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5. The Struggle for Civilian Supremacy
- The University Press of Kentucky
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95 Chapter Five tHE sTRUGGLE FOR cIVILIAN sUPREMACY The new governor of North Carolina, Jonathan Worth, took pride in his record as a steadfast Union Whig. “The preservation of the Union has been the polar star of my political life,” he declared in June 1866. As a first-term state legislator in 1831,Worth denounced nullification, a doctrine granting a state the right to reject a federal measure it deemed unjust .Three decades later, as a six-term veteran of the General Assembly, he struggled to keep North Carolina in the Union until the state’s secession on May 20, 1861.AlthoughWorth feared that secession would prove suicidal , he yielded to the ties of home and family and remained loyal to the Old North State. In December 1862, he was elected state treasurer and served in that capacity until Johnston’s surrender.A less than enthusiastic supporter of the Confederate war effort, Worth drafted an anonymous petition in 1864 calling for a state convention to consider peace negotiations with the North. Although his petition failed to sway Governor Zebulon B.Vance, who advocated fighting on for southern independence, Worth continued to support the peace movement clandestinely to the end of the war.1 Sharing similar antiwar views with Vance’s archrival Holden, Worth remained on good terms with the Standard editor and, in June 1865, was appointed treasurer in Holden’s provisional government. The two men split over Holden’s support of the repudiation of North Carolina’s war debt. Soon afterward, Worth announced his candidacy in the fall guber- 96 Bluecoats and Tar Heels natorial race.Worth’s conservatism appealed not only to ex-Union Whig colleagues such as Vance and William A. Graham—aptly renamed “Conservatives ” during the war—but also to former secession Democrats, longtime political adversaries who now threw their support to Worth because of his commitment to restoring as much of the old order as possible .The Democrats regarded him as far more dependable than Holden, whose frequent shifts of political allegiance smacked of rank opportunism . During the war, the Conservatives and the Democrats had discovered that they could compromise when necessary. Although most Conservatives had protested what they perceived as the Confederate government’s unconstitutional encroachment on state sovereignty, they had shared the secession Democrats’ commitment to southern independence.2 Governor Jonathan Worth (Courtesy of the North Carolina State Archives) [18.191.24.202] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:40 GMT) The Struggle for Civilian Supremacy 97 Thanks to the support of the newly forged Conservative-Democratic coalition,Worth was elected by a substantial majority, despite losing several Unionist counties to Holden—including Worth’s home county of Randolph. Holden’s success in the staunchly Unionist counties was due to his continued popularity as the peace candidate for governor in 1864. Despite his success with Unionist voters, Holden lacked the broadly based support needed to defeat Worth.3 The victorious Worth rode a mandate to restore as much of the status quo antebellum as possible. Whereas Holden had appointed a high percentage of “new men” to local offices, Worth’s appointees reflected his intention to keep the traditional state elite in positions of authority. Among other conservative measures, Worth advocated upholding minimum property qualifications for governors and state legislators, favored creditors by recommending the repeal of a postwar stay law, and opposed granting the right to vote or hold office to freedpeople, a viewpoint the governor shared with many federal occupation commanders in the South. He also supported abolishing the state’s common school system because of fears that the Freedmen’s Bureau would require the state to fund schools for black children as well. Worth intended to adhere to President Johnson’s Reconstruction plan, which promised a swift restoration of North Carolina to the Union and an early departure of U.S.Army and Freedmen’s Bureau personnel.4 Above all, the state’s political leaders planned to restore control of the black workforce during the upcoming session of the General Assembly. Although the Thirteenth Amendment had abolished slavery, Conservative legislators sought to consign blacks to a subservient position resembling “the peculiar institution” in all but name. In the meantime, Worth would attempt to prevent the army and the bureau from interfering in civil government, even if it meant having to make a few temporary legal concessions to racial equality. Unfortunately for Worth and the ConservativeDemocratic coalition, the Republican-dominated Congress was maneuvering to supplant Presidential Reconstruction with a far more radical...