| I have the original (Reminiscences Of My Great, Great Grandfather's Slaves) |
Isaac Voting the Democratic Ticket.
One day I met one of dese highfalutin' nigger women who puts on so many airs; she says to me, "I'm a great mind to shoot you, you ole rascal, fur votin' dat ticket." "Well, madam, if your fingers ken play on de trigger enny faster dan mine, crack a' loose."
NOTE.--He was always a good Democrat. (Which would have been a conservative Southerner back then. BT)
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With Americans in the South disarmed and impoverished by war, the Radical Republican Congress proceeded to treat them “as
alien communities who were to be dealt with anew under the laws of
conquest and admitted to the Union on conditions of its own imposing.”
To assure their political hegemony in the South, the Radicals deemed it
not desirable to have the Union restored by the admission of eleven
Democratic States as that would seriously endanger the Republican party.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The 4th of July 1868
“North
Carolina, who had already, in obedience to the President’s invitation,
held a convention and remodeled her government . . . [and] became part
of “Military District No. 2.” Orders from “Headquarters” in Charleston,
South Carolina, dissolved her State government . . . overturned her laws
and displaced her officials. Anarchy reigned . . . a new convention was
called.
The
Negroes were invited to vote, though their suffrage was not known to
either State or Federal law; whilst many thousands, embracing nearly all
of her leading citizens, were disenfranchised. The excuse for this
legislation was that the States lately in insurrection were in a state
of complete anarchy, entirely without civil law and a republican form of
government. Each assertion was a lie.
A saturnalia began. Our English-speaking race has not known its like since the plunder of Ireland in the sixteenth century. Detachments of the army were stationed at various points to overawe the people. Almost every citizen of experience of affairs in the State was disenfranchised, and over the others hung the threat of confiscation. Under such circumstances the new convention was called by military orders; the qualification of its members, its electors, and the persons to hold the elections, the time and place, were all prescribed by the same authority…”
The returns . . . were examined in secret and the result announced. That result was 110 Republicans and 10 Democrats! The voting population of the State…was 214,222; the registration for that election in 1868 was 103,060 whites and 71,657 Negroes -- total 174,717. The result shows that about 40,000 were either disenfranchised or in some other way deterred from voting.
Of the 110 Republican . . . elected . . . were thirteen Negroes and eight strangers, who came to be wittingly called “carpet-baggers.” They were not citizens of the State and were in no way entitled to the privilege of making laws for North Carolina; but they came to officer the Negroes and to teach loyalty to the whites. The rest were disaffected white natives, mostly without property to be taxed or sympathy with their race, or regard for the misfortunes of their country . . . They met in January, 1868, and framed a Constitution after those of Ohio, Illinois and other Northern States . . . On the 4th of July, 1868, the new government was inaugurated.”
(North Carolina History Told By Contemporaries, Edited by Hugh Talmage Lefler, UNC Press, 1965, pp. 351-353)
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