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CHAPTER 16 Gone, But Not Forgotten 1865 to 1876

Reconstruction after the Civil War was a bitter period throughout the South. This era of forced change contributed to racial unrest that persisted long after the official interval of rehabilitation ordered by the Federal Government ended. A sense of devastating loss pervaded the entire region, even in areas where no battles were fought. Nearly an entire generation of young men had been killed or permanently disabled, and many others found themselves homeless because Union soldiers had often burned everything in their paths that might help the Rebels prolong the conflict.

Roads that could have carried people somewhere else to start over were rutted and virtually impassable; and railroads were frequently in similar disrepair. Most Southerners, however, had little or no money to finance such a journey anyway. Of those who did manage to hold onto cash and bonds during the hard war years, most found their remaining wealth sunk into all but worthless Confederate currency. Many, once rich, were now poor. Fields lay fallow without the farmers to tend them. Horses to pull the plows were also gone, killed in battles or stolen. With crops unplanted, and livestock all but depleted, fresh food became scarce, and what commodities were available often came at exorbitant prices. If there were crops to sell, wagons to carry them to market were also in short supply.

A bitter irony was that slaves freed by the war in some ways remained no better off than before. Policies designed to help them went awry, derailed by insufficient money and personnel to enforce the mandates, and sabotaged by Southern Whites. One method Federal officials devised to protect Blacks from possible abuse was to require White employers to sign a contract with every laborer stating exact wages. Most Whites considered the contracts repulsive, not only because they hated any commands from the victors of the war, but also because they resisted any measure requiring them to treat as equals people they had only recently considered their property.

But the contracts were mandatory, so many Whites circumvented the government^'s intent by writing contracts that replicated conditions almost identical to those of slavery. These documents sometimes bound workers for an entire year to an employer and stipulated that in return laborers would receive food, clothing, and housing, just as they did in slave times, but now they would also earn a small wage.

The History Group, an Atlanta-based research organization, found an example of the sort of contracts used: "This agreement made and entered into the ___ day of August, 1865...Joseph R. Deadwyler agrees to furnish [his former servants] clothing and food and humane treatment as heretofore, and in addition to their own patches I will give to each ten bushels of corn and five gallons syrup and meat, and they agree to labor as heretofore on my farms and as I may direct until the 25th day of December next, and to behave themselves."

Many Blacks were also displeased by the contracts because they wanted nothing that would legally bind them back to former owners. On the other hand, if the slaveholders had been relatively just, Blacks were more inclined to continue working at the same plantation as they did before the war's end. Some, though, wanted nothing at all to do with their former masters or any other Southern Whites. Groups of former slaves congregated in towns and near Federal army bases waiting to receive the promised "40 acres and a mule" or some other allotment of land from the Federal Government. Most, however, waited in vain. Some Blacks left the South altogether. Others, untrained for other employment, eventually returned to field work. But many Black males were opposed to their women and children working in the fields anymore. They wanted their families to have the same leisure that many White women and children enjoyed. All of these factors combined to cause a severe labor shortage. Captain C. R. Becker, sent by the Federal Government to guide Reconstruction efforts on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, reported: "...there are none who need want employment, if they only choose to seek it, for in fact I have applications nearly every day from planters who are in want of hands and unable to obtain them." In another report, the captain stated some ex-slaveholders were still lashing their Black laborers with whips, and that many Blacks were stealing food.

The transition to a free labor market was the responsibility of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which became known as the Freedmen's Bureau. An arm of the United States Congress, the Freedmen's Bureau was also responsible for doling out assistance to Whites, destitute because of the war, and to Blacks, most of whom had never had any money of their own. No other plans existed for infusing money into the region's crippled economy, no Marshall Plan to rebuild cities like Atlanta destroyed in the war. Federal coffers were severely depleted from the enormous costs of the war, and some Washington officials were disinclined to appropriate resources to help their recent enemies.

People in the Russell area, although spared battles on their land, weren't immune to the many costs of the war or to the fear of one another that existed between Blacks and Whites. Much of the area's wealth before the war consisted of slaves. Now, that wealth had vanished; many Whites faced financial ruin. Some, however, used the economic depression as an opportunity to acquire cheap land, as James Edward Calhoun apparently did.

