Redeemers
Redeemers
In United States history,"Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a
political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil
War. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the conservative, pro-business faction in the
Democratic Party, who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags.
During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces and Southern state governments were
dominated by Republicans. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed
slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth
Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth
Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude)
enshrined such political rights in the Constitution.
Numerous educated blacks returned to the South to work for Reconstruction, and some blacks attained positions of
political power under these conditions. However, the Reconstruction governments were unpopular with many white
Southerners, who were not willing to accept defeat and continued to try to prevent black political activity by any
means. While the elite planter class often supported insurgencies, violence against freedmen and other Republicans
was often carried out by other whites; insurgency took the form of the secret Ku Klux Klan in the first years after the
war.
In the 1870s, the Southern Democrats exercised power through paramilitary organizations such as the White League
and Red Shirts, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi, respectively. The Red Shirts were also active in North
Carolina. These paramilitary groups turned out Republican officeholders and terrorized and assassinated other
freedmen and their allies to suppress voting. By the presidential election of 1876, only three Southern states –
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida – were "unredeemed", or not yet taken over by white Democrats. The
disputed Presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes (the Republican governor of Ohio) and Samuel J. Tilden
(the Democratic governor of New York) was allegedly resolved by the Compromise of 1877, also known as the
Corrupt Bargain.[1] In this compromise, it was claimed, Hayes became President in exchange for numerous favors to
the South, one of which was the removal of Federal troops from the remaining "unredeemed" Southern states; this
was however a policy Hayes had endorsed during his campaign. With the removal of these forces, Reconstruction
came to an end.
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Redeemers
History
In the 1870s, southern Democrats began to muster more political power as
former Confederates began to vote again. It was a movement that gathered
energy up until the Compromise of 1877, in the process known as the
Redemption. White Democratic Southerners saw themselves as redeeming the
South by regaining power. They appealed to scalawags (white Southerners
who supported the Republican Party after the civil war and during the time of
reconstruction).
More importantly, in a second wave of violence following the suppression of
the Ku Klux Klan, violence began to increase in the Deep South. In 1868
white terrorists tried to prevent Republicans from winning the fall election in
Louisiana. Over a few days, they killed some two hundred freedmen in St.
Landry Parish. Other violence erupted, From April to October, there were
Political cartoon from 1877 by Thomas
1,081 political murders in Louisiana, in which most of the victims were
Nast portraying the Democratic Party's
freedmen.[2] Violence was part of campaigns prior to the election of 1872 in
control of the South.
several states. In 1874 and 1875, more formal paramilitary groups affiliated
with the Democratic Party conducted intimidation, terrorism and violence against black voters and their allies to
reduce Republican voting and turn officeholders out. These included the White League and Red Shirts. They worked
openly for specific political ends, and often solicited coverage of their activities by the press. Every election from
1868 on was surrounded by intimidation and violence; they were usually marked by fraud as well.
In the aftermath of the disputed gubernatorial election of 1872 in Louisiana, for instance, the competing governors
each certified slates of local officers. This situation contributed to the Colfax Massacre of 1873, in which white
Democratic militia killed more than 100 Republican blacks in a confrontation over control of parish offices. Three
whites died in the violence.
Later that year, thousands of armed white militia, supporters of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate John
McEnery fought against New Orleans police and state militia in what was called the "Battle of Liberty Place". They
took over the state government offices in New Orleans and occupied the capitol and armory. They turned Republican
governor William Pitt Kellogg out of office, and retreated only in the face of the arrival of Federal troops sent by
President Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1874 the White League turned out six Republican officeholders in Coushatta, Louisiana and told them to leave the
state. Before they could make their way, they and five to twenty black witnesses were assassinated by white
paramilitary. In 1874 such remnants of white militia formed the White League, a Democratic paramilitary group
started first in Grant Parish of the Red River area of Louisiana, with chapters rising across the state, especially in
rural areas.
Similarly, in Mississippi, the Red Shirts formed as a prominent paramilitary group that enforced Democratic voting
by intimidation and murder. Chapters of paramilitary Red Shirts arose and were active in North Carolina and South
Carolina as well. They disrupted Republican meetings, killed leaders and officeholders, intimidated voters at the
polls, or kept them away altogether.
