HISTORY OF TENNESSEE
Reconstruction and the New South
*On 14 April 1865, President Lincoln was shot, dying the next day, and
Vice-President Andrew Johnson or Tennessee became the 17th president of
the United States, while Isham Harris, who led Tennessee into the war,
fled to Mexico and then to Europe, although he later came home and
served in the US Senate from 1877-1897.
*With the end of the Civil War, the South was devastated and needed to
be rebuilt or, in the parlance of the time, reconstructed. Who
would determine how this would be done, and how would they do it?
*As early as 1863 Lincoln had created a plan for bringing the Southern
states back into the Union. According to his theory that they had
never seceded in the first place, this was a fairly simple
affair. Lincoln’s plan required 10% of the voters registered in
each Southern state in 1860 to swear allegiance to the Union, so it was
called the Ten Per Cent Plan. The state would then elect a new
government and, once accepted by Lincoln, function as a state of the
Union again. Finally, Lincoln would pardon any Confederate who
would swear an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept the federal
policy on slavery, but it denied pardons to all Confederate military
and government officials and anyone who had killed black prisoners of
war.
*The Radical Republicans in Congress thought this was too soft on the
South, and refused to seat elected representatives from Louisiana,
Arkansas, or Tennessee after those states sent them to Congress under
Lincoln’s Ten Per Cent Plan in 1864.
*The Radical Republicans instead created the Wade-Davis Bill, and
passed it in 1864. Many Radicals felt that the Southern states,
by leaving the Union, no longer had equal rights and deserved to be
treated as conquered provinces that might one day being the process of
admission all over again. Radical Republicans believed the South
needed a complete Reconstruction of its society. Among many
tougher restrictions, the Wade-Davis Bill required fifty percent of
ex-Confederate men to take an oath of allegiance and swear that they
had never borne arms against the United States. After all, they
could be called traitors if they did—the Constitution defines treason
as making war against the United States. It also had stronger
protections for emancipation than did Lincoln’s Ten Per Cent
Plan. Lincoln refused to sign this bill, thus using the pocket
veto.
*At the time of Lincoln’s death, nothing was resolved, although Lincoln
was known to still favour a mild plan for reunification, welcoming the
Southerners back into the Union as brothers who had gone astray.
Many Radicals were actually glad of Lincoln’s death at first, as they
hoped that Johnson, known to hate the planter aristocracy, would side
with them. Despite his class biases however, Johnson was still a
Southerner and did not want to see his countrymen suffer unduly.
He and Congress would fight over plans for Reconstruction for his
entire presidency. Lincoln might have had the prestige to
maintain his plan for Reconstruction in the face of opposition, but his
death would ensure that the transition from war to peace would not go
smoothly.
*On 29 May 1865, Johnson issued his own plan for Reconstruction, known
as Presidential Reconstruction. It was based on Lincoln’s Ten Per
Cent Plan, although it was not identical to it. It
disenfranchised rich Confederates worth over $20,000, and a few other
prominent (but less wealthy) Confederate leaders, although they could
appeal for individual pardons personally, mostly so that backwoods
Johnson could gloat over their humiliation and defeat. Southern
states would have to call special state conventions to repeal the
ordinances of secession and repudiate all Confederate debts. This
had the good effect of not leaving the South in debt, but, according to
some interpretations, taken by Radical Republicans, meant that the
South could not pay pensions to Confederate veterans, either.
Finally, the Southern states had to ratify the XIII Amendment. He
also recommended that they give the vote to blacks (although no state
North or South did this at the moment). States that did all this
could return to the Union without other trouble, because Johnson saw
them as being fellow states of the Union. The Radical Republicans
did not approve, but Congress was not in session and could not do
much. By the end of 1865, four Southern states (Tennessee,
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia) had rejoined the Union under
Johnson’s terms. Several states refused to ratify the XIII
Amendment, but enough states did so that it became part of the
Constitution in December 1865.
*Distribute Constitutions from the Blount Mansion, and look at Amendments XIII-XV.
