- [Voiceover] Tennessee
Civil War 150 is made
possible in part by
Tennessee Civil War
National Heritage Area
and by First Tennessee
Foundation.
Steal away Steal
away home I ain't got
long to stay here
- [Voiceover] One month
before General Lee
surrendered at Appomattox,
and the end of the Civil
War, a crowd gathered
in front of our nation's
capital for the second
inauguration of President
Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln, a Republican, had
chosen southern Democrat,
Andrew Johnson as his vice
president, symbolizing the
approaching restoration
of the Union.
Johnson, a former Senator
and slave-owner from
Tennessee, had spent the
last three years as the
state's military governor.
In attendance that day
was abolitionist leader,
Frederick Douglass, whose
first glimpse of Johnson
would tell him everything
he needed to know about
the east Tennessean.
- [Douglass] There are
moments in the lives of
most men when the doors of
their souls are open and
unconsciously to
themselves, their true
characters may be read
by the observant eye.
It was at such an instant
when I caught a glimpse of
the real nature of this
man, which all subsequent
developments proved true.
I was standing in the
crowd when Mr. Lincoln
pointed me out to him.
The first expression which
came to his face and which
I think was the true index
of his heart was one of
bitter contempt
and aversion.
Seeing that I had observed
him, he tried to assume a
more friendly appearance
but it was too late.
Whatever Andrew Johnson
may be, he is no friend of
our race.
- [Voiceover] In his
address, President Lincoln
promised to bind the
wounds of the divided
country, with malice
toward none and charity
for all.
Powerful words which
failed to move one
audience member.
Just a few weeks later,
well known actor and
Confederate sympathizer,
John Wilkes Booth, would
murder Lincoln, placing
Johnson in the White House
and in charge of
southern Reconstruction.
- [Johnson] I will be your
Moses and lead you through
the Red Sea of war and
bondage, to a fairer
future of liberty
and peace.
I speak now as one who
feels all who love equal
rights, his friends.
- He was so adamant
against African Americans
getting any equal rights
at all, that Lincoln
became annoyed
with Johnson.
Johnson is, in my book,
outright anti-Black.
He is pro-slavery all the
way, so when he made that
speech, I'll be your
Moses to the blacks in
Nashville, remember he's
speaking politically, he
can't say I'm against
slaves being freed.
But we must remember that
Andrew Johnson's attitude
was the attitude of the
many people across the
United States.
As one writer said, "You
could legislate laws "but
you can't legislate
people's hearts."
- [Voiceover] Privately
harboring contempt for
freed men, Andrew Johnson
had for years, publicly
declared his hatred for
the wealthy plantation
owners who had chosen
secession rather than risk
losing their slaves.
- [Johnson] Robbery is a
crime, rape is a crime,
treason is a crime and
crime must be punished.
- When Johnson becomes the
President of the United
States, the Radical
Republicans believed they
have someone we can
work with in Johnson.
They've had issues
with President Lincoln.
Lincoln has been a road
block in the path of
Radical Reconstruction
in the South.
Johnson's on-record, I
am your Moses, to the
Tennessee freed people,
his statements of
punishing traitors
in the South.
Little did they know that
Johnson would be much
worse than
Abraham Lincoln.
- Andrew Johnson was
part of the slavocracy.
He wasn't a major
plantation owner but he
owned slaves.
Their world was based on
that premise, so much of
it, not just political
power but their culture,
their own identity.
So that's hard to
move away from.
- When he gets to the
Presidency, blacks go to
see him.
Frederick Douglass, six or
seven of black delegation
and they visit Johnson and
Johnson is sitting there,
looking all mean and mad,
because these Negros would
dare, you know, come and
question him about, "What
are you gonna do about
Black Reconstruction?
"We think blacks ought
to have equal rights "and
they also ought to have
the suffrage, "that is the
right to vote." And
Johnson looks at them and
says, "Well, we're not
gonna uplift the black man
"before we uplift poor
whites in this country."
And he is particularly
angry when the issue comes
about, about giving blacks
equal citizenship because
he's arguing, "Well,
we've got all these whites
"coming in as immigrants
and they were pouring in,
"who's gotta wait, you
know, seven years "before
they can become a citizen.
"And you're asking
the country just to
grandfather in "4.5
million slaves and freed
Negros, "and they don't
have to do anything, "they
just automatically become
citizens." So he was
totally against that and
Johnson would try all he
could to impede that.
Douglass interrupts him
and Johnson is angry.
And he said, "Well, we
see where the President
stands, "so we'll go to
the people." And Johnson
says, "Well, you
go to the people.
"I understand the people
too," you know, he's very
angry and so after that,
Black Reconstruction is
gonna be different because
blacks are gonna have to
go around Johnson and
they're gonna go directly
to Congress.
