JUDGE TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION
By RUSSEL B. NYE
Albion Winegar Tourgee, Ohioan,
novelist, political thinker,
soldier, editor, jurist, and diplomat,
was a man whose comments
upon the political and social questions
of the late nineteenth cen-
tury form an interesting chapter in the
development of American
thought. Born in Williamsfield, Ohio, in
1838, of Huguenot,
German, and Yankee stock, he spent a
normal boyhood amid the
farms and villages of northern Ohio.1
After study at Kingsville
Academy, Ohio, he entered the University
of Rochester in 1859,
staying until 1861, when the outbreak of
the Civil War led him
to join the Federal Army. The loss of an
eye and a spine injury
invalided him home to Ashtabula, Ohio,
after First Bull Run. He
studied law until 1862, when he again
entered the army as first
lieutenant in Company G of the 105th
Ohio Volunteers,2 where
he served with his regiment through some
heavy fighting in Ken-
tucky and Tennessee, until captured by
the enemy at Murfrees-
boro in 1863. After four months in Libby
and other southern
prisons, he was exchanged, returned home
to be married in Colum-
bus, Ohio, and soon after rejoined his
regiment to fight at Tulla-
homa, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga.
After withdrawing from
the army in the early months of 1864, he
was admitted to the
bar in Painesville, Ohio, joining the
law firm of Sherman and
Farmer, and shortly after removing to
Ashtabula to practise for
himself. As the War closed, Tourgee saw
an opportunity for
advancement in the new South which he
felt bound to arise from
1 The best sources of fact and
interpretation concerning Albion W. Tourgee's
life are Roy F. Dibble's Albion
W. Tourgee (New York, 1921), and his own semi-
autobiographical novel, Figs
and Thistles, A Romance of the Western Reserve (New
York, 1879), although the latter
is thought by some to be a disguised life of James A.
Garfield, whom Tourgee admired.
According to Dibble, the novel is, however, at least
partly autobiography.
2 The story of the 105th, Tourgee
later told in The Story of A Thousand (Buf-
falo, 1896).
(101)
102
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the ashes of the old, and in 1865, with
his savings of five thousand
dollars, he went to Greensboro, North
Carolina, determined to find
a place in that new order.3
The fourteen years Tourgee spent in the
South, during the
period of Reconstruction, were the most
important in his life, for
his experiences formed the foundation
for his literary and political
work of those and later years. Business
and politics he entered
almost at once. A nursery firm was his
first commercial venture,
and upon its failure, he became a real
estate agent in 1866. A
year later he engaged in an unsuccessful
publishing venture, edit-
ing the short-lived Greensboro (North
Carolina) Union Register.
The Loyalist Convention of 1866,
engineered by Edwin M. Stanton
and the Radical Republicans to offset
the rival "arm-in-arm" con-
vention of the Johnson Republicans,
found Tourgee in Phila-
delphia as a North Carolina delegate,
denouncing the provisional
reconstruction government of Andrew
Johnson, and telling of
antinegro barbarities in his adopted
state under its rule.4
Tourgee's political affiliation, then,
during this period, was with
the Radical Republican group, and probably
as a result his career
in politics began to show a success not
evident in his business
affairs, since his journal failed in
1868. In that year, however,
Tourgee was elected judge of the
Superior Court, Seventh Dis-
trict, of North Carolina, and served as
a delegate to the state
constitutional convention. At the
convention he came out boldly
for repudiation of the state's war debt,
in agreement with the
Radical plans of reconstruction embodied
in the Fourteenth
Amendment.5 The convention also appointed him as head of a
commission concerned with codification
and revision of state laws,
and he was instrumental in putting into
effect a code similar to
Ohio's.6 His connections with
the radical wing of the Republi-
3 See the early chapters of A Fool's
Errand (New York, 1879), the autobio-
graphical novel based on his southern
experiences.
