John Hope Franklin lecture, "W.E.B. DuBois as Historian of Reconstruction," at the University of Iowa, June-July 1972

Speaker 1: The following is an address recorded at the Fourth Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa, June 25th through July 7th, 1972. Speaking on W.E.B. Du Bois as Historian of Reconstruction is John Hope Franklin, Professor at the University of Chicago. Introducing Professor Franklin is Charles T. Davis, Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Chairman of the Institute. Charles T. Davi...: I'm very pleased to welcome this evening John Hope Franklin. He is now the John Matthews Manly [inaudible] at the University of Chicago. The title of his Chair intrigues me because I knew John Manly, not really you understand, but I had heard of John Manly as a Professor of English at the University of Chicago, specialty was [inaudible]. But it was explained to me very carefully by Mr. Franklin that the University of Chicago makes no distinction between English and History. Nor indeed between History and Chemistry or Chemistry and Physiology or anything else. Charles T. Davi...: And they passed the chairs around and the names don't really matter. So, it's conceivable that the Professor of Nuclear Physic, who becomes a distinguish University Professor of Chicago may have the John Manly Chair. I can only imagine that John Manly is twirling in his grave. But back to Mr. Franklin, his training resembled, in many ways, that of Du Bois and to a certain distinct, that of Professor Logan. He has a graduate degree from Fisk University, graduate degrees from Harvard University. Charles T. Davi...: When I try to, in some ways, summarize the career of John Hope Franklin I discover, as well as I do, it's an extremely difficult thing to do because he's done so much in so many directions. And only this evening I discovered that he had a certain distinction in singing and performing on the stage in Tulsa, which I had not heard of before. And I thought I knew everything about John Hope Franklin. Charles T. Davi...: But I think of him essentially as an Academic Statesman. That is to say he's presently now Vice President of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. He's a member of the Council of The American Historical Association, President of The Southern Historical Association. He's been a past member of the Board and I think Chairman of the Board of Forgien Scholarships, honors of that kind. I think of him as a distinguished teacher. First at Black schools in the South, at Saint Augustine's North Carolina College, Fisk, Howard University, then Chairman of The Department at Brooklyn College. Then, University of Chicago where he's been Chairman of the department. Charles T. Davi...: And I think of him, finally, of course as a scholar. I don't say finally because I don't think of him finally as that. But I think of him indeed as a distinguished scholar who has written The Free Negro in North Carolina, and the book that we've all read, From Slavery to Freedom. Also, The Militant South, the influential work which has done so much to counteract and to false theories about what happened in reconstruction, Reconstruction after the Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation, which appeared, of course, in 1963, exactly 100 years after the act itself. Charles T. Davi...: These are the important works and I have not covered them all. But I moderate it to indeed the said, finally, the reference to finally because I don't think of him finally as a scholar. I think of him as a friend and when I think of him as a friend I think of the moment when I first met him at Harvard. So many years ago, I can't say. It would embarrass me and it would embarrass him. When I had come down from that country school in New Hampshire, Dartmouth College, for a contest of some kind. And I met then John Hope Franklin, who was finishing his graduate work at Harvard University. Charles T. Davi...: And I remember even then, the sense of warmth that I got from his fellowship and his friendship and his inspiration. I'm delighted that he's here and it seems to me there's no one better equipped to do the job that he has been assigned to do this evening. That is to say to discuss Du Bois as the Historian of Reconstruction. I'm very pleased then to present to you, friend, scholar, statesman and teacher, Professor John Hope Franklin. John Hope Frank...: Thank you, Professor Davis. It is indeed a pleasure to be here. The year of the birth of William E.B. Du Bois, 1868 was the year of great significance in the history of reconstruction. It was the first year of full implementation of the Congressional Acts, and it was the year when Congress made an unsuccessful attempt to remove Andrew Johnson from the Presidency of the United States. It was the year that saw the first Black man elected to high office in state and national governments. And it was the year when the Freedman's Bureau was at the peak of its power and performance. John Hope Frank...: It was the year when the wrath of the white South reached fever pitch, as it witnessed the dismantling of much of the apparatus by which it had maintained power for centuries. Where there at the center of action or far from it, people in every part of the United States were caught up in the drama and tragedy of slavery, Civil War, emancipation and reconstruction. The racism that was spawned by slavery survived the