After Douglass and the
black delegation left,
Johnson says to one of his
colleagues, "That so and
so Frederick Douglass, "he
would as well cut a white
man's throat as anything."
So Johnson was determined
that they would not gonna
rise faster than the poor
white man rose.
- [Voiceover] Tennessee,
like much of the South,
had been devastated
by the war.
Farms and homes had been
pillaged by foraging
armies.
Infrastructure had
been destroyed.
Thousands of fathers
and sons would not be
returning home.
While thousands more
would never be the same.
Shaken to its very
foundation, the Southern
economy, based primarily
on the enslavement of
millions of African
Americans had been
crushed, and difficult
questions arose from the
ruins.
- How do you deal with
this huge population of
people who have, who are
saying to the nation,
we're not gonna be slaves?
Economically, how do you
reconstruct the South?
And you can't do that
unless you have a stable
labor system.
Unless you have some way
of getting the crops in
and getting the
production restarted.
You have this agency, the
Freedmen's Bureau that's
created, the Bureau of
Freedmen, Refugees, and
Abandoned Lands, and that
describes everything that
they were responsible for.
It's created to try to
figure out what do you do
with the freedmen, how do
you introduce this free
labor system into the
South, and how's it going
to work.
And again, nobody
really knows.
- The plan was just for
one year to provide the
kinds of immediate things
that they needed, food,
shelter, medical
assistance, legal
assistance.
The Freedmen's Bureau kind
of evolves and takes on
different roles over time
as it becomes necessary to
negotiate land deals,
work contracts.
- But that doesn't
necessarily mean that all
of the people who are
involved in this process
are people who are
thinking in terms of what
is in the best interest of
the freed people and what
that eventually results
in, is the exploitation of
black labor.
- The Civil War left
so many blacks without
mothers and fathers
before the age of 18.
There were many of these
people split up on farms
and plantations, mothers
and fathers gone somewhere
else and so they had an
apprenticeship program and
that apprenticeship
program allowed farmers to
gain an apprenticeship
certificate for homeless
or orphaned black
children, and they could
keep them until they
were 18 years of age.
And so they were
practically slaves.
- [Beverly] If you look
at the Freedmen's Bureau
records, if you look at
court papers, you see
cases where children who
had once been slaves on a
plantation, they turn up
in court records as now
being indentured to the
owner of that plantation,
and the owner of the
plantation saying the
parents abandoned
the child.
That could mean
a lot of things.
You see some cases enough
as it, again, where
fathers returned from the
military to discover that
their children had been
indentured to their former
owners.
You see women who have no
other way of supporting
themselves, other
than remaining in the
countryside.
And even if they come
to the city, that's no
guarantee that they'll
be able to remain in the
city.
Many of them were
forced back to the rural
countryside so here's a
woman who is poor, who has
to work on the plantation,
who is forced to sign a
labor contract, sometimes
by the Freedmen's Bureau.
- [Voiceover] Far from
perfect, the Freedmen's
Bureau was understaffed
and underfunded, but
managed to ease the
transition to freedom in a
number of ways.
- Perhaps its most
enduring gift to black
America was the
establishment of schools.
The newly freedmen really
wanted education, they had
a thirst and a desire that
was unparallel up until
their time.
- Some of the first
institutions that
developed are the schools
and the churches within
these communities.
People valued education as
a way of getting ahead, as
a way of preparing them
for the future, as a way
of maybe making sure that
the life that you're going
to live in the future
is not the life that you
lived for so long.
- [Maxwell] We shall be
heard before Congress and
before the legislature.
We want the right to
guarantee by the Infinite
Architect.
For these rights, we
labor, for them, we will
die.
We have gained
one, the uniform.
We want two more boxes
besides the cartridge box.
The ballot, and
the jury box.
We shall gain them.
- One thing that really
propelled the quick
formation of political
organizations among
African Americans, people
forget that they were
freed blacks in numbers,
in Tennessee, before the
Civil War.
Now they weren't in huge
numbers, just in the
hundreds, but that gave
you some basis to start
thinking politically.
These people had been
thinking politically,
they'd been their own
independent actors.
These weren't guys
being led by someone.
They knew what they wanted
to accomplish as new
citizens of the
United States.
- [Voiceover] As freedmen
demanded new rights,
former masters lamented
the loss of theirs.
Ex-Confederates, the
overwhelming majority of
Tennessee voters had been
disfranchised, effectively
banning rebel soldiers
and sympathizers from the
electoral process.
During the war,
Confederates had made the
lives of
anti-secessionists a
living hell.
Now the Unionists, hungry
for revenge, were in
control of state
government.