4 C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era (Boston,
1929), 124-5. Jonathan Worth, North
Carolina's governor, became Tourgee's
chief political enemy after this convention. See
J. G. deR. Hamilton, ed., The
Correspondence of Jonathan Worth (Raleigh, N. C.),
1909.
5 See the discussion in C. R. Fish, The
Development of American Nationality.
Rev. ed. (New York, 1919), 410-1.
Tourgee at the state convention advocated equal
civil and political rights for all men.
repeal of the property qualification for suffrage
and office-holding, popular election of
all state officers, penal reform, a uniform taxa-
tion system, and a public school system,
all in general agreement with Radical Repub-
lican reconstruction policies. See A
Fool's Errand, 141.
6 Dibble, Tourgee, 39ff., for
further discussion.
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION:
NYE 103
can Party, and his position as judge,
gave Tourgee a great deal
of political power, especially as a
dispenser of Federal patronage,
and he earned the dislike of numerous
southerners. Fear of re-
prisal by the rapidly growing Ku Klux
Klan led him at one time
to contemplate departure from the state
to avoid personal injury,
but he stayed until 1879, when the
declining power of his party,
and financial reverses, suffered because
of the panic of 1873,
caused his removal from North Carolina.
Political and literary
work took up his time, and after
frequent changes of residence,
to Denver, New York, and Philadelphia,
he was appointed consul
at Bordeaux, in 1897, retaining the post
until his death in 1905.7
There are several aspects of Tourgee's
life and work worthy
of attention, but perhaps the most
important is that of his ideas
concerning the problems of the
reconstruction period in the South.
Reconstruction is the theme of his major
literary productions, and
is the motivating force behind the
expression of most of his social
and political thought. Of his numerous
works, 'Toinette (New
York, 1874), A Fool's Errand (New
York, 1879), Bricks without
Straw (New York, 1880), Eighty-nine
(New York, 1888), and
Pactolus Prime (New York, 1890), are most directly expressive
of his ideas. The novelettes John Eax
and Mamelon (New York,
1882), and the political tract, An
Appeal to Caesar (New York,
1884), are also sources of information.8
Since Tourgee, as Union
soldier and Republican politician, was a
typical product of the
northern school of thought, and since,
as southern jurist and busi-
ness man he was familiar, as were few
others, with the problems
of the postwar South, his answers to the
questions raised by
reconstruction take on historical
validity.
The South after Appomattox presented a
dismal picture, its
economic and social systems disjointed
by war and emancipation,
its old institutions forever dead.
Obviously, the South must be
7 The consular post was probably the
result of his assistance in the successful
McKinley Presidential campaign.
8 For a bibliography, see Dibble, Tourgee,
149-53. 'Toinette was published in the
1881 edition under the title, A Royal
Gentleman, and The Invisible Empire, bound
with A Fool's Errand in the 1880
(New York) edition, is primarily a collection of
documentary evidence supporting the
statements in the earlier novel made on the
Ku Klux and negro issues. Figs and
Thistles, while important for autobiographical
information, does not fall within the
scope of this paper, being a "payment of debt"
to his native Ohio in its nostalgic
remembrances of childhood.
104 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
rebuilt, and a new South planned for and
created, but how? The
answers to the question are divided by
most authorities into three,
Lincoln's plan of reconstruction,
Johnson's plan, and the Con-
gressional or Radical Republican system.9
The methods of re-
adjusting the Southern States to the
Union, although never fully
put into practise because of his
assassination, favored by Lincoln,
are fairly clear in his wartime
treatments of the loyal Virginia
counties, of the Louisiana and Arkansas
governments, in the
Sherman-Johnston agreement, and in his
Proclamation of Amnesty
and Reconstruction of 1863.10
Fundamentally, Abraham Lincoln
was intent upon receiving the South back
into the Union as quickly
and easily as possible; disfranchisement
of the rebellious south-
erner in wholesale fashion, and similar
enfranchisement of the
emancipated slave, seem never to have
been integral parts of his
plan, and his policies were in no way
intended to destroy com-
pletely, with the exception of slavery,
basic southern political,
civil, and social institutions. The
procedure of Johnson, his suc-
cessor, indicated slightly different
aims. Johnson, no aristocrat,
found his main interests to lie with the
middle class southern
yeomanry, and perhaps contemplated
rebuilding the South upon
that foundation.11 As
a strict constructionist of the Constitu-
tion, he contended that state
governments alone had control over
white and negro suffrage, thereby
leaving the provisional state
governments to solve the enfranchisement
problem, although he
hoped that limited negro suffrage would
be granted. His exclu-
sion from the voting privilege of
holders of twenty thousand dol-
lars or more of property, intended to
strengthen the political power
of the middle class at the expense of
the upper economic group,
was the main point upon which he
differed from Lincoln's plan.