The Redeemers' program emphasized opposition to the Republican governments, which they considered to be
corrupt and a violation of true republican principles. They also worked to reestablish white supremacy. The crippling
national economic problems and reliance on cotton meant that the South was struggling financially. Redeemers
denounced taxes higher than what they had known before the war. At that time, however, the states had few
functions, and planters maintained private institutions only. Redeemers wanted to reduce state debts. Once in power,
they typically cut government spending; shortened legislative sessions; lowered politicians' salaries; scaled back
public aid to railroads and corporations; and reduced support for the new systems of public education and some
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Redeemers
welfare institutions.
As Democrats took over state legislatures, they worked to change voter registration rules to strip most blacks and
many poor whites of their ability to vote. Blacks continued to vote in significant numbers well into the 1880s, with
many winning local offices. Black Congressmen continued to be elected, albeit in ever smaller numbers, until the
1890s. George Henry White, the last Southern black of the post-Reconstruction period to serve in Congress, retired
in 1901, leaving Congress completely white.
In the 1890s, the Democrats faced challenges with the Agrarian Revolt, when their control of the South was
threatened by the Farmers Alliance, the effects of Bimetallism and the newly created People's Party. On the national
level, William Jennings Bryan defeated the Bourbons and took control of the Democratic Party nationwide.
Disfranchising
Democrats worked hard to prevent such populist coalitions. In the former Confederate South, from 1890 to 1908,
starting with Mississippi, legislatures of ten of the eleven states passed disfranchising constitutions, which had new
provisions for poll taxes, literacy tests, and residency requirements that effectively disfranchised nearly all blacks
and tens of thousands of poor whites. Hundreds of thousands of people were removed from voter registration rolls
soon after these provisions were implemented.
In Alabama, for instance, in 1900 fourteen Black Belt counties had 79,311 voters on the rolls; by June 1, 1903, after
the new constitution was passed, registration had dropped to just 1,081. Statewide Alabama in 1900 had 181,315
blacks eligible to vote. By 1903 only 2,980 were registered, although at least 74,000 were literate. From 1900 to
1903, white registered voters fell by more than 40,000, although their population grew in overall number. By 1941,
more poor whites than blacks had been disfranchised in Alabama, mostly due to effects of the cumulative poll tax.
Estimates were that 600,000 whites and 500,000 blacks had been disfranchised.[3]
African Americans and poor whites were totally shut out of the political process and left unable to vote for
representation. Southern legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing segregation in public facilities and places. As
blacks were segregated, millions of people were quickly affected, to devastating effect. The disfranchisement lasted
well into the later decades of the 20th century. They were shut out of all offices at the local and state level, as well as
Federal level. Those who could not vote could not run for office or serve on juries, so they were never judged by
peers.
While Congress had actively intervened for more than 20 years in elections in the South which the House Elections
Committee judged to be flawed, after 1896 it backed off from intervening. Many Northern legislators were outraged
about the disfranchisement of blacks and some proposed stripping the South of seats in Congress. They never
managed to accomplish that, as southern representatives formed a strong, one-party voting block for decades.[4]
Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges (with many secretly funded by educator Booker T.
Washington and his northern allies), the Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's and Alabama's provisions in its rulings
in Williams v. Mississippi (1898) and Giles v. Harris (1903).[5]
Religious dimension
People in the movement chose the term "Redemption" from Christian theology. Historian Daniel W. Stowell[6]
concludes that white Southerners appropriated the term to describe the political transformation they desired, that is,
the end of Reconstruction. This term helped unify numerous white voters, and encompassed efforts to purge southern
society of its sins and to remove Republican political leaders.
It also represented the birth of a new southern society, rather than a return to its antebellum predecessor. Historian
Gaines M. Foster explains how the South became known as the "Bible Belt" by connecting this characterization with
changing attitudes caused by slavery's demise. Freed from preoccupation with federal intervention over slavery, and
even citing it as precedent, white southerners joined northerners in the national crusade to legislate morality. Viewed
by some as a "bulwark of morality", the largely Protestant South took on a Bible Belt identity long before H. L.
