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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 THE AGE 10 11 of 12 13 LINCOLN 14 15 16 17 18 19 Orville Vernon Burton 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 hill and wang 32 A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux 33 34 New York 35 36 S 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 hill and wang 13 A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux 19 10003 14 Union Square West, New York 15 Copyright © 2007 by Orville Vernon Burton 16 All rights reserved 17 Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. 18 Printed in the of America 19 First edition, 2007 20 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 21 Burton, Orville Vernon. 22 The age of Lincoln / by Orville Vernon Burton.—1st ed. 23 p. cm. 24 Includes bibliographical references and index. 25 ISBN-13: 978-0-8090-9513-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 10 0-8090-9513-0 26 ISBN- : (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United States—History—19th century. 2. United States— 27 History—Civil War, 1861‒1865. 3. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809‒1865. 28 4. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865‒1877) I. Title. 29 E415.7.B87 2007 30 973.5—dc22 2006037960 31 32 Designed by Cassandra J. Pappas 33 34 www.fsgbooks.com

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The Kentuckian, LINCOLN, defended the Declaration of 10 Independence against the attacks of the degenerate , 11 DOUGLAS, and against BRECKENRIDGE and the whole ruling 12 class of the South. Here was a Southerner, with eloquence that would 13 bear a comparison with HENRY CLAY’S, defending Liberty and the 14 North against the leaders of the Border Ruffians and Doughfaces of 15 . 16 —Belleville Weekly Advocate (Illinois), October 22, 1856 17 18 If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we 19 of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our 20 complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause 21 to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. 22 — to Albert Hodges, April 4, 1864 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 S 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Contents 10 11 12 13 14 15 Prologue 3 16 one Kindred Spirits and Double-Minded Men 11 17 two “Gale of Simple Freedom” 32 18 three To Carry Out the Lord’s Vengeance 50 19 20 four Washed in the Blood 77 21 five “Southern by Birth” 104 22 six 134 “The Coming of the Lord” 23 seven 168 “A Giant Holocaust of Death” 24 eight “I Want You to Come Home” 193 25 nine “To Square Accounts” 212 26 ten The Promised Land 234 27 eleven “The Safeguard of the Republic” 271 28 twelve “A Dead Radical Is Very Harmless” 300 29 30 thirteen The New Colossus 323 31 fourteen A Cross of Gold 351 32 33 34 371 Bibliographical Essay 35 Acknowledgments 401 36 S Index 405 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 THE AGE of LINCOLN 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 S 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Prologue 10 11 12 13 14 15 Rivers of blood flowed as Americans turned against each other in 1 (1lh) battle. The land was torn asunder. Four and a half months after the Bat- 2 tle of Gettysburg, standing in the November chill of a military cemetery 3 (2lh) still hardly half-finished, President Abraham Lincoln articulated the 4 meaning of the battle, of the war, of the American dream. He called for 5 a “new birth of freedom.” 6 In Mathew Brady’s famous photograph of that day, Abraham Lin- 7 coln looks ordinary, indistinct, trivial. The crowd of twenty thousand 8 had come to hear another man, silver-tongued Edward Everett, onetime 9 president of Harvard and former senator from Massachusetts, speak of 10 valor and values and victory, the stuff of melodrama that the age so 11 loved. None could have anticipated the president’s confession, the bene- 12 diction, and the challenge he set forth in the sweep of a few sentences. 13 With the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln proclaimed the hopeful determi- 14 nation of the human spirit. That determination is, ultimately, the theme 15 of this book, which traces the forces and events that led Lincoln to speak 16 of liberty in a Pennsylvania graveyard in 1863, and considers the path 17 Americans would take across the next three decades. This determina- 18 tion for freedom and the numerous contests it would inspire would be- 19 come the legacy of the Age of Lincoln. 20 Lincoln began his brief remarks at Gettysburg with a grand, over- 21 S reaching claim, declaring that eighty-seven years earlier “our fathers” 22 R

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1 2 3 4 5 One 6 7 8 9 Kindred Spirits and 10 11 Double-Minded Men 12 13 14 15 1 (1lh) 2 From the rocky shores of Maine to the Valley and beyond, 3 (2lh) men and women by the thousands rose up early on the morning of 4 October 22, 1844. Quickly and carefully they bathed, put on spotless 5 new clothes, and expectantly went outside. They looked up toward 6 heaven. Before the day was through the skies were to open, the angels of 7 the Lord were to descend, and the world they knew was to come to an 8 end. Today was the day appointed for Christ’s return to judge mankind 9 and establish God’s rule on earth. 10 It was not to be. Although their leader, a Baptist minister named 11 William Miller, had promised through thirteen years of vibrant preach- 12 ing that the advent of the millennium had been calculated down to that 13 very day, their faith was disappointed. Many had abandoned farms and 14 workshops; others had given away worldly possessions in expectation of 15 the Second Coming. They knelt on rooftops, bowed their heads in prayer, 16 and waited, shivering in an early winter’s wind and rain, for the Savior’s 17 return. Finally they stood up in confusion, went home, and continued on 18 with their lives. That was an act of faith of a rather different sort. 19 In the 1800s many Americans came to embrace a new and radical 20 idea, that they could advance the millennium by right living. Faithfully, 21 S eagerly, defiantly, they took up cudgels against the evils they saw around 22 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 Five 7 8 9 10 “Southern by Birth” 11 12 13 14 15 (1lh) 1 On January 27, 1838, men and women in Springfield, Illinois, braved 2 the winter weather and gathered at the Baptist Church to attend the (2lh) 3 Young Men’s Lyceum, a public meeting where they were audience to 4 talented speakers perfecting their eloquence on a wide assortment of 5 topics. The speaker that evening was a member of the Illinois House of 6 Representatives and a resident of Springfield, having recently moved 7 from the frontier town of New Salem, Illinois. Disturbed by recent mob 8 violence in and the city of St. Louis as well as the killing of 9 abolitionist editor Reverend Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, Abraham 10 Lincoln was to deliver a speech on “The Perpetuation of Our Political 11 Institutions.” 12 Displaying a loquaciousness he would prune in subsequent years, the 13 young representative staked the nation’s future on “a reverence for the Con- 14 stitution and law” (Lincoln’s emphasis), for which he recommended that 15 “every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor.” He 16 worried that nationwide “wild and furious passions” refused to concede 17 to the “sober judgment of the courts,” and the “mobocratic spirit” of 18 the times rendered extrajudicial judgment against gamblers, abolition- 19 ists, suspected slave insurrectionists. Evoking the specter of dead men 20 “literally hanging from the bough of trees upon any roadside,” Lincoln S 21 called on Americans to renew their patriotic attachment to sober rea- R 22 son, to law and order, and to the political edifice of liberty and equal

