Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites

Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction

Mitchell Snay

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780807154816
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Amerikanische Bürgerkriegsgeschichte

After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security while the Ku Klux Klan used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. In Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups and illuminates the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested.After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues, which began during the war to support the northern effort, spread to the South after the war and mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security. Opposing the Leagues was the Ku Klux Klan, which used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups in Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, illuminating the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. Despite their separate and often opposing goals, the Fenians, Union Leagues, and the Klan, Snay reveals, shared many characteristics. To various extents, they were secret societies that sought to advance their mission through both political and extra-political means. Both the League and the Klan employed elaborate rites of initiation and secret passwords common to nineteenth-century fraternal organizations. They also shared a similar political culture of secrecy, conspiracy, and countersubversion. All three groups were quasi-military in structure and activities and shared a desire for the control of land. Among the three organizations, Snay shows, the Fenians provide the clearest case of nationalist aspirations along the lines of ethnicity, though the rise of racial consciousness among both southern whites and blacks also might be seen as expressions of ethnic nationalism. According to Snay, the political culture of Reconstruction encouraged the nationalist ambitions of these groups, but channeled their separatist impulses along civil rather than ethnic lines by focusing on questions of freedom, citizenship, and suffrage. In addition, the Republican emphasis on color-blind equality limited overt expressions of national identities based solely on ethnicity or race.Unlike southern whites and blacks, Irish Americans are seldom mentioned in Reconstruction histories. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested.

1

THE CONTEXT OF REPUBLICAN RECONSTRUCTION

Reconstruction was in essence a political process. State governments in the South were reorganized and African American males were given the right to vote. National Republicans sought to create and sustain a party organization in the South, efforts resisted at every turn by southern Democrats and Conservatives. Reconstruction politics was thus the fundamental context in which Irish Americans, southern whites, and freedpeople sought political self-determination and a collective ethnic identity. It was perhaps the strongest factor uniting these three groups, providing each with a common set of ideas and languages that both encouraged their aspirations and set limiting contours to those ambitions.¹

The politics of Reconstruction also provided the framework in which those secret paramilitary societies that were so instrumental to freedmen, southern whites, and Irish Americans—the Union League, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Fenians—emerged. The League was an essentially political organization with the purpose of mobilizing the votes of newly enfranchised freedmen to erect a viable Republican Party in the South. To thwart the political goals of the Union Leagues, the Ku Klux Klan acted as an arm of the Democrats and Conservatives who saw themselves as victims of political despotism imposed by Radical rule. To a lesser extent than with the Union Leagues and Ku Klux Klan, Reconstruction politics was also influential in shaping the American Fenian movement. In the late antebellum period, Irish American votes were especially important to the Democratic Party in northern cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The power of ethnic politics persisted in the immediate postwar era. In seeking the electoral support of Irish Americans, both Democrats and Republicans had to pay close attention to the rise of Fenianism.

The dominant factor that determined the influence of Reconstruction on the process of identity formation was the Republican Party. Founded as an antislavery third party during the 1850s, the Republicans cemented their power in American life during a successful Civil War that abolished slavery and established the supremacy of the Union. As postwar Reconstruction began in 1865, Republicans were united in their commitment to the final abolition of slavery and securing the fruits of emancipation for former slaves and their party. Yet by 1866, intraparty conflict and deep divisions over Reconstruction policy split the party into radical and moderate factions. By 1867, the Radicals, in compromise with moderates and conservatives, framed a new Reconstruction policy that divided ten former Confederate states into military districts under military control, gave voting rights to blacks while disfranchising some former Confederate whites (temporarily, as it turned out), and protected the rights of citizenship and suffrage through two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was this political world created by Radical Reconstruction in which the Union Leagues, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Fenians operated. Participation in partisan politics helped define the collective identity of freedpeople and Irish Americans. To counter their disfranchisement, many southern whites turned to Klan violence to influence elections. Reconstruction politics then served to channel separatist impulses along civic rather than class or ethnic lines.²

