The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894-1901

Helen G. Edmonds

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780807855492, 9780807806074
• eBook ISBN: 9781469610955
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Edmonds gives a detailed and accurate record of the political careers of prominent North Carolina blacks who held federal, state, county, and municipal offices. This record shows that the ration of Afro-American voters was so low that black domination was neither a reality nor a threat.

Chapter One
Introduction

IT IS OFTEN STATED that North Carolina is dominantly a one-party state. The history of the past fifty years bears testimony to the fact that the Democratic party has been in control of government of this state more often than any other party. The historian is compelled to analyze the factors which gave rise to that domination. The North Carolina pattern cannot be fitted into the single formula that the Reconstruction Period, which followed the War Between the States, solidified the Democratic whites against the Republican blacks and thereby created a Democratic state beyond peradventure. The unique forces and circumstances which contributed to the one-party system in this state warrant the analysis of a more recent historical period than Reconstruction.

The Democratic party has, from 1870 to 1951, had a majority representation in the North Carolina legislature, with but one exception. That exception is the brief interlude, 1895–1901, commonly termed the Fusion Period. This treatise, in analyzing the Fusion Period, involved first, the rise of a third party in the state, the People’s party; second, the “fusion” of that party with the Republican party; third, the Fusion’s overthrow of the Bourbon Democratic party; and, fourth, Democratic restoration. Fusion politics in this study means the strategy employed and the results attained by the Populists and Republicans in their ascendancy, domination, and decline. It means a redefining of the political role of the Negro in the period.

Any writer who deals with the turbulent 1890’s in this state’s history will find that there are two schools of opinion relative to the interpretation of Fusion politics: the old and the new. There will also be found numerous shades of opinion between the two points of view. Those writers who have maintained a condemnation of the Fusion administration constitute the old. The few writers and statesmen who have given some credit to the period constitute the new.

Some of the possible determinants which have established the old school point of view and perpetuated it are: First, most of the earlier writers were staunch Democrats; hence, they were anti-Republican, anti-Populist, anti-Negro participation in politics, and unscientific in the evaluation of data.¹ Second, more recent writers, in treating this period in their general histories of the state, have leaned heavily upon Democratic source materials and have accepted the decade of the 1890’s as a terrible political era, a near replica of Reconstruction days.² Third, many Democratic campaign speakers, at that time and until 1930, resurrected the activities of the Fusion Period to illustrate the necessity of “white supremacy,” although the majority of Negroes had been disfranchised by constitutional amendment in 1901 and fraudently disfranchised by intricate election laws before 1901.³ Fourth, such source materials as private papers, campaign literature, newspapers, periodicals, and memoirs which set forth the Democratic side of the question are in greater abundance and are more centrally located than those materials which present the Fusion side.⁴

The new school of interpretation of Fusion is small and comparatively recent. The decades of the 1930’s and 1940’s found the emotional attitudes of the Democratic party more receptive to any analysis which was at variance with the established Democratic hypotheses. Pioneer attempts by the students of the University of North Carolina, Duke University, and the University of Chicago have re-examined some aspects of the period. As J. D. Hicks in The Populist Revolt exposed many unjust condemnations which anti-Populist propaganda has assigned to the national movement, so has the new group of writers in North Carolina, by the more thorough use of source materials, attempted to see Populism in its true light. The new school has focused its attention first upon the economic implications involved in Fusion; secondly, upon the racial constituency of the Fusion parties; and thirdly, upon the Democratic techniques employed in the overthrow of Fusion.

Fusion included three factors: the Populist party, the Republican party, and the Negro. It is necessary to analyze critically the existing works which treat each factor separately and the three factors collectively in terms of new points of view. Simeon Delap was the first writer to see in Populism any benefits to this state.⁵ His work is superficial in treatment, but it was a pioneer attempt in a neglected phase of state history. Florence E. Smith sought to justify the righteousness of the Populist party and ignored the truth or falsity of the factors involved in the race question.⁶

There is no separate treatment of the Republican party. The Negro as a component part of the Republican party is also a neglected phase. William A. Mabry, in recording the political activities of the Negro, devoted some attention to the Negro in Fusion politics. He believed that there was no threat of Negro domination, yet he concerned himself more with exposing the effects of Negro office-holding on race relations than ascertaining the number and quality of positions held by Negroes.⁷

Others of the recent writers on state history, as a whole, have introduced new appraisals on Fusion politics and the Negro. Albert R. Newsome and Hugh T. Lefler have modified some of the points of view on the period by showing that the rule of the Populists and the Republicans pleased the people in some respects. They have eliminated some of the Negro-phobia from Fusion politics by the use of the terms “some” and “few” in reference to Negro officeholders.⁸ Lefler has opened other new vistas to future writers through his compilation of documentary data which show both sides of the Fusion picture.⁹ The best, most authentic and dispassionate interpretation of the Fusion election of 1896 made thus far has been done by Phillip J. Weaver.¹⁰ His work asserts that Fusion was the reaction against the Democratic party’s failure to meet the new challenge for reform and advancement. While the writers of the old school contend that the Negro vote was responsible for Fusion victory in 1896, Weaver states that victory was assured without the Negro vote. His estimate of the race question in the background of Fusion politics shows that he was not unduly influenced by the racial propaganda of the period.