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rights bequeathed them by their forebears. All too aware of human frail- 1 ties, Lincoln readily granted the existence of bad laws, of grievances for 2 which “no legal provision have been made.” The “political religion” he 3 espoused was necessarily a never-ending exercise, a halting process 4 toward greater justice, not perfection. Bad laws were to be repealed, and 5 new legal provisions applied to new grievances. “Reason, cold, calculat- 6 ing, unimpassioned reason” was the bedrock for America’s future sup- 7 port and defense. Here was boundless commitment to, if not necessarily 8 blind faith in, general intelligence, sound morality, and reverence for the 9 rule of law. If the government rested on those pillars of strength, the 10 twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln was prepared to assert, “The gates of hell 11 shall not prevail against it.” 12 13 14 Had Lincoln lost the presidential election of 1860, there is reason 15 to believe that the Republicans might have faded from prominence. Had 16 southerners moderated their demands to a slight degree, northern 17 “Wide-Awakes” who championed Lincoln’s cause might have been less 18 zealous, and perhaps the center might have held one more time. In- 19 stead, Republicans also made important gains in the Senate, where 29 20 Republicans balanced 37 non-Republicans, and in the House of Repre- 21 sentatives, where 120 Republicans and 108 non-Republicans squared 22 off. The Supreme Court, with Taney as justice, was still dominated 23 by southern interests. Nevertheless, many slaveholders in the South con- 24 sidered the election of Abraham Lincoln to be the equivalent of a dec- 25 laration of war. They regarded the election of any Republican as a 26 reproach to their pride, but especially this one, whom they felt sure 27 would centralize the government, would not enforce the Dred Scott de- 28 cision, and would prevent the expansion of slavery. 29 Southern newspapers jeered at Lincoln as “vulgar,” a “horrid-looking 30 wretch,” and an “Illinois ape.” Some called him harder names still, usu- 31 ally linked with an affection for that Lincoln tried to 32 soft-pedal in the campaign. Such unthinking hostility perplexed president- 33 elect Lincoln. As he wrote in December 1860 to con- 34 gressman John Gilmer, “You think slavery is right and ought to be 35 extended; we think it wrong and ought to be restricted. For this, neither 36 S has any just occasion to be angry with the other.” But angry they were. 37 R

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1 Lincoln seemed to polarize people; some felt intense animosity, others a 2 fierce loyalty. Those who came to know him, however, even former ene- 3 mies, came to like him. 4 One admirer, the poet Walt Whitman, considered him a man of 5 “the real West, the log hut, the clearing, the woods, the prairie.” Al- 6 though Whitman called him a man of the West, Republican senator 7 of Ohio referred to him as “born of ‘poor white trash’ 8 and educated in a slave State.” Antislavery journalist Charles H. Ray 9 (future owner of the Tribune) wrote to Illinois congressman Elihu 10 Washburne in 1854 of his concerns over Lincoln: “I must confess I am 11 afraid of ‘Abe’...He is Southern by birth, Southern in his associations 12 and Southern, if I mistake not, in his sympathies...His wife, you know, 13 is a Todd, of a pro-slavery family, and so are all his kin.” When Lincoln 14 campaigned for Frémont in central and southern Illinois in 1856,Re- 15 publican newspapers stressed that Lincoln was a “southerner” and com- 16 pared his eloquence to that of his fellow Kentuckian, Henry Clay. South 17 Carolina fire-eater Robert Barnwell Rhett declared in 1860 that Lincoln 18 was “a Southern renegade—spewed out of the bosom of Kentucky into 19 Illinois.” In later years black sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois declared, “Abra- 20 ham Lincoln was a Southern poor white.” Historian of the South, 21 Bertram Wyatt-Brown names Lincoln as the greatest poet of the South. 22 His hometown newspaper in Springfield, Illinois, clearly identified Lin- 23 coln as a southerner: “Our friend carries the true Kentucky rifle and 24 when he fires he seldom fails of sending the shot home.” 25 Abraham Lincoln did indeed have southern roots, roots that helped 26 define him as a person and as a president. Lincoln once confided to his 27 law partner William H. Herndon that his maternal grandfather was “a 28 well-bred Virginia farmer or planter,” and Lincoln attributed some of 29 his ambition and intellect to this nobleman from Virginia. His father, 30 Thomas, and his paternal grandfather, Abraham, were also from Vir- 31 ginia, and Abraham was born in Kentucky, not far from ’s 32 birthplace. Beyond Lincoln’s habit of greeting folks with a southern 33 “Howdy!” his famous sense of humor emanated from his rural southern 34 heritage. His father was a legendary storyteller, and young Abraham not 35 only reveled in the stories but learned his father’s talent and used it to S 36 good purpose most of his life. R 37 But Lincoln’s southern habits went beyond turns of speech, story-

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telling, and literary references. Driving his life’s decisions and his handling 1 of the crisis to come was his understanding of and respect for southern 2 honor. Honor depended on one’s standing in the community; it was an ex- 3 ternal quality that reflected others’ view of the individual’s place within 4 the group. For the yeoman of the American South, this included exag- 5 gerated masculine traits of derring-do, courage, strength, and braggado- 6 cio. Traits of the yeoman sense of honor in young Abraham Lincoln are 7 evident in the story, now part of legend, of his wrestling match with Jack 8 Armstrong in 1831. The Armstrong family of the Clary’s Grove settlement 9 had migrated from Tennessee. Lincoln’s own neighborhood of New 10 Salem was similarly settled by southerners and was in fact a southern en- 11 clave in Illinois. Jack Armstrong was the leader of the Clary’s Grove Boys, 12 a group of tough young rowdies, and Armstrong was considered the 13 toughest. Lincoln’s employer, shop owner Denton Offutt, was more im- 14 pressed with the strong, wiry Lincoln. He bet that his store clerk could 15 whip Armstrong. Accounts vary, but apparently the two contestants strug- 16 gled evenly for a long time until Armstrong threw Lincoln by cheating. 17 Lincoln sprang angrily to his feet and challenged the entire gang, claiming 18 that he would take them all on one at a time, but only in a fair fight. His 19 strength and courage won over the Clary’s Grove Boys. 20 Just a few months later when the community’s unit was mobiliz- 21 ing for the Black Hawk War, Jack Armstrong and the Boys elected Abe 22 Lincoln captain. According to Lincoln’s short 1859 autobiography, the 23 public esteem evidenced by this election by the men who knew him so well 24 provided him “a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have 25 had since.” Abraham Lincoln craved communal approval, that essential 26 part of southern honor. In 1832, in his first race for the Illinois General 27 Assembly, he explained his ambition “of being truly esteemed of my fel- 28 low men, by tending myself worthy of their esteem.” Although Lincoln 29 lost the election, his own home district of New Salem gave him 277 of its 30 300 votes cast. 31 On one occasion, Lincoln’s respect for southern honor almost 32 brought him to a duel, an unusual event in the rural North. Lincoln told 33 a friend that he was opposed to dueling, but if degradation was the only 34 alternative, he would fight. Democrat James Shields challenged Lincoln 35 in September 1842 because of witty, anonymous articles in the Whig pa- 36 S per Sangamo Journal. The wit may have been a little too vicious due to the 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 Seven 7 8 9 10 “A Giant Holocaust of Death” 11 12 13 14 15 (1lh) 1 Tall, sad, and shrouded with a tawny mane of beard and hair, 2 Kentucky-born Texan John Bell “Sam” Hood was too much the lion, (2lh) 3 Robert E. Lee thought, and too little the fox to make an effective com- 4 mander. No one doubted Hood’s courage, but by war’s end, bravery had 5 turned to irrational bloodlust. He already bore one wound from a Co- 6 manche arrow in his left hand, when he had led the Texas Brigade into 7 battle at Gaines’ Mill in 1862. His soldiers shattered the Union line that 8 day and broke George McClellan’s spirit, but by nightfall every officer 9 under his command had been killed or wounded. Gettysburg ruined his 10 left arm, and Chickamauga took off his right leg, but on both occasions 11 he grasped his sword, urged his men forward, and rose ever higher in 12 rank. On the afternoon of November 30, 1864, he was raging over the 13 remnants of the Army of Tennessee he now led, stalled on the road out- 14 side Franklin, fifteen miles below Nashville. The fight had gone out of 15 his men, he believed, so he set them a simple, impossible task: charge 16 straight down the road toward the Yankee guns that blocked their way, 17 break through their entrenchments, and carry on toward Nashville it- 18 self. It would be a fair fight, Hood figured, about twenty-two thousand 19 men on each side. One gallant rush, and the Confederacy would drive 20 the invader out of the heart of Tennessee. S 21 A generation later, Sam Watkins, a private in the First Tennessee R 22 Regiment, recorded his memory of that charge:

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A sheet of fire was poured into our very faces, and for a moment we 1 halted as if in despair, as the terrible avalanche of shot and shell laid 2 low those brave and gallant heroes, whose bleeding wounds attested 3 that the struggle would be desperate. Forward, men! The air loaded 4 with death-dealing missiles...Forward, men! And the blood spurts in 5 a perfect jet from the dead and wounded. The earth is red with blood. 6 It flows in streams, making little rivulets as it flows...The death- 7 angel shrieks and laughs and old Father Time is busy with his sickle, 8 as he gathers in the last harvest of death, crying, More, more, more! 9 while his rapacious maw is glutted with the slain. 10 11 For five hours, into the darkness, Yank and Reb fought hand to hand in 12 a slaughter of no strategic importance whatsoever. The Union forces at 13 Franklin, Tennessee, were a minor rear guard, expertly dug in. Amass- 14 ing sixty thousand bluecoats behind them for the coup de grâce was 15 the Virginia-born and -bred General George Thomas—the “Rock of 16 Chickamauga” and Hood’s old teacher from West Point. More disas- 17 trous still, Hood’s advance had been achieved only by abandoning 18 Georgia and the Carolinas, actually easing Sherman’s plan to “make 19 Georgia howl” by marching his own sixty thousand Union troops 20 through the countryside, “smashing things” all the way from Atlanta to 21 the sea. Even the grandest victory at Franklin would be a crushing de- 22 feat for the Confederacy. 23 How much worse then was the spectacle Sam Watkins saw when the 24 sun rose that next morning. “O, my God! what did we see!” he remem- 25 bered. “It was a giant holocaust of death.” The Union lines had held 26 firm, and now that their work was done, the Federals were pulling back 27 down the pike, yielding up quietly the ground for which so many had 28 perished, aiming to draw southerners farther into Thomas’s trap. More 29 than one-third of the Confederates who had gone forward at Franklin 30 the previous evening now lay dead or wounded on that battlefield, a car- 31 nage equal to any in this grim, increasingly pointless conflict. All told, 32 six Confederate generals had been killed in this battle. Whole regiments 33 and brigades were slaughtered. “Death had held high carnival there 34 that night,” Watkins summed up. “The dead were piled the one on the 35 other all over the ground. I never was so horrified and appalled in my 36 S life.” Two weeks later Hood’s forces were crushed outside Nashville, 37 R

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1 reeling back aimlessly toward Mississippi, now less an army than a mob 2 of hungry, filthy refugees. 3 4 5 By the end of 1862 the Civil War was by no means over, but it was 6 fundamentally transformed. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of- 7 fered only the clearest sign of that change. In the East the failures of 8 McClellan and his lieutenants had exaggerated Confederate battlefield 9 achievements. In the West, apart from the scare at Shiloh, northern 10 forces had advanced from victory unto victory. Lincoln had paid dearly 11 in blood and treasure for such successes as had been achieved, but he 12 never doubted that he could pay. His only consistent complaint throughout 13 the war was that his generals did not fight often enough, boldly enough, 14 directly enough. When McClellan had proposed to swing around be- 15 hind Lee’s forces in the Peninsular campaign, the president was at first 16 displeased. Nevertheless, Lincoln remained supportive of McClellan’s 17 various demands. The failures of 1862 confirmed his belief in a simple 18 method of slaughter: if the South could not be outwitted on the battle- 19 field, it could be outbludgeoned. After McClellan’s dismissal that fall, 20 Lincoln chose a series of generals whom he called “fighters,” but those 21 closer to the front labeled them “butchers.” 22 In the end, more than thirty months passed after Antietam before 23 the last surrendered, Yankeedom growing steadily stronger. In his 24 annual message to Congress in 1864 Lincoln stated that, for all the car- 25 nage, his generals had more men, more guns, and more money to fight 26 the war than ever before. After all the “science” of warfare that leaders 27 like Halleck preached, all the discipline and cohesion that had been 28 drilled into recruits, and all the technical advances of weaponry that re- 29 cent decades had yielded, was modern warfare to resolve itself simply 30 into slaughter on a vaster, more efficient scale? “What is all this strug- 31 gling and fighting for?” one Union general’s wife asked. “This ruin and 32 death to thousands of families?...What advancement of mankind [was] 33 to compensate for the present horrible calamities?” Any assessment of 34 Lincoln and Davis, of the Confederacy and America itself after Antie- 35 tam, must include the question, Could even a goal as noble as liberty, S 36 Union, or independence possibly justify such slaughter? R 37

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From the fall of 1862 onward the pace of killing accelerated, and 1 the conflict itself was transmuted from a war of armies into a war of 2 peoples. Commanders and soldiers on both sides increasingly came to 3 regard the enemy, soldier and civilian alike, as alien other. Lee himself 4 consistently called northern soldiers “those people.” Soldiers of the New 5 Orleans Guard waiting in reserve at Shiloh in April 1862 described the 6 Union men as covered with blood and scarcely recognizable, with “faces 7 disfigured with hideous wounds.” But when ordered to charge, they fixed 8 their bayonets and let out “a collective ‘hurrah.’” More disturbing still, 9 military leaders on both sides hardened themselves to the human suffer- 10 ings of their own troops as they lashed out against the foe. Warned that 11 Mobile Bay was infested with mines that might decimate his fleet, Admi- 12 ral answered with a callousness that succeeding genera- 13 tions have chosen to interpret as a hero’s shout: “Damn the torpedoes! 14 Full speed ahead!” That cruel logic writ large unleashed a bloodbath in 15 the last years of the war. 16 Lashing out against soldiers and civilian populations alike were nu- 17 merous bands of Confederate irregulars that operated behind Union lines 18 as the North pushed south. Guerrilla harassment often forced Union lead- 19 ers to establish sizable garrisons along every route to protect supply lines. 20 In northern Virginia, John Singleton Mosby’s partisans disrupted Union 21 supply routes, though ultimately the “Gray Ghost’s” efforts could do little 22 to stem the staggering abundance of equipment and munitions that 23 Union forces put into play. In Kentucky and east Tennessee, Confederate 24 guerrilla fighter Champ Ferguson killed captives after they surrendered, 25 sometimes allegedly decapitating them. In and Kansas, William 26 Quantrill’s raiders devolved into a fearsome band, staging hit-and-run 27 attacks on Union forces and exacting bloody vengeance on local civilians. 28 Reacting to the killings of members of his men’s families in Union cus- 29 tody (when the floor of their prison collapsed), Quantrill struck back at 30 Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863, ordering his men to “kill every 31 man and burn every house” in the Free-Soil town and precipitating a mas- 32 sacre that horrified the nation. In the hills of Tennessee, North Carolina, 33 Georgia, and farther afield, divided loyalties sparked a host of atrocities 34 and reprisals that left communities smoldering and still hungry for retribu- 35 tion at war’s end. For the grim and angry men who committed these hor- 36 S 37 R