No one was surprised
when they chose a sharp
tongued, east Tennessee
preacher, turned newspaper
owner to become governor.
William Gannaway Brownlow
earned his nickname, The
Fighting Parson, through
years of scathing
editorials aimed at
secessionists, his old
political foe, Andrew
Johnson and anyone else
who disagreed with him.
Imprisoned and later
forced to leave the state
by Confederate
authorities, Brownlow was
widely considered the most
hated man in Tennessee.
- The best way to
characterize William
Brownlow's governing style
in Tennessee, is to look
at his newspaper.
When Brownlow returned to
Knoxville with the Union
Army in August 1863,
he quickly re-setup his
newspaper.
And when his first paper
rode off the press in
November 63, it was
now titled, Brownlow's
Knoxville Whig and
Rebel Ventilator, which
reflected his
editorial strategy.
- [Brownlow] Let
them be punished.
Let them be impoverished.
Let them be slain, after
slain, let them be damned.
- [William] The Civil
War and Reconstruction in
Tennessee is a story
that's rich in irony.
It says he was
exempted from Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation,
out of fear that it would
collapse the Unionist
Coalition because of the
abolishment of slavery
which was very unpopular
among many Unionists.
And yet, Tennessee was
the first among the
Confederate states to
abolish the institution of
slavery, nearly seven
weeks before the collapse
of the Confederacy.
- There was no controversy
in Tennessee about going
ahead and freeing the
slaves in early 1865.
The problem became for
Tennessee, now that the
war is over, how do
we come back together?
The ex-Confederates cannot
vote but in the state
house, you have two
different groups of
Unionists.
You have the Radicals
who want to punish the
ex-Confederates for all of
the damage of the war and
make sure that they are
never allowed to return to
power.
And then you have these
conservative Unionists who
are determined to put the
war behind them and bring
the state back together
as peacefully as possible.
The conservative Unionists
felt like these people
were our neighbors, the
war is over and done with,
we've freed the slaves,
let us bring our state
back together.
So you began seeing a
tremendous tension between
Governor Brownlow and some
of the more conservative
members of the Tennessee
General Assembly.
- [Voiceover] Tensions
stretched far beyond the
confines of the capital.
Former rebels, furious
about the rising power of
Radical Unionists and
former slaves, resorted to
the same type of
guerrilla, vigilantism
common during the war.
Several terrorist bands
formed across the South.
However, none would
achieve the size or infamy
of the Klu Klux Klan.
Formed in Pulaski,
Tennessee by six former
Confederate officers, the
Klan would grow in numbers
and ferocity as freedmen
attained more rights.
- They were hell bent
on targeting Radicals,
whether they were
white or black.
These are seen as
targeting blacks.
But they also targeted
white Radicals.
Assassinated a Tennessee
Senator, Senator Case.
- [Voiceover] But night
riders weren't the only
source of violence.
Racial tension increased
across the state as
freedmen crowded
into urban areas.
In May 1866, the simmer
came to a boil in Memphis.
- You've got
unreconstructed
Confederates and black
soldiers who had been
mustered out of the
Union Army through Fort
Pickering which was
the Union fort here.
So you've got a growing
number of black soldiers
who are in the fort but
also in the community as a
whole.
And you got this conflict
that's developing.
And then there's a
confrontation on a street
and it kind of bubbles up
into a major, major riot.
A massacre, really.
The overwhelming number
of victims of robbery,
murder, rape, everything
in the city during that
three day period is
African American.
In the course of the riot,
of course every Black
Church building or school
that had been built is
burned.
Many, many black
businesses that are
beginning to start, they
are destroyed, so it's
very clear that this is
not just a fight between
two groups.
It's a political thing
that's going on here.
There's this feeling that
this black community is
emerging, now we
have to suppress it.
- [Voiceover] Leaving
48 dead, 46 of whom were
black, and more than 100
injured, the Memphis Riot
was a wake up call to
Radical Republicans in
Washington.
Fed up with Andrew
Johnson's lenient
restoration policy,
Republicans had begun
exercising their power
to override presidential
vetoes of civil
rights legislation.
Presidential
reconstruction was giving
way to congressional or
radical reconstruction.
- Congress proposed
another Amendment, the
14th Amendment, which
said that all people are
protected by the
due process of law.
And this 14th Amendment
essentially guaranteed
African Americans their
rights as citizens, and
Congress took over
Reconstruction, they
weren't willing to
just restore the Union,
Congress wanted to rebuild
their whole political
structure, that was
totally contrary to Andrew
Johnson's views of how the
South should be brought
back into the Union.
- [Voiceover] Back in
Tennessee, The Fighting
Parson saw things
differently.
