©2013 Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego ALL RIGHTS RESERVED “THAT OUR GOVERNMENT MAY STAND”: AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICS IN THE POSTBELLUM SOUTH, 1865-1901 By LUIS-ALEJANDRO DINNELLA-BORREGO A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History written under the direction of Mia Bay and Ann Fabian and approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “That Our Government May Stand”: African American Politics in the Postbellum South, 1865-1913 by LUIS-ALEJANDRO DINNELLA-BORREGO Dissertation Director: Mia Bay and Ann Fabian This dissertation provides a fresh examination of black politics in the post-Civil War South by focusing on the careers of six black congressmen after the Civil War: John Mercer Langston of Virginia, James Thomas Rapier of Alabama, Robert Smalls of South Carolina, John Roy Lynch of Mississippi, Josiah Thomas Walls of Florida, and George Henry White of North Carolina. It examines the career trajectories, rhetoric, and policy agendas of these congressmen in order to determine how effectively they represented the wants and needs of the black electorate. The dissertation argues that black congressmen effectively represented and articulated the interests of their constituents. They did so by embracing a policy agenda favoring strong civil rights protections and encompassing a broad vision of economic modernization and expanded access for education. Furthermore, black congressmen embraced their role as national leaders and as spokesmen not only for their congressional districts and states, but for all African Americans throughout the South. Black political leaders during the postwar Reconstruction years placed particular importance on the significance of black military service during the war and the lasting legacy of emancipation for the newly freed population. Local developments, especially antiblack violence and tumultuous electoral contests, conditioned newly elected black ii congressmen and shaped the policies that they embraced, whether it was expanded educational opportunities, stronger federal protections for civil rights, or the tactical decision to support amnesty for ex-Confederates. Despite political pressures and frequent intimidation, black congressmen performed their work admirably, particularly during debates over Charles Sumner’s Civil Rights Act of 1875. As Reconstruction gave way to Redemption, a fracturing took place within the black political establishment as black leaders and their constituents searched for effective ways to respond to white supremacy, disfranchisement, segregation, and lynching. The two most viable avenues available to them, fusion voting and emigration, were both applied in various settings but were ultimately unable to stave off the loss of black citizenship rights by the century’s end. Nevertheless, black congressmen challenged the barriers of prejudice, paving the way for future black struggles for equality in the twentieth century. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have accumulated many debts during this project, and I appreciate the chance to repay some of them here. To begin, I deeply appreciate my teachers and advisors at Dartmouth College, Sheila Culbert (now at the Loomis Chafee School), Richard Wright, Annelise Orleck, Craig Steven Wilder (now at MIT), Edward G. Miller, David Lagomarsino, Walter Simons, Lennart K. Sundelin, Tanalís Padilla, and Marysa Navarro. I must also thank Robert Bonner for first introducing me to the work of Steven Hahn during a conversation at his office at Dartmouth. My teachers in the Theater Department—Amy S. Holzapfel (now at Williams College), Laura D. Edmondson, Annabelle Winograd, James Rice, Ford Evans, Jamie Horton, Peter Hackett, and Mara Sabinson—were invaluable in introducing me to formal academic study and in guiding me through my time as an undergraduate. My growth as a historian accelerated during my time at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. I would like to thank my advisor at Virginia, Michael F. Holt, and my teachers at the Corcoran Department of History, Peter Onuf, Gary Gallagher, Olivier Zunz, and Mark Thomas. I have continued to develop my skills as a historian thanks to the tutelage that I have received at Rutgers. My teachers at the Department of History at Rutgers University, Seth Koven, Paul Clemens, Peter Silver, Virginia Yans, Donna Murch, David Foglesong, Minkah Makalani (now at the University of Texas at Austin), Jennifer Mittlestadt, and Deborah Gray White, were all inspiring and taught me the fundamentals of the craft. My doctoral advisors, Ann Fabian and Mia Bay, read drafts with patience. I also wish to thank my other committee members: David Greenberg, Jackson Lears, and Eric Foner of Columbia University. The department’s staff, especially iv departmental secretary Dawn Ruskai, helped to make my stay at Rutgers enjoyable and incredibly productive. Various institutions were subjected to innumerable e-mail queries from me and responded with considerable material. Among those who suffered through my numerous requests patiently and greatly contributed to this work are Colleen W. Seale, librarian at the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville; R. Boyd Murphree, Ph.D., Archivist at the Florida State Archives, Tallahassee, Florida; Matthew Taylor and Christa Snow, librarians, and Patricia A. Morrison in Special Collections at the Jacksonville Public Library, Jacksonville, Florida; Steven D. Tuttle, Director, Archives Services, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Charleston; Cheryl Thomas, Collections Project Manager and Subject Liaison for Philosophy at Perkins Research Services at the Perkins/Bostock Library at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Harry Fulmer, Curator of Manuscripts, and Dr. Fritz Hame, at the University of South Carolina’s South Caroliniana Library in Columbia; Beth Madison Howse, Special Collections Library, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee; and Trent Hanner, Reference Librarian at the Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville. At the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, I thank Anne L. Webster (Director of Library Services), Grady Howell, Amanda Lyons, and Clinton Bagley. Anne pulled out all the stops and dug up lots of material to help me learn more about Klan violence in Mississippi. Clinton’s welcome humor was much appreciated, and he also suggested that I visit Natchez, where I could see the house in which John Roy Lynch grew up and the church where Hiram Revels preached. I could even eat behind v Lynch’s house, which Bagley said was actually a stable back in the day. Even though he will probably think that I am an ingrate because I never made it to Natchez, I benefited from many of Clinton’s valuable suggestions. I also thank Rickie Brunner, Norwood Kerr, Nancy Dupree, Graydon Rust, and Graham Neeley, all at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, and Sara Brewer and Arlene Royer, at the National Archives and Records Administration—Southeast Region at Morrow, Georgia, for helping me navigate through early 1870s district court records. At the State Records Center at Raleigh, North Carolina, I wish to thank Lauren Hensey, Victoria Montgomery, and especially Michael Denning. At the State Archives of North Carolina, also in Raleigh, I thank Alison M. Thurman, Michael Hill, Dennis F. Daniels, and especially LeRae Sikes Umfleet, who generously gave me a copy of the full draft of her 2005 report on the Wilmington Riot of 1898. This report contained generous transcriptions of valuable primary sources and enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of the riot and its causes than I otherwise would have had. She and Mike Hill also allowed me access to the three years’ worth of notes, research, and photocopies that she accumulated in the process of writing her report on the violence in Wilmington. Bill Bynum at the Library of Virginia in Richmond and Frances S. Pollard, Chief Librarian, and Amber Jones of the Virginia Historical Society (also in Richmond) provided excellent assistance to my searches for materials. My research required repeated trips to Washington, D.C. and to New York City. The librarians at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library were incredibly helpful. I also want to thank the librarians at the Manuscripts Division and at the Newspapers and Current Periodicals Reading Room of vi the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. At Howard University, I greatly appreciated help from Dr. Ida E. Jones and Joellen ElBashir of the Manuscript Division of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Finally, Tab Lewis at Archives II in College Park, Maryland suffered through what must have seemed to be mind-numbingly vague citations for Treasury Department records. I owe a major debt to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), especially Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero (who listened and asked provocative questions at the brown-bag lunch where I presented my findings). At the NARA Center for Legislative Archives, Richard McCulley, Richard Hunt, Christine Blackerby, and Allison Noyes put up with me as an undergraduate intern and provided insightful opportunities and bits of information