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1 2 3 4 5 6 Te n 7 8 9 10 The Promised Land 11 12 13 14 15 (1lh) 1 On February 18, 1865, blue-coated soldiers of the Twenty-first U.S. 2 Colored Troops Regiment marched into Charleston, , (2lh) 3 capturing the rebel citadel with surprising ease after four long years of 4 war. White southerners had long dreaded the coming of the Yankees, 5 but how much more dreadful to discover, when they finally did arrive, 6 that the invaders were black. U.S. Colored Troops, free African Ameri- 7 cans and former slaves, commanded by white abolitionist Augustus Ben- 8 nett of New York, who had earlier overseen the execution of his black 9 sergeant for insubordination, marched through the fallen city’s streets, 10 securing government offices and establishing strongpoints—and wreak- 11 ing a revenge of looting and burning as well. Grim and gleeful soldiers 12 sang words that had come to haunt the slaveocracy from battle to bloody 13 battle: “John Brown’s body lies a-mould’ring in the grave, but his soul 14 goes marching on!” 15 The strains of “John Brown’s Body” had offered fair warning of the 16 social cataclysm that engulfed the master class between 1861 and 1865. 17 But it suggested something more fearsome still: the prospect of sweep- 18 ing social change, which overturning slavery only began. Thereafter it 19 threatened to erupt into egalitarian demands for property, freedom, and 20 justice, promising as it did so to cut down traditional barriers of gender, S 21 race, and class altogether. America in 1865 looked remarkably different R 22

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than it had in 1861. Virtually no one could have imagined the bewilder- 1 ing new nation that emerged from the fires of fratricidal war. 2 Four million African Americans were free from bondage. Yet in this 3 revolutionary by-product of the struggle for the Union, white and black 4 Americans lacked anything like consensus about the possible place of 5 freedpeople in a reconstructed United States. Commentators as diverse 6 as Martin Delaney, Hinton Helper, William T. Sherman, and Lincoln 7 himself had wondered doubtfully whether different races could ever be 8 brought to peaceful coexistence, much less to the common purpose of 9 joint citizenship. Equally uncertain was the question of what to do with 10 the defeated southerners, all the men and women who had aided and 11 encouraged the slaveholders’ rebellion. Were these traitors, at the hour 12 of their defeat, to be handed back the privileges they had scorned and 13 with them the reins of local power? Should ex-rebels be permanently 14 disfranchised? Should they be penalized for their treason, after the ex- 15 ample of other republican governments, by execution, confiscation of 16 their property, or loss of their political rights? How the victorious nation 17 dealt with southern masters and former slaves at war’s end would fore- 18 tell the providential meaning that Americans would impose on the 19 blood and sacrifice of the past four years. 20 The Civil War cost more than $6.5 billion, not including the pen- 21 sions to wounded and elderly soldiers and widows and orphans of the 22 conflict (by 1890, over 40 percent of the federal budget). That money 23 was more than enough to cover the cost of purchasing from all the slave- 24 holders all the four million slaves, which, after all, is what Lincoln had 25 advocated all along. In addition, there would have been enough money 26 left over to give each African American family forty acres, a mule, and 27 some cash. 28 Worse than the financial cost, the war had seen more dying than any 29 could have imagined—fully six hundred thousand soldiers as well as 30 many civilians. Tens of thousands of dinner tables included a vacant 31 chair, once filled by a father or a son, now forever empty. More than half 32 a million more were filled by men suffering wounds, many mangled or 33 crippled, with one sleeve empty, an eye gone, their minds distracted or 34 their nerves shattered. The war’s cost, too, was borne by women and 35 children who had endured dark fears and long nights, and too often 36 S 37 R

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1 found those fears of loss dreadfully realized. Even men who did not go 2 into battle, due to advanced age or infirmity, special position, self-interest, 3 or simple cowardice were compelled ever after to concede in private that 4 at the hour of crisis they had failed to act the part of a man. The 5 diminution of spirit such admissions entailed, however tiny and per- 6 sonal, were magnified by their social pervasiveness. True heroes there 7 were, all knew, but they were fewer than anyone had thought, and now 8 they were mostly dead or gruesomely maimed. Even the best of men, 9 though they had given full measure in the struggle, now knew that their 10 bodies, their families and communities could never be restored to what 11 they had been before. Many wondered why God had put them—and 12 their country—through the horrifying ordeal. 13 Historians have noted that the Civil War created a “theological cri- 14 sis.” Antebellum Protestants, both North and South, had been certain 15 they were wedded to notions of national destiny, but they were less cer- 16 tain now. Religion had not solved the nation’s political problems. Reli- 17 gion had not prevented war. More than that, political extremists had 18 used religion to justify war. Many decided that they should no longer 19 base public policy on interpretations of the Scriptures. The Civil War 20 took the moral energy out of Protestantism. 21 Southern white theologians had a dilemma in how to explain defeat. 22 They did so by preaching that God was testing their reliance on His 23 providence. As had happened in Biblical times when God allowed the 24 enemy to smite His chosen people, southerners needed to keep the faith. 25 Theological underpinnings for slavery would become underpinnings for 26 racism, discrimination, and segregation. As southern Presbyterian min- 27 ister John Bailey Adger wrote in 1868, “God has so constituted the two 28 races as to make their equality forever impossible.” 29 Northern white theologians also had a dilemma. Although the Civil 30 War determined that the northern interpretation of Biblical scripture 31 on slavery was the political winner, many northern clergy did not want 32 to preach racial equality. Moreover, many thought the larger problem 33 was young white men. The young men they had sent to fight for noble 34 ideals were supposed to return home more purified and less self- 35 centered. Some of the soldiers sent “to die to make men free” had in- S 36 stead become killers, or at least drunkards and blasphemers. Northern R 37 newspapers editorialized that the war did not redeem the Union. The

