RISE AND FALL OF NEGRO MILITIAS

FROM  THE  BOOK  "A  WELL  REGULATED  MILITIA"  BY  SAUL  CORNELL.  A  BOOK  I  HIGHLY  RECOMMEND  FOR  THE  WHOLE  TRUTH  ABOUT  THE  ISSUE  OF  GUN  CONTROL  IN  THE  USA.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEGRO MILITIAS

The problem of southern violence, particularly the activities of state militias dominated by former Confederate soldiers, prompted congressional Republicans to propose temporarily disbanding all militias in the South. The measure was introduced by Senator Henry Wilson from Massachusetts, who also admitted into the Congressional record detailed reports of the horrors being committed by these rebel-dominated militias. He cited evidence provided by the head of the Freedmens Bureau, General Oliver O. Howard, who reported that "officers and agents of the bureau as well as military authorities and the newspapers" confirmed that militias were "engaged in disarming the negroes." Howard suggested abolishing the militias and temporarily replacing them with a federal police force. Congressional Democrats protested that the proposal to disband Southern militias clearly violated the Second Amendment. Senator Willard Saulsbury from Delaware declared emphatically that Congress could not "disarm the militia of a State, or [to] destroy the militia of a State." He explicitly evoked the Second Amendment and then quoted its text verbatim. Wilson responded to Saulsbury's critique by reiterating that these so-called militias were little more than roving bands of Confederate bandits terrorizing southern citizens. Others in the debate sought middle ground, conceding that Congress might regulate the militia, effectively disarming rebel units without abolishing the institution itself. Despite efforts to find a middle ground, Republican voices prevailed, and the bill disbanding the militia passed.¹³ Eliminating the neo-Confederate state militias did little to lessen the chaos and violence in the South. Republicans soon realized that some type of military force was necessary to restore order, and they turned to a newly constituted militia as the best solution. Democrats charged them with playing politics with the Constitution. Pennsylvania Senator Charles Buckalew observed that Republicans had done away with the militia "in order to weaken the then existing political governments in the South." Now, he added, they wish to reconstitute them "because the political power which now exists is politically friendly to them." Buckalew believed that the Republicans clearly aimed to use the militia as a political tool.¹⁴

The formation of a new militia, one that included African-Americans, became a high priority for southern Republicans. The decision to allow blacks to serve alongside whites meant that most southerners refused to join the new militia. Dubbed the "Negro militia" by contemporaries, it became an indispensable political and military institution, providing a means of protecting and organizing freedmen. Blacks eagerly joined these units, which were outfitted with the latest weaponry. The social role of the militias within the African-American community was at least as important as its military function. Drilling and parading served an important symbolic function, inspiring and rallying the African-American community. For Republicans, participation in the new militia became one of the most important privileges and immunities of citizenship, a foundation for the exercise of other rights such as voting or participation injuries.¹⁵ The arming of the Negro militias met with especially fierce resistance in South Carolina. Violent clashes between the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the Negro militia in 1869 prompted congressional investigation. Democrats denounced the militia as a tool of Republican tyranny. Republicans argued that the militia was the only means to protect the black population from Klan terror.¹⁶

Republican South Carolina Governor Robert Scott, a former Union officer from Ohio, was denounced by his enemies as a carpetbagger. Scott believed that arming the militia was essential to fighting Klan violence. His actions clearly struck a sensitive nerve in his opponents, who viewed Scott's decision to arm the Negro militia as the greatest Republican outrage perpetrated on the state of South Carolina. The sight of organized, armed freedmen incensed opponents of Reconstruction and led to an intensified campaign of Klan terror. Leading members of the Negro militia were beaten or lynched and their weapons stolen. The destruction of the Negro militia became a top priority for the Klan and its supporters.¹⁷

Congressional investigation of Klan violence was so intensely partisan that the hearings became little more than an exchange of accusations. Democrats and Republicans blamed each others' policies for the escalation of violence. Not surprisingly, the committee could not agree on a report, and a minority account emerged from the hearings. The minority Democratic report was highly critical of the Negro militias for provoking violence. The majority Republican report blamed violence on Klan provocations.¹⁸

Democrats charged that Governor Scott had deliberately politicized the militia by arming freedmen. Adopting a highly inflammatory tone, the Democrats investigating Klan activity charged that Scott had "corruptly and secretly sent his emissaries through the State to enroll and organize the negro population." The governors policy of arming "the negro militia, in the summer of 1870, and during the progress of the political campaign, was done for the purpose, and for none other than to carry the election by force and intimidation." Democrats echoed charges Klan members had made to justify their terrorist actions. Scott, they maintained, had refused to allow whites to enroll in the militia and had even confiscated arms from white militia units and redistributed them to blacks. In his memoir of Reconstruction, South Carolina Democrat Henry T. Thompson reported that Scott had boasted that "the only law for these people [South Carolinians] was the Winchester Rifle/' Democrats introduced into evidence the records of the state adjutant general, which showed that South Carolina had purchased and distributed more than seven thousand weapons and issued ninety thousand rounds of ammunition to the Negro militias. Finally, with characteristic racist derision, the Democrats remarked, "Even the miserable testimony of the negroes themselves shows that the principle object of the visitation of their disguised assailants was the search for the very guns distributed among them by the governor." The Klans chief objective according to contemporary testimony was the disarmament of the Negro militia.¹⁹

Republicans painted a different picture. Klan violence, not the arming of the Negro militias, had produced civil unrest in South Carolina. "Whatever other causes were assigned for disorders in the late insurrectionary States, the execution of the laws and the security of life and property" were "seriously threatened by" the Klan, who acted as "organized bands of armed and disguised men." Republicans did not dispute that there may have been isolated examples of corruption and that individual militiamen may have acted inappropriately on occasion, but they resolutely denied that the militia was functioning as an extension of the state Republican Party. Republicans also disputed the charge that aiming state militias had spurred Klan violence, which they argued had long preceded this decision.²⁰

 U.S. Attorney Daniel Corbin, a Republican sympathetic to the plight of freedmen, admitted that "although a friend of the administration," he nevertheless "disapproved entirely of the matter of organizing the colored people and arming them, without doing it generally in regard to all people." Neither Democrats nor Republicans on the committee disputed the fact that arming of the militias intensified the violence in South Carolina.²¹

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^{AGAIN  TO  THE  SHAME  OF  AMERICA,  PUTTING  ASIDE  THE  "GUN"  ISSUE,  THE  KKK  AND  OTHERS  CONTINUED  RACISM  AND  VIOLENCE  AGAINST  BLACKS  FOR  ANOTHER  100  YEARS.}

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