Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The Story of Reconstruction10

not necessarily the same. Also, be careful to note the most important facts of Reconstruction that each presents and the meaning each assigns to them. To see more clearly how these textbook selections differ from one another, it would be helpful to write down brief answers to the following questions as you read each account:

1. Does the author present the Republican governments in the Southern states as effective or ineffective? How are they described? Is the view of the “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” positive, negative, or neutral?

2. What is the author’s view of blacks? Is the author’s analysis of Reconstruction based on racial assumptions about the character of the freedmen? Are blacks passive or active participants in shaping Reconstruction and their own lives?

3. What is the author’s view of the overturning of Reconstruction? Is the sei- zure of power by white Southerners a welcome or regrettable development? What is the author’s view of such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan?

Before you begin, read your own textbook’s discussion of Reconstruction. When you are finished, you should be able to explain how these selections differ, which one is closest to the interpretation in your own text, and which one is most plausible.

S O U R C E S

1 Reconstruction (1906)THOMAS W. WILSON Adventurers swarmed out of the North to cozen, beguile, and use . . . them [negroes]. These men, mere “carpet baggers” for the most part, who brought nothing with them, and had nothing to bring, but a change of clothing and their wits, became the new masters of the blacks. They gained the confidence of the negroes, obtained for themselves the more lucrative offices, and lived upon the public treasury, public contracts, and their easy control of affairs. For the negroes there was nothing but occasional allot- ments of abandoned or forfeited land, the pay of petty offices, a per diem allowance as members of the conventions and the state legislatures which their new masters made business for, or the wages of servants in the vari- ous offices of administration. Their ignorance and credulity made them easy dupes. . . .

Source: Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (New York: Harper and Bros., 1906), V: pp. 46, 47, 49, 58, 59, 60, 62, 98, 99.

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial Review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

Sources 11

. . . In Mississippi, before the work of the carpet baggers was done, six hundred and forty thousand acres of land had been forfeited for taxes, twenty per cent, of the total acreage of the State. The state tax levy for 1871 was four times as great as the levy for 1869 had been; that for 1873 eight times as great; that for 1874 fourteen times. The impoverished planters could not carry the intolerable burden of taxes, and gave their lands up to be sold by the sheriff. There were few who could buy. The lands lay waste and ne- glected or were parcelled out at nominal rates among the negroes. . . .

Taxes, of course, did not suffice. Enormous debts were piled up to satisfy the adventurers. . . . Treasuries were swept clean. . . .

. . . The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and con- ducted in the interest of adventurers: governments whose incredible debts were incurred that thieves might be enriched, whose increasing loans and taxes went to no public use but into the pockets of party managers and cor- rupt contractors. . . .

They took the law into their own hands, and began to attempt by intimi- dation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action. They began to do by secret concert and association what they could not do in avowed parties. Almost by accident a way was found to succeed which led insensibly farther and farther afield into the ways of violence and outlawry. In May, 1866, a little group of young men in the Tennessee village of Pulaski, finding time hang heavy on their hands after the excitements of the field, so lately abandoned, formed a secret club for the mere pleasure of association, for private amusement—for anything that might promise to break the monotony of the too quiet place. . . .

. . . Year by year the organization spread, from county to county, from State to State. Every country-side wished to have its own Ku Klux, founded in secrecy and mystery like the mother “Den” at Pulaski, until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, an “Invisible Empire of the South,” bound together in loose organization to protect the southern coun- try from some of the ugliest hazards of a time of revolution. . . .

It was impossible to keep such a power in hand. Sober men governed the counsels and moderated the plans of those roving knights errant; but it was lawless work at best. They had set themselves, after the first year or two of mere mischievous frolic had passed, to right a disordered society through the power of fear. Men of hot passions who could not always be restrained carried their plans into effect. . . .

The reconstruction of the southern States had been the undoing of the Republican party. The course of carpet bag rule did not run smooth. Every election fixed the attention of the country upon some serious question of fraud or violence in the States where northern adventurers and negro major- ities were in control. . . . Before [Ulysses S. Grant’s] term was out the white

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction12

voters of the South had rallied strong enough in every State except South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana to take their governments out of the hands of the men who were preying upon them.

2 The Negro in Reconstruction (1922)CARTER WOODSON Reconstruction began in the schoolhouses not in the State houses, as unin- formed persons often say. . . . As the Union armies gradually invaded that area the soldiers opened schools for Negroes. Regular teachers came from relief societies and the Freedmen’s Bureau. These enlightened a fair percent- age of the Negroes by 1870. The illiteracy of the Negroes was reduced to 79.9 by that time. When about the same time these freedmen had a chance to participate in the rehabilitation of State governments in the South, they gave that section the first free public school system, the first democratic education it ever had. . . .

The [majority of] other States in the South, from 1868 to about 1872, became subjected to what is commonly known as “Negro carpet-bag rule.”

To call this Negro rule, however, is very much of a mistake. As a mat- ter of fact, most of the local offices in these commonwealths were held by the white men, and those Negroes who did attain some of the higher offices were usually about as competent as the average whites thereto elected. Only twenty-three Negroes served in Congress from 1868 to 1895. The Negroes had political equality in the Southern States only a few years, and with some exceptions their tenure in Congress was very short. . . .

