had been called on to assist in the work of reconstruction, the best results would have followed. This, to some extent, was the policy of Mr. Lincoln. Under the amended state constitution an act was passed in March, 1866, "concerning negroes and persons of color, or of mixed blood." It declared that negroes and their issue, even where one ancestor in each preceding generation to the fourth inclusive was white, should be deemed persons of color. This was the ante-bellum definition of persons of mixed blood. It is still the law, and may be brought into requisition with reference to prohibited marriages. The same statute gave to negroes all the rights of white persons before the courts, in prosecuting and defending suits. It made them competent witnesses in all cases of law or equity in which persons of color were concerned. Their exclusion from the witness-box in cases involving the rights of white persons only, was unwise. It was not in the interest of justice; but it cannot be regarded an oppressive regulation for the colored race. Under the law of slavery in this state and throughout the South, the marriage relation between slaves was not recognized. It might be broken by either party, or by the masters. This barbarism was removed. The laws relating to marriage were made applicable to the colored population; and where a man and woman, lately slaves, had lived together as man and wife, they were to be deemed lawfully married from the commencement of their cohabitation. They were required to go before the clerk of the county court and acknowledge the cohabitation. Of this a record was to be made, which was to be prima facie evidence of marriage.

On May 24, 1866, the convention of the preceding year met pursuant to adjournment. It made amendments that were found to be necessary in order to induce the military commander to relax his hold upon the state and people, and allow the laws to be enforced by the civil officers. The governor in a message stated that General Robinson, then in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau, was desirous of turning over to the jurisdiction of the state courts all cases relating to the freedmen, but that he could not do so in consequence of certain provisions of the recent act of the legislature in regard to negroes. This act restricted negro testimony, and it inflicted on a negro, and on a white man, different penalties for the same crime. This discrimination be-. tween the races was at once removed by the convention. The general thereupon turned over the enforcement of the laws to the civil courts. Other changes were made; but the whole constitution being submitted to the people for ratification, it was voted down, though by a vote of less than two thousand in above forty-one thousand. Governor Worth was re-elected in August by a large majority of the small vote given. He was superseded in the early part of 1867, under the Reconstruction acts, by Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, the military commander of the district. Thus North Carolina continued to be a "conquered province."

CHAPTER XXII.

TEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES.

HER

MISSISSIPPI AND HER GOVERNORS - JUDGE SHARKEY-PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S TERSE ORDER-- LEGISLATION IN DETAIL- GEORGIA RECONSTRUCTED TERRIBLE CONDITION IN 1865-ACTION OF HER PEOPLE-TEXAS RECONSTRUCTED – GOVERNOR HAMILTON AND HIS PROCLAMATIONS — ALABAMA— VANDALISM THERE-GOVERNOR PARSONS' DESCRIPTION OF IT-HIS SERVICES - ALABAMA CONVENTION.—QUARREL OVER THE EPISCOPAL PRAYERS - MEDDLESOME MILITARY ORDER - SOUTH CAROLINA – BRECKENRIDGE ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA CHIVALRY-GOVERNORS MAGRATH, PERRY, AND ORR- OBSTACLES OVERCOME.

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ENERAL CLARK was the governor of Mississippi when the Confederate armies surrendered. He called an extra session of the legislature, to meet on the 18th of May, 1865; but General Canby, by direction of the President, forbade the meeting of that body. On June 13, Judge William A. Sharkey was appointed provisional governor by the President, with powers like those conferred upon Governor Holden, of North Carolina. A convention was then called by Governor Sharkey, the members to be elected on August 7, and the voters to have the same qualifications as those prescribed in the North Carolina proclamation.

Judge Sharkey was a lawyer who had a thoroughly professional mind. He could drive a legal proposition through every impediment. It may not do to liken him to Chief Justice Marshall, who gave such logical decisions that they required no precedent to support them. For eighteen years he presided as chief justice of the High Court of Errors and Appeals in Mississippi. In that domain he had no peer in his state. He was a Tennessee man, born on the River Holston, just before the incoming of the present century. His maternal grandfather was a German belonging to the Rhine. His father was an Irishman whose name was Patrick Sharkey. This combination presaged very much to the credit of the chancellor who became so famous, and who played such an important part during the war. When a boy of fifteen, young Sharkey entered the army of General Jackson.

