The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910

Notes

NOTES Introduction 1. According to Eric Foner, 267 blacks were among the 1,000 delegates to the constitutional conventions of 1867-69 that created the postwar state governments for the southern states. During Reconstruction, 683 blacks served in the lower houses of state legislatures, and 112 served in the state senates. P. B. S. Pinchback served briefly as the governor of Louisiana. At the national level, in addition to black senators and congressmen, there were black ambassadors. Blacks also held numerous federal positions. Eric Foner, Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xiv-xv; also see Paul Finkelman, introduction to African Americans and the Right to Vote, vol. 6 of Race, Law, and American History, 1700 -1990, ed. Paul Finkelman (NewYork:Garland, 1992), viii. 2. Although I use "black suffrage" more frequently than "black male suffrage" in the following pages, it should be understood that both terms indicate black male suffrage. 3. Samuel Denny Smith, The Negro in Congress,1870-1901 (1940; reprint, Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1966), 4-6. 4. J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1800-1910 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 182-224; Paul Lewinson, Race, Class, Party: A History of Negro Suffrage and White Politics in the South (1932; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 79 - 97; Finkelman, introduction to African Americans and the Right to Vote, xiii - ix; Frederic D. Ogden, The Poll Tax in the South (Birmingham : University of Alabama Press, 1958), 1-31. 5. John W. Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876 (NewYork: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 1902), 245; Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1929), 3078 ; Bernard A. Weisberger, "The Dark and Bloody Ground of Reconstruction Historiography," Journal of Southern History 25 (November 1959): 428; Walter L. Fleming, Sequel of Appomattox: A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1919), 292. For early general accounts of Reconstruction and federal enforcement of black suffrage, see also William Archibald Dunning's Essay on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics (1897; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1965) and Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877 (New York: Harper &Brothers, 1907). 6. A. Caperton Braxton, The Fifteenth Amendment: An Account of Its Enactment (1903; reprint, Lynchburg, Va.: J. P. Bell, 1934), 16-26. See also Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918). 7. William Watson Davis, "The Federal Enforcement Acts," in Studies in Southern History and Politics Inscribed to William Archibald Dunning . . . by His Former Pupils, ed. James W. Garner (1914; reprint, Port Washington, N.Y.:Kennikat, 1964), 205-28. For mixed concerns argument, see 305 306 Notes to Introduction John Mabry Mathews, Legislative and Judicial History of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1909), 118. 8. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965); William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 442.For similar views, see Howard K. Beale, "On Writing Reconstruction History," American Historical Review 45 (July 1940): 819; James M. McPherson, The Strugglefor Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 430;Phyllis F. Field, The Politics of Race in New York: The Struggle for Black Suffrage in the Civil War Era (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 230; and Leslie H. Fishel Jr.,"Northern Prejudice and Negro Suffrage , 1865 -1870," Journal of Negro History 39 (January 1954): 8 - 26. 9. LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox, "Negro Suffrage and Republican Politics: The Problem of Motivation in Reconstruction Historiography," Journal of Southern History 33 (August 1967): 303 - 30. Another twovery important general accounts of Reconstruction that directly reversed the interpretations of the Dunning school are Kenneth Stampp's The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (NewYork: Vintage, 1965) and William R. Brock's An American Crisis: Congress and Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New York: St. Martins, 1963). Both Stampp and Brock viewed the radical Reconstruction as a true reform effort of the Republican party in the postwar years. 10. Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 55-56; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromiseof Principle: CongressionalRepublicans and Reconstruction, 1863 -1869 (NewYork:W.W Norton, 1974), 326-27. 11. Everette Swinney, Suppressing the Ku Klux Klan: The Enforcement of the Reconstruction...