The Black Codes of the South (review)

BOOK REVIEWS377 holds true for the chapter entitled: 'The Voice of Politics." While abundant evidence is provided attesting to the existence of bitter partisanship in the North, very little editorial or documentary analysis is utilized which casts light upon the complexities that produced it. Much the same thing can be said about the chapters on "Credos of the North," "Ways of Life," and "Promises and Threats of Victory." With some notable exceptions, the editors obviously chose to substitute scope for depth. The choice was not a happy one. Richard O. Curry University of Connecticut The Black Codes of the South. By Theodore B. Wilson. (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1965. Pp. 177. $5.95.) This is the first book to be devoted entirely to southern legislation on the Negro during 1865-1866, and the author treats the subject with a judicious mixture of censure and understanding. He begins by surveying the history of legislation on the free Negro during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—a useful and desirable enterprise, except that the author's discussion of race relations is unfortunately marred by vague and unnecessary sociological jargon. Wilson recognizes that legislation cannot be divorced from its social and economic context, and the resulting discussion of southern conditions in 1865-1866 is a careful one. In analyzing the laws themselves he concludes that the 1865 codes were harsh largely because of southern fears that the Negroes would not work without compulsion and were planning a major uprising at the end of the year. During 1866, he finds, labor conditions improved considerably, and thus the codes of that year were generally milder than the earlier ones. As to the pohtical effect of the codes, Wilson feels that they were indiscreet and unwise, but that they "certainly did not cause Radical Reconstruction." Wilson gives insufficient attention to the question of how closely the Black Codes paralleled northern state laws on similar subjects; for instance, in discussing an 1866 Virginia law which General Terry suspended by müitary order, he omits the fact that it was copied verbatim from the statutes of Pennsylvania. He points out, quite correcUy, that the codes resembled regulations previously issued as occupation measures by the United States Army and the Freedmen's Bureau, but his treatment of this aspect leaves something to be desired. He says these restrictions "were not official army or bureau policy in the sense of being issued by the top command," which is certainly vague, potentially misleading, and probably wrong, depending on what "top command" means. He fails to recognize that, on the subject of labor regulations, the bureau's measures were much more explicit and detailed than the army's. He makes the undemonstrable statement that "a large portion of white enlisted men appear to have been anti-Negro. ..." In dealing with northern reaction to the codes he omits the interesting fact that the North found much greater fault with southern 378civil war history laws than with similar mihtary regulations. Finally, why these army and bureau measures furnished "bad" examples for southern legislatures is hard to see. Wilson tends to assume that the best test of whether a law is "discriminatory " is whether its provisions specifically refer by name to Negroes er freedmen. Thus, as in the case of a Mississippi law punishing certain misdemeanors when committed by Negroes, he too often labels a law discriminatory without explaining how whites might be punished under other statutes for the same offenses. He also gives insufficient attention to the enforcement of the codes by local officials. Chapter six, entitled "The Campaign Against Reunion," requires special notice. Wilson demonstrates that the Radicals misrepresented the codes and magnified their harsh features, and he concludes that on the whole the sentiment against a speedy reunion was intensified by the codes but did not originate in them. Unfortunately, eighteen pages of the chapter are not fully relevant to the Black Codes, being a scissors-and-paste assemblage of thirty indented quotes—a stylistic device which the author greatly overuses—from politicians, abolitionists, ministers, and literary figures on the general subject of reunion. Since the text of this book only embraces 152 pages to begin with, those eighteen are precious...