The charge that all Negro officers were illiterate, ignorant of the science of government, cannot be sustained. In the first place, the education of the Negro by Union soldiers in the South began in spots as early as 1861. Many of the Negro leaders who had been educated in the North or abroad returned to the South after the war. Negro illiteracy had been reduced to 79.9 by 1870, just about the time the freedmen were actually participating in the reconstruction. The masses of Negroes did not take a part in the govern- ment in the beginning of the reconstruction.

It is true that many of them were not prepared to vote, and decidedly dis- qualified for the positions which they held. In some of the legislatures, as in Louisiana and South Carolina, more than half of the Negro members could scarcely read or write. They, therefore, had to vote according to emotions or the dictates of the demagogues. This, of course, has been true of legislatures composed entirely of whites. In the local and State administrative offices,

Source: Carter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley, The Negro in Our History, (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers Inc., 1962; originally published in 1922), pp. 382, 388, 401–410, 431–414.

Sources 13

however, where there were frequent chances for corruption, very few igno- rant Negroes ever served. . . .

Most of the local, State and Federal offices, however, were held not by Negroes but by southern white men, and by others who came from the North and profited by the prostration of the South. They were in many respects selfish men, but not always utterly lacking in principle. The north- ern whites, of course, had little sympathy for the South. They depended for their constituency upon the Negroes, who could not be expected to placate the ex-slaveholders. Being adventurers and interested in their own affairs, the carpet-baggers became unusually corrupt in certain States. They admin- istered affairs selfishly. Most Negro officers who served in the South came out of office with an honorable record. . . .

Reconstruction history, however, was distorted by J. W. Burgess, a slave- holder of Giles County, Tennessee, who was educated in the North and finally attained distinction as a teacher and writer at Columbia University; and by W. A. Dunning, the son of an industrialist of Plainfield, New Jer- sey, who became the disciple of Burgess. The two trained or influenced in the same biased way the sons and sympathizers of former slaveholders who prostituted modern historiography to perpetuate the same distortion. These pseudo-historians refused to use the evidence of those who opposed slavery, discredited the testimony of those who favored Congressional Reconstruc- tion, and ignored the observations of travellers from the North and from Europe. These makers of history to order were more partial than required by the law of slavery, for they rejected the evidence from Negro sources and thus denied the Negro not only the opportunity to testify against the white man but even to testify in favor of himself. . . .

Wherever they could, the native whites instituted government by investi- gation to expose all shortcomings of Negro officials. The general charge was that they were corrupt. The very persons who complained of the corruption in the Negro carpet-bag governments and who effected the reorganization of the State governments in the South when the Negroes were overthrown, however, became just as corrupt as the governing class under the preced- ing régime. In almost every restored State government in the South, and especially in Mississippi, the white officers in control of the funds defaulted. These persons who had been so long out of office came back so eager to get the most out of it that they filled their own pockets from the coffers of the public. No exposure followed. . . .

The attack on the policies of the carpet-bag governments, moreover, had the desired effect among the poor and ignorant whites. Reared under the degrading influences of slavery, they could not tolerate the blacks as citizens. The Negroes thereafter were harassed and harried by disturbing elements of anarchy, out of which soon emerged an oath-bound order called the Ku Klux Klan, established to terrorize the Negroes with lawlessness and violence.

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction14

3 The Ordeal of Reconstruction (1966)THOMAS A. BAILEY Enfranchised Freedmen

The sudden thrusting of the ballot unto the hands of the ex-slaves, between 1867 and 1870, set the stage for stark tragedy. As might have been foreseen, it was a blunder hardly less serious than thrusting overnight freedom upon them. Wholesale liberation was probably unavoidable, given the feverish conditions created by war. But wholesale suffrage was avoidable, except insofar as the Radicals found it necessary for their own ends, both selfish and idealistic.

The bewildered Negroes were poorly prepared for their new responsi- bilities as citizens and voters. Democracy is a delicate mechanism, which requires education and information. Yet about nine-tenths of the 700,000 adult Negro males were illiterate. When registering, many did not know their ages; and boys of sixteen signed the rolls. Some of these voters could not even give their last name, if indeed they had any. Bob, Quash, Christmas, Scipio, Nebuchadnezzar would take any surname that popped into their heads, often that of “massa.” Sometimes they chose more wisely than they knew. On the voting lists of Charleston, South Carolina, there were forty-six George Washingtons and sixty-three Abraham Lincolns.

The tale would be amusing were it not so pathetic and tragic. After the Negroes were told to come in for registration, many appeared with boxes or baskets, thinking that registration was some new kind of food or drink. Others would mark their ballots and then carefully deposit them in mail boxes.

While these pitiable practices were going on, thousands of the ablest Southern whites were being denied the vote, either by act of Congress or by the new state constitutions. . . .

