Section Six:
Ignoring American Terrorism
* Americans have been victimized by terrorism long before September 11. What often makes the difference between the reaction to 9-11 and these other terrorists is that powerful elites and large segments of American people wanted these terrorists to succeed. Vengeful white supremacists, including President Andrew Johnson himself, were happy to see terrorism during Reconstruction against Blacks trying to assert civil rights and anti racist whites allied with them. Along with millions of American Protestants, Presidents Polk and Fillmore shared the anti-Catholic hatred of the Know Nothings. Cuban-American hostility against Castro has been very useful for several presidents. Kennedy helped organize Cuban-American terrorists. Bush Sr. pardoned the worst terrorist among them, Luis Posada Carriles. Finally, right wing terrorism has been a serious problem since the early 1980s, with many bombings and hundreds dead. Not one single president has succeeded in halting their terror campaigns. Only Obama even made a serious effort.
Andrew Johnson and White Supremacist Terrorists in Reconstruction
* What: Racially and politically motivated violence, lynchings, assassinations, bombings, beatings, rapes, mob violence, and organized attacks by private vigilante armies designed to maintain white supremacy and keep Blacks, Mexicans, and anti racist whites too terrorized to practice their civil rights.
* The Body Count: At least 50,000 deaths in the five years following the Civil War, Blacks, anti racist whites, and Mexicans in Texas all murdered by white supremacists, mostly ex Confederates, with a body count over a dozen times higher than that of Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
* The Confederate Secret Service also killed perhaps 2,000 Americans with its state sponsored terrorism, bombing over 200 ships. The worst act of terrorism prior to September 11 was carried out by the Confederacy, the bombing of the USS Sultana. The CSS's most famous victim was Abraham Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth was a CSS agent who temporarily escaped thanks to a network of fellow CSS agents. CSS plots included plans to spread smallpox and yellow fever in New Orleans, Norfolk, and Washington DC and burn down New York City, Chicago, Boston, and Cincinnati. The biological warfare and arson plots only failed due to CSS incompetence.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* The Ku Klux Klan, White League, Red Shirts and other racist terrorists have the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous and most disturbingly successful of all terrorists the US has ever faced. This is because they either worked with authorities, or in some instances, the authorities were one and the same, were the terrorists.
* President US Grant gets some of the blame. He did make a strenuous effort to stop terrorism, but was often far too trusting of colleagues that often turned out to be quite corrupt. Grant did succeed in limiting violence, especially in George and South Carolina. (See Section Eight.) But in the end his desire for reconciliation among whites led him to pardon many Confederate traitors.
* Corrupt administrators in both the Johnson and Grant administrations are sometimes blamed. Confederate apologists often claim the south suffered greatly from “carpetbaggers” the derogatory term applied to northerners who moved south. In fact, corruption was far worse among white racist state governments after Reconstruction.
* Until the Civil Rights Era, most Confederate apologists and white racists blamed the victims themselves, Blacks, for “not knowing their place” or supposedly being inherently savage or incapable of being civilized.
* Many of these same apologists and racists also blamed the federal government and “Yankees,” inventing falsehoods of federal tyranny. Racist terrorists actually operated with virtual impunity and were usually not punished. Most of the northerners demonized as exploitative Yanks were actually soldiers, teachers, or charity workers.
* Choosing Andrew Johnson as his Vice President was the biggest mistake Lincoln ever made.
Johnson was the worst possible choice to be president after the Civil War. The most deeply racist president in US history, embittered, an outright drunk, an insecure, mean, petty little man, Johnson managed to make a recovery from a destructive civil war into an extended period of the worst terrorism America ever faced. Al Qaeda in their darkest fantasies could not have done as much damage to America as Johnson did by his sheer utter incompetence.
* Johnson grew up poor, and remained insecure about that fact his entire life. After serving in the militia briefly, he long after insisted on being addressed as “Colonel.” He became a successful businessman, enough to have eight to ten slaves in his home. He was the last US President to be a slave owner, and as congressman led a successful effort to strip Free Blacks in Tennessee of the vote. He became a Democratic Senator, and when Tennessee seceded, he spoke against it, but also against abolitionists. When Tennessee was liberated from the Confederacy, Johnson became its military governor. He convinced Lincoln to make Tennessee exempt from Emancipation. When Lincoln ran for re election in 1864, he chose Johnson to replace Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, a Republican abolitionist from Maine. Johnson was intended to be a symbol of unity and reconciliation across party and regional lines.
