One of the main allegations of “racism” made against the South is that white Southerners were historically against black suffrage. As the historian Eric Foner sees it, during the Reconstruction Era the federal government—guided by principles of racial justice and equality—forced a reluctant South to give black citizens the vote. Yet, during this era, roughly 1865 to 1877, black people in the North also did not have the right to vote. For example, in Connecticut,
Between the elections of 1812 and the new state constitution of 1818, Connecticut enacted laws that restricted voting to white adult males. Petitions protesting these restrictions flooded the state General Assembly, but all were summarily rejected...
In 1870, the state ratified the 15th Amendment which stated that no one could be denied the opportunity to vote based on their race or previous servitude. Still, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and other means of disenfranchising African Americans remained in place. It wasn’t until 1965, with the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, that many of these restrictive measures were legally abolished.
Even in the few states where blacks, in theory, had the right to vote, this did not mean they could do so in practice:
But even where the right [to vote] was extended by law, often the white majority did not allow it to happen. In Massachusetts in 1795, despite the absence of any law prohibiting black voting, Judge James Winthrop and Thomas Pemberton wrote, “that Negroes could neither elect nor be elected to office in that state.” De Tocqueville, in Philadelphia in 1831, asked why, since black men had the right to vote there, none ever dared do so. The answer came back: “The law with us is nothing if it is not supported by public opinion.”
But for some unexplained reason none of this makes the North “racist,” or if it does, nobody deems it worth mentioning when they remind everyone that the South was historically against black suffrage. For example, Foner argues that the Dunning School historians who documented the Reconstruction Era in the South should be seen as “endorsing a political consensus” whose goal was to promote white supremacy by, among other things, depicting black suffrage as a mistake. The Dunning School is accused of having “treated black suffrage as an egregious blunder that created corrupt and oppressive Republican state governments.” Critics of William Dunning inform us that he “condemned black suffrage in blatantly racist terms,” although we are not told why his account of the black suffrage debates amounts to a “condemnation,” nor why the history of black suffrage was “racist” in the South but not in the North.
Dunning’s aim was neither to endorse nor to condemn the history which he recounts. This seems to be the crime he committed in the eyes of modern historians. They consider it important for historians to express politically correct opinions on the history they report. Dunning’s aim was not to share his personal political and moral opinions, but to document an important historical era. Accordingly, he highlighted the fact that black suffrage was not popular at the time, in either the North or the South. He noted that,
Negro suffrage was apparently not in favor in the radical [Republican] strongholds of the West; for constitutional amendments enfranchising the blacks were rejected by popular votes in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Kansas.
This does not mean he was personally endorsing what those states did. Similarly, he explains why black enfranchisement was so controversial in the South—the stakes around black voting were artificially heightened by the fact that white “rebels” had been disfranchised. Therefore, the black vote would decide the outcome of elections. The black population was overwhelmingly loyal to the Republican Party, a result which the Radical Republicans had achieved through persuasion, propaganda, bribery, and the enforcement activities of the Union League militia. Dunning reports that blacks reliably voted Republican:
Of the seven states that were restored in June, it was confidently expected that all the electoral votes would go to the [Radical Republicans]. In three of these states – Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana – this end had been striven for through far-reaching disfranchisement of whites in addition to the enfranchisement of the blacks.
Again, this does not mean Dunning was endorsing that history. Looking beyond Foner’s fog of racism allegations to ascertain the political realities of the era, it is clear that Dunning’s analysis is correct—giving blacks the vote in the South was a guaranteed way for the Radical Republicans to stitch up the vote for their party and gain political control of the South. The Radical Republicans themselves made no pretense of objectivity or fairness between North and South because, as they saw it, they had won the war and had every right to do so.
The Constitution had little to do with the matter, in their view—the matter had been decided by the outcome of the war. To the Radicals, the cause of the South was lost and they would therefore have to do as they were told, and the exigencies of reconstruction required special rules for the South. As the Radicals saw it, it was necessary for blacks in the South to be able to vote in order to ensure that the victory which the North had won in the war would not be undermined by the “rebels,” while there was no such imperative in the North. Dunning explains the perspective of the Radicals:
The guarantee by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men of the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal states properly belongs to the people of those states.
Voting in the South was to be the preserve of “loyal men,” namely, the black population who showed their loyalty by voting for the Republican Party, while voting in the “loyal states” of the North was to be decided by the states without the interference of federal authorities. Thus, the fact that the “loyal states” rejected black suffrage was deemed to be a matter of no wider significance, while the Southern rejection of black suffrage was attributed to “racism” and crushed by the Federal authorities supported by federal troops. In Alabama, the historian Walter Fleming observes that the Union League insisted that the right to vote was only to be gifted to those loyal to the Republican government. As they saw it, the disfranchised whites should consider themselves fortunate to have been allowed by the “outraged but merciful government” to escape with their lives, and allowing them to vote was out of the question unless they swore an oath of allegiance to the United States.
…while we believe that rebellion is the highest crime known to the law, and that those guilty of it hold their continued existence solely by the clemency of an outraged but merciful government, we are nevertheless willing to imitate that government in forgiveness of the past, and to reclaim to the Republican Union party all who, forsaking entirely the principles on which the rebellion was founded, will sincerely and earnestly unite with us in establishing and maintaining for the future a government of equal rights and unconditional loyalty.
By treating “forsaking entirely the principles on which the rebellion was founded” as a precondition for the right to vote, the Radical Republicans effectively guaranteed the disfranchisement of white Southerners who refused to repent of their rebellion and swear the “oath of amnesty.” Thus, the stage was set for conflict at the ballot box.