Enthroned Ignorance

Some of the new Southern legislatures created in 1867–1870, not unlike some Northern legislatures, presented bizarre scenes. They were domi- nated by newly arrived carpetbaggers, despised scalawags, and pliant Negroes. Some of the ex-bondsmen were remarkably well educated, but many others were illiterate. In a few of the states the colored legislators con- stituted a strong minority. In once-haughty South Carolina, the tally stood at 88 Negroes to 67 whites; and ex-slaves held offices ranging from speaker to doorkeeper. Negroes who had been raising cotton under the lash of the

Sources 15

overseer were now raising points of order under the gavel of the speaker. As a Negro song ran:

De bottom rail’s on de top And we’s gwine to keep it dar.

Greatly to their credit, these Negro-white legislatures passed much desirable legislation and introduced many overdue reforms. In some states a better tax system was created, state charities were established, public works were launched, property rights were guaranteed to women, and free pub- lic schools were encouraged—for Negroes as well as whites. Some of these reforms were so welcome that they were retained, along with the more en- lightened state constitutions, when the Southern whites finally strong-armed their way back into control.

But the good legislation, unhappily, was often obscured by a carnival of corruption and misrule. Graft and theft ran wild, especially in states like South Carolina and Louisiana, where designing whites used naive Negroes as cats-paws. The worst black-and-tan legislatures purchased, under “legisla- tive supplies,” such items as hams, perfumes, suspenders, bonnets, corsets, champagne, and a coffin. One “thrifty” carpetbag governor in a single year “saved” $100,000 from a salary of $8000.

The public debt of the Southern states doubled and trebled, as irrespon- sible carpetbag legislatures voted appropriations and bond issues with lighthearted abandon. Burdensome taxes were passed in Mississippi, where some 6,000,000 acres were sold for delinquent taxes. The disfranchised and propertied whites had to stagger along under a tax burden that sometimes rose ten or fifteenfold. . . .

One should also note that during this hectic era corruption was also ram- pant in the North, among Republicans as well as Democrats. The notorious Tweed Ring of New York City probably stole more millions, though with greater sophistication, than the worst of the carpetbag legislatures com- bined. And when the Southern whites regained the whip hand, graft by no means disappeared under Democratic auspices.

The Rule of Night Riders

Goaded to desperation, once-decent Southern whites resorted to savage mea- sures against Negro-carpetbag control. A number of secret organizations blos- somed forth, the most notorious of which was the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee in 1866. Besheeted night riders, their horses’ hoofs muffled, would hammer on the cabin door of a politically ambitious Negro. In ghoulish tones one thirsty horseman would demand a bucket of water, pour it into a rubber attachment under pretense of drinking, smack his lips, and declare that this was the first water he had tasted since he was killed at the battle of Shiloh. If fright did not produce the desired effect, force was employed.

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction16

Such tomfoolery and terror proved partially effective. Many Negroes and carpetbaggers, quick to take a hint, were scared away from the polls. But those stubborn souls who persisted in their forward ways were flogged, mu- tilated, or even murdered. In one Louisiana parish in 1868, the whites in two days killed or wounded two hundred victims; a pile of twenty-five bodies was found half-buried in the woods. By such atrocious practices was the Negro “kept in his place.”

4 Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution (2001)MARY BETH NORTON et al. Reconstruction Politics in the South

From the start, Reconstruction encountered the resistance of white south- erners. In the black codes and in private attitudes, many whites stubbornly opposed emancipation, and the former planter class proved especially unbending. In 1866 a Georgia newspaper frankly observed that “most of the white citizens believe that the institution of slavery was right, and . . . they will believe that the condition, which comes nearest to slavery, that can now be established will be the best.”

White Resistance Fearing loss of control over their slaves, some planters attempted to postpone freedom by denying or misrepresenting events. For- mer slaves reported that their owners “didn’t tell them it was freedom” or “wouldn’t let [them] go.” Agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau reported that “the old system of slavery [is] working with even more rigor than formerly at a few miles distant from any point where U.S. troops are stationed.” To hold onto their workers, some landowners claimed control over black children and used guardianship and apprentice laws to bind black families to the plantation.

Whites also blocked blacks from acquiring land. A few planters divided up plots among their slaves, but most condemned the idea of making blacks landowners. A Georgia woman whose family was known for its support of religious education for slaves was outraged that two property owners planned to “rent their lands to the Negroes!” Such action was, she declared, “injurious to the best interest of the community.”

Adamant resistance by propertied whites soon manifested itself in other ways, including violence. In one North Carolina town a local magistrate clubbed a black man on a public street, and bands of “Regulators” terrorized blacks in parts of that state and in Kentucky. Such incidents were predictable in a defeated society in which many planters believed, as a South Carolinian put it, that blacks “can’t be governed except with the whip.”

Sources 17

After President Johnson encouraged the South to resist congressional Reconstruction, white conservatives worked hard to capture the new state governments. Many whites also boycotted the polls in an attempt to defeat Congress’s plans; by sitting out the elections, whites might block the new constitutions, which had to be approved by a majority of registered voters. This tactic was tried in North Carolina and succeeded in Alabama, forc- ing Congress to base ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and of new state constitutions on a majority of “votes cast” (the provision of the Fourth Reconstruction Act).

