CHAPTER XXII.

TEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

MISSISSIPPI AND HER GOVERNORS - JUDGE SHARKEY – PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S TERSE ORDER--. LEGISLATION IN DETAIL- GEORGIA RECONSTRUCTED HER TERRIBLE CONDITION IN 1865-ACTION OF HER PEOPLE-TEXAS RECONSTRUCTED GOVERNOR HAMILTON AND HIS PROCLAMATIONS-ALABAMAVANDALISM THERE-GOVERNOR PARSONS' DESCRIPTION OF IT- HIS SERVICES - ALABAMA CONVENTION.- QUARREL OVER THE EPISCOPAL PRAYERS MEDDLESOME MILITARY ORDER-SOUTH CAROLINA – BRECKENRIDGE ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA CHIVALRY — GOVERNORS MAGRATH, PERRY, AND ORR

OBSTACLES OVERCOME.

G

ENERAL CLARK was the governor of Mississippi when the Confederate armies surrendered. He called an extra session of the legislature, to meet on the 18th of May, 1865; but General Canby, by direction of the President, forbade the meeting of that body. On June 13, Judge William A. Sharkey was appointed provisional governor by the President, with powers like those conferred upon Governor Holden, of North Carolina. A convention was then called by Governor Sharkey, the members to be elected on August 7, and the voters to have the same qualifications as those prescribed in the North Carolina proclamation.

Judge Sharkey was a lawyer who had a thoroughly professional mind. He could drive a legal proposition through every impediment. It may not do to liken him to Chief Justice Marshall, who gave such logical decisions that they required no precedent to support them. For eighteen years he presided as chief justice of the High Court of Errors and Appeals in Mississippi. In that domain he had no peer in his state. He was a Tennessee man, born on the River Holston, just before the incoming of the present century. His maternal grandfather was a German belonging to the Rhine. His father was an Irishman whose name was Patrick Sharkey. This combination presaged very much to the credit of the chancellor who became so famous, and who played such an important part during the war. When a boy of fifteen, young Sharkey entered the army of General Jackson. He was a substitute

President

for an uncle. He was at the battle of New Orleans, and witnessed the overthrow of the British on the Plains of Chalmette. His military fame was won on the 8th of January, 1815. After that adventure he returned to Tennessee. There, at a school of some note in Greenville, he learned more or less of the English branches of education, and he afterwards read law with Dr. Hill, of Lebanon, Tennessee. After that he went to Mississippi, where his ability, integrity, and genius for the law gave him a large practice. In 1827, he was sent to the legislature. He was an eminent judge as early as 1832. No man who ever sat upon the bench of the High Court of Errors and Appeals in Mississippi settled more questions or made more authoritative precedents than Judge Sharkey. His work in the Mississippi state reports is a monument to his legal fame. He had an immense treasure of common sense. He never failed in minute detail. He never failed on a legal principle. When he left the bench in 1850 it was to rescue his little fortune. Fillmore tendered him the position of Secretary of War, which he declined. He preferred to devote his talent and thought to the Constitution. Years afterwards, when the dire work of civil war had ended, he became one of the heroes of reconstruction. As stated, President Johnson made him provisional governor of Mississippi. It was a difficult, delicate, and most ungrateful office; yet all parties were satisfied with his administration. At the first election under the new system he was chosen Senator from his state. But the reconstruction policy of the President having been abrogated, he was, with other Southern members, refused a seat. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had been elected governor. He returned to Mississippi and continued to practice his profession. The writer remembers him well as a man of kind, polished manner, with a rare fund of conversation, as brilliant as it was attractive. He was a man who looked to the unseen world. He was a strict Methodist, in which communion he died, but he was worthy to be called, as Wendell Phillips once said of Samuel Adams, "one of Plutarch's men." His name is all over, and all through, and all under the jurisprudence of his state. No one lives so gloriously in the annals of Mississippi as Judge William L. Sharkey.

It is said of Judge Sharkey by men of his own state who took part in its resurrection, that he was not successful in the office of governor; that he did not materially assist in restoring its statehood or its prosperity. Their criticism is, that he was a specimen of that class of wonderful men who make great judges, jurists, and chancellors, but are utter failures in that field of politics in which motives must be divined at each stage of human vicissitude and progress. However this may be, it must be said that he had little opportunity to show much administrative ability as governor.

His successor, Governor Humphreys, accomplished nothing. He could not have done any good for the state, with such a legislature as came into power with him. His recommendations to that body might have suited the

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temper of the people of the state, but it is not improbable that Judge Sharkey's recommendations would have better impressed them with the importance of liberal action towards the freedmen. Judge Sharkey had visited Washington, and had there met the leaders of both parties. He knew the vital necessity of temperate action in the South.

The convention called by Provisional Governor Sharkey met at the city. of Jackson on the 14th of August, 1865. The next day the governor received a dispatch from President Johnson, of which the following is a copy:

"I am gratified to see that you have organized your convention without difficulty. I hope that without delay your convention will amend your state constitution, abolishing slavery, and denying to all future legislatures the power to legislate that there is property in man; also that they will adopt the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing slavery. If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English, and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary, and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and trust your convention will do this, and, as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempt to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union by not accepting their Senators and Representatives. ANDREW JOHNSON."