* Johnson got roaring drunk at the inauguration and gave one of the most bizarre speeches ever given by a politician. He stumbled for a quarter of an hour, then kissed the Bible. Then he was rarely seen until six weeks later. With Lincoln's murder by a Confederate Secret Service agent, Johnson was now president. It was more than seven months until Congress met again. One of Johnson's first acts was to pardon all Confederate traitors, except for the wealthy. The wealthy had to apply to him personally. Over time almost all traitors were pardoned.
* His second act was to declare the matter of Blacks voting was to be left to states, now to come back under the control of pardoned Confederates. Essentially Johnson threw away most of what Unionist fought the Civil War for, ending slavery and punishing treason. (See Sections Eight and Eleven.) The Confederates were being handed back much of what they had lost. Worst of all, Johnson fired thousands of federal officials. These ranged from generals upholding the law in southern states to Blacks working for the post office, one of the few secure refuges for minorities before the end of segregation.
* Thanks to Johnson, white supremacists had virtual impunity. Ex-Confederates took office all across the south, even former Confederate Vice President Stephens. These states passed Black Codes, recreating slavery as much as possible. Blacks had to sign work contracts they could not quit. To be without a contract meant you would be arrested for vagrancy, where you were hired out (unpaid) to plantation owners in the day and locked in jail at night. Blacks were forbidden to rent or own their own farms, carry guns, and barred from almost all schools. In some cases the laws even required Blacks to get off the sidewalk if whites were on it, address all whites as “sir,” and barred looking whites in the eye or shaking their hand.
* Johnson, instead of seeking to undo the damage done by ex-Confederates, turned his anger on Republicans, abolitionists, and Blacks. He vetoed the first Civil Rights Bill. He tried to abolish the Freedmen's Bureau, set up to aid former slaves. Then he gave an angry speech attacking Republicans, even accusing congressmen by name of plotting to kill him. In the congressional elections of 1866, Johnson toured giving speeches trying to defeat Republicans. He was often drunk during his speeches, compared himself to Christ, and got into shouting matches with hecklers. Republicans won huge majorities, enough to finally override his vetoes. Johnson tried to delay the Fourteenth Amendment, making Blacks citizens and guaranteeing voting rights, as long as possible, to the very end of his term.
* Across the south, mob violence tried to keep both Blacks and anti racist whites from voting, and intimidate anyone trying to change the old ways. But what was even more vicious than violence at polling stations was the new phenomenon of racist lynchings. Lynching criminals without trial was not new. Lynching as terrorism, to intimidate those seeking civil rights, was.
* Most readers are likely aware that it was quite common for slave owners to rape slaves. Once slavery came to an end, that stopped. Now, newly freed Black women and girls could be raped by anyone, and the law usually did not protect them. Sometimes it was done to “send a message” or intimidate. But more often it was done for the disturbing reason that the rapists knew they could get away with it, that it would never be punished. For nearly a century it became a sick phenomenon throughout the south, that racists would get their sexual thrills through rape.
* The usual pretext of most lynchings was the accusation of Blacks' rape or attempted rapes of white women. This is what psychologists call projecting. The violent stereotype was projected onto Black males, when actually virtually all the violence being done was by white racists, including the new epidemic of rapes of Black women and girls. The usual targets of lynchings were rarely guilty of rape. Far more often, lynching victims were those seeking or exercising their civil or legal rights or with a defiant or “uppity” attitude of not “knowing their place.” The lynch victim had perhaps tried to vote, had spoken out publicly (especially ministers), or had committed a minor transgression like failing to get off the sidewalk or address someone white as “sir.”
* Lynching by nature was a public execution with no fear of punishment. Sheriffs and mayors were either conveniently absent or sometimes even took part. “Lynch parties” were social occasions, with drinking and sometimes refreshments bought and sold there. Often parents brought their children, and courting couples treated a lynching like a date. People often took souvenirs at lynchings, collecting body parts as gruesome trophies. Violence was not limited to hangings either, and included burning to death, whippings, beatings, tar and feathering, or shooting. Sometimes instead of lynchings, racist terrorists bombed churches or engaged in pitched street battles.
