Name: ______________________________________ Period: _____ Due Date: _______________
Time Period 5B
-The Republican
Experiment Continues1865-1896
Contents
Chapter
22
22
22
26
26
Document
Louisiana Black Code
A Freedman Writes “Home”
Southern Skepticism of the Freedmen’s Bureau
Theodore Roosevelt’s Views on Native Americans
Mrs. Mary Lease- “Wall Street Owns the Country”
Page
1
3
5
7
9
Source: Louisiana Black Code, 1865 [Louisiana]
Introduction
After the region's slaves were freed, Southern communities passed laws called "black codes" to control black
citizens. The first states to pass black codes were Mississippi and South Carolina; other Southern states soon
followed. Exact provisions of these laws varied from state to state, but their effect was similar. Read the
following provisions of a Louisiana parish's black codes and evaluate their impact.
Source
. . . Sec. 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no negro shall be allowed to pass
within the limits of said parish without special permit in writing from his employer. Whoever shall violate this
provision shall pay a fine of two dollars and fifty cents, or in default thereof shall be forced to work four days on
the public road, or suffer corporeal punishment as provided hereinafter. . . .
Sec. 3. . . . No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish. Any negro violating this
provision shall be immediately ejected and compelled to find an employer; and any person who shall rent, or
give the use of any house to any negro, in violation of this section, shall pay a fine of five dollars for each
offence.
Sec. 4. . . . Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall
be held responsible for the conduct of said negro. But said employer or former owner may permit said negro to
hire his own time by special permission in writing, which permission shall not extend over seven days at any
one time. . . .
Sec. 5. . . . No public meetings or congregations of negroes shall be allowed within said parish after sunset; but
such public meetings and congregations may be held between the hours of sunrise and sunset, by the special
permission in writing of the captain of patrol, within whose beat such meetings shall take place. . . .
Sec. 6. . . . No negro shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of colored
people, without a special permission in writing from the president of the police jury. . . .
Sec. 7. . . . No negro who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of
weapons, within the parish, without the special written permission of his employers, approved and indorsed by
the nearest and most convenient chief of patrol. . . .
Sec. 8. . . . No negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise or traffic within said parish
without the special written permission of his employer, specifying the article of sale, barter or traffic. . . .
Sec. 9. . . . Any negro found drunk, within the said parish shall pay a fine of five dollars, or in default thereof
work five days on the public road, or suffer corporeal punishment as hereinafter provided.
Sec. 11. . . . It shall be the duty of every citizen to act as a police officer for the detection of offences and the
apprehension of offenders, who shall be immediately handed over to the proper captain or chief of patrol. . . .
Page 1
Louisiana Black Code
(1865)
Chapter 22
Questions
1. What were the black codes? ______________________________________________________
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2. List some of the restrictions placed on black citizens in this Louisiana parish. ____________
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3. Why were these black codes so restrictive? _________________________________________
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4. Speculate about how these laws were enforced. _____________________________________
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Extensions
What impact would these laws have had on the black community?
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Page 2
Source: A Freedman Writes “Home”
Introduction
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former
slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who,
since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family
— responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to
newspapers at the time, he dictated).
Source
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to
come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often
felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs
they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the
Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left
you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to
go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and
Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would
have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors
told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well
here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for
Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school
and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school,
and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others
saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear
such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many
darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what
wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back
again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my
free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she
would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and
we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served
you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the
future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a
month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six
hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and
Page 3
deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy,
and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's
Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we
can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to
the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for
generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there
was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a
day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now
grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would
rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the
violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any
schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to
give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at
me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.
Page 4
Source: Southern Skepticism of the Freedmen's Bureau, 1866
[James D.B. DeBow]
Introduction
James D. B. De Bow published a commercial and agricultural journal in New Orleans in which he advocated
industrialization for the South as a means to revive the economy, reduce the South's dependence on Northern
goods, and mitigate the North's criticism of slavery. As a publisher attuned to and familiar with economic
conditions in the South, De Bow was asked by the House Committee on Reconstruction to give an assessment
of the Freedmen's Bureau's effectiveness.
Source
. . . Question. What is your opinion of the necessity or utility of the Freedmen's Bureau, or of any agency of that
kind?
Answer. I think if the whole regulation of the negroes, or freedmen, were left to the people of the communities
in which they live, it will be administered for the best interest of the negroes as well as of the white men. I think
there is a kindly feeling on the part of the planters towards the freedmen. They are not held at all responsible
for anything that has happened. They are looked upon as the innocent cause. In talking with a number of
planters, I remember some of them telling me they were succeeding very well with their freedmen, having got
a preacher to preach to them and a teacher to teach them, believing it was for the interest of the planter to
make the negro feel reconciled; for, to lose his services as a laborer for even a few months would be very
disastrous. The sentiment prevailing is, that it is for the interest of the employer to teach the negro, to educate
his children, to provide a preacher for him, and to attend to his physical wants. And I may say I have not seen
any exception to that feeling in the south. Leave the people to themselves, and they will manage very well. The
Freedmen's Bureau, or any agency to interfere between the freedman and his former master, is only
productive of mischief. There are constant appeals from one to the other and continual annoyances. It has a
tendency to create dissatisfaction and disaffection on the part of the laborer, and is in every respect in its result
most unfavorable to the system of industry that is now being organized under the new order of things in the
south. . . .
Question. What is your opinion as to the relative advantages . . . of the present system of free labor, as
compared with that of slavery as it heretofore existed in this country?
