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Chapter Six Reconstruction Dr. Dan L. Morrill University of North Carolina at Charlotte E-mail comments to N4JFJ@aol.com
Many
whites were appalled over what was happening in Charlotte and its environs
in terms of the advancement of African Americans in the years immediately
following the Civil War. The traditional white elite of Charlotte and
Mecklenburg County joined their compatriots throughout North Carolina and
the South in opposing the creation of greater social and economic equality
for the rank-and-file citizenry, black and white.
"The Negro is a good thing for fanatics, demagogues and
hypocritical philanthropists to prate about," proclaimed the Western
Democrat
. "We are in favor of treating colored people
kindly, fairly and justly," the newspaper declared in 1868, "but
at the same time we warn them, as a friend, against thrusting themselves
forward as the rulers of the white race." D. H. Hill minced no words
about how he felt. "As
children need parents, so do Negroes need masters," declared a
newspaper editorial that Hill reprinted in The
Land We Love
. Historian Paul D. Escott contends that" continuity in power relationships and in the elite's undemocratic attitudes" spanned the Civil War. "The men who benefited from the aristocratic customs and laws of 1850," he asserts, "fought tenaciously to protect their power and privilege during the Civil War and Reconstruction." Such influential whites as railroad promoter William Johnston and physician J. B. Alexander believed that blacks and lower class whites were incapable of exercising prudent political judgments. Consequently, Johnston, Alexander, and other men of their elitist persuasion worked tirelessly to maintain the social hierarchy of ante-bellum Charlotte and Mecklenburg County after the Civil War.
Most wealthy and middle class whites in the
South reacted angrily when the United States Congress wrested control of
Reconstruction policies from President Andrew Johnson and passed a series of laws in 1867 that established what many
Southerners regarded as onerous requirements
for being accepted back into the Union. “The white people of the
former Confederacy were masters in their own states for a period of one to
three years when no compulsion was put upon them to enfranchise the
Black,” explains historian Samuel Eliot Morison. The Radical
Republicans, upset by the refusal of Southern white politicians to let
blacks vote and exercise full civil rights, divided the South into five
military districts and stipulated that all states in the former
Confederacy had to enact universal manhood suffrage and approve new
constitutions consistent with the Constitution of the United States.
This meant that free blacks would be able to vote in North Carolina
for the first time since 1835 and that their ranks would now include
hordes of former bondspeople.
Elections for a constitutional convention were held under duress in North Carolina in November 1867. Blacks and poor whites flocked to the polls. Controlled by African Americans and pro-Unionist whites, despairingly known as “Carpetbaggers ” and “Scalawags ,” the convention completed its work in March 1868; and soon thereafter North Carolina was readmitted to the Union. The new constitution eliminated all property qualifications for voting or holding office and provided for a “general and uniform system of Public Schools.” Even more ominously for elitist and middle class whites, it eliminated the system of county Justices of the Peace and created elected county commissions as the governing body of local government. “The traditional aristocratic structure of local government was destroyed,” writes Paul Escott, “and the opportunity for full local democracy rose in its place.”
Newspaperman William W. Holden, who had
served briefly as Provisional Governor
in 1865 and who had brought about the establishment of the
Republican Party in North Carolina two years later, was elected Governor
in April 1868. Large numbers of whites were convinced that they had no
chance of winning the election and refused to vote.
Republicans carried 58 of North Carolina’s 89 counties.
“Prominent men of the old elite saw their worst nightmare – an
alliance among the lower classes of both races – materializing under the
protection of the federal government,” says Escott.
The mood in Mecklenburg County was tense. Mecklenburg did not give Holden a majority and voted against ratification of the new constitution. When Holden came to Charlotte during the campaign, local whites, who called themselves Conservatives, burned him in effigy and hurled insults at him when he stepped off the train. Holden spoke to a large crowd of supporters, mostly African Americans, waved a bloody shirt in the air, reminded the crowd of the secessionist sentiments of Mecklenburg County, and accused his opponents of “enacting the scenes of 1860-61.” Thomas McAlpine , Charlotte agent for the Freedmen’s Bureau , a Federal agency established in 1865 to assist Southern refugees, was concerned about the retribution that embittered whites were meting out against African Americans who had voted with the Republicans. Deliveryman Allen Cruse fired five black employees who supported Holden. One black voter in Mecklenburg County had his mule killed on the night of the election.