The Republican Party was the primary means of black political enfranchisement in the Reconstruction South. African American freedpeople tied their aspirations for freedom and citizenship to the political organization that had been a driving force for emancipation. It was the freedmen, along with selected northern and southern whites, who made up the basis of the Republican Party in the South. Their connection to the Republican Party was thus instrumental in their quest for political autonomy. In stating the principles of his newspaper, the editor of the black Freeman’s Standard announced that his would be “an organ of the colored and all other Loyal citizens of the State of Georgia, and as a supporter of the Government of these United States and a fearless advocate of the rights of the people and principles of the Republican Party.” A convention of freedmen in Mobile similarly proclaimed themselves “a part of the Great National Republican Party of the United States, and of the State of Alabama.” Prominent black leaders during Reconstruction recognized the Republicans as their best chance to gain civil rights. “It is the only party,” insisted a convention of Alabama freedmen, “which has ever attempted to extend our privileges, and as it has in the past always been trying to do this, it is but natural that we should trust it for the future.” In a campaign speech delivered at Aberdeen, Mississippi, in 1869, an African American spokesman told his listeners that the Republicans were “the party that promises equal rights to all without regard to race, color, or previous condition.”³

As one of the main avenues through which freedmen sought political participation, the Union League was also deeply devoted to the Republican Party. Its values were clearly set forth in the constitution of the national organization: “to preserve Liberty and the Union of these United States; to maintain the Constitution thereof, and that of this State, and the supremacy of the laws of the United States, to sustain the existing Administration in putting down the enemies of the Government, and thwarting the designs of traitors and disloyalists, and to protect, strengthen and defend all loyal men, without regard to sect, condition, or party.” Union Leagues in the South adopted these goals. “The object of this Council,” stated the Deep River Union League of North Carolina, “shall be to preserve Liberty and the Union of the U.S. to maintain the Constitution thereof and the Supremacy of the laws to elect honest and reliable Union men to all offices of profit or trust in National State and Local Government and to secure equal civil and political rights to all men under the Government.” A Galveston League upheld the major Republican principle that “loyalty shall govern what loyalty has preserved.” Union Leagues across the South endorsed Republican efforts at Reconstruction. Leagues of north Alabama, meeting in convention in 1867, gave “our cordial and entire sanction to the action of Congress for the restoration of Union and to the wise and just principles of the Republican Party.” Some Union Leagues expressed their specific support for Radical Reconstruction. A writer to the Athens Republican claimed that Congress was “the conservators of our nationality, peace, and prosperity.” Banners at a Union League rally in Franklin, Tennessee, conveyed such messages as “Andy can’t Control Congress” and “Vote the Radical Ticket.” The close identification between the Leagues and Republican Reconstruction would help funnel black proto-nationalism into civic channels.⁴

The Union Leagues in the Reconstruction South were essentially a political arm of the Republican Party. A quick glance at the state leaders of southern Union Leagues reveals the links between white League leadership and Republican politics. In North Carolina, Governor William W. Holden was also the president of the state Union League. A former Unionist during the Civil War, Holden was also prominent in the Heroes of America. White Republican E. W. M. Mackey was speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives and a League official. William Markham, president of the state Union League in Georgia, had a prewar career as a Whig mayor and Atlanta railroad promoter. Northern-born Republican General H. H. Thomas was a secretary to Governor William G. Brownlow in Tennessee. Valentine Dell, editor of the Fort Smith New Era, allied with the Fishback faction of Unionists in Arkansas. H. C. Dibble, the Union League representative of Louisiana, was a federal judge who later opposed Henry Clay Warmoth. The close connection between League and party leadership is understandable since the Union Leagues were considered instrumental in the creation of a Republican voting base in the South.⁵

The association between the Union Leagues and Republican politics was widespread in the Reconstruction South. “The Union League organization,” stated Republican U.S. senator Willard Warner of Alabama, “was simply a political organization.” A South Carolinian testifying before the 1871 congressional hearings on the Ku Klux Klan explained similarly that the Loyal League was a political organization for mobilizing black voters. An African American journal from New Bern, North Carolina, termed the Union League a “Great Political Society.” As the Leagues began to spread with the advent of Congressional Reconstruction, one Virginia newspaper assumed that the purpose of the League “was to accomplish some political end.”⁶