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war had not brought sanctification or godliness as hoped. Northern 1 American Protestantism would never be the same. The failure of white 2 American Protestantism to come to terms with the Civil War meant that 3 it would have only a marginal voice when it came to issues of accelerated 4 industrialization and the Civil War’s unleashing of unfettered capitalism. 5 African Americans faced no such dilemmas. Unlike white evangeli- 6 cals, their theology held no ambitions for cultural power and prestige 7 and thus was not overturned. Rather than a theological crisis, the Civil 8 War was proof of God’s plan for His children. In April 1867, African 9 American minister Simeon Beard interpreted the meaning of the war 10 for fellow former slaves: “God intended, through this war, that, like the 11 Red Sea, while the nation rendered itself asunder, you should pass 12 through free. This war was God’s work.” AME minister Andrew Brown 13 drew upon a millennial imagery of Revelations: “God’s horse was tied 14 to the iron stake. The day the first fire was made at Sumter, I saw the 15 Gospel Horse begin to paw. He continued to paw until he finally broke 16 loose and came tearing through Georgia. The colored man mounted 17 him and intends to ride him.” 18 Lincoln’s war had been fought to prevent the disorder of secession 19 from ending the American experiment of democratic freedom. When 20 the war uprooted the twisted tree of chattel slavery once and for all, it 21 also unleashed a broad new debate across the land about just what free- 22 dom actually signified, what it meant to be American, and what sort of 23 a new nation had been ushered in at such horrific cost. 24 For North and South alike, April was the cruelest month. Amid ruined 25 cities, ruined fields, and ruined lives arose a profound uncertainty. Once- 26 valiant Confederates were now vanquished traitors awaiting the justice of 27 victorious Yankees. No one knew how far that justice would be meted 28 out. On April 4, as Jefferson Davis abandoned Richmond and fled south 29 hoping to reach Texas, he defiantly urged Confederate troops to fight on, 30 suggesting even guerrilla warfare, “with our army free to move from 31 point to point,” and with “the foe...far removed from his own base... 32 nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain but...our own un- 33 quenchable resolve.” Lee contravened that last order of his president, re- 34 fusing to turn his remaining 27,805 seasoned soldiers into guerrillas. 35 On April 9, with marked graciousness and leniency, General Grant 36 S accepted General Lee’s surrender. Reactions to the surrender were 37 R

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1 varied. Some Union officers hooted and jeered Lee as he rode away 2 in defeat, and federal soldiers stared curiously at the rebel soldiers 3 who stacked arms three days later. The famed “mutual salutation and 4 farewell” at the formal surrender ceremony disbanding Lee’s army was 5 only one gesture among thousands. Another was made by General Mar- 6 tin Witherspoon Gary of South Carolina, whose brigade earlier in the 7 war had massacred a brigade of African American soldiers so that “only 8 a corporal’s guard survived the slaughter.” Ignoring Lee, Gary rode 9 away from Appomattox with his men in an attempt to join the fleeing 10 Davis and fight on. 11 Just like war, war’s aftermath involved matters of moral integrity and 12 sheer power. Lincoln began considering the issue of Reconstruction al- 13 most as soon as war broke out, and in 1864 he had written to a Quaker 14 constituent: “Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty 15 convulsion.” Lincoln also considered the place of African Americans in 16 a nation undergoing a new birth of freedom. His views had evolved and 17 expanded throughout his presidency. As he pondered racial issues, he 18 became acquainted with people such as , whom he 19 called “my friend,” and Martin Delaney, about whom he wrote to Ed- 20 win M. Stanton in February 1865, “Do not fail to have an interview with 21 this most extraordinary and intelligent black man.” Asking about Doug- 22 lass’s reaction to the Second Inaugural, Lincoln said, “there is no man in 23 the country whose opinion I value more than yours.” 24 The New York World criticized Lincoln for not having a plan for Re- 25 construction, comparing him to “a traveler in an unknown country 26 without a map.” Not true. Lincoln knew where he was headed and had 27 already taken several important steps in the right direction. Of critical 28 importance was the appointment of a new Chief Justice to replace 29 Roger Taney on the Supreme Court. Taney, whom Andrew Jackson had 30 appointed in 1836, had written the majority opinion in the Dred Scott 31 case. For twenty-eight years, until his death in October 1864, he had 32 presided over a conservative court. Many of Lincoln’s supporters, good 33 and qualified people, wanted the position, but Lincoln knew that Recon- 34 struction would need an unfaltering advocate of black rights: Salmon P. 35 Chase. When questioned why he appointed a rival, a critic, a thorn in S 36 his side, Lincoln admitted that he “would rather have swallowed his R 37 buckhorn chair than to have nominated Chase.” But more important to

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Lincoln: “To have done otherwise I should have been recreant to my 1 convictions of my duty to the Republican Party and to the country.” Just 2 a little over a month after Chase was confirmed, intro- 3 duced the first black attorney, John Rock, to practice before the highest 4 court, and Harper’s Weekly commented that future historians would inter- 5 pret this “as a remarkable indication of the revolution which is going on 6 in the sentiment of a great people.” 7 An early step in his Reconstruction plan was his decision on amnesty 8 for the rebels. He determined that a general amnesty should be granted 9 to all who would take an oath of loyalty to the United States and pledge 10 to obey federal laws pertaining to slavery. Unworthy of amnesty were 11 officials and military leaders of the so-called confederate government, 12 who were to be at least temporarily excluded. Again, Lincoln was put- 13 ting his trust in southern yeomen and not their leaders. 14 On April 11 from the White House balcony, after Lee’s surrender but 15 before Johnston’s, Lincoln made some remarks to the gathering crowd, re- 16 minding them to remember Him “from whom all blessings flow.” He then 17 addressed “the re-inauguration of the national authority—reconstruction.” 18 Lincoln the southerner knew that he did not confront a single, unified 19 South. “We must simply begin with, and mould from, disorganized and 20 discordant elements.” Nevertheless, he hoped and expected that a major- 21 ity of white southerners would support efforts to reunify the country. 22 Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction required cooperation between the ex- 23 ecutive and legislative branches of the government. The executive branch 24 had the right to determine when the rebellious states were back in “proper 25 practical relation” with the government, and the legislative branch had the 26 right to determine who were admissible as members of Congress. 27 Lincoln pointed to as an example of what Reconstruction 28 might look like. That state had already passed the Thirteenth Amend- 29 ment granting total emancipation with no middle step of apprenticeship 30 for freed slaves. Louisiana’s “free-state constitution” gave “the benefit of 31 public schools equally to black and white.” Lincoln noted that some crit- 32 icized Louisiana’s constitution for not granting African American suf- 33 frage, but it did empower the state legislature “to confer the elective 34 franchise upon the colored man.” In part Lincoln agreed with the crit- 35 ics: “I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intel- 36 S ligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” 37 R

