Story of a Party - Chapter XIII
"Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it incessantly."
- William Henry Seward
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The White House
Washington, D. C.
August 2, 1862
President Fremont sat at his desk working, when his secretary arrived to announce a visitor.
"Mr. President, Senators Hamlin and Sumner are here to see you."
"Send them in."
The three men had met each week for some time now, to plan out the reconstruction and readmission of the old Confederacy into the Union. They were all of the more radical side of the Republican Party, and so they agreed on what should be done most of the time. It had been agreed early on, for example, that the states should remain under occupation until they could be assured not to rebel again. The means for assuring this, however, were not quite clear, and Fremont expected that that was what Hamlin and Sumner wanted to clarify.
"Good day, gentlemen," he said as they entered the room. "I understand you wanted to discuss something?"
"Yes," said Hamlin. "Now that the war is over, we rather think that we should demarcate the means for bringing the Southern states back into the Union."
Sumner started speaking. "We think, or I think, anyway, that half of the state officials, and three quarters of the ex-Confederates, are to have taken an oath not to rebel against the federal government again before the readmission progress can begin."
"I agree," said Fremont. "It should be clear to them that if they want to be a part of the Union they can't try this kind of things anymore. In fact, I rather think there should be an amendment, if we get to that point, that keeps it more difficult for states to secede. This time it happened too quickly, and without Congressional support to boot…"
"Indeed. However, firstly, I think we should devote our attention to restoring order in the South and emancipating all of the slaves. We have prepared a constitutional amendment to that effect, which we shall undertake to put before Congress to consider as soon as our current legislative actions are finished, which will be in a couple of months."
"We must not forget," said Hamlin, "to protect the rights of the freedmen once they are, well, freed. The Southerners are liable to still treat them as slaves even when they aren't. To ensure that this won't be the case, we should definitely put forth another amendment to make sure they get the franchise…"
"Agreed," said the other two men, almost in unison. Hamlin carried on.
"… and perhaps a land reform, to make sure the freedmen won't have to be dependent upon the planters for land."
"Hold on there." Fremont stopped him. "That will turn everyone in the South against us, except possibly the freedmen themselves. If we do such a thing, we should only take land from the planters who openly supported the Confederacy, as punishment for the rebellion. However, I'm not certain that even that will be quite necessary. The western territories offer ample land. Kansas, for example, is quiet enough these days, and only about a third of the land is settled. Perhaps we should pass an act making homesteads available to anyone, regardless of race, who settles the land?"
"That's a good idea," said Sumner, "and I think the Freedmen's Bureau which we've discussed establishing can arrange cheap transport for the freedmen who want to resettle?"
"It might," said Hamlin. "I'm sure there are many freedmen who will want to get away from the planters. I've heard they've gotten even more brutal after the slave revolts."
"Splendid, then," said Fremont, "we are decided. There should be a Homestead Act, and that's what I want you to prioritise. I went into office promising free soil for free men, and that's what we're going to give them. As for the size of these homesteads, I think the standard 160 acres will do; that's more than enough to support a family."
The three men exchanged the usual greetings, and the Senators left Fremont to do his work in peace.
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From "Deconstruction and Reconstruction: A History of the Postbellum United States, 1862-1924" by Walker Smith
Abrams Publishing, Philadelphia, 1956
"The Homestead Act was passed by Congress on December 14, 1862. Under it, anyone who had filed an application and then improved the land he lived on could then file for the title deeds to the land without having to buy it from the government. The idea behind the act was not only to settle the west faster, but also to provide new homes for freedmen and other war refugees. This latter idea proved somewhat unsuccessful, as not all the people wanted to leave their home areas and their extended families behind, and some of them wanted to move to the cities of the North to find industrial jobs instead (this, as you will all know, was before the Boll Weevil Infestation, and so the South still lacked even the beginnings of a native industrial economy [1]). In addition, many of the planters in the South still held considerable sway over their former slaves, many of whom retained the servile mindset that they had been brought up with, and could use various means to keep them from leaving. This was done by means such as sharecropping, which it was difficult to prevent in law, and was quite effective at keeping the freedmen economically dependent upon their former masters."