The third method of reconstruction, that
of the Republican group
in Congress, differed sharply from both.
"Our safety," declared
9 For
good summaries of the reconstruction period, see W. B. Hesseltine, His-
tory of the South (New York, 1936), and C. R. Fish, American
Nationality, 407-53.
Broad treatments, from various viewpoints,
are Bowers, The Tragic Era; G. F. Mil-
ton, The Age of Hate (New York,
1930), W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction, Political
and Economic (New York, 1907), and W. L. Fleming, The Sequel of
Appomattox
(New Haven, 1919).
10 See Hesseltine, History of the
South, 581-7, and for fuller treatment, C. H.
McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of
Reconstruction (New York, 1901).
11 See Hesseltine, History of the
South, 587-95, or any other of the numerous biog-
raphies of Johnson.
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION: NYE 105
one of them, "requires us to
disfranchise the rebels and enfran-
chise the colored citizens in the
revolted states." Negro suffrage,
disfranchisement of the southern white
man, repudiation of the
rebel debt in each state, division of
the conquered area into dis-
tricts with military governors, civil
rights for the colored man,
the abolition of slavery by
constitutional amendment--these were
the major points of Congressional
reconstruction policy,12 differ-
ing in aim and method from those of
Lincoln and Johnson. The
Radical Republicans based their plans
upon the "state suicide"
theory of Charles Sumner, and the
"conquered province" theory
of Thaddeus Stevens, both of whom viewed
the postwar South
as a tabula rasa upon which the
principles of a new northern
civilization were to be written.
Fundamentally, all approaches to the
problem of reconstruc-
tion focused upon three sets of issues,
social, political, and eco-
nomic. Tourgee, recently removed from
Ohio into the area to
be rebuilt, occupied himself for the
greater part of his life in
thinking out solutions to the problems
these issues presented.
Tourgee's first important literary work,
'Toinette (1874),
concerned itself with the study of
relationship between Negro and
white in the South, before and after the
Civil War.13 As his
preface explains, he found the root of
southern troubles to lie in
the caste system of the aristocrat; the
pride of class characteristic
of the slaveholder constituted the chief
evil of the institution of
slavery, not cruelty to the black man,
and while the Civil War
removed slavery, it had not destroyed
the class consciousness of
the aristocratic class.14 The story
covers the period 1858-1867,
and concerns the love of a young
southern lawyer for his octo-
roon slave 'Toinette, to whom he gives
freedom after she has
borne his child. Wounded in the war, he
is nursed to health by
12 Hesseltine, History of the South,
597-613; Fish, American Nationality.
13 Dibble, Tourgee, 48, places the actual
composition of the book some six years
before publication, in 1868-1869, when
the Congressional Reconstruction Acts were in
full force. There is thus good evidence
for the statement that 'Toinette and A Fool's
Errand are among the first, if not the first, of the literary
treatments of reconstruction
problems. Constance Fenimore Woolson's Rodman
the Keeper (New York), for ex-
ample, did not appear until 1880.
14 The Fords, Howard, and Hulbert
edition of 'Toinette (New York, 1874).
The bitter experiences of Tourgee and
his wife in southern society, recounted es-
pecially well in A Fool's Errand, probably
reinforced this dislike of the planter class
which had rejected him socially, despite
his sincere wish to know and help them.