Willing to do whatever it
took to return his state
to the Union, he made
passing the new Amendment
a priority.
This would pit him
against his fellow east
Tennessean, and now
President for the first
time since the
rebellion began.
For nearly 30 years,
Brownlow and Andrew
Johnson were political
rivals, but their loyalty
to the Union trumped
any other disagreement.
During the war, they
joined forces against
secession.
With Tennessee's
Restoration within reach
however, Brownlow had no
qualm about angering the
man he used to refer
to as Toady Johnson.
- It's a showdown between
Governor Brownlow and
President Johnson.
When the men had came to
the floor in the General
Assembly, for
ratification, for a vote,
Tennessee's conservative
legislators skipped town.
All that was left were the
Radical Republicans and
thus we have a problem, no
quorum, in order to take a
vote on the
14th Amendment.
Governor Brownlow had the
sheriff of Davidson County
arrest the conservative
legislators.
The sheriff was able to
locate two conservative
legislators and brought
them back to the General
Assembly where they were
kept under lock and key.
A quorum was now
established, although they
were not allowed to vote.
After the 14th Amendment
was ratified by the
General Assembly, Governor
Brownlow wired the clerk
of the United States
Senate to declare, "We
have fought the battle
and won it, "Two of Andrew
Johnson's tools
not voting.
"Please give my regards to
the dead dog of the White
House."
- [Voiceover] Tennessee
was welcomed back into the
Union but The Fighting
Parson's heavy handed
tactics were taking a
toll on Radical rule.
Many of his supporters
were beginning to align
themselves with
the Conservatives.
With elections approaching
and Radical support
dwindling, Brownlow
was convinced by his
colleagues to extend
voting rights to the
freedmen.
- [Brownlow] Now is the
time for Tennessee to show
to the world that she
belongs to the advanced
guard on the great
question of equal
suffrage.
Without their votes,
the state will pass into
disloyal hands and a reign
of terror will be the
result.
- Brownlow did not believe
that blacks and whites
should be equal, but
Brownlow is an opportunist
and Brownlow is a
practical politican as
much as Lincoln is,
and Brownlow knows his
political success is based
upon whether he can keep
control of Tennessee.
And the one way to do that
is to influence us Negros.
- [Voiceover] In February
1867, Tennessee became the
first rebel state to
allow black men to vote.
This further infuriated
most Tennesseans,
including many Radicals.
But the ballots of 40,000
pro-Union freedmen would
ensure Brownlow's
reelection, continued
Radical rule
and bloodshed.
- [Bobby] That really was
the straw that broke the
camel's back.
- [William] Once black
suffrage is a reality in
Tennessee, the Klu Klux
Klan's numbers multiplied.
Lawlessness pervaded large
portions of middle and
western Tennessee.
- [Voiceover] Three
months after black
enfranchisement, former
Confederate General Nathan
Bedford Forrest, the
Wizard of the Saddle,
became Grand
Wizard of the KKK.
Famous as his success as
a cavalry commander and
infamous for the massacres
of black Union soldiers at
Fort Pillow, Forrest
publicly denied his
involvement with the
Klan, while defending its
purpose.
- [Forrest] There was a
great deal of insecurity
felt by the
southern people.
There were a great many
northern men coming down
there, forming leagues
all over the country.
The negroes were holding
night meetings and were
going about and
becoming insolent.
And the southern people
all over the state were
very much alarmed.
I think this organization
was got up to protect the
weak, with no political
intention at all.
- [Voiceover] Contrary to
Forrest claim, returning
Democrats to power
was its primary goal.
And efforts to reach that
goal using intimidation,
terrorism and cold-blooded
murder intensified with
black suffrage.
- [Moore] They took
me from the house and
stripped me, and whipped
me with a strap of leather
with the buckle on the
end, striking me 175
licks.
This Klan asked me
if I was a Radical.
They told me that no
colored man should vote in
the Presidential election.
That they should
be killed first.
I do not believe that any
colored or white Union man
is safe.
The Klan which whipped
me told me to take my
bloodied shirt and
carry it to Brownlow.
- [Voiceover] Tennessee's
readmission to the Union
in 1866, exempted it
from further federal
Reconstruction, which also
meant the loss of federal
troops.
The Fighting Parson was in
desperate need of someone
to fight the Klan.
- Brownlow's answer to the
Klu Klux Klan was his own
Radical State Guard, which
he put together in 1867.
Their mission was simple,
go out and find the Klu
Klux Klan, arrest them.
The problem is, that
once the State Guard was
assembled, the Klu Klux
Klan wisely went into
hiding.