Black Voters and Emergence of a Southern Republican Party Very few black men stayed away from the polls. Enthusiastically and hopefully, they voted Republican. Most agreed with one man who felt he should “stick to the end with the party that freed me.” Illiteracy did not prohibit blacks (or unedu- cated whites) from making intelligent choices. Although Mississippi’s William Henry could read only “a little,” he testified that he and his friends had no difficulty selecting the Republican ballot. “We stood around and watched,” he explained. “We saw D. Sledge vote; he owned half the county. We knowed he voted Democratic so we voted the other ticket so it would be Republi- can.” Women, who could not vote, encouraged their husbands and sons, and preachers exhorted their congregations to use the franchise. With such group spirit, zeal for voting spread through the entire black community.

Thanks to a large black turnout and the restrictions on prominent Con- federates, a new southern Republican Party came to power in the constitu- tional conventions of 1868–1870. Republican delegates consisted of a sizable contingent of blacks (265 out of the total of just over 1,000 delegates through- out the South), some northerners who had moved to the South, and native southern whites who favored change. Together these Republicans brought the South into line with progressive reforms adopted earlier in the rest of the nation. The new constitutions were more democratic. They eliminated property qualifications for voting and holding office, and they turned many appointed offices into elective posts. They provided for public schools and institutions to care for the mentally ill, the blind, the deaf, the destitute, and the orphaned. . . .

The Myth of “Negro Rule” Within a few years, as centrists in both parties met with failure, white hostility to congressional Reconstruction began to dominate. Some conservatives had always desired to fight Reconstruction through pressure and racist propaganda. They put economic and social pres- sure on blacks: one black Republican reported that “my neighbors will not employ me, nor sell me a farthing’s worth of anything.” Charging that the South had been turned over to ignorant blacks, conservatives deplored “black domination,” which became a rallying cry for a return to white supremacy.

Such attacks were inflammatory propaganda, and part of the growing myth of “Negro rule,” which would serve as a central theme in battles over

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction18

the memory of Reconstruction. African Americans participated in politics but hardly dominated or controlled events. They were a majority in only two out of ten state constitutional writing conventions (transplanted northerners were a majority in one). In the state legislatures, only in the lower house in South Carolina did blacks ever constitute a majority; among officeholders, their numbers generally were far fewer than their proportion in the popula- tion. Sixteen blacks won seats in Congress before Reconstruction was over, but none was ever elected governor. Only eighteen served in a high state office such as lieutenant governor, treasurer, superintendent of education, or secretary of state. In all, some four hundred blacks served in political office during the Reconstruction era. Although they never dominated the process, they established a rich tradition of government service and civic activism. Elected officials, such as Robert Smalls in South Carolina, labored tirelessly for cheaper land prices, better healthcare, access to schools, and the enforce- ment of civil rights for their people. The black politicians of Reconstruction are lost in the mists, the forgotten heroes of this seedtime of America’s long civil rights movement.

Carpetbaggers and Scalawags Conservatives also assailed the allies of black Republicans. Their propaganda denounced whites from the North as “carpet- baggers,” greedy crooks planning to pour stolen tax revenues into their sturdy luggage made of carpet material. Immigrants from the North, who held the largest share of Republican offices, were all tarred with this brush.

In fact, most northerners who settled in the South had come seeking busi- ness opportunities or a warmer climate and never entered politics. Those who did enter politics generally wanted to democratize the South and to introduce northern ways, such as industry, public education, and the spirit of enterprise. Carpetbaggers’ ideals were tested by hard times and ostracism by white southerners.

In addition to tagging northern interlopers as carpetbaggers, Conserva- tives invented the term “scalawag” to discredit any native white south- erner who cooperated with the Republicans. A substantial number of southerners did so, including some wealthy and prominent men. Most scalawags, however, were yeoman farmers, men from mountain areas and nonslaveholding districts who had been restive under the Confederacy. They saw that they could benefit from the education and opportunities promoted by Republicans. Banding together with freedmen, they pursued common class interests and hoped to make headway against the power of long-dominant planters. Cooperation even convinced a few scalawags that “there is but little if any difference in the talents of the two races,” as one observed, and that all should have “an equal start.” Yet this black-white coalition was vulnerable to the race issue, and most scalawags did not support racial equality. Republican tax policies also cut into upcountry yeoman support because reliance on the property tax hit many small landholders hard.

Sources 19

Tax Policy and Corruption as Political Wedges Taxation was a major prob- lem for the Reconstruction governments. Republicans wanted to maintain prewar services, repair the war’s destruction, stimulate industry, and support important new ventures such as public schools. But the Civil War had destroyed much of the South’s tax base. One category of valuable property—slaves—had disappeared entirely. And hundreds of thousands of citizens had lost much of the rest of their property—money, livestock, fences, and buildings—to the war. Thus an increase in taxes was necessary even to maintain traditional services, and new ventures required still higher taxes. Inevitably, Republican tax poli- cies aroused strong opposition, especially among the yeomen.

