Capitol Men (73 page)

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 "
I pledge my faith":
Jarrell, p. 73.
"
Like a beet": New York Times,
Dec. 27, 1876.
The Hampton forces went out of their way:
Avary, pp. 360–61.
"
The only way to bring about prosperity":
Quoted in Bowers, p. 515.
As early as 1868, the
New York Times
had warned: New York Times,
Aug. 15, 1868.

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 "
Never has there been so general an uprising": Charleston News & Courier,
Sept. 18, 1876.

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At one rally in Manning:
"Recollections of a Red Shirter." Undated clipping from
The State Magazine,
Reconstruction vertical file, South Carolina Room, Charleston Public Library.
This ostensibly fair:
Uya, pp. 100–1;
New York Times,
Oct. 20, 1876; Select Committee on Recent Elections in South Carolina, House of Representatives, 44th Cong., 2nd sess., misc. document 31, part 3, pp. 197–99; also Allen, pp. 374–77. Political violence also flared that fall at Cainhoy and around Ellenville, South Carolina.

12.
A
Dual House

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 "
I often peeped into its spacious windows":
Douglass,
Life and Times,
pp. 487–93, quoted in Fleming, p. 89.

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 "
Patriotic and philanthropic citizens":
"Report from the Select Committee on the Freedman's Savings and Trust Co.,"
Report No. 440,
printed Apr. 2, 1880, 46th Cong., 2nd sess.
"
The need for such an institution":
Resolution in the Senate of the United States, Apr. 2, 1880, Mr. Bruce, Chair, Select Committee on the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, quoted in St. Clair, p. 147.

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 "
At Charleston, S.C., we have a choice property": New National Era,
Mar. 10, 1870.

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 "
Married to a corpse":
Douglass,
Life and Times,
p. 493, quoted in Fleming, p. 93.
On June 28, 1874, the day Douglass:
Foner,
Forever Free,
p. 194.

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The nearly yearlong Senate inquiry:
Du Bois, p. 600.
Many reports of corruption:
Fleming, pp. 62–63.
In other testimony, General Howard:
Gilbert, "The Comptroller of the Currency and the Freedman's Savings Bank,"
Journal of Negro History.
"
Sane and honest men could so trifle":
Resolution in the Senate of the United States, Apr. 2, 1880, Mr. Bruce, Chair, Select Committee on the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, quoted in St. Clair, pp. 291, 293.
"
Pleaded forgetfulness or ignorance":
Ibid., p. 293.

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As the historian James M. McPherson:
McPherson,
The Abolitionist Legacy,
p. 75.
In the wake of the bank's collapse:
Smith, p. 37.
The deal itself soon became infamous:
Morris,
Fraud of the Century,
pp. 1–5.

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 "
By God, sir, I'll not do it":
Burton, "Race and Reconstruction,"
Journal of Social History.

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On November 30, the Democrats: Charleston News & Courier,
Dec. 4, 1876.

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 "
We have just seen a brave, honest, patriotic man": Charleston News & Courier,
Dec. 2, 1876.
"
A defeated administration that has to be upheld": Charleston News & Courier,
Dec. 1, 1876.
"
The scene in the House ... is picturesque": Charleston News & Courier,
Dec. 2, 1876.
William A. Wheeler, an upstate New York congressman, was Hayes's running mate.

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 "
The Mackey house members":
Guignard, "How the Wallace House Met in Carolina Hall," Charleston Public Library.
One representative had been described as a "ringtail roarer": Charleston News & Courier,
Dec. 4, 1876.
The threat of physical confrontation:
Avary, p. 368.

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 "
I don't care for myself.
.
. but I do care for the poor colored men":
Williams, Charles Richard,
Life of Rutherford B. Hayes,
vol. 1, pp. 488–89, 496; Woodward,
Reunion and Reaction,
p. 26, and Logan,
Betrayal of the Negro,
p. 15.
"
An arrangement could not be arrived at":
Stanley Matthews to Daniel Chamberlain, Mar. 4, 1877, quoted in Allen, pp. 469–70;
New York Times,
Dec. 10, 1876.

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 "
I desire to aid and relieve President Hayes":
Daniel Chamberlain to Stanley Matthews, Mar. 7, 1877, quoted in Allen, pp. 470–71.
"
To be able to put an end as speedily as possible":
W. K. Rogers to Daniel Chamberlain, Mar. 23, 1877, quoted in Allen, pp. 472–73.

