American Experience; Reconstruction: The Second Civil War; Interview with Clarence E. Walker, Historian, University of California, Davis, part 2 of 3

their own congregations about that political action where should they look for allies who should pay the genesis of black politics in the south in the post civil war period life in the charges it's my theory that since the church provided a structure came in a context for political messages to be delivered to the black caucus of this out this is not just leave in the intent all many of the ministers of these churches would as they would tell you there's this as he drove them into politics they going into politics means in this case being a member of the republican party because it was the last place for you in the democrat the southern democratic party was to me too why

is that willie williams and i a very strange place within the republican party for example in a state like georgia in the eighties and the things and why the late sixties leave that has a hundred point out republicans in the state about a hundred and twenty thousand eight thousand live people republican party never had a great appeal to white south only in a few selected oakland areas of the south in the piedmont something thought there was a party party so that was over and you know churches they learn through the summons delivered by their ministers and through

being felt throughout the week to vote for the republican party but he's not he's not always you have though because in many ways oh let's find themselves not completely supported by this other white little else would you do you have a commitment to the republican party that he's very strong in the sense that this is the party that freed us and this is the party of lincoln and this is the party that stands for liberty equality and justice in the south at least as a writer mainly ministers even republican politics this is that as john lynch this is a citizen arias chains of carolina and most notably in the new

term in georgia who becomes an id which is in republican politics there in the period after eating sixty seven and works when it is i am white peers to create a new state of georgia is not complete with success with the host with the republicans you know what is it what did the black republicans allow expect from the party was their hope is and what immediate hole the most likely weaken republicans was that they would be treated as equals and that the target would give great consideration to their desires and wishes the republican

party and the post civil war period was applying compresses a coalition of maurice ravel and conservatives it is a radical wing was the most sympathetic to like tea party in general was committed to a limited program civil rights protection of property education etc but the party's nominee wake of it because the asian for example land in the south is not related in many ways to the east or a radical re structuring also saw a black people have been freed that their freedom was a formal freedom that is to say they will not receive any special treatments or special rewards it was expected now that they were freed by the republican allies that they would make their way in the

world as other men who had made their way at all the adulation said last year ruled hole or die that is to say they would you know work with they would pass from the face of the earth and failed to live up to the standards of work that was that you bet no republican non republican whatever view of negroes did not accord and it seems to be in full rights and he could talk about that that you know so yeah ok i'll send sir it means that this is a little absurd emancipation proclamation freeing slaves with racial prejudice

that is that most whites in nineteenth century america the only rise to a certain level and many levels that are going to be kind of challenge the position of white people it was the last line years ago you know when reconstruction is a variation on that two contests anyway and you know the desert that white supremacy is in washington and been willing to stay here and on now they haven't really challenged white and so there is about that is a certain irony that

black people have these great expectations of the republican party these expectations are never to be fulfilled because these allies have reservations about these people weren't stewart so what the west wants house republicans figure this relationship working ari you're free but you can't see it and it was the social code this also cottee is that you are free but you know has resigned for the social code is that we're not our names sharing nicole route it so what was it like people would visit at the same table as whites they would never intermarriage with white people they would never go to

seeing with wind people that like people would be free and the right to be protected but they would not use your freedom in the same way in nineteenth century america that ease the lowly rises and live in the year they really they will never break out raises very serious limitations and so i think that is the relationship with republican life without it was too were taking care of an orphan were taking care or some kind of war whose capacities are not diminished certainly not alone to assume awful place at the table

and that goes for most of the cooking with his republicans you know i think that what we have to really think about this period of american history see that this was the national sensibility there are very few people in the polls united states were calling for a full equality and freedom for a lot of people they were dominant climate of opinion is one in which lies have been freed but they have not been free to was so complete social and political equality with whitey this freedom is he my whole holds all

prior assumptions about liability and the competence eighties is our senses is quite trenchant use residences asians for the future of race relations in the last quarter of the nineteenth century united states because it means that people in power really do not feel committed in any way too radical transformation oh recently nick bottom of the moral problem in another words that's what the problem is after slavery has been broken and so therefore our job missionaries and as friedman is to show why people that we can do there was this hopefulness wasn't there that that if that is what you just described could be

