Mississippi Plan
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The Mississippi Plan of 1875 was devised by the Democratic Party to overthrow the Republican Party by organized violence, suppression of the black vote and disruption of elections, in order to regain political control of the legislature and governor's office. The Mississippi Plan was also adopted by white Democrats in South Carolina and Louisiana.
Following the end of the American Civil War, blacks were emancipated and granted citizenship. With the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870, freedmen allowed to vote. The consequences of this were far-reaching and almost immediate. Blacks eagerly registered and flooded the polls. In Mississippi's 1874 election the Republican Party carried a 30,000 majority in what had before been a Democratic Party stronghold.
Although Republicans took the governor's office and many legislative seats, including the election of blacks to many offices, such as ten of thirty-six seats in the state legislature, the precedent for the Mississippi Plan had been set in the city of Vicksburg in 1874. There, the White Man's party sent armed patrols to prevent blacks from voting and succeeded in defeating all Republican city officials in August. By December the emboldened party forced the black sheriff to flee to the state capitol. Blacks who rallied to the city to aid the sheriff also had to flee in the face of superior force. Over the next few days, armed gangs may have murdered up to 300 blacks in the city's vicinity. President Ulysses S. Grant sent a company of troops to Vicksburg in January to quell the violence and allow the sheriff's safe return.
In 1875, under the Mississippi Plan of Southern Democrats, a political dual-pronged battle to reverse the otherwise dominant Republican trend was waged. White paramilitary organizations rose up to serve as "the military arm of the Democratic Party." Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, they operated openly, with members known in local areas, they sometimes invited newspaper coverage, and their goals were political. In Mississippi, the most notorious group were the Red Shirts. They were well-armed, with private financing for the purchase of new weapons as they took on more power. The first step was to "persuade" the 10 to 15 percent of white voters still calling themselves Republicans to switch to the Democratic party. Outright attacks and a combined fear of social, political and economic ostracism convinced carpetbaggers to switch parties or flee the state.
The second step of the Mississippi Plan was intimidation of the black populace who had so recently been granted their voting rights. While planters, landlords and merchants used economic coercion against black sharecroppers to some limited success, the Red Shirts more often used violence in intimidation, including whippings and murders. White paramilitary groups, also called "rifle clubs," frequently provoked riots at Republican rallies, shooting down dozens of blacks in the ensuing conflicts.
Although the governor requested Federal troops to curb the violence, President Ulysses S. Grant hesitated to act, for fear that, in doing so, he would be accused of "bayonet rule"--which he believed would undoubtedly be exploited by Democrats to carry Ohio in that year's state elections. Ultimately, the violence went unchecked and the plan worked just as it had been intended: During Mississippi's 1875 election, five counties with large black majorities polled 12, 7, 4, 2, and 0 votes, respectively. The Republican victory by 30,000 votes in 1874 was reversed to a Democratic majority of 30,000 in 1875.
The success of the white Democrats in Mississippi influenced the growth of Red Shirts in North Carolina and South Carolina as well. They were particularly prominent in suppressing black votes in majority black counties in South Carolina, and were estimated to have committed 150 murders in the weeks leading up to the 1876 election.
[edit] References
- John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M McPherson, Gary Gerstle, Emily S. Rosenberg, Norman L. Rosenberg, Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People Volume II: Since 1863, Wadsworth, 2005.
- Foner, Eric, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York, 1988.