* An important point is organized racist violence targeted anti racist whites as well, and in Texas many Mexicans. The first year of Reconstruction, more whites were lynched than Blacks. This was a clear way of sending a message, stand with them and we will kill you too.
* What did Johnson do to stop any of this? Nothing, and worse than nothing, he encouraged it and cheered it. For Johnson was an utterly repugnant racist, way beyond even most of the typical racists of his day. He obsessed over, in his own words, being “trodden underfoot by niggers.” His private diaries, letters, and conversations showed a morbid fear of interracial sex and mixing, one rarely equaled by any but the most vicious bigots. To him, Blacks were “inferior to the White Man in intellect...is every splay footed, hump backed, thick lipped, flat nosed, wooly headed, ebon colored Negro.”
* Johnson's words sound strikingly similar to white racists today, and not just in their race baiting. Again and again, Johnson and other racists claimed that any civil rights laws were anti white and thus racist, that whites were the true victims, and that Blacks were inherently violent and had to be kept in line with greater violence up to and including murder.
* Thus when US Army generals tried to enforce the law, Johnson fired almost all of them. Johnson did not want the federal government involved in law enforcement anyway. When US Army generals confiscated plantation land and gave it to those who actually worked on it, former slaves, Johnson handed the land back to the former slave owners. Amazingly, Johnson even tried to form his own army, the “Army of the Atlantic” stationed in DC, to try and intimidate Republicans.
* Congress, and most of the public, finally had enough. Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson could no longer fire officials for enforcing the nation's laws. Johnson defied Congress and fired Secretary of War Stanton, who had been appointed by Lincoln and was a dedicated abolitionist. Since US troops were in the south trying to prevent violence, firing Stanton was firing the highest federal official trying to stop lynchings and enforce civil rights.
* Congress moved to impeach Johnson. The House voted to impeach by well over the two thirds margin, almost three to one. The Senate failed to impeach him by a single vote. Johnson narrowly avoided being impeached by bribing senators, with both money and the promise of offices. Some authors defend his not being impeached, but the nation was obviously worse off.
* Johnson finished office. He tried to get elected as president on his own, openly proclaiming he was the best hope to stop Black equality. But he got virtually no votes at the end of the Democratic Convention. At the inauguration, the next President, US Grant, the former Union commander during the Civil War, refused to share the same carriage with Johnson, something ingoing and outgoing presidents had always done before.
* In spite of Johnson, Congress, Union generals, abolitionists, the Freedmen's Bureau, and newly freed Blacks exercising their civil rights could point to some accomplishments. Sixteen Blacks were elected to US Congress, some of them former slaves who had taught themselves to read only a few years before. Some of these same congressmen were re elected for up over 30 years, until 1900. Hundreds of Blacks were elected to Republican Conventions and in local offices. The three Reconstruction Amendments were passed, one before Johnson, one in spite of him during his time in office, and one after he left office. In spite of Johnson, Reconstruction saw the beginnings of Black autonomy, mobility, self assertion, and civil rights. Reconstruction under the so called Radical Republicans and Grant built 4,400 Black schools. The Black community began 35,000 Black churches and 60 Black newspapers. One out nine Blacks in the cities owned land, homes or businesses.
* Lynchings continued all the way until the late 1980s. They first dropped off dramatically in the 1950s and 60s. Ida Wells led an anti lynching campaign, but it was international pressure during the Cold War, combined with the Civil Rights movement that led to the sharpest decline in lynchings. (See Section Eight.) Johnson died seven years after he left office, unrepentant over what he had done and not done. There were others who were better choices, who could have led the country far better. (See Section Nine.) Grant, contrary to some critics of his, was largely a far better president and partly ended racist violence. (See Section Eight again.)
* In fact it is hard to imagine a worse president for that time than Johnson. Johnson did more damage to the US than any president up to that time except Buchanan. But where Buchanan almost guaranteed a long destructive civil war, Johnson guaranteed a destructive peace, one that acquiesced to terrorism. Future generations of nonwhites were consigned to subservience and limited lives, more likely to die younger and live in greater poverty, their possibilities limited to manual labor or insulated communities. Future generations of whites were taught this was how it had to be, the natural order. Their fate was tragic as well, for many whites were trained to blame and hate the Other rather than look at their own failings.