Quotes Concerning Reconstruction

[unionblue]

Address of the Democratic White Voters of Charleston to the Colored Voters of Charleston, the Seaboard and of the State Generally (Charleston, 1868), during the Presidential election of that year between Symour and Grant:

"We have the capital and the give employment. We own the lands and require labor to make them productive...You desire to be employed...We know we can do without you. We think you will find it difficult to do without us...We have the wealth."

Unionblue

[Georgiana Jewell-Roberts]

Neil -

I recently ran across this essay on Reconstruction by Frederick Douglass. Perhaps you are familiar with it, but just in case....

I believe it was published in the Atlantic Monthly late in 1866.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin...&division=div1

Enjoy!

[unionblue]

Georgiana,

Yes, I have seen the speech before and you are correct that it was published in the Atlantic Monthly. I appreciate you posting it for me.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[thea_447]

"Never will this nation be a unit until every class God has made, from the lakes to the Gulf, has its ballot to protect itself...The negro has earned land, education, rights. Before we leave him, we ought to leave him on his own soil, in his own house, with the right to the ballot and the schoolhouse within reach. Unless we have done it, the North has let the cunning of politics filch the fruits of this war."--Wendell Phillips

[thea_447]

A correspondent of the New York Herald who was with Sherman in Atlanta wrote:

"On Sunday night a kind of long streak of light, like an aurora, marked the line of march and the burning stores, depots, and bridges, in the train of the army...everything in the way of destruction was now considered legalized....ruffians ran with brands, to fire churches, hotels, depots, and stores, pillaging as they went. "The streets" were soon in one fierce sheet of flame, houses were falling on all sides, and fiery flakes of cinders were whirled about. Men plunged into the houses, broke windows and doors with their muskets, dragging out armsfuls of clothes, dressing themselves with some, and flinging the rest into the fire. Occasionally shells exploded, excited men rushed through the choking atmosphere to escape the ruin. At a distance the burning city seemed overshadowed by a cloud of black smoke. The sun looked like a blood-red ball of fire; and the air for miles around, felt oppressive and intolerable. The lyre of the South was laid in ashes, and the "Gate City" was a thing of the past." (David P. Conyngham, Sherman's March Through the South (New York, 1865), pp. 236-238, 243-269.

[thea_447]

The New York correspondent who was with Sherman on his march to the sea told of the vandalism that had been openly encouraged and seldom punished. On one such occasion the correspondent reported that he:

"...came up to a retired plantation house, just set on fire. The soldiers were rushing off on every side with their pillage. An old lady and her two grandchildren were in the yard alarmed and helpless. The flames and smoke were shooting through the windows. The old lady rushed from one to another beseeching them at least to save her furniture. They only enjoyed the whole thing, including her distress...The scenes I witnessed in Columbia--scenes that would have driven Alaric the Goth into frenzied ecstasies, had he witnessed them--made me ponder a little on the horrors of war." (D.P. Conyngham, op. cit., pp. 313, 335)

[thea_447]

Human losses at war's end were much more serious than worn out farm equipment and broken fences, or the loss of from a third to a fourth of ALL horses, mules and hogs.

Manpower was heavily depleted. Population was now around 5 million, of whom one million had been in the armies and many of these were crippled, maimed, more a burden than an asset; more than a quarter of a million had died, these young men would leave no descendents. In South Carolina of the 44,046 able-bodied arms bearing men, 44,000 had volunteered. In all some 71,000 men had seen service; of these nearly 13,000 (23 percent) had been killed. Of Alabama's 126,587 white men between 15 and 20, over 122,000 had been in the army and over 35,000 were lost.

Never before or since in modern times has any people suffered such proportionately high casualties. The section had been bled white.

For the South's 258,000 dead at least 100,000 must be added as wounded, with an additional 60,000 taken prisoners. This already bankrupt people were forced to spend as much as a fifth of their total revenue to buy artificial legs and arms and even more for the support of widows and orphans. It is hard to contemplate such human wreckage.

"It is, therefore a false impression to assume that the South of 1865 was much concerned with politics" or that it was interested in anything of reconstruction" wrote Paul H. Buck.

"The North itself was so preoccupied with the issue of deciding a Reconstruction policy that everything Southern was distorted. Purveyors of Southern news to the North were curious as to what the South thought, especially about the negro and the political situation. They pried into the minds that would never otherwise have expressed opinions, and opinions were relayed North to be printed in newspapers, reports, and books." (Paul H. Buck, The Road to Reunion (Boston, 1937), pp. 36-37)

[thea_447]

"The time has arrived when the American people should understand what crime is, and that it should be punished, and its penalties enforced and inflicted...If you take the life of one individual for the murder of another, and believe that his property should be confiscated, what should be done with one who is trying to assassinate the nation? Treason must be made odious....traitors must be punished and impoverished...their social power must be destroyed. I say, as to the leaders, punishment. I say leniency, conciliation and amnesty to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived." --Andrew Johnson's remarks to Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana

[thea_447]

1865: Judge J.W.C. Watson told the Mississippi convention delegates, they were conquered people and had no right to dictate terms. "Gentlemen talk as if we had a choice," said another Mississippian, "but we have no choice...The only course we can pursue is that dictated to us by the powers at Washington..." A compatriot added, "As men of sense let us endeavor to remedy what we can alter, and gather together whatever may tend to palliate our misfortunes." (Reconstruction: The Ending of the Civil War, Avery Craven, pub. Holt,Rinehart, Winston, p.97)

[thea_447]

"I am not one of those who, clinging to the old
superstitions that the
Will of Heaven is revealed in the immediate results of
trial by combat, fancy that right must be on the side
of might, and speak of Appomattox as a judgment of
God. I do not forget that a Suwaroff triumphed and
Kosciusko fell; that Nero wielded the scepter of an
empire and a Paul was beheaded; that a Herod was
crowned and Christ crucified; instead of accepting the
defeat of the South as a divine verdict against her.
I regard it as but another instance of 'truth on
the scaffold and wrong on the throne'."
--Rev. Dr. Robert C. Cave, Confederate Memorial Day
1894.