overcome i think that there is a hopefulness that that sensibility of prejudice could be overcome but i think we don't understand that every effort and achieving that goal could always be explained away the very service of black soldiers in the union army their willingness to obey orders the fact that slaves did not rise up during the civil war and kill their masters was interpreted is the sign o russell into an acceptance of why the polls even in the process of the rehearsal you know right out of a price structure of assumptions about a racial tapping with and so in many ways the black decision on hard work and education and as a robbery although

no where in many ways rooted in i think a lack of understanding about the nature of american racism in the nineties and he never really came to grips with the police pryor assumptions about what to do when i think of the reason you did not displace them in many ways the very improvement the day day improvement of black people was really it is a sign of ugliness of blocking the other place and then since then the american dream of social mobility was never applied in the senate what people applied to the irish germans if you could not break out in some ways of the boundaries of race at your account you were free

there's a chance that maybe you an exception for very excited to talk to you if you say you wrote that are in some ways emancipation and its aftermath only increased racial prejudice now and i we know about that that strategy was acquired property to become educated show that you can do this and yet things did not get better they were capable there's only really ruins it the white seven population that this assertion of autonomy and asserts himself

a living increased white house do with is this is very difficult to explain i was a just society and where visitors you have been taught that other people are your regime's years it's very hard over a period of thirteen years of war is called the news the enormous social change involved in their emancipation and their movement toward freedom and every assertion on the part of all the friedman was tuesday arizona saw that the material was divided says eurozone day even a crude device was in terms of the loss of what more education

that is about the center was the unit's somehow i mentioned these things but he is going to raise the lead characterize what people there are savages as was often center and savages to be is it alive i thought oh gee it was just four miles across of money and force the north that has forced us to accept this business of the essence and we cannot accept this this is an actual is not normal just do anywhere in the world in the nineties it wasn't the case that when people will rue but

walking nowhere this is an aberration in a state that is a white supremacist a civil war and reconstruction and at the same time clarence what's happening to these white people and i'm talking about the wider context of people who feel themselves to be well they were crushed they were defeating they are sliding down the social scale that used to be rich they are now four let's just look at it from the point of view civil wars insurgencies it was something that they felt that they had been treated that way they

only defended what they understood to be their constitutional rights and it was the north was a vicious progressive and aggressive committed to a version which was black while and as the reconstruction process unfolded and you move from the thirteenth amendment which freed slaves the fourteenth amendment i have the right to vote this series of grievance and sense of injustice only group that this was something that was not to be except that it was on that edge involved the sellers having to deepen research with human cells to find an explanation for why this happened and then this nation was not that they have disrupted the union engaged and accessories etc it was italy's was lost over there for

mediation and therefore he's the head of the top that they were out of their choice and that they were living in a world of pensions because no one finds out was never going to accept the idea of black equality lack citizenship that are again work committed to morphine that because they feel so when they found themselves in an episode of this slide down the social scale to seeing gertrude thomas that now and you know she was rich she had everything she education has just put up for sale in her son can't go to college and it's all over south the last costly probably you know i was just location wrought by war itself produced the situation in which millions of the most impoverished and beard turn their hostility on slips among white people as

they may also find it difficult dionne in the world if they had been members of the aristocracy they had lost their social position and the south as a society in which so i've been extremely important and more warranty work and the black was more importantly originally pool was more important to be old and the young deciding which family was extremely important all these things now has some ways lost the social cachet and it is necessarily as if he was still there and we do these

things that was a comment although some paranoia about black domination but only in one of the southern states was there black majority in which the black people went down in the state legislature for any period of time and that was south carolina's there he is this feeling that the last about two months and that he is really all out portions of the reality of what was going on in the south but that one letters in power and so we begin to us and johanna now black man who would speak and they for themselves even the few positions within the reconstruction genes that they often called was trying to walk so

it's something that had to be stopped you are describing the situation is volcanic in its level of change in effect go to town the city and describes herself as feeling like she's living at the mouth of a volcano that if you could just you know cast your eye around this landscape and talk about this that there are so many different you know it is people have different ideas about what should happen once in this context in which there is a great deal of tumult and the violence that people in the south of the white people believe that the best thing is for the north to give up and allow them to resume control of race relations that they feel in some ways that they can

never expect to be treated equitably by the reconstruction regions and then it's only their lives the resort result and restoration of a natural port which is why people that grow and then you happy in a situation in which these people were unrelenting and the animosity and hostility to these regimes that the regimes that the blade for anything everything because they ought to legitimate and they are there are not really anyway on the qatari now this is ironic because these governments owning senators ten year lows over at him

