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Chapter 4 Reconstruction, 1865–1868 On April 26, 1865, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston defied the orders of Jefferson Davis and surrendered the tattered remains of his army to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman a few miles from Durham Station, North Carolina , near Raleigh. Federal troops remained for the rest of the year under the command of Gen. John M. Schofield, who was charged with keeping the peace and assisting in reconstituting the state government. One month later, on May 29, President Andrew Johnson issued his Amnesty Proclamation , which pardoned all Southerners except fourteen specific classes of Confederate officials and wealthy planters. These exceptions required individuals to make a personal appeal for pardon directly to Johnson himself. Until officially pardoned, their property was forfeit and they could not officially convey title. It was clear that Johnson’s vision for Reconstruction included a modicum of personal revenge toward the Southern aristocracy that had rejected him before the war.1 That same day, the president also issued another proclamation specific to North Carolina. In it, he announced that William W. Holden would act as provisional governor until a new state government could be formed and a new constitution written. Holden would oversee the convention that would rewrite the state’s constitution and prepare the way for reentry into the Union. It was a tumultuous period that placed unprecedented strain on class and race relations in the Old North State. During that time, many poor whites and freedmen worked together under the banner of the Republican Party to establish a more democratic political reality for all the people of North Carolina. Secessionists and Conservatives like David Schenck, meanwhile, resorted to violence and intimidation to roll back democratic reform and maintain the old order. The principle of white equality was the primary issue that underpinned Presidential Reconstruction. Between 1865 and 1867, North Carolinians struggled to establish greater political equality among whites, rewrite the state’s constitution, and reorganize the structure of local power. Some prominent Tar Heels understood that change was unavoidable and sought to make the necessary adjustments. Many, however, took a conservative Reconstruction, 1865–1868 68 view and resisted all attempts to renegotiate the terms of power that had long been established in North Carolina society. Conservatives would win a minor victory against Holden and his Unionist administration by gaining a majority in the legislature in November 1865, but ultimately their stubborn refusal to accept the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution fundamentally altered the character of Reconstruction by bringing even greater Federal intervention into the state’s internal affairs. For David Schenck, the end of the war marked a period of great uncertainty and despair that began with Federal occupation of Lincolnton.2 “On the 16th April,” wrote Schenck on the last day of May 1865, “Gen’l Palmer’s brigade of cavalry took possession of this place (Lincolnton) and we were in their power for six days—in the meantime being compelled to feed the men and horses, three regiments.”3 Although the people of Lincolnton were required to feed the soldiers and their horses, they were otherwise treated kindly. “Though thus subjected to the rigors of war,” wrote an incredulous Schenck, “we were magnanimously treated in our persons and homes, both of which were protected from violence and molestation.”4 In the immediate aftermath of surrender, chaos otherwise ruled in the Western Piedmont. Crowds of displaced persons wandered to and fro, bands of Confederate soldiers roamed the countryside looking for food as they followed their homeward paths, and freedmen began to exercise their new freedom by leaving the masters for whom they had labored for so long. Indeed, as many as 330,000 black North Carolinians “were no longer chattel.”5 The presence of so many people moving about at such an unstable time led to violence until Federal troops intervened. “At first we were threatened by armed mobs of Confederate soldiers, deserters, &c,” Schenck recalled, “but the Yankees put them down where they were, and in our own town we dispersed a large mob by promptly arming our citizens and defying their power and subsequently, by arresting 9 of them, who were the boldest of the crowd.”6 In spite of the uncertainty associated with defeat and emancipation, Schenck was initially optimistic about the future of wage labor in the South. “I expect to lose all my negroes—eight—but as there are many ‘freedmen’ hunting labor I feel no uneasiness about procuring servants,” he wrote. “In fact I am half inclined...

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