Forces for compromise had been at work behind the scenes in Washington for some time. Although northern Democrats threatened to fight to the last ditch, many southern Democrats were willing to accept Hayes if he would promise to remove the troops and allow the southern states to manage their internal affairs by themselves. Ex-Whig planters and merchants who had reluctantly abandoned the carpetbag governments and who sympathized with Republican economic policies hoped that by supporting Hayes they might contribute to the restoration of the two-party system that had been destroyed in the South during the 1850s. Ohio Congressman James A. Garfield urged Hayes to find “some discreet way” of showing these Southerners that he favored “internal improvements.” Hayes replied, “Your views are so nearly the same as mine that I need not say a word.”
Tradition has it that a great compromise between the sections was worked out during a dramatic meeting at the Wormley Hotel20 in Washington on February 26. Actually the negotiations were drawn out and informal, and the Wormley conference was but one of many. With the tacit support of many Democrats, the electoral vote was counted by the president of the Senate on March 2, and Hayes was declared elected, 185 votes to 184.
Like all compromises, the Compromise of 1877 was not entirely satisfactory; like most, it was not honored in every detail. Hayes recalled the last troops from South Carolina and Louisiana in April. He appointed a former Confederate general, David M. Key of Tennessee, postmaster general and delegated to him the congenial task of finding Southerners willing to serve their country as officials of a Republican administration. But the alliance of ex-Whigs and northern Republicans did not flourish; the South remained solidly Democratic. The major significance of the compromise, one of the great intersectional political accommodations of American history, was that it ended Reconstruction and inaugurated a new political order in the South. More than the Constitutional amendments and federal statutes, this new regime would shape the destinies of the four million freedmen.
For many former slaves, this future was to be bleak. Forgotten in the North, manipulated and then callously rejected by the South, rebuffed by the Supreme Court, voiceless in national affairs, they and their descendants were condemned in the interests of sectional harmony to lives of poverty, indignity, and little hope. But many other former slaves managed to thrive during the last third of the nineteenth century. Their hard work, discipline, and financial savvy elevated them into a property-owning middle class whose existence—more than Union armies—marked the end of slavery.
LifjWatch the Video The Promise and Failure of Reconstruction at Www. myhistorylab. com
Cold Mountain (2004),a movie based on Charles Frazier's novel, is a love story set during the Civil War. But this is an unusual love story. The lovers are seldom together;and the hero is a deserter.
Inman (Jude Law),a schoolteacher, and Ada (Nicole Kidman), the well-born daughter of a minister, meet in a town in western North Carolina in the shadows of Cold Mountain. They speak on several occasions, look searchingly at each other, and exchange a single resolute kiss. Then Inman enlists in the Confederate army. They send each other letters, many of which never arrive. They yearn for each other without knowing much about each other. In a world made ugly by war, they need something beautiful to love. Each cherishes photographs of the other.
Inman is wounded in the neck during the siege of Petersburg. While convalescing in a hospital, he receives a letter from Ada:"If you are fighting, stop fighting... If you are marching, stop marching. Come back to me."He nods grimly and decides to desert. He sneaks out of the hospital and begins his long trek back to Cold Mountain.
The journey is an ordeal. He suffers from cold and hunger. Confederate soldiers chase, capture, and shoot him,
Nicole Kidman as Ada in Cold Mountain.
Leaving him for dead; rogues attack and rob him. If war is hell, leaving it is no picnic, either.
Ada suffers too. Her father dies and she sets the slaves free. A southern lady, she knows nothing about farming and goes hungry. A plucky female farmhand (Renee Zellweger) appears at the farm and sets it aright.
The movie reaches a climax when Inman staggers up Cold Mountain—and into the arms of Ada. He is closely pursued by ruffians in the Home Guard, a local militia on the lookout for deserters, who shoot him dead.
Can any of this be regarded as history?
There was a man named Inman, the brother of author Frazier's great-great-grandfather. The real Inman had been wounded in the neck at Petersburg, deserted, and was killed in a gunfight with the Home Guard near Cold Mountain. But the known facts of Inman's story, Frazier explained,"could be scrawled on the back of the envelope." Frazier made up everything else, doubtless inspired by Homer's Odyssey, another story of a soldier's return home from war.
But if much of the story is the product of Frazier's imagination, it nevertheless illuminates several historically significant themes. Cold Mountain examines the psychological effects of the loss of morale in the South, which many historians now regard as the best explanation for its defeat. (See Debating the Past,"Were Reconstruction Governments Corrupt?"p.413.) Official statistics indicate that some 200,000 Union soldiers and
104,000 Confederates deserted. Many more simply walked unarmed into enemy camps and were arrested as "captured." When Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, his army had dwindled to 28,000 men;another 3,800 were reported as deserted and another 14,000 as captured.
The problem of desertion was especially acute in the mountain region of North Carolina, where support for secession had never been strong. In late 1863 and early 1864 the legislature of North Carolina passed laws penalizing sheriffs who failed to assist in capturing deserters and draft dodgers; it also created the Home Guard, local militias composed of men exempt from conscription, and charged them with the task of rounding up deserters. By early 1865, Lee was complaining that entire units were deserting; he especially regretted that "the greatest number of desertions have occurred among the North Carolina troops."
The movie accurately pinpoints the geography of desertion—North Carolina. But was its psychological explanation equally valid? Did southern women, like Ada, encourage their menfolk to desert?
The historical evidence is ambivalent.
On the one hand, the Confederacy made a concerted effort to enlist the support of white women. The South's surprisingly strong economic performance suggests that plenty of women, like Ada, learned how to manage farms and
The woman in The Consecration (1861) by George Cochran Lambdin was probably used as the model for Nicole Kidman's hair style and clothing. The movie was extraordinarily attentive to historical visual detail.
Plantations. There is evidence, too, that southern women encouraged their men to fight. In 1862 and again the next year, a letter appeared in many Confederate newspapers in which "The Women of the South"called on their men to enlist and fight."Never turn your backs on the flag,"it advised soldiers, for cowardly behavior would disgrace themselves and their "children's children."When Sergeant Edwin Fay of Louisiana wrote to his wife saying that he wanted to leave "this horrid war,"she responded that while she missed him terribly she could not countenance his becoming a deserter.
The Confederacy's appeal to women reflected their increasing importance in public life. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust (who in 2007 became the first woman president of Harvard University) argues that women's role shifted further as the Confederacy and its menfolk failed to defend white southern "womanhood.""Of necessity,"such women assumed a larger role in the management of farms and plantations and they became more assertive in public matters. Some took the lead—as did Ada—in encouraging their men to desert.
"Though the ladies may not be willing to concede the fact,"a Confederate official in North Carolina declared,"they are nevertheless responsible for the desertion in the army." James Fowler, a private from North Carolina who had been sentenced to death for desertion, cited his wife's pleas in his appeal for clemency."I received a letter from my wife stating there [sic] condition and my two children was both at the point of Death and I made evry [sic] effort to get permission to go home honorably."
Cold Mountain is not history. But the movie illuminates the anguish of those who cling to life and love rather than to a war effort that will likely fail.
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