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 "
You became the victims of every form of persecution":
Daniel Chamberlain, "To the Republicans of South Carolina," Apr. 1877; quoted in Allen, pp. 480–82.
"
To think that Hayes could go back on us now":
W. F. Rodenbach to Daniel Chamberlain, Apr, 4 1877, cited in Burton, "Race and Reconstruction: Edgefield County, South Carolina."
"
Unanimous in the belief that to prolong the contest":
Robert B. Elliot et al. to Daniel Chamberlain, Apr. 10, 1877; quoted in Allen, pp. 482–83.
April 10 was the day chosen: Charleston News & Courier,
Apr. 11, 1877.

13. Exodusting

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 "
The Negro ... long deemed to be too indolent and stupid":
Douglass, "Negro Exodus from the Gulf States," Sept. 12, 1879, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
Robert Finley, the Presbyterian minister:
Finley was inspired by the example of Paul Cuffee, a black New England shipowner who a few years earlier had sailed successfully to Sierra Leone with thirty-eight black American emigrationists.
The ACS, in collaboration:
Moses, p. 42. American interests directly controlled Liberia until 1847 when, in order to keep it from becoming a British colony, it was made a free and independent republic.
"
Of all classes ofour population":
The ACS Tenth Annual Report, published in 1827, is quoted in Streifford, "The American Colonization Society,"
Journal of Southern History.

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 "
The fostering agency ofLiberian colonization": New National Era,
Feb. 17, 1870.
"
We live here—have lived here":
Douglass, "Colonization,"
North Star,
Jan. 26, 1849; see Douglass,
Selected Speeches and Writings,
pp. 125–26.
In its first half-century of existence, the ACS: New National Era,
Dec. 19, 1872.
The shifting and sometimes contradictory beliefs:
Delany, "Political Destiny of the Colored Race," quoted in Rollin, p. 337; see also Hahn, p. 122.

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 "
Deep rooted prejudices":
Jefferson, pp. 189–90.
"
Do you intend to turn the three millions of slaves": Congressional Globe,
37th Cong., 2nd sess.
"
A moral fitness in the idea":
Eulogy on Henry Clay, July 16, 1852, quoted in Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes,"
Journal of Negro History. During a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1854:
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Oct. 16, 1854; ibid.
"
The enterprise is a difficult one":
Lincoln speech, June 26, 1857; ibid.

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 "
There is an unwillingness on the part of our people":
Lincoln, quoted in Foner,
Forever Free,
p. 48.
An "attempt to roll back Niagara to its source":
Goodwin, p. 469.
On December 31, 1862, the federal government contracted:
Wesley, "Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing the Emancipated Negroes,"
Journal of Negro History.

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 "
Fifty families in Granville County":
G. Rogers to American Colonization Society, Mar. 9, 1879, ACS Papers, Library of Congress.
And though the interested parties:
Painter,
Exodusters,
p. 140.

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Patterson's speech on November 26, 1877: New York Times,
Nov. 27, 1877.
One of Butler's initial efforts: Congressional Record,
51st Cong., 1st sess., p. 972.

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It will not do to shut our eyes:
Quoted in
Charleston News & Courier,
Jan. 9, 1882; see Tindall, pp. 177–78.
The
Columbia Daily Register
denounced: Columbia Daily Register,
August 19, 1877; quoted in Tindall, p. 159.
The Liberian relocation project did have a millenarian aspect: Charleston News & Courier,
Aug. 21, 1877, quoted in Tindall, p. 157.
Bruce explained that he had begun to see:
Blanche K. Bruce to
Cincinnati Commercial,
Feb. 19, 1878; quoted in St. Clair, pp. 273–80.

