The Posse Comitatus Act: liberation from the lawyers

Parameters, Autumn, 2004 by Gary Felicetti, John Luce

While the federal Army quickly demobilized after the war, it remained a powerful symbol of the destruction of the South's antebellum way of life. Army activity to protect blacks or assist institutions such as the Freedmen's Bureau, no matter how limited, kept the wounds open and raw. One prominent Tennessee planter perhaps summarized the Southern perspective on the Bureau and the Army best when he wrote:

   The Agent of the Bureau ... requires citizens (former owners) to
   make and enter into written contracts for the hire of their own
   Negroes.... When a Negro is not properly paid or fairly dealt with
   and reports the facts, then a squad of Negro soldiers is sent after
   the offender, who is escorted to town to be dealt with as per the
   Negro testimony. In the name of God how long is such things to
   last? (6)

Politically, the immediate postwar period was much more benign. Under the generous terms of Presidential Reconstruction, state governments were in place throughout the South by the end of 1865. Unfortunately, they moved quickly to assert white domination over blacks via a series of laws know as "Black Codes." These laws, while varying from state to state, consigned blacks to a hopeless serfdom. As one Southern governor stated, the newly reconstructed governments were a white man's government and intended for white men only. (7)

The reconstructed state governments also did little to protect blacks against what was, unfortunately, just the beginning of widespread racial terrorism. For example, Texas records from the Freedmen's Bureau recorded the murder of 1,000 blacks by whites from 1865 to 1868. The stated "reasons" for the murders include: "One victim 'did not remove his hat'; another' wouldn't give up his whiskey flask'; a white man 'wanted to thin out the niggers a little'; another wanted 'to see a d--d nigger kick.'" (8)

Newspaper stories about the Black Codes and abuse of the former slaves enraged Northerners, and the Republican Congress imposed a more radical agenda. Under Congressional Reconstruction, the existing state governments were dissolved, direct military rule was introduced, and specific measures were taken to encourage black voting and secure full civil rights for the freedmen.

The nation wasn't ready for a full civil rights movement. From the popular Southern perspective, Congressional Reconstruction imposed corrupt and inept foreign governments propped up by an occupying army. Accordingly, Southern Democrats did everything possible to undermine the Republican mixed-race state governments. In some areas, expanded voting rights for former Confederates gradually created white Democratic voting majorities, while economic pressure induced blacks to avoid political activity. In other areas, however, more direct action to limit Republican voting was taken. Terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and the Knights of the Rising Sun served as the unofficial Southern white army in the war against Northern rule. For this "army," no act of intimidation or violence was too vile, so long as it was directed against blacks and their white political allies.