A Brief Moment in the Sun: Francis Cardozo and Reconstruction in South Carolina

A Brief Moment in the Sun: Francis Cardozo and Reconstruction in South Carolina Neil Kinghan Institute of the Americas, University College London This dissertation is submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 I, Neil Kinghan, confirm that the work presented in this dissertation is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the dissertation. Abstract This dissertation examines the life and career of Francis Lewis Cardozo, the first African American to win election to state-wide office in the United States, in April 1868. He served as Secretary of State, then as State Treasurer, for South Carolina from 1868 to 1877. He played a significant role in developing a new state constitution, in promoting land reform and public education and in securing financial stability for South Carolina. Unlike many of his peers, he was an honest and effective office holder, described by a local white newspaper as “the faithful one among the faithless many.” For that reason, the white Democratic government, returning to power after Reconstruction, prosecuted him on a trumped-up charge of fraud. They secured his conviction and, briefly, his imprisonment. Condemning him proclaimed the disgrace of Reconstruction as a whole. Cardozo was also a successful educator, at Saxton School in Charleston, between 1865 and 1868, later as Principal of the M Street High School in Washington, after his pardon and release from prison. In both schools, Cardozo’s purpose was to show that African American children could succeed on the same terms as white if given the opportunity. As a political leader, he believed that African Americans could govern alongside white people and win acceptance if they proved themselves capable. Despite his own successes, the white population was not persuaded. Racism prevailed and Reconstruction was defeated. Cardozo was the most powerful African American political leader in South Carolina. His experiences illuminate the history of Reconstruction. Yet there has been no full- length biography of him. His name has appeared regularly in histories of the period, but never at centre stage. This dissertation aims to recognise Cardozo’s central role in Reconstruction and his contribution as an educator, and to demonstrate why he should be remembered now. 2 Impact Statement The subject of my research is the life and career of Francis Lewis Cardozo and the history of Reconstruction in South Carolina in the 1860s and 1870s. Francis Cardozo was an African American educator in Charleston S.C. and in Washington D.C. and a leading figure in the government of South Carolina during Reconstruction. He is largely unknown in his home state and among students of nineteenth century American history. Inside academia, I hope that my dissertation will give Cardozo the recognition he deserves and fill a gap in the historiography of Reconstruction. African American political leaders of the nineteenth century have received relatively little attention from historians of the period, themselves mostly white, with the distinguished exceptions of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and Sojurner Truth. There have been a handful of biographies of others, none of Francis Cardozo. Cardozo was an outstanding educator and the most influential African American political leader in South Carolina during a remarkable period in its history. He was arguably the most effective and influential African American to hold elected office in the South between the Civil War and the Civil Rights era one hundred years later. He was one of a handful of “outstanding cases of notably incorruptible Negro leaders,” in the words of the African American historian, W.E.B. Du Bois.1 He was the target of a false charge of corruption, convicted and imprisoned, when the Democrats regained power in South Carolina in 1877. In traducing him, they succeeded in completing the picture of Reconstruction as a “tragic failure” and in undermining his reputation. My aim is both to restore Cardozo’s reputation to his rightful place in nineteenth century history and African American history and to provide a new perspective on the history of Reconstruction Outside academia, the image of Reconstruction is still characterised by “hoary fictions of a subjugated white South that are perpetuated by novels and films like Gone With the Wind and by some strands of contemporary political 1 W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1988) 617. 3 discourse.”2 The dissertation will seek to demonstrate that Reconstruction did not subjugate the South but opened it to inter-racial government for the first time. There was certainly corruption in southern states, but it was much exaggerated and no worse than elsewhere in the country. There was notable progress in education for both white and black children and in civil rights and land reform. Francis Cardozo played a leading part in securing that progress. Racism and white supremacy were the main factors in the defeat of Reconstruction. They were the inevitable legacy of slavery and they are still relevant today. A better understanding of Reconstruction and of the positive contributions of African Americans should demonstrate that they are as dangerous and negative now as they were then. 2 Thomas J. Brown ed. Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 8. 4 Contents: Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 1: Introduction 8 Chapter 2: Before Reconstruction, legacies in conflict: slavery and racial politics in South Carolina; Charleston’s free black community 44 Chapter 3: The Beginning of Reconstruction 76 Chapter 4: The Early Years of Reconstruction 108 Chapter 5: Reconstruction in Government: Cardozo, Scott and Moses 1868-1874 161 Chapter 6: Reconstruction in Government: Cardozo and Chamberlain 1874-1877 204 Chapter 7: After Reconstruction: Cardozo in South Carolina and Washington 262 Chapter 8: Reconstruction and Francis Cardozo: Conclusions 318 Bibliography 334 Illustrations: Photographs: of Francis Cardozo, on p.13; of his parents, Isaac Cardozo and Lydia Weston and of Francis as a child, on p.69; and of his wife, Catherine, on p.111. Cartoons of Franklin Moses Jr. on p.188 and of Daniel Chamberlain and Wade Hampton on p.240. 5 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful for all the help that I have had in preparing this dissertation over the last five years. At UCL’s Institute of the Americas, my supervisor, Iwan Morgan, has been a great guide and advisor, pushing me towards the best way to organise my thoughts and to say what I was trying to say better, avoiding diversions and mistakes. He has been unfailingly positive and encouraging, an exemplary mentor for a part-time student. I would also like to thank Tony McCulloch and Nick Witham at the Institute for their clear- thinking advice and help. I have been very fortunate in the academic support I have found in the United States. Lewis Burke, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina, has been remarkably generous with the research he conducted on my subject in preparing his outstanding article on Francis Cardozo, which was a key inspiration for my research. He gave me unlimited access to his research papers and copies of all that I wanted, and his expert advice. Dale Rosengarten, founding Director of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston Library, has been equally helpful in guiding me through South Carolina’s nineteenth century history, Jewish and non-Jewish, and a great source of contacts in the academic community. I was lucky enough to spend two months at Yale on a postgraduate student exchange and to benefit from its vast resources, thanks primarily to Crystal Feimster who was my sponsor there and whose classes I found inspiring. Best of all at Yale, I met Glenda Gilmore, then Professor of History and African American Studies there. Glenda has been immensely generous with her help and support and her knowledge of nineteenth century history, reading and commenting in detail on my draft chapters, and encouraging me to pursue my subject for the dissertation and the possibility of further development. There are many librarians, archivists and others to whom I am indebted, including: Jane Rawson, librarian of the Vere Harmsworth Library in Oxford, Steve Tuttle and Charles Lesser of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia, South Carolina, Michael Mounter of the Law School Library at the University of South Carolina, Kimberley Springle of the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives in Washington D.C., Margo Taylor of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven, 6 Connecticut, Nan Card at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library in Fremont, Ohio, and Patrick Kerwin of the Library of Congress in Washington. They have all been endlessly patient and helpful in answering my questions and helping me to track down obscure records. My wife, Lilian, has been a wonderful source of support and encouragement in the course of my research. She has been continually tolerant of the time that I have spent and of my absences to pursue it. I am grateful to her, as I have been for the last forty years. All of these have helped immeasurably in the preparation of this dissertation. The judgements and misjudgements in it are my own. Neil Kinghan, October 2019. 7 Chapter 1 Introduction “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back toward slavery”3 The elections of April 1868 in South Carolina and other southern states marked an extraordinary moment in the history of the United States. Just seven years earlier, these states had seceded from the Union to protect the institution of slavery and precipitated the Civil War.

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