*When Congress re-convened on 4 December 1865 after a nine-month
recess, the Republicans were shocked to see Southern Democrats back in
town, many of whom were prominent former Confederates, including
generals, cabinet officials, and even the former Vice-President, still
under indictment for treason.
*Not wanting to lose power to a bunch of traitorous rebel Democrats,
the Republicans refused to let their new colleagues take their seats in
the House and Senate. The problem was only going to get worse,
too. Congress’ refusal to seat the new congressmen angered and
upset President Johnson, however. He had thought he was restoring
the Union more or less as Lincoln wanted it done—with malice towards
none, with charity for all.
*Angry, Johnson vetoed a bill passed by Congress in 1866 to extend the
duration of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In response, Congress passed
the Civil Rights Bill, granting blacks the rights of citizenship and
attacking the black codes. Johnson vetoed this, but Congress
overturned his veto, as the Republicans had more than the 2/3 majority
required to do so. They would do this repeatedly, although
Johnson would try to veto so many laws that he would be called ‘Andy
Veto,’ ‘Sir Veto,’ and even ‘the dead dog of the White House’ (and that
by Tennessee’s own Governor Brownlow).
*The Republicans, now that they saw their power, would put the Civil
Rights Bill in the Constitution itself as the XIV Amendment. Sent
to the states for ratification in June 1866, it conferred civil rights
(including citizenship but not the franchise) on freedmen, reduced
representation of states in Congress and the Electoral College if they
denied blacks the right to vote, disqualified any former Confederates
who had earlier held federal office from ever holding a federal or
state office again, and guaranteed the national debt while repudiating
the Confederate debt. Under Congressional Reconstruction in 1866
and 1867, the old Ten Per Cent Plan applied with the additional
requirement that all states ratify the XIV Amendment before returning
to the Union. Tennessee did so, but Johnson encouraged the rest
of the South not to, and they happily obliged.
*To try to stop the XIV Amendment from passing and to support fellow
Democrats throughout the Union in the Congressional elections of 1866,
Johnson went campaigning throughout the country on his way to and from
the dedication of Stephen Douglas’s tomb in Chicago. His campaign
circuit was called the ‘swing ‘round the circle,’ and was a spectacular
failure. Johnson could be a good stump speaker, and he spoke
passionately against the Republicans in Congress, even accusing them of
starting the recent race riots in Memphis, but he was easily irritated,
and the Republicans planted people in his audience to heckle him.
His responses would grow increasingly wild and frenzied, to the point
that people began to accuse him of public drunkenness. The only
thing Johnson did was alienate the voters from himself and his
party. The Republicans returned the Congress with a larger
majority than before and more radical than ever, and the XIV Amendment
was ratified in 1868.
*The Radicals were afraid that once they left the South, things would
go back to the old black codes. So, one year after the
ratification of the XIV Amendment in 1868, Congress would write the XV
Amendment in 1869 which made it illegal to deny the franchise on the
basis of race of former condition of servitude. This was ratified
in 1870 by Republicans freely elected in the North and elected under
military rule in the South.
*By this point, Johnson was long gone from the White House, but he had
lost what presidential power he ever had even before U.S. Grant was
elected.
*In 1867 Congress declared that since the Senate had to confirm all
Cabinet appointments, that also meant that the Senate had to confirm
any removal from office of any Cabinet member during a president’s
term. This was called the Tenure of Office Act. Congress
knew Johnson, who badly wanted to fire Stanton, was likely to break
this, and they turned out to be right.
*On 5 August 1867 Johnson requested Stanton’s resignation.
Stanton refused and the Senate backed him up. Stanton barricaded
himself in his office, even after Johnson named General Grant as his
replacement. Grant eventually turned the job down to show support
for Stanton.
*This gave Congress what they needed. For violating the Tenure of
Office Act Johnson was impeached by the House. During the Senate
trial, however, Johnson behaved himself, was quiet, sober, and
conciliatory, when he even appeared in the Senate chamber at all.
His defence suggested that the law was unconstitutional (and the
Supreme Court would officially say so in 1926, but in 1868 was too
scared of the Radical Republicans to challenge them much) and that
Johnson was not guilty of any high crime or misdemeanor.