Recent memoirs, personal correspondence, and autobiographies have contributed some either towards new points of view or towards the furthering of the new points of view. The Clawson Memoirs add a small bit of clarity to the Wilmington Race Riot in that the writer (white) owned the press with which Alex Manly (Negro) printed the Negro newspaper.¹¹ The private correspondence of one Negro sheds much light on the duplicity of some of the Republican leaders.¹² The first two volumes of Josephus Daniels’ autobiography are indispensable for an analysis of the atmosphere of the 1890’s.¹³ These volumes are intensely Democratic, and the author lets this fact be known without apologies. Some of his conclusions are new points of view, as he writes them in retrospect. It is primarily because of Daniels’ retrospective writings that one may assume that the time seems at hand when the emotional attitude of North Carolina historians will permit a dispassionate appraisal of the tempestuous 1890’s. This tendency is well illustrated when this energetic Democratic participant, opponent of the Negro in politics, and enemy of Fusion, says, in 1941:

I made enemies and I garnered friends, and my vehemence of denunciation of opponents was not always tempered with charity But I look back, also, amazed at my own editorial violence at times, even when I understood the circumstances which surrounded it. . . . The poverty of the South, the poverty of my State, and resentment at the Politics of Reconstruction, bred a violence in insecurity which reduced to pure bitterness the contest between men and groups and races.¹⁴

There are certain handicaps inherent in the study of Fusion politics. There are few county histories. Of the ninety-six counties of the state in this period, only six have written histories.¹⁵ Only one of the six discussed Fusion.¹⁶ There is a scarcity of source materials on Negro officeholders. The House and Senate Journals and Public Documents make no distinction between white and colored members of the legislature. The most useful aid in identifying them was the North Carolina Manual, 1913, but this work failed to designate several Negro members. Personal interviews, newspapers, relatives, and secondary materials are the chief means of determining racial identity. The Congressional Record and House Journals (North Carolina General Assembly) are the basic sources for the activities of George H. White and James H. Young, respectively, two Negroes who figured prominently in the period.

The Democratic newspapers of the period were more numerous and had wider circulation; in them, however, one has to wade through vitriolic and partisan propaganda. The Republican party had no official press at the time, and this makes difficult a nonpartisan study of the period. The Populists relied upon the Progressive Farmer and the Caucasian to carry their message.

This work attempts to pursue the path of the new school of interpretation, taking into consideration certain points of view of the old. It aims to investigate the bases of Fusion in each election from 1894 to 1900; to appraise those aspects of Fusion legislation which bear relationship to the Negro; to examine the facts concerning the cry of “Negro domination” through an analysis of Negro office-holding with regard to federal, state, county, and municipal positions; to see the industrial and commercial forces at work behind the issue of race; and to estimate the Democrats’ use of the race question as an instrument in making North Carolina a one-party state.

NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE

1. Samuel A. Ashe, History of North Carolina, Vol. II.

Fred Rippy, (ed.), Furnifold Simmons, Statesman of the New South; Memoirs and Addresses.

James Sprunt, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River 1660–1916, Second ed.

Alfred M. Waddell, Some Memories of My Life.

2. R. D. W. Connor, North Carolina: Rebuilding an Ancient Commonwealth, 1584–1925, Vol. II.

R. D. W. Connor and Clarence Poe, The Life and Speeches of Charles Brantley Aycock.

J. G. deR. Hamilton, History of North Carolina Since 1860 (History of North Carolina, Vol. III).

Archibald Henderson, North Carolina, The Old North State and the New, Vol. II.

3. Charles B. Aycock, Josephus Daniels, Locke Craig, Robert Glenn, T. J. Jarvis, Claude Kitchin, Cameron Morrison, George Rountree, Furnifold Simmons, Francis Winston.

4. Duke University Library (Durham, North Carolina), State Department of Archives and History (Raleigh, North Carolina), State Library (Raleigh, North Carolina), University of North Carolina Library (Chapel Hill, North Carolina).

5. Simeon Delap, “The Populist Party in North Carolina,” Trinity College Historical Papers, Series XXIV (1922), 40–74.

6. Florence E. Smith, Populism and Its Influence in North Carolina (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1929).

7. William A Mabry, “The Negro in North Carolina Politics Since Reconstruction,” Historical Papers of Trinity College Historical Society, Series XXIII (1940).

8. Albert R. Newsome and Hugh T. Lefler, The Growth of North Carolina.

9. Hugh T. Lefler, (ed.), North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries.

10. Phillip J. Weaver, The Gu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• THE NEGRO AND FUSION POLITICS IN NORTH CAROLINA 1894–1901
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Maps
• Tables
• Chapter One Introduction
• Chapter Two The Factors Underlying Fusion
• Chapter Three Triumph of Fusion, 1894–1895
• Chapter Four The Completion of Fusion, 1896–1897
• Chapter Five Fusion Election Law
• Chapter Six Negro Office-Holding: Federal
• Chapter Seven Negro Office-Holding: State
• Chapter Eight Negro Office-Holding: County
• Chapter Nine Negro Office-Holding: Municipal
• Chapter Ten The “White Supremacy” Campaign of 1898
• Chapter Eleven The Wilmington Race Riot
• Chapter Twelve The Legislature of 1899
• Chapter Thirteen The Election of 1900 and Disfranchisement
• Chapter Fourteen Conclusions
• Appendix, Bibliography, and Index