106
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
'Toinette, who refuses, on the grounds
of her new-found freedom
and equality, to renew their former
relationship. Her suggestion
of marriage he refuses, and the two part
ways to live unhappily.
Tourgee's point is, of course, that the
southerner still regards
'Toinette as chattel, and although
slavery no longer technically
exists, she is nevertheless in the eyes
of the southern ruling class,
no better off than before. The caste system, the innate pride of
southern aristocracy, has not been done
away with, and no plan
can ignore the fact if it is to face
squarely the social issues in-
volved in reconstruction.
A Fool's Errand (1879) is a much more detailed study of
the postwar South, the doctrinal charge
of the book being so
heavy that it becomes a tract rather
than a literary project.15 Com-
fort Servosse, who is obviously Tourgee
himself, journeys south
to help rebuild the shattered country,
and the story is the record
of his growing disillusionment with the
methods of reconstruc-
tion which he encounters. Like Tourgee,
Servosse attempts to
show the southerner and the Negro the
way to peaceful life to-
gether; he tries, as a convention
delegate and politician, to assist
in redefining the aims of the state, is
attacked by the Ku Klux
Klan, and, misunderstood and hated, is
embittered by the failure
of both North and South to comprehend
fully the issues involved.
Tourgee's perception of the problems is
a clear one, and while he
was nominally a Radical Republican, he
did not wholly accept
their Reconstruction Acts in practise.
On the one hand, he was
willing to accept the "state
suicide" and "conquered province"
theories of Stevens and Sumner, and like
them, suggested that
the South be divided into territories,
regardless of former state
lines, and upon reestablishment of
commerce and society, that they
be readmitted as new states, in the same
fashion as western terri-
tories. This plan to him "neither
shirked nor temporized. It
accepted the past, and sought to
guarantee the future."16 But on
15 Published anonymously, as by
"One of the Fools." With Steele Mackaye,
Tourgee attempted unsuccessfully to
dramatize the novel in 188l.
16 The Fords,
Howard, and Hulbert edition of A Fool's Errand (New York,
1879), 115. He said (p. 213),
"Rebellion destroyed and thereby annihilated the State.
. . . There is no state, in the sense we
use it, but only a skeleton, a lifeless body."
Interesting replies to the book are W.
L. Royal, A Reply to "A Fool's Errand"
(New York, 1881), and J. G. Ingraham, Not
A Fool's Errand (New York, 1880).
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION: NYE 107
the other hand, Tourgee did not believe
in immediate and complete
enfranchisement of the former slave, as
the Radicals wished, for
"the slave was not made fit for
unrestrained political power by
the simple fact of freedom."17
Neither did the Radical plan take
into account the southern pride of caste
and race prejudice; in
order to rebuild the South, the
northerner must perforce work
with the Negro, thereby placing himself,
in the opinion of the
white South, upon the Negroes' social
level, and as a result nulli-
fying any success he might have. With
the pride and prejudice
of the South still operative, northern
leaders working with the
Negro in an attempt to reconstruct the
section were either "self-
seekers, martyrs, or fools," doomed
to failure. He said:
It seems impossible that the wise men of
the day should have been so
blind as not to see that they were doing
the utmost possible injury to the
colored race, the country, and
themselves, by propounding a plan of re-
organization which depended for its
success . . . upon this class, in con-
nection with a few of the dominant race
who, from whatever motives, might
be willing to put themselves on the same
level with them in the estimation
of their white neighbors.18
The roots of the problem, stated before
in 'Toinette, were
not perceived by the "wise
men," and therefore all attempts at
reconstruction must fail until caste and
prejudice were stamped
out. Neither did Tourgee agree with the
practise of denying the
vote to the rebel white man. He pointed
out accurately that the
Congressional planners had wrongly
supposed that "if this class
were deprived of actual political
position, they would thereby be
shorn of political influence";
furthermore, the practise led to
"segregation," and a line of
demarcation, which widened the
breach between native southerner, Negro,
and Republican north-
erner, had been drawn.