- [Voiceover] While
effective, keeping the
State Guard in the field
was expensive, a problem
compounded by the enormous
debt Tennessee accumulated
as a result of the war.
In a lethal game of cat
and mouse, as soon as the
troops were withdrawn,
night riders returned with
a vengeance.
- Things were so bad in
Tennessee, that we were
very near having a little
internal war within our
own state.
The situation here was
so bad, with the Klan's
harassment of freedmen
and indirect harassment of
Governor Brownlow, that
John McCormick Lee, a very
conservative Unionist went
to Washington and met with
President Johnson saying
the fact that Brownlow
refuses to let any of the
ex-Confederates vote is
creating a very
volatile situation.
President Johnson was
unable to step in by that
point, he had his own
personal problems to
contend with
in Washington.
- [Sumner] This is one
of the last great battles
with slavery.
Driven from the
legislative chambers,
driven from the field of
war, this monstrous power
has found a refuge in the
executive mansion, nobody
can question it.
Andrew Johnson is the
impersonation of the
tyrannical slave power.
In him it lives again.
- The conflict between
President Andrew Johnson
and Congress
was inevitable.
Congress felt that he was
far too lenient on his
fellow southerners and he
felt that Congress was too
hard.
So the showdown really
began when Congress passed
the Tenure of Office Act,
saying that the President
of the United States could
not fire anyone from his
Cabinet without the
express approval by the
United States Congress.
And Johnson had been
at odds throughout his
Presidency with his
Secretary of War, Edwin
Stanton, and
Johnson fired him.
So the House of
Representatives promptly
drew up impeachment
charges against President
Johnson for violation of
the Tenure of Office Act.
- The act to remove
Secretary Stanton was
designed to lead
to impeachment.
Because what President
could not fight against
such a law, that he could
not remove his own Cabinet
officers without
Congressional approval.
It was a step across the
line of separation of
powers.
So this is where
Constitutional scholars
look at Johnson and say,
"Well, you know, "maybe he
wasn't a great President
"but he was right to stand
up for the Presidency
"in that whole dispute,
"because the Radical
Republicans had gone too
far."
- [Voiceover] Johnson's
impeachment proceedings,
the first in US history,
dragged on for most of the
spring in 1868.
The final vote could not
have been much closer.
- He missed being
impeached by just one
vote.
The two Congressmen
from Tennessee voted for
acquittal, one of those
Congressmen was Johnson's
son-in-law.
- [Voiceover] Johnson's
battle to remain
Washington was over, but
back in Tennessee, the
battle with the
Klan was raging.
Reports of violent raids
across the state led
Governor Brownlow to
reassemble his militia.
The Fighting Parson's
orders to exterminate the
KKK were met with threats
of all out war, from the
Wizard himself.
- [Forrest] If they go
hunting down and shooting
these men, there will be
war and a bloodier one
then we've ever witnessed.
I have told these Radicals
what they might expect in
such an event.
I have no powder to
burn killing negroes.
I intend to kill
the Radicals.
And if trouble should
break out, not one of them
would be left alive.
- [Voiceover] In spite of
death threats, Brownlow
redeployed the militia,
sending the night riders
temporarily back
into the shadows.
Midway through his second
term as Governor, The
Fighting Parson set his
sight on a new goal,
transitioning to the
national political arena
as a US Senator.
- Brownlow's shift to the
Senate shocked a lot of
people because, well he
had fought so hard as
Governor and he said he
was willing to give his
life for the cause and
taken such radical steps
himself.
But I think he could see
the handwriting on the
wall.
His own support within
the Republican Party in
Tennessee had faded
because of some of his
extra Constitutional
actions.
Also, I think he
understood that maybe the
federal government was not
worried about Tennessee,
they had southern states
with bigger issues than
Tennessee at that time.
- [Carole] So, the General
Assembly was quite happy
to elect him to that
position, and our Speaker
of the Senate, Dewitt
Senter, became Governor of
Tennessee.
- [Voiceover] The new
Republican Governor took
the reins of a party that
was tearing itself apart.
Governor Senter, a
moderate, watched
helplessly as Radical
Unionists, which included
the freedmen and
conservative factions who
were rebel sympathizers,
became further polarized.
As Senter's campaign for
reelection geared up, the
infighting erupted in May
of 1869, at the Republican
Convention in Nashville.
- Tennessee's Radical
Republicans became the
laughing stock, as these
reports of delegates
throwing punches,
pistols being drawn.
- [Voiceover] News of
the mayhem would pale in
comparison to reaction of
Governor Senter's address
to the Convention.
- After discussing his
vision for a post-Civil
War Tennessee, Senter then
turned to the issue of the
day, and dropped a
political bomb, as he
announced that he was
now in favor of universal
suffrage, extending the
right to vote to the
former Confederates.