Corruption was another serious charge levied against the Republicans. Unfortunately, it often was true. Many carpetbaggers and black politicians engaged in fraudulent schemes, sold their votes, or padded expenses, tak- ing part in what scholars recognize was a nationwide surge of corruption in an age ruled by “spoilsmen.” Corruption carried no party label, but the Democrats successfully pinned the blame on unqualified blacks and greedy carpetbaggers among southern Republicans.

Ku Klux Klan All these problems hurt the Republicans, whose leaders also allowed factionalism along racial and class lines to undermine party unity. But in many southern states the deathblow came through violence. The Ku Klux Klan, a secret veterans’ club that began in Tennessee in 1866, spread through the South and rapidly evolved into a terrorist organization. Violence against African Americans occurred from the first days of Reconstruction but became far more organized and purposeful after 1867. Klansmen rode to frustrate Reconstruction and keep the freedmen in subjection. Nighttime harassment, whippings, beatings, and murder became common, and terrorism dominated some counties and regions. . . .

Klan violence injured Republicans across the South. No fewer than one-tenth of the black leaders who had been delegates to the 1867–1868 state constitutional conventions were attacked, seven fatally. In one judicial district of North Carolina the Ku Klux Klan was responsible for twelve murders, over seven hundred beatings, and other acts of violence, including rape and arson. A single attack on Alabama Republicans in the town of Eutaw left four blacks dead and fifty-four wounded. In South Carolina five hundred masked Klans- men lynched eight black prisoners at the Union County jail, and in nearby York County the Klan committed at least eleven murders and hundreds of whippings. According to historian Eric Foner, the Klan “made it virtually im- possible for Republicans to campaign or vote in large parts of Georgia.”

Failure of Reconstruction Thus a combination of difficult fiscal problems, Republican mistakes, racial hostility, and terror brought down the Republi- can regimes. In most southern states, “Radical Reconstruction” lasted only a few years. The most enduring failure of Reconstruction, however, was not political; it was social and economic. Reconstruction failed to alter the

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction20

South’s social structure or its distribution of wealth and power. Without land of their own, freed men and women were dependent on white landowners who could and did use their economic power to compromise blacks’ political freedom. Armed only with the ballot, freed men in the South had little chance to effect major changes.

C O N C L U S I O N

These discussions of Reconstruction should make it clear that history textbooks contain interpretations. They are no different from other historical writing in that regard. Modern texts are also written by people with biases and opinions, although their interpretations may be as difficult to spot today as Muzzey’s were for his students. In part that’s because historians often do not reveal their most important assumptions, as the selection from The American Pageant, another best-selling American history textbook, demonstrates. The original author, Stanford University historian Thomas A. Bailey, approached his task in much the same spirit as Muzzey; he wrote history as a lively story, with the accom- plishments of prominent people giving direction to the narrative. Behind this approach was the unspoken assumption that the lives of people at the bottom of the society mattered less than the bold actions of diplomats, generals, and politicians. Moreover, Bailey wrote and revised earlier editions of The American Pageant before civil rights protests had overthrown legal racial segregation. The 1966 edition excerpted in this chapter appeared after historians began to mount a successful assault on the Dunning view of Reconstruction, but before text- books fully reflected the outcome of this battle. On the other hand, Mary Beth Norton and the other authors of A People and a Nation are of the generation of scholars who came of age in the 1960s. Not only do many of these histori- ans incorporate ordinary people into their accounts, but their racial assump- tions also differ markedly from those of most historians earlier in the twentieth century.

It is usually easier to spot interpretations in older textbooks because their authors do not share our premises. The first textbook selection, written with an unquestioned assumption of black inferiority, is a good example. Its author, Thomas W. Wilson, was probably as unfamiliar to you as were William Dunning and David Muzzey. He is better known today as Woodrow Wilson, the Princeton historian and Southerner who later became the twenty-eighth president of the United States and, as president, introduced racial segregation to the federal government. If Wilson’s text reflects the racist assumptions at the heart of the triumphant Southern view of Reconstruction, the second selection reveals that not all historians accepted this dominant view, even in the early twentieth century. Its author, Carter Woodson, was a Virginia-born African American who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912. Like the

work of fellow Harvard-trained black historian W. E. B. Du Bois, Woodson’s The Negro in Our History and his other Negro history textbooks were largely ignored by white historians and students. In its own way, of course, Woodson’s text also demonstrates the importance of racial assumptions in shaping inter- pretations about Reconstruction. It also illustrates that historians are more than mouthpieces for the dominant views of their day.

Together, all of these texts remind us that Americans’ social views have not remained frozen since the early twentieth century. And although the questions historians ask are not entirely dependent on whatever social views happen to be popular, historians are surely influenced by their times. However, these selections also make clear that historians do not simply mirror what happened in the past but instead give meaning to the “facts” of history. To do that, they study primary sources—the materials left to us by people in the past. We turn to them next.

F U R T H E R R E A D I N G

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York: Russell and Russell, 1935). Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century

(New York: Random House, 1979). Michael W. Fitzgerald, Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South

(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007). Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1977 (New York: Harper and Row,

1990). Nicolas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus,

and Giroux, 2006). James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History

Textbook Got Wrong (New York: The New Press, 1995).