Recent studies in Louisiana and Alabama reveal that the planter class as a whole was actually able to add to their land holdings between 1860 and 1870, although few people managed a 72 percent increase in property as Calhoun apparently accomplished. But even he struggled some during Reconstruction, unsuccessfully seeking loans several times between 1865 and 1867. In a letter in 1865, an agent Calhoun had asked to help him get a loan in Philadelphia wrote: "Affairs are still so unsettled in the South, that is as to getting the Freedmen to their labor, that I have not even attempted to ask for a loan.^"

Calhoun probably eventually got a loan, but nonetheless he considered himself financially disadvantaged. He had lost his slaves, valued at about $130,000, according to researchers under the direction of Charles Orser. Even as late as 1869, Calhoun wrote to a friend: "My house, which you knew, is rotting over my head, past repair. My losses have been so immense that I cannot afford to build. I can do no more than try to gather enough to enable me to modify one of my outbuildings, that I may have some convenience and more security."

While his wartime prosperity may have dissipated, Calhoun was undoubtedly exaggerating the hardships he experienced. Any real financial difficulties he might have experienced were short-lived and he was soon earning enough profits to launch major construction projects. Certainly, in the years following Reconstruction, he was comfortably rich, and as J. W. Joseph observed: "His frequent complaints (during Reconstruction) of impoverishment and roofs rotting over his head must be taken in light of Calhoun's character, which emphasized the impediments to his industrial schemes." While Calhoun was concerned with expanding his interests, many others were concerned with merely staying alive during Reconstruction.

Violence had by no means ended with the war, and most places had few, if any, Federal Government representatives to police them. Lawlessness was rampant and vigilantes often became the only enforcers. A clear example of the inadequacy of government at the time were the few representatives assigned to the Freedmen's Bureau. For all of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, a territory with 400,000 former slaves, Brevet Major General Rufus B. Saxon commanded a staff of only 24 assistants and 20 doctors.

Saxon concentrated his thinly stretched effort on the coastal areas where the majority of the former slaves lived. He also opened a district office in Anderson, South Carolina, although the office was apparently understaffed. Few Federal troops patrolled anywhere in the surrounding area.

The Anderson office provided some of the sparse written evidence found by Russell researchers about life during Reconstruction. Documents indicated that a tense atmosphere persisted, often erupting into violence towards Blacks. According to one report, the former slaves, "in this section of the state (are) not freedmen and women... they are nominally such, but their condition indeed is worse than bondage itself and ever will be unless this subdistrict is flooded with... cavalry.... The U.S. soldiers and the freedmen are alike threatened and despised, and a very little respected. The military authorities are seldom obeyed except when necessity compels-and the garrison is limited, hence a majority of the guilty go unpunished."

Captain C. R. Becker, in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in Anderson, detailed one example of the terrors taking place in a report he filed in May, 1866: "On Saturday, May 12, about ten o'clock a freedman by name of Elbert MacAdams was taken from his house by an unknown man and shot three times and then had his throat cut and was dragged into the woods about a hundred yards from his house, where he was found dead on Sunday morning. The freedman had come to see his wife on Basil Callahan's plantation, about 16 miles from here.... Freedmen report to the office every day that they are being driven off, and my time is entirely taken up looking into the reason and seeing that they get their rights."

Early in Reconstruction, White-controlled legislatures throughout the South strove to limit or to end altogether many of the freedoms Blacks had won. They did this by passing laws called "Black Codes," statutes that varied from state to state, but expressed similar intent. Some of the laws limited Black voting rights and the types of jobs they could take to only the lowest-paying, such as farm laborer. Others prevented Blacks from serving on juries and owning guns, and from testifying in court against Whites. The codes also made public school segregation the law, and required segregation in other arenas as well. For example, Blacks were prohibited from using the same public facilities as Whites. And to countermand the lack of laborers, legislators enacted strict vagrancy laws so that anyone not working could be arrested and hired out to White employers to pay off vagrancy fines.

The Federal Government responded by enforcing its own law guaranteeing the right to vote to all Black men, while excluding many former Confederate supporters from the polls. When, as a result, Blacks, unaccustomed to public office, and their White allies took over state legislatures, other Whites vociferously complained that corruption became rampant, an accurate assessment in some cases. The South's defeat did attract vulture-like, unscrupulous men, sometimes from outside the region, who were looking for spoils among the ruins. Corruption in local government, however, was by no means restricted to the South in post war years, but was rampant throughout the country. Within a few years, even the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant was engulfed in scandal.

State budget deficits in the South ballooned and taxes rose as Blacks sought equal public education, public-works programs, and relief for the poor, changes that infuriated many Whites who sought to end any further erosion in the way of life they formerly knew.