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From "Death and Rebirth: A History of the South during Reconstruction" by Charles Wilcox
Jefferson University Press, 1993
"By the summer of 1863, most of the planters had been returned their real property; at least, those who had managed to keep the title deeds to their plantations had. In some cases, however, the occupying forces had actually not allowed the planters to return, on the grounds that they had actively supported the Confederacy; this was usually the case, but sometimes the planter in question had just not actively resisted, which made it difficult to initiate a lawsuit.
The plantations whose masters were turned out saw their land divided between the freedmen living on them, except in some rare cases where the plantation was kept around as a collective farm, owned jointly between all of the freedmen on it and managed by an elected president. On the plantations that were divided, there arose disputes between the freedmen over who should get what. Soon, an act of Congress, termed the Land Reform Act 1863, was passed to determine who should get what. The act guaranteed that "all such persons formerly held in servitude to such persons as have participated in rebellion against the lawful authority of the United States federal government, shall receive forty acres of land from the land previously held by the persons to whom they were indentured, with the rest of such persons' land to be distributed evenly among all parties."[2]. In effect, the act expropriated the Confederate supporters among the planters, and distributed the land between the former slaves. It did much to calm relations between various freedmen, but it only worsened the already strained relations between the freedmen and the planters that were still managing their own plantations. The poor whites of the South, who although having a bad lot in life were still in favour of "keeping the negro in his place", were also against the act, and in many places violence broke out between them and the freedmen, whom they saw as having stolen land from its rightful owners and gotten away with it because of "the nigger-lovin' bastards in Washington". The army had to be called in to cease these confrontations, which only led to the white groups attacking the army and the freedmen, and soon getting captured and detained b the army. As the right of habeas corpus was suspended in the occupied South, this meant that they could find themselves in jail cells for several months and then suddenly released with stern warnings not to repeat their mistakes.
Indeed, these were dark times for democracy, and it was against this background that an election was held for the office of the Presidency…"
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From "A History of America Through its Presidents"
John Bachmann & Son, Bluefields, Nicaragua, 1945
"1864 presidential election
The election of 1864 was marked by one singular event, with many other issues spreading out of it. This was the Civil War, and its recent ending. The principal issue was how to deal with the Southern states, now that the war was over. The Republicans favoured the continuation of the policies pursued under Fremont, such as taking away both land and voting rights from ex-Confederates, and even redrawing state boundaries to punish the former Confederate states. Initially, Vice President Lincoln was considered a likely candidate, but when Roger Taney died in April [3], Lincoln was selected by President Fremont to replace him as Chief Justice. Lincoln was accepted by the Senate and sworn in, and a new candidate needed to be found. Indeed, the radicals of the party soon found their man in William Henry Seward, the Secretary of State and a noted radical. Although there were concerns over his past policies, particularly his support for funding Catholic schools in New York during his time as governor there, his history as a strong abolitionist and a friend of the people carried him through to the nomination, which he won on the first ballot at the Convention in Albany. Hannibal Hamlin, the President pro tempore of the Senate [4], was chosen as his running mate.
The Constitutional Union, who had originally had a very simple party program of reconciling the North and South and upholding constitutional rule of law, had had a chance to expand its ideology during its first few years in Congress. The party put forth a program of quick reconciliation between the North and South, "so that the nation may be whole once more". As for their nominations, several candidates held sway, including John Bell of Tennessee, their 1860 candidate; Sam Houston of Texas, Bell's running mate; Francis Preston Blair, Jr. of Osage, the Union Army general who had been instrumental to that state's countersecession from Missouri; Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a former Senator who had been a strong candidate for the nomination in 1860; and several others. However, two days into their national convention, the still immensely popular Robert E. Lee announced that he was a Constitutional Unionist, and was nominated by a unanimous convention on the fourth ballot. Blair was selected as his running mate, despite concerns that a Northern vice-presidential nomination might be useful to counterbalance the very Southern Lee.
