without preparation. So ran the Governor’s order of Sep- tember roth. Just eight days after the fall of Atlanta, when the enemy might at any moment march in any direc- tion to spread the destruction that marked its path to At- lanta, the state troops were sent home to gather sorghum! It seems probable that could Governor Brown have pro- ceeded on his own responsibility, he would have acted fav- orably toward the proposition made by General Sherman. He had a rare facility for divining on which side of the 1 Sherman, Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 139. 2 Ibid., pp. 137-8; Johnston and Browne, op. cit., pp. 471-2. 8 New York Times, September 25, 1864. 38 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [38 bread the butter is spread, and to a mind such as his, less controlled than most by sentimental or ideal impulses, it must have been clear that the war was hopeless, a cheerless end not far off, and that a voluntary submission on the part of Georgia when the chance was given, instead of forced subjugation some weeks or months later, would save the state untold suffering in loss of life and property. But at the same time, the natural shrewdness of the Governor, sharpened by long political practice, made him see that the people of Georgia were not ready for such action as his own practical wisdom and regard for material consequences might dictate. While weariness and discouragement with the war were increasing daily, there was strong objection to treating with an invading enemy, and stronger and more extensive still was the feeling that, whatever happened, the seceded states must stick together. This sentiment was voiced in Governor Brown’s public note on the Sherman matter: The fact must not be overlooked, however, that while Georgia possesses the sovereign power to act separately, her faith, which never has, and I trust, never will be violated, is pledged by strong implication to her Southern sisters, that she will not exercise this power without consent on their part, and concert of action with them. Clear and direct as this statement is, the effect was ren- dered rather equivocal by the closing paragraph of the same letter: If those on both sides who have the constitutional power of negotiation, from obstinacy or ambition, refuse to recognize the sovereignty of the states, and to leave the settlement of the question to the states when they cannot themselves agree and insist on continual effusion of blood to gratify their caprice, all the states, North and South, in their sovereign 39} INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 39 capacity, may then be justifiable in taking the matter in their own hands and settling it as sovereigns in their own way.? In the middle of November the Federal army abandoned the ruined city of Atlanta and set out to “ make Georgia howl”, as Sherman aptly stated the purpose of his march to the sea. The fate that awaited Georgia was not imme- diately appreciated. Many people thought, as did the mili- tary authorities at Washington, that Sherman was march- ing into a cul-de-sac and would be entrapped long before he reached the coast. But after Savannah had fallen late in December, affairs wore a different aspect. There was little question then about the fate of Georgia. Sufficient answer lay in the path, three hundred miles long and forty miles wide, of smoking ruins and trampled fields. The year 1865 dawned with little encouragement, except the certainty that the end was near. Some wished to hasten the end by call- ing a state convention, but others were unwilling to do any- thing to meet submission half way. The surrender in April brought the end which many greeted with the sense of re- lief that at least the worst had come. Developing out of the despondency produced by the mili- tary disasters of 1863, helped on by the disaffection of the Georgia government toward the Confederate administra- tion, and precipitated by the direful experience of Sher- man’s march, there existed in Georgia before the end of the war a strong trend toward reunion, a willingness to aban- don the attempt to establish the independence of the se- ceded states. This readiness for submission implied no more than a return to the Union as it was, changed in nature only by the elimination of slavery. From lack of organi- zation, and from the absence of declared leaders and a fixed 1New York Times, October 8, 1864, from the Milledgeville Con- federate Union; Fielder, Life and Times of Joseph E, Brown, p. 311. 40 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [40 purpose to achieve a definite end, the peace feeling in Georgia before the surrender was more in the nature of a reunion sentiment than an actual movement towards recon- struction. In April, 1865, when resistance to the Union ceased in Georgia with the news of General Johnston’s surrender to General Sherman in North Carolina, the war left Georgia poorer by the loss of 40,000 of its white population, and burdened it with a serious labor problem, on the solution of which the whole agricultural, and hence, chief economic interest of the state depended. If her half million of blacks continued to work in the fields as before, then her people would be none the worse off and the estimated value of slave holdings would not be reckoned as loss, but merely transferred to enhance the value of land.* But if freedom to the negro meant freedom from work, then land would be worthless and Georgia itself would be ruined. In the spring of 1865, lands in the rich southwest region were untouched by the hand of the enemy, but across the middle of the state,-from the northwest corner to Savannah, lay a land of waste thirty or forty miles broad. In this region destruction involved not only stores of cotton and food supplies and growing crops, but the annihilation of all im- plements and means with which to make a new crop. Fences and barns were burned and live stock carried away. For the soldier or refugee returning to the Sherman belt, nothing: was left but the mild climate and an occasional well of water which the Yankees had been unable to de- molish or appropriate.» Northeast Georgia, though not in- 1 Report of the Comptroller General, 1860, p. 6; taxable value of land in 1860, $161,764,955; of slaves, $302,694,855. ? For destruction wrought by Sherman’s march, see Moore, Rebellion Record, vol. ix, p. 7; New York Times, October 14, November 23, 1865; 41] INTRODUCTION—GEORGIA IN THE WAR 41 vaded, was desolate and poverty-stricken, and just at the end of the war in April, 1865, Wilson’s raiders burned cot- ton, warehouses and factories in the west and central part of the state, at West Point, Columbus, Griffin, and Macon. The destructive work of a hostile army disrupted the main lines of railway, destroying the chief means of transporta- tion to the coast. Banks were thoroughly ruined and capi- tal vanished. The state was eighteen million dollars in debt, with assets short in the weakened condition of its in- come-producing property, the Western and Atlantic R. R., and the taxable property of its citizens already burdened beyond the last point of endurance by war taxes and uncer- tain income. In all this disaster, the people of Georgia felt relief that the end had come at last, but doubt and uncertainty for what the future might bring. In general, there was a will- ingness to return to the Union, even though the abandon- ment of slavery should be the price exacted for reunion. That reconstruction would enforce more than such a re- union was not foreseen. Avery, History of the State of Georgia, p. 306; Annual Cyclopedia, 1864, p. 407; 1865, pp. 3923; Wilson, Historic and Picturesque Savannah, p. 203; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, pp. 32-4; Reed, History of Atlanta, p. 194; newspaper clippings in Brown Scrap Books. CHAPTER II TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM THE problems of peace were far more difficult and in- tricate than were those of war, and in 1865 when hostili- ties ceased, instead of the worst having passed, as the people of the South thought, the worst had only just begun in the region subject to reconstruction. Of all the problems be- fore the South and the Nation, the foremost, not yet com- pletely solved after fifty years, were the adaptation of the slave-driven negro to free labor, the adjustment of the land and planting system to new conditions, and the settlement of social relations between the two races living side by side when the old bond of master and slave was destroyed. These economic and social problems were complicated by political difficulties, the relation of the rebel state to the Union, the constitution of political citizenship in the state, and the struggle for party domination. In attempting to solve these problems, the process of reconstruction in ‘Georgia, as in every other Southern state, was worked out through two revolutions. In 1865, the abolition of slavery overthrew the whole ante-bellum economy of Georgia; and since Georgia was primarily an agricultural state, a change in the labor system meant nothing less than a far-reaching economic revolution. In 1867, when the radicals in Con- gress undertook to make over the conquered provinces, the political enfranchisement of the former slaves induced a second revolution, fundamentally political and social in character. 42 [42 43] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 43 The half-million negroes in Georgia were not actually free until the end of the war, for the Emancipation Procla- mation had no effect except in a limited region. In districts not penetrated by the Federal armies agricultural labor con- tinued during the war as under normal conditions. But wherever the army appeared negroes left the plough in the field to follow the soldiers to freedom. The path traversed by Sherman’s army was not through the region where blacks were most numerous, hence disorganization of labor was not general until the summer of 1865, when military posts were established. To the negro, freedom meant all that slavery had not been. Slavery signified work, gener- ally in the field, labor under constant supervision, restriction in habitat, and subjection to patrol. Therefore, if freedom meant anything at all it must be idleness, roving from place to place, flocking into towns, and doing generally as pleas- ure dictated." Vagrancy and loafing, natural reactions when the restraint of slavery was removed, were fostered among the negroes by the belief, as tenacious as their cer- tainty of judgment day, that at Christmas time the white folks’ lands would be divided and every negro would have his share, commonly estimated at forty acres and a mule.’ The negroes, especially as they came in contact with the soldiers of the garrisons and the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, had some understanding that the war had been fought for the negro against the white man, and as out- come, what had been the property of the master would be turned over to his slaves. When the negroes were told by their masters or by Federal agents or by general rumor that 1 Mr. Fleming’s account of the negro testing his freedom in Alabama is substantially true for Georgia as well. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p. 260, et seq. 2 New York Times, October 14 and 24, 1865 (correspondent writing under the pseudonym, “Quondam”); Milledgeville Federal Union, July 18, 1865; Hull, Annals of Athens, p. 303. 44 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [44 they were free, the most general and immediate response to the news was to pick up and leave the home place to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. The lure of the city was strong to the blacks, appealing to their social natures, to their inherent love for a crowd. The first and only means by which the negroes could test their freedom was migration, to go where they were not. They put into practice the cynic’s moral, “ There’s no place like home—thank God!” With no sense of foresight, but in simple trust that freedom must be good, there were thousands of negroes, who, as Sidney Andrews remarked, “had clearly let go the bird in hand without any prospect of finding even one in the bush”.* In the black belt of Georgia, where slavery was as little burdensome to the negro as anywhere in the South, multitudes of negroes were on the march, leaving comfort and security in joyful quest of the unknown. Starve or steal they must before the winter was over, for work they would not. On the out- skirts of almost every town there were throngs of these wanderers huddled together in rude huts or with no shelter at all. In one such wretched hovel in Macon, Andrews found eleven negroes. With one of the men he had the following conversation : ? “Well, Uncle,” said I, after he had told me that he was raised near Knoxville, some thirty miles away,—“ well, Uncle, what did you come up to the city for? Why didn’t you stay on the old place? Didn’t you have a kind master?” “Ts had a berry good master, mass’r,” he said, “ but ye see I’s wanted to be free man.” “ But you were just as free there as you are here.” “P’r’aps I is, but I’s make a livin’ up yer, I dun reckon; an’ 1 Andrews, The South since the War, p. 349. ? Tbid., pp. 350-351. 45] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 45 I likes ter be free man whar I can go an’ cum, an’ nobody says not’ing.” “But you would have been more comfortable on the old place: you would have had plenty to eat and plenty of clothes to wear.” “Ye see, mass’r, de good Lo’d he know what’s de best t’ing fur de brack, well as fur de w’ite; an’ He say ter we dat we should cum up yer, an’ I don’t reckon He let we starve.” The very essence of the negro’s Wanderlust was ex- pressed in the reply of an old darky, who was asked why she left the old place: “What fur? Joy my freedom!” * Hence, by the fall of 1865, when cotton-picking time came, a large majority of the freedmen had left their former mas- ters. Thousands of able-bodied negroes were living in in- dolence, getting a living by picking and stealing from unpro- tected corn-fields and hen-roosts; and hundreds more aged and infirm and children were cared for by the Freedmen’s Bureau.” Thus, in the summer and fall of 1865, vagabond- age was the general condition of the freedmen. Plantations suffered from the loss of labor, from their depredations on the crops, while towns were overwhelmed with throngs of idle blacks that crowded everywhere.