This was excellent advice. It would have been much better for the people of Mississippi and of the South had it been followed. It would have left no pretext for denying the state her Federal rights. The Mississippians did not credit the President with good intentions. They were not in a mood to receive advice from him. They were familiar with his career during the war, and immediately following its close. To them he seemed to be inspired with all the bitter antagonism to the South which animated the Northern radicals. His recommendation was regarded as the essence of radical policy. Had not President Lincoln, in the early part of the preceding year, March 13, 1864, addressed a letter similar in purpose to Provisional Governor Hahn, of Louisiana? No; Mississippi was not yet prepared to accept such advice. Mr. Lincoln's letter is brief. It is worthy of a place in this connection:

"MY DEAR SIR: I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first free state governor of Louisiana. Now you are about to have a convention, which, among other things, will define the elective franchise, I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in-as, for instance, the very intelligent, and

especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone. Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.”

But the Mississippi convention was not alone in its objection to negro suffrage. Even the Republicans of the North were slow to adopt such a policy for their own states. Nevertheless, the convention did some notable work. It did enough to disarm even the radicals, if the latter had not been determined to make the South the stronghold of their party. The convention passed ordinances for the amendment of the state constitution:

First. Declaring null and void the ordinance of secession, passed in state convention on Jan. 9, 1861.

Second. Declaring that, slavery having been destroyed, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes. whereof the party should have been duly convicted, should thereafter exist in the state. This ordinance further provided that the legislature at its next session, and thereafter as the public welfare might require, should provide by law for the protection and security of the freedmen and their property, and guard them and the state from any evils that might arise from their sudden emancipation.

An amendment to the twelfth section of the State Declaration of Rights contained a germ of evil consequences to the state. It had much to do with defeating President Johnson's beneficent plans for reconstruction. That section provided—"That no person shall, for any indictable offense, be proceeded against criminally by information; except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, or, by leave of the court, for misdemeanor in office." The amendment provided—“That the legislature, in cases of petit larceny, assault, assault and battery, affray, riot, unlawful assembly, drunkenness, vagrancy, and other misdemeanors of like character, may dispense with an inquest of a grand jury, and may authorize prosecutions before justices of the peace, or such other inferior court as may be established by the legislature; and the proceedings in such cases shall be regulated by law."

The ordinances were adopted, and an election was held on Oct. 9, 1865, for governor and other state officers, congressmen, and members of the state legislature. The legislature elected under the new constitution met on October 16th, of the same year. Benjamin G. Humphreys, a prominent gentleman of the state, was elected governor. He recommended, in his message, that the negroes be placed on the footing of white men as to the right of suing and being sued, and of giving testimony; that the negroes be encouraged to engage in the pursuits of industry; and that the militia laws be revised so as to protect the people "against insurrection, or any possible combination of vicious white men with negroes."

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This legislature refused to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery. The members legislated with a view to recognize as little as possible any of the results of the war. As an evidence of gratitude toward those who had fought for Southern independence, they appropriated twenty per centum of the state revenues" for the relief of the destitute and disabled Confederate States soldiers." The old United States pensioners who had fought for the Confederacy were exempted from payment of state taxes. There was nothing objectionable in these liberal provisions in a state where all the tax-payers had been to some extent in sympathy with secession. They were, however, construed in Congress, with other provisions passed by that body, as giving evidence that the people were not fit to conduct their own state government.

Pursuant to the spirit of the governor's recommendation, and to the spirit of the people also, the legislature passed, on November 22d-"An Act to regulate the relation of master and apprentice." This act related exclusively to the colored race. It required sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers to report to the probate courts of the several counties, semi-annually, "all freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes, under the age of eighteen," who were orphans, or whose parents had abandoned or failed to provide for them. The courts were required to bind as apprentices all such persons, on such terms as the judge might direct, "having a particular care to the interest of said minors." It was provided that the minors should be bound to their former owners, when, in the opinion of the court, the latter were persons suitable for that purpose. The court was enjoined to have a particular care of the interests of such minors. The males were to be bound until they were twenty-one years old, and the females until their eighteenth year. The usual authority for the moderate chastisement of apprentices was given, and for their recovery if they should run away.

A vagrant act was passed on November 24th. It provided that all freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes, over the age of eighteen years, who, on or after the second Monday in January, 1866, might be found without lawful employment or business, or unlawfully assembling themselves, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling, or usually associating with them on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication. with a freed-woman, free negro, or mulatto, should be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof be fined in a sum not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free negro, or mulatto, fifty dollars, and of a white man, two hundred dollars, and be imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months. Jurisdiction was conferred on all justices of the peace, mayors, and aldermen, to try offenders against the act without a jury, and to sentence them. Sheriff's and constables were punishable for neglecting to report

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