Efforts to keep Blacks from gaining political strength were especially virulent, involving murder and midnight raids by armed men. On June 30, 1868, a Freedman Bureau report issued from the Anderson office listed 13 separate incidents where former slaves were attacked by Whites, the majority of them beatings of Black women. In August and September of the same year, five Black men were beaten and one was shot in retaliation for joining the Republican Party, which was hated by many Southern Whites because of its association with former President Abraham Lincoln and with Northerners who had fought to abolish slavery. Near election time in November, the Ku Klux Klan went on a rampage. Field agent William DeKnight reported nine cases of KKK brutality.

Another account discussed an episode involving an entire Black community that had apparently fled to avoid election-directed violence: "Innumerable persons have been lying out in the woods since sometime before the election to save being murdered in their beds, their houses having in the meantime been frequently visited at night for that purpose." In still another instance, a Black man attempting to vote at Calhoun Mill was shot, but he apparently survived.

The agricultural life of the region-the only life that most Blacks and Whites had ever known-did help foster some cooperation based on mutual need. Planters continued to need help farming their land, and Blacks needed somewhere to live and money for food. Just after the war, many planters hired their former slaves for low wages. Living in the same houses they had occupied as slaves, the workers wore clothes and ate food dispensed by the planters, and labored in gangs under the vigilance of bosses similar to those of the antebellum years. The situation so resembled slavery that when they could, Blacks complained and sought a different system.

Calhoun, during at least part of Reconstruction, hired laborers in a squad system, enabling him to maintain some of the same control he had as a slaveholder. Under this system, he signed contracts in 1867 with seven Blacks who were to act as bosses. These seven men were expected to hire their own crews and to enforce discipline, including preventing workers from leaving the plantation or having visitors without Calhoun's permission. They were further ordered "to watch & defend the Premises night & day."

The seven bosses, three of whom were named Calhoun, indicating they were his former slaves, paid the planter half of everything their crews grew, and paid the workers from the other half. Besides growing crops, these crews were responsible for repairing plantation fences, roads, and buildings.

Calhoun loaned work animals to the crew leaders, who were required to pay back the full worth of an animal if it were stolen or neglected. The leaders also had to buy supplies from Calhoun, who in turn loaned them hogs and chickens on condition that he "shall receive one-third part of all the fresh eggs, and of the increase in poultry, every month a roasting pig, and beginning at the first of November and closing at the 31st of December, a sounded, well-fatted Hog, weighing at least 150 pounds." Additionally, if any laborer accepted an outside job elsewhere, Calhoun received one-third of his pay.

Calhoun, like most landowners, probably experimented with various labor systems as he adjusted to the loss of slaves. According to one planter in 1865: "On twenty plantations around me there are ten different styles of contracts."

By 1870, most planters had switched to sharecropping or renting land. At first, Blacks probably considered these alternatives improvements over squad systems because they gained some autonomy. Under sharecropping, the landlord supplied basic tools and livestock. Renter systems required tenants to provide their own animals and equipment. Under both systems, the landlord supplied a patch of land and a house to the worker in return for rent, which was often paid as part of the harvest because cash was in such short supply.

Tenant houses under the two arrangements tended to be spread throughout the plantation in a pattern called "fragmented" by geographer Merle Prunty. This dispersed housing provided workers with some measure of freedom because they escaped constant surveillance from a planter or boss by living some distance away. At Millwood, for instance, tenants lived in houses that tended to be about one-third mile from their neighbors. These houses resembled those used earlier by slaves, although they were slightly larger. The houses also tended to be situated on a slope, generally facing south to capture the winter sun's warmth.

In contrast to what happened on plantations, small farmers often paid wages to their help. Their workers continued to live near the main farm house, duplicating a pattern from slavery. As for the planters, gradually they came to prefer tenancy because they were no longer required to spend as much time managing workers, yet still had a mostly stable workforce. Over time, many used both White and Black tenants.

Tenancy helped the Southern economy gradually rebound and cotton to regain its former prominence. Production actually boomed again because most tenants grew cotton as their main crop. With the economy expanding, heightened opportunities drew more people to the Piedmont. Between 1850 and 1890, the population in the reservoir area moderately increased, with the percentage of Black and White residents staying about the same. Population growth was much more dramatic in Anderson County, where the number of people doubled as the county blossomed into a textile manufacturing center.