He needs the conservatives
in order to beat the
Radicals.
That's the key to winning
the Governorship in
Tennessee.
And here we get the
process of Senter ensuring
his election.
He begins removing
Brownlow appointed
commissioners
of registration.
One of Senter's
appointees is John P.
Baughman, who has
a checkered past.
He is acknowledged as a
Unionist during the Civil
War but he's also known
for having Confederate
sympathies as well.
You start getting letters
from people in Shelby
County to Governor Senter
saying this guy is a
Confederate.
And what's he doing, he
giving the right to vote
not only to conservatives
but he's also giving the
right to vote to
former Confederates.
And that's what started
happening with these
conservative
commissioners, they
started extending the
right to vote to the
former Confederates and we
get William vs Boughner.
And in the Supreme Court,
a court of Brownlow
appointed Justices, they
find in favor of Governor
Senter.
Senter as Governor, has a
right to appoint his own
officials.
This was a power that
Brownlow and Brownlow's
legislature had
given Brownlow.
So now we have Senter
using the election
machinery that Radial
Republicans created for
Brownlow, he's also using
powers that Brownlow's
legislators gave him.
Once Willams vs Boughner
comes down in favor of
Senter, we began to see a
wholesale removal of any
remaining Brownlow
appointed commissioners of
registration.
And so now we see
Tennessee Confederates
flocking to the
Commissioner of
Registrations office
for a certificate.
And there are reports
coming in to Senter that
there are as many as a
thousand or two thousand
rebels getting
certificates a day.
- [Voiceover] Governor
Senter had opened a
political Pandora's Box,
and former rebels swarmed
the polls on Election Day.
- [Stillwell] The rebels
are jubilant, insolent and
overbearing.
The elections in this end
of the state will all be
carried by force,
and fawn for Senter.
What is to become of us?
- [William] Even after the
August 1869 election, when
Governer Senter
is reelected and
Reconstruction has
collapsed in Tennessee,
Tennessee Radicals
don't give up hope.
They still believe
that the Republicans in
Congress in Washington
will overturn this
election.
They believe President
Grant will invalidate the
election returns.
And so we have a race to
Washington right after the
election.
But President Grant can't
be found in Washington,
he's in New York City.
And so when the Tennessee
Radicals leave Washington
to go up to New York City
to have a conversation
with President Grant, to
see what the President can
do.
Will he intervene
in Tennessee?
Who do they find there?
Governor Senter has
already arrived in New
York City and he's having
a conversation with
President Grant.
In this private closed
door meeting with the
President, Senter
reassures Grant that
Tennessee has been
thoroughly reconstructed.
There was no election
fraud in Tennessee.
There are no more
rebels in Tennessee.
- [Voiceover] Pleas from
Tennessee Radicals for
federal intervention
received little support
from President
Grant or Congress.
There would be no rescue
for Reconstruction.
Back in the state capital,
redeemed Confederates
wasted little time
erasing Parson Brownlow's
legislation.
- So with the
ex-Confederates now voting
and coming back to
Nashville to the General
Assembly, one of the very
first things that took
place was a rewriting of
the State Constitution.
A Constitutional
Convention was held, the
Constitution was written
to be heavily in favor of
the ex-Confederates, and
at that point, James C.
Napier, a Nashvillian, who
was an African American
lawyer and businessman,
went to Washington with a
delegation of other
African Americans from
Nashville to plead with
President Ulysses S.
Grant to send troops to
Nashville to protect the
African Americans.
Mr. Napier saw that the
voting rights were soon
going to dissipate
and be taken away.
And he wanted Tennessee
to be put under military
reconstruction as the
other 10 states of the
Confederacy had been.
- Why did Congress
intervene in other
southern states but never
in Tennessee and that's
because Tennessee had
readmitted to the Union.
No one in Congress
believed they had the
authority to do so now
that there was a loyal,
functioning civil
government in Tennessee.
Tennessee's Reconstruction
experience should have
served as a warning to
the Radical Republicans in
Washington DC.
If Radical Reconstruction
wasn't going to work in
Tennessee, in a state that
had a sizable Unionist
coalition, Radical
Reconstruction wasn't
going to work
anywhere in the South.
- [Voiceover] The war
weary nation was eager to
close what had been the
most painful chapter in
its young history.
Turning its gaze westward,
America turned its back on
its most vulnerable
citizens.
Promises of new rights,
new freedoms would have to
wait for nearly 100 years.
The freedmen's brief
moment in the sun was
fading and would soon
set across the South.
- In revising the
Constitution, they put in
a lot of racial things in
there, poll tax, end time,
Jim Crow stuff went
into the 1870 Tennessee
Constitution that was
allowed by the federal
government.