Upon the one side were found only those
who constituted what was
termed respectable people. . . . On the
other side were the pariahs of the
land, "niggers," the newly
enfranchised African voters; "scalawags," the
native whites who were willing to accept
the reconstruction measures; and
17 A Fool's Errand, 116. He reiterated the idea in Pactolus Prime saying,
"Lib-
erty is a growth, an evolution--not an
instantaneous fact," and in Zouri's Christmas,
a novel printed with John Eax, he
stated that the Negro's true freedom came, "not
from proclamation or constitutional
amendment, but from self-control, self-denial, and
self-direction."
18 A Fool's Errand, 119.
108
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
"carpetbaggers," all men of
Northern birth, resident in the South, who
should elect to speak or act in favor of
such reconstruction.19
On the issue of negro suffrage, Tourgee,
through the mouth
of his hero Servosse, agreed more
closely with the Lincoln and
Johnson plans than with the Radical
Republican. He warns the
South, "if you of your own volition
will enfranchise a part of
them, marked by some definite
classification--of intellect, property,
or what not--and the others as they
reach that development, it
will suffice at this time. . . . Refuse,
and all will be enfranchised
without regard to your wishes and
fears."20 It was clear to Tourgee
that the mistake of the Republican
politicians arose from two
factors: first, the failure to recognize
the importance of southern
pride and prejudice, with a resultant
loss of cooperation, and sec-
ond, their handling of the
enfranchisement problem, which alien-
ated the white population and gave
"the power of the reorganized,
subordinate republics, into the hands of
a race unskilled in public
affairs, poor to a degree hardly to be
matched in the civilized
world, and so ignorant that not five out
of a hundred of its voters
could read their own ballots. . .
." These were the errors of
reconstruction, due both to northern
misunderstanding, and to the
fact that politics played a part; the
political nature of Congres-
sional reconstruction did not escape
Tourgee.21 "It should be
remembered that pressure for
reconstruction came from the North
--not from the people of the
North, but from its politicians. It
was reduced to practice, not because
society here was ripe for its
operation, but to secure political
victory and party ascendancy."
At least, the novel takes the stand that
reconstruction upon such
grounds was a failure, in the opinion of
southerner and northern
reconstructionist alike. Tourgee, living
in the South, was sym-
pathetic to the southern viewpoint,
misplaced and wrong at times
as he felt it to be. To him the South
must of necessity be rebuilt
19 Ibid., 124-5.
20 Ibid., 56. This is
substantially the same advice as that given to the southern
state constitutional conventions by
Johnson; see Hesseltine, History of the South,
590-5. Tourgee did not completely
disagree with Johnson's reconstruction, but his
main objection was rather that it
attempted to put into practise principles for which
the South was unready. See A Fool's
Errand, 115.
21 Ibid., 119. Tourgee was no
advocate of negro social equality. While consul
at Bordeaux, he wrote President Theodore
Roosevelt, expressing distaste for the invi-
tation proffered Booker T. Washington in
1901. See J. B. Bishop, Theodore Roose-
velt and His Time (New York, 1920), I, 165.
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION:
NYE 109
by the North, by "northern capital,
northern energy, and northern
men," and "the only way to
effect it is by the influence of northern
immigration." But the methods
employed by those politicians he
ironically termed "the wise
men," made ineffective the attempts
of men such as Servosse and Tourgee, and
forced the southerner,
with some justice, to resist such
attempts. While the Ku Klux
Klan was "a new and terrible
revelation" of a power which "might
be used so as to effectually destroy the
liberty of the newly
enfranchised citizens," yet
"it was a magnificent sentiment that
underlay it all, an unfaltering
determination, an invincible de-
fiance to all that had the seeming of
compulsion and tyranny."22
Evil as it was, the Klan was the answer
of a people pushed
beyond endurance by unwise
reconstruction measures, and "all this
was natural, and should have been
foreseen and acted upon by
the Wise Men whose task it was to reform
the shattered nation."