*The prosecutors had a fairly flimsy case, and Johnson was acquitted,
although only by one vote. This was partly because many
Republicans did not trust Ben Wade, president pro tempore of the Senate
and next in line for the presidency, who they regarded as a dangerous
radical because he supported soft money, the labour movement, and a
high tariff, most of which scared the business community. Some
simply felt the charges were not strong enough; Johnson was certainly
obnoxious, but that alone was neither a high crime nor a
misdemeanour. Other Congressmen were nervous about setting a
precedent that would weaken the executive office too much.
Besides, Johnson would be out of office a few months after the end of
the trial in 1868, why make too much trouble? It is quite
possible that the entire trial was rigged to yield this dramatic
outcome for the sole purpose of breaking Johnson’s remaining power and
prestige, and to show him just who was in charge. Indeed,
Congress would remain the most important part of the government for the
rest of the century.
*Because Tennessee had been under military occupation for so much of
the war, Reconstruction did not affect Tennessee quite the same way it
did the rest of the United States.
*In January 1865, following Hood’s defeat at Nashville, but before
Lincoln’s inauguration (while Johnson was still military governor),
Tennessee held a convention to consider a new constitution.
Naturally, all of those who attended were Unionists, mostly from East
Tennessee, and many of them soldiers in the Federal Army.
*The Convention did not create a new constitution, but it did amend the
existing one to abolish slavery (which had largely ceased to exist
under Union occupation, anyway), nullifying Tennessee’s declaration of
independence on 6 May 1861 and all legislative acts that had followed
it, and called for a referendum on these decisions and the election of
a governor and state legislators. They even proposed William
Brownlow as governor and suggested a slate of legislators.
*To make sure the vote went the right way, Johnson prohibited any
voting by anyone who had not been allowed to vote in the 1864
presidential elections (which is to say, almost everyone who supported
the Confederacy, or even opposed the war at all). Many
conservative unionists, who felt this was unfair, boycotted the
elections.
*On 22 February 1865, about 25,000 Tennesseans approved the
convention’s decisions. Only 48 people voted against them.
On 4 March, Brownlow and the other suggested candidates were elected by
a similar margin. Not many people overall voted, but it was
enough to meet Lincoln’s 10% requirement. On 5 April they were
inaugurated and Tennessee’s government began to operate again.
*They presided over a state that had been wrecked by war. Union
occupation had destroyed much of the state’s livestock, ruined the iron
and tobacco industries (Tennessee’s main non-agricultural areas), and,
of course, wiped out millions in wealth through the abolition of
slavery. Lawlessness in the countryside had destroyed farming
communities, and the cities had become badly overcrowded: by
1870, Nashville had over 26,000 people (after only 17,000 in 1860) and
Memphis went from 23,000 to 40,000 in the same period.
*Large-scale agriculture had also collapsed due to the end of
slavery. Many freedmen went to the cities or left the state
entirely, but others stayed on their plantations but demanded land of
their own. Since most could not afford to buy land, the old
planters broke up their plantations and rented plots to families in
return for cash rent or, in most cases, a share of the crops grown
there every year. This share-cropping system was very
inefficient, and held Tennessee, and much of the South back, for
generations.
*Brownlow did not do much to make things better. At first he
promised to bring law and order back to the state, which people
approved, and called for the ratification of the XIII Amendment, which
no-one minded much any more. However, Brownlow also made it clear
that he did not plan to give the right to vote back to former
Confederates any more, and this offended them (the majority of the
state) and many conservative Unionists, who were ready to forgive and
forget.
*Brownlow’s supporters dominated the legislature, and in June 1865 most
former Confederate supporters lost the right to vote for 5 years, and
prominent leaders lost it for 15 years. To enforce this, Brownlow
created the state’s first voter registration system, administered by
the county clerks.
*In August, it was time for congressional elections. Up till now,
conservative Unionists had mostly boycotted Johnson and Brownlow’s
elections in protest of their harsh loyalty oaths. Now, though,
they came out in great numbers, and only 3 of Tennessee’s 8 seats in
the House of Representatives were won by Brownlow’s men outright,
although he managed to fix the returns from one district to bring that
up to 4. When county elections were held the next March,
Conservatives took almost every office in Middle and West Tennessee.
