Today we are continuing my series on Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in Florida. This series is looking at Florida politics from the 1860s to 1900; tracking the rise of Black political power and voting rights, eventually seeing the rise of Jim Crow and a repression of democracy.
This issue picks up after the events of Part 3 in my series, which looked at the 1872 elections. These elections, held with federal troops protecting Black access to the polls, saw Republicans hold on to control of Florida’s Government.
The election saw Ossian Hart elected Florida Governor. Hart had secured the Republican nomination with Black support and proved to be a reliably ally for Black voters in his time as Governor. Unfortunately, Hart passed away in early 1874 after a long illness; elevating Marcellus Stearns to the Governorship. Stearns was not an ally to Black voters, and his elevation to the Governorship put the state’s Black population is a tough bind. With white Democrats eager to take back power and strip away Black political power, Florida’s Republican Party would struggle to hold itself together heading toward 1876.
This article will look at state and national dynamics heading toward 1876, the all-important elections that would tragically mark the end of Reconstruction.
Governor Marcellus Stearns
Originally born in Maine, Marcellus Stearns came to Florida like so many early Republican leaders, as a military man. While serving in the Union army as a soldier, Stearns was shot in his right arm and was forced to have the lower half amputated. This put an end to his battle career. However, while his fighting days were over, he remained with the military and eventually became part of the Freedman’s Bureau, which sent him to Gadsden County.
Early Clashes with the Freedmen
Stearns’ placement in Gadsden County made his elevation into politics almost inevitable. At the time, the county was 62% Black and one of the most populated in the state. As I wrote about in Issue 1, the Freedman’s Bureau agents were tasked by the reconstruction acts with registered the newly freed Black men to vote. Stearns hence was in charge of registering voters in a critical county for future elections. Like many of these agents, Stearns was brought into politics by these circumstances.
In the fall of 1867, as the planned November elections for Constitutional Convention delegates were approaching, Stearns was nominated to be a Republican candidate for delegate in Gadsden County. Stearns was part of the moderate slate of delegates that state executive committee had chosen - a slate aligned with future Senator Thomas Osborn. However, the Radical Republicans, unhappy with many of the moderate or conservative people floated, opted to run their own delegate slates in a few key districts; Gadsden being one of them.
Three delegate spots were up for grabs in Gadsden. Daniel Richards, who along with Liberty Billings ran the radical organization, moved from his base around Jacksonville to run in this seat. He was joined by William Saunders, another major radical leader, and Frederick Hill, who would go on to serve in the state house from Gadsden. Both Richards and Saunders were not longtime county residents, only Hill was local. They faced off against Stearns’ slate, which included local white Republican J.EA. Davidson and a Black man only reported in the paper as “Jones.”
The radical slate in Gadsden was shown to have wide support with the freedman. Thanks to conservative white boycotts, the choice of the Black population was a guarantee to prevail in Gadsden. This caused great anger to Stearns, who complained that Richards and the radicals had “lured” the Black population away from him. As Stearns and the radicals clashed on the campaign, Saunders sent a petition, signed by many freedmen, to have Stearns removed as Freedman Bureau agent. This did not come to pass. However, what did come to pass was the radical slate absolutely sweeping Gadsden’s delegate slots.
This loss did not keep Stearns out the convention, however. Due to Richards and Saunders not being longtime county residents, they were booted from the convention when the moderates took control of the proceedings (see Part 1). Stearns and Davidson, as the next highest vote getters, were installed instead.
These events no doubt soured Stearns, already a more conservative carpetbagger, toward the opinions of the Black population. Stearns was part of the class of military men who favored mending fences with the native white population after the civil war; even if that was at the expensive of equality for the Black population. This view, followed by his clashes with radical Republicans, left him firmly on the conservative end of the Republican spectrum.
After the moderate faction won control of the state party, Stearns would win election to the state house in 1868 and become the Speaker of the Chamber. When he and Ossian Hart clashed in the 1872 convention for the Republican nomination for Governor, it was Black delegates that pushed Hart over the finish line (see Part 3). Stearns had been named Lt Governor as a show of unity; arguably in a move similar to the selection of Andrew Johnson as Lincoln’s Vice-President.
Now he was Governor.
Early Clashes with Black Leaders
There was little time that Stearns was in office were he was not clashing with other Republican lawmakers. Stearns and newly-selected US Senator Simon Conover did not have a pleasant relationship. Stearns took special umbrage at Conover pushing the promotion of Black men to federal jobs in Florida; claiming it would antagonize the white population. These attacks on Conover saw Black lawmakers jump to Conover’s defense and lash out at Stearns. Leon County Senator John Wallace would remain a firm anti-Stearns voice for years.