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Mencken coined the term.[6]
The 'redeemed' South
When Reconstruction died, so did all hope for national enforcement of adherence to the constitutional amendments
that the U.S. Congress had passed in the wake of the Civil War. As the last Federal troops left the ex-Confederacy,
two old foes of American politics reappeared at the heart of the Southern polity – the twin, inflammatory issues of
state rights and race. It was precisely on the ground of these two issues that the Civil War had broken out, and in
1877, sixteen years after the secession crisis, the South reaffirmed control over them.
“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery”, wrote W. E. B. Du
Bois. The black community in the South was brought back under the yoke of the Southern Democrats, who had been
politically undermined during Reconstruction. Whites in the South were committed to reestablish its own
sociopolitical structure with the goal of a new social order enforcing racial subordination and labor control. While
the Republicans succeeded in maintaining some power in part of the Upper South, such as Tennessee, in the Deep
South there was a return to ‘home rule’.[7]
In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877, Southern Democrats held the South’s black community under
increasingly tight control. Politically, blacks were gradually evicted from public office, as the few that remained saw
the sway they held over local politics considerably decreased. Socially, the situation was worse, as the Southern
Democrats tightened their grip on the labor force. Vagrancy and ‘anti-enticement’ laws were reinstituted. It became
illegal to be jobless, or to leave a job before the contract expired. Economically, the blacks were stripped of
independence, as new laws gave white planters the control over credit lines and property. Effectively, the black
community was placed under a three-fold subjugation that was reminiscent of slavery.[8]
Historiography
In the years immediately following Reconstruction, most blacks and former abolitionists held that Reconstruction
lost the struggle for civil rights for black people because of violence against blacks and against white Republicans.
Frederick Douglass and Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch cited the withdrawal of federal troops from the
South as a primary reason for the loss of voting rights and other civil rights by African Americans after 1877.
By the turn of the 19th to 20th century, white historians, led by the Dunning School, saw Reconstruction as a failure
because of its political and financial corruption, its failure to heal the hatreds of the war, and its control by
self-serving northern politicians, such as the people around President Grant. Historian Claude Bowers said that the
worst part of what he called "the Tragic Era" was the extension of voting rights to freedmen, a policy he claimed led
to misgovernment and corruption. The freedmen, the Dunning School historians argued, were not at fault because
they were manipulated by corrupt white carpetbaggers interested only in raiding the state treasury and staying in
power. They agreed the South had to be "redeemed" by foes of corruption. Reconstruction, in short, violated the
values of "republicanism" and they classified all Republicans as "extremists". This interpretation of events was the
hallmark of the Dunning School which dominated most history textbooks from 1900 to the 1960s.
Beginning in the 1930s, historians such as C. Vann Woodward and Howard K. Beale attacked the "redemptionist"
interpretation of Reconstruction, calling themselves "revisionists" and claimed that the real issues were economic.
The Northern Radicals were tools of the railroads, and the Republicans in the South were manipulated to do their
bidding. The Redeemers, furthermore, were also tools of the railroads and were themselves corrupt.
In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois published a Marxist analysis in his Black Reconstruction: An Essay toward a History of
the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. His book
emphasized the role of African Americans during Reconstruction, noted their collaboration with whites, their lack of
majority in most legislatures, and also the achievements of Reconstruction: establishing universal public education,
improving prisons, establishing orphanages and other charitable institutions, and trying to improve state funding for
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Redeemers
the welfare of all citizens. He also noted that despite complaints, most Southern states kept the constitutions of
Reconstruction for many years, some for a quarter of a century.
By the 1960s, neo-abolitionist historians led by Kenneth Stampp and Eric Foner focused on the struggle of freedmen.
While acknowledging corruption in the Reconstruction era, they hold that the Dunning School over-emphasized it
while ignoring the worst violations of republican principles — namely denying African Americans their civil rights,
including their right to vote.[9]
Supreme Court challenges
Although educated African Americans mounted legal challenges, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's and
Alabama's provisions in its rulings in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), Giles v. Harris (1903), and Giles v. Teasley.
Booker T. Washington secretly helped fund and arrange representation for such legal challenges, raising money from
northern patrons who helped support Tuskegee University.[10]
When white primaries were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright (1944), civil rights
organizations rushed to register African-American voters. By 1947 the All-Citizens Registration Committee (ACRC)
of Atlanta managed to get 125,000 voters registered in Georgia, raising black participation to 18.8% of those
eligible. This was a major increase from the 20,000 on the rolls who had managed to get through administrative
barriers in 1940.[11] Georgia, among other Southern states, passed new legislation (1958) to once again repress black
voter registration.