The failure of
Reconstruction made the
federal government a
co-conspirator in the
establishment of Jim Crow
in the United States.
- [Voiceover] Insult was
added to injury in 1871
when Governor Senter was
succeeded by John Calvin
Brown, a former
Confederate General and
leader of the
Klu Klux Klan.
- The Klan dispersed
to some degree after
ex-Confederates came back
to power but just because
the Klan disintegrated did
not mean this pervasive
racism and resentment
towards the former slaves
was ended.
Indeed that racism and
tremendous resistance to
equality continued
to live on.
Throughout the 1870s and
80s across the south,
African Americans
continued to lose more and
more ground, economically,
politically and in every
way.
The ex-Confederates,
before the Civil War, had
wealth because of
land and slaves.
Now, they've lost their
slaves but they haven't
lost their land.
The wealthiest, most elite
landowners were able to
come back to their former
position and status in the
state.
The way that they were
able to do this was by
instituting as a
substitute for slave
labor,
sharecropping labor.
- The whole labor process
after the Civil War for
freed people goes
through stages.
You know, at first it's
that contract that the
Freedmen's Bureau is
helping to negotiate.
Then you start to see
in some of the labor
contracts something that
approaches what we'll
eventually call
sharecropping.
- Because I was a slave,
I don't own any land, I
don't own a home, I don't
own much of anything.
For 20 years I had been a
slave, I had been involved
in agricultural labor but
you can't farm without
land and because one
of the failures of the
Freedmen's Bureau was its
efforts to redistribute
abandoned
confiscated lands.
Because they were
reclaimed by their
Confederate owners, you
find that freed blacks'
only recourse is to become
a part of the system where
I get to farm your land
and in exchange you are
promised a portion
of my harvest.
Which sounds really good
but I don't have any power
in that, one, I have
to farm your land.
Two, I need supplies to
farm your land which means
I probably am running
up a credit with you.
Three, you're the one
that's keeping track of
the credit and four, I'm
gonna probably have to
sell my crop to you anyway
and so you're gonna tell
me what it's valued,
you're gonna take whatever
portion of it that you
want and I might be upside
down at the end
of every season.
Which means that instead
of you owing me, I now owe
you.
And attached to that, this
horrible cycle of debt is
really the perilousness of
agriculture and farming.
Because I can't guarantee
a good season, I can't
guarantee there's not
going to be a drought,
there's not going to be a
rain, there's not going to
be a bug that comes in
and swallows up the crop.
- Sharecropping was a
terribly unfair, cruel
institution.
The sharecroppers were
never able to make enough
money, to buy pieces of
land and thus they were
held to the land in a
situation not unlike
slavery.
- Another thing including
that is everybody was hurt
because in some places in
Tennessee, in Mississippi
and so on, the majority of
sharecroppers were white.
Poverty was stalking the
South after Reconstruction
among whites and blacks,
but it was worse among
black sharecroppers 'cos
now they had no political
rights, they had
no economic rights
whatsoever.
- [Voiceover] Seeing no
future for themselves in
an unreconstructed South,
thousands of African
American Tennesseans left
the region as part of the
Black Exodus.
- [Bobby] Benjamin "Pap"
Singleton, former slave
from Davidson County,
really led that exodus.
He says to the former
slaves and especially in
the Nashville middle
Tennessee area, "Why
should you stay here and
be a sharecropper "and
live on the same
plantation where you were
a slave?
"You know if you live on
the same farm, "the same
plantation where you were
a slave, "nothing is going
to change." Singleton goes
around to these contraband
camps telling people, you
know, you need to have
your own land.
Whether you were black or
white, the real commodity
in those days and time
was a piece of land.
And the Homestead Act
was passed in 1862, and
there's plenty
of land out west.
And so we estimate maybe
25,000 or more went west
on what we call the Black
Exodus between 1869 and
1881.
- [Voiceover 2] Thousands
of colored people unable
to endure the intolerable
hardships, injustice and
suffering inflicted
upon them by a class of
Democrats in the South
had in utter despair, fled
panic-stricken from
their homes and sought
protection among strangers
in a strange land.
Thousands more were
congregating along the
banks of the Mississippi,
hailing the passing
steamers and imploring
them for a passage to the
land of freedom, where
the rights of citizens are
respected, and honest
toil rewarded by honest
compensation.
The very air was burdened
with the cry of distress
from American citizens
flying from persecutions
which they could
no longer endure.
- [Bobby] The federal
government did a very poor
job in supporting the
Black Exodus, in fact they
had a Congressional
hearing and they were
opposed to it.