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In Congress, Bruce was consistently humane:
Bruce's 1879 bill to create a permanent Mississippi River Improvement Commission was one of the first attempts to bring federal oversight to the issue of flood control on the lower Mississippi. Several damaging floods had occurred between the end of the Civil War and 1874, and during that period more than one hundred miles of levees had collapsed. Bruce proposed a commission to coordinate efforts to protect the alluvial lands adjoining the river as well as a plan for the "correction and deepening" of channels for navigation. He, like many others, believed federal involvement was necessary because the river was an interstate waterway, and local fixes had always been piecemeal. As the Ohio congressman James A. Garfield had said, "The statesmanship of America must grapple with the problem of this mighty stream; it is too vast for any state to handle; too much for any authority less than that of the nation itself to manage" (Garfield, quoted in Humphreys, p. 40). Congress failed to support Bruce's proposal. Federal coordination of flood control along the Mississippi would not begin in earnest until after the devastating flood of 1927. See "An Act to Provide for the Organization of the Mississippi River Improvement Commission," H.R. Bill 4318, U.S. Senate, 45th Cong., 3rd sess., Feb. 6, 1879.
But his vision of a coming racial enlightenment:
Blanche K. Bruce to
Cincinnati Commercial,
Feb. 19, 1878, quoted in St. Clair, pp. 273–80.

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The
Azor
tacked out of Charleston Harbor:
Williams, Alfred,
The Liberian Exodus,
pp.1–6.
Forty-two days out from Charleston:
Tindall, pp. 162–65.

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The so-called Exoduster Movement:
The idea of black westward migration had been in the air since the 1860s, when debates over land distribution to the freedmen in the South dovetailed with enthusiasm for western lands made available under the Homestead Act of 1862. The reformer Sojourner Truth, working among freed people in the Washington area immediately after the war, envisioned a system of land distribution in the West similar to that of Indian reservations, where blacks could become educated, work for a living, and be safe from hostile whites.
"
The government of every Southern state":
Douglass, "Negro Exodus from the Gulf States."
As one migrant told a reporter: New York Daily Herald,
Apr. 17, 1879.
"
Voting is widely regarded at the North": Atlantic Monthly,
Aug. 1879.
"
Live as happy as a big sunflower": New York Tribune,
Dec. 19, 1878.

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 "
The Negro's necessities have developed an offensive race": Atlantic Monthly,
Aug. 1879.
"
I know, within the last three years": St. Louis Globe Democrat,
Mar. 12, 1879, quoted in Athearn, p. 10.
But President Grant, on December 6, 1876, sent to Congress: Executive Documents,
44th Cong., 2nd sess., no. 30;
Senate Reports,
46th Cong., 2nd sess., part 1; quoted in Van Deusen, "The Exodus of 1879,"
Journal of Negro History.

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 "
The Southern white man is inconvertibly fixed in the belief": New York Times,
Apr. 7, 1879.
"
Political tricksters, land speculators":
Douglass, "Negro Exodus from the Gulf States."
The magazine
Puck
neatly captured:
Cartoon by Joseph Keppler,
Puck,
Apr. 16, 1879, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress; Foner,
Forever Free,
p. 184.
"
It is not surprising that the Negro looks":
Windom and Blair, "The Proceedings of a Migration Convention and Congressional Action Respecting the Exodus of 1879,"
Journal of Negro History.
"
Where John Brown's soul": Missouri Republican,
Apr. 17, 1879; Athearn, p. 32.
"
The humiliating fact":
Douglass, "Negro Exodus from the Gulf States."
The
New Orleans Times
in April 1879 urged planters: New Orleans Times,
Apr. 22, 1879; Painter,
Exodusters,
p. 241.

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 "
You may ... judge of my surprise": Louisianian,
Mar. 15, 1879; Painter,
Exodusters,
p. 181.
He also heard a number of completely groundless reports:
Athearn, p. 245.
"
There is no doubt in my mind": Louisianian,
Mar. 15, 1879.

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 "
Look into affairs and see the true condition ofour race":
Hahn, p. 319.
"
You can't find out anything till you get amongst them":
Windom and Blair, "The Proceedings of a Migration Convention and Congressional Action Respecting the Exodus of 1879,"
Journal of Negro History
.
Adams and his council wrote letters of appeal:
Ibid.

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 "
The weather and roads here enable you":
Ibid.
Educated blacks he derided as "tonguey men": St. Louis Post Dispatch,
undated clipping from 1879, in Singleton Scrapbook, Kansas State Historical Society; quoted in
Fleming, "'Pap' Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus,"
American Journal of Sociology.
"
Those who had been leading the colored people":
Foner,
Freedom's Lawmakers,
pp. 156–57.