N O T E S

1. David Saville Muzzey, History of the American People (New York: Ginn and Com- pany, 1935), pp. 408, 410.

2. John W. Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866–1876 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970; reprint of 1902 edition), p. viii.

3. William A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907), p. 212.

Notes

This chapter introduces primary sources. The documents presented give infor- mation on nineteenth-century working conditions.

Sources 1. Testimony of Workingmen (1879) 2. “Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their

Families” (1884) 3. “Human Power . . . Is What We Are Losing” (1910), crystal eastman 4. Why We Struck at Pullman (1895) 5. Colored Workmen and a Strike (1887) 6. “I Struck Because I Had to” (1902) 7. Women Make Demands (1869) 8. Summary of Conditions Among Women Workers Found by the

Massachusetts Bureau of Labor (1887) 9. A Union Official Discusses the Impact of Women Workers (1897) 10. Work in a Garment Factory (1902) 11. Gainful Workers by Age, 1870–1920 12. Breaker Boys (1906), john spargo

Chapter

2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization

and the Condition of Labor

Setting 23

n 1873 a financial panic sparked a severe depression. Four years later, busi- ness was still stagnant, and, with unemployment at perhaps one million, work- ing people grew restless. In Pennsylvania’s coal mining regions, the militia was called on repeatedly to keep order. Then, in 1877, wage cuts and layoffs on the railroads exploded into a paralyzing railroad strike. After the violent confronta- tion was over, many people lay dead, millions of dollars of property had been destroyed, and dazed Americans stared at the specter of class warfare.

In 1878 Congress appointed a committee to investigate the causes of the “General Depression in Labor and Business.” One of the witnesses called to testify was the Yale University professor William Graham Sumner. Sumner was a proponent of what would be known as Social Darwinism, a theory that applied Darwin’s theories of evolution to society in an attempt to justify un- controlled economic competition. Sumner later shared his views about the “survival of the fittest” through books and a stream of popular magazine ar- ticles. Now, he responded to Congress with answers that many middle-class Americans found reassuring. When asked by one congressman what effect the spread of machinery had on workers, Sumner admitted that they suffered a loss of income and “a loss of comfort.” Asked if there was any way to help, Sumner responded, “not at all.” And when pressed to admit that there was “distress among the laboring classes,” Sumner shot back, “I do not admit any such thing. I cannot see any evidence of it.”1

If anything, Sumner was a man of the Gilded Age. His father was frugal and hardworking, though unsuccessful. Sumner, in the words of one student of the era, had imbibed a “deep-grained prejudice in favor of the business- like virtues.”2 He was not alone. Many of Sumner’s contemporaries accepted unquestioningly the assumption that individuals were solely responsible for their financial success or failure. Many of them also could not see, or were un- troubled by, any suffering that industrialization may have caused. Yet it would be foolish for us to reason this way. Instead, we can rely on a wide variety of primary sources—the historical evidence and artifacts that survive from the past—to understand the ways industrialization influenced the lives of workers. Without them, historians are at the mercy of other people’s interpretations of the past. With them, they can make direct contact with the past. In this chap- ter, therefore, we turn to these sources to examine the same question about the “laboring classes” posed to William Graham Sumner in 1878.

S E T T I N G

Historians who study workers in the late nineteenth century have a wealth of primary sources. They include “literary” or written sources, statistical sources relating to such information as wages and the cost of living, and such nonwritten sources as sketches and photographs. Many of these sources are available

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor24

because a variety of bureaus, commissions, and committees in the late nine- teenth century began to investigate the effects of industrial growth on labor. By the 1880s, for instance, a number of states had set up bureaus of labor statistics to assess the living and working conditions of wage earners. In 1884, Congress established the Bureau of Labor, which two years later began to issue annual reports related to the conditions of workers. At about the same time, the U.S. Senate issued a five-volume Report upon the Relations Between Capi- tal and Labor. In addition, in 1901 and 1902, its Industrial Commission pro- duced a massive report on the effects of industrial growth. Meanwhile, other investigators also began to produce valuable sources. Often armed with only pens and cameras, such reformers as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, John Spargo, and Upton Sinclair recorded the conditions in the industrial workplace at the turn of the century. The Atlantic Monthly, Independent, Outlook, and other pop- ular magazines also published articles on the living and working conditions of laborers. Added to these sources are newspaper accounts, diaries, songs, and documents from such organizations as charities, labor unions, corpora- tions, and business associations. In short, the sources reflecting the condition of labor in industrial America are as varied as they are numerous.

I N V E S T I G A T I O N

The main problem we investigate in this chapter is the question posed to William Graham Sumner in the congressional investigation in 1878: Was there “distress” among the “laboring classes” as the United States industrial- ized in the late nineteenth century? That question is a very broad one, and, given the abundance of primary sources, it might seem easy to answer. Yet it is not. First, by 1900, there were more than 13 million nonagricultural wage earners in the United States, and their working conditions varied greatly. Second, we must define distress and determine whether our definition is the same as that of industrial wage earners themselves. We need to know the “objective” conditions as defined by wages, hours of labor, and cost of living, as well as what people at the time thought about them. That might depend, in turn, on workers’ expectations. The question Sumner answered with such certainty is thus more complicated than it first appears. A good answer must be based on a careful consideration of the evidence. It should also address the following questions:

1. Overall, do conditions appear to be improving or getting worse? What im- portant qualifications must be made to any generalizations about the condi- tions of workers? Does the race, class, or gender of the workers affect their conditions?

