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The Union League of America, sometimes called the Loyal league, was an organization for political purposes of northern whites, later of southern Negroes, which originated in Ohio in 1862 when the Confederate military successes and political disaffection in the northern states made the outlook for the north seem doubtful. Within one year it had spread over 18 northern states and among the Unionists of the south. The order raised troops, paid their expenses, sent supplies to the field and distributed political literature. At the close of the war it worked for radical reconstruction of the southern states, punishment of the southern leaders, confiscation of property and Negro suffrage. The southern Unionists hoped to make it the nucleus of a new political party, but this was frustrated by the admission of the blacks for political purposes, after which the southern whites generally deserted the league.
After the Freedmen's bureau agents and other northern whites obtained command of the league in the south it became simply a machine to control the Negro vote. The league ceased to be important in the north, though headquarters were in New York city. Each southern state had its grand council and each county one or more councils.
A constitution and an elaborate ritual were adopted, making it an oath-bound secret order, whose members were sworn to support one another on all occasions, to vote in elections only for Negroes or northern men, and to overthrow the southern "white oligarchy." No ex-Confederate and few southern Unionists were permitted to join.
At each meeting the members were taught that they must beware of their white neighbours as their worst enemies, that the Democratic party, to which the southern whites belonged, had opposed emancipation and was still opposed to any rights for the Negro. To prevent moral control of the Negroes by former masters, the league, by an "exodus order," required all Negroes who were still living with their former masters to find other homes. The Negroes were taught the equality of men and the right of the Negro to his master's property.
The Negro vote during reconstruction was controlled by the few white Radical leaders and Negroes who voted with the mass of the southern whites were persecuted, beaten, or even, in a few cases, killed. The league died out about 1870 but not before it had succeeded, with the Freedmen's bureau and other forces, in permanently arraying the Negroes and the whites into opposing political parties.
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Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net
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Republicans Preaching Racial Hatred:
“Scalawags were Southerners willing to espouse Republicanism for reasons of opportunism. When the pro-Negro policies of the carpetbaggers caused the scalawags to desert Republicanism, Northern leaders, conscious of the power of numbers, to an ever greater degree relied upon pure Negro support.
The principal agency of the carpetbaggers was the Union or Loyal League. Initially it was composed almost entirely of white unionists with patriotic rather than political aims. As the [radical] plans of Congress unfolded in 1867, its main purpose became the organization of Negro voters [as Republicans]. In every Southern community trusting Negroes were organized into secret lodges of the order which indulged in mummery and high-sounding platitudes. In its heyday the Union League was said to have more than 200,000 members.
Ceremony, talk about freedom and equal rights, sententious references to the Declaration of Independence, accompanied by the clanging of chains, the burning of weird lights, and prayers and songs – all had their compelling effect upon the Negroes’ emotions and thoughts. They were repeatedly reminded that their interests were eternally at war with those of Southern whites, and that their freedom demanded the continued supremacy of the Republican party.
As a consequence of these teachings, the Union League “voted the Negroes like “herds of senseless cattle.” One member described it as the ‘place we learn the law.” When asked why he voted Republican, another member replied “I can’t read, and I can’t write…We go by instructions. We don’t’ know nothing much.” During the presidential campaign of 1868, the Union League of North Carolina declared that if Grant were not elected, the Negroes would be remanded to slavery; if elected, they would have farms, mules, and hold public office.
One fact is of fundamental importance in understanding the course of radical Reconstruction: the Negroes were aroused to political consciousness not of their own accord but by outside forces. This revolution in Southern behavior, unlike the more lasting political revolutions of history, was not a reflection of accomplishments in other fields. Attainment of political equality by the Negroes, in other words, was not attended by social and economic gains, possibly not even signifying a general demand for these advantages.
Such a lack of support not only meant that the radical political experiment could be destroyed almost as easily as it was created, but that participation of the Negro in politics would be erratic and irresponsible. Even if it had not been that way, it would have been so regarded, because the Negroes did not preface their attempt to win political equality with the attainment of respect in other fields of social endeavor.”
(A History of the South, Francis Butler Simkins, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953, pp. 272-273)
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Republicans Preaching Racial Hatred
