Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama by Walter L. Fleming

Author:Walter L. Fleming [Fleming, Walter L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9780231906586
Google: k59scrAh_LQC
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 1905-01-15T04:19:03+00:00

Conservative Opposition Aroused

Though the leaders complained of the “appalling apathy of the whites in political matters,”[1397] a change was coming. The teachings of the Radicals were beginning to have effect on the negroes, some of whom were becoming hostile to the whites and were resisting the white officers of the civil government. Their old belief in “forty acres of land and a mule” was revived by the speeches of Thaddeus Stevens, which were widely circulated by the agents of the Union League, who were sent through the country to distribute the speeches and to organize the movement resulting from it. Many of the whites now began to believe that at last confiscation would be enforced and that the negroes and low whites of the Union League would become the landowners.[1398] Clanton had been at work for two months, and on July 23, as chairman of the state committee of the Conservative party, called a convention of that party to meet in Montgomery on September 4.[1399] Meetings of the Conservative party were held in the larger towns. A slight hope was entertained that the whites might be able, by uniting, to obtain some representation in the convention. At a meeting in Montgomery, in August, Joseph Hodgson[1400] urged the people to take action and save the state from “Brownlowism,”[1401] as the worst results were to be feared from inaction; the enemies of the Conservatives were making every effort to control the constitutional convention; the Conservatives were in favor of conceding every legitimate result of the war and were willing to grant suffrage to the negro by state action—the only legitimate way; at the same time the negro must assist in guaranteeing universal amnesty. The negroes were asked by the speaker to reflect and to learn for what purpose the Radical leaders were using them. The best people of the state, he said, and not the worst, ought to reconstruct the state under the Sherman law.[1402]

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