Somewhat bitterly, Servosse concludes
that northern reconstruc-
tion failed to attain its purpose
through lack of comprehension
of the real problems, and, as a result,
those who sincerely at-
tempted to assist in the rebuilding of
the South were shunned as
"carpetbaggers" by North and
South alike. It was "a fool's er-
rand," this attempt to
"superimpose the civilization, the idea of
the North, upon the South at a moment's
warning."23
It is clear, then, that Tourgee, while
he agreed in theory with
the Radical Republicans, accepting some
of their major policies,
did not agree with the fashion in which
those theories were put
into practise. Political ax-grinding,
plus failure to understand
key issues, had made reconstruction of
the Congressional type a
failure. What, then, was the remedy he
proposed, and from
whence ought it to come? In the final
chapters of the book, he
gave the answer. First of all, solution
of the problem must come
from the North, for "the sick man
can not cure himself. The
South will never purge itself of the
evils which affect it." The
answer, Tourgee felt, lay in education,
education of the Negro
22 A Fool's Errand, 171, 227.
23 Ibid., 841. Tourgee's definition of the carpetbagger, as
conceived in the
northern mind, was "a man without
means, character, or occupation, an adventurer,
a camp-follower, a bummer," and to
the southerner, he was "an incarnation of northern
hate, envy, spleen, greed, hypocrisy,
and all uncleanliness."
110
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and the white man in the ways of society
and government calcu-
lated to make the two races friends, to
make the two sections of
the Nation one, and to bring the South
from its mistaken ideas
of prejudice and pride of class up to a
level upon which recon-
struction could take place.
The course lies before us, broad and
plain as the king's highway: the
remedy for darkness is light; for
ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, right-
eousness. . . . Let the nation educate
the voter because the nation cannot
afford that he should be ignorant. . . .
Poor Whites, Ku Klux Klan, and
Bulldozers are all alike the harvest of
ignorance. The nation cannot afford
to grow such a crop.24
This idea was to become the lodestar of
Tourgee's life.
Bricks without Straw (1880), the second and least auto-
biographical of Tourgee's novels of
reconstruction, attacked the
same issues in the same way as did the
earlier books. The hero,
Hesden Le Mayne, a southern Whig, is
converted to a northern
point of view through marriage to a
Yankee school teacher, and
through his own realization of the
weaknesses of southern civili-
zation. The injustice and blindness of
the twin political measures
of negro enfranchisement and rebel
disfranchisement are treated
as before.25 To Le Mayne, the
aim of reconstruction should be
to build up in the South a
self-governing system of townships,
of small democratic units on the pattern
of the New England
town meeting. However, before this can
successfully be accom-
plished, the South and the North must be
made one in thought,
spirit, and purpose, and "the
solution, lying just at hand," is
education. Le Mayne points out that an
illiterate South is politi-
cally dangerous, that since forty-five
per cent. of the South is
uneducated, it needs only the addition
of an intelligent and un-
scrupulous six per cent. to rule the
land.26 He, like Comfort
Servosse, feels that "the only
remedy is to educate the people
until they shall be wise enough to know
what ought to be done,
and brave and strong enough to do
it." More specifically, how-
ever, than does A Fool's Errand, the
novel outlines the method
24 Ibid., 346-7. Chapters LXVI-LXVIII are keen and intelligent
summaries
of the problem of North and South.
25 The Fords, Howard, and Hulbert
edition of Bricks without Straw (New
York, 1880), 355ff. See also his
analysis of the Klan, ibid., 350-61.