The economic mainstay for the rest of the area continued to be farming, predominantly by renters and sharecroppers, leading to unfortunate results for the land. While some planters maintained direct involvement in farming their property, others, like Calhoun, apparently lost interest altogether, and relied heavily on overseers to ensure they got their fair shares of the crops. Tenants felt no incentive to protect land they didn't own when it was in their best interest to squeeze as big a harvest as possible from the soil. Any crop rotation to restore the soil or other land conservation practiced before Reconstruction was commonly abandoned, and the broad neglect caused the worst erosion in the long history of the area. The cost in lost soil was staggering. Torrents of mud rushed into the Savannah River, which became more susceptible to floods, in turn causing more erosion. The economic damage from the destruction wouldn't be felt for awhile, but the erosion helped set the stage for the cotton market to tumble.

Tenant farming continued to tie many Blacks to a landowner through debt they incurred. Besides agreeing to pay rent with part of their harvests, tenants commonly borrowed from the landlord to pay for livestock, feed, seed, as well as some of the food they ate. But, when they harvested their crops, profits, which were rarely substantial, were often insufficient to pay the debts. Tenants were obligated to farm another season in hopes that the next harvest would be better, but for many, the cycle became a perpetual treadmill they couldn't escape.

The situation was perpetuated in some instances by landlords who capitalized on Blacks' illiteracy and lack of education by manipulating debt figures against them. Still, the Russell studies of several White families revealed that most of them had fairly good relations with their Black tenants, although that wasn't always the case. At least two researchers located several sources who remembered a form of "debt peonage" administered by one of the landlord families.

The "debt peonage" worked like this: The landlord family members assembled much of their workforce by bailing poor people out of jail in exchange for their labor. As further payment, they also demanded that the prisoners' families work for them, too. The chances of the workers repaying the bail steadily diminished because they were also required to repay for supplies and food the landowners provided. Instead of clearing their debts, the workers became hopelessly entrenched in the landowners' service.

The cotton boom and the decline of plantations as the principal places to obtain supplies and receive other services led to the growth of small communities. Normally, these communities were located where major roads intersected. The town of Heardmont in Elbert County was such a community. Heardmont, mentioned in an earlier chapter, took the same name as a neighboring plantation, which belonged to Georgia Governor Stephen Heard.

In the late 1880's, the town of Heardmont included several White-owned stores, but the community's principal landmark was the Bethel Grove Baptist Church, a Black church. The town was also known as the base for a small group of Black landowners. While tenancy was generally associated with poverty, a few tenants managed to break out of the system through a combination of hard work, knowledge, and a certain amount of luck. Not infrequently, however, when Black tenants managed to accumulate enough money to buy land, they were forced to overcome stiff White resistance to their owning property.

The first Black landowners in Heardmont were actually part White, fathered by George Washington Dye, a White planter. Sometime before the Civil War, according to oral tradition, Dye's marriage proposal to the daughter of a prominent White family was rejected because he didn't have enough money. Dye, then postmaster in Elbert County, vowed he would someday be richer than the family that had rejected him. He determinedly set out to make money, and, eventually, fulfilled his vow. He acquired great wealth, apparently through shrewd business dealings and gambling.

Dye also lived openly and defiantly in an unmarried relationship with his slave, Lucinda. Many local Whites considered the arrangement scandalous, and made no secret of their disapproval, but Dye ignored them. In retaliation for his behavior, the White community all but ostracized him.

Lucinda bore Dye eight children. A ninth child, also born by Lucinda, was reportedly fathered by another man, but was raised with Dye's children and inherited equally from his estate.

When he died, sometime after 1865, Dye bequeathed all his land, including 3,000 acres near Heardmont, to Lucinda and the children. But, because of various causes, his offspring lost most of their property over the years. Some of the land may have been stolen through illegal actions on the part of Whites. Part of Dye's land, though, was eventually bought by other Blacks.

In Georgia before the Civil War, free Blacks reportedly owned about 3,000 farms. By 1903, when Blacks were about half of Georgia's population, they owned 18,715 farms, about four percent of all farms in the state. By then, Reconstruction had passed from the scene, forced to an end by political pressures.

The election of 1876 was, in a situation reflective of the times, a divisive battle between the two major parties. Neither Democratic nor Republican presidential candidate captured enough electoral votes to win the White House; each side claimed 20 disputed votes, and refused to concede defeat. The stalemate dragged on for months at the peril of the stability of the presidency and the entire government. Finally, party leaders compromised. Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, could be inaugurated as president, but in exchange he would withdraw the despised Federal troops from the South. Even before this compromise was finally reached, however, many in the North were losing interest in controlling Southern politics.

By the late 1870's, the South Carolina and Georgia Republican governments, which included many Blacks, had both been turned out of office, and replaced by predominately White, conservative governments. Reconstruction was over, but the actual rebuilding of the South was just beginning.

Chapter 17: Risky Ventures, Rising Waters

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