holocaust of war and extended its sinister influences even into Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the birth place of Du Bois. John Hope Frank...: This future Historian of the reconstruction was still living through that experience when a white classmate taught him the meaning of racism by refusing to exchange visiting cards with him. But Du Bois was too young to appreciate the full meaning of this rebuff or indeed, of the lost cause in the South or the waving of the bloody shirt in the North. Perhaps it was just as well that he was spared the immediate significance of these twin symbols of sectional and partisan bigotry. John Hope Frank...: In later years, Du Bois would combine whatever detachment he could salvage from his personal experiences in the growing up years with the rigors of scholarship that he would acquire during his studies at Fisk, Harvard and Berlin. Although he would remain deeply committed to scholar the detachment and objectivity, which he called Science, he was aware of the powerful influences of personal experiences, as well as the very meteor in which he lived and worked. John Hope Frank...: He hoped that, "no siring of the memory by intolerable and insult and cruelty would make him fail to sympathize with human failures and contradiction in the eternal paradox of good and evil." This statement during the early 1930s had been a guiding principle in all the historical writing that Du Bois had undertaken. As a sensitive young man, and as a deeply committed scholar, he approached his subject somewhat gingerly. John Hope Frank...: His first scholarly forays were in the slave era and it is important to observe that he always addressed his remarks to a large and important readership. First he read portions of his Master's thesis on the enforcement of the Slave Trade Acts before the American Historical Association in 1892 and published this thesis in the reports of that association later that year. When he had developed this subject to the status of a definitive work, he published the Suppression of the African Slave Trade, his Doctoral dissertation, as the first monograph in the Harvard Historical Studies. John Hope Frank...: Soon, he moved on to a consideration of the problems of reconstruction with his article on the Freedman's Bureau, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for March 1901. In publishing this article on the Bureau, this represented no abrupt change in the interest of Du Bois. For he saw the 19th century as a unit with slavery, Civil War, reconstruction and its aftermath closely and inextricably woven together. John Hope Frank...: This was the general view that was explicit all through that piece that he published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1901. Slavery, Du Bois argued, was the deeper cause of the Civil War and despite the efforts and disclaimers of its defenders and its compromises, slavery always forced itself to the surface as the cause. Thus, the question of what was to be done with the former slaves was inevitably as urgent in 1865 as the question of the future of slavery had been in 1860. And the situation at the close of the War was indeed in Du Bois' words, "a curious mess". As he described it, little despotism, communistic experiments, slavery, peonage, business speculation, organized charity, unorganized arms giving, all reeling under the guise of helping the Freedmen, and all enshrined in the smoke and blood and the cursing and silence of angry men. John Hope Frank...: Without a broad comprehensive program to deal with the problems of the Freedmen, emancipation would indeed, from the point of view of Du Bois, be an empty and meaningless gesture. The Freedman's Bureau could have been the answer, for it was one of the most singular and interesting attempts made by a great nation to grapple with the vast problems of race and social condition. The Freedom's Bureau was a government of men and Du Bois said, "not of ordinary men, but Black men, emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery centuries old." John Hope Frank...: If this new government had been of men who enjoyed some measure of economic independence, which the Bureau did not provide, as well as the enlarged educational opportunities, which the Bureau did provide, its chances of success would have been significantly increased. But the Bureau was hampered in its work from the beginning. Not merely by a hastily drawn law that failed to define its functions adequately or to give it sufficient power. But, as Du Bois said, "by the executive amnesty extended to former masters who in turn did much to frustrate the work of the Bureau." John Hope Frank...: Even so, the Bureau did much more than its enemies hoped for or feared. At the end of his analysis, Du Bois set forth the following conclusions regarding the Bureau's work. "To sum it up in brief," he said, "we may say it set going a system of free labor, it established the Black peasant proprietor, it secured the recognition of Black freed men before courts of law. It founded the free public school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to accomplish or to establish good will between ex masters and freed men, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods that discouraged self reliance, to make Negros land holders in any considerable numbers." John Hope Frank...: In summarizing both the successes and failures of the Bureau, Du