REFERENCES SOCIAL CONDITIONS: Bruce, Plantation Negro; Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk; Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, ch. 23; Page, The Negro, passim; Reed, The Brothers' War, pp. 358, 378; Thomas, American Negro, ch. 6-10; Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America. FREEDMEN'S BUREAU LABOR SYSTEM: Du Bois; Fleming, ch. 11 and p. 717; Garner, pp. 133, 249; Pierce, Freedmen's Bureau, ch. 5. IMMIGRATION TO THE SOUTH: Fleming, p. 717; Garner, p. 134; Pike, Pros trate State; Political Science Quarterly, May, 1905; Reed. DECLINE OF THE BLACK BELT: American Journal of Sociology, January, 1905; Bruce, passim; Fleming, p. 730; Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, ch. 3 and 4; Leconte, Autobiography, pp. 229, 233; Reed, ch. 17; Smedes, Southern Planter, ch. 19-22. WHITE AND BLACK LABOR: Bruce, passim; Fleming, pp. 727, 804; Hammond, Cotton Industry, passim; Kelsey, p. 19; Reed, p. 397; Somers, Southern States, see index; Thomas, ch. 3, 4; Tillinghast, p. 176. SHARE AND CREDIT SYSTEMS: Fleming, p. 723; Fortune, Land, Labor and Politics in the South; Garner, p. 137; Hammond, passim; Kelsey, ch. 3 and 4; Somers, p. 281; Thomas, ch. 3. 1. THE WHITES DURING RECONSTRUCTION 1 A State of Mind Mississippi Election of 1875, p. 1077. Statement of Reuben Davis, formerly member of U. S. Congress. [1875] You took $16,000 of my cotton, and left me a beggar; I call that an act of oppression. You denied me the right to vote; I call that an act of oppression. You denied me the right to hold office; I call that an act of oppression. You refused to permit our state to be represented in Congress; . . I call that an act of oppression. . . You sent men here to organize these colored people for political purposes, and for your political good; and the men who came were the men that your people in the North would scarcely recognize as gentlemen at home, and they robbed us; I call that oppression. I call it oppression not to throw a little flower upon the grave of a southern soldier, which we have never failed to do upon the graves of northern soldiers in the South since the war ended. I call it a manifestation of bitterness toward us in the general legislation which has been imposed upon the South, and which was intended for the South alone, although.. it was general on its face; but I have seen as many as four or five hundred men of my country taken before your Federal court, and when they got there the district attorney says, "Pay me the costs and I will dismiss the suit." We have been robbed of our substance that way; I call that oppression. The Mountain Whites Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony, p. 207. Statement of Governor R. B. Lindsay, of Alabama. [1871] THE people are better off in our mountain regions than they ever were at any time before. Their labor has been more remunerative; they perform their own work in the fields; they do not employ labor. Cotton selling at from $100 to $150 1. See also Chapter I, a bale remunerates the man who does his own labor to the amount of three times. While it is advancing the comforts of the white laborer who cultivates his own lands, it is, to a certain extent, impoverishing the man who employs labor, simply because the expense of provisions, of implements, and of mules has all increased in a greater ratio than the increased price of For example, before the war you could buy bacon at 10 cents a pound; now you have to pay 22 cents; and the white man who labors in our section of the country raises his own meat. In other words, his expenses are increased, while the increase of the price of his products of labor are trebled. cotton. Hence the people are more industrious, because their industry is better compensated. Being more industrious, there is more sobriety, more pride of character, more disposition to be kindly toward each other. Instead of those old-fashioned southwestern feuds and personal rencounters that took place before the war, you rarely ever hear of them now. Fear of Negro Insurrection House Misc. Doc., 41 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 482. Statement of a Democratic lawyer, state senator, Louisiana. [1869] I MYSELF was on horseback for four nights in scouring that part of the country. After the death of this man Meadows [negro], the negroes assembled in large bodies and concocted a plan for the purpose of having an insurrection. This infor mation I received from a negro man, who reported the facts, whose name I do not wish to state, because he came to me in confidence. The whole plan was concocted and the time was fixed, as he stated. The negroes were to meet in the town of Homer at a public meeting. They were all to come with arms and guns, and at a preconcerted signal, they were to rush into the stores and take possession of the guns and powder, and then commence an indiscriminate slaughter. This was the report of that colored man to the white people. So great was the fear of the white people that they kept a constant watch and look-out for four or five days. . It resulted from the death of this man Meadows. As was reported, this man Meadows had held a meeting in the swamp. He had a great influence among the negroes. He was a controlling and leading man in the parish among the negroes. For some reason or other he had become offended at the white people, and had told the colored people at this meeting that now was the time to kill the white men and to take the white. women for their wives. . . There was, of course, consider able apprehension among the white people, especially for the safety of the women and children. Alarm among the Whites Mississippi Election of 1875, p. 1701. Andrews. Statement of General Garnett I WILL state that from this period up to the election and a short time after, I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience, at any period, including that time, the fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt at that time. And this was the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six weeks or a month, and I have felt that when I laid down that neither myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be assassinated and my house set on fire at any time. . The colored race largely outnumbered the white population. In town they are about equal, nearly equal; in the country, though, in some places, they are twelve to one; in other places one hundred to one. In other places the majority is much less; nearly as many white people as colored people. But take the county over, the colored population is much larger than the white population; though the white population is increasing now, and has been for a year or two past, especially in the hills. Yazoo City, however, is located in the swamp and surrounded by large plantations tenanted almost exclusively by colored people. . . I believe that the whites were more alarmed than the colored people. I know I was badly frightened for the safety of myself and family. I felt genuine, honest alarm, and if I thought I had to go through again with that thing, if it was to be habitual that sort of trouble, I would leave the State. I had made up my mind once or twice to do it, to go away, and actually went to Virginia once to stay on account of the horrible condition of things in that country; and I might have gone away, and a great many people would have left the county, white people, this year if the same men had continued to rule there as they have ruled heretofore. It was insufferable. "Thad. Stevens is Dead" Planters' Banner, (Louisiana) August 15, 1868, in House Misc. Doc. no. 154, 41 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 544. Illustrates the feeling of the whites at the time. [1868] THAD. STEVENS IS DEAD. - The prayers of the righteous have at last removed the congressional curse! May old Brownlow, Butler, and all such political monsters, soon fol low the example of their illustrious predecessor! May his new iron-works wean him from earth, and the fires of his new furnaces never go out! The devil will get on a big "bender" With Thad. Stevens in his cabinet and Butler in Washington, he can manage things in both kingdoms to his liking. Lucky Devil! now. Social Ostracism of Republicans Mississippi Election of 1875, p. 227. Statement of a Mississippi "scalawag." [1875] THEY don't associate with my family, or the families of republicans. We have to make what little associations we have with ourselves. We are perfectly ostracised in every particular. A man who is a republican in our county must make up his mind to all sorts of ostracism. After election a man owed |