Washington, all dependent on the success of the Republican party.

By request of President Johnson, General Grant in 1865 made a tour of the southern states, to learn the feelings and intentions of the people and to ascertain to what extent, in the interest of economy, the military forces there could be reduced. He reported that white troops excited no opposition: thinking men would offer no violence to them. But black troops demoralized labor, “and the late slaves seem to be infused with the idea that the property of their late masters should by right belong to them, or at least should have no protection from the colored soldiers. There is danger of collision being brought by such causes.”

The so-called abandoned lands on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia—lands from which whites had fled to escape dangers of the war—were actually seized and colonized with wandering negroes, though the lands were afterward restored to the owners. The germ of the “forty acres and a mule” idea, no doubt, originated in those colonies. The idea was of early conception, as the Grant report shows.

The first annoyances caused by the league were the neglect of field work by negroes in order to attend political meetings in daylight, and taking hard-worked mules from lots at night and riding them to league meetings. But in the course of time the organization assumed a military aspect, drilling regularly. Bodies appeared in procession, in regular company order, with arms, banners, drums and fifes, the officers wearing side-arms. At the election they were met outside the towns by emissaries and furnished with tickets, and then proceeded to the polling places and deposited them as directed. All of this appealed to the negroes’ taste for novelty and spectacle.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A Republican Blunder

This narrative is now brought again to the point at which it digressed, the election on the constitution, but before resuming that subject a few words of comment here will not be out of place.

The perfidy of Congress in imposing upon the people of Alabama, in violation of its own solemn covenant, a constitution which they had rejected in a lawful manner, was a blunder fatal to the future influence of the Republican party in Alabama. The fourteenth amendment had already injured the party because of its application to great numbers of men who might have allied themselves with it if they had not been involved in the proscription. They had opposed secession as long as there was any reason in opposition, and then reluctantly adapted themselves to the situation. Jefferson Davis had been in prison, demanding trial and ready to abide the result; he was discharged, and the proceedings looking to personal punishment abandoned. Other leaders, including Admiral Semmes, “the pirate,” as he was termed in intensity of hatred, were at their homes, pursuing the vocations of peace and ready to try the issue. The excuse for abandoning the prosecution was that, the fourteenth amendment having imposed the penalty of deprivation of citizen rights, the courts could not inflict other punishment.

Thus, the men who had, at the cost of popular good will and private friendship, opposed with all their abilities severance of the Union were equally subject to a penalty deemed adequate for “the arch traitor” and “the pirate,” so called.

Then, there were thousands of men in northern Alabama not subject to the proscription, who were nursing the grievance that Democrats had precipitated secession without permitting the people to vote on the ordinance. They believed that, had it been submitted, it would have been defeated. Northern Alabama was so loyal to the Union that leaders there proposed separation of that section at the line of the mountains, and that its people organize and “fight it out” in the foothills. But the promptness with which the Confederate authorities organized the military forces discouraged such a project. The strong resentment of the summary accomplishment of secession was rendered bitter by conscription laws. Sections of the mountains in which drastic measures were necessary to enforce those laws became easy recruiting grounds for the federal army. It is recorded that 2,700 men from Walker, Winston and Fayette counties enlisted in one federal command. North Alabama was more than once occupied by contending armies, and partisan organizations embittered the contest.

In central and southern Alabama were many Whigs and Union men who had no liking for the Democratic party.

In this state of affairs, convinced that not many of the proud Confederates would sue for relief from fourteenth amendment disabilities, and that the constitution which disqualified thousands of white voters would perpetuate negro supremacy in Alabama, the Republican leaders in Congress committed a wrong which to this day bears heavily upon their party.

CHAPTER NINE

Carpetbag Government

The negroes had exercised without hindrance their new privilege of the suffrage. Their incapacity as voters was illustrated in the character of the men who assumed office after the election in 1868.

In Sumter county, Tobias Lane was elected probate judge, but during the period of uncertainty when the constitution was in abeyance, concluding that congressional action respecting it would be unfavorable, he packed his carpetbag and returned to Ohio, having been one of the migrants from that state, so prolific of birds of his feather.

Beville, the sheriff, was an appointee of General Swayne. He was unable to give bond, but Swayne waived that formality and ordered him to continue in office without bond. In 1868 Richard Harris, a negro, who could neither read nor write, became his worthy successor.

As solicitor the discriminating voters chose Ben Bardwell, a negro, who was wholly deficient in the knowledge of reading and writing, a deficiency which made him “an easy mark” for one of the most learned bars in the state.

George Houston, a freedman, was sent to the lower house of the legislature. As his colleague Ben Inge, another “person of color,” absolutely illiterate, was selected.

An army captain, one Yordy, received the state senatorial honors, which he wore while serving Uncle Sam in the custom house at Mobile. He was a long-distance representative, having no domicile in Sumter, nor ever making his appearance there.

John B. Cecil, reputed federal army sutler and coming with the influx from fecund Ohio, was elected treasurer. He gradually and logically degenerated into a partnership with a negro in a grog-shop enterprise.

Badger, another bird of passage, became tax assessor. The revenue and road commission was a motley aggregation which comprised one carpetbagger and three negroes.

Edward Herndon, a native Union man, by grace of appointment and election, simultaneously devoted his talents to the offices of circuit clerk, register in chancery, notary public, justice of the peace, keeper of the poorhouse and guardian ad litem,—and perhaps felt aggrieved that he didn’t have “all that was coming to him.”

It would seem that, with this multiplicity of trusts, Mr. Herndon monopolized the privilege of plurality in office holding; but not so, for Mr. Daniel Price, a typical scalawag, with the