The Democrats, for their part, were disillusioned by their poor performance in the previous election, but hoped that a good candidate and sensible policies would help regain some of their voting base. They advocated a soft reconstruction as well, and the Democratic policies for dealing with Reconstruction were almost exactly the same as the Constitutional Unionist ones. However, the economic policies of the two parties were different. The Democrats favoured the status quo for the South, preserving the unique way of life in the former Confederacy, and as a rule vehemently opposed tariffs on foreign trade. The Democratic nomination, although hotly contested, was eventually secured by Senator Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, with George H. Pendleton of Ohio as his running mate. [5]
The campaigning was intense; however, the South was largely ignored by all three major candidates, since the southern states did not vote in the election. The Republicans ran their campaign on the slogan "Peace for our time", and it was not uncommon for Republican-aligned newspapers to portray Hendricks and Lee as copperheads and doughfaces who wanted to set the South completely free and start the Civil War all over again.
The Democrats and the Constitutional Unionists, on the other hand, were convinced that electing Seward would mean the complete ransacking of the South, and that his approach to reconstruction had grown beyond punishing the South and turned into a crusade to destroy it politically and economically. The image of Seward and Hamlin as vultures swooping down on the corpse of a planter was common during the campaign, and similar imagery has become a staple of political cartoons.
Lee, for his part, did not make much campaigning of his own, instead running a traditional "front porch campaign"; this was rather successful, since the Lee family estate was located only a few miles away from Washington, D. C. His party hoped that his celebrity and success in the war alone would carry him into office.
The election was a relatively close race considering that most of the South (all of the former Confederacy except Vandalia and Osage) was still under military occupation, and the Republican North and West dominated the electoral college. Had the South voted in the election, it is likely that General Lee would have won office, leading to a vastly different Reconstruction. However, with this not being the case, the policies of the Constitutional Union meant that Lee was an unappealing choice to most of those Northerners who wanted to punish the South for the war. Seward was promising that very thing, and this was what won him the election.
Lee carried Vandalia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Osage, Texas and New Jersey, and Hendricks carried Indiana, Illinois, Maryland and Delaware. Seward won all other states.
Results
Secretary of State
William Henry Seward (R-NY) / Senator
Hannibal Hamlin (R-ME): 149 EV
General
Robert E. Lee (CU-VD) / Governor
Francis Preston Blair, Jr. (CU-OE): 44 EV
Senator
Thomas A. Hendricks (D-IN) / Former Congressman
George H. Pendleton (D-OH): 39 EV"
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[1] Hint hint…
[2] IOTL, Sherman set aside land for the freedmen in southeastern Georgia, and arranged for it to be divided up in a similar fashion. After the war, similar measures were proposed by the Radicals, but were either written off as too radical or vetoed by President Johnson. ITTL, however, with the slave revolts already having started the job and there being fighting over it, the act is seen as a less drastic step.
[3] This is earlier than he died IOTL. Why? Because he was more than eighty years old at this point, and because seven years of Republican rule, with all the hatred felt toward him for Dred Scott and others, is more of a strain on him than three years would have been.
[4] ITTL, Hamlin remained a Senator instead of standing for the gubernatorial election in Maine. This means that he has served continuously since 1848, making him the most senior Senator of the Republican party (even though he was obviously not a Republican from the beginning).
[5] So, why not Seymour? Well, he actually declined the nomination over and over in 1868 IOTL, and even when the entire convention started shouting that he was the only one they'd accept, he still adamantly refused. Only when he had left the room did the convention nominate him unanimously wihout his knowing, forcing him to give in.
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Thoughts?