The most ominous form of white payback against
“unruly” blacks was political terror and physical intimidation. In 1866, six Confederate veterans met in Pulaski, Tennessee
and founded the Ku Klux Klan
. Its membership quickly spread into other states, including
North Carolina. “The immediate and primary goal of the Klan was to wrest
political power away from the Republicans,” Escott explains. Although there is no evidence that it operated in Mecklenburg County, the Klan had its local
admirers, especially among affluent and middle class whites.
“The Ku Klux Klan was all that saved our country, our women,
children and old men,” proclaimed J. B. Alexander
. “Our condition was
desperate,” he insisted. “The
best blood on earth was subject to the will of the lowest and basest
creatures that ever walked on earth.”
Affluent and middle class whites were
determined to reverse the political tide and undermine white support for
the Republican Party "by attacking racial equality as the weakest
point in the Republican program."
In addition to brutalizing blacks when necessary, the Conservatives
sought to use the doctrines of White Supremacy
to solidify their electoral
base. D. A. Tompkins
, a South Carolinian trained in the North as an engineer and a resident
of Charlotte beginning in 1883, stated in his two-volume history of
Mecklenburg County that the “white man will survive and will continue to
be the controlling factor in all matters of advancing civilization.”
The scheme was simple and ultimately
successful. Poor whites would
be weaned from forming
alliances with African Americans on the basis of their shared economic
interests and would be made to understand they should stand shoulder to
shoulder with members of their own race. "Instead
of letting Republicans define the issue as democracy -- universal
manhood suffrage, local democracy, free public schools for all, and
expanded economic opportunity," Escott contends, "Conservatives
set out to make white supremacy the central question."
In return, affluent and middle class whites promised to create jobs
for impoverished whites and for cooperative blacks by advancing the
economic recovery of the South. In
short, they would fashion a “New South.”
“To consolidate past victories, the Democrats built shibboleths
of party, defining themselves as the agents of reform, white unity, and
deliverance from the ‘horrors’ of black rule,” Escott argues.
“To strengthen themselves in the future, they supported visions
of a New South of progress, improvement, and prosperity.”
The Conservatives, who would soon begin
calling themselves Democrats again, gained large majorities in both
chambers of the legislature in 1870.
Interestingly, two out of every three North Carolina counties that
moved from the Republican to the Democratic camp had experienced
substantial Klan activity since 1868.
Also undermining popular support for the Republicans were
exaggerated allegations of governmental corruption.
"Although some illiterate blacks were elected to state
conventions and legislatures," contends Samuel Eliot Morison,
"many of the colored leaders were men of education who showed ability
equal to the ordinary run of state legislators anywhere."
Bolstered by their victory at the ballot
box, the Democrats called for another constitutional convention in 1875. The voters approved thirty amendments the following year, the
general effect of which was to concentrate greater power in the
legislature now that the Democrats controlled it.
The most important of the amendments gave the general assembly
"full power by statute to modify, change, or abrogate" the
existing rules of county government.
This meant that the Democrats could nullify the election of county
officials, most notably African Americans
in the eastern part of
North Carolina, where blacks were most numerous.
"It is easy to see why the Democratic offensive was aimed so
directly at local government," Escott asserts.
"Control of county affairs had been the foundation of North
Carolina's aristocratic social order."
Two events in 1876 signaled the end of
Reconstruction in the Tar Heel State.
Zebulon Vance
, North Carolina's popular Civil War governor, was elected chief
executive again, thereby demonstrating that the ante-bellum elite was
predominant once more. Also,
Rutherford B. Hayes
became President of the United States and withdrew the
last Federal troops from the South, thereby removing the North’s
indispensable instrument for enforcing its will.
"Thus, by 1877, all former Confederate states were back in the
Union and in charge of their domestic affairs, subject only to the
requirements of two constitutional amendments to protect the freedmen's
civil rights," says Morison.
African Americans continued to run for political office in Mecklenburg County until the end of the nineteenth century, and several routinely served on the Charlotte Board of Aldermen. John T. Schenck , a mulatto carpenter, represented Second Ward for four terms, and blacks were consistently elected from Third Ward. But white Democrats invariably held the majority on the twelve-member Board of Aldermen, and Republicans never succeeded in electing a mayor. "While accommodating new economic growth, new business leaders, a vigorous Republican party, and black political participation, the town continued to be dominated by the secessionists of the Civil War," asserts historian Janette Greenwood.
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