there were expulsions message of biblical sounding so here we are it's what year patricia agency cia anxious campbell is trying to hang on to his spot in the georgia legislature was incinerated you can see and so difficulty is the republicans with their black allies in the agency's the expulsion of the georgia state legislature the difficulties with their black allies in the agency's the expulsion of the black members of the georgia state legislature and in this particular context the white republicans win over unmade allies with the democratic members of the legislature and voting together on a technicality they got the black

members of the legislature experiment and this i think symbolizes something in some ways a great deal of the difficulties of maintaining alliance across racial lines in this period of american history there are variations on this where in a state like virginia are certain elements of the democratic party and a republican party working together creating alliance with lights and once but even there ultimately founders later on over issues of social equality center what you have here is a very volatile moment in which elias is politically a shift in the cause the context it was just politics as acting itself is always moving very rapidly and from one day to the next you don't know really what's going

to happen the alliance between the republicans and the lessons sound was an active expediency on the part of both parties and in the case of the republican party it represented an effort to establish himself in national politics at black votes to maintain its health and how and that without those votes it would not have been able to hang on to the presidency of threw through grant presidents and certainly nineteen eighty eight republicans will have to consolidate their strengths and other parts of the country that they no longer need the south and along many black votes wrestling been here for making sixty seven and eighteen cents so they do need black votes and has black people

become disillusioned with him as a political party they tell them repeatedly don't forget where the artistry black legislation to use oh yeah the next bill withers well i think that the term things i remember that moment about camden's yesterday well when you take in sixty eight by members were expelled legislature threatening a term we've been a chaplain in the union army and also worked as a missionary the aftermath is a visible church in georgia or not a lot of politicians who is suleiman is that a

he was extremely angry and felt betrayed he noted in several speeches given after his expulsion how he and his colleagues worked really to and he saw this as a betrayal and he came to understand it and in some ways a very a morality of american politics that alliances are not based on race or moral consideration but on the expedient and the contagion forces at work at a particular moment and turner was extremely bitter about this and willing to either become an immigration it's just getting on america and on american politics doesn't necessarily what is it that really turns turner is there a moment you can identify

i think that this is part of the world turned away ease is increasing awareness of how republican party really has no long term interest of the people and they're also events in the post eighteen sixty period they convince him of this that ultimately he does become an impressionist in the last part of the nineties and his story is interesting because he's so optimistic and hopefully he's very optimistic and hopeful of the beginning of reconstruction you know there is a very powerful transformative moment one in which in terms of thousands of people that thread reconstructions conversion process in which all the old soon to be washed away in a new body politic created in which black people would assume a certain place of authority in the state of georgia's politics and as events unfold he becomes more and

more a poll and what he's seen a aware of betrayal or the lack of really a commitment to what he thought was the moral sensibility of the republican party to black people and he becomes extremely bitter man yes let's go back to their religion think the end because you can just you know we're in a recession towards the end if you will hear in the state nine point out that political fatigue with reconstruction especially the eighteenth and just go on it after at seventy three and a lot of people who had supported graham strong backing what's going on the middle class are looking for something that wouldn't just hired negroes you

know that could picture yourself at that moment in this film where you know grays not going to send troops we know people are outraged when he does try new orleans and then you know what's going on was his use research on forward and was characterized that review of violence and financial financial partially sale on saying that the people in your throat exceedingly tired of this process the very beginning about the possibility of bringing black people into the mainstream american society as fully fledged citizens and asked the violence the cost of instability an uproar only re inscribes in the long line the possibility that white people were not ready to assume the places inside the republic of talent is

the economic dislocation that comes about as a result of the panic in the presidents and seventy three coupled with changing personally in the republican party thats a generation they come on the scene before the civil war and seen the country through the civil war and through the passage of the thirteenth the fourteenth amendment those men cheryl summer it's over the dying in passing from the scene you have now a situation in which reconstruction is being presided over by an administration that is less committed to the sort of moral concerns that had characterized an earlier generation of republicans president grant or greater military strategists was not we would have to say a great politician and disability the brain the south under

control only resulted in great hostility to his administration was an ordinance that where is willing to using grades all this out loud a process of violence to increase their view is i'd say this is only about him he dispatches of the army to put down at times but anyways isn't really current events have our actions and they're not only result in a long term commitment to the reconstruction process rather than on the street the gravest helen prejean politically but if you're walking down the street in boston cincinnati weather and you say did the bartender what aereo a lot of actually grow issue what about what's been going on the south all these years what is this guy well i think that in the minds of many people that are violating seventies