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just as important in advancing democracy’s goals as African Americans 1 in Congress, maybe more so. 2 In Louisiana the new state legislature in 1868 was approximately half 3 white and half African American. Black legislators never constituted a 4 single like-minded bloc. Well-heeled Creole politicians often advocated 5 programs far more attuned to moderate white Democrats than to land- 6 less black farmers. African Americans in Louisiana held the offices of 7 lieutenant governor, state superintendent of education, and state trea- 8 surer. In South Carolina, African Americans controlled a majority of seats 9 in the lower house (and from 1874 to 1876 both the senate and the house), 10 and African Americans won elections as lieutenant governor, secretary of 11 state, and state treasurer, as well as a significant number of local offices. 12 Reconstruction in South Carolina lasted longer than in any other state, 13 and South Carolina’s black Republicans achieved as great a degree of 14 political power as did African Americans anywhere. Their achievements 15 were the consequence of clear-eyed pragmatism and considerable politi- 16 cal horse-trading. 17 Newly freed African Americans understood the give-and-take of 18 politics. When a white newspaper reporter asked an African American 19 leader in Vicksburg, Mississippi, whether it was appropriate for black 20 candidates to disagree on issues, the official chided the reporter’s pater- 21 nalistic attitude. He had no wish to prevent other candidates from ex- 22 pressing differing views, he explained. Had he so wished, he “could have 23 followed the course whites had so often pursued: using cow hide, a 24 bucket of tar, and a bag of feathers.” Vigorous and honest debate prom- 25 ised a better way forward. 26 In a speech entitled “An Honest Ballot Is the Safeguard of the Re- 27 public,” delivered in the U.S. House of Representatives (1877), Con- 28 gressman Robert Smalls told how slavery had taught white masters “to 29 ignore and trample the rights of those they could not control.” The right 30 to vote brought protection against that trampling. It meant political 31 power and elected officials responsive to the needs of the new con- 32 stituency. The new state constitutions, formed by various coalitions of 33 African Americans and moderate whites, brought about important re- 34 forms in women’s rights and divorce laws. They reformed orphanages 35 and asylums and ended some of the exploitation of children in appren- 36 S ticeship. A lasting legacy of Reconstruction was the vigorous advocacy 37 R

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1 of public education for all children in the South. Republican legislators 2 also initiated important changes in the penal system, ending inhumane 3 punishments such as disfigurement and imprisonment for debt. 4 The tendency of this legislation seems overwhelmingly radical, given 5 its accent on fair play, aiding the underdog, and holding back the hand 6 of unjust power. But once again the vision of Lincoln shines forth, 7 meshing the drive for equal opportunity with a concern for emerging or- 8 der. African American and white Republicans saw the suffrage as a 9 means of radically altering their society, to be certain, but altering it 10 along lines that would seem familiar and palatable even to the most so- 11 cially conservative of Americans: erasing racial preference, guarantee- 12 ing the rule of law, upholding the operation of the free market, securing 13 the strength of families and the promotion of churches and schools in 14 the local community, and advocating personal responsibility, volun- 15 tarism, honest government, and civic service. 16 As Republican Party operatives and legislators tried to reestablish or- 17 der and promote racial harmony, new biracial administrations flowered 18 all over the region after 1868, and the gradual strengthening of local 19 communities attested to their success. Although Confederates and con- 20 servatives tarred Republicans as illiterate, inept, free-spending, and 21 corrupt, Republican achievements under increasingly difficult circum- 22 stances remain impressive. Faced with empty coffers, a wrecked cotton 23 economy, and the sullen intransigence of the white elite that had done 24 the wrecking, they acted swiftly. To revitalize the state and local econ- 25 omy and reestablish credit, they floated massive new bond issues and 26 wrote protective lien laws. They established the rule of law on a basis 27 stronger than had ever been obtained in the antebellum era. Vastly en- 28 larged public education programs in particular offered a broad road for 29 social advancement for ordinary southerners, white and black. Beyond 30 everything else Republican legislators did in this decade, they got the 31 southern economy up and running again, reviving banks and railroads, 32 promoting trade and agriculture, creating jobs and wealth for ordinary 33 citizens. 34 The most revolutionary of legislative initiatives, or so it seemed to 35 propertied conservatives, were the Republican tax reforms. Emancipa- S 36 tion and war had completely dismantled the existing tax system. Ante- R 37 bellum taxes that white slaveholders paid for the enslaved population

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1 imate dissent. With a new sense of pride for their violent extremist 2 measures, many of the new white vigilante groups no longer hid behind 3 masks and silly white robes. 4 White “Restoration” of the mid-1870s and 1880s ushered in a new 5 phase of southern white violence, an era wherein no act, no matter how 6 heinous, went untried in the effort to eliminate African American voting 7 power. Ultimately what brought down the republican vision in state af- 8 ter state was a bloody reign of terror, sponsored and carried out by the 9 very leaders who posed as champions of conservative “order.” Waning 10 in power were groups such as the 1873 Unification Movement in New 11 Orleans, which included blacks and whites, Republicans and Demo- 12 crats, Jews and Gentiles, former Union soldiers and former Confederates 13 such as General P.G.T. Beauregard. This group and others advocating 14 racial equality, and freedom and justice for all, were slowly losing out to 15 the largely unchecked flood of white supremacist rhetoric and violence. 16 The very success of Reconstruction drove white Democrats and their 17 vigilante lieutenants to acts of terrorism. A Democrat from Louisiana 18 pronounced, “This state of affairs could scarcely be tolerated by the 19 proud former masters of slaves.” Refusing to work with the interracial 20 coalitions that had won elections during the first several years of Recon- 21 struction, too many whites deliberately chose lawlessness precisely be- 22 cause they demanded a system that would adjudicate their interests only. 23 Violence was the only way white Democrats across the South could end 24 the record of electoral and appointed success. The Democratic Party 25 created a paramilitary wing that shadowed the opposition and gener- 26 ated unrest. While party leaders promoted the peaceful electoral process, 27 it was a facade. Whether through secretive activity or through open mob 28 fighting, Democrats resorted again and again to political assassination 29 and murder, although physical beatings, arson, and threats of death were 30 more common. A constable, white or black, who tried to serve a warrant 31 on a white man put his own life in jeopardy. While adopting a policy of 32 winning elections peacefully if possible, Democrats did not shrink from 33 fraud and violence in areas with large African American populations. 34 Corruption of the electoral process became the norm. One northern 35 Louisiana newspaper bespoke the depth of white feeling when it edito- S 36 rialized that it was a “religious duty” to rob votes and “any failure to do R 37 so will be a violation of true Louisiana Democratic teaching.” With a

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might-makes-right mentality, whites used extralegal activity because 1 they were not legally able to break the majority control of the state and 2 local governments. Ultimately, it was not African Americans or Repub- 3 licans they opposed but the rule of law itself. 4 In Louisiana in 1867, former Confederate General James Long- 5 street, then commander of the state militia stationed in , 6 was surprised that the newspaper accused him of “joining the enemy” 7 when he expressed his support for equal rights: “If I appreciate the is- 8 sues of Democracy at this moment, they are the enfranchisement of the 9 negro and the rights of Congress in the premises.” Longstreet had only 10 acted as he thought right. He had integrated the militia and appointed 11 black as well as white officers, including Confederates and Union veter- 12 ans. He ordered that each militiaman swear on oath to “accept the civil 13 and political equality of all men, and agree not to attempt to deprive any 14 person or persons on account of race, color, or previous condition of any 15 political or civil right, privilege or immunity enjoyed by any other class of 16 men.” By 1871 Longstreet claimed that “one half of our force is com- 17 posed of officers and soldiers who were in the military service of the 18 Southern States during the late civil conflict,” and in 1872 and 1873 this 19 militia defended the governor and state legislature from two attempts at 20 violent overthrow. Thereafter, the White League, the paramilitary arm of 21 the Democratic Party, grew stronger, enforcing tighter discipline in its 22 ranks. It replaced wanton, indiscriminate terror with carefully orches- 23 trated violence to achieve specific political ends. In the “Colfax Mas- 24 sacre” of April 13, 1873, the more numerous White League defeated the 25 Louisiana state militia as it attempted to protect black voters. White 26 Democrats in Colfax, determined to rid the county of black voters, 27 strode into the black section of town and killed the fleeing people. When 28 some African Americans took refuge in the courthouse, whites set it afire 29 and then shot those exiting the burning building. 30 After the massacre, the federal government was able to convict only 31 three persons for more then 100 murders. The defendants appealed their 32 case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in October 1875 in 33 U.S. v. Cruikshank that the federal government did not have the right to 34 prosecute individuals under the . The Supreme 35 Court had already severely limited the enforcement of Reconstruction 36 S law in its rulings in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873. Justices used those cases, 37 R

