United States v. Cruikshank

United States v. Cruikshank

So I’m taking the deadline for this blog to the limit here. I am also taking Dr. Weise’s advice on what to write about, so I chose United States v. Cruikshank. To jog your memory, William Cruikshank was one of the white members of the Democratic Party in Colfax Louisiana. After the Louisiana election of 1872 democratic and republican runners for office contested the results, many times there would be two offices but eventually, the republicans prevailed since the federal government was republican. Tensions were high in all of Louisiana, and the ones who were mad were the ones with the most military experience. This was a bad combination.

                Armed with a cannon and rifles, the white democratic men of Colfax attacked and captured many of the freedmen who were gathering at the courthouse. After they set the roof on fire, the black republicans surrendered. It was after this surrender that most of the black men (women and children were given the opportunity to escape) were murdered. Many of them were beaten or tortured and their bodies were dumped in the river, or buried or just left out to rot. The number 150 that we are familiar with from the historical marker in Colfax is a large estimation. All figures were taken into consideration when that sign was made, as if the killing of black citizens was being celebrated. The sign was made in the 50’s though.

                On the subject of the trial, the name Cruikshank was only the name chosen to represent the trial. There were many more involved in the trial, nearly 100 other persons according to the trial transcript. The figure that I am drawing this from is the Supreme Court case, not from the trial that took place in Louisiana. I will go over both trials.

                It took a while to find all the men that were involved in the Colfax massacre, but after they did, 97 in all were brought to trial. The initial trial took place in New Orleans with two more to follow. In all, the men were charged with one murder and conspiracy against the rights of freedmen, a law which was very new and not very respected. The men were eventually acquitted of the murder and the enforcement act for protecting the rights of the freedmen was deemed unconstitutional.

                Almost two years later, the federal government appealed the case and it was brought before the Supreme Court. Justice was not obtainable. Because of the mindset of the time, or just pure racism, the men had convictions overturned and were again found not guilty. At least not guilty in that court, in so many words; the men were guilty but should have been tried in Louisiana. My interpretation of law isn’t very good, but from what I understand, murder was not a crime in the eyes of the federal government and it had to be prosecuted at the state level.

                So in short, the Supreme Court said that if the state did not have laws in place to protect certain groups of people i.e. Black people, then it would have the right to rule on and to protect those individuals. Since Louisiana did have laws in place to protect the rights of black people, the federal government ruled that it had no right to intervene, even if the state didn’t actually abide by those laws.

“but any outrages, atrocities, or conspiracies, whether against the colored race or the white race, which do not flow from this cause, but spring from the ordinary felonious or criminal intent which prompts to such unlawful acts, are not within the jurisdiction of the United States, but within the sole jurisdiction of the states, unless, indeed, the state, by its laws, denies to any particular race equality of rights, in which case the government of the United States may furnish remedy and redress to the fullest extent and in the most direct manner.” (United States V. Cruikshank case no. 14,897)

               

Reconstruction or Civil War: What had the Longest Lastin Effect?

            The Reconstruction period following the Civil War perhaps defined the country for the next 100 years more so than the actual war did.  War is war and it the Civil War was the bloodiest in American History and it is the most researched war of all American Wars.  But the actual war itself besides its hundreds of thousands casualties that took place didn’t change the culture the way Reconstruction did.  The actual enforcement of Reconstruction laws were what shaped the future in the South as we know it.

            Starting on March 2^nd, 1867 the first reconstruction act was passed although it had been vetoed by Andrew Johnson then overridden by the more radical northern based Congress.  Johnson had first, following the end of the war, appointed temporary Governors of all the seceded states in order to re-enforce the Union Federal laws.  But with this Reconstruction provision, the South had been divided up the ten states into five separate military districts ran by high ranking officers of the time.  The job that they were given had the following requirements: "to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals.”  This was an example of the kind of thing that the late Abraham Lincoln would not have wanted.  He was in favor of letting the Southern states being reintegrated back into the Union as soon and as swiftly as possible.  But his congressional colleagues were not as forgiving and wanted the South to suffer before they were re-issued their statehood.

            On March 23^rd, 1867 the second provision of Reconstruction was issued.  The Act included as follows: “to include the registration of qualified voters who had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States, the supervision of the election of delegates to state constitutional conventions, and the transmittal to the President of certified copies of the constitutions adopted.”  As unreasonable as the first part of the Reconstruction Acts may have been, the second set of regulations were not as stringent.  Basically they just wanted to register the people of the South that had accepted the fact that the CSA was gone and it was not coming back.  Also they wanted proper officials overseeing the writing of each states new constitution and the delivering them upon their completion to President Johnson. 