they were tired of the negro question the negro question head on at them saints the eighteen sixties and it was a subject which they were extremely ambivalent about and so you have a situation which many people in the north they think it's probably best to cut your losses to get out because this seems to be an interminable longtime law that is not going to be resolved easily and republicans it's very worried about this ad in the state and local elections they're also worried about the fact that the administration granted he's charged with a whole bunch of financial improprieties and so reconstruction is something that they feel was it really

for this thank you american people and he continued into the nineteenth century with the virulence and with an intensity that it may be hard to imagine today but for these nineteenth century people this was extremely vexing question one that they would have preferred not to have to deal with and so it was very easy for northerners by the eighteen seventies it included on some level maybe the south was right that these people really never going to be capable of that is was their citizenship in a recall that they

lacked the requisite intelligence the requisite says a civility seder to be citizens in our country is telling us that we turn this issue back over to the people who know what's best that is so this is a laurel is really hitting i suffered from racial exhaustion it has no long term commitments and never really had a long term thing and i think that's an important point to keep in mind is that the whole civil war the rigors of the process and what's on the part of the law and ambivalence by eighteen seventies by the late eighties and his hair as crystallizing to let's cut our losses and get out and the best thing is to revisit the people know this and he says minority of normal is that's upset about this but there's really nothing they can do

that the major climate of opinion is that the south knows best so let the southerners handle this issue that sensitive in northern that blacks are being blamed for that well in many ways it was avoiding the people that there was this sense that they were not only other place that usually runs aground and they also didn't seem to understand that the government was not going to force the south to do a number of things of the last lion wanted to do by the late eighties and the airport you want you got it not be we are grateful to us we

treat you said the unbroken wiry man that the revolution can go backwards you know at the beginning of the book you describe the hopefulness with which the nation began decreasing began if you know what you mean he used that phrase to get reflected on this the ending of a subdivision of blood with his thoughts and what people generally the reasons the model with islam and that was because that will sustain the broad scale necessary economic and political change was not there and this is where the great black historian debby big voice it meant when he said that reconstruction did not fail where it was expected that i did not fail with the black citizens of the united states

with robin and sailed with the government of the united states that the government did not and the wherewithal or the commitment to see this process through to a better world and so you have a situation which by the seventies the great expectations that characterize black thinking about reconstruction and about the transformation of american racial politics are pretty much exhausted and why people understand that they will have to deal with their former masters and then they will have to accommodate themselves to white authority for a very long period of time because revolutions go that the revolutionary

but something's thirty what was achieved when what she eats and reconstruction was a creation oh the biracial state and they are one in which the ground was laid for future work for racial justice and racial equality and the united states what was achieved was the creation of the number of black institutions schools churches social organizations in the community now all this is for another sixty to seventy years with the expectation they would be for and this to me he is the great achievement of reconstruction but it did not break the black equipment lack commitment to racial

equality in this is to me is the great cuban regime and also his instruction his sentence this to me is the great achievement of the lack of this amazing regime and reconstruction but it did not break the black commitment to reconstruction this to me is the great achievement of reconstruction it did not break the black the commitment to be called a wing their faith by the family quarrel i'd like you to talk about that it used a phrase that seems to make a

place for it again is near the end of the film in the same reflective mood maybe for example we might be looking at the footage of the gettysburg reunion almost like you're looking at thinking about those pictures and looking back at the history of this to really just what you see what came and what came out it was what came out of a religious impulse is on the national level was re invasion of the north and the south and this came and these fans of black freedom equality it re inscribes in my mind the idea that generation of white people this was a white family or because the subsequent history would be a history in which the role and the place of black people in the struggle for racial justice would be denied this is the true meaning album it the last clause which isn't a history

in which the south the white south becomes the victims of a normal an aggressive ally with a bunch of black savages and it seems to me that this is the last clause they deny the central place of slavery and the coming of the civil war and so the violence and the destruction of all what we're legally constituted governments what white southerners the ku klux klan or isolating sixty seven is an original american terrorist organization he's doing violence and the violence of a number of its core was asians

that the reconstruction process was undermined and overthrown in eighteen seventy seven the nation