They were finding ways
to stop blacks from going
into Kansas and into
Oklahoma and into Nebraska
and Iowa and those places
where you could get free
land because whites were
objecting, "We don't want
any competition "and now
you're gonna send so many
slaves "out here to
be homesteaders."
- [Voiceover 3] We regard
this attempt to transfer a
people without means and
without intelligence from
the homes of their
nativity as injurious to
the people of the South
and injurious to the black
people themselves.
All the attempts of
legislation, inflammatory
appeals of politicians
and newspapers, the
misdirected philanthropy
of certain classes of
citizens and all other
influences to disturb the
equanimity of the colored
people of the South and to
make them discontented
with their position are
doing them an incalculable
injury, to say nothing of
pecuniary losses inflicted
upon southern communities.
Congress, having enacted
all the legislation for
the benefit of the colored
people of the South which
it can enact, place these
people upon a footing of
perfect equality
before the law.
The sooner they are taught
to know that their true
interests is promoted by
cultivating the friendship
of their white neighbors
instead of their enmity,
the sooner they will gain
that friendship, and once
fully attained, there is
nothing to bar the way to
their speedy civilization
and advancement in wealth
and prosperity.
- They should have
supported it rather than
oppose it, and if more
African Americans could
have been independent
and that is, by being
landowners, then the
post-Reconstruction
history probably
would have turned out
differently.
- Reconstruction in
Tennessee is the great
missed opportunity.
The state had suffered so
much during the Civil War
period.
We all know the major
battles, we all know the
hundreds of thousands who
were affected directly by
the war, it just scarred
families for generations.
They did have a chance to
maybe envision a different
future and to move forward
but the state wasn't ready
for it, just like the
nation wasn't ready for
it.
'Cos that would have
called for really thinking
about what white supremacy
meant in a former slave
society.
And people were not
ready to go that way.
They think about it
as a failure because
integration didn't
happen and we still had
segregation and Jim
Crow would come and
sharecropping was almost
as bad as slavery.
Consider that phrase,
"almost as bad".
It's not slavery, it's
economic peonage but it's
not slavery.
And yes, I think as a
state and a nation we
missed a chance to move
forward quicker but it
wasn't in the cards.
But did African Americans
focus just on what they
didn't get?
No, they focused on what
they had, and they did
have this sort of new
breath of freedom.
And they were not slaves
anymore, and they could
start to build their own
institutions, and they
did.
I mean certainly there
were philanthropic
societies and missionary
groups helping African
Americans start things,
but that's all they did to
help them start.
To sustain them, to
grow them, to become
neighborhoods,
communities.
- Black communities began
to gather their resources
together, and to
provide services.
You have churches, black
congregations that are
separating themselves from
the white congregations
that they had once
been a part of.
And organizing or setting
up their own independent
black churches.
They want to construct
their own building but
they start to worship
first in what's called a
brush arbor.
They hold all kinds of
fairs and bake sales and
everything to raise money.
They even raise money to
provide for the services
of a doctor, for African
Americans in this
community.
And that's pretty much
what you saw happening,
how communities, the
black community itself in
Memphis, and I'm sure in
Nashville as well, begins
to gather together to
provide for some of these
services.
- I always look to the
community of Orange Mound,
Tennessee.
Now folks who lived there
in Orange Mound in 1860s,
they weren't even
a person, they were
three-fifths of a
person according to the
Constitution.
In 1870, well they were a
person now with freedom,
maybe not full civil
rights at all but
opportunity, and by 1890,
they had built there in
Memphis, the state's
first all African American
neighborhood.
Designed by African
Americans, lived in by
African Americans who were
not renters, they were
homeowners.
They had started
down that path.
Now what a transition for
those individuals in 1860
who were three-fifths
of a person.
They were now a
property owner.
- It's amazing that in
spite of every adversity
which seems like every
single block being stacked
up against you that there
are blacks who come out of
this period who are able
to create a world for
themselves, to create
opportunities for their
families.
- It was certainly
a time of challenge.
But let's look at
what was created.
When you consider the
primacy of some of these
universities, such as Fisk
University, Lane College
in Jackson, LeMoyneÃ¢â "Owen
College in Memphis, these
have produced thousands
upon thousands of
graduates who have
affected and changed
America.
And then you think of the
churches, and you think of
the schools, and you think
of all these institutions
that grew out of this
time, those are still the
bedrock of our African
American communities and
neighborhoods today.
That's where they go
back to to celebrate
themselves, their
families, their
traditions.
That's no mean feat, being
created in these terrible
years of Reconstruction.
- [Voiceover] Tennesse
Civil War 150 is made
possible in part by
Tennessee Civil War
National Heritage Area
and by First Tennessee
Foundation.
