The Lost Cause and Jim Crow Written by ©2018 Sarah Becker In 1888 Congress established the U.S. Department of Labor; former Union General and U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison (R-IN) won the Presidency (1889-1893), and the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union or Southern Alliance emerged. Business gave way to industry; William Burroughs invented the first commercially successful adding and listing machine and farmers, including the one million member Colored Farmers’ Organization, advocated for greater control of railroaders, bankers and land speculators. In Alexandria, as in Jackson, Mississippi, the city approved a Confederate monument. The evangelical Alliance welcomed all who were “not obnoxious to the Constitution.” Harrison “held that a protective tariff [a tax on imports] is…wholesome and necessary.” He also dealt with election fraud and immigration. • “In many parts of our country…the colored…people…are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political [and] civil rights,” Harrison continued. “The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains….” He favored “National aid to education” and “a free and unmolested exercise of suffrage.” • “Closely connected with the subject of the tariff is that of the importation of foreign laborers under contracts of service to be performed here,” Harrison concluded. “In the earlier years of our history public agencies to promote immigration were common…Labor was scarce and fully employed….While our doors will continue open to proper immigration we do not need to issue special invitations to inhabitants of other countries.” Especially China. George Washington, America’s first President, was inaugurated in New York City on April 30, 1789. In his Address he spoke of “an indissoluble union…of duty…and the destiny of the republican model of government.” President Benjamin Harrison twice visited Mount Vernon, in 1889 and 1890. “[O]ur country now steps…into its second…
By Sarah Becker In college my roommate, an Arkansan and I often discussed southern history. One afternoon—I will never forget—she turned her tiny torso and snapped: “Yankees do not understand! America did not fight a Civil War. It was the War of Northern Aggression.” Aggression was news to me. I am a Hoosier by birth. The War Between the States began in April 1861 with the shelling of Fort Sumter. Alexandrians—initially—were reluctant to separate from the Union. However the mood changed when President Abraham Lincoln assembled 75,000 troops to respond to the rebellion. Virginia seceded as of May 24, 1861 and the War ended with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. “After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the [Confederate] Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources,” Lee told his troops on April 10, 1865. “I need not tell the survivors…that I have consented to this [surrender] from no distrust of them; but, feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of this agreement, officers and men can return to their homes…” Reconstruction did not proceed easily. President Andrew Johnson, a southerner and Unionist Democrat, failed to win widespread political support. In 1870 Negro males were granted voting rights. The economic downturn, when combined with the emotion of Robert E. Lee’s 1870 death resulted in a surge of southern sentiment. In April 1885 Edgar Warfield, a pharmacist and former private in the 17th Virginia Infantry, asked the R.E. Lee Camp of the United Confederate Veterans to…
CIVIL DISCOURSE, APRIL 1865 In late March of 1865, Grant threatens Lee’s supply line to Petersburg, meaning that Lee‘s army is now in danger of being enveloped and starved into submission. Lee characteristically chooses to go on the offensive. At about four in the morning on March 25th, Confederates masquerading as deserters surged out of the darkness before Fort Stedman. Follow-on troops overrun the fort and punch a hole in the Union lines 1000 feet wide. Lee’s ultimate objective is very ambitious – to seize and destroy the Federal supply depot at City Point. But then the attack slows and fizzles, the Yankee artillery pounding the captured fort until a counterattack pushes the Confederates back into their own lines. The breakout lasts just four hours. Grant loses about 1000 men, Lee about 4000 – this at a time when Lee was already outnumbered about 125,000 to 50,000. On March 31st Grant goes on the offensive. He severs Lee’s supply line on Boydton Plank Road. The attack cuts off about 10,000 Confederates at Five Forks under General Pickett. Sheridan pounces with cavalry, but his unsupported troopers cannot overcome Pickett’s veterans and are driven back at Dinwiddie Courthouse. But the next day Warren’s corps arrives with infantry and gets behind the Confederate line. It turns into a route. With the Petersburg line about to become enveloped, Lee reports to Jefferson Davis on April 2nd that he will abandon Petersburg and can no longer protect Richmond. The Confederate government evacuates; the final capital will be Danville, then wherever Jefferson Davis lays his head. On April 3rd, Union troops occupy Petersburg and Richmond. Ironically, the mayor actually begs the Yankees to occupy the city to put out the fires set by the retreating army, gutting the downtown area. On April 4th, Lincoln visits the…