James Shepherd Pike (September 8, 1811 – November 29, 1882) was an American journalist and a historian of
South Carolina
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, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
during the
Reconstruction Era
The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...
.
Biography
Pike was born in
Calais, Maine
Calais is a city in Washington County, Maine, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 3,079, making Calais the third least-populous city in Maine (after Hallowell and Eastport). The city has three Canada–US border cro ...
, and was a journalist in the United States during the mid 19th century. From 1850-1860 he was the chief Washington correspondent and associate editor of the ''
New York Tribune
The ''New-York Tribune'' was an American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley. It bore the moniker ''New-York Daily Tribune'' from 1842 to 1866 before returning to its original name. From the 1840s through the 1860s it was the domi ...
''. The ''Tribune'' was the chief source of news and commentary for many Republican newspapers across the country. Republican editors reprinted his dispatches prior to the outbreak of the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
. In 1854 he led the fight against the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, calling for the formation of a new political entity to oppose it. Pike wrote that a "solid phalanx of aggression rears its black head everywhere south of Mason and Dixon's line, banded for the propagation of Slavery all over the continent." His reports were, "widely quoted, bitterly attacked or enthusiastically praised; they exerted a profound influence upon public opinion and gave to their author national prominence, first as an uncompromising anti-slavery Whig, and later as an ardent Republican."
President
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
appointed Pike to be minister to the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
, where he fought
Confederate
Confederacy or confederate may refer to:
States or communities
* Confederate state or confederation, a union of sovereign groups or communities
* Confederate States of America, a confederation of secessionist American states that existed between 1 ...
diplomatic efforts and promoted the Union war aims from 1861 to 1866. On returning to Washington in 1866, Pike resumed writing for the ''New York Tribune'' and also wrote editorials for the New York ''Sun.''
Pike was an outspoken
Radical Republican
The Radical Republicans (later also known as " Stalwarts") were a faction within the Republican Party, originating from the party's founding in 1854, some 6 years before the Civil War, until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reco ...
, standing with
Thaddeus Stevens
Thaddeus Stevens (April 4, 1792August 11, 1868) was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party during the 1860s. A fierce opponent of sla ...
and
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811March 11, 1874) was an American statesman and United States Senator from Massachusetts. As an academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the anti-slavery forces in the state and a leader of th ...
and opposing President
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808July 31, 1875) was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Dem ...
. Long before black suffrage became a major issue Pike had come to believe that the freed slaves must be given the vote. Pike in 1866–67 strongly supported Black suffrage and the disqualification of most ex-Confederates from holding office.
Pike did not admire
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
as a politician, and drifted away from the Republican party. By 1872 Pike was disenchanted with Black
suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
and the corruption and failures of Reconstruction. He argued the federal government should withdraw its soldiers from the Southern states. He was a strong supporter of the
Liberal Republican movement that in 1872 opposed President
Ulysses Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant ; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Ar ...
, denouncing the corruption of his administration. Pike's boss, ''New York Tribune'' editor
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and newspaper editor, editor of the ''New-York Tribune''. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressm ...
, was the Liberal Republican nominee in 1872. Greeley lost to Grant by a landslide, then died. The new editor of the ''Tribune''
Whitelaw Reid
Whitelaw Reid (October 27, 1837 – December 15, 1912) was an American politician and newspaper editor, as well as the author of ''Ohio in the War'', a popular work of history.
After assisting Horace Greeley as editor of the ''New-York Tribu ...
sent Pike to South Carolina to study the conditions in the deep South under Reconstruction.
Pike's reports on South Carolina
In 1873 Pike toured South Carolina and wrote a series of newspaper articles, reprinted in newspapers across the country and republished in book form in 1874 as ''The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government.'' It was a widely read and highly influential first hand account of the details of
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
government in South Carolina, that systematically exposed what Pike considered to be corruption, incompetence, bribery, financial misdeeds and misbehavior in the state legislature. His critics argued that the tone and emphasis was distorted and hostile toward African Americans and Grant Republicans.
''The Prostrate State'' painted a lurid picture of corruption. Historian
Eric Foner
Eric Foner (; born February 7, 1943) is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, the American Civil War, Reconstru ...
writes:
:The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extravagance, and under the control of "a mass of black barbarism." The South's problems, he insisted, arose from "Negro government." The solution was to restore leading whites to political power.
Historian
John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Histo ...
said, "James S. Pike, the Maine journalist, wrote an account of misrule in South Carolina, appropriately called ''The Prostrate State'', and painted a lurid picture of the conduct of Negro legislators and the general lack of decorum in the management of public affairs. Written so close to the period and first published as a series of newspaper pieces, ''The Prostrate State'' should perhaps not be classified as history at all. But for many years the book was regarded as authoritative—contemporary history at its best. According to
Robert Franklin Durden
Robert Franklin Durden (May 10, 1925 - March 4, 2016) was an American historian and author at who worked at Duke University. He wrote books about Duke's history, journalist James S. Pike, and historian Carter G. Woodson.
He was born in Graymont ...
, Pike did not really attempt to tell what he saw or even what happened in South Carolina during Reconstruction. By picking and choosing from his notes those events and incidents that supported his argument, he sought to place responsibility for the failure of
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
on the Grant administration and on the freedmen, whom he despised with equal passion.
Durden wrote that the fundamental clue to Pike's hostile characterization of African Americans in his book ''The Prostrate State'' was that "in the 1850s no less than in the 1870s, . . .
e seehis constant antipathy toward the Negro race."
In his biographical study of Pike, Durden concluded that Pike had been ardently "free soil" before the American Civil War because he thought that the West should belong to the white man. Durden said Pike despaired of living alongside arrogant slaveholders and their repulsive human property, and that he urged peaceful secession during the 1860-61 crisis partly because he had one eye cocked on the chance of getting rid of a "mass of barbarism" and that during some of the Civil War's darker days he would have settled for a compromise peace if it meant only that a Gulf coast or Deep South "negro pen" would be lost to the Federal Union. Durden wrote that ''The Prostrate State'' makes sense only in this context, and to the extent that Pike's racial views were representative, "the Civil War and
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...
take on a new dimension of tragedy."
Historian Mark Summers concludes that Pike stressed the sensational, but "however maliciously and mendaciously he shaded his evidence, his accounts squared with those of his colleagues
Charles Nordhoff
Charles Bernard Nordhoff (February 1, 1887 – April 10, 1947) was an American novelist and traveler, born in England. Nordhoff is perhaps best known for ''The Bounty Trilogy'', three historical novels he wrote with James Norman Hall: ''Mutiny o ...
of the ''New York Herald'' and
H. P. Redfield of the ''
Cincinnati Commercial
The ''Cincinnati Commercial Tribune'' was a major daily newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio formed in 1896, and folded in 1930.(3 December 1930)OLDEST NEWSPAPER IN CINCINNATI QUITS; Commercial Tribune Stopped by McLean Interests After Political Shift in ...
''.
James Freeman Clarke
James Freeman Clarke (April 4, 1810 – June 8, 1888) was an American minister, theologian and author.
Biography
Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, on April 4, 1810, James Freeman Clarke was the son of Samuel Clarke and Rebecca Parker Hull, though h ...
, a leading Boston abolitionist, visited South Carolina and reported back to his Boston congregation that the facts presented by Pike, "were confirmed by every man whom I saw."
[McPherson, p, 41.]
Durden (2000) reports:
:A sweeping indictment of Republican rule in this state (and, by inference, other southern states), Pike's dramatic, "eye-witness" account gained much attention throughout the country. The book was so popular because it was seen as the work of an allegedly impartial Maine Republican and old foe of slavery who had come to his senses about the "wicked corruption" of the carpetbaggers and their "ignorant and barbaric" Negro allies. Pike's book not only played a role in the ending of Reconstruction but was much used by historians well into the twentieth century. In fact, it was far from objective, simply reflecting Pike's long-standing racism.
Bibliography
* Durden, Robert F. ''James Shepherd Pike. Republicanism and the American Negro, 1850–1882'' (Duke University Press, 1957).
* Durden, Robert F. "Pike, James Shepherd"
''American National Biography'' Online February 2000 discusses Pike's work ]
* Franklin, John Hope. ''Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988,'' Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
* James M. McPherson. ''The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP'' (1975)
* Pike, James Shepherd, ''The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government''(New York, 1874)
full text online at Making of America, University of Michigan paperback edition with introduction by Durden (1974)
* Pike, James Shepherd, ''First Blows of the Civil War'' (1879), collection of Pike's ''Tribune'' editorials and political letter
online edition* Mark Wahlgren Summers, ''The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878'' (1994)
* Van Cleve, Thomas C. "Pike, James Shepherd, (Sept. 8, 1811 - Nov. 29, 1882)" in ''Dictionary of American Biography'' (1934)
References
External links
*
James Shepherd Pike Find A Grave Memorial*
University of Maine
*
The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government 1874 edition—Complete text.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pike, James Shepherd
1811 births
1882 deaths
African-American history of South Carolina
Ambassadors of the United States to the Netherlands
American abolitionists
American political writers
Bleeding Kansas
Crime in South Carolina
Historians of South Carolina
Historians of the Reconstruction Era
Legal history of