*Brownlow was embarrassed and angry. In April, he got the
legislature to disenfranchise former Confederates (easily 2/3 of the
state or more) for life, and set up election commissions under the
governor’s control that would handle voter registration in the future.
*As Johnson and Congress fought each other in Washington, Brownlow
sided with Congress, and passed the XIV Amendment. This nearly
failed, because Conservative legislators, knowing they were
outnumbered, boycotted the meeting when it was to be voted on,
preventing the General Assembly from having a quorum (that is, enough
people there to legally conduct official business), so Brownlow just
had two of them arrested and held in the state house until the
Amendment was passed. Upon its passage, Tennessee became the
first state back into the Union, just as we had been the last to
leave. This would mean that Tennessee was the only state the US
Congress did not send troops into during Reconstruction, although with
Brownlow in charge, it hardly mattered.
*Things were not easy for Brownlow. He had angered enough
conservative unionists that he had more and more trouble winning
support in elections, and in 1867 a gubernatorial election was coming
up. Suddenly, Brownlow declared himself in favour of allowing
black Tennesseans to vote.
*Brownlow had not been a great advocate of racial equality in the past,
although he had said in 1865 that if ex-Rebels ever got to vote, then
blacks ought to as well, saying ‘a loyal Negro is more eminently
entitled to suffrage than a disloyal white man.’ He now claimed
that despite his best efforts, disloyal white men were voting (which
was an outright lie). In February 1867 the Tennessee constitution
was amended to allow black men to vote, although it only barely
passed. This made Tennessee the first southern state (and one of
the first states anywhere) to allow blacks to vote.
*In the same month, while the General Assembly elected in 1865 was
still sitting, Brownlow had them create a State Guard, made up of loyal
white and black troops under the command of the governor.
*When elections came in 1867, Brownlow won easily. Between
disenfranchising many white voters, enfranchising all black men (who
almost all voted for him), dominating the voter registration process,
and sending soldiers of the State Guard to monitor all elections,
Brownlow had complete control of the election process, and only three
state legislators, of all those elected, opposed him, and this time all
the men sent to the US Congress were men he had chosen.
*The positive side of Brownlow’s expensive and corrupt government was
significant increased civil rights for blacks in Tennessee. Not
only did they get the right to vote, but they had many other privileges
that previously had only been held by white people.
*Black people could now have last names legally recognised, and they
adopted them immediately. Black marriages were now legally
recognised, and in July 1865, Bedford County issued 406 marriage
licenses to black people and 16 to white couples.
*Black founded their own communities (either as neighbourhoods in towns
or small villages in the country), their own churches, and their own
businesses. Particularly in the large cities like Nashville and
Memphis, a hard-working black man could make a small fortune, or at
least a very respectable income. Even blacks who did not go into
business for themselves found that, for the first time, they could
negotiate with their bosses, demanding better conditions and quitting
if they did not get them. Things were far from equal, but they
were far better than they had been.
*In some of these things, blacks were helped by the Freedmen’s Bureau,
a government agency set up to help freed slaves with court cases, voter
registration, and other problems. Perhaps even more, they were
helped by churches, particularly northern missionaries, who established
most of the early black schools in Tennessee, as the school system was
still segregated.
*In 1866, the American Missionary Association and the Western
Freedmen’s Aid Commission founded Fisk University in Nashville, and the
next year began a teacher education programme there. Soon blacks
began founding their own schools, and many blacks insisted that their
children be taught be black teachers, and many blacks became great and
successful educators.
*For all its faults, segregation (at first just a custom, eventually a
legal institution) did ensure that there was a space for black
professionals and entrepreneurs to work and thrive, and many did so.
*Although not blacks held major state offices in Tennessee, they did
win election to many local offices, and some ever criticised Brownlow’s
government when it seemed to take them for granted (at it sometimes
did).