Stearns also tried to pressure Jonathan Gibbs to resign as Superintendent of Public Instruction; a job he had been appointed to by Governor Hart. Gibbs was the most prominent Black official in Florida and the state’s only Black cabinet official, previously serving as Secretary of State under Governor Harrison Reed. This effort failed, with Gibbs refusing to step down. Gibbs was under constant threats to his life by white regulators and would tragically pass away in 1874. His death remains a major source of debate, as he got ill and suddenly passed the same night he had given a rousing speech as a Republican club event. Suspicion of poisoning has long lingered, but no real proof has emerged. What is notable is that at the time, suspicion for poisoning Gibbs did not just linger on Klan activity, but also on Republican rivals like Stearns as well. Again no proof exists, but that bipartisan suspicion shows how distrusted Stearns was with Black citizens.
Quickly into his Governorship, Stearns was firmly establishing himself as an antagonist for Florida’s Black community. Like Harrison Reed before him, he believed he could united conservative Republican with moderate Democrats to form a new political order.
He was wrong.
The 1874 Midterms
When Stearns assumed the Governorship, it came just 7 months before the State legislative and Congressional elections were to take place.
The elections, similar to 1872, were free of the rampant violence that had dominated the 1870 contests. However, intimidation continued to be an issue, whether from violence or from economic harm. As the white planter class continued to rebuild the plantations and businesses, and as Black voters still found themselves working for white bosses, economic threats were common. In an era of no private ballot, every election saw efforts by white leaders to warn they would prioritize Democratic employees over Republican ones.
Congressional Fights
In 1872, Florida had elected both its members of Congress statewide; but the 1874 contests would see the state divided into two districts; one covering west Florida and the other covering east Florida. White Republican William Purman would run in the west-based 1st and Black Republican Josiah Walls would run in the east-based 2nd. Governor Stearns, however, had issues with both men.
Despite the fact party unity was of upmost importance heading into the 1874 contests, Stearns made real heavy-handed efforts to oust both Walls and Purman from their positions. The effort to oust Walls in his Republican nominating convention failed, but it only led to several conservative Republicans in east Florida aligning with the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile, the effort to oust Purman in the 1st district likewise failed, but became so vitriolic that it led to an second Republican, State Senator Robert Meacham, running as a third candidate. The risk of splitting the Republican vote was so severe in the 1st district that eventually national party forces stepped in to get Meacham, who had Stearns’ backing, to drop out.
Despite the Stearns-driven drama, both Congressional races went well for the Republicans. In the 1st District, William Purman won re-election with a comfortable 6%. This win was driven entirely by massive margins in the four majority-Black counties in the district.
Purman’s victory shows just how important the Black vote was for Florida Republicans. The margins in Leon or Jefferson alone, if not counted, would have flipped the race to Henderson.
In the 2nd district, the race between Josiah Walls and Jesse Finley was much closer. Walls racked up strong margins in majority-Black counties like Marion, Alachua, Madison, and Duval. The initial count gave him a 400 vote lead.
This contest, however, would be challenged in Congress. Disputes arose about the vote in Alachua. In the meantime, however, Walls was certified as the winner and began his new term.
Walls would see his Congressional term cut short by the election investigation however. In April of 1876, the Democratic-controlled US House election committee threw out the votes from Precinct 3 in Alachua County, a heavily Republican precinct. The reasoning, as cited here (just search Alachua) was that proper procedures had not been followed at the site, and that up to 50 people may have illegally voted. However, in throwing out the entire precinct, they removed 700 net GOP ballots and hence awarded the election to Finley. There was no claim the entire precinct was fraudulent, but the committee argue the results were “tainted.”
Removing the entire vote of the precinct was an excessive move driven by the partisanship of the committee. It does, however, serve as a reminder about election issues as this time, similar to what I discussed in the last issue. Irregular procedures and questions about WHAT to count or not count based on said issues, were common, and often driven by the whims of those making the decisions at the time.
This decision cost Walls his seat. Similar debates about “tainted” returns would play out even more so in 1876.
The Loss of the State Legislature
While the Congressional elections were the main focus of Florida politics in 1874, the battle for the state legislature was far more impactful. The election results saw the State Senate come in at a tie, 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, secured a majority in the House of 28 to 24 (give or take, there were a few independents).
This outcome came despite the Republican Congressional candidates winning a majority of the statewide vote. However, the state’s apportionment makeup, which gave every county, no matter the size, at least one representative, resulted in a map that aided amplified white Democratic voting strength. In 1874, the Democratic candidates for Congress won a majority of legislative districts despite losing the popular vote.
I will write a special issue on Florida’s legislative apportionment issue in the future. For this article, I want to focus on the tie in the State Senate, which had several contested results that would matter heading into 1876.
This was the State Senate after the 1874 midterms. As you can see, the GOP seats made up 66% of the state’s population; a byproduct of a lack of population equality across districts. Most of the Democrat-held seats were way under-populated; with geography being a larger factor in maps than population balance.
