PBS presented a 2-hour history program on the violent overthrow of government in Wilmington, NC. My main complaint is that it takes the Wilmington insurrection out of context; it fails to show that the fall of Negro power in Wilmington was the final chapter of what had been a 33-year long Second Civil War.
When Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the US, in late 1860, not even receiving a full 40% of the popular vote, Southern states began to secede. When Louisiana withdrew, and called for volunteers, among them volunteering were the informal militia of the Free People of Color (FPC). The Confederacy did not think that wise, and they were rejected. True, there were black slave owners in the state, one woman an owner of many slaves; but these were the exceptions, and arming blacks might lead to problems in the war.
Early in the war, the largest city of the Confederacy, New Orleans, fell to the Yanks headed by Farragut, a Southerner, fighting for the Northerners. When local women in the city showed what they thought of the Yankee soldiers by spitting on them and insulting them, Union Gen. Ben Butler ordered that such women were then to be treated as women of ? (whores), an order that caused international outrage in Europe, and Lincoln had to countermand Butler's order. Meanwhile, many of the FPCs now sought to join the Union army, and they did. So some people of Louisiana were now joining the "foreign" occupiers.
The American Civil War continued, and tho our population was then much smaller, the casualty rate was higher than those lost in WWI, or WWII, or any war since. By early 1864 many wanted the killing to end, have peace again. The Democrats' party program of 1864 essential promised a 2-state solution; the North would go it alone and free, the South would retain slavery and be independent as the CSA. The Democrats were so popular, that Lincoln dumped his vice-president Hamlin of Maine, and replaced him with a war Democrat from Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. They did not run as Republicans but as the Union ticket. With Yankee victories and the 2nd half of 1864, more voters turned to Lincoln's plan for victory over the rebels, and he won decisively.
At his inauguration in 1865 Lincoln did not sound vindictive, with charity toward all," and after the band played the national anthem, Lincoln requested that it next play Dixie. Earlier, Gen. Grant had allowed the defeated Lee's army to keep their side arms in defeat. Shortly after the inauguration, Booth made Johnson President.
Lincoln had toyed with letting educated blacks (men) vote, but he had also toyed with sending the large black population to Africa or some islands.
By this time thousands of blacks in the North and black slaves in the south had joined the Union Army. (n 1866 in New Orleans a meeting of hundreds mainly blacks to demand the vote. The Mayor, and police, Democrats and pro Confederates, raid the gathering and murder a large number, including Dr. Dotsie, a white, and they shot a German-born newspaper man, Michael Hahn, who survived and would be one of the few Republican elected leaders at war's end. Elected as governor, the General running New Orleans was transferred, and Hahn was given little power; then elected to the US Senate, with Lincoln's murder, the national Congress refused to seat any elected from the South. Hahn had a bumpy political career, as would any Republican in the South. Also in 1866 a massacre of blacks in Memphis. These were well publicized and helped the Radical Republicans win Congress.
The Freedmen's Bureau was aiding the freed slaves to adjust.
White planters had lost their work force and their Confed. money was worthless.
Think of the trauma for some Southerners - not only had they lost their valuable property in the largest confiscation of private property in American history, but soon after their former property might be wearing the blue uniform of the enemy and aiming a gun at them! A large number of blacks had fought in the army of the Northern enemy. Blacks thought, the white South fought to keep them enslaved.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
We should understand, not only was the South defeated, not only was there much destruction of property, burnt buildings, stolen cattle, chickens, whatever, but THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY SIGNALED A SOCIAL REVOLUTION. Millions of blacks, illiterates (there had been laws forbidding teaching them to read) and everything uncertain. Thay had lived in slave quarters, but who would now own those dwellings? Did freedom mean they had to work? Everything was uncertain. Of course many whites were illiterate too; and in the north, new immigrants might not even speak English. But the South was entering unknown terrirory.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT? A 2nd civil war. So long as Norther troops remained to occupy the South, there was some protection for blacks. But the Johny Reb's were forming new organizations to prevent black rule. Red shirts, knights of the white camellia, the white league, and the ku klux klan, all set to oppose black rule.
When Grant was elected President, he pushed for civil rights for blacks, and enforced anti-KKK laws. Yes, there were national civil rights laws passed in the 1860s and 70s.
But the crunch came in the Presidential election of 1876; Democrat Tilden clearly had a majority of votes, but not Electoral Votes, and the Dems had intimidated blacks in many southern states, including the disputes ones. A DEAL, The Republican would win the White House, but remove the Yankee troops from the south.
Soon, Dems are winning big in elections in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. and black cries of intimidation or lynching go un-noticed. The cavalry is no longer there.
By early 1890s, Louisiana had a new voting law that essentially prevented most blacks from registering. And this was happening in other Southern states too. In 1895 the great Atlanta Exposition, at which Booker Washington, leader of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama gave a major speech. In some things, the races can be like the finger, separate and doing separate functions, but on other issues the races can unite in strength as a fist. He basically said blacks should not prioritize politics. That was national news, what whites north and south wanted to hear. End the race problems. Or rather, end of hearing about them.
In the 1890s a case had been percolating up from New Orleans to the US Supreme Court, which finally ruled 8-1, that separate and equal facilities were legal in Plessy v. Ferguson; segregation was the law of the land. In 1892 Ida Wells went north and while away her newpaper was destroyed by segregationists, and she was threatened with lynching if she continued.
My point, by early 1898 NEARLY ALL of the South had basically succumbed to white supremacy and the Democratic Party, often by intimidation and murder. Aside from 1 or 2 Appalachian areas that had supported the Yanks during the war, there were no Republicans left in the national Congress from the South, they had all been wiped out. All but the one in Wilmington. But Wilmington should not be studied in isolation, for it was the last battle in the 2nd Civil War.
Hugh Murray I wrote this mainly from memory. Alas, I have not taught history for 55 years. I'll try to fill in the blanks later.
This period in history is called the era of Reconstruction, and there was much to be rebuilt after the war's destruction. But the social revolution promised by Northern victory depended on Yankee soldiers. True, many locals still had weapons, former Confederate soldiers on one side, former slaves who had joined the Union army might have theirs on the other. Local police and sheriffs were still Democrats (white supremacists). Early large-scale massacres caused reaction in the North, determination to punish the South, and passage of anti-KKK laws and pro-black civil rights laws. So an alternative strategy was adopted. Instead, of mass murders, the South planned to kill Radical Reconstruct with a thousand cuts, a guerilla war, throughout the South, targeting this militant here, another black voter there, a slow 2nd Civil War which engulfed the entire South. The 2nd Civil War was a guerilla war fought mainly in the South, The Southern whites generally sought to avoid major killings, for that might rouse the North to intervene. In the South, it was also mainly a racial war, whites against blacks, while the Northerners residing there were generally intimated either to go North, or change their views. When the Yanks withdrew the Union troops after the 1876 Compromise, the Southern offence hastened. Wilmington was the last major battle of that war. No more blacks in Congress from the South until the 1960s. The "solid South" was solidly Democratic, and solidly white supremacist.
For a modern analogy, after WWII there were 2 reconstructions in Germany, one conservative, one radical. The radical one, in the east, the German Democratic Republic, sought to build a "socialist" society. But how long would it last without Soviet troops? 1876 and 1990 provide somewhat similar answers.
Back to the tv program: it is like a Shakespearean play in which the director cut Act I, cut Act II, cut Act III, etc. and only the final act was staged. That is not good enough.