2. What do workers think about their conditions? Which sources are espe- cially valuable in understanding what it was like to be a wage earner in the late nineteenth century? Are some of the sources more biased than others?

Sources 25

3. Many late nineteenth-century commentators like William Graham Sum- ner argued that “in the cold light of reason” employers could not be ac- cused of treating workers as a mere commodity. They also asserted that it was not the role of government to improve the condition of the working classes. Based on the evidence in this chapter, do you agree? What does the “cold light” of your reason applied to this evidence suggest to you about the validity of Sumner’s assertions?

Before you begin, read the sections in your textbook on the condition of labor in the late nineteenth century and its response to industrial growth. See if you can detect a point of view regarding the living and working conditions of in- dustrial workers.

S O U R C E S

1 In 1878, the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor sent a questionnaire to working men and women throughout the state to so- licit their opinions about their own work. According to the report,

many of the respondents “expressed themselves at length upon some phase of the labor question.”3 Does this report show that workers were content or un- happy with their jobs? What were their primary complaints?

Testimony of Workingmen (1879)

Hours of Labor

From a Carpet-Mill Operative I am satisfied with sixty hours a week: it is plenty time for any man, although there are some employed in the same place over that time, and get nothing extra for it. I know of one young man under age who was absent two Saturday afternoons, and his overseer gave him his bill on Monday morning when he went in. If there is any inspector of the ten-hour law, he would do well to call round, and see for himself.

From a Shoemaker I think there ought to be an eight-hour law all over the country. There is not enough work to last the year round, and work over eight hours a day, or forty-eight hours a week. There can be only about so much work to do any way: and, when that is done, business has got to stop, or keep dragging the year round, so that a man has to work for almost any price offered; when, if there was an eight-hour law, things would be more

Source: John A. Garraty, The Transformation of American Society, 1870–1890 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968). Reprinted by permission of the University of South Carolina Press.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor26

even, and a man could get what his labor was worth, according to the price of living, and there would be plenty of work for all, and business would be good the year round. . . .

Overwork

From a Harness-Maker In answer to the question, “Do you consider your- self overworked?” I answered, “Yes”; and it is my honest and firm conviction that I am, by at least two hours a day. With the great increase in machinery within the last fifteen or twenty years, I think, in justice, there ought to be some reduction in the hours of labor. Unless the hours of labor are shortened in proportion to the increase of machinery, I consider machinery an injury rather than a benefit to humanity. I tell you that ten hours a day, hard, steady work, is more than any man can stand for any length of time without injuring his health, and therefore shortening his life. For my own part, although my work is not very laborious, when I stop work in the evening, I feel completely played out. I would like to study some; but I am too fatigued. In fact it is as much as I can do to look over the evening paper; and I am almost certain that this is the condition of a majority of workingmen. . . .

From a Quarryman In filling this blank, there are a good many questions which I did not answer relative to men with families; but, however, I would say, on behalf of married men in this locality, that they are poorly situated, working hard eleven and a half hours a day for $1.25 in summer, and 80 cents a day in winter, and obliged to purchase merchandise in company stores, and pay enormous rents for tenements. Merchandise being thirty per cent above market price, and being paid monthly, they are obliged to purchase at sup- ply store; if not, they will be discharged, and starvation is the result. It is ridiculous in a free country that the laws are not more stringent, whereby the capitalist cannot rule and ruin his white slaves. I would draw your at- tention carefully to this matter, and I lay before you all truth, not hearsay, but from experience, I am a single man, and I would not be so if times were better than they are now. . . .

From a Machinist In reply to your question concerning overwork, I wish to say, that, in employment requiring close application of mind or body, to be successful, the diligent and conscientious workman often, I might say al- ways, finds his energy exhausted long before his ten hours are up. Then he is obliged to keep up an appearance to get the pay for his day’s work, which he might do in eight hours as well as ten. If we are to have our pay by the hour, I should not advocate the eight-hour system. I think the employer would be the gainer, and the employé the loser. In the shop I work a little less than ten hours. To do that I have to leave home at 5:30 a.m., and arrive home again at 7 p.m.; so you see it makes a pretty long day. I travel not less than thirty-four miles daily, and pay $28.50 per quarter for car-fare. If I want to have a gar- den, I must do the work nights, or hire it done. I do not think I should be

Sources 27

able to follow up work in this way until the age of sixty-five. Hope to find some way to avoid some of the long hours and some of the heavy work be- fore then. I do not mean to complain; but it does seem as if the burdens and the pleasures of this world were very unequally divided. It is a hard matter to say what is right in every case. If my answers and statements should be of any service in improving the condition, prospects, or possibilities of the toil- ing thousands in our State, I shall be well paid for the same. . . .