At its annual meeting in 1869, the Union League of America affirmed its role in spreading Republicanism to the South: “[T]he League was actively pushed into the South, for the double purpose of resisting Rebel outrages, and of laying the foundation for a truly Republican policy, when it should be adopted by Congress.” Union Leaguers in the South joyfully accepted this task. To a correspondent to the Charleston Daily Republican, the Union League “deals with a man’s devotion to Republicanism, and love for the union, under the sanctity of an oath.” Council No. 9 of the U.L.A. in Georgetown, South Carolina, affirmed that “the onward progress of communities and States depended upon the continued and constant success of the great political party that we are identified with.” Supporting the Union Leagues in his address to some citizens of North Carolina, T. A. Byrnes insisted that the Republican Party “has gloriously maintained and vindicated the doctrine of the equality of American citizenship, the development and progress of this nation, and the responsibility of a dissolution of the government or country.”⁷

As part of the political machinery of the Republican Party, Union Leagues in the South garnered support for Radical Reconstruction. The movement blossomed with the advent of Congressional Reconstruction in the spring of 1867. Congress passed two Military Reconstruction Acts in March that divided the ten unreconstructed southern states into five military districts, ordered military commanders to register voters for elections to constitutional conventions, and in the process enfranchised black men over twenty-one. The state League in Georgia noted correctly that it was “not until the passage of that Law that they assumed the character of political agencies.” In March 1867, a meeting of blacks in Raleigh called upon “the colored People of the State to form themselves into Leagues, and organize for the work before them.” In May, freedmen in Mobile urged the establishment of Union Leagues in every county. Significantly, the expansion of League activity in 1867 increased the number of African American members. The Southern Watchman of Augusta, Georgia, reported in March of that year a “meeting composed of five hundred freedmen under the auspices of the Union League… A few whites participated.” Essie Harris, a black man from North Carolina, recalled that there were only three or four whites in his League. On the other hand, a meeting of the Union League in Autauga County, Alabama, in June 1867 reported between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred members, “most of whom are white.”⁸

Southern white conservatives saw the Union Leagues as political in more negative terms. To opponents of Congressional Reconstruction, the Leagues were tools of the Republican Party to fasten black suffrage on the South. As the Republicans began to rally black voters after the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of March 1867, the Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser warned its readers about a “secret political society or league” created by Radical Republicans “to coerce the whole negro vote.” The Savannah Daily News and Herald concurred that the formation of the Loyal League was a “political scheme in pursuance of the policy which had inaugurated the war, which was to obtain through the negroes and renegade whites, the political control of the Southern states.” Henry L. Benning of Georgia told a congressional committee that the Union Leagues were an organization for the purpose of influencing votes. James Boyd of Alamance, North Carolina, told a similar committee that the Leagues were composed principally of black Republicans. To the Natchez Democrat, the idea that the Union Leagues existed to support Radical Reconstruction should be “obvious to even an obtuse mind.”⁹

The Union Leagues were indeed instrumental in mobilizing the newly enfranchised freedmen to support the Republicans. With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, African American males could vote for the constitutional conventions to be held in the former Confederate states. The Union League directed its attention to these elections. “Most of the Leagues in the Country,” a Republican leader wrote, “will meet between now and Monday and take some action towards a new Convention in which the will of the people will be expressed.” In October of 1867, Tallahassee Republicans held a meeting of the League to nominate delegates to the Florida constitutional convention. There was apparently a Loyal League in every black community in the 1867 elections for delegates to the Mississippi constitutional convention. Once these conventions were held, Union Leaguers worked for the ratification of these new Reconstruction constitutions. “The Constitution must be ratified,” urged the state meeting of the North Carolina Union Leagues in February 1868: “We must elect loyal members of Congress, and loyal state and County officers. All our past labors have been directed to this end.” One angry southerner thought that the North Carolina Leagues, by “all kinds of villainy,” helped the Republicans ratify the 1868 state constitution.¹⁰

