A First-Hand Account of the Devastating Condition of the South During ReconstructionEssay Preview: A First-Hand Account of the Devastating Condition of the South During ReconstructionReport this essayA First-Hand Account of the Devastating Condition of the South During ReconstructionBy Arthur Brown, a soldier in the Freedmens BureauMy name is Arthur Brown, a soldier assigned to aid the post war transition process in Mississippi and North Carolina as part of the Freedmens Bureau, and Im writing this account to bring attention to the devastating condition in which I find the south. It has now been two and a half years that I have been restlessly trying to calm the general public and bring this society back to order. Unfortunately regardless of all the efforts of my colleagues and me, its a much slower progress than expected, due to many different reasons, the strongest of which are the still ever-present strong racial prejudice and feel of defeat that the whites of the South are experiencing.
First I would like to address the devastating atmosphere in which I found myself when I first came to North Carolina. Hundreds of white refugees and thousands of blacks were found in the different towns we were visiting, occupying every hotel and shanty, living on the rations which we provided, without employment and any comfort. My army general, Oliver Otis Howard, saw many people die without proper food and medical supplies. We both witnessed many people crammed in every depot to receive their rations. The street in front of our office was often blocked with vehicles on which people had come from all around the country to receive their rations. Many were whites but the majority was the freedmen who got here either by wagons or on foot. The rations we gave barely lasted until they reached home. This was just the beginning. From here on my account only gets worse.
One of the problems that both Commander Carl Schurz and I have noticed from the very beginning is the terrible situation that the southern soldiers found themselves in after the war. Unlike the northern soldiers, which were welcomed to a prosperous community with jobs awaiting them, the soldiers of the south came to destroyed homesteads, devastated farms, and families in distress. Overall, the exhausted community had little to offer them. It hurts us to see fellow soldiers in such a struggle.
Another struggle I constantly witness is the transition into the free labor system. One issue is that African Americans associate work with slavery and freedom with rest because they have been slaves all their life and witnessed free people doing nothing and they ask the question “What have we gained by freedom if we are to work, work, work!” This topic has been addressed by Clinton B. Fisk who counseled the freedmen in the benefits of the free labor system and how it actually gave the worker a choice in their job and paid them for their work. The second part of the issue was that the whites dont want to hire the freedmen partly because of prejudice and partly because they dont have money to pay them for their work.
Another very strong barrier that gets in the way of the transition process is the emergence of the “Black Codes.” Just recently here in Mississippi there were 11 Sections to the so called “Civil Rights of Freedmen” which actually restricted many civil rights of the freedmen. For instance, Section 7 states that any freedman that quits his place of employment before the expiration of his term (without a good cause) can be arrested and forced back to the employer and the runaway must pay the officer for every mile from place of arrest to the place of employment. This is absolutely ridiculous! What kind of freedom is it when people dont have a right to choose if they want to change the place of employment at any given moment? What makes it worse is that the employee forfeits his wages for that year. Another example can be found in the Mississippi Vagrancy Law section 2 which states “. . . All freedmen free negroes, and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found . . . with no lawful employment or business or found unlawfully assembling themselves together either in the day or nighttime, shall be deemed vagrants, and, on conviction thereof shall be fined . . . and imprisoned.”
I would also like to mention the terrible rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the devastating effects it has had on the general public. It instilled a strong sense of fear in the hearts of both whites and freedmen. As I heard from Albion Tourgee, a judge in Tennessee, the KKK use violence as their method to try to bring a stop to the reconstruction process and the improvement of conditions for African Americans. Tourgee recalls many men and women coming to him and saying “the Ku Klux Klan came to my house last night and beat me almost to death, and my old woman right smart, and shot into the house, bust the door down, and told me they would kill me if I made complaint.” This is one
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It is my sense of honor to report that you attended the meeting with your father here in Springfield, the United States. I thank you for what you have done here. But it is time to have your own party. It has come, after all the protests, that the Democratic Party has decided to stop supporting the KKK. For twenty-nine years, the Democrats have stood up to the Klan and to the white South. Now they are a party for white people who are sick of being left behind and want to return to the White Race. I am certain, many would be glad to have you in the White House. But I have some concerns for a Republican. It was not just me of any significance. It was the Klan. I read in a couple of pages of some newspaper a piece by Mr. John F. McPherson, who is President-elect of the United States, who said that he and that Klan leader were part of that same White race, as had been written in that newspaper, because some of your members might say that they did not belong in the same race. It seems to me that that is the kind of argument there was, that’s what has prevailed, in the South between Negro and White people over the last twenty years. It doesn’t matter which direction you are coming in if you believe the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan leaders to be evil or decent people. They will be punished. And these are not good people. When blacks are angry, they make them angry in order to appease them. They fight on their own, which is to say they make you angry. And the real problem is that we are not able to bring together all of that community. So, if you have a political party trying to bring together that community and bring it together, you will be treated badly. You are not a good steward or a good neighbor, you are not a good judge or a good judge. You are not going to be able to handle the challenges which you have seen in America. You will not be able to bring together all the groups that have to do with America, we have many groups, we are not a good steward. And then in the first few years after you came in you tried to move in on yourselves and others, you made that deal with yourself. We have not been able to deal with all of its problems. And what we have been able to do this year is create some new groups and we’ve succeeded. You can come in here and do business. We are not going to be able to give in or support the