*The growing rights of black Tennesseans worried many whites (who hated
any suggestion that blacks might be their equals), and the loss of
voting rights under what was essentially the military rule of Brownlow
and his State Guard angered many more, especially in East Tennessee,
where former Confederates were in the minority, and often subject to
verbal and even physical abuse. Brownlow may have promised law
and order, but he did not mind seeing former Rebels get what he thought
was coming to them. Ultimately, some whites turned to violence.
*Whites, especially northern missionaries, who worked to help blacks
were vilified. Blacks were threatened, and at times their
businesses and schools were burnt. Memphis experienced a major
race riot in 1866, when a disagreement between local white police and
discharged black soldiers grew into mob violence against blacks, in
which 46 blacks and 2 whites were killed, and many black schools,
churches, and businesses were burnt.
*The most famous of the anti-black forces was the Ku Klux Klan.
Formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a fraternal organisation in 1865, it
spread across the South and, in 1867, organised itself formally with
Nathan Bedford Forrest as its first Grand Wizard.
*The Klan could threaten blacks with its mere presence, holding
night-time marches and rallies, dressed in their robes and
costumes. They could also attack them directly, finding an
isolated cabin and hauling out the inhabitants for a whipping or an
outright execution.
*1867 was certainly a bad year for Tennessee—the State Guard kept most
whites from voting, and the Klan frightened many blacks away from the
polls.
*In 1868, Brownlow fought back, gaining the power from the legislature
to use the State Guard against the Klan, along with the power to
declare martial law in any county threatened by the Klan. He also
asked the US Government for a regiment of Federal troops, lent from the
soldiers already in Middle Tennessee in preparation for the 1868
election.
*Thanks to Brownlow, the State Guard, and the US Army, Grant carried
Tennessee in 1868, but the power of the Klan and general
dissatisfaction meant that overall turnout was only 2/3 what it had
been in the 1867 election, and two conservative candidates for Congress
even managed to get more votes than Brownlow’s candidates (although he
managed to rig the result so that his men won anyway.
*In 1869 the State Guard was activated and martial law imposed in 9
counties. A spy hired to infiltrate the Klan was killed.
Shortly afterwards, Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered the Klan to destroy
their masks and robes and to stop public demonstrations. This may
have just been a way to hide from Brownlow, and violence did not end.
*In February 1869, Brownlow had his legislature send him to the US
Senate, and he resigned the governorship. In 1875, he would be
replaced as senator by his old nemesis, Andrew Johnson (who would only
serve a few months until his death). This left the governorship
to the speaker of the state senate, DeWitt Clinton Senter of East
Tennessee.
*Although a Radical and a friend of Brownlow, Senter relaxed martial law and demobilised the State Guard.
*In the 1869 gubernatorial race, Senter ran for the office outright,
but was opposed by another Radical, Middle Tennessean Willam
Stokes. The state convention was so heated that the police were
called in to break it up, and both men ended up running for governor.
*The Conservatives chose not to run anyone, hoping that either Senter
or Stokes would seek their support, and they were right. Senter
repealed all voting restrictions. In part, this was because the
state supreme court had overturned some of Brownlow’s earlier
restrictions, and in part because the sons of former rebels, who
themselves were too young to have been caught by the old laws, were
becoming old enough to vote. Senter then replaced Brownlow’s
election officials with his own appointees, and they were told to
register any man who asked.
*Senter won in a landslide, carrying all three Grand Divisions (although it was close in East Tennessee).
*The new state legislature was also mostly conservative, and they
repealed laws limiting the Ku Klux Klan and disbanded the State Guard.
*The new legislature lowered taxes. Brownlow had raised them to
fund public education and to pay off $14 million in bonds he had issued
to fund railroads, most of which had ended up in the hands of crooked
businessmen.
*They also called for a Constitutional Convention, with voting for
delegates open to all adult males. 75 delegates were elected;
only 4 were Radicals, and none were black.
*The Constitution of 1870 is still in effect to-day. It was
basically the Constitution of 1835 (which was basically that of 1796)
with a few changes. Universal male suffrage (white or black) was
included, but a poll tax was added, and it was assumed that this would
keep most blacks from voting. The governor’s power was
significantly reduced, and the legislature was limited in the number of
days it could be paid to work (to try to prevent busy and expensive
legislatures like those under Brownlow).
