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and while a larger number were more or less indifferent, there were many who were opposed to Reconstruction on any such terms, preferring a continuance of the military government until passions were calmer and a more liberal policy proposed. There was, however, no organized opposition to Reconstruction for two months or more, and even then it was rendered possible only by the arbitrary conduct of General Pope and the violent agitation carried on among the negroes by the Radical faction. For several months, in the white counties of north Alabama the so-called
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people, reënforced by numbers of the old
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Peace Society men, had been holding meetings looking toward organization in order to secure the fruits of Reconstruction. These meetings were continued, and by them it was declared that the people of Alabama were in favor of Reconstruction by the Sherman Bill, to which only the original secession leaders were opposed, and the Sherman plan, negro suffrage and all, was indorsed as a proper punishment for the planters.[1373] After the beginning of congressional Reconstruction, however, the centre of gravity in the Radical party shifted to the Black Belt, and no one any longer paid serious attention to the few thousand
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whites in north Alabama. The first negro meetings held were in the larger towns, Selma leading with a large convention of colored
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Unionists, who, under the guidance of a few white officers of the Freedmen's Bureau, declared in favor of military Reconstruction.[1374] The Montgomery reconstructionists held a meeting in the capitol
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The meeting was addressed by several
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officers: A. C. Felder, ---- Doster, and H. C. Semple, and by General Swayne and John C. Keffer from the north. General Swayne and Governor Patton served as vice-presidents. The blacks were eulogized and declared capable of political equality; and it was urged that only those men in favor of military Reconstruction should be supported for office.[1375] In Mobile, a meeting held on April 17 resolved that
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were due to Congress for its wisdom in passing the Reconstruction Acts. Both whites and negroes spoke in favor of the rights of the negro to hold office, sit on juries, and ride in the same cars and eat at the same tables with whites. The prejudices of the whites, they declared, must give way. At a meeting of negroes only the next day one of the speakers made a distinction between political and social rights. He said that the latter would come in time but that the former must be had at once; they were defined as the right to ride in street cars with the whites, in first-class cars on the railroad, to have the best staterooms on the boats, to sit at public tables with whites, and to go to the hotel tables