It was not until African-American leaders gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of
1965 that the American citizens who were first granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War
finally regained the ability to exercise their right to vote.
Notes
[1] "Election 2000 much like Election 1876" (http:/ / www. stpetersburgtimes. com/ News/ 111700/ Election2000/ Election_2000_much_li.
shtml), Wes Allison, St. Petersburg Times, November 17, 2000.
[2] Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died, Henry Holt & Co., 2009, pp. 18-19
[3] Glenn Feldman, The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004,
p.136
[4] COMMITTEE AT ODDS ON REAPPORTIONMENT, The New York Times, 20 Dec 1900 (http:/ / query. nytimes. com/ mem/ archive-free/
pdf?res=9F07E1D7153DE433A25752C2A9649D946197D6CF), accessed 10 March 2008
[5] Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, pp. 12 and 21], accessed 10
March 2008
[6] Blum and Poole (2005)
[7] Eric Foner, "A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877", New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990, p.249
[8] Eric Foner, "A Short History of Reconstruction: 1863-1877", New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990, p.250
[9] http:/ / college. hmco. com/ history/ readerscomp/ rcah/ html/ ah_074300_redeemers. htm
[10] Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon," Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, pp. 12 and 21], accessed 10
March 2008
[11] Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman, Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994, p.70
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Redeemers
References
Secondary sources
• Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction (1993).
• Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags: Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (2003), a
statistical study of 732 Scalawags and 666 Redeemers.
• Blum Edward J. and W. Scott Poole, eds. Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction. Mercer
University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-86554-987-7.
• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935), explores the role of African
Americans during Reconstruction
• Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (2002)
• Garner, James Wilford. Reconstruction in Mississippi (1901), a classic Dunning School text.
• Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (1979)
• Going, Allen J. "Alabama Bourbonism and Populism Revisited." Alabama Review 1983 36 (2): 83-109. Issn:
0002-4341
• Roger L. Hart, Redeemers, Bourbons, and Populists: Tennessee, 1870-1896. LSU Press, 1975.
• Jones, Robert R. "James L. Kemper and the Virginia Redeemers Face the Race Question: A Reconsideration."
Journal of Southern History, 1972 38 (3): 393-414. Issn: 0022-4642
• King, Ronald F. "A Most Corrupt Election: Louisiana in 1876." Studies in American Political Development, 2001
15(2): 123-137. ISSN: 0898-588x
• King, Ronald F. "Counting the Votes: South Carolina's Stolen Election of 1876." Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 2001 32 (2): 169-191. ISSN: 0022-1953
• Moore, James Tice. "Redeemers Reconsidered: Change and Continuity in the Democratic South, 1870-1900" in
the Journal of Southern History, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Aug., 1978), pp. 357–378.
• Moore, James Tice. "Origins of the Solid South: Redeemer Democrats and the Popular Will, 1870-1900."
Southern Studies, 1983 22 (3): 285-301. Issn: 0735-8342
• Perman, Michael. The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869-1879. Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
University of North Carolina Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8078-4141-2
• Perman, Michael "Counter Reconstruction: The Role of Violence in Southern Redemption", in Eric Anderson and
Alfred A. Moss, Jr, eds. The Facts of Reconstruction (1991) pp. 121–140.
• Pildes, Richard H., "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon", Constitutional Commentary, 17, (2000).
• Polakoff, Keith I. The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (1973)
• Rabonowitz, Howard K. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1977)
• Richardon, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction (2001)
• Wallenstein, Peter. From Slave South to New South: Public Policy in Nineteenth-Century Georgia (1987).
• Wiggins; Sarah Woolfolk. The Scalawag in Alabama Politics, 1865—1881 (1991)
• Williamson, Edward C. Florida Politics in the Gilded Age, 1877-1893 (1976).
• Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951). emphasizes economic conflict between rich
and poor.
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Primary Sources
• Fleming, Walter L. Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational,
and Industrial (1906), several hundred primary documents from all viewpoints
• Hyman, Harold M., ed. The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861-1870. (1967), collection of longer
speeches by Radical leaders
• Lynch, John R. The Facts of Reconstruction(1913) Online text by African American member of the United States
Congress during Reconstruction era. (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16158)
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