*In subsequent years, Conservatives would come to dominate Tennessee
politics again. Although blacks would complain to Congress
repeatedly that their rights were being violated, almost nothing was
ever done. By 1870, Reconstruction was over in Tennessee.
*With Reconstruction over, whites in Tennessee began rebuilding the
state, and, indeed, people across the South tried to start again, but
to do it better. Some called to take what was best about the
North, or at least most economically successful, and apply it in the
South—industry, hard work, internal improvements, and other aspects of
a strong economy. People were encouraged to become ‘Southern
Yankees’ and to create a New South.
*At the heart of the New South was the railroad. Railroad
construction really began in Tennessee in the 1850s, but even then it
was badly run and badly funded. By 1900, though, the state had
3,137 miles of railroads and it was possible to travel from Bristol to
Memphis and stop at all the major towns along the way. Railroads
ran back into the mountains, up into the Cumberland Plateau, and into
rural areas throughout the state, connecting the different parts of the
state to each other and to the outside world.
*The most powerful of all the railroads was the Louisville and
Nashville, or L&N, which bought up or crushed all its major
competitors in Tennessee (and much of the rest of the South) until it
virtually had a monopoly. This made many people resent it,
especially as its rates often seemed arbitrary and unfair, and as it
was mostly owned by northerners and by British investors, but it also
was very influential in state government (partly through bribes) and it
remained one of the most powerful economic and political forces in the
state from the 1880s through the 1930s.
*The railroad brought wealth with it. When rails were being laid,
local people could get work building the railroads, and once they were
in, things could be shipped out. This worked best for Nashville,
because the L&N gave Nashville preferential shipping rates, and
Nashville became a centre of flour milling.
*Flour was not Tennessee’s largest industry, either in terms of capital
or labour involved (that was timber, in both cases), but it was the
most profitable, and most of the product and the profits from it stayed
in the state in locally owned businesses.
*Lumber and timber products, by 1900, employed over 11,000 people
full-time, and many more part-time workers. The forests of
Tennessee were stripped bare, and the logs floated down Tennessee’s
rivers or out on special rail lines built right up to the lumber camps,
and were sold all over the US and the world.
*Tennessee also saw a growth in textile mills, although not as much as
some other southern states. As part of being Southern Yankees,
investors in the New South wanted southern factories to replace those
of the North, upon which they were too dependent. Some textile
mills actually brought in Northern workers and Northern owners, but
many were locally-owned and employed local people, especially women and
children, who were paid less than adult men.
*Iron and coal were also important, but many of the investors in these
industries were northerners. Despite Tennessee’s best efforts to
become more economically developed and self-sufficient, like much of
the South, it remained part of what was almost a colonial economy, in
which Northerners exploited the South for its resources: tobacco,
cotton, coal, iron, timber, and cheap labour.
*One reason Tennessee had so much cheap labour was a loophole in the
XIII Amendment. People could still be enslaved if convicted of
crimes, and Tennessee, like many southern states, employed convict
labour. Prisoners (who were mostly black) could be forced to work
for whomever bought their contracts from the state, and this was a
major source of income for the state. It also let big industries,
especially the coal mines, have cheap labour, and often allowed them to
undercut the unions if they threatened to strike. Consequently,
unions were never as important in Tennessee as they were elsewhere, and
even to-day, Tennessee is a right-to-work state, where no-one can be
forced to join a union (which is not the case in some other states).
*At one point, this backfired against the state and the coal miners,
though. In 1891, a mining company in Briceville (in East
Tennessee) brought in convict labour to break a strike. This
started the Coal Miners’ War. Three hundred coal miners from
around Anderson County surrounded the convicts’ stockade and forced
their guards to surrender. The prisoners and their guards were
shipped back to Knoxville.
*Governor Buchanan and the state militia marched the convicts back to
work. The miners sent them back to Knoxville again, and then
started going around the county breaking up other convict camps.
*The governor sent in 600 militiamen. The miners refused to stand
down until they were promised that the convicts’ lease would be
repealed by the state legislature. Instead, the legislature made
it illegal to interfere with convict labour at all.