Bois placed himself squarely in opposition to those who viewed the work of the Bureau as an abject failure. Already the students in the Columbia Seminar at William Archibald Dunning had begun their task of condemning virtually every aspect of reconstruction history, and treating so carefully a major institution of that period and finding that it had, indeed, accomplished much, Du Bois made the task of these students who wanted to traduce everything that happened in the reconstruction considerably more difficult. John Hope Frank...: But Du Bois was then, as later, always seeking a wide audience than Dunning's graduate students. That surely is one reason why he reprinted his Freedman's Bureau article and his new volume, The Soul's of Black Folk, under the alluring title and it's published there, word for word, under the title of, Of The Dawn of Freedom. Even as Du Bois turned his attention to the Niagara Movement, the National Association of The Advancement of Colored People, and the gigantic task of fighting for equality, he continued to study the era of reconstruction. John Hope Frank...: Between 1901 and 1910 his articles and speeches reflect this continued interest in the post Civil War years. Soul's of Black Folk, published in 1901 is studded with references to the building of the school system in the South after the war, the tragedy of the failure of the Freedman's Bank, and the continued degradation of the freed men because they did not have land that could have done has much for their real freedom as the 13th Amendment itself had done. John Hope Frank...: In 1906 Du Bois lamented the system of labor that emerged during reconstruction that had resulted in the illegal withholding of at least three fourths of the stipulated wages and shares of crops, which the Negro has earned on the farm. In 1909, he reminded his readers that the 15th Amendment was not merely to solve the simply problem of fixing the qualifications of voters, but of dealing with the immensely more complicated problem of enforcing a vast social and economic revolution on a people determined not to submit to it. "It was," he continued, "not the Emancipation Proclamation, but the 15th Amendment that made slavery impossible in the United States. And those that object to the 15th Amendment have simply this question to answer. Which," he said, "was best? Slavery or ignorant Negro voters? The answer is clear as day. Negro voters never did anything as bad as slavery." John Hope Frank...: It was the lessons of reconstruction that provided Du Bois with many of the insights, as well as the perspective on which to base a program for race improvement in the 20th century. The commitment to science remain as deep as the commitment to action, even as Du Bois forged new programs for equality and even as he edited the official origin of the NAACP, The Crisis. He'd read a paper for the American Economic Association in 1906 called The Economic Future of The Negro. And in 1907, he prepared a paper for the American Sociological Society entitled, Is Race Separation Impractical, unfortunately he wasn't able to arrive to read the latter paper. John Hope Frank...: Less in the crucial first decade of the 20th century, whose problem, according to Du Bois, would be the problem of the color line. Du Bois had access to the platforms of several major learning societies, the American Economic Association, the American Sociological Society, it's well for us in the middle and past the middle of the 20th century to remember that he did enjoy those platforms. It is not surprising, therefore, that he would have access to the learning society that represented his own major interest the most, namely the American Historical Association. John Hope Frank...: Even so, the government's of which Negros had a part accomplished three things for the South, he said. "They gave the South truly democratic governments, free public schools, and the new social legislation." In conclusion, on this point, Du Bois told those who were gathered at the American Historical Association session, "paint the carpet bag governments and Negro rule as Black as you may. The fact remains that the essence of The Revolution, which the overturning of the Negro governments made, was to put these Black men and their friends out of power. Outside the curtailing of expenses and stopping of extravagancy not only did their successes make few changes in the work which these legislations and conventions had done, but they largely carried out their plans, followed their suggestions and strengthened their institutions." John Hope Frank...: There is no doubt that for many years Du Bois had in mind the writing of a major work on reconstruction. From what he said on the subject in 1909 at the American Historical Association, he was both emotionally and intellectually prepared to undertake such a task. But that was the year that the NAACP was founded, and he accepted the invitation to become Director Research of that organization and editor of The Crisis. There would be much research, much writing in the decades ahead, but the ambitious work on reconstruction would have to wait. John Hope Frank...: Meanwhile, Du Bois drew upon his earlier writings and elaborated his thoughts and his ideas on reconstruction, particularly in 1915 in a volume on The Negro, which is published by the Home University Library. His principle conclusions were not unlike those that he had reached in