(October 31, 1867)
George Fitzhugh was not alone in overreacting to the prospect of black voters in the Reconstruction era South. The editor of The Nation, while pleased to report that Virginians had taken steps toward complying with the Reconstruction Acts, alleged that black voters in the state had come under the political control of an extreme Radical, Unionist editor the Reverend James W. Hunnicutt (1814–1880), author of The Conspiracy Unveiled (1863), a work that condemned secession as a slaveholders’ plot. The Nation prophesied that Reconstruction would fail if the Republicans pitted whites against blacks.
Virginia is the first State in which a full vote of both races has been polled under the Reconstruction Act. Although there is a considerable preponderance of white voters in the State, there seems to be no doubt that the call for a convention is sustained by a large majority, and that the convention will be Radical in politics. So far, this is a very acceptable result. But it is attended with some drawbacks which deserve attention, especially as they proceed from causes which may find a larger field of operation and produce very serious results.
We have on several occasions alluded to the dangerous effects which might be produced among the freedmen of the South by the current talk about confiscation, and the suggestions of politicians that the negro might properly use his ballot as a means of personal advantage. It is evident that our warnings were only too much needed and our fears too well founded. The fear, once common at the North, that the votes of the negroes would be controlled by their masters, has been entirely dispelled. The fear, common among a different class, that the negroes would use their power brutally, long since passed away. But while it is clear both that the negroes will vote in a mass for a Republican ticket, and that they will be in the main a law-abiding class, it is also plain that they are in danger of falling into the hands of demagogues who will use them without scruple for purposes which will finally prove disastrous to the race.
Mr. Hunnicutt, of Richmond, is the foremost example of this class. Originally, no doubt, a well-meaning man, zealous for liberty and loyalty, he has been perverted by the prospect of power which his great influence among the colored people opened to him, and embittered by the hatred of his white neighbors. His public language has sometimes had an affectation of liberality, but it is manifest that his actions have all been governed by a narrow desire to keep the Republican party of the State under his own control. He has persuaded the colored people to distrust every white man outside his own little clique; and has urged them to a course of political action which has excluded every respectable white man from their alliance, although thousands were willing and even anxious to co-operate with them upon honorable terms. The natural result of such bigotry was shown in the recent vote of Richmond, where there are hundreds of white Republicans fully as radical as Mr. Greeley or Senator Wilson, yet who were driven to support a Conservative ticket; so that Mr. Hunnicutt and his associates received less than fifty white votes in the whole city. It is true that Mr. Hunnicutt secured his election, which was all that he cared about; but at the cost of consolidating the whole white race in opposition. We rejoice to believe that this event, in view of the narrow escape which Mr. Hunnicutt had from entire defeat, will prove fatal to his higher aspirations. But there are more important interests at stake than the fortunes of a single demagogue. The Republican party puts its existence in peril by tolerating such a policy as has been adopted in Richmond. The national leaders of the party must find some means of liberalizing the party managers at the South, or the whole plan of reconstruction will fail, dragging the party to ruin with it.
We say it deliberately, no scheme of reconstruction can succeed with the white race at the South unanimously opposed to it. It can succeed though every rebel, in States where all the whites are rebels, oppose it. It can succeed against the will of nine-tenths of the whole white population of the South. But if it is so managed as to disgust the whole white race as a race, irrespective of birthplace, politics, associations, and interest, it must inevitably fail.