HARVEST OF HATE
Hesseltine, William B.
Harvest Of Hate By WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third of a series of articles by Prof. Hesseltine on American experience with the policing of a conquered people. The fourth and...
...Meantime, the Southern whites were pinned down at the bayonet's point so close that they hardly had "room to wiggle...
...With an eye cocked for propaganda, Butler had begun his reign of terror by hanging a citizen who had cut down an United States' flag...
...The General drained the city's swamps with forced labor, and when Confederate ladies failed to hide their dislike for the invading Army, Butler issued an order that any woman insulting a Federal soldier should be "held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her vocation...
...At the close of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had planned to restore the Southern states quickly, with malice toward none and with charity for all...
...The Committee —dominated completely by that "Jacobin" element of the Republican Party who wanted to punish and exploit the conquered South—was carefully gathering testimony to justify subjecting the South to military government...
...The fourth and last installment will appear in an early^sue...
...The amendment was skillfully worded to seem to protect Negroes: Actually, as the Supreme Court would later reveal, it was carefully designed to preserve the "liberty and property" of corporations...
...Then he replaced the Board of Levee Commissioners with a board of his own choosing, and removed the governor of Louisiana...
...The good feeling which had followed the collapse of the Confederacy gave way to hatred...
...An original tolerant and kindly attitude toward Negroes gave way to race prejudice and hatred...
...But Collector Recks, who had advised the bayonet policy, had thought that "the only way for this Gov-ernment to make these people its friends is just to keep them down...
...The immediate loot might not be worth the eventual harvest of hate...
...The ven-emous Jacobins, inspired by a combination of revenge and greed, hoped to punish the South for secession, to destroy and impoverish the old Southern ruling class, and to transfer the plantations, the banks, the transportation systems, and the mineral resources of the conquered area to Northerners...
...Their descendants were doing much to prove that government of the people, by the people, and for the people had perished from the earth...
...Moreover, the Army enrolled the Negroes in the Republican Party, and instructed them in voting for the Jacobin wing...
...Moreover, the witnesses testified that the South was not safe for Northern capital, and would not be until the military took control...
...The new Southern governments were run by "carpet-baggers" from the North, aided by "skalawags" from the South, who were kept in office by Negro votes...
...The joker was hidden in the latter proposition...
...Tolerance Yields To Hatred The travesty on democracy in the South lasted for a decade after military reconstruction began...
...The Generals Take Over When it had gathered its supporting testimony, the "radical" Committee made a report proposing, first, that military government by established in the South until the Negroes and "loyal" citizens could form satisfactory governments, and second, that a 14th Amendment be added to the United States Constitution...
...The Joint Committee on Reconstruction selected witnesses who would testify that Southerners were still rebels at heart, that they were secretly organizing, that they would secede again if they had a chance, that they would join the enemy if the United States went to war with a foreign power, and that they would re-enslave the Negroes...
...During the war, the military government in New Orleans had furnished precept and example of military rule...
...Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts had become military governor...
...As soon as the Military Reconstruction Act, recommended by the Committee^ went into effect major generals took command in the South...
...This stout assertion of Vansit-tart-Fadimanism was not made in 1944 regarding the Germans...
...The carpetbag regime moved the Southerners to develop electoral corruption and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan as counter-revolutionary devices...
...Neal Dow, the "father of Prohibition," looted plantation houses and sent a ship-load of furniture to his home in Maine...
...It was 1866, and John W. Recks, late of New York and the then collector of the port of Pensacola, was testifying before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction...
...THE only way for this government to make these JL people its friends is just to keep them down," said John Recks...
...Then the military supervised elections for constitutional conventions, supervised the new constitutions, submitted them to the, electorate for ratification, and supervised the elections for new state officers held under them...
...John Pope got rid of Mobile's mayor, and in Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas the generals turned out elected governors...
...The Jacobins prepared to overturn the Johnson government in the South, and establish in their stead governments based upon Negro suffrage and supported by the Army...
...Speculators Clean Up The Jacobins rejoiced when Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln, but their joy curdled when the new President began to reconstruct the Southern states for the benefit, not of Northern financiers and industrialists, but for Southern laborers, artisans, and small farmers...
...Modern Jacobins, intent upon imposing military government upon conquered territories, and of revamping their governments to conform to the victors' ideas, might well give thought to the post-Civil War experiment...
...In the towns, the military governors reorganized the police forces and Federal soldiers patrolled the streets...
...In addition to desecrating the peace and making a mockery of civil liberties, the military governors prepared the way for "reconstructing" the states by creating a new electorate...
...Persistent legend has it that "Beast" Butler—also known as "Spoon"—carried off most of the silverware from New Orleans...
...Eight days after he assumed command, Gen...
...The generals found conditions peaceful, but they quickly brought peace to an end...
...Butler's brother made a fortune speculating in cotton, and Gen...
...They registered the newly freed slaves as voters, and carefully excluded from the voting lists all who had aided or sympathized with the Confederacy...
...In collusion with the state officers, Northern corporations looted the South's resources as effectively as Ben Butler's officers had stolen silverware from New Orleans' mansions...
...In Alabama, Gen...
...The military authorities made law through Army orders, levied and collected taxes, and made appropriations out of the state treasuries...
...Instead of friendship, the Southern whites learned only lessons of bitterness from military rule...
...Military officials sat with judges on the bench, suspended laws, released prisoners, and supervised the selection of juries...
...The Butler example was perhaps crude, but it embodied the essence of the Jacobin desires...
...I would pin them down at the point' of the bayonet so close that they would not have room to wiggle...
...The collector had strange ideas about how to win friends and influence people...
...Thousands of local officials were replaced by "loyal" men, by carpetbaggers from the North, and by Army officers...
...The Joint Committee on Reconstruction knew exactly what it wanted...
...When the Crescent City of Louisiana fell into Northern hands, the notorious Gen...
...Four score and 10 years before, the ancestors of these men had brought forth a new nation...
...His lenient policy had not instant resistance from the "radical" or "Jacobin" wing of his party...
...But the ultimate authority in the South was in the military rather than in the electorate...
...They suppressed newspapers, licensed public meetings, censored speakers, forbade parades, and, in one place, required applicants for a marriage license to swear to love, honor, and obey the Government of the United States...
...The carpet-bag regime was an era of unprecedented corruption...
...Meantime, back of the dramatics, cotton speculators carried off cotton and Army officers made profits selling Southern heirlooms...
...Phil Sheridan removed the mayor of New Orleans...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 16