his American Historical Association paper. But by 1915 his conclusions seemed clearer, more precise, somewhat more definitive. For example, he said, in one place, "Finally, the legislation covering property, the wider functions of the state, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that the laws on these points established by reconstruction legislatures were not only different from and even revolutionary to the laws in the older South, but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the new South, that in spite of the retrogressive movement following the overthrow of the Negro governments, the mass of this legislation, with elaborations and development, still stands on the statue books of the South." John Hope Frank...: While still in The Crisis office, Du Bois secured a grant from the Rosenwald Fund and began sometimes in the late 20s or early 30s, systematically to work on his, what he called his Magnum Opus, on the reconstruction. When he resigned from the NAACP in 1934 and went to Atlanta University as Chairman of The Department of Sociology he must have had a draft of the manuscript in hand. Herbert Aptheker, his Literary Executor, reports that Du Bois wrote and rewrote Black Reconstruction three times and after that, revised and revised and cut and cut. As much as 250 pages were cut by him in the summer of 1934. John Hope Frank...: Even on the Galla pages he made numerous revisions, much to the dismay undoubtedly of the publisher. The work finally appeared in May of 1935. Du Bois was much to modest when he claimed that for his authority he had depended "very largely upon secondary materials and upon state histories in reconstruction written in the main by those who were convinced before they began to write that the Negro was incapable of government." John Hope Frank...: He admitted that he had neither the time, nor the money, nor the opportunity to examine many original sources which would have vastly strengthened his home work. But it is abundantly clear that Du Bois did use quite extensively the government records. And he regarded them as sources of "wide and unrivaled authenticity." Among these were the report of The Committee of 15, the many volumes of the reports made on the Ku Klux conspiracy, reports of the Freedman's Bureau, various executive and other reports of governmental officials and above all, the Congressional Globe. John Hope Frank...: I'm quoting, "None who has not read page by page the Congressional Globe, especially the sessions of the 39th Congress, can possibly have any idea of what the problems of reconstruction facing the United States were in 1865 and 1866." It's quite clear that Du Bois had read every page. Wherever possible he also used sources left by Negro participants, although he was appalled to discover that the official records of Johnathan Gibbs, the Superintendent of Education in Florida, had been destroyed, as had the records of many other Black officials during the reconstruction era. John Hope Frank...: Even if such sources were lost to future historians, and even if Du Bois did not use certain ones that were available, this did not frustrate his real objectives. Du Bois was particularly interested in demonstrating to any reasonable reader that he could use the same sources that previous historians of the reconstruction had used, and reach conclusions that were essentially antithetical to theirs. "They had reached their conclusions," he said, "because they were determined 'to paint the south as a martyr to inescapable fate, to make the North the magnanimous emancipator and to ridicule the Negro as the impossible joke in the whole development.'" John Hope Frank...: Regarding his own approach, which was "simply to tell the truth", Du Bois said, "I cannot believe that any unbiased mind with any ideal of truth and of scientific judgment can read the plain authentic facts of our history during 1860 to 1880 and come to conclusions essentially different from mine. And yet, I stand virtually alone in this interpretation." Du Bois' study of reconstruction led him to two very important conclusions. John Hope Frank...: The first was that earlier historians and many of his contemporaries had so misinterpreted and so distorted the facts of what he called the greatest critical period of American History as to prove the wrong right and the right wrong. Historians had thus become the servants of the social order that sought to maintain itself on a set of myths and half truths, as well as the makers of a brand of historical inquiry in writing that was more romance than science. John Hope Frank...: Black Reconstruction is the angry book that it is, not merely because of the events with which it deals, but also because Du Bois was utterly aghast that men and women had prostituted their training in history to serve a cause that had not the slightest interest in truth. The second conclusion was a consequence of the first, namely that no one had even begun to provide an honest and faithful account of the Black man's part in the reconstruction of American Democracy. John Hope Frank...: Du Bois would correct this incredible failing, not only by giving such an account, but by indicating how and why the effort to reconstruct the nation had failed so tragically. Du Bois saw reconstruction as a significant social revolution involving nothing less than the extensive reordering of American society. Slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and even before 1865 this was more widely acknowledged than later generations would care to admit. John Hope Frank...: With the end of the war, the old Southern social order came crashing down, whether Southerns or even white Northerners liked it or not. Slavery was dead or dying and all the presuppositions and assumptions underlying a slave society were themselves in grave danger. No longer could masters and non slave holding masters look at Blacks as they had viewed them for two and a half centuries. The efforts of white Southerners to disregard the reality of emancipation merely resulted in their becoming more bogged down than ever in the quagmire of federal state relations. Their effort to look backward and restore a semblance of the glories of the past merely brought into existence the apparatus of congressional reconstruction, that seemed to them even worse than defeat on the field of battle. John Hope Frank...: We are reminded by Du Bois that with the exception of a very few men, such as Sumpter and Stevens, not even Northerners saw reconstruction as a real revolution or a real reordering of society. Northerners had been responsible for unleashing the forces that lead to emancipation, but they hesitated to follow through and bring into full reality the revolution that they had begun. "All the great literature of the Civil War," Du Bois said, "was based on human freedom. And then, so far as its stress union it had to make it liberty and union." John Hope Frank...: He went on to say that practically all of the songs that were composed during the Civil War spoke of freedom and liberty. And yet, Northerners, at the end of the Civil War, strayed from the task of implementing a real program of freedom and liberty that they had sung about during the war. When the Freedman's Bureau was established, it met covert, as well as open opposition, even in the North. And it never enjoyed adequate financial or even moral support. John Hope Frank...: Its enormous achievements in the areas of health, education and welfare were in the face of the bitterest opposition of the President and his Southern supporters. And despite the unwillingness of the Northerners to give it the power and the resources to accomplish its stupendous task. Northerners furthermore haggle over the amendment to the Constitution that would confer citizenship and equality on the former slaves. And in the end, not only did the 14 Amendment fall far short of what its original authors intended, but it was spurned by large segments of the population in the North, as well as in the South. John Hope Frank...: "The ballet is a school master," Charles Sumpter has said in 1866. But Northern states among them, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan and Nebraska were excluding Blacks from the ballet in the early post war years. Indeed, few Northerners joined in supporting a Constitutional Amendment to guarantee the suffrage to the Blacks, until they were frightened by the prospect that Southerns, counting all Blacks as persons for the first time since the federal Constitution was ratified, would gain some political advantage over the North. John Hope Frank...: Du Bois saw in all this a certain moral latitude that clearly indicated the inability or unwillingness of most Americans to come to grips with the inescapable implications of a Northern victory and the end of slavery. Even when they enacted the reconstruction legislation and ratified the reconstruction amendments, Americans were not acting out of the larger human interest or from highly touted American ideals. "Most Americans," he said, "used the Negro to defend their own economic interest and refusing him adequate land and real education and even common justice, deserted him shamelessly as soon as their own selfish interests were safe." John Hope Frank...: To Du Bois, the most vexatious aspect of the reconstruction story was that the key witness, the emancipated slave himself, had been almost barred from court. During the period, he'd been the pawn of selfish and greedy white men, and had been exploited in every conceivable fashion. And had been a temporary beneficiary only when it was to the advantage of whites to include him in the franchise or civil rights or economic gain." John Hope Frank...: "And in the hand of later historians," Du Bois said, "the freed man fared no better. His written record has been..." I'm quoting now, "been largely destroyed and nearly always neglected. Only three or four states have reserved the debates in the reconstruction conventions. There are few biographies of Black leaders. The Negro is to refuse the hearing because he was poor and ignorant. It is, therefore, assumed that all Negros in reconstruction were ignorant and silly, and that therefore, history of reconstruction in any state can quite ignore him. John Hope Frank...: The result is that most unfair caricatures of Negros have been carefully preserved but serious features, successful administration and upright character are almost universally ignored and forgotten. Wherever a Black head rises to historic view, it is promptly slain by an adjective, shrewd, notorious, cunning. Or pillared by a sneer, or put out of you by some quite unproven charge of bad moral character. In other words, every effort has been made to treat the Negro's part in reconstruction with silence and contempt." That's the end of the quotation. John