Heading into 1874, Republicans had a narrow advantage in the chamber. The Democrats tied the Senate with their flipping of the 24th. That seat, which included Key West, had a large Cuban population that once leaned more Republican but had trended to Democrats over issues with the Grant administration’s handling of the ongoing revolution on the Cuban island.
Debated Results
Republicans also only had a tie in the Senate due to decisions made in after the 1872 contests. That election would have seen a tie, and hence given Democrats a majority in 1874, if the counting in Senate 21 had been followed properly.
District 21, covering Dade and Brevard counties, was decided based on just the Dade returns. Because Brevard was late reporting its vote totals till after the state canvass deadline, the 30 votes in Dade were used to decide SD21. This allowed Republican E. T. Sturtevant to win SD21 with a 14-13 raw vote margin. While I don’t have the Brevard totals, the reports from the time said that the Democratic candidate, Israel Stewart, secured at least 30 ballots more than Sturtevant. Had Brevard been counted, Stewart would have had the right to the seat.
That whole drama is not only an example of the flaw in such low-populated districts, but how subjective and corrupt counting could be. Even with Brevard, this low total of votes is less than useless for determining popular will for such seats. Random lot drawings would have been just as respectable. Oh and the other issue was Sturtevant was a poll manager for Dade’s lone voting precinct. In the count, Sturtevant had thrown out three Democratic ballots for questionable reasons. Hence its also entirely likely the Democrats won Dade County in 1872, but we will never know for sure if those three tossed ballots were legit or not.
This furthers my discussion from Part 3 about the issues with reliable vote counts from this era.
Violence to determine Control
The issues around Senate 21 would linger in the legislative investigative committee for years. However, in a different contested election, events took on a much more sinister turn.
In Senate District 14, based in Columbia County, Republican Elisha Johnson had been declared the winner of the 1874 contest. Columbia, the site of so much violence in the 1870s, was the site of intimidation as well as ballot stuffing. Democrats claimed Republican ballots had been added as key precincts, while Republicans charged the opposition with documented incidents of intimidation of Black voters. Johnson himself had been the target of assassination by the Klan multiple times.
The dispute over the Columbia County election came to a violent end in July of 1875. As Senator Johnson was walking to his home in Lake City, he was killed by a shotgun blast. Republicans insisted the motive was political while Democrats claimed the GOP was exploiting random tragedy. However, I would like to present this statement on the shooting, given by Democrat and hardened Confederate Henry A. L’Engle on the shooting, which also broke the tie in the Senate in favor of the Democrats
“In his death is our gain, . . . That gives us a clear majority without putting out Sturtevant. . . . In losing Johnson we gain a county. . . . If I was on a jury of inquest I should say shot by persons unknown and served him right. . . .”
L’Engle was one of the firm non-reconstructed Democrats. While too polarizing to win elections statewide he would serve in future Florida Democratic administrations. His sentiment showed how cold and callous politics was. Whether he or any Democratic official was involved in the shooting is unknown, but folks like L’Engle were more than happy to accept murder as a means to political ends.
Meanwhile, as violence and imitation continued to be an issue in the South, voters in the North were quickly developing fatigue about the whole issue of Reconstruction.
National Reconstruction Struggles
As Florida’s Republican party tried to hold its control of the state through the mid 1870s, events were happening nationwide that would bode ill for southern Black voters. Increasing violence in several prominent southern states, moral exhaustion from Northern voters, and an economic panic all began to contribute to a lack of support for Reconstruction politics.
The Moral Fatigue of the North
The 1872 elections, which saw President Ulysses S Grant easily secure re-election while committing to protect the Black population of the south, was the high point of popular support for Reconstruction. Quickly into Grant’s 2nd term, events conspired to weaken his admissions. It must be stressed that Grant was a true believer in securing the vote and security of the Black population. As long as he had the political and legal power to do so, he wanted to secure Black rights. This power, quickly got sucked away in his 2nd term.
Two issues really hampered Grant’s popularity through his 2nd term. The first was the Panic of 1873. This event was brought on the bursting of the railroad bubble and hit North America and a good portion of Western Europe. It was considered the biggest depression in American history until the Great Depression came in 1929. As we all know, economic issues are blamed on the party in power, and hence the Grant administration took the brunt of the blame.
As Northern voters reeled from the Great Panic, their concern for the plight of Black people in the south began to increasingly decline. This came as questionable journalists took pleasure in reporting stories from the southern states that portrayed Republican rule as incredible corrupt and Black voters are dumb lemmings who voted as they were told by white carpetbaggers. While corruption was an issue across every state in the union, it was framed as inherently worse in the reconstruction states. This sentiment was best encapsulated in a book by James Shepherd Pike called “The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government.”