            On July 19^th, 1867 the third part of the Reconstruction act was passed.  This act was pretty much the proverbial middle finger to Andrew Johnson.  It read as follows: “defined the powers of the district commander to suspend or remove from office persons occupying positions in the civil government of the state concerned; the provisional governments established by the President were thus made subject to the military commanders.”  Congress had no respect for Johnson or any of the post-war decisions which he had made and this pretty much solidified that.  The Provisional Governors which the President had appointed were now subject to be ousted by the new military regime.

            On February 18^th, 1869 the last reconstruction law of the period was passed.  This showed that the Southerners were none too willing to resume their lives as part of the Union.  “Provided for the removal from office of persons holding civil offices in the "provisional governments" of Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi who could not take the oath of allegiance and directed the district commanders to fill the resulting vacancies by the appointment of persons who could take the oath.”  The district commanders were having a hard time filling positions with qualified personnel in a government in which the electorate wanted little to do with.

            So while the Civil War is much more interesting to talk about, with characters like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and George McClellan and battles like Gettysburg, Bull Run, and Antietam, it was actually the years of Reconstruction that had the longest lasting impact on the future of the South for years to come. 

Sources: Reconstruction Acts. (March 2, 1867, 14 Stat. 428-430, c.153; March 23, 1867, 15 Stat. 2-5, c.6, July 19, 1867, 15 Stat. 14-16, c.30; and March 11, 1868, 15 Stat. 41, c.25)

Arkansas: The Precedent for Reconstruction

            In May of 1868, the New York Times featured an article on how the readmission of Arkansas was the standard for how many Americans felt reconstruction was going to occur. Arkansas had completed all of the necessary steps to be readmitted to the Union, yet there were still politicians (radicals) who felt it was just not enough. It is very clear after reading this article that the author did not believe reconstruction would be easy, but rather “a harder road to travel than most [Americans had] considered it.” This is an interesting article to read because it shows how determined radicals were at wanting to prolong Southern readmission to the union and how ready some people in the Union were ready for reconstruction to be over. It is also clear that Arkansas’ reconstruction story was an accurate depiction of how complicated and drawn out reconstruction truly was.

            Arkansas had “adopted a new Constitution, reorganized and elected its new Legislature and local government, ratified the Constitutional Amendment, and in all respects complied with the letter and spirit of the law.” Arkansas had completed every step that needed to be taken to become a Union state again. Yet there were still radicals in the Senate who were trying to find ways to “prolong the State’s exclusion.” Senator Drake introduced Article 14, which needed to be voted on before Arkansas could be readmitted. Drake was a radical, and there were quite a few others in the Senate who felt the same way as he did. Most radicals felt like the Confederate states deserved more loops to jump through, and that it shouldn’t be easy for the South to rejoin the Union. Though the problem with Article 14 was that the states could not have ratified it or added it to their constitutions until they were a part of the Union again, and that was a process which Arkansas proved to be difficult.

            Another interesting aspect to look at is that Congress wanted each state to readmitted individually, so one states entrance did not ensure the entrance of another state. This is further proof that Congress did not want to reconstruction to be a fast process. Since each state was readmitted individually, it took a longer time to fully complete reconstruction, rather than if they had readmitted all of the southern states at once. If Congress had readmitted all of the Southern states at once, then reconstruction could have a speedier and potentially more successful process. Not only did the admission of each state individually lengthen the reconstruction process, but so did the potential of a new amendment for the states to adopt, reconstruction was believed to take forever. The author of this article believed that reconstruction did not need to be a long process and that the Southern states should be readmitted “whenever they are ready.” This belief is one that is easy to agree with. Even though the South caused a lot of trouble for the country by seceding, there was no need to lengthen the process of readmission after the South had been defeated. The loss in the war was enough punishment for the South because it really hurt their pride, which is something that was very important for that region. If the Southern states only had to adopt the new constitution and elect new legislators, then that should have been enough for readmission.

            The author of this article expressed the views of many Americans at the time. Reconstruction did not need to be a difficult and lengthy process, but rather a process where all of the South was readmitted and then the government should have helped the Southern economy.  Arkansas was proof that reconstruction was going to be a long and difficult process, and that there was going to be a lot of trouble completing the process successfully.

Obstructing reconstruction. 1868. New York Times (1857-1922), May 30.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/92448627?accountid=10628.

The Effects of the Civil War on the Marriage of Southern Women

One of the interesting facts that I recently came into consideration on was the fact that in the aftermath of the Civil War, former slaves were not the only ones affected by the changes that would soon come from the repercussions of the war. This is the fact that women were also affected in regards to the fact that as many as 92% of southern women were forced into spinsterhood, as there was not enough southern men in order for them to marry

According to J. David Hacker, “If it is true that the war condemned a generation of southern women to spinsterhood, then demography, specifically the imbalance in the number of men and women, contributed to what some historians have described as a war-provoked "crisis in gender (p. 40).” This brings a key point the era of Reconstruction as I feel that even though many historians call for more research during this period, it is usually a topic that gets brushed to the wayside for meatier topics such as the “Redemption of the South”.