26 Ibid., 514.
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION: NYE 111
to be followed. The Federal Government
should establish and
maintain schools in the South, subsidies
to be granted directly
proportionate to the illiteracy rates in
each community.27 Besides
healing the ugly wounds left by both war
and reconstruction,
such a measure, planned on a liberal
scale, would be a vindication of the
manhood of the North; an assertion of
its sense of right as well as the
determination to develop at the South
the same intelligence, the same free-
dom of thought and action, the same
equality of individual right, that have
made the North prosperous and free and
strong, while the lack of them has
made the South poor and ignorant and
weak.28
The thesis of An Appeal to Caesar (1884)
is the same, the
book being not a novel, but an
exposition of the ways and means
of instituting this educational system,
and written to influence
the Republican Party in its policies
toward the South.29 In the
preface to the tract, Tourgee stated
that "the roots of the upas
tree" of rebellion, southern pride
of caste and southern race
prejudice, still remained despite war
and reconstruction. Begin-
ning in 1790, he traced the history of
the South's problems through
the 1870's, and offered as a remedy the
educational plans intro-
duced earlier in the novels.30
Eighty-nine (1888), a prognostication of the year to come,
repeats the southern material of the
earlier books, and is inter-
esting for its view of the Ku Klux Klan.
As in A Fool's Errand,
Tourgee did not wholly condemn the
organization's purposes,
although he did resent its extra-legal
and thoroughly dangerous
means of accomplishing its ends. His
hero, Royal Owen, a
Georgian, founds an "Order of the
Southern Cross" to combat
by peaceful and legal means the
domination of his state by carpet-
baggers, taking a sympathetic but
sensible view of reconstruction
problems.31
27 Ibid., Chapters LXI, LXII.
28 Ibid., 518-9.
29 Tourgee addressed the House Committee
on Education in 1890, attacking the
Blair Bill, and suggesting instead the
plan outlined here and in Bricks without Straw.
See Dibble, Tourgee, 110. The
Blair Bill was also attacked in Pactolus Prime.
30 The Fords, Howard, and Hulbert
edition of An Appeal to Caesar (New York,
1884). See especially the chapters,
"Wisdom Becometh a King," "Is Education a
Specific?" "Who Shall Apply
the Remedy?" and "The Method of Application" (p.
260-349).
31 Tourgee censures Grover Cleveland's
failure to put into operation an adequate
southern educational system, and also
attacks the monopolistic trends of the Standard
Oil Company, which he disguises as the
"Rock Oil Company," antedating similar
attacks by Henry D. Lloyd in Wealth
against Commonwealth (New York, 1894), and
Ida M. Tarbell in McClure's (New
York, 1902).
112 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Pactolus Prime (1890) was, like 'Toinette, a study of the
race problem, but built around a less
convincing plot. Pactolus
is an octoroon who passes the color line
to be successful in white
society, but who, through medical
treatment for an injury, con-
tracts a skin ailment which turns him
black. For his daughter's
sake, he conceals the relationship, and
works as a bootblack in
Washington. The central character, though painfully idealized,
is well drawn, and powerfully presented;
bitterly he comes to the
conclusion that "color caste has
become a part of Christianity,"
and that the only hope of the Negro for
social and civil equality
lies in concealment of his racial origin
if possible.32 The novel-
ettes, John Eax and Mainelon, published
and bound together with
Zouri's Christmas in 1882, added little to what Tourgee had
already stated, being local color
stories "of the reconstruction era
in the South, without the shadow that
hung over the land."33 The
first-named work concerns a sentimental
love story of an aristo-
crat and a girl of lower birth, being a
treatment of southern
aristocracy less unsympathetic than 'Toinette
and Bricks without
Straw. With Mamelon, which is the story of the saving
of a
southern estate through the
commercialization of a corundum
deposit found on it, it signifies the
method by which the South
is to find renascence, that is, through
its acceptance of northern
ideals. As Tourgee put it, "The New
South was springing into
life about us--the spirit of the North
and the manhood of the
South in its matchless elements."
From these sources, then, can be made a
summary of Tour-
gee's ideas on the issues involved in
the reconstruction period in
the South. In the question of the place
of the Negro in society,
he was no equalitarian, but he was a
champion of negro rights,
and an enemy of blind race prejudice.34
As for "carpetbagger"
politicians, he disliked the
self-seeking northerner as much as any,
but was hurt by the failure of North and
South alike to dis-
32 The Cassel and Company edition of Pactolus Prime (New
York, 1890).