The book, based on interviews Pike held while in South Carolina, framed the Reconstruction Government in the worst light and framed Black politicians as uneducated and corrupt. This book was taken at face value at the time, but has been subjected to much rebuke in recent decades. The book was made by relying almost entirely on interviews with native whites, most of them former confederates. This was not true journalism, but it was taken at face value. Such books and stories allowed once reliably abolitionists and radical Republicans to turn the heads away from the South, caring less for the plight of the Black population.
Cartoonists, even those that attacked the Klan and white violence, would also portray Black lawmakers in terrible light. Portraying politicians as borderline animals.
In the 1874 midterms, Democrats swept away 92 Republican seats and won control of the US House of Representatives. This ensured one chamber of Congress would be less receptive to any future investment in Reconstruction.
Grant’s administration was then further weakened by issues of corruption in his own administration. While no historic data has ever shown Grant was personally corrupt, he made mistake of putting many of his military friends in charge of several offices, and these men were corrupt. Corruption scandals in DC melded with the claims of corruption in reconstruction governments, and further moved northern voters away from concerns with politics in the South.
The Rise of Violence
While the Grant administration got increasingly weakened by scandals and economic conditions, white southerners did not let up on their plans to take back control of state governments. While the 1871-1872 period had seen the Ku Klux Klan beaten back, this only stemmed the tied of violence for a few years - varying by state.
Louisiana saw a new organization form in 1873/1874 - dubbed The White League. This organization formed by the men who’d perpetrated the Colfax Massacre, which saw between 65 and 155 Black men murdered after a dispute over elections in Grant Parish. The league, which came to be made up of several thousands paramilitary members, even overthrew the elected Governor of the state, William Pitt Kellogg. This event, which saw the league defeat state militia guards, is known as the Battle of Liberty Place.
It took Grant calling in federal troops to re-install the Government of the state. The League, however, was hardly crushed, and it continued to use violence to sway elections in Louisiana.
As violence increased in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, national Republicans grew more exhausted with the issue. In early 1875, before the Democratic majority took its seats, Congressional Republicans debated legislation on Civil Rights and voting rights. In response to violence that had swayed the 1874 Alabama Governor election to Democrats, many radical Republicans and Black congressmen asked for federal voter protections to be continued and expanded. However, this did not have the support of many in the Republican caucus. Republican Speaker of the House, James G Blaine, rejected such a move, saying it would hurt Republicans in future elections.
Meanwhile, Mississippi was scheduled to have its state elections in November of 1875. Black Congressman John Lynch, a former slave, warned that without federal help, white reactionaries nonviolently suppress the vote. Indeed that was the plan, literally. The Mississippi Plan was an actual strategy by the white leaders of Mississippi to gain “home rule for their state.” Included in such a plan was violence and intimidation of Black voters. The goal was to win control of the state legislature and force Republican Governor Adelbert Ames out of office early. In their words, they would win these elections “peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must”.
Congressman Lynch begged the Grant administration for aid in securing peaceful voting in Mississippi. However, national Republicans convinced the President NOT to send aid. As many Republican politicians saw it, Mississippi was lost either way, and that northern voters were tired of money and manpower being spent in “controlling” Southern politics. Republicans were specifically worried about winning the Governor’s race in Ohio, being held the same time as Mississippi. There, the Republican nominee was Rutherford B Hayes, who was trying to distance himself from Reconstruction issues. Grant would later admit to Lynch that he caved to these Republican worries about the Ohio race, and hence did not send aid to Mississippi.
The Mississippi elections saw a Democratic sweep of offices amid violence and intimidation. Governor Adelbert Ames was faced with impeachment by the now-Democratic legislature. Eventually Ames agreed to resign and leave the state for his own safety. Congressman Lynch narrowly held on in his district. However, the new Democratic legislature then gerrymandered the district lines to eventually force Lynch out as well.
In 1876, the rights of Black southerners was dealt another blow. The Supreme Court case of United States v. Cruikshank severely weakened the Enforcement and Klan acts. The decisions reversed several convictions achieved against white perpetrators of the Colfax Massacre, arguing that such cases only could be tried in state courts. The opinion further ruled that violations of the 14th Amendment could only be applied to state actions, not individuals. In other words, the federal government could not bring charges against private citizens for violating the 14th Amendment; such charges could only be brought against state governments. This led back to the pre-1871 dynamic of local white juries being able to acquit whites who committed violence against Black citizens.
Looking to 1876
Heading into the 1876 Presidential election, only three southern states remained in Republican hands: Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. With northern Republicans growing more and more exhausted with aiding southern governments, Democrats in all three of these states saw 1876 as a prime opportunity to finish off these Reconstruction governments.
Internal state tensions and national dynamics would all come to a head in Florida in 1876. The year that Republican rule came to an end.
That will be the topic of the next part in this series…..