Testimony before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on Atrocities in the South against Blacks

Context

Although the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered what remained of his army to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, the official cessation of armed conflict left many unresolved questions. Paramount among them was what would become of the former Confederate states and their leaders. Should the two sections immediately be reunited and set about the work of healing and forgiving, or should the South remain separate, under federal control, until its people could demonstrate that they had been thoroughly reconstructed? Could southern whites be trusted to oversee their own affairs, and, most important, respect the rights of the newly freed? Although many rejoiced that the war was over, these troubling questions loomed large on the political horizon.

President Andrew Johnson favored a policy of quick restoration of the southern states to their prewar status. A native of Tennessee and an ardent Unionist, Johnson assumed the presidency upon Abraham Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865. At first, Johnson’s well-known dislike for slaveholders and their aristocratic pretensions led many Republicans to believe that his treatment of the South would be much harsher than that of his predecessor, who had urged charity toward errant southerners. Johnson’s initial plans to deprive wealthy southerners and high-ranking Confederate leaders of citizenship, along with his demands that the southern states repeal their secession ordinances and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the Union, pleased the more radical members of his party. Soon, however, it became apparent that Johnson would do little else to ensure a peaceful transition from slavery to freedom in the South.

Following what he believed would have been President Lincoln’s course of action, Johnson issued a general amnesty proclamation in May 1865, effectively relieving Confederates of any fear of criminal prosecution or other retributive measures the government might take against them. He appointed provisional governors to the southern states, many of whom had Confederate sympathies. He also removed federal troops from the South upon request from the provisional governors and in 1866 vetoed key measures aimed at protecting freed slaves, namely the renewal of the Freedmen’s Bureau and enactment of a bill on civil rights. (Congress overrode both vetoes.)

Johnson’s plans were unpopular among many within his own party, who favored greater federal intervention in the South and a longer, more sustained plan of Reconstruction. Known as Radical Republicans, these men came from an antislavery background and had struggled to make emancipation the primary war aim. While Lincoln hesitated, fearing that such a move would alienate the border states and push them out of the Union, men like Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens urged the president to see that emancipation was not only a military necessity but also a moral imperative. Their leadership on the issue eventually secured the Thirteenth Amendment (December 1865), which abolished slavery forever. However, Radical Republicans felt that more needed to be done in order to ensure that freedpeople’s rights would be firmly established and protected.

Former Confederates responded to Johnson’s leniency by passing laws aimed at curtailing black freedom. Known as Black Codes, these state laws attempted to regulate labor relations between white employers and black workers by making it illegal to break an employment contract. The laws enacted fines and jail time for vagrancy, thereby forcing black people to sign contracts with whites, who were often their former owners. The laws also required the apprenticeship of minor children. The Black Codes also forbade freedpeople from owning or carrying firearms, so as to limit their ability to defend themselves against assault or coercion. They instituted curfews and sometimes required blacks to carry passes in order to travel off the plantation, just as they formerly had to do as slaves. The Black Codes criminalized a variety of personal behaviors, such as using insulting language or gestures or otherwise being “insolent.” White southerners proudly declared their intention to establish “a white man’s country,” and the Black Codes aimed to do just that.

White southerners elected former Confederate leaders to positions of political power. Candidates running for office would print on their tickets “late of the Confederate army,” and former Confederate officers often wore their old uniforms. In Alabama, a man accused of murdering a Union general was elected sheriff. The unreconstructed state legislatures sent high-ranking Confederate leaders, including their former vice president, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, to Congress. They also called state constitutional conventions that valorized the southern war effort and refused to repudiate secession. President Johnson advised provisional governors against such acts of open defiance, but his advice fell on deaf ears. Ultimately, the former Confederates overplayed their hand. Their disloyal behavior and attacks against freedpeople caused Johnson much embarrassment and fueled Radical criticisms against him.

It was in this context that the Joint Committee on Reconstruction was established by the Thirty-Ninth Congress on December 13, 1865, to investigate and report on conditions in the former Confederate states and to propose necessary legislation. Nine representatives and six senators composed the committee: the senators William Pitt Fessenden of Massachusetts, James W. Grimes of Iowa, Ira Harris of New York, Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, Reverdy Johnson from Maryland, and George H. Williams of Oregon and the representatives Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, Justin S. Morrill of Vermont, Kentuckian Henry Grider, John A. Bingham from Ohio, Roscoe Conkling of New York, George S. Boutwell from Massachusetts, Missourian Henry T. Blow, and Andrew J. Rogers of New Jersey. Radical Republicans were a minority on the committee, as most of its members were moderate Republicans. There were only three Democrats.

For several months in 1866 four subcommittees took testimony in Washington, D.C., from a variety of sources: among them, U.S. military officers and Freedmen’s Bureau officials; former Confederate leaders, including General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate vice president, Alexander H. Stephens; northerners who had spent time in the South; southern Unionists, and black southerners. Only 7 of the 144 witnesses called before the Joint Committee were black. There would have been no blacks testifying at all, except for the fact that a freedmen’s rights convention coincided with the hearings in Washington, D.C., and the Virginia delegates to the convention petitioned to appear before the committee. The men were Daniel Norton, a free black man from New York trained as a physician; the Reverend William Thornton, a former slave and minister in Hampton; Madison Newby, a free black landowner from Norfolk who had worked as a boat pilot for Union forces during the war; Richard R. Hill, a former slave also living in Hampton; Alexander Dunlop, a free black before the war and trustee of the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg; Thomas Bain, a fugitive slave living in Massachusetts until emancipation, when he returned to Virginia; and Edmund Parsons, a house servant before the war living in Williamsburg. Based on the overall testimony (most of which was taken in February), the committee issued its report in March of 1866.