Hacker brings up the point of saying that “The vast majority (approximately 92 percent) of southern white women who came of marriage age during the war married at some point in their lives. Indeed, the marriage squeeze on southern women apparent in the 1870 census is no longer evident in the 1880 census (p. 42).” I feel that after the era of Reconstruction, the crisis seems to be averted. But however one has to look at the standpoint of the economic, demographic, and cultural contexts of marriage patterns in the 19^th century of the United States history. The things with marriage in this time was that young couples were expected to be able to have enough financial backing to properly provide for themselves, particularly to have enough money in order to secure farm land, the equipment needed to run the farm, and homes to thrive in the on the land they acquired. Hacker goes on to say that, “As a result, marriages occurred several years earlier, on average, in colonial America than in Europe, and much higher proportions of the population eventually married (p. 42).”  He also brings up the point that it marriage also depended on the presence of desirable alternatives to marriage, going on to say that 20^th century scholars have seen that women in that day were more likely to postpone marriage to have greater opportunities for education and to join the paid labor force.

 Hacker brings up another interesting point regarding the cultural expectation and appropriate age differences between men and women during this time.  “Although this difference suggests that many young women would be forced to delay marriage or remain permanently single, the greater tendency for men to remarry after widowhood ensured that most women in the nineteenth century eventually married (p. 44).” At the outbreak of the Civil War with the bombing of Fort Sumter on April 12^th 1861, this caused many men of appropriate marriage age to be shipped out to fight a war.

I feel that they fact that the war eventually broke and caused many men to die for a “noble cause” severely hindered the growth of the Southern population after the war. The fact this notion would add to the white southerners paranoia that former slaves wanted nothing better than to inter marry with the white women of the south who many would consider to be “vulnerable and threatened” by a large group of men who were essentially free from the bounds of slavery.

Hacker, J. D., Libra Hilde, and James H. Jones. "The Effects of the Civil War on Southern Marriage Patterns." The Journal of Southern History 76.1 (2010): 40-45. Web. 1 May 2013.

War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the Civil War: A Review 

The one thing that I felt this book by Lisa Brady brought to the forefront of my mind is that in regards to war, many people think more about the loss of life and that the death toll of the armies that fight said wars. However I feel that this book brings an interesting look at the biggest sufferer when it comes to warfare, the very land upon which the war is fought. I felt after reading the book that I am slightly more enlightened by this fact.

The one thing that I always knew about war was that in some cases a “scorched earth” policy ends up taking place at some point during the conflict, the prime example during the Civil War is William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to the sea, in which he literally burned down everything from Atlanta, Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean. The one event that I never knew took place was the raiding of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia by both Union and Confederate forces. This raiding not only prevented the troops for either army from securing supplies to fuel the war effort, but also hurt the many citizens that happened to live in the area that would soon be raided to help fuel a war, that even many of the people of the area felt wasn’t necessary.

One of the strongest things I find in this Brady’s book is that she brings to mind that her approach in her work could be applied to any war, and she has since moved on to explore other military conflicts to prove that point. This helps paint a clear picture that in every war, even the very land that we fight over is a part of the conflict.

Sumner and French at Antietam 

One of the many things that I find interesting is the fact that history is very subjective based upon the historian that is interpreting the events that transpired. That same notion can be translated to the events for the Battle of Antietam, specifically the battle for the Confederate center otherwise known as the Battle for the Sunken Road or Bloody Lane, which may have resulted from an error in movement by Brigadier General William H. French who was in command of the Third Division of the Second Army Corps.

The morning before the battle French’s division, along with a detachment under the command of Major General John Sedgwick, where station closed the headquarters of General McClellan’s headquarters east of Antietam Creek. This led to Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner receiving orders from McClellan to take French’s division and Sedgwick’s detachment and move east across Antietam Creek to support an attack on the Confederate left.

The main instance in where this topic is severely contested among historians is the fact that during the march across the creek, French’s division fell behind Sedgwick’s and did not come onto the field for about twenty or thirty minutes after Sedgwick. This caused French to lose track of the division he was following, and instead of heading west toward the West Woods, French moved south on his own volition to antagonize the Confederates by precipitating the Battle for the Sunken Road.

I find this to be interesting in the fact that one minor detail during a major Civil War engagement precipitated into a conflict within a conflict. If French had managed to keep pace with Sedgwick, I feel that the Confederates would have routed the Union forces to cause the battle’s outcome to be different, but then again this is just pure speculation at this point.

Armstrong, Marion V. "Sumner and French at Antietam." Civil War History LIX.1 (2013): 67-74. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.