* Newspapers re- ported that most of the offenders brought before the pro- vost courts in towns were negroes, accused of stealing, quarreling, and disturbing the peace generally.* The Au- gusta Constitutionalist urged the need of turning to the military authorities for protection against vagrants, and suggested as a remedy that the commander of the post re- 1 Andrews, op. cit., Dp. 353. 2B. .C. Truman said that about one-third of the slaves were with their former masters. New York Times, November 23, 1865. 3 Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, p. 253, and news- papers. 4 Macon Telegraph, December 1 and 30, 1865, and other papers. 46 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [46 quire all negroes coming into the city to register, allow them reasonable time to secure work, and then send all those still idle to plantations on the coast or hire them for work on the railroads.*. In Athens in one week one hun- dred and fifty negroes were arrested for theft. The prob- lem of punishment was a trying one for provost marshals, some of whom devised odd penalties, such as tying the of- fender by his thumbs on tiptoe, or shaving off one-half of his head, or putting him in a barrel with armholes and labeled—“ I am a thief’. Somewhat later, judges of the Freedmen’s Court in Savannah punished freedmen by mak- ing them work in the chaingang on the streets, each one bearing a placard stating his crime.* Idleness and vagrancy brought to the freedmen much suf- fering and hardship from which slavery had protected them. As valuable property, slaves were well fed and comfortably housed, but as free persons, many of them abandoned all comforts, satisfied because they were free. The rate of mortality among the blacks in the latter part of 1865 was frightfully high, and especially in towns, where pressure for existence was heaviest, they suffered greatly from star- vation and disease. In Macon, for instance, during De- cember, about five hundred negroes died, whereas ordi- narily the death rate was only about forty a month.* With soldiers returning from the armies and negroes wander- ing without restraint, smallpox spread widely during the latter part of 1865 and was responsible for many deaths among the blacks. 1 Macon Telegraph, May 24 and June 1, 186s. ‘Hull, Annals of Athens, p. 303. 3 Macon Telegraph, January 13, 1866. “New York Times, December 31, 1865, from Macon Telegraph and Augusta Constitutionalist; Joint Committee on Reconstruction, pt. iii, p. 173 (Test.: Sidney Andrews). 47] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 47 One of the difficulties in the transition from slavery to freedom was the care of the dependent classes among the freedmen, the aged, helpless and young children. Some of these were supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau, and many more, who remained in their old homes, were looked after by their former masters as they had always been. It was probably a rare case for a former slave-holder to turn out the old darkies or the sick, and, if he had any means of subsistence whatever, he willingly cared for those who had been dependent on him.* But it was a different matter when the charity given freely was demanded as an obliga- tion by the Freedmen’s Bureau. General Tillson directed that the Bureau was not to remove the helpless and the aged freedmen and young children from the homes of their masters: dependent adults should be supported by their sons or daughters, if they had any, or by former masters until the state should make provision for them; if chil- dren were not supported the agent should try to bind them out.” Newspapers, in commenting on this order, said that no case had been heard of where a master had refused to care for the helpless among his former slaves. “ We won- der,” said the Columbus Enquirer, “how many such ex- amples there are at the North—how many poor Irish or German ‘helps’ are provided for in their old age by former employers who for a score of years had the benefit of their faithful service when able to work.’”’* The following ob- servation of the Milledgeville Union on General Tillson’s order was thoroughly sound in principle: 1B. C. Truman observed that in the whole state the Freedmen’s Bureau had only about 1000 paupers, because generally the aged and young were cared for by their former masters. New York Times, December 5, 1865. 2 Asst. Commissioner Tillson, Circular no. 5, in Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. ® Quoted in Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. 48 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [48 The plantation economy was an integral system, all parts of which were necessary to sustain it. When the government took away the effective working force, it knocked away the prop that upheld the whole system; it withdrew the effective workers, and with them the means by which the owner was enabled to provide for those who could not provide for them- selves.+ And another comment on the order was: The law which freed the negro, at the same time freed the master. At the same moment, and for both parties, all obli- gations springing out of the relation of master and slave, ex- cept those of kindness, ceased mutually to exist. If any officer can make the master support the old and infirm slave, he can also make the slave continue under and support the old and infirm master.? Under these conditions the great troublesome question of the day, discussed in newspaper editorials and talked over wherever planters met together, was—What is to be done with the negro? On this point the Southern Cultivator ob- served: Our servants are giving us not a little trouble, nowadays. Poor, misguided creatures! who imagine that “ freedom” consists in no work, plenty to eat, and going where they please! .... The whole question of our future agricultural labor is one of the deepest import to every landholder and resident of the South; and deserves the calmest consideration of the wisest, best, and most experienced men of our country.® It was agreed that some action must be taken to prevent a large part of the negro population from lapsing into per- 1 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. 2 Southern Cultivator, July, 1865. 3 June 1, 1865. 49] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 49 manent vagabondage, and from the experience of the first few months of the negroes testing their freedom, the only possible method, apparently, was by some scheme of com- pulsory labor. Various suggestions for labor control were made. The editor of the Savannah Herald urged the ap- pointment of officers in every militia district to supervise labor.* In most of the Southern states laws to control vagrancy in the Black Codes made some approach to com- pulsory labor. But in the meantime, the military authori- ties, as guardians of the black wards of the government, before the Freedmen’s Bureau was thoroughly established, in the state, were active in attempts to make the negroes work. Some parts of Georgia were fortunate in having offi- cers at the posts who were energetic in trying to adjust labor difficulties and settle the negroes at work. In Mill- edgeville, for instance, blacks could not enjoy ease without labor, for the military officer there put vagrants to work on the streets without compensation.*? Military orders in some places forbade negroes to go from one plantation to an- other without passes, and provided for daily inspection of negro cabins to stop the stealing and killing of stock. To prevent plundering on the plantations, trading with negroes from the country was prohibited. All blacks had to have written permits from their masters to sell things, and the commander of the post at Milledgeville ordered, “ Freed- men that will use any disrespectful language to their former masters will surely be punished.” Runaways who broke labor contracts and those who harbored runaways were ar- rested. On June 26, 1865, General Molineux, in Augusta, issued strict regulations to control vagrancy. Passes were ‘January 3, 1866. 2 Milledgeville Federal Union, October 17, 1865. 8 The above orders are mentioned in Avery, History of the State of Georgia, p. 343. 50 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [50 required from all persons out after nine o’clock.* Such re- strictions on the freedmen, made by their national pro- tectors, went further toward re-establishing the old slav- ery in some respects than even the severest of the Black Codes. When General Tillson took charge as Assistant Commis- sioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia, he started en- ergetically to improve the condition of the blacks by mak- ing them earn their living. In his order of October 3, 1865, he gave the following commands to his agents: to get work for unemployed negroes so as to prevent death and starvation in the approaching winter; to refuse rations. to able-bodied negroes for whom work could be found; to disabuse the negroes of the false impression about the dis- tribution of lands at Christmas; to help and not to inter- fere with the fulfilment of contracts already made, whether written or verbal; and to see that contracts for 1866 be written in a set form and duly registered by the superin- tendent of the district.?_ But nothing, not even the Bureau, could induce the freedmen to settle down to work, and planters were able to make very few contracts in the sum- mer and fall when the negroes were filled with expecta- tions of the distribution of land and other good things at Christmas time. Rumors were current among the whites that a general in- surrection was being planned by the negroes at Christmas and newspapers in various sections warned the people to make ready to protect themselves. There is no evidence that the Christmas uprising was anything more than mere rumor, a bogey to which the nervous and uncertain state of mind of the white people gave reality. But true or false 1 Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, vol. xlvii, pt. iii, p. 665. 2 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. 51] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 51 as rumors might prove, the white people took precautions against what the season might bring forth. In the country districts militia was organized to picket roads and patrol the country. During the last week of 1865 a number of negroes were killed and other outrages were reported. But probably the disorder was not much greater than was usual at that season of the year. In towns Christmas passed more quietly than was expected. In Milledgeville, for in- stance, fewer negroes appeared than at Christmas time be- fore and had less money to spend.” In Macon the rollick- ing, jovial negro of Christmas time was no longer seen. One good old negro, looking back to the palmy days of the past, said to a white friend: “ Ah, Masser, niggers were niggers in dem days. Den dey enjoyed demselves and had somebody to take care of em. Now dey is just vagabonds —all gwine to de debil together.” * At any rate, the holiday season passed without undue disorder and after the beginning of the new year negroes began to look around for jobs and made contracts for 1866. Doubtless the determined order of General Tillson on De- cember 22d greatly influenced them towards facing the necessity of work. One section of the order was as fol- lows: * Freed people have the right to select their own employers; but if they continue to neglect or refuse to make contracts, then, on and after January 15th, 1866, officers and agents of the Bureau will have the right, and it shall be their duty, to make contracts for them, in all cases where employers offer good 1 The Nation, February 1, 1866 (contributed articles by J. R. Dennett on “The South as It Is”). 2 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 2, 1866. 8 Macon Journal and Messenger, December 31, 1865. 4 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. 52 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [52 wages and kind treatment, unless the freed people belong to the class above excepted [those who have sufficient property to support themselves and their families without contracting to labor], or can show that they can obtain better terms. Con- tracts so made shall be as binding on both parties as though made with the full consent of the freed people. In the early aftermath of emancipation most planters looked with despair upon the future of agriculture with free labor. Freedom and labor were considered incompatible in the negro. All the characteristics of the negro slave, as his owner knew him, were believed to be inherently racial, rather than adventitious, the product of slavery. “ The negro won't work.” “ Cotton can never be raised with free labor.” “ Niggers won’t work and everything is going to ruin.” These opinions were heard on all sides in the sum- mer and fall of 1865. Slavery was considered the natural and best condition for the negro. The point of view ex- pressed in the following letter, written by Howell Cobb to General J. H. Wilson, echoed the opinion of the great mass of Southern people: * By the abolition of slavery—which either has been—or soon will be accomplished, a state of things has been produced, well calculated to excite the most serious apprehensions with the people of the South. I regard the result as unfortunate both for the white and the black. The institution of slavery, in my judgment, provided the best system of labor that could be devised for the negro race. But that has passed away, and it will tax the ability of the best and wisest statesmen to provide a substitute for it. It is due both to the white population and the negroes that the present state of things should not remain. ‘You will find that our people are fully prepared to conform to 1Letter dated from Macon, June 14, 1865. In Johnson MSS. in the Library of Congress. This letter has been published in Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. i, pp. 128-131. 53] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 53 the new state of things ;—and as a general rule will be disposed to pursue towards the negroes, a course dictated by humanity and kindness. I take it for granted, that the future relations, between the negroes and their former owners, like all other questions of domestic policy, will be under the control and direction of the State governments. In commenting on Cobb’s letter, General Wilson made this statement as to the attitude of the people of Georgia toward slavery :* The people express an external submission to its Abolition, but there is an evident desire on the part of some to get the matter within their own control, after the re-organization of the State. Others are anxious to substitute a gradual system of emancipation, or a modified condition of Slavery, similar to Peonage, and still others seem to doubt that the President’s proclamation of freedom, and the laws of Congress have been final in disposing of the Slavery question. There must be no hesitation on any of these points either by military or civil authorities. The whole system of Slavery and slave labor must be effectually destroyed, and the Freedmen protected from the injustice of evil men, before the people of Georgia get the State Government under their own control. If a single particle of life is left in the institution, or the original guardians of it are allowed any influence in the reorganization of the State, they will resuscitate and perpetuate its iniquities if possible. Some years later many of the slave-owning class came to think that emancipation was good for the master, what- ever it might be for the slave; that it relieved the white man of a heavy responsibility. But in 1865 this opinion was shared by only a few slaveholders. Joseph LeConte, ’ Letter of Bvt. Maj. Gen. J. H. Wilson to Brig. Gen. W. D. Whipple, from Macon, Ga., June 15, 1865. Johnson MSS. 54 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [54 who owned a large plantation in Liberty County, went even further and declared, to the astonishment of his friends, that emancipation entailed no real loss; that the exchange from the slave to a wage system, if labor remained reliable, would simply transfer the value of slaves to the value of land. Few, likewise, were the slave owners who faced the new order of things with an open mind. Alexander H. Stephens was one of this class, who, as far as his own ne- groes were concerned, was glad to try the experiment, to see what could be done for them under the new conditions. As he wrote to President Johnson from Fort Warren, where he was imprisoned, in June, 1865: ° “ Slavery has been com- pletely abolished. If any other system or measure can be devised for the better amelioration of the condition of the colored portion of our population, consistent with the best interests of both races, then I shall be content.” In 1866, when Stephens was called before the Reconstruction Com- mittee of Congress, he stated that relations between the whites and the blacks in Georgia were as good as the rela- tions between employers and employees elsewhere, much better than in the previous fall when negroes were idle, re- fusing to make contracts in the expectation that the con- vention would distribute land among them at Christmas.® In fact, the whole tone of comment on the labor situa- tion changed completely in the early months of 1866. Des- pair gave place to hopefulness as the blacks made agree- ments to work and settled down on the plantations. As the Augusta Chronicle observed, General Tillson’s order was having good effect, and consequently planters were feeling more encouraged than a few weeks previous. The real test 1LeConte, Autobiography, pp. 232-3. 7 Avary (ed.), Recollections of Alex. H. Stephens, p. 201. * Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. iii, p. 160. 55] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 55 would come in the summer and early fall. Patience and forbearance were necessary. The result would probably be mixed, however, with some failures and other successes under the new system of labor. The Milledgeville Federal Union reported that in Baldwin County most of the ne- groes had gone to work though a score or more were still hanging around the sunny corners in town. The editor gave his opinion that the negroes should be taught that they must work, and that even being a “ preacher” should not save a negro from a bad name if he didn’t work.? In the Macon region negroes pretty generally contracted and went to work, but even then only about a third of a crop was ex- pected. Delay was caused in some places where agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau insisted that contracts be submitted to them.* In Talbot and Jefferson and other counties of Central Georgia, negro men settled to work early in Janu- ary, but there, as elsewhere, difficulties were found in get- ting negro women to go back to their ante-bellum duties.* Reports from South Georgia, from Thomas, Early, Baker and other counties, said that the labor question was adjust- ing itself more rapidly than had been expected, though planters were not supplied with as many hands as they wanted and many large farms were idle for want of laborers.° Still some of the larger towns continued to be troubled with crowds of loafing negroes. In Augusta at the end of January the streets were thronged with negro vagrants when everyone was clamoring for laborers. Negro huck- sters harangued the loafers on street corners, telling them 1January 9, 1866. 2 January 9, 1866. 8 Macon Journal and Messenger, January 16, 1866. 4 Augusta Chronicle, May 13, 1866; Macon Telegraph, February 3, 1866. 5 Ibid., January 10, 27 and February 14, 1866. 56 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [56 not to work for the whites unless they could get extrava- gant privileges.’ But all of the negroes that remained in the towns after the holidays were not loafers. Some wha settled down there were skilled mechanics of the planta- tion who found a good market for their craft in the city. This advertisement, for instance, appeared in an Augusta paper, evidently written by a white friend of the persons whose names are signed: ” Work wanted—We have established a shop at Turnwold where we are prepared to do all manner of wood and iron work— wagon making and repairing included. We have not turned fools because we are free, but know we have to work for our living, and are determined to do it. We mean to be sober, industrious, honest, and respectful to white folks, and so we depend on them to give us work. (signed) William & Jim. Town life afforded many opportunities to blacks who ac- quired skill of one sort or another as slaves. For instance, in the Hull family in Athens, the house servants found var- ious means of living in the new conditions after emancipa- tion. The seamstress and her daughter moved into a house belonging to Mr. Hull and took in sewing enough to sup- port themselves. The carriage driver found work in a livery stable, and the old carpenter, who stuck to his mas- ter and was supported by him, made tubs and buckets for ready cash to buy dram and tobacco.* These are only a few instances of the many capable negroes who, having been household servants in towns or skilled mechanics on plan- tations, found profitable employment in towns and cities after emancipation. This new or greatly augmented class of black inhabitants changed the character of negro dwell- Augusta Chronicle, January 31, 1866. 2 Ibid., April 17, 1866. 3 Hull, Annals of Athens, p. 2092. ral TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 57 ings in towns, which had formerly been small houses in the rear of white people’s houses. Later, separate negro tene- ments were built in a distinct section of the city, the begin- ning of the “ Shermantown” or “ darktown”’ settlements of Southern cities.* Plantations on the sea-islands and coast lands where rice and long staple cotton were raised were abandoned when the Federal fleet in 1862 blockaded the Georgia coast. All planters who had facilities transported their slaves to the safer inland region or else left the plantations to the ne- groes to get along as best they might. At the end of the war, when owners returned to the islands, difficulties arose. over claims to lands that were occupied by the negroes as. their own. General Sherman, after his march to the sea in 1864, assigned abandoned lands to negroes who had fol- lowed in his train.” But since he gave only a possessory title, rights were finally restored to the owners. After the- war, conditions in the island and coast settlements were thoroughly chaotic, for vicious agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau or men acting under its authorization did much to. disturb the blacks and hinder instead of help them to make: themselves self-supporting. Colored troops established at Darien and at other coast points also were contributing fac- tors towards disturbance. But by the end of 1865 the colored troops had been recalled, giving place to white regiments. Some of the negroes, who had been transported’ up state during the war, came wandering back, many of them with no means of support, saying that their masters had dismissed them without any share of the crop or wages.* 1 Macon Journal and Messenger, March 2, 1866. 2 Macon Telegraph, February 10, 1866, quotes a letter from Gen. Sherman to President Johnson of February 2, 1866; Trowbridge, Picture of the Desolated States, pp. 508, 509. 3 Joint Committee on Reconstruction, pt. iii, p. 42, report of C. H.. Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau. 58 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [58 In the summer of 1866 General Steedman and General Fullerton, in investigating the working of the Freedmen’s Bureau under commission from the War Department, made a careful tour of inspection of the Sea Islands of Georgia.* At the Ogeechee River Settlement, the largest colony estab- lished by General Sherman’s order, they found that the negroes had been duped by the agent, who left them at the end of the year with no share in the rice crop they had raised. The agent, who provided the workers during the season with government rations, had hired twenty-five freed- men as guards and armed them with U. S. muskets, so as to prevent whites from entering the settlement. Even U. S. officers were refused admittance except by pass from the agent. On St. Simon’s Island freedmen held eighteen valid land grants, encumbering four plantations. By the middle of 1866 most of the five or six hundred freedmen on the island were working for owners who had returned to occupy their plantations. They appeared well-fed and contented. On two plantations, though no formal contracts had been made, the negroes had confidence in fair treat- ment. Sapelo Island was exclusively cultivated by two Northerners, who were running a big plantation, promising some sticcess. The negroes were working for two-thirds of the crop. In 1865 the freedmen of Sapelo Island had fallen into the hands of some unprincipled men who came with permits from the Freedmen’s Bureau and bought their cotton at 10 cents per pound, paying mostly in whisky.’ St. Catherine’s Island was in the grip of the notorious Tunis The Steedman-Fullerton Report, on which this account is based, is printed in full in the New York Herald, beginning June 13, 1866; parts dealing with Georgia appear in the Savannah News and Herald, May 19, 21, and August 15, 1866, and Augusta Chronicle, June 16, 1866. ? New York Herald, June 2, 1866. Correspondent with Steedman and Fullerton. 59] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 59 G. Campbell,* a negro from Canada, appointed agent of the Bureau by General Saxton, Campbell had set up an auto- cratic government with an absurdly elaborate constitution, senate, house of representatives, courts of various kinds, and what not, with himself as chief autocrat. Seventeen valid land grants, 515 acres in all scattered over the island, were consolidated by General Tillson to cover one end of the island, leaving the remainder to the original owners. Two Northerners, who had rented part of the Walburg plantation and worked 147 hands, planted 530 acres in cot- ton and I15 acres in corn; whereas the 475 freedmen working for themselves, more than three times as many, planted only 200 acres of cotton and the same amount of corn: a commentary on the industry of the negro when left to himself. A special correspondent for the New York Herald, traveling with Steedman and Fullerton on their inspection tour, wrote the following as his opinion of the negro as land owner: ’” This is but another illustration of the fact which I have pre- viously mentioned, namely, that the experiment of making the uneducated plantation negro a planter on his own account is an utter and unmitigated failure, injurious to the negro him- self and to the community in which he lives. The sooner the few valid land certificates issued under Gen. Sherman’s order are bought up by the government, the better. It will remove a fruitful source of jealousy and ill-feeling among the blacks themselves, lessen the risk of unfriendly collision with the whites, and in the end be much better for all concerned. The journal which Frances Butler Leigh kept of her resi- dence on her father’s plantations on St. Simon’s Island and Butler’s Island (near Darien) is a valuable account of con- 1 Notorious in the later reconstruction period of Georgia. 2 New York Herald, June 2, 1866. 60 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [60 ditions on the Sea Islands after the war.