*From 1891 to 1893 the miners struck back, freeing convicts, burning
their stockades, and fighting with the state militia. It was
estimated that although the state made $50,000-$75,000 a year from the
convicts’ lease, it spent about $200,000 on the militia.
Furthermore, most Tennesseans sympathised with the miners.
Demonstrations were held across the state, and money was sent to the
miners.
*Finally, in 1893, the state started its own prison and mined its own
coal with prisoners, and, while the existing convict leases were
allowed to run their course, none were renewed and no new ones were
issued.
*Despite (or perhaps because of) such problems in rural areas,
Tennessee’s cities grew rapidly in the late 19th Century. Memphis
had some setbacks, suffering repeated yellow fever epidemics (to the
point that in 1878 the city government fled the city and Memphis ceased
to exist as a legal entity, simply becoming ‘the Taxing District of
Shelby County’) until the 1890s. Still, by 1900, Memphis had over
100,000 people, Nashvilee had over 80,000 and both Knoxville and
Chattanooga had over 30,000 each. To reach these figures, all
these cities far more than doubled their population in the years after
the Civil War.
*Memphis was important as a river port, and for cotton production and
processing. Nashville was a centre of rail transportation and of
food production, particularly flour and livestock. Knoxville had
iron production, timber mills, and textile factories. Chattanooga
built major ironworks, and briefly looked like it would become a
southern version of Pittsburgh, although it ultimately lost out to
Birmingham, Alabama.
*The drive to improve the New South economically also led to efforts to
improve it morally, and the 1880s saw a new burst of reforms such as
Tennessee had not seen since the days of William Carroll. This,
however, will be discussed more in the next lecture.
*One area that was not reformed, and in which the New South looked very
much like the Old one, was in the relationships between white and black
Tennesseans.
*Slavery may have been outlawed, and civil rights for blacks guaranteed
by the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments, but there were always ways around
those.
*Once the Federal Government quit paying attention to the South, the
states slowly but surely began passing what came to be known as Jim
Crow Laws, which limited the rights of blacks. Popular early
measures were poll taxes, which could keep poor people from voting, but
which were not uniformly enforced. Literacy tests (with variable
standards) were also common.
*In Tennessee, Brownlow had never given blacks quite the same rights
that the US Army had forced other states to give them, but successive
government never took quite rights as many away, either. Blacks
in Tennessee were never completely denied the right to vote, as the
Republicans needed them (no black would ever fail to vote for the Party
of Lincoln), and so did some urban Democrats. Although no black
state representatives were elected after the 1880s, black political
leaders did retain some influence, and Tennessee offered better
opportunities for education, employment, and economic advancement than
most other Southern states—but it was still far from egalitarian.
*As blacks got a little more influence and wealth, and as more and more
of them moved into the cities, either from rural Tennessee or from
other Southern states (sometimes following the railroads as tracklayers
and other workers), they increasing numbers and relative success
(compared to slavery) frightened some whites, and lynching became
increasingly common.
*Most lynch mobs claimed to be acting on behalf of the honour of a
white woman who had been raped—no-one could complain if a rapist was
hanged or otherwise brutally murdered. In fact, many lynchings
were not related to sexual misconduct, and even black women were
sometimes lynched.
*Lynchings were so popular that sometimes they would be scheduled ahead
of time, and it would be in the newspaper so people would know when to
show up. Some early 20th century lynchings were so well-attended
that souvenir postcards were sold afterwards (although that was more
common in other states—in fact, lynching was more common in the north
than the South, although that fact is rarely advertised).
*There were opponents to lynching, of course. One of the last
black men to sit in the Tennessee General Assembly for many years,
Samuel McElwee, spoke against it, and Ida B. Wells, a former slave from
Mississippi who moved to Memphis and became a journalists was famous
nation-wide for her articles against it.
*Black political power (already weak) declined significantly beginning
in 1889. In that year, Tennessee instituted a secret ballot,
ostensibly as one of the many reforms popular in that period.
