A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868

Conclusion

conclusion In March 1867, David Schenck, a thirty-two-year-old lawyer in Lincolnton, North Carolina, sat down with his diary, wrote the heading ‘‘Stevens Bill for Reconstruction (so called),’’ and proceeded to record ‘‘the chronicle of a nation’s and a peoples degradation, and of myself as one of that unfortunate body politic.’’ Schenck raged against the dual ignominy of being placed under military government and the disfranchising ‘‘of Southern patriots and conferring on the negro the elective suffrage.’’ For Schenck, as for most white Southerners, the simultaneous enfranchisement of African Americans and disfranchisement of former Confederates was an insult of the highest order. It ‘‘debases me politically beneath my former slave,’’ Schenck lamented , and he ominously predicted that ‘‘the effect of this will be to create a deadly feud between the races, and give rise to scenes of violence and disorder which will make society miserable: for the white race will not suffer this outrage without bloody resentments and if it cannot be done by force it will be done by assassinations and secret means of revenge.’’1 Schenck’s reaction to the imposition of Radical Reconstruction encapsulated many whites’ feelings. Schenck used the language of honor to express his dismay. Disfranchisement ‘‘degraded’’ him, and the elevation of African Americans to positions of political primacy struck at his sense of order, and, indeed, at his sense of self. White Southerners like David Schenck built and rebuilt their identities between 1861 and 1868: first as proud Confederates, then as defeated but still defiant Southerners. One of the few constants for them in these years of upheaval was their inborn and indestructible sense of racial superiority. While they swiftly accepted the loss of slavery, Southerners had no intention of giving up their politically, socially, and economically privileged position. Although Radical Reconstruction threatened this foundation of postwar Southern identity, white Southerners reacted to this insult not by threatening secession but by protesting the loss of their rights as Americans. White Southerners thus took the high road, charging the Radicals with crimes against the Constitution, but they also turned (as Schenck had predicted) to extralegal racial violence in order to reassert control . These two strategies would ultimately allow Southern whites to win the peace, to achieve political reunification with the rights and privileges of American citizenship while still holding on to a separate and quasi-ethnic social and cultural identity.2 David Schenck was shocked by the ‘‘marvellous spectacle’’ presented by the North Carolina Republican Convention that met in Raleigh in late March 1867. Blacks and whites ‘‘all met on an equality,’’ and to Schenck and men like him ‘‘it seems very abhorrent, and as was natural to suppose our people of dignity either sighed or cursed as their morality allowed.’’ Rather than act out in anger, Schenck adopted the strategy of biding his time as far as black voting was concerned, confident that white Democratic Southerners would be able to ‘‘direct’’ their former slaves ‘‘for the good of the country.’’ He took the long view, hoping that ‘‘the Radicals have given us the club with which we will be able to beat them hereafter.’’ In his writings we can see the deep hostility toward the national government that characterized Southern politics for generations.3 White Southerners like Schenck debated whether to stay away from the polls in 1867 and 1868. They found black voting repellent and were angry about white disfranchisement. A Quitman, Texas, man wondered about the political situation back home in North Carolina, and observed that African Americans were ‘‘away ahead of the white people in registering here.’’ In Houston, black juries were common, ‘‘as the Yankees can’t find white men enough for the purpose that can or will swallow the Oath required.’’ George Anderson Mercer called the November 1867 election in Savannah a ‘‘solemn farce,’’ describing ‘‘crowds of ignorant negroes from the country’’ coming into town and being ‘‘marched up to the polls by their Radical leaders’’ to vote: ‘‘It was a sad sight to every contemplative or humane man to see these ignorant semi-savages clothed with a power which rightfully belongs only to the wise and good, and to reflect how terrible, at no distant day, must be the consequences of the greatest of all political crimes and blunders—that of subjecting, in the name of liberty, all the wealth and virtue of the land, to the control of its pauperism, ignorance and vice.’’ White Southerners appeared ready...