Hope Frank...: In dealing with the Black man's part in reconstruction, Du Bois received obvious satisfaction, not only in setting the record straight, but also in revising the historians. Negros were vilified by their contemporaries and the vilification's were repeated by historians. "It was easy to traduce them," Du Bois said, "because everyone was ready to believe the worst, and no reply was, for the moment, listened to. There was not a single great Black leader reconstruction against whom almost unprintable allegations were not repeatedly and definitely made without any attempt to investigate the reliability of sources of information." John Hope Frank...: In the struggle to build a civilization consonant when the ideals of American Democracy, Du Bois observed that Negros unerringly and insistently led the way. It was they, who in dozens of conventions and gatherings of their own, in the years 1865 and '66, protested against the Black codes, called on Congress to enact laws guaranteeing their equal rights and assisting them toward independence through land ownership. And demanded suffrage as a privilege that was endured by all other American citizens regardless of education or previous condition. John Hope Frank...: Long before they were participants in political affairs, they were building their own schools, churches, and other institutions and assuming the roles of responsible citizens, even in the face of division and scorn. They took their case to the highest authorities, even to the President of the United States. And when Johnson showed nothing but contempt for Douglas, Downing and the others, they appealed to the American people and received the response scarcely better than that which Johnson had given them. John Hope Frank...: Du Bois trudged his weary way through the confusing maze of reconstruction developments in each and every state of the former confederacy. He made no excessive claims for the accomplishments of Negros anywhere, but in view of what had been said and had been written about them, any claim on their behalf would seem excessive to those who had been schooled in the view that Blacks were incapable of performing like other human beings. He chatted one historian for assuming that the advertisement placed in a Georgia newspaper by two Negro workers had been "evidently written by a white friend", that Georgia historian said. John Hope Frank...: Then, Du Bois said, "there is not the slightest evidence to prove this." And there were plenty of educated Negros in Augusta at the time who might have written this. In every state he saw honest, educated and unlettered Negro leaders whose integrity and commitment to the public good had never been unsuccessfully impugned. The list of such persons is impressive in length, as well as in accomplishments. John Hope Frank...: But they never achieved the level of power to justify any claim, then or later, that they had instituted Negro rule in the South. To be sure, they pressed for numerous reforms, including free public schools, enlarged programs of human welfare, access to land, and protection of their civil and political rights. Where they were successful, it was with the support and cooperation of various groups of whites. John Hope Frank...: Du Bois rejected the widely held claim that dishonesty was racial. "It was not even a matter of lore economic classes, white or Black." He said. It was instead "the child of an age of extravagancy and characteristic of a state where the mass of voters were poverty stricken, and the property holders angry and ruthless in their methods." John Hope Frank...: He made no attempt, therefore, however to exonerate every Black participant of wrong doing. The point he made over and over again was that it was the times and the circumstances that induce some persons to commit acts of fraud and deception. And such acts were no more common among Blacks than among whites. He also argued that those who sought to censure the Black man for his part in reconstruction could not have it both ways. John Hope Frank...: "If the Black man is to be blamed for the ills of reconstruction," Du Bois argued, "he must also be credited for his good. And the good is indubitable. The Negro buttress Southern civilization in precisely the same places it was weakest, against populace, oligarchy in government and land monopoly." John Hope Frank...: And in the words of Albion Tourgée, whom Du Bois called the bravest of the carpet baggers, Negro voters instituted a public school system in a realm where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot box and the jury box to thousands of whites who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced finally Home Rule in the South. John Hope Frank...: As much as Du Bois would have liked it, the limited achievements of reconstruction were not the work of a Black poor proletariat or a dictatorship of labor in the South. While some had an ardent desire to increase the land holding among the freed men, and to enlarge the electorate among Blacks and whites, most of the participants, Black and white, recoiled from the notion that Blacks alone should rule or that the workers alone should rule, or that the basis of land ownership should be radically changed or that the plan in class should be destroyed. John Hope Frank...: The achievements in reconstruction were the work of Albion Tourgée, and William Holden, working with James Harris and John