Previously, each party printed out its own ballot on a different colour
of paper, and people would go down to the court house or other polling
place and vote publicly, with people to help them pick the right colour.
*With secret ballots, as Tennessee issued them, voters had to be able
to read the ballots, which listed candidates alphabetically.
Although making it almost impossible for illiterates to vote hurt many
whites, it hurt black people worse. This was especially the case
because the law exempted most rural areas (which were mostly white) and
only applied to Davidson, Shelby, Knox, and Hamilton counties, and
later to towns with over 2,500 people.
*In 1890, the poll tax was instituted for all voters. This
largely disenfranchised black voters. Segregation also became
more wide-spread about this time, in part due to Supreme Court
decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson.
*About the same time, Tennessee’s Republicans began withdrawing their
support for black politicians. Soon the Democrats would
essentially run the state, and the biggest political battles would not
be in the general elections, but in the Democratic primaries, although
Tennessee’s Republicans would remain powerful enough to occasionally
win an unexpected victory.
*Tennessee’s politics in the end of the 19th century were dominated by
the Democrats, who naturally broke into factions. Indeed, in most
local contests, people voted for the men they knew rather than worrying
about parties at all.
*The big issue in the 1870s and early 80s was the money spent on
railroads in the previous decades. Most of them had been funded
by bonds, almost all of which were handled by corrupt businessmen and,
in fact, many of them were accepted by fake corporations that simply
vanished once the bonds were handed over. They were then sold to
legitimate investors—or maybe not. No-one could track the bonds,
they just had to pay them.
*Since so much of the railroad bond business was corrupt, and many of
the men who ended up with the bonds were northerners or other
foreigners, many Tennesseans resented the high taxes they had to pay to
cover the interest on them.
*Some Democrats, known as Redeemers, wanted to redeem the bonds at face
value. Others, more conservative, and often known as Bourbons,
after the old ruling family of France (since many of them had held
power before the Civil War, as the Bourbons had before and after the
French Revolution), wanted to either pay back some of them but not all
of them, or pay them back in part but not in whole, or else to
repudiate them altogether.
*The Redeemers, who tended to be advocates of the New South, said that
even if the bonds were corrupt and held by Yankees, it was still
necessary to pay them, or else no-one would ever trust the state or
invest in it again. Eventually a compromise was reached, partly
with the help of Senator Isham Harris, in which all the bonds would be
paid back at half their face value with 3% interest. It did not
entirely satisfy everyone, but it did not completely ruin the state’s
reputation, either.
*A third faction of Democrats were called ‘independent’ Democrats, or
sometimes as the Wool-Hat Boys. They were from East Tennessee,
and led by Robert Love Taylor, who got their nickname when he used the
price of wool hats to explain national tariff issues (high tariffs
equal expensive hats). These were also more modern and radical
Democrats, and they tended to support the poorer farmers and the common
man more than did the wealthy old Bourbons or the wealthy young new
money, New South Redeemers.
*In 1886 the Redeemers and Bourbons were so split that there was a
danger of the Republicans actually winning the gubernatorial
race. So they turned to Bob Taylor. The Republicans chose
his brother, Alfred (the Taylors had split politically during the Civil
War).
*The election of 1886 was called the War of the Roses, after the old
dynastic war of England, and the brothers played it up. They
toured together, saving money by sharing train cars and hotel
rooms. They campaigned more on style than substance, playing
fiddles, telling stories, playing practical jokes, and having
fun. Once, one of them stole the other’s speech, and read it to
the crowd, leaving the first without anything prepared to say (and
since both had basically the same platform, it didn’t really
matter). Other times, they would impersonate each other, telling
lies and awful stories while claiming to be the opponent. It won
national attention, and made Tennessee famous.
*Bob won, and served two 2-year terms, where he became more
conservative than his old Wool-Hat Boys might have wanted. He
would later serve in the US Senate. Alf would get to be governor,
but not for over 30 years.
*For the rest of the decade, Democrats would follow Bob Taylor’s style,
appealing to poor rural voters, while maintaining the status quo while
in office. This would be despite increasing calls for reform in
the state, and a lot of grassroots effort in that direction.