The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States | Page 9

the Negro soldier,

impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new
gun, was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race
conflicts were frequent. A New Orleans newspaper thus states the
Southern point of view: "Our citizens who had been accustomed to
meet and treat the Negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified,
pained, and shocked to encounter them . . . wearing Federal uniforms
and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets . . . . They are
jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards, marching four abreast.
They were halted, in rude and sullen tones, by Negro sentinels."
The task of the Federal forces was not easy. The garrisons were not
large enough nor numerous enough to keep order in the absence of civil
government. The commanders in the South asked in vain for cavalry to
police the rural districts. Much of the disorder, violence, and
incendiarism attributed at the time to lawless soldiers appeared later to
be due to discharged soldiers and others pretending to be soldiers in
order to carry out schemes of robbery. The whites complained
vigorously of the garrisons, and petitions were sent to Washington from
mass meetings and from state legislatures asking for their removal. The
higher commanders, however, bore themselves well, and in a few
fortunate cases Southern whites were on most amicable terms with the
garrison commanders. The correspondence of responsible military
officers in the South shows how earnestly and considerately each, as a
rule, tried to work out his task. The good sense of most of the Federal
officers appeared when, after the murder of Lincoln, even General
Grant for a brief space lost his head and ordered the arrest of paroled
Confederates.
The church organizations were as much involved in the war and in the
reconstruction as were secular institutions. Before the war every
religious organization having members North and South, except the
Catholic Church and the Jews, had separated into independent Northern
and Southern bodies. In each section church feeling ran high, and when
the war came, the churches supported the armies. As the Federal armies
occupied Southern territory, the church buildings of each denomination
were turned over to the corresponding Northern body, and Southern
ministers were permitted to remain only upon agreeing to conduct
"loyal services, pray for the President of the United States and for
Federal victories" and to foster "loyal sentiment." The Protestant

Episcopal churches in Alabama were closed from September to
December 1865, and some congregations were dispersed by the
soldiers because Bishop Wilmer had directed his clergy to omit the
prayer for President Davis but had substituted no other. The ministers
of non-liturgical churches were not so easily controlled. A Georgia
Methodist preacher directed by a Federal officer to pray for the
President said afterwards: "I prayed for the President that the Lord
would take out of him and his allies the hearts of beasts and put into
them the hearts of men or remove the cusses from office." Sometimes
members of a congregation showed their resentment at the "loyal"
prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of many irritations, both
sides frequently managed to get some amusement out of the "loyal"
services. The church situation was, however, a serious matter during
and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phases will have to be
discussed elsewhere.
The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself,
in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community,
they found themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victims
of ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later
Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the
most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal
Union man; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms
and epithets to him." General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region
more divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle
Tennessee is disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is
by the disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United
States.
Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil
authorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the United
States . . . . They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State
of Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army, than
they are to men of Northern birth."
In the border states, society was sharply divided, and feeling was bitter.
In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts of
Arkansas and Missouri, returning Confederates met harsher treatment
than did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east
Tennessee: "Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen

unawares to