As Republican governments were being established in the South, the Union Leagues helped enlist black voters to build a party base in each southern state. “To this end,” urged the editor of the Jonesboro, Tennessee, Union Flag, “Union Leagues should be organized in each civil district of the county.” Calling attention to “the imperative necessity for a better organization of the party,” a Mississippi editor suggested the Leagues “as one of our most efficient means.” Democratic opponents as well noted the connection between the Union Leagues and the Republican Party. The conservative Mobile Advertiser and Register worried that the appearance of Union Leagues indicated the creation of “a Radical party” across the state. As part of the Republican Party machinery, the Union League was especially active in mobilizing voters before elections. “The U.L.A. ought to be in every neighborhood in the State before the election,” implored the editor of the Raleigh Tri-Weekly Standard: “It is one of the best agencies yet devised to unite the loyal men and ensure an individual vote for Liberty and Union.” A Virginia editor told his readers that the Leagues were “a powerful political agency if properly wielded, and will exert a tremendous influence in the coming Elections South.” The president of the Union League in York County, South Carolina, recalled that his League “was doing its most powerful work, as it was drawing nigh to election day.”¹¹

As political organizations, the Union Leagues performed functions similar to those of urban political machines in the North. Among these was the endorsement of candidates for political office. At the first meeting of the Deep River Union League in Guilford County, North Carolina, the Council decided “to select candidates for Township No. 17 offices at next meeting.” Union Leagues in Marshall and Blount counties in Alabama nominated William H. Smith for governor in 1867. In Abbeville Court House, League members petitioned Governor Robert K. Scott on a vacancy in the South Carolina State Senate. Union Leagues endorsed Republican candidates such as Henry P. Farrow, who ran for governor in Georgia in 1868. League membership could be helpful in establishing the Republican credentials of office seekers for Radical governments. For instance, the loyalty of an aspirant for an office in the North Carolina Railroad was affirmed since he was “a true Member of the U.L. of A.” Conversely, the Union Leagues warned party officials of untrustworthy candidates. The League in Ashe County, North Carolina, sent a petition signed by thirty-two members urging the governor not to make certain political appointments since “we know them to be vowed enemies to the republican party.” Members of a Union League in Charleston similarly urged the appointment of a trial justice, warning the governor that his opponent had been “odious to republicans as city detective.”¹²

The Union Leagues were also useful in the dispensing of political patronage, a central strategy for building up Republican regimes in the South. The patronage functions of the Union Leagues are illustrated in the papers of William W. Holden, Republican governor of North Carolina during Reconstruction and president of the state Union League. During his one-year term as president, Holden provided strong centralized Republican leadership to the state League. League councils across North Carolina offered their political advice to Holden. The Enfield Union League in Halifax County, for example, backed a candidate for the Board of Registration, explaining to the governor that “the whole of the said Council is opposed to the said Hinton occupying that position.” The Union League in Wilkes County sent Holden names for justices of the peace. In the heavily Republican city of Wilmington, the League petitioned Governor Holden concerning positions as police and inspectors of fuel for the town. One Union League even asked the governor to remove the voting disabilities of one James Harrington because he was “a member of Holden Council U.L.A…. and has voted with the Republican party and rendered other valuable services therein.”¹³

One of the most important functions of the Union Leagues was political education, perhaps best illustrated in the records of the Union League of Maryville, Tennessee. A Unionist area in eastern Tennessee during the Civil War, Maryville was a center of black political activism during Reconstruction. In early 1867, freedmen met there to endorse black suffrage and the candidacy of Republican William G. Brownlow for governor. The local newspaper, the Maryville Republican, was edited by two African Americans. The town also boasted four black aldermen. The Union League of Maryville engaged in the kinds of political activity common to Union Leagues across the South: issuing certificates to delegates to the state Republican convention, electing delegates to the county Republican convention, and collecting money to send out a canvasser for elections. The Maryville Union League also devoted a good deal of its time to political education. This function became clear at their meeting of January 29, 1867, when they voted to elect one member to address the League...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Context of Republican Reconstruction
• 2. The Political Culture of Countersubversion
• 3. Nationality and Class
• 4. Ethnic and Racial Nationalism
• 5. Civic Nationalism
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index