He was a substitute

for an uncle. He was at the battle of New Orleans, and witnessed the overthrow of the British on the Plains of Chalmette. His military fame was won on the 8th of January, 1815. After that adventure he returned to Tennessee. There, at a school of some note in Greenville, he learned more or less of the English branches of education, and he afterwards read law with Dr. Hill, of Lebanon, Tennessee. After that he went to Mississippi, where his ability, integrity, and genius for the law gave him a large practice. In 1827, he was sent to the legislature. He was an eminent judge as early as 1832. No man who ever sat upon the bench of the High Court of Errors and Appeals in Mississippi settled more questions or made more authoritative precedents than Judge Sharkey. His work in the Mississippi state reports is a monument to his legal fame. He had an immense treasure of common sense. He never failed in minute detail. He never failed on a legal principle. When he left the bench in 1850 it was to rescue his little fortune. President Fillmore tendered him the position of Secretary of War, which he declined. He preferred to devote his talent and thought to the Constitution. Years afterwards, when the dire work of civil war had ended, he became one of the heroes of reconstruction. As stated, President Johnson made him provisional governor of Mississippi. It was a difficult, delicate, and most ungrateful office; yet all parties were satisfied with his administration. At the first election under the new system he was chosen Senator from his state. But the reconstruction policy of the President having been abrogated, he was, with other Southern members, refused a seat. It would have been better, perhaps, if he had been elected governor. He returned to Mississippi and continued to practice his profession. The writer remembers him well as a man of kind, polished manner, with a rare fund of conversation, as brilliant as it was attractive. He was a man who looked to the unseen world. He was a strict Methodist, in which communion he died, but he was worthy to be called, as Wendell Phillips once said of Samuel Adams, "one of Plutarch's His name is all over, and all through, and all under the jurisprudence of his state. No one lives so gloriously in the annals of Mississippi as Judge William L. Sharkey.

It is said of Judge Sharkey by men of his own state who took part in its resurrection, that he was not successful in the office of governor; that he did not materially assist in restoring its statehood or its prosperity. Their criticism is, that he was a specimen of that class of wonderful men who make great judges, jurists, and chancellors, but are utter failures in that field of politics in which motives must be divined at each stage of human vicissitude and progress. However this may be, it must be said that he had little opportunity to show much administrative ability as governor.

His successor, Governor Humphreys, accomplished nothing. He could not have done any good for the state, with such a legislature as came into power with him. His recommendations to that body might have suited the

REORGANIZATION IN MISSISSIPPI.

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temper of the people of the state, but it is not improbable that Judge Sharkey's recommendations would have better impressed them with the importance of liberal action towards the freedmen. Judge Sharkey had visited Washington, and had there met the leaders of both parties. He knew the vital necessity of temperate action in the South.

The convention called by Provisional Governor Sharkey met at the city of Jackson on the 14th of August, 1865. The next day the governor received a dispatch from President Johnson, of which the following is a copy:

"I am gratified to see that you have organized your convention without difficulty. I hope that without delay your convention will amend your state constitution, abolishing slavery, and denying to all future legislatures the power to legislate that there is property in man; also that they will adopt the amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolishing slavery. If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English, and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary, and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and trust your convention will do this, and, as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempt to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union by not. accepting their Senators and Representatives. ANDREW JOHNSON."

This was excellent advice. It would have been much better for the people of Mississippi and of the South had it been followed. It would have left no pretext for denying the state her Federal rights. The Mississippians did not credit the President with good intentions. They were not in a mood to receive advice from him. They were familiar with his career during the war, and immediately following its close. To them he seemed to be inspired with all the bitter antagonism to the South which animated the Northern radicals. His recommendation was regarded as the essence of radical policy. Had not President Lincoln, in the early part of the preceding year, March 13, 1864, addressed a letter similar in purpose to Provisional Governor Hahn, of Louisiana? No; Mississippi was not yet prepared to accept such advice. Mr. Lincoln's letter is brief. It is worthy of a place in this connection :

"MY DEAR SIR: I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first free state governor of Louisiana. Now you are about to have a convention, which, among other things, will define the elective franchise, I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in-as, for instance, the very intelligent, and

especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone. Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.”

But the Mississippi convention was not alone in its objection to negro suffrage. Even the Republicans of the North were slow to adopt such a policy for their own states. Nevertheless, the convention did some notable work. It did enough to disarm even the radicals, if the latter had not been determined to make the South the stronghold of their party. The convention passed ordinances for the amendment of the state constitution :

First. Declaring null and void the ordinance of secession, passed in state convention on Jan. 9, 1861.

Second. Declaring that, slavery having been destroyed, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party should have been duly convicted, should thereafter exist in the state. This ordinance further provided that the legislature at its next session, and thereafter as the public welfare might require, should provide by law for the protection and security of the freedmen and their property, and guard them and the state from any evils that might arise from their sudden emancipation.

An amendment to the twelfth section of the State Declaration of Rights contained a germ of evil consequences to the state. It had much to do with defeating President Johnson's beneficent plans for reconstruction. That section provided "That no person shall, for any indictable offense, be proceeded against criminally by information; except in cases arising in the land and naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, or, by leave of the court, for misdemeanor in office." The amendment provided—"That the legislature, in cases of petit larceny, assault, assault and battery, affray, riot, unlawful assembly, drunkenness, vagrancy, and other misdemeanors of like character, may dispense with an inquest of a grand jury, and may authorize prosecutions before justices of the peace, or such other inferior court as may be established by the legislature; and the proceedings in such cases shall be regulated by law."

The ordinances were adopted, and an election was held on Oct. 9, 1865, for governor and other state officers, congressmen, and members of the state legislature. The legislature elected under the new constitution met on October 16th, of the same year. Benjamin G. Humphreys, a prominent gentleman of the state, was elected governor. He recommended, in his message, that the negroes be placed on the footing of white men as to the right of suing and being sued, and of giving testimony; that the negroes be encouraged to engage in the pursuits of industry; and that the militia laws be revised so as to protect the people "against insurrection, or any possible combination of vicious white men with negroes."