33 The Fords. Howard, and Hulbert edition of John Eax and Mameion
(New
York, 1882), preface.
34 His departure from the army was in
part caused by an argument with an
officer over the treatment of a Negro. He
favored intelligent Negroes over white
applicants in
appointments to office, and his dislike of race prejudice is evident in
all of his books. See Dibble, Tourgee, 30,
35, 43 etc.
TOURGEE AND RECONSTRUCTION: NYE 113
tinguish between politicians with false
and sincere motives. From
this, perhaps, arose his hatred of the
planter class, as well as
from his more objective evaluations of
southern civilization. Po-
litically, despite his nominal party
affiliation, he was, in his dis-
like of the aristocracy, his distrust of
blanket enfranchisement of
the Negro, and his opposition to
disfranchisement of the rebel,
much closer to the reconstruction
policies of Johnson than those
of Stevens and Sumner, although agreeing
with them in the theory
that the South was a conquered province
to be rebuilt upon a sub-
stantially northern pattern. Economic
questions Tourgee tended
to neglect, but in broad terms he seemed
to feel that northern
capital and industry would combine with
southern manhood and
resources to produce a new commercial
South.35 Finally, his ideas
are noteworthy for their temperance and
sensibility; writing in an
age marred by hatred, prejudice, and
misunderstanding, he dis-
played an intelligent grasp of issues,
men, and meanings.
In regard to literary artistry,
Tourgee's novels leave some-
thing to be desired. For one thing, the
propaganda in most cases
overshadows the plot, and is so evident
as to make the books
tracts rather than works of art. Like
most Victorians, Tourgee
attempted to combine artistic excellence
and doctrinal inculcation
in equal portions. No realist, he yet at
times did not avoid in
the interests of art touches of
realism,36 although he stated quite
clearly his creed as follows: "The
province of true art is to por-
tray the meaner phases of nature only as
a foil for the nobler
and grander passions . . ."37 While
his novels dealing with the
tragedies of mixed blood have a certain
effectiveness, they suffer
by comparison with G. W. Cable's
powerful Madam Delphine
(New York, 1881), as his war scenes do
not measure up to those
of J. W. DeForest's Miss Ravenel's
Conversion (New York,
1867). But Tourgee did not lack art, for
the wild night ride
of Lily Servosse in A Fool's Errand is
the equal of Cable's simi-
35 Tourgee's ideas, it is noticeable,
are closer to those of Henry W. Grady than
to those of the agrarian Sidney Lanier.
36 For example, his description of the
Ku Klux Klan, A Fool's Errand, 164ff.,
and its activities.
37 Quoted by Dibble. Tourgee, 188.
Tourgee's favorite novelist was his con-
temporary E. P. Roe; he disliked the realism of William
D. Howells, Thomas Hardy,
and the Russians.
114 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
lar description in Dr. Sevier (New
York, 1882), and the swiftly
moving story of the attack of the Klan
on the negro hut in the
same novel is a skillful piece of
writing. The obvious fault of
Tourgee's books lies in the fact that he
had but one theme to
discuss, and that he worked the same
vein over more than once,
losing sight of the narrative in his
attempt to teach and convince.
Despite the classification of his novels
as literary propaganda,
Tourgee deserves credit for the clarity
and intelligence with which
he approached the vital problems of his
time, those of reconstruc-
tion, thus pointing the way for later
treatment of the issues by
others.38
38 Followers of Tourgee in the novel of
reconstruction include Constance Feni-
more Woolson, Thomas Nelson Page, George
W. Cable, John Esten Cooke, Joel
Chandler Harris, Grace Elizabeth King,
Augusta Evans Wilson, Harris Dickson,
Thomas Dixon, Stark Young, Ellen
Glasgow, Margaret Mitchell, Laura Krey, and
others.