* Early in 1866 letters from a neighbor and from a Bureau agent informed Mr. Butler, who had resided in the North during the war, that all his slaves had returned to the island and would hire to no one else though they were badly in need of pro- visions. When Mr. Butler returned, in addition to his own negroes there were some whom he had sold eight years before. Seven had worked their way from the up-country. Since it was too late to plant a full crop, only enough was planted to make seed for another year and to clear expenses, the negroes to have one-half of what was raised. The ne- groes seemed happy to get back to the old place and to their master. Everything which had been left in their charge was restored, and one old couple, “ Uncle John and Mum Peggy ”’, came with five dollars in silver half-dollars tied up in a bag, which had been given to them in the second year of the war by a Yankee captain for some chickens. The negroes on St. Simon’s Island, who had come under the influence of Northern soldiers during the war, seemed disappointed that the land was not really theirs as the Yankees had told them. They had planted some corn and cotton, which Mr, Butler allowed them to keep, provided they should plant twenty acres for him, for which he would feed and clothe them. After the first year’s experience, when Mr, Butler found that it was decidedly more difficult to carry on a plantation with free than with slave labor, he arranged with a Northerner who had leased a place on St. Simon’s to manage the Butler place for him on shares. Mr. Butler’s experience was not by any means unique. After the war the prosperity of the rice and sea-island cotton plantations vanished. In the difficult period of transition from slavery to free- 1 Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the IVar. 61] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 61 dom, Georgia was particularly fortunate in having General David Tillson in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau from September, 1865, to January, 1867.1_ General Tillson was an enlightened man, fully in sympathy with the demands upon him to safeguard the interests of the negro, but in- telligent enough to understand that the negro’s welfare would not be advanced by stirring up the hostility of the former masters. It was his policy to secure the co-operation of the citizens of Georgia with the Bureau so far as pos- sible. Hence, on October 25th he wrote to Provisional Gov- ernor Johnson, requesting him to instruct such justices of the peace and ordinaries of the counties, as might be desig- nated by the Freedmen’s Bureau, to act as agents. In se- lecting such civil officers as Bureau agents, Tillson promised to be guided by the competency and fitness of the officers to do simple justice without reference to condition or color.’ Further co-operation was established between civil author- ity and theBureau when the Assistant Commissioner asked the Provisional Governor to constitute the civil courts of the governor’s appointment as freedmen’s courts, whenever the judges were ready to accept such recognition. This was done with satisfactory results in most instances. In De- cember, 1866, the legislature passed a law which made valid the contracts of apprenticeship made by citizens of Georgia with Freedmen’s Bureau agents, the same as if made ac- cording to statutory provisions of the state.* The main activities of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 1General Saxton was Assistant Commissioner for South Carolina, Georgia and Florida up to January, 1866, but was relieved in Georgia in December, 1865. Before that time Tillson was a subordinate under him. 2 Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the People of Georgia, 1865, p. 30. 3 Acts of the General Assembly, 1866, p. 141. “ 62 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [62 and 1866 concerned the physical and economic needs of the negroes. It also directed educational opportunities for the freedmen in connection with Northern philanthropic socie- ties. In the early months after emancipation, when the freedmen could not or would not earn their living, supplies from the Bureau kept many of them from starving. Be- tween June, 1865, and September, 1866, 847,699 rations were furnished in Georgia; and in the next year from September, 1866, to September, 1867, about half that amount, less in Georgia than in the neighboring states. To care for the sick and helpless, the Freedmen’s Bureau had five hospitals in Georgia in 1865, seven in 1866.* Besides relieving distress among the freedmen, the most important work of the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 and 1866 was its regulation of labor in getting the negro to work and in fixing the terms of contract. General Tillson used his utmost energy to disabuse the negroes of the idea that they did not have to work for their living. His second circular order of October 3, 1865, gave notice that_rations _would not be furnished to able-bodied negroes for whom “work could be found; and his order of December 22d pro- nounced an ultiniatam to idle negroes, giving them until January 15th to make contracts to labor.” This order, with the determination of Tillson to enforce it, was in no small part responsible for the betterment in the labor situation in 1866. Prior to issuing this order, General Tillson held a meeting with planters in Savannah, at which he offered to do his best to induce negroes to make contracts and to en- force them, if the planters for their part would offer good wages.> In Augusta, Milledgeville and elsewhere, other 1 Peirce, Freedmen’s Bureau, pp. 92, 98. ? Milledgeville Federal Union, November 17, 1865; January 9, 1866. 5Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. ili, p. 41, report of C. H. Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau. 63] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 63 officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau addressed public meetings in an effort to bring seekers after labor and the laborers into harmony.* The planters appealed to the Bureau to help them in another difficulty which confronted them, which was to protect them against other employers who would entice the negroes away, after they had already con- tracted for the year, by offer of higher wages. Some un- scrupulous men were ready to offer almost anything at the beginning of the season when hands were scarce, but were unable or unwilling to live up to their bargain when the day of reckoning came. As Ben Hill said: ‘ How to make the negro observe his contract on the one hand, and how to make the bad white man fulfil his contract on the other, is just now the pons asinorum of our labor system’’.? To cross this rather treacherous bridge, the employer and the laborer both needed some outside assistance, which only the Freedmen’s Bureau was in a position to give in 1865, before the courts were ready to deal with the difficulty. The trouble with the Freedmen’s Bureau, like any other piece of machinery, was that its usefulness depended largely on the hands that operated it. Many of the subordinate agents were incompetent, unfit for what was a most difficult and delicate work. The system of payment of agents by fees, which continued in force until 1867, encouraged the worst class of agents to use their office for what they could get out of it. Their command over negroes was the source of great temptation to bribery.* Planters found that hands could be secured under favorable terms, sometimes, by greasing the palm of the Freedmen’s Bureau agent. Some of the resident civil officers appointed as agents were ac- 1 Augusta Constitutionalist, May 27, 1865; Milledgeville Federal Union, August 22, September 5, 1865. 1Ku Klux Committee, vol. vii, p. 758. 8 Trowbridge, Picture of the Desolated States, p. 499. 64 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [64 cused by the head of the Bureau of abusing their powers in being unjust to the freedmen, and in inflicting cruel and unusual punishment upon them.* It was perhaps a rare ex- perience for an agent of the Bureau to receive commenda- tion from the white citizens in the district under his super- vision. The fact that Captain Thos. W. White, in charge of the Bureau in Baldwin County, was a citizen of Mill- edgeville, and hence more in sympathy with the employer’s point of view in settling difficulties that came before him than were non-resident agents, may account for the fol- lowing resolution passed at a public meeting of the repre- sentative townsmen of Milledgeville: ? Resolved, That in view of the happy and quiet state of affairs in Baldwin County, in regard to the free negroes, resulting from the judicious exercise of his powers as Freedmen’s Bureau Agent, by Capt. Thos. W. White, we, the people of the ‘county, hereby tender to Capt. White our hearty thanks and commendation for the enlightened, moderate and useful ad- ministration of his office among us, and hereby acknowledge our public obligations to him, on his retirement. The bad repute of the Freedmen’s Bureau was due more directly to the political activities of its agents in 1867 and 1868, when they manipulated the helpless black voters for their own aggrandizement. But even in the first year and a half after the war, the Bureau, as a Federal organ com- ing between the white man and the blacks, was resented by most of the white people in the South. The judgment of General Steedman and General Fullerton after their inves- tigation in the summer of 1866 was that the Bureau in ‘Georgia, under the administration of General Saxton, was » Report of Commissioner Howard in the Report of the Secretary of War, 1867, vol. i, p. 673. 4 Milledgeville Federal Union, May 1, 1866. 65] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 65 badly mismanaged, granting unnecessary support and un- necessary tutelage and guardianship to the freedmen, and teaching them to distrust the whites. But General Tillson’s management was commended in the warmest terms.* J. R. Dennett, correspondent for the Nation, traveling in the South, noted that the Bureau was generally denounced, though some favorable opinions were expressed from a man’s personal experience.? A Northern resident in Georgia testified before the Reconstruction Committee of Congress that in Upper and Middle Georgia confidence was expressed in the Freedmen’s Bureau and in General Tillson. It was good for both planters and negroes, necessary to make the negro work, he thought.* Provisional Governor Johnson said that something like the Freedmen’s Bureau was necessary. The law was all right, but its enforcement was sometimes ineffective. Hostility toward its agents was abating in 1866, especially among those who formerly owned slaves.* B. C. Truman, sent south by the President in the fall of 1865, remarked that the Freedmen’s Bureau and its agents were hated by a class of whites, mostly “ poor whites ”, not the slave holders. In his opinion the Bureau was well officered and managed, a necessity to both races.® The Macon Telegraph on February 4, 1866, urging that the Bureau be abolished as speedily as possible, said: Georgia has taken the matter in hand, and, through the agency of an enlightened committee of her citizens, de- vised a code for the government and protection of the black 1 New York Herald, June 13, 1866. 2 Nation, February 1, 1866. 8 Toint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. iii, p. 110 (Test.: Welles). 4 Ibid., p. 120. 5 New York Times, November 23, 1865. 6G RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [66 man that, if let alone, will do more in five years to secure his rights and revive prosperity in her borders than all the schemes that northern theorists could devise in a century. The Milledgeville Federal Union of May 29, 1866, said that the Freedmen’s Bureau was no longer needed in Georgia if it ever had been. A few military garrisons at two or three points in the state would be all that was necessary to pro- tect the negroes. “If Congress would let us alone, we could work out our problem satisfactorily without even a soldier in the state. But people cannot object to orderly white soldiers—might prefer to have them for a time.” The Savannah News was uncompromising in its judgment of the Bureau—“a social and moral evil, keeping alive antagonism between the races”’.* Public opinion, as Sidney Andrews read it, was that the Freedmen’s Bureau was a necessary evil that must be endured, though the people .would rather have the negroes left to their own control.? To be left alone to work out the negro problem without in- terference from the North was the intense desire of the South. This was the keynote of the address of H. V. John- son, President of the Constitutional Convention in 1865, who said: * It is true our labor system has been entirely deranged, al- most destroyed; and we are now to enter upon the experiment, ; whether or not the means of labor which are left to us, the class of people to which we are to look in the future as our laboring class, can be organized into efficient and trustworthy laborers. That may be done, or I hope it may be done if left to ourselves. If I could have the ear of the entire people of the United States, and if I might be permitted, humble though May 22, 1866. 1 Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, pt. iii, p. 173. 3 Journal of the Constitutional Convention, 1865, p. 203. 67] TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM 67 I be, to utter an admonition, not by way of threat, but for the purpose of animating them to the pursuit of a policy which would be wise, and salutary, and fraternal, and best for . the country, I would implore them that, so far as providing for this branch of our population is concerned, and their or- . ganization into a class of efficient and trustworthy laborers, : the Federal Government should just simply let us alone. We understand the character of that class of people, their capac- ities, their instincts, and the motives which control their con- duct. If we cannot succeed in making them trustworthy and | efficient as laborers, I think it is not saying too much, when | we affirm that the Federal Government need not attempt it. I trust they will not, and that we will have the poor privilege of being let alone, in the future, in reference to this class of our people. _ Had all the inhabitants of Georgia been as fair-minded and as humane toward the freedmen as H. V. Johnson, Alex. H. Stephens, John B. Gordon, and the like, there would have been no need of such an institution as the Freedmen’s Bureau. But in conditions as they were, even with the large bulk of evil influence justly charged against some of its agents, the Freedmen’s Bureau was, on the whole, an important constructive, force towards economic adjustment in the immediate transition from slavery to freedom. } 2 See address of Alex. H. Stephens before the Georgia Legislature on February 22, 1866. Journal of the House, 1865-6, pp. 413-28; also testimony of General Gordon, before the Ku Klux Committee, vol. vi, p. 305, et seq. CHAPTER III Lagpor AND LAND For the remainder of the season of 1865, after emancipa- tion destroyed titles in slave property, Georgia planters at- tempted to continue their planting operations with as little change as possible from the old routine, by the substitution of some kind of payment to the freedmen for labor formerly exacted of them. This was the ideal of the planter in 1865, to cultivate on a large scale, to work the negroes in gangs as formerly under strict control, but to pay them jsome kind of wage, either a share of the crop or money. But the difficulty in achieving this ideal in most parts of J agricultural Georgia was that the taste of freedom was sweet to the negro, and as a free agent he wished to get as far as possible from the old régime. The negro’s ideal was to have a little farm or patch of ground of his own, to cul- tivate when and how he pleased, to establish his family as an independent social and economic group without subjec- tion to any master or overseer. The warring of these two ideals forced the remodeling of the agrarian system of Georgia that has taken place since 1865.t In the contest for supremacy the planter was at a disadvantage in many ways. He had little capital and but limited credit. He was rigid in his ideas and unadaptable to change. He had always cultivated his land in one way and lacked the 1QOn this subject two important monographs have been published, Banks, Economics of Land Tenure in Georgia, and Brooks, Agrarian Revolution in Georgia. 68 [68 69] LABOR AND LAND 69 constructive power to create a new system instead of try- ing to resurrect the old. The new order came in spite of him instead of because of him. The negro had the upper hand. The white man wanted his work more than the negro wanted to work. With the migration of freedmen to towns and with the drain of the labor force to newer and better paying fields in Mississippi and Louisiana, the de- mand for labor far exceeded the supply. On the other hand, the freedman was handicapped by his ignorance and by his defective bargaining powers. But this weakness of the laborer was more than made up where the Freedmen’s Bureau was established. It was the business of its agents to supervise the making of labor contracts so as to protect the interests of the freedmen. The first general order of Assistant Commissioner Till- son of the Freedmen’s Bureau on October 3, 1865, directed that labor contracts for 1866 should be in writing, and gave the following as a model form for the use of agents: * Know all men by these presents, that — of the county of —, state of —, held and firmly bound to the United States of America in the sum of — dollars, for the payment of which — bind — heirs, executors, administrators firmly by these presents in this contract: That — furnish the persons whose names are subjoined, (freed laborers) quarters, fuel, substantial and healthy rations, all medical attendance and supplies in case of sickness, and the amount set opposite their respective names per month during the continuation of the contract; the laborers to be paid in full before the final disposal of the crop which is to be raised by them on — plantation, in the county of —, state of —. 1 Milledgeville Federal Union, November 17, 1865. W 4 ‘ 70 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [70 | — No. | Names | Age Rates of pay per month DoLuiars CENTS This contract is to commence with this date and close with the year. Given in duplicate to — this — day of — 186—. Registered —, 186—. WHEE 8 Sakae GsG oa Supt. of Dist. In places where the freedmen remained on the plantation at the end of the war, chiefly in the southwestern part of the state, the plantation was less disturbed than elsewhere. Planters attempted to make arrangements with their former slaves to continue cultivating the crop, promising a share of the crop at the end of the year. Payment by a share of the crop was the general rule in Southwest Georgia in 1865. Even in this section, where conditions were more favorable than in other regions, many were the trials of planters who tried to continue in the old way with free labor. The fol- lowing letters are an expression of the difficulties which confronted Howell Cobb on his plantations in Middle and Southwestern Georgia. There the old system was retained, 1 Letters in MSS. in the possession of Mrs. A. S. Erwin of Athens, Ga., to whom I am indebted, also to Professor U. B. Phillips of the University of Michigan, for the use of the correspondence of Howell Cobb. These two letters have since been published in Brooks, Agrarian Revolution of Georgia, pp. 20-2. The letter from J. D. Collins to John A. Cobb has appeared in the collection of Cobb’s correspondence, edited by U. B. Phillips, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1911, vol. ii, pp. 665-6. Collins was the overseer on one of Cobb’s plantations, and John A. Cobb was the son of Howell Cobb. ‘ 71. LABOR AND LAND 71 whereby the negroes worked under an overseer as formerly, the only difference being that they were paid one-third of the crop, out of which they had to maintain themselves. [J. D. Collins to John A. Cobb. ] BALDWIN County, HurricANE PLANTATION. July 31, 1865. Dear Sir, Acordin to promis I write you to inform you how the ne- grows or freedmen air getting on. tha dont doo as well as tha did a few weeks back your propersition to hier them has no effect on them at tall tha say and contend that onley three of them agreed to stay that was the three that spoke Sam, Al- leck, and Johnson the rest claim tha made no agreement what- ever an you had as well sing Sams to a ded horse as to tri to instruct a fool negrow Some of them go out to work verry well others stay at their houseses untell & hour by sun others go to their houseses and stay two & three days Say enny thing to them the reply is I am sick but tha air drying fruit all the time tha take all day evry Satturday without my lief I gave orders last Satturday morning for them to go to work when tha got the order eight went out I ordered tom to go to mill he said he would not doo so. tha air steeling the green corn verry rapped som of them go where tha pleas and when tha pleas and pay no attention to your orders nor mine: the commandant of post at milledgeville sent walker back under ‘Gen Wilson order I explained the matter to him but he would send him back unless you had paid him for his work up to the time you ordered him off I told walker ef he came back he would not get a cent for his work not even his clothes nor those he came back in the face of all the orders had been given him. I drove him off the Secont time after you left before I received a written order to take him back I then went down and saw the officer in command an exsplained the hole matter to him but he said he could not allow him driven off without violating Gen. Wilsons order an he was compeld to carry them ‘out as sutch the matter stands as above stated it would be best 72 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [72 for you to visit the plantation soon or write a verry positive letter to be read to them requiering them to work or leave though I think I will get som of them by not feeding them which proses is now going on though tha is rather two mutch fruit and green corn to have a good effect. I send Alleck up with the wagon and mule pleas write back by Alleck I am sick at this time I have had fever for three days no other matters of importance at present. P. S. We will need som barriels to put syrup in in about six weeks. [Howell Cobb to his Wife. ] DoMINIE PLACE, SUMTER Co. My Dear Wife, (December, 1865-) I avail myself of the first opportunity to send a letter to town. I find a worse state of things with the negroes than I expected, and am unable even now to say what we shall be able to do. From Nathan Barwick’s place every negro has left. There is not one to feed the stock, and on the other places none has contracted as yet. I shall stay here until I see what can be done. By Tuesday we shall probably know what they will do. At all events I shall then look out for other negroes. I intend to send Nathan Barwick to Baldwin on Wednesday to see what hands can be got there, with the assistance of Wilker- son. I am offering them even better terms than I gave them last year, to wit, one-third of the cotton and corn crop, and. they feed and clothe themselves, but nothing satisfies them. Grant them one thing, and they demand something more, and there is no telling where they would stop. The truth is, I am thoroughly disgusted with free negro labor, and am deter- mined that the next year shall close my planting operations with them. There is no feeling of gratitude in their nature. Let any man offer them some little more freedom, and they catch at it with avidity, and would sacrifice their best friend without hesitation and without regret. That miserable creature Wilkes Flag sent old Ellick down to get the negroes from Nathan Barwick’s place. Old Ellick staid out in the woods and. 73] LABOR AND LAND 73, sent for the negroes and they were bargaining with him in the night and telling Barwick in the day that they were going to stay with him. The moment they got their money, they started for the railroad. This is but one instance but it is the history of all of them. Among the number was Anderson, son of Sye and Sentry, whom I am supporting at the Hurricane. In these first contracts there was great variety in the terms of hiring. In addition to the scheme just mentioned, other agreements provided that the hand would receive his maintenance during the season as well as a stated share of the crop at the end. In this way, if the laborer broke his contract before the end of the season, he lost everything ex- cept the food he had consumed and the clothes he wore. Still other contracts called for so much a month or a year. When wage was agreed to by the month, the planter tried to hold the laborer by paying only half each month and the remainder at the close of the season. From the experience of 1865 it was seen that both methods of payment, by share and by money, had their dif- ficulties. It was about six of one and half a dozen of the other. Those who had paid by shares wished they had paid money; and those who bargained for money thought that things would have been better had they hired their laborers for shares. The authoritative agricultural paper of Georgia at the close of the season of 1865 carefully can- vassed both methods in an editorial on “ Contracts with Laborers’”’.* Of the two methods, the editor thought that it would be best, if possible, to pay hands a stipulated price per week, and reserve half until the end of the year, which would be forfeited if the agreement was not kept. Deduc- tions ought to be made for idleness or tardiness, as with factory labor in the North. Then additional hands could be hired at special times for extra work. To the money 1 Southern Cultivator, December, 1865. 74 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [74 wage system, however, there were three objections. The planter didn’t know what kind of labor he could get—most hands had no regular hours of work and moved lazily; then the planter could offer only small wages, which would react badly on the negro, not encouraging him to take pains. Moderate wages would make the Northern Radicals think that the negro was being oppressed. And most people had not the means to pay money wage. On the whole, concluded the writer, the best thing for all parties under the circum- stances would be share payment. Shares would vary on different plantations, less on more fertile ones, where more of the work was done by animals and less by hand.. The scheme of payment of laborers by shares is described thus by Frances Butler Leigh, as practised on her father’s plantation: Our contract with them is for half the crop; that is, one-half to be divided among them according to each man’s rate of work, we letting them have in the meantime necessary food, clothing and money for their present wants (as they have not a penny) which is to be deducted from whatever is due to them at the end of the year.* Where the old plantation system was kept as closely as possible, the former slaves simply became hired hands under contract for a year. Their payment was either in a share of the crop or in a stated money wage. In 1865 pay- ment in a share of the crop was more common than money payments.* The shortage in money at the end of the war 1 Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the War, p. 26. 