Answer. If the negro would work, the present system is much cheaper. If we can get the same amount of labor
from the same persons, there is no doubt of the result in respect to economy. Whether the same amount of
labor can be obtained, it is too soon yet to decide. We must allow one summer to pass first. They are working
now very well on the plantations. That is the general testimony. The negro women are not disposed to field
work as they formerly were, and I think there will be less work from them in the future than there has been in
the past. The men are rather inclined to get their wives into other employment, and I think that will be the
constant tendency, just as it is with the whites. Therefore, the real number of agricultural laborers will be
reduced. I have no idea if the efficiency of those who work will be increased. If we can only keep up their
efficiency to the standard before the war, it will be better for the south, without doubt, upon the mere money
question, because it is cheaper to hire the negro than to own him. Now a plantation can be worked without
any outlay of capital by hiring the negro and hiring the plantation. . . .
Question. What arrangements are generally made among the landholders and the black laborers in the south?
Answer. I think they generally get wages. A great many persons, however, think it better to give them an
interest in the crops. That is getting to be very common. . . .
Page 5
Southern Skepticism
(1866)
Chapter 22
Questions
1. What was James D. B. De Bow's opinion of the Freedmen's Bureau? Explain. ______________
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2. Using the document and the discussion in your textbook, do you think that De Bow was
justified in his assessment of the Freedmen's Bureau? Why or why not? __________________
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3. According to De Bow, how had conditions changed in the South with regard to the labor
system, the role of women, and opportunities for education or religious fellowship?
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Extension
Using the document, what can you predict about the emerging labor system in the South? Support
your prediction.
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Page 6
Source: Theodore Roosevelt’s Views on Native Americans, 1885
Introduction
Teddy Roosevelt, the future president, invested more than $50,000 of his patrimony in ranch lands in Dakota Territory.
He lost most of his investment but gained robust health and valuable experience. With little sympathy for Native
Americans, he felt that the government had “erred quite as often on the side of too much leniency as on the side of too
much severity.” The following account, based in part on firsthand observations appears in one of his earliest books:
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman.
Source
There are now no Indians left in my immediate neighborhood, though a small party of harmless
Grosventres occasionally passes through; yet it is but six years since the Sioux surprised and killed five
men in a log station just south of me, where the Fort Keogh trail crosses the river; and, two years ago,
when I went down on the prairies toward the Black Hills, there was still danger from Indians. That
summer the buffalo hunters had killed a couple of Crows, and while we were on the prairie a longrange skirmish occurred near us between some Cheyennes and a number of cowboys. In fact, we
ourselves were one day scared by what we thought to be a party of Sioux; but on riding toward them
they proved to be half-breed Crees, who were more afraid of us than we were of them.
During the past century a good deal of sentimental nonsense has been talked about our taking the
Indians' land. Now, I do not mean to say for a moment that gross wrong has not been done the
Indians, both by government and individuals, again and again. The government makes promises
impossible to perform, and then fails to do even what it might toward their fulfillment; and where
brutal and reckless frontiersmen are brought into contact with a set of treacherous, revengeful, and
fiendishly cruel savages a long series of outrages by both sides is sure to follow.
But as regards taking the land, at least from the western Indians, the simple truth is that the latter
never had any real ownership in it at all. Where the game was plenty, there they hunted; they
followed it when it moved away to new hunting-grounds, unless they were prevented by stronger
rivals; and to most of the land on which we found them they had no stronger claim than that of
having a few years previously butchered the original occupants.
When my cattle came to the Little Missouri the region was only inhabited by a score or so of white
hunters; their title to it was quite as good as that of most Indian tribes to the lands they claim; yet
nobody dreamed of saying that these hunters owned the country. Each could eventually have kept
his own claim of 160 acres, and no more.
The Indians should be treated in just the same way that we treat the white settlers. Give each his little
claim; if, as would generally happen, he declined this, why then let him share the fate of the
thousands of white hunters and trappers who have lived on the game that the settlement of the
country has exterminated, and let him, like these whites, who will not work, perish from the face of
the earth which he cumbers.
The doctrine seems merciless, and so it is; but it is just and rational for all that. It does not do to be
merciful to a few, at the cost of justice to the many. The cattle-men at least keep herds and build
houses on the land; yet I would not for a moment debar settlers from the right of entry to the cattle
country, though their coming in means in the end the destruction of us and our industry.
Page 7
Theodore Roosevelt’s Views on the Native Americans
(1885)
Chapter 26
Questions
1. Describe how T.R. views Native Americans? _________________________________________
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2. What light does T.R. observations cast on the allegation that whites robbed Native
Americans of their lands? ________________________________________________________
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3. What is T.R.’s proposed solution to the problem? ____________________________________
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Extension
In what ways is T.R.’s viewpoint and proposed solution to the problems of Native Americans
consistent or not consistent on U.S. foreign and domestic policy with Native American tribes?
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Page 8
Source: Mrs. Mary Lease- “Wall Street Owns the Country”, 1890
Introduction
As the plains seethed with protest, the Populist Party emerged from the Farmers’ Alliance. Kansas spawned the most
picturesque and vocal group of orators. Known as the “Patrick Henry in petticoats,” Mary Lease insists on drastic
measures.
Source
This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We
fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our
tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first.
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the
people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.
The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and
South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East.
Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which
clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.
The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go
to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the
rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what
came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that's
what came of it.
The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so
statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New
York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their wages deny them...
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want
the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out...
We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our
debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us.
The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware.
Page 9
Mrs. Mary Lease—“Wall Street Owns the Country”
(1890)
Chapter 26
Questions
1. What political party is depicted here? ______________________________________________
2. From the excerpt, which are substantial grievances and which are demagogic outpourings?
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3. Which of Lease’s complaints seem to be the most extreme? Explain. ____________________
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Extension
What were the best and worst things about life on the frontier? How was the frontier experience
for men different from that for women? Explain. __________________________________________
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Page 10