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1 which were initiated by butchers, to define what could be brought to trial 2 under the auspices of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a split decision 5 to 3 4 (Chase among the dissenters), the court ruled that very little could be so 4 brought. In effect, the court gutted enforcement of civil rights legislation. 5 President Grant was outraged that guilty parties went unpunished. 6 “To say that the murder of a negro or a white Republican is not consid- 7 ered a crime in Louisiana would probably be unjust to a great part of 8 the people, but it is true that a great number of such murders have been 9 committed and no one has been punished.” He denounced the idea that 10 “the spirit of hatred and violence is stronger than law.” 11 Six months later, on September 17, 1874, the Louisiana state militia 12 again lost to the stronger forces of the White Leaguers in the battle of 13 Canal Street, an attempt to get rid of the Republican governor William 14 Kellogg. Democrats also prevented elected Republicans from orga- 15 nizing the state legislature. After an emergency cabinet meeting Presi- 16 dent Grant authorized federal troops to preserve the peace. Three months 17 later, on December 24, 1874, Grant sent Lt. Gen. to 18 Louisiana to investigate reports of massive disorder. Sheridan verified 19 the reports and recommended the arrest of the leaders. U.S. troops re- 20 installed the duly elected officials. Republicans in Louisiana were grate- 21 ful, but White Leaguers did not approve of the military intervention. 22 Reaction in the North was also hostile. 23 In the midterm election of November 1875 Georgia native white Re- 24 publican Richard Whiteley was defeated in his bid for reelection to the 25 U.S. House of Representatives. Like other southern white Republicans, 26 Whiteley had built a coalition that depended upon getting African Amer- 27 icans to the polls, winning over or appeasing some whites, and minimizing 28 the certain obstruction of Democrats. By 1875, however, 29 had become a major issue in Georgia. By limiting the vote of African 30 American Republicans, Democrats won every single congressional race 31 in Georgia. In both north and south, the Republicans felt the repercus- 32 sions of the Panic of 1873. For the first time since the Civil War began, 33 Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives. The Forty- 34 third Congress, which served from 1873‒75, included 88 Democrats and 35 199 Republicans (5 other). The Forty-fourth Congress, 1875‒77, included S 36 182 Democrats and 103 Republicans (8 other). R 37 With victory in Congress, the white counterrevolution at the state

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1 2 3 4 5 Thirteen 6 7 8 9 The New Colossus 10 11 12 13 14 15 On October 28, 1886, more than one million Americans, white and 1 (1lh) black, many of them immigrants newly arrived, lined New York’s Fifth 2 Avenue to share in a celebration of liberty. Marching in a grand parade 3 (2lh) to the city’s teeming harborfront, citizens and dignitaries traveled by 4 ferry to tiny Bedloe’s Island to unveil a gigantic, gleaming copper statue, 5 150 feet tall, on a site selected by General . 6 Liberty Enlightening the World was a gift to the United States from France, 7 which was recently vanquished by Bismarck’s aristocratic Prussians, in- 8 creasingly unconvinced of democracy’s virtues, and riven by all manner 9 of social and economic divisions. The gesture, financed by lotteries and 10 sporting events, was as much a backhanded colonialist slap at Turkey for 11 the marvel it hoped to plant at the mouth of the new Suez Canal, Egypt 12 Carrying the Light of Asia, as it was a proud remembrance of an enduring 13 republican ideal. 14 Imagined in 1865 as a symbol of the love of liberty as shared by 15 France and America, the statue was the idea of Edouard-René 16 Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union at a time when the French 17 monarchy unofficially supported the Confederacy. The Times of Lon- 18 don cheekily wondered “why liberty should have been sent from France, 19 which has too little, to America, which has too much.” For some French- 20 men at least, such as Victor Hugo, the idea of liberty was an ideal to be 21 S constantly sought. The great French novelist never glimpsed how the 22 R

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1 emerging egalitarianism of the Age of Lincoln was being turned back, 2 but in his awe upon seeing the Statue of Liberty’s completion in France, 3 Hugo pronounced, “The idea—it is everything.” 4 In the two decades intervening between Laboulaye’s imagined gesture 5 of 1865 and its delivery of 1886, America itself seemed to slip far from the 6 pinnacle of Lincoln’s triumph. Then the nation’s leaders had been up- 7 right religious men, idealistic abolitionists, egalitarian intellectuals, high- 8 minded statesmen, and vigorous captains of industry. Now freedom’s 9 fortunes, such as they were, seemed bound up with the success of narrow- 10 minded corporate leaders, chiseling lawyers, sneaking speculators, and po- 11 litical bagmen. The golden age of the millennium was nowhere in sight. 12 Instead, America’s greatest writer, Mark Twain, a man at once more sadly 13 sentimental and more misanthropically cynical than any author before or 14 since, sneered at life in “The Gilded Age,” when men dreamed only of 15 millions and—like his foolish, wayward schoolboy Tom Sawyer—had no 16 inkling of what to do with such riches once gained. At century’s end New 17 York Tammany ward heeler George Washington Plunkitt could trumpet 18 his success as a of “honest graft” as a positive good. Even as he 19 helped loot the city’s treasury—on a minor scale, certainly—he made sure 20 to share his windfall with local constituents, creating jobs, doling out re- 21 wards, and greasing palms. “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em,” he 22 pronounced. More than one immigrant who passed through Ellis Island 23 in these years must have imagined that those words were in fact the legend 24 inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty that welcomed them to the 25 New Jerusalem of the Almighty Dollar. 26 The pulsating belief in an imminent millennium that dynamized 27 antebellum culture was not so much defeated by the slaughter of civil 28 war and Reconstruction as it was secularized. In the years after Appo- 29 mattox, northern white Protestants, horrified by the cost of restoring the 30 Union and abolishing slavery, cast off their grand expectation of Chris- 31 tian perfection and abandoned the task of bringing on God’s Kingdom. 32 A growing middle class determined instead to protect their earthly pos- 33 sessions. Newcomers arriving by the shipload also sought to cash in on 34 American economic opportunity. They did not come to empty their lives 35 of sin, but to fill it with material blessings. Many were not Protestants, S 36 but Catholics and Jews. No longer would the northern ecclesiastic com- R 37

