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As one belligerent South Carolina planter said to a Freedmen's Bureau agent in the early fall of 1865, "The war is not over." Despite the capitulation of Confederate armies in the spring, the collapse of the Confederate government, the garrisoning of the South with Union troops over the summer months, and the final destruction of slavery in this same period across the whole of the South, many conservatives could not or would not reconcile themselves to the new order of things. Accustomed to a world where their power over black workers was maintained by violence, many whites lashed out at blacks in the first year after Emancipation, often with tragic and lethal consequences. Some, like Wade Hampton, had a hard time admitting that they had lost on the battlefield, hoping perhaps that this might help hold off the results of that defeat and enable them to hold on to a lost world a little longer. At best, they counseled minimal cooperation with federal authorities, even during the relatively easy period of Presidential Reconstruction. In fairness, it must be said that a few conservatives responded to the changes more constructively, looking toward new economic initiatives and making tentative, if often paternalistic, gestures towards the freedpeople. In general, however, it was a period of disorientation, disgust, and despair for most conservatives.
An illustration from John Trowbridge’s A Picture of the Desolated States
Caption reads “I shall discharge every nigger who votes to adopt this Radical Yankee constitution.”
This recalcitrance backfired, however, and led to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March 1867. If conservatives had been reluctant to face up to the implications of the end of slavery, they were appalled by the prospect of their former slaves having political rights while they themselves were disfranchised. One solution was to make use of a loophole in the new law: if a majority of the registered voters did not vote in favor of a constitutional convention, it would not be held. Despite the fact that African American men were now eligible to register to vote, conservative whites believed they could convince enough voters, black and white, to stay away from the polls to insure the defeat of the conventions. They were wrong in every state where the attempt was made. As the conventions convened in January 1868, conservatives continued to rail against what they considered the unconstitutional oppression of the Republicans in Congress. This set the stage for an interpretation of Reconstruction that would gain traction in the South in the early 1870s, be sold to the citizens of the rest of the country in the middle of that decade, and become the standard line of historians and textbooks for decades. Some conservatives, such as Plato Durham in North Carolina, continued their opposition after the 1868 constitutional conventions by joining the Ku Klux Klan. Significantly, though, the Ku Klux Klan soon found itself facing serious opposition from many conservatives who did not want the violence to get out of control and perhaps spark a more widespread social and political upheaval.
Sources:
Document 1. A White Texas Farmer Shoots a Freedman
Document 2: "The War is Not Over"
Document 3. D. F. Caldwell's Ideas for Economic Development in North Carolina
Document 4. 1865 North Carolina Constitutional Convention Responds to Freedpeople
Document 5. Wade Hampton's Advice to Confederate Veterans
Document 6. Judge A. P. Aldrich Removed from the Bench
Document 7. Wade Hampton's Advice to Freedpeople
Document 8. A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
Document 9. Gov. Jonathan Worth Argues Against 1867 Call for a Constitutional Convention
Document 10. Plato Durham Argues Against the Reconstruction Acts in the 1868 Constitutional Convention
Document 11. Dr. Pride Jones Agrees to Help Stop the Ku Klux Klan