2See Brooks, Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, p. 18. “In 1865, therefore, in a great number of cases all the externals of the former régime were continued: the negroes lived in ‘quarters’, went to the fields at tap of farm bell, worked in gangs under direction, and were rationed from the plantation smokehouse, the charge for food being deducted from the wage. A money wage was usually paid in 1865 75] LABOR AND LAND 70 made some sort of payment in kind practically necessary for a time. All the ready cash that the planter realized from the sale of his cotton on hand and all the credit that he could command were consumed in purchase of stock and provisions for the season, with none left in the great ma- jority of cases for the payment of hands. Then, too, the extreme mobility and uncertainty of labor, together with the negro’s ignorance of money values, made payment in the crop more practicable to the planter. The method of hiring, by which a share of the crop was offered to be paid at the end of the harvest season, out of which the cost of provisions furnished to the hands during the season was deducted, the plan used by Howell Cobb on his plantations, kept the negro more nearly in his former position than any other; especially when the organization of the plantation continued to be squad work under the direction of the planter or his overseer. The labor problem thus offered perplexing difficulties. To discuss the question, General Tillson met with planters in Savannah on December 9, 1865. He offered to do his part to induce the freedmen to make contracts and to en- force them if the planters offered good wages. Planters thought $8, $10, or $12 a month with food would be a good wage for a full hand, the majority agreeing on $10 with food. But General Tillson said he would not help to make contracts for less than $12 to $15 with food for males, and $8 to $10 for females. Some few planters agreed to this stipulation.? In the circular which General and 1866, the payment being weekly, monthly, or yearly, according to contract.” From the many current accounts of farming operations which were published in the Georgia papers, I am led to differ with Mr. Brooks on this last point. While both kinds of payment were used side by side, I think share payment was more common. 1 Banks, Economics of Land Tenure in Georgia, p. 78, et seq. 2 Joint Committee on Reconstruction, pt. ili, p. 41 (report of Brevet Brig. Gen. C. H. Howard to Gen. O. O. Howard, December 30, 1865.) 76 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [76 Tillson sent to agents of the Bureau on December 22d, he set down the following as standard wages: in Upper and Middle Georgia, where land was not rich, $12-13 per month with board and lodging for full male hand, and $8-10 for full female hand, the laborers to furnish their own cloth- ing and medicine; along the coast and in Southwest Georgia, $15 for full male and $10 for full female. In all parts of the state, since some planters preferred to pay in part of the crop, one-third the gross to one-half the net proceeds might be considered a fair equivalent to the wages stipu- lated. But the standard set by the Freedmen’s Bureau was by no means held where planters could secure hands for less. J. R. Dennett, writing for the Nation in his series of ar- ticles, ““ The South as It Is”, reported from Macon and Columbus that the $12 rule was not enforced, that the majority of contracts calling for a money wage were for $120 a year and board.” This was good wages, for re- ports in the newspapers of 1866 gave $100 with rations as the current wage for a full hand, though payments varied from $75 to $140 for men and from $50 to $100 for women. In South Georgia a large majority of laborers worked for a part of the crop, one-third if they provided for themselves or one-fourth with everything furnished. Where money was paid, it was a common practice to pay one-half at the end of each month and the other half at the end of the year. This was done to hold the negro if possible until the end of the harvest season.® The experiment of cultivating land with free contract labor was beset with two great difficulties, to keep the negro 1 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. ? Nation, February 1, 1866. 8 Reports from various counties in Macon Telegraph, January 27, February 3, 1866; Macon Journal and Messenger, January 3, 1866; Savannah Herald, March 28, 1866; etc. Also conversation with Mr. S. M. Mays of Augusta, Ga., a planter in Columbia County. 77] LABOR AND LAND 77 to his contract and to make him work steadily and regu- larly. It was hardly to be expected that the blacks, after their long habits as slave-driven workers, would under- stand the obligation of a contract. They were fickle, ready to quit work under the least provocation and to break one contract to make another under the inducement of higher wages. When the farmer set out to plant cotton in the spring with sixty hands, he had no security that sixteen or six would remain to work it during the summer and to pick in the fall. The blame did not rest entirely with the irre- sponsible blacks, but with employers who induced negroes by offer of higher wages to break their contracts. Agents came from further south, from Louisiana and Mississippi, where labor was in great demand, and beguiled the negroes away in the night by offering $20 or $25.7 Planters ap- pealed to the Freedmen’s Bureau for help, and General Tillson, in his circular order of December 22, 1865, gave the following instruction:* “ All persons are forbidden to tamper with or entice laborers to leave their employers be- fore the expiration of their contracts, either by offering higher wages, or other inducements. Officers will punish, by fine or otherwise, any person who may be convicted of such acts.” Agents probably afforded some sanction to the binding force of contracts on the negroes, but still the diffi- culty continued during 1866, apparent in the numerous com- plaints registered in the newspapers of that year. 1 Macon Journal and Messenger, March 21, 1866; Savannah News, August 3, 1866; New York Times, November 23, 1866 (Truman) ; Joint Committee on Reconstruction, pt. iii, p. 167 (Test.: J P. Ham- bleton). 2 Milledgeville Federal Union, January 9, 1866. In 1866 a law was passed by the state legislature which made it a misdemeanor to entice another’s servants. Acts of the General Assembly, 1866, pp. 153-4. A case is cited by Mr. Brooks in which a verdict was rendered for $5000 against a man who enticed another man’s laborers. Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, p. 30. 78 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [78 When the compulsory methods of slavery disappeared, there was absolutely no power to keep the negro steadily and regularly at work. Everywhere negroes worked more lazily than they did as slaves. Where formerly a negro, properly supplied with mules, was expected to cultivate fifteen acres, after emancipation only ten acres could be counted on.t The crop, after it was planted, was neglected. Sometimes the whole force would put aside work and go off fishing for the day. There were many like Zeke, a hand on a plantation near Savannah, who left the field about eleven o’clock—said it was too warm to work, and besides he had promised “the lady” to go to school. Sometimes hands worked only half a day and sometimes less, and Saturday was always their day off. The only means of control which the planter could exercise over loafing and ir- regularity was by docking the delinquent’s wages. But such penalty, deferred to the end of the month or the year when pay time came, had no deterrent effect on the lazy, pleasure-loving freedmen. Planters, who had gone deeply in debt for their year’s supplies, despaired of clear- ing anything at the end of the year, for cotton required con- stant and regular care and a fair crop could not possibly be raised with such haphazard labor. One disadvantage of the share system, so widely used in 1866, was that the ne- groes considered it perfectly fair if they lost three days out of a week, since they were losers as well as the owners. They could not understand that a crop could not be raised on half-time labor: They thought if six days would raise a whole crop, three days would raise half a crop, which would satisfy them. Half a day’s work might keep them 1 Augusta Constitutionalist, July 1, 1866; Nation, February 1, 1866 (Dennett). 2 Augusta Constitutionalist, July 1 and October 5, 1865; Augusta Chronicle, April 19, 1866. 79] LABOR AND LAND 79. from starving, which was all they cared for, but it would not raise a successful crop for the owner who had staked heavily on the year’s planting.* Hiring for wages, either in money or in crop, made no material change in the plantation system, for wage or Share laborers were worked in squads under direction of their labor as in slavery. From the planter’s point of view this was the most desirable method of utilizing free labor, but the least desirable in the negro’s estimation. It was the ambition of all enterprising negroes to own small farms of their own, which they could cultivate as a family, free from any outside control. But with their poverty and the disin- clination of the whites to see the freedmen become property holders, by the end of 1866 very few negroes had managed to secure holdings in their own right. There were some small holdings in the neighborhood of towns and on the abandoned coast lands, which they held under the super- vision of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Mr. Hull, of Athens, tells of two hands on his father’s plantation who came to. buy lands for themselves. One had coins amounting to fifty dollars which he had saved for years; the other bought on credit a few acres where he built a rude cabin and worked hard all the rest of his life with few comforts.” In the first year and a half of freedom negroes had not accu- mulated enough to buy land, and then there was not much marketable land at low prices until many planters were forced to give up a part of their lands after failure and heavy indebtedness at the end of 1866. Between these two systems, in which the freedman was a hired laborer or else an independent property owner, an intermediate plan grew up wherein the negro freed himself 1Leigh, op. cit., pp. 25-7. 2 Hull, Annals of Athens, pp. 292-3. 80 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [80 in large measure from control by the planter and worked in a family group instead of the old associated labor group. This was accomplished in different kinds of tenancy, which varied as to amount and kind of capital furnished by the planter with the consequent degree of regulation over the tenant, and the amount and kind of payment made by the tenant. While tenancy belongs more distinctly to the later period of the agrarian revolution in Georgia, it had its beginnings immediately after the war and existed to a con- siderable degree as early as 1866. When it appeared it ‘was almost always the sign of the inability of the planter ‘to withstand the efforts of the negro to rise from the con- ‘dition of subjection he was under as a wage or share lab- orer. There were some exceptional instances where the landowner adopted tenancy voluntarily as an experiment looking towards the social as well as the economic better- ‘ment of the freedmen.* When a negro became a tenant, he ceased to work in a group of laborers under the constant supervision of the owner or overseer, and received from the owner a special piece of land, generally stocked completely by the owner, for the use of which the tenant paid a share of the crop, varying generally from one-fifth to one-fourth. A newspaper reporter traveling in Georgia in the winter of 1865-66 found five cases of negro tenancy in which the rent varied from one-fifth to one-half. In one instance the rent for forty acres was $250 and 48 bushels of meal.’ In 1866 there were not many instances of tenancy in which the ten- ant furnished part of the capital, paid a money rent, and received no control over his management from the landlord. 1 Alex. H. Stephens was one of those who parceled out his lands ‘among his former slaves as tenants, thinking it the best arrangement for the freedmen’s interests. Avary (ed.), Recollections of Alex, H. Stephens, pp. 144, 201. ? Nation, February 1, 1866 (Dennett). 81] LABOR AND LAND 81 But tenancy, likewise, brought difficulties, as the following incident shows: + A tenant worked a piece of land, for which he was to pay one- fourth of the corn produced. When he gathered his crop, he hauled three loads to his own house, thereby exhausting the supply in the field. When, soon after, he came to return his landlord’s wagon, which he had used in the hauling, the latter asked suggestively : “Well, William, where’s my share of the corn?” “You ain’t got none, sah!” said William. “ Haven’t got any! Why, wasn’t I to have the fourth of all you made?”’ “Yes, sah; but hit never made no fourth; dere wasn’t but dess my three loads made.” But often it was the negro who suffered from his ignor- ance of arithmetic. A gentleman in Milledgeville tells of a negro who failed to get anything after his year’s labor, be- cause by agreement he was to get one-half of the crop, and his employer put him off without anything with the ex- planation that only half a crop was raised. Another story is told of negroes on a plantation in Wilkes County who quit work in high discontent when they discovered that the hands on a neighboring plantation had contracted for one- fifth of the crop, whereas they had been promised only one- fourth.” Tenancy grew from both above and below—from the needs of the planter, his poverty, lack of capital, and the uncertainty and instability of his labor force; and from the demands of the negro to be free from supervision and his inability to satisfy his demand for freedom through out- “Barrow, “A Georgia Plantation,” in Scribner's Magazine, April, 1881. 2 Conversation with Capt. T. F. Newell of Milledgeville and Miss E. F. Andrews of Washington, Ga. 82 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [82 right purchase of land.* With tenancy, when the negro no longer worked as a member of a group of laborers and when his work was not subject to constant supervision, two of the essential elements of the ante-bellum plantation sys- tem had disappeared, though the land still remained in the owner’s possession. ‘The importance of tenancy even in the first year and a half after the war is shown by the fact that landlords secured in 1866 the enactment of a law which gave them a lien on the crops of tenants.’ The family system of cultivation, which tenancy made possible, marked a distinct step forward in the social de- velopment of the negro. To establish the negro family as the industrial unit was the scheme which seemed to General Wilson, who was in command of part of Georgia at the end of the war, as the most promising for the freedmen’s advance. The following letter, written by General Wilson from Macon in June, 1865, expresses his views on this sub- ject: * . . . It may not be improper in this connection to call atten- tion to the present communal system of labor, practiced by slaveholders throughout the South. I believe it is susceptible of proof that nearly all of the crime and debasement of the Freedmen in their present condition is attributable to the fact that they are crowded together in villages offering every in- ducement and opportunity for promiscuous propagation, and allowing nothing like absolute protection to the family. Every individual of the community is made thereby subordinate to the brutalizing influence of the master’s ignorance, cupidity and selfishness. 1For a discussion of tenancy see Banks, Economics of Land Tenure in Georgia, ch. v; and Brooks, Agrarian Revolution in Georgia, ch. ii and iii. 2 Acts of the General Assembly, 1866, p. 141. 3 This letter, addressed to Brig. Gen. Whipple, is in the Johnson MSS. in the Library of Congress. 83] LABOR AND LAND 83 I am convinced that the first step towards the civilization and elevation of the negro, by which he is to be made a useful and self-sustaining member of society, is to establish the family of every worthy man upon such a basis as will ensure it all the advantages of industry, good management, and virtuous aspir- ations. Practically, every landed proprietor who has freedmen upon his estate should be compelled to give every respectable and trustworthy man a life-lease upon as much land as he and his family could cultivate; to build or allow the removal of houses and enclosures to the land, and require the lessee to live upon his own possessions, and paying a fair rate of rent either in money or in kind to the proprietor. Along with the tendency among the negroes to work as a family was the ambition of the freedwomen to transfer their sphere from the field to the home. The withdrawal of women from field labor was a large factor in the scar- city of agricultural labor after the war. Freedmen gener- ally refused to hire their wives, wishing to keep them at home to cook, tend the garden, do the washing, and the women liked to set themselves up as ladies with a home of their own. Where women did contract to labor, the wage was generally about $50 a year with provisions, though in some cases it was as high as $100 a year with board. Often women were paid by the month $3 or $4. One form of contract with women was to promise $4 a month cash when called for, at the end of one month or six, rations being furnished all the time and pay only when they worked. Household servants were in great demand and everywhere the complaints of housekeepers about no servants or un- satisfactory servants were as frequent as they are to-day." 1 Macon Telegraph, February 3, 1866; Macon Journal and Messenger, November 28, 1866; Milledgeville Federal Union, December 26, 1865; Augusta Chronicle, July 11, 1866. 84 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [84 In Atlanta and Augusta and other cities it was no uncom- mon thing for families to change cooks a dozen times in three months, and eight out of every ten were pronounced worthless. The trouble was not confined to cities and towns. Avery, op. cit., p. 384. 203 | THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 203 vote against the constitution." The fundamental issue in the campaign was the restoration of conservative white tule. The relief feature of the constitution was pressed forward by the Republicans as a means of attracting the vote of the debtor class of whites. During the campaign, newspapers were full of notes and campaign views, in contrast to the situation in the previous winter, when they paid scant attention to the proceedings of the con- vention or to politics in general.2 Numerous political handbills were circulated by both parties. One, issued by the Democratic Conservatives, made the following arraignment of the constitution :3 It establishes social, political, and educational equality of whites and blacks. It would result in depreciation of property and a fearful in- crease of taxation. It did not originate with the people of Georgia, but in Washington—framed by adventurers from New England, by convicts from penitentiaries,* and by ignorant negroes from the cornfields. At least 20,000 whites are excluded at this election. The constitution is a falsehood to entrap people to accept it through the Relief promises, though it is known it will not stand court decisions, being contrary to the U. S. Constitution. 1In every district Gordon’s vote outran the vote against the constitu- tion and Bullock’s vote was less than that for ratification. Report of Comptroller General, 1869, Table A. 2 The Savannah News, for instance, in December, 1867, while the convention was in session, gave only brief notices of the proceedings when it was giving several columns to a Methodist Conference. 8 This and the following handbills are in the possession of Mrs. V. P. Sisson of Kirkwood, Ga., to whom I am indebted for the use of them. 4Refers to A. A. Bradley, a negro delegate from Savannah, who served a term in a New York prison. 204 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [204 And another: White men of Georgia! Read and Reflect! Rescue Georgia! The issue involved in the election on the 2oth of April is whether or not Georgia shall pass into the hands of negroes and Yankee political adventurers! Can Georgians rule Georgia? They can! Then go to the polls and vote the Democratic-Conservative ticket. Both parties appealed to the passions of the poor whites, the Conservatives by arousing them against the domination of negroes, and the Republicans by stirring up jealousy against the former leading class. Of the latter kind of appeal the following * is a good example, addressed by the Republicans to the Poor White Men of Georgia: Be a man! Let the slave-holding aristocracy no longer rule you. Vote for a constitution which educates your chil- dren free of charge; relieves the poor debtor from his rich creditor ; allows a liberal homestead for your families; and more than all, places you on a level with those who used to boast that for every slave they were entitled to three-fifths of a vote in congressional representation. Ponder this well be- fore you vote. In the outcome of the election, the Republicans secur- ed the state ticket, electing Bullock by a majority of 7171, and ratifying the constitution by a majority of 17,972.27 The election of the members of the legislature was so close that it was doubtful which party would con- trol. Bullock carried most of the counties where a ma- jority of the registered voters were negroes, and also nine of the white counties in Northeast Georgia, three in the northwest and three on the southern border. It 1In Brown Scrap Books. 2 Report of the Comptroller-General, 1869, Table A. 205 | THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 205 is noteworthy that fifteen counties in which negro regis- tered voters outnumbered whites were carried by Gordon.’ * Republican ~ April and November 1868 Republican -April Democatic -November !868 X Majority of registered voters colored in 1867 1 These counties were Elbert, Spalding, Crawford, Upson, Houston, Chattahoochee, Stewart, Quitman, Clay, Randolph, Baker, Early, Sumter, Lowndes, Washington. 206 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [206 It is difficult to determine whether the result came with a moderate degree of fairness or not. In some of the black counties carried by the conservatives, Ku Klux bands doubtless did much toward achieving the result by intimidating negroes to keep them away from the polls. With all the machinery of election in their hands the Republicans had full opportunity to doctor the returns to suit themselves. Charges of unfairness were made on both sides. Savannah and Augusta papers stated that droves of negroes were brought over from South Caro- lina, and that negroes who appeared with a Democratic ticket were set upon by radicals and prevented from vo- ting. In Augusta an affidavit was made by three citizens to the effect that Blodgett had four negroes from Lin- coln County take the voter’s oath and vote, although they had been in Richmond County less than ten days, the legal term of residence." The same complaint that negroes were brought in from adjoining counties was made in Macon. A conductor on a train said that two- hundred negroes got on the train at Hawkinsville and other points in Pulaski and Twiggs counties and were taken to vote in Bibb County. The Conservatives looked upon Hulburt, the Republican superintendent and man- ager of the election, as a skilful and unscrupulous man- ipulator of the returns. An example of his strategy is given by Avery in his History of the State of Georgia, citing the following communication from Hulburt:3 1 Augusta Chronicle, April 21, 1868; Savannah News, April 23, 1868. 3 Macon Journal and Messenger, April 21, 1868. 5 Pp. 384-5. This document was published in the Columbus Sun and Times. 207 | THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 207 OFFICE OF SUPERINTENDENT REGISTRATION, ; ATLANTA, GaA., May 8, 1868. Joun M. Duer, Eso., CoLtumsus: Dear Sir: Yours of 6th at hand. We want affidavits prov- ing force, fraud, intimidation, in violation of general orders. We must have them. Go to work and get them up at once. The names of the parties making the affidavits will not be known to any person except yourself and the Board. They need have no fear on that score. You can swear them before. Capt. Hill. Please go to work “‘sharp and quick.” Get Chapman and other friends to assist you. The election in your county will be contested. Defend yourselves by attacking the enemy. Respectfully, etc. (Signed) E. Huxsurt. It was generally understood that the lower house had’ a Conservative and the upper house a Republican ma- jority. But in April, 1868, parties were not definitely enough crystallized to make an accurate division possi- ble. There was no doubt as to the straight-out radi- calism of some and of the uncompromising conservatism of others. Between these two were the independent Republicans, who voted at times with one side and again with the other. The following classification is the result of an examination of the votes in the first session of the legislature on certain test questions, checked up by the classification in the Atlanta papers given at the time of the election:* 1 The test questions considered were: ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, election of U. S. Senators, relief for debtors, negro ex- pulsion from the legislature. Avery gives the composition of the Senate as 26 Republicans and 18 Democrats. History of the State- of Georgia, p. 395. 208 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [208 Senate—17 Radical Republicans. 10 Moderate Republicans. 17 Conservative Democrats. House —75 Radical Republicans. 9 Moderate Republicans. 88 Conservative Democrats. When the legislature convened, Bullock, acting as Provisional Governor under General Meade’s appoint- ment, notified the commanding general that no steps had been taken to test the eligibility of members under the Fourteenth Amendment.’ General Meade issued cer- tificates of election according to the returns sent him by the election managers, leaving inquiry into eligibility to each house.? Each house then appointed a committee of investigation. The majority of the Senate committee reported none ineligible; one minority member reported two ineligible; and another minority member reported eleven.* The Senate, in which there was presumably a Republican majority, voted to accept the majority report, those members whose eligibility was under question not voting. In the House three members of the investiga- ting committee reported two to be ineligible, W. T. Mc- Cullough and J. M. Nunn; two of the investigating committee agreed that Long of Carroll County also was 1 The Reconstruction Act of March 2d provided that “no person shall be eligible to any office under any such provisional government who would be disqualified from holding office under the provisions of the third article of said constitutional amendment.” * Report of the Secretary of War, 1868, vol. i, pp. 78-9. *J. L. Collier and W. B. Jones. “The two named above and J. C. Richardson, B. R. McCutcheon, Joshua Griffin, J. H. McWhorter, C. R. Moore, J. Harris, E. Thorn, J. G.W. Mills, E. D. Graham. 5 Senate Journal, 1868, pp. 28, 32-5. 209] THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 209 ineligible. The two minority members reported that they found none to be ineligible. The minority mem- bers based their report on the grounds that members of the legislature were not “‘ officers” in the meaning of the law, and that all members of the House had been per- mitted to vote by the registrars, though the franchise was more exclusive than the right to hold office. By a vote of 95-53 the House accepted the minority report declar- ing none ineligible." Accepting the judgment of the two houses as final, General Meade allowed the legislature to proceed to the transaction of regular business. In the organization of the two houses, the Radicals elected Benj. F. Conley as President of the Senate, by a vote of 23-13, though the moderate Republicans and Conserva- tives together elected their candidate for President pro tem. (24-19); and in the House, by a close vote and a mistake made by one of the candidates, a Republican Speaker was elected.” On July 21st the legislature passed the joint resolu- tion to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, the Senate by 27-14 and the House by 89-71.3 Those voting contrary were, of course, outright Conservatives, but in the Senate one Conservative voted for ratification, and two refrained from voting. In the House, six Conservatives voted for ratification and several did not vote. The first action that showed definitely the line-up of members was the all-important election of U.S. Sena- tors. The Bullock Republicans favored Jos. E. Brown for the long term, and Foster Blodgett for the short 1 House Journal, 1868, pp. 31-45. 