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1 2 3 4 5 Fourteen 6 7 8 9 A Cross of Gold 10 11 12 13 14 15 On April 30, 1894, the Commonwealth of Christ came at last to 1 (1lh) Washington, D.C. Its representatives were politicos and workingmen— 2 not angels, to be sure—and their numbers were as unimpressive as their 3 (2lh) peculiar vision of millennial harmony. But in many ways their naïve 4 faith and simple, sweeping demands brought the nation full circle to the 5 Millerite believers of a half-century earlier and the millennial spirit that 6 did so much to shape the Age of Lincoln. Led by “General” Jacob Coxey, 7 a small-time Ohio politician, the five hundred–odd marchers who con- 8 stituted “Coxey’s Army”—newspapers derided them as tramps and 9 crackpots—called upon Congress to end unemployment, vanquish so- 10 cial strife, and regenerate rural communities and idle factories. By an 11 action both plain and radical, they set out on foot across the American 12 heartland from Massillon, Ohio, in late March, preaching a gospel of 13 national salvation through public works and full employment. The press 14 focused its ridicule on his monetary theory: the printing and circulating 15 of vast amounts of paper money. Backed by pledges of redemption from 16 the federal government—covenants of the sort that had underwritten 17 military victory in 1865 and shored up egalitarian efforts during Recon- 18 struction—Americans would literally purchase their way into utopia, 19 buying and selling goods, creating jobs, building bonds of property and 20 custom. The acme of statesmanship, the zenith of public service, and 21 S the chief duty of citizenship, it turned out, was to promote and facilitate 22 R

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1 consumption in the marketplace. Governance and worship both, for 2 Coxey and his followers, had mutated into little more than esoteric 3 forms of shopping. The City Upon a Hill had become Vanity Fair. 4 In its broad principles, the program of government-sponsored eco- 5 nomic recovery and social reform that Coxey promoted foreshadowed 6 the deficit-finance schemes that reshaped American capitalism forty 7 years down the road. But Coxey (who named his first son Legal Tender) 8 managed to tangle up notions of free enterprise, government activism, 9 and conservative moral reform in a theoretical stew that smelled pun- 10 gently socialist to some. The upshot was political farce. Marching up 11 Capitol Hill to declare his principles to the nation at the end of a five- 12 week trek, Coxey was arrested for walking on the grass. His corporal’s 13 guard of supporters scattered, and the spotlight faded. 14 Frank Baum, a ruined South Dakota storekeeper turned Chicago 15 journalist, witnessed the failure of “Coxey’s Army” up close. Baum knew 16 many farm families whose few years of contact with the market economy 17 had run athwart of drought or rain or pests or low prices or sickness or 18 something else. Susan Orcutt from western Kansas wrote to Governor 19 Lorenzo Lewelling in 1894 after hail destroyed her crops and garden, “I 20 take my Pen in hand to tell you that we are Starving to death. It is pretty 21 hard to do without anything to Eat hear in this God for saken country.” 22 How were the common farmers to cope, she wondered, when eastern 23 capital and harsh western nature conspired to wreck their fortunes? 24 Baum’s answer came in the form of a parable, an allegory on the elec- 25 tion of 1896. The children’s book he penned as a follow-up to his 1899 26 bestseller Father Goose transposed elements of personal experience and 27 political philosophy into a manifesto disguised as whimsical fiction. The 28 Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) traces the trials of everygirl Dorothy (the 29 syllables of whose name, reversed, read Theodore, after Republican re- 30 former Theodore Roosevelt) as she attempts to return to the tranquil 31 farm life from which she has been separated by a powerful cyclone. 32 Dorothy is assisted by a scarecrow who has his own problem: “If my 33 head stays stuffed with straw instead of with brains, as yours is, how am 34 I ever to know anything?” Even without the brains he so desires, the 35 scarecrow is as uncommonly sensible as many unschooled farmers. An- S 36 other companion is a tin woodman. Having had to work harder and R 37 faster, he accidentally chopped off pieces of himself that were then re-

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1 Lincoln. Under the pen name O. Henry, he wrote “The Cop and the 2 Anthem,” about a New York hobo who tries all manner of minor crime 3 in hopes of being thrown into a warm jail cell for the winter. Only when 4 he resolves, in a moment of heartfelt Christian repentance, to get a job 5 and rebuild his life is the final irony revealed. The tramp is arrested for 6 loitering; his personal millennium is forestalled, perhaps forever. With 7 that characteristic twist O. Henry told the story of modern America. 8 Hope was the most savage and fruitless delusion; modern men and 9 women were not meant for such fine feelings. 10 The history of the United States during the nineteenth century con- 11 centrates on sectional conflict, civil war, and Reconstruction. As the 12 meaning and expansion of freedom and of citizenship rights galvanized 13 the age, Lincoln was the fulcrum. Prior to the Civil War, America was in 14 the frenzy of a millennial age. Millennialism permeated antebellum po- 15 litical debate, undergirded the presumption of Manifest Destiny, and 16 buttressed the understanding of honor. Righteous men knew God’s 17 plan. Extremes eroded any middle ground as powerful constituencies 18 rallied to intransigent positions. For such fanatics, the purpose and 19 promise of America lay in protecting their right to hold those positions. 20 Contravening them was Abraham Lincoln and his particular sense of 21 southern honor. Lincoln recast America’s purpose, and his call for a new 22 birth of freedom came to fruition in new amendments to the Constitu- 23 tion, none of which was inevitable, all of which promised to embrace an 24 equality of opportunity that transcended any particular and exclusion- 25 ary right. Under rulings that touted “separate but equal,” the U.S. 26 Supreme Court put to rest those millennial schemes of equality; never- 27 theless the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments would 28 continue to promise freedom from slavery, equal protection under the 29 law, and the right to vote. Even as the darkness of the nadir began to set- 30 tle over the land, a handful of believing blacks, and a smaller number 31 still of trusting whites, put their faith in the law and continued to work 32 on redrawing freedom’s boundaries. 33 In the passing of the age, Americans gave up old dreams of heavenly 34 perfection and enshrined new hopes of material progress—incremental, 35 tangible, calculable in dollars and dimes, full bellies and fine clothes. In S 36 place of noble statesmen and great leaders, they trumpeted clean hands R 37 and efficient administration. In place of pure hearts, gentle spirits, and

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feminized consciences, they held up manly toil, stoic endurance, and the 1 virtue of struggling self-interest. But in the American mind, the Civil 2 War itself never truly ended. It was transmuted to a romantic memory, 3 the stuff of elaborate weekend rituals of bloodless battles during which 4 no contraband crossed enemy lines at risk of life. It flowered into a na- 5 tional pastime for vacationing families that took in the emotional majesty 6 of Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge without making sure to wrestle 7 likewise with untold lynchings across America. Whether found in the shock 8 of a geneticist discovering slaves in one’s family or in the wastes of New 9 Orleans’s devastated Ninth Ward, the war is with us still, as myth and re- 10 ality both. Just as in the Age of Lincoln, moral choice, democratic citi- 11 zenship, and equality still mingle. “Determine that the thing can and 12 shall be done,” wrote Lincoln, “and then we shall find the way.” 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 S 37 R

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