The Use of Machinery

From a Boot and Shoe Cutter Tax machinery. Bring it in common with hand labor, so a man can have twelve months’ work in a year, instead of six or eight months. Protect hand labor, same as we protect trade from Europe, by tax or tariff. . . .

From a Machinist Machinery and the swarms of cheap foreign labor are fast rendering trades useless, and compelling the better class of mechanics to change their occupation, or go to farming. . . .

Habits of Industry

From a Shoe-Cutter There is no way I think I could be paid more fairly than I now am. I do not consider that my employers profit unfairly by my labor. My labor is in the market for sale. My employers buy it just as they buy a side of leather, and expect, and I think are willing to pay, a fair mar- ket price for it. The miller who makes a grade of flour up to the very high- est point in excellence will command the highest price for it in the market. The workingman who makes his labor of the most value will generally com- mand the highest market price for it, and sharp business men are quick to discover its value. I consider all legislation in regard to any thing connected with labor as injurious. All trades-unions and combinations I also consider as injurious to the mass of working-people. A few profit by these associa- tions, and the many pay the bills. If working-people would drop the use of beer, tobacco, and every thing else that is not of real benefit, and let such men as and a host of others earn their own living, they would have far more money for the general expenses of a family than they now have. I live in a village of about two thousand inhabitants; and I do not know of a family in destitute circumstances which has let alone vicious expenditures, and been industrious. It is the idle, unthrifty, beer-drinking, don’t-care sort of people, who are out at the elbows, and waiting for some sort of legislation to help them. The sooner working-people get rid of the idea that somebody or something is going to help them, the better it will be for them. In this country, as a general thing, every man has an equal chance to rise. In our village there are a number of successful business men, and all began in the world without any thing but their hands and a will to succeed. The best way for working-people to get help is to help themselves. . . .

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor28

2 In 1884, the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted an inves-tigation of the standard of living of Illinois workers and their fami- lies. One result was a tabulation of the amount of money that

2,139 families in a number of communities actually earned and spent. As the bureau’s report put it, “this minute catalogue of the details governing the life of each family portrays more vividly than any mere array of figures the common current of daily life among the people.”4 As you study these summaries, pay attention to the standard of living of families in this sam- ple. Note the characteristics of the families who earned the most money or had the highest standard of living and of those who earned the least or had the lowest standard of living.

“Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their Families” (1884) No. 35 LABORER Italian

Earnings—Of father $270

Condition—Family numbers 5—parents and three children, all boys, aged one, three and five. Live in one room, for which they pay $4 per month rent. A very dirty and unhealthy place, everything perfectly filthy. There are about fifteen other families living in the same house. They buy the cheapest kind of meat from the neighboring slaughter houses and the children pick up fuel on the streets and rotten eatables from the commission houses. Children do not attend school. They are all ignorant in the full sense of the word. Father could not write his name.

Food—Breakfast—Coffee and bread. Dinner—Soups. Supper—Coffee and bread.

Cost of Living— Rent $ 48 Fuel 5 Meat and groceries 100 Clothing, boots and shoes and dry goods 15 Sickness 5

Total $173

Source: Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Earnings, Expenses and Conditions of Workingmen and Their Families,” Third Biennial Report (Springfield, III., 1884), pp. 164, 267–271, 357–362, 365, 369–370, 373, 375, 383–385, 390–393, 395, 401–402, 404, 406–407, 410.

Sources 29

No. 46 LABORER American

Earnings—Of father $360 Of wife 100 Total $460

Condition—Family numbers 7—parents and five children, aged from six months to eight years. They live in a house which they rent, and pay rental of $10 per month. Two of the children attend school. House is situ- ated in good, respectable neighborhood. The furniture and carpets are poor in quality, but substantial. The father is not a member of a labor or- ganization, but subscribes for the labor papers. Their living expenses ex- ceed their income.

Food—Breakfast—Salt meat, bread, butter and coffee. Dinner—Bread, meat and vegetables. Supper—Bread, coffee, etc.

Cost of Living— Rent $120 Fuel, meat and groceries 225 Clothing, boots, and shoes and dry goods 85 Books, papers, etc. 2 Sundries 75

Total $507

No. 47 LABORER Irish

Earnings—Of father $343

Condition—Family numbers 5—parents and three children, two girls, aged seven and five, and boy, aged eight. They occupy a rented house of 4 rooms, and pay a rental, monthly of $7. Two of the children at- tend school. Father complains of the wages he receives, being but $1.10 per day, and says it is extremely difficult for him to support his family upon that amount. His work consists in cleaning yards, base- ments, out-buildings, etc., and is, in fact, a regular scavenger. He also complains of the work as being very unhealthy, but it seems he can procure no other work.

Food—Breakfast—Black coffee, bread and potatoes. Dinner—Corned beef, cabbage and potatoes. Supper—Bread, coffee and potatoes.

Chapter 2 Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor30

Cost of Living Rent $84 Fuel 15 Meat and groceries 180 Clothing, boots and shoes and dry goods 40 Sundries 20

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The Story of Reconstruction10

Chapter 1 Historians and Textbooks: The Story of Reconstruction10

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