2 Senate Journal, 1868, pp. 8, 48. ‘Conley defeated Wooten for Presi- dent; Wooten defeated Harris for President pro tem. House Journal, 1868, p. 12. R. L. McWhorter defeated W. T. Price, 76-74. 3 Senate Journal, 1868, pp. 44-6; House Journal, 1868, pp. 49-51. 210 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [210 term. Alex. H. Stephens was the choice of the Con- servatives for the long term and for the short term they supported H. V. M. Miller. On the first ballot, Brown had 24 votes from the Senate and 78 in the House, a to- tal of 102, against Stephens’ vote of 96, 15 in the Senate and 81 in the House. Neither had a majority. The Conservatives and moderate Republicans then formed a coalition, uniting on Joshua Hill, electing him for the long term by 110 votes to Brown’s 94.* On the first ballot for the short term senatorship, Foster Blodgett got 73 votes, H. V. M. Miller, 93, with scattering votes for A. T. Akerman and Jas. L. Seward. On the joint ballot of the two houses most of this independent scat- tering vote went to Miller, who was elected by 120 to Blodgett’s 72.2, So the anti-Bullockites, the Conserva- tives and the moderate Republicans, acting together, showed in no unmistakable terms that they were in con- trol of the situation. The following letter from Robert Toombs to Alex. H. Stephens, written August 9, 1868, gives Toombs’ inter- esting comment on the senatorial situation : As to the senatorship I preferred that Brown should be beaten by Joshua Hill to almost any other man. It is impos- sible for you [to] think worse of the scoundrel than I do, but it could only be done by a Radical, and there was political justice in making the earliest traitor’ defeat the worst one and break down his party. I differed with you as to the policy of beating Brown. He had been [covert ?] Govr. of Georgia nearly two years, administering the patronage of the military, 1 Senate Journal, 1868, p. 91; House Journal, 1868, pp. 100-108. ? Senate Journal, 1868, p.92; House Journal, 1868, pp. 106-108, July 29. *Joshua Hill was candidate for governor on a Union platform against Jos. E. Brown in 1863. 211] THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 211 and had the whole patronage of Bullock at his feet,’ and put all these with the whole patronage, if he had been senator [it] would have cost us not far short of 10,000 votes. His special knowledge, especially of all the rogues in the State, is pro- digious, and I think it was about worth the State to beat him. Hill is a poor devil. His forlorn condition, powerless under the present circumstances, is conclusive evidence of his weak- ness, his inability to help himself or hurt us. I did my utmost to elect him, and ask of him no other favor than not to join us or speak to me.” In the first legislature under the reconstruction con- stitution, three negroes were elected to the Senate and twenty-nine to the House. During the campaign, such supporters of the constitution as Jos. E. Brown main- tained that negroes were not eligible to office by the new document.3. The Conservatives in both houses from the very first looked for an opportunity to eliminate the black brothers from their midst. The first open attack was made in the Senate, when Milton A. Candler, the Con- servative leader, included in the resolution concerning the eligibility of members under the Fourteenth Amend- ment the question of the right of the three negro senators to their seats by reason of their color.* This motion was incidental to the main question and nothing was done on the matter until July 25th, when Candler introduced the following resolution :5 1A resolution was introduced in the House, July 28th, (Williams, of Morgan, Moderate) for the appointment of a committee to wait on the governor to invite him to make explanation as to his using the patronage of his office in a partisan attempt to elect certain persons to the U. S. Senate-—House Journal, 1868, p. 97. * From MS. for which I am indebted to Prof. U. B. Phillips. This letter has since been published in American Historical Association Report, I91I, vol. ii, p. 703. ® Speech of Brown of March 18, 1868, in the Atlanta Constitution, August 11, 1868. 4 Senate Journal, 1868, p. 19, July &. 5 Tbid., p. 84. 212 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [212 Whereas, ex-Governor Joseph E. Brown, one of the ablest lawyers of the Republican party of Georgia, as well as persons distinguished for their knowledge of constitutional law, held during the late election canvass that persons of color were not entitled to hold office under the existing Constitution ; and whereas such persons hold seats as Senators on this floor ; and whereas there are laws of vital importance to the people of Georgia to be enacted by the General Assembly, the validity of which should not be rendered uncertain because of the par- ticipation in their enactment by persons not entitled, under the Constitution, to so participate ; therefore be it Resolved, That the Committee on Privileges and Elections be directed to inquire into the eligibility of the several per- sons of color holding seats as Senators, and report at the earliest day practicable. At this time the resolution was laid on the table by a vote of 21-14, and the question of negro expulsion was not brought forward again until September 7th. In the meantime one of the negroes in question, the notorious A. Alpeoria Bradley, was expelled on evidence that he had served a term in the New York State prison, con- victed of the felony of seduction.* His seat was taken by his Conservative opponent having the next highest vote in the April election, Rufus E. Lester. On September 12th, after vigorous and lengthy argu- ment on both sides, the Senate, voting 24-11, passed the resolution to expel Tunis G. Campbell of the 2d district and George Wallace of the 2oth, as “‘ ineligible to seats, on the ground that they are persons of color, and not eligible to office by the Constitution and laws of Georgia, 1 Tbid., pp. 13, 121-7, 129, 130, 134-5, 137. The resolution to expel Bradley passed after a vigorous contest, August 13. On the final vote Bradley was sustained by only five votes, Adkins, Higbee and Sherman in addition to his two negro colleagues. 213] THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 213 nor by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” * In their places candidates having the next highest num- ber of votes in the election were seated, thus adding two more to the Conservative party in the Senate.2. In com- paring the votes on the test resolution of July 25th and the final vote on expulsion on September 12th, to find how it was that the Conservatives finally got together ten votes more and the Radicals ten less, we find that five came from every Conservative being in place, whereas five were absent on July 25th; Lester in the place of Bradley added one more to the Conservatives at the expense of the Radicals, and four changed sides—J. Griffin (6th district), M. C. Smith (7th), W. C. Smith (36th), and Richardson (32d). On other questions the first three had voted as moderate Republicans, but Rich- ardson had voted with the Bullock men. His divergence from his party on the question of negro office-holding was probably due to the fact that he represented the northern mountainous counties, White, Lumpkin and Dawson, where there was strong prejudice against negroes. In the House, where the Conservatives had more con- trol than in the Senate, the expulsion of negro members was carried with less difficulty. On August 26th a reso- lution was introduced declaring ineligible the following named persons, by reason of being persons of color:3 Allen of Jasper, Barnes of Hancock, Beard of Richmond,‘ 1 Senate Journal, pp. 243-4, 273, 277-8. 2 Tbid., pp. 280, 324-6. 3 House Journal, 1868, p. 222. 4The names of these four, Beard, Belcher, Davis and Fyall, were later stricken out as they were so nearly white that their race was indeterminate. They remained in the House after the others were expelled. Jbid., p. 229. 214 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [214 Belcher of Wilkes, T. G. Campbell of McIntosh, Clai- borne of Burke, Clower of Monroe, Colby of Greene, Costin of Talbot, Davis of Clarke,» Floyd of Morgan, Fyall of Macon,? Gardner of Warren, Golden of Liberty, Harrison of Hancock, Houston of Bryan, Joiner of Dougherty,’ Linder of Laurens, Lumpkin of Macon, Moore of Columbia, O’Neal of Baldwin, Porter of Chat- ham, Richardson of Clarke, Sims of Chatham, Smith of Muscogee, Stone of Jefferson, Turner of Bibb, Warren of Burke, Williams of Harris. On September 3d the resolution to unseat the negro members passed the House, 83-23,” negroes not voting. It was clear enough that the Conservatives could carry the measure, so the opponents made no such resistance as in the Senate, where the outcome was doubtful. When Governor Bullock, by request, reported to the House the list of candidates having the next highest vote, he took occasion to protest against the expulsion of negro members as unconstitutional and illegal. The House showed its temper toward the Governor by returning his message, with the tart resolution that “the Constitution declares that the members of each House are the judges of the qualifications of its members, and not the Gover- nor. They are the keeper of their own consciences, and not his Excellency.”3 But while the legislators of Georgia may have been the keepers of their consciences, as they averred, they were not the keepers of the State of Geor- gia. Congress was master, as it plainly demonstrated in its refusal to admit Georgia’s representatives, and in its order for the second reconstruction of the state under the military management of General Terry in 1869. How- 1 See note 4, p. 213. ” House Journal, 1868, pp. 242-3. * Ibid., pp. 296, 302-303. Vote, 71-32. 215] THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 215 ever unsuited negroes were to the important function of making laws for the commonwealth, the two houses were most unwise in their act of expulsion, as events proved. The Conservatives of Georgia made their mistake in be- ing strong enough to gain control too soon to suit the Radicals in Congress, who were still the real keepers of Georgia. The Conservatives made a like error of judg- ment when they elected A. H. Stephens and H. V. Johnson to the U. S. Senate in 1865; and again when they carried the state for Seymour and Blair in the pres- idential election of 1868. The trouble was that the Con- servatives considered solely what was best for the white people of Georgia, instead of viewing reconstruction as a national political problem and consulting the pleasure of the Republican leaders in Congress and the effect of Georgia proceedings on public opinion in the North. A test case was made by the Republicans in Georgia to have the courts decide the question of the eligibility of the negroes to hold office. In June, 1860, the case of White wv. Clements was argued before the Supreme Court. Justices Brown and McCay decided in favor of the eligibility of negroes, with Justice Warner dissenting.’ After the decision of the court was rendered, the ques- tion arose: What bearing did it have on the status of the legislature? Was the legislature bound to act accord- ingly and reinstate negro members, or could the status guo continue, on the basis that each house had the in- alterable right to determine the qualifications of its mem- bers? The press was divided; the Macon Telegraph, Athens Banner, Griffin Star, Atlanta Intelligencer, and Albany News holding that the law must be obeyed, un- pleasant though it be; and the Augusta Constitutional- 139 Georgia 232. See infra, p. 360. 216 RECONSTRUCTION IN GEORGIA [216 tst, Columbus Sun and Times, Augusta Chronicle, Columbus Enquirer and Savannah News agreeing that the decision had no effect on the legislature." Alex. H. Stephens held the latter opinion. Writing from Craw- fordsville, June 29, 1869, to A. R. Wright of the dugusta Chronicle, he said that the decision of the supreme court seemed to him in accordance with law, for he himself thought the legislature in error in deciding colored members ineligible; yet the legislature was judge of the qualifications of its members and the court had no bind- ing power on the legislature.2, However, the legislature had no opportunity to act or to refuse to act on the de- cision of the court, for it was not in session when the decision was rendered, and before the next session Con- gress passed the Reorganization Act. A comparison of Georgia in the first two years of re- construction, 1868-70, with her neighbors, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida, shows a marked moderation in her government, a lesser degree of reconstruction evils, less wanton corruption and extravagance in public office, less social disorder and upheaval. In Georgia, negroes and carpet-baggers were not so conspicuous, and conservative white citizens were better represented. Facts do not warrant the description of the reconstruc- tion government of Georgia as a negro-carpet-bagger combination. There were some of both classes in the constitutional convention and in the legislature of 1868, already mentioned, and many in the Federal service, par- ticularly as internal revenue officers, but they generally held minor positions. The big plums of office went to 1 Macon Telegraph, June 18 and June 20, 1869, cites opinions of other papers. ? Letter printed in Macon Telegraph, July 4, 1860. 217] THE RECONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT 217 native Republicans or to Northerners who came South before the war. Governor Bullock himself, strictly speak- ing, was not a carpet-bagger, though his opponents applied that opprobrious epithet to him.