W. Hood in North Carolina. And John R. Lynch and Blanche K. Bruce working with James Alcorn and Adele Bert Aims in Mississippi. Among such public servants were well to due Northern businessmen, Southern planters, middle class Negros, as well as unlettered freed men. They had no common ideology. They scarcely had a common program. John Hope Frank...: More often than not, their achievements were the result of horse trading, begrudging concessions, and hard won compromises. "Therefore to reconstruct democracy in America failed," Du Bois says. "Because there was no real commitment ever to have it succeed. More interested in profits from its new industries than in human freedom or even peace. The North faltered when it became clear that in the path of greater profits laid the white South, defiant, unrepentant, refusing to give up slavery or to yield the political power based on the counting of slaves." John Hope Frank...: Even the federal government that had defined the rights of the freed men, and promised to protect them, began to yield to the pressures of whites North and South, and resorted to the helpless ringing of its hands and these rights became a mockery in the face of lynchings and murders all across the lawless South. Deserted by his erstwhile friends, abandoned by his government, and victimized by his former masters, the freed man had neither the strength, nor the resources, to win against such formidable odds. John Hope Frank...: And thus, it ended. And as Du Bois summed it up in that unforgettable passage, "The attempt to make Black men American citizens was in a certain sense all a failure. But a splendid failure. It did not fail where it was expected to fail. It was Athanasius contra mundum with back to the wall, out numbered ten to one, with all the wealth and all the opportunity and all the world against him. And only in his hands and heart the consciousness of a great and just cause. Fighting the battle of all the oppressed and despised humanity of every race and color. Against the mass haroldings of religion, science, education, law and brute force." John Hope Frank...: If what I have said about Du Bois as Historian of the Reconstruction has been merely implicit, it is quite important that I be quite explicit. Du Bois was not only the first historian to view the post Civil War period with a clear, unmistakable, accurate, precise understanding of what had happened. But what he said about it remains still the most important statement that has yet been made about the reconstruction. John Hope Frank...: "One ignores Black Reconstruction at one's own peril or embarrassment." As in the case of the American Historical Review, they did not review it. "But one cannot escape the power of its logical or the conclusiveness of its findings. One may offer criticism that is mere carping, or one may take exception to a certain preselection or line of reasoning. But that would be a compliment to its breadth and its scope. If one can find here and there something with which one can reasonably take issue." John Hope Frank...: The important and inescapable conclusion that one must of course reach upon reading, studying and working with this magnum opus is that after its publication in 1935, the writing of reconstruction history could never be the same. And indeed, it has not been. Charles T. Davi...: It is our custom to accept questions at this time and I'm sure that Professor Franklin would be willing to do so. All right. John Hope Frank...: Yes? Speaker 4: Jacque Voegeli in his book, Free But Not Equal, comments on one of Du Bois of the reconstruction congress being to make the South possible for the Blacks so that they wouldn't come North. Would you comment on that? John Hope Frank...: The question is that [inaudible] and his separate but not equal has suggested that one of the things that congress was interested in, in its legislation, was to create a condition that would make it desirable for the freed men to stay in the South and not to come into the North. I would have little reason to doubt that that would be in the minds of some of the legislators. Some of those who were doing everything they could to make life bearable in the South for the freed men. There would be, of course, many people, both Black and white, who would express the view in the 60s and 70s that the best place for the freed man was in the South. And they would have reasons that would range all the way from the inability to stand the Northern climate to their natural proclivity to agricultural work, and particularly picking cotton. John Hope Frank...: I think that we only need to look at the expressions of apprehension on the part of large numbers of white Northerners during the Civil War to understand that they loved the Negro in the South and not in New York City. And the draft riots and all of the other actions that were taken that expressed hostility to Negros during the war survived the war, and found expression in various ways in the post Civil War years. I would say that among those who were anxious to help the Black man where he was were the various philanthropic groups in the North that did whatever they could. I don't want to impune the motives or good intentions of the various religious and philanthropic groups, except to say that they did think it was nice for them to be on Hilton Head and various other places in the South. John Hope Frank...: And there can be no doubt that many of the legislators had the same feeling. But there was, so far as I know, and I took Du Bois at his word. I felt that I had to read the Congressional Globe page by page too. And so far as I know, this doesn't become explicit and in debates in the congress. There were many about what should be done about the slaves, the freed men. But it doesn't become explicit in any of the debates that I know anything about in those post war years. But I think he's, Jacque is quite right in suggesting that this is a real possibility, and it remains so. All the hostility expressed by whites towards Blacks in Philadelphia and New York, and Pittsburgh and all the other places in the North would indicate that they didn't want them there. They hadn't wanted them there ever. And surely, they wouldn't want any flood of them in the post Civil War years. Speaker 5: Du Bois suggests in his book Black Reconstruction that one of the problems of that particular period was that there were no economic programs to buttress the so called political rights that were supposed to protect in a sense all Americans, which would include Black Americans. Now, were there any legislative efforts on this? A directive step to this particular approach such as land distribution, or otherwise? John Hope Frank...: The suggestion is that Du Bois said that there was no program that would give Blacks the economic buttressing that they needed if they were to enjoy their political and other rights. I think the word is not that there were no programs, but that they were inadequate. And I think Du Bois would say they were inadequate. He felt that the Bureau, for example, did a great deal. But not enough. John Hope Frank...: The question is, was there legislation that called for the redistribution of land, et cetera? And the answer to your question is, if I were to give a short answer, it would be no. Now, I would then have to modify it to suggest that the Homestead Act of 1866, which was designed primarily to clue in Southern whites who had been outside the confederate, outside the union at the time that the National Homestead Act was passed, conceivably could have, and in some instances, did benefit the freed man. John Hope Frank...: Then, of course, see the congress did, in the second Freedman's Bureau Bill, provide for the leasing and in some instances, the sale of land to freed men, particularly after the abandon lands of the former slave holders had been restored to them. But there was no significant or important program of land redistribution. And I hasten to point out as I suggested by implication there at the end or my the end of my talk, not only was that not popular in Washington. It was not popular in many parts of the South and even among many Black legislators. John Hope Frank...: So, that the likelihood of a program of land distribution, which we are... I say, which I would see now as a kind of scenic or unknown to any kind of satisfactory adjustment in the reconstruction era, simply was not seriously considered. The talk about people speak a good deal and speak somewhat derisively about Negros wanting 40 acres and a mule, as though that was beyond conception. It was not beyond conception, that is, it was discussed and talked about in much the same way, and this is the thing I like to remember, that white slave holders sat around whimpering about their being paid for their slaves too, you see? Even after the war was over. John Hope Frank...: They felt someone ought to... Now, that was just as far fetched in 1866 as 40 acres and a mule was, and yet, many of the white slave holders thought that somehow they might strike it rich by getting some kind of compensation for their slaves. But, I would say that congress never really seriously considered doing either of these things. Speaker 6: [inaudible] have any actions on behalf of military officers, such as in Mississippi [inaudible] gave certain amounts of land to Black people, I understand and they were [crosstalk]- John Hope Frank...: Yeah, there were some military arrangements, which did... The question is, did any military officers make land available to freed men and the answer is yes. And some freed men kept the land indefinitely. Others, under leases, had to give it up at a certain point. But some did keep the land indefinitely. There's no question about that. But that was relatively minuscule compared to the total problem. Yes? Speaker 7: Mr. Franklin, I'm wondering if you could comment on the [inaudible]. John Hope Frank...: Yes. I hinted at that by pointing out that it wasn't reviewed in the American Historical Review of all places. It was reviewed in what was then the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, reviewed by Arthur C. Cole, my predecessor at Brooklyn College. And while Cole took some exception to some of the things that he said, he was on the... It was on the whole, a laudatory review, as might have been expected from a man who had written on the irrepressible conflict and who saw slavery as the cause of the Civil War, and then who, therefore, moved into the general approach to problems of war and freedom and reconstruction that Du Bois referred to. John Hope Frank...: So, in that particular review, I would say it was laudatory. I'm trying to remember the name of the person reviewed in the Southern Historical Review. I just read it within the last few weeks. I cannot remember the name. It was a rather luck warm-