History: Why the Lincoln GOP abandoned Black Voters (hint: Corporate Money)

As many of you know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The Republican Party was the party most abolitionist called home, and after the Civil war most African Americans were Republicans. But many people are unfamiliar with just how much influence Black Republicans had in the Post civil war period. In this, the period before the Great Migration of Blacks out of the South, Blacks composed a majority of the population of Mississippi, and over 40% of the population of 4 other Southern States. In fact the two US Senators from Mississippi were African-American! Even if the in rest of the South, where Blacks were not numerous enough to project political power had fell into the grasp of segregationist, why did the GOP write off these 5 States? Why write off 10 Senators, and numerous Electoral College votes? Racism? Well undoubtedly that played a part, but not as much as many of you have been lead to think! "Big Money" was worried about two things, property rights, and land reform; concerns over these "rights" were strong enough for the GOP to abandon the Black Southern GOP. Doubtful? Lets' go on a historical journey....


Steven Hahn in his book review of Forever Free by Eric Foner and Joshua Brown writes...

Republicans took control of state government and began not only to rebuild the economic infrastructure, but also to construct new institutions of civic life..
...the South first system of public education: although racial segregated, they provided African-Americans with access to new forms of personal and community empowerment. In some states, such as South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, where Blacks legislators sat in substantial numbers, issues of land labor, and civil rights were tackled (and in some cases carried forward) too.

But Black political power reached even higher levels than this.

In the heart of plantation districts, where large slaveholders
had once ruled, former slaves came to serve as grand jurors, councilmen, supervisors, magistrates, school commissioners, surveyors, treasurers, and even as sheriffs. In some places-McIntosh County Georgia; Edgefield County, South Carolina; Adams County, Mississippi- enclaves of genuine black power took shape.

African Americans had the opportunity to serve on trial juries, thus offering their communities avenues of grievance and measure of justice that previously had been unavailable.

So the GOP South compromised of newly free African Americans, Scalawags, and Carbetbaggers, controlled much of the South. Most Southern Governors were Republicans, and Blacks Republicans had two US Senators, and several house members. Combined with the majority Republican North and West this would have provided an unbeatable coalition for Generations. So what would be more intoxicating then political power to the Republican Party? Money! Money and property were the catalyst to the GOP abandoning the Black South. To understand how this dynamic came into play, one must first understand the consequences of General Sherman January 1865 meeting with 20 Black Ministers in Savannah Georgia, and his famous Field Order No. 15.

The Black ministers wanted the opportunity " to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor". They also asked for the chance to " reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care or ourselves". Three days later General Sherman issued his field order, "reserving 400,000 acres of prime plantation land along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia for exclusive Negro settlement, to be divided into forty-acre plots and made available to Negro families together with the use of surplus army mules". This was the genesis of the Black populist myth of 40 acres and a mule.

Land reform had natural allies in the Republican Northern base at the time. Many people saw it as a way to break the backs of the former Confederacies upper class. Remember it was the plantation owners who bank rolled the civil war. The GOP was also full of free staters, and home steaders, who strongly backed having the "little guy" own land. But the Investment class then as now controlled the Republican Parties purse strings, these were bankers, railroad barons, Industrialist, and Trust lords. The Investor class saw the taking and breaking up of private property as a grave threat. If enemies of the State property could be confiscated it would set a dangerous precedent. In many ways this was the first red scare, a modern day Zimbabwe. Also the of 1873 was one of the USA first large national labor unrest. The Investor class was starting to be attack for price manipulation, and runs on banks were common due to a lack of public trust. (These prenatal political feeling are what eventually lead Teddy Roosevelt to break up Standard Oil and other Trust, and bring monopolies to an end). If large tracts of private land in the South were taken and given to Negroes and they were successful, where would it have stopped? Would a sort of pre-Modern Marxist idea have spread? The Investor class didn't want to take the risk. Feeling they had enough of an electoral edge already in the Northern and Western States, they were willing to compromise with their former Southern enemies.

As Steven Hahn writes

Republican governors in the South were reluctant to mobilize state militias to protect the rights of Republican voters, since many of the militiamen would be black and armed, and President Grant, a Republican, was reluctant to send in troops to shore up Republican regimes under siege. Rather than recognize paramilitary politics for what they were and attempting to defend their black allies, most white Republican leaders instead tried to cut deals with their opponents and, in the end to blame the victims for corrupt and anti-democratic practices. Appropriately, the last Republican governments in the South (South Carolina, Louisiana, and yes - Florida) fell when the contested presidential election of 1876 produced a settlement and President Rutherford B. Hays withdrew the few troops left guarding the statehouses.

While Black Republicans formed Union Leagues and Republican Party Clubs and along with the Scalawags (native Southern Republicans) and Carpetbaggers (Northerners who moved in) debated the issues; most White Southerners organized in a different way. The Ku Klux Clan, Red Shirts, White Christian Leagues and other White Militias tried to make a mockery of the electoral process. They called Republican rule "Negro Rule" and then set about intimidated White Republicans, assassinated Black leaders, and even setting up dual governments. They refused to accept the ending of their cherished racial hierarchies.

So when did Reconstruction end? Most history books cite the toppling of the Republican Governments of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. This is wrong on many fronts. The Republican Party again regained control of Southern States with the help of the Readjusters (an insurgent movement based on state debt issues). Along with their Black Republican allies the GOP took control of Virginia and with Populist they took control of North Carolina. Blacks at this point could still vote in large numbers, held state and national offices, and the threaten intervention of Federal troops kept the Racist Southern Democrats from total political hegemony. Therefor Southern White Supremacist associates the end of Reconstruction not with the withdrawal of Federal troops, but with the disfranchisement of Black Voters in the 1890's and the following decade.



Poll taxes, Jim Crow laws, all were argued as needed to defend American Capitalism and property rights. Moderate and Conservative Republicans, who shared the views of manufacturers and bankers, along with border state White Protestants who shared some of the South social and cultural views, took charge and defined its limits. They supported the abolition of slavery (factory owners wanted free labor), national citizenship, consecrated the equality between the law and the right of contract, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the federal government. But land reform was rejected.

As is true now the Investor class GOP is all for moral crusades until it threatens their business interest. Many Social Conservatives are dismayed that the Economic Conservatives are abandoning them over stem cell research, and immigration. They feel they fought and won elections and compromised on tax cuts and trade in order to pursue their social agenda. How can the Investor Class who they though were fellow conservatives betray them now? They should ask the Black Republicans of the post civil war period. They were sacrificed in order to protect the property rights of the elite. The GOP left their former Black allies to suffer in the Jim Crow South for 70 years. So when Northern Democrat Liberals starting with Eleanor Roosevelt began to agitate for greater freedom for African Americans, they were ready to "jump the broom" and enter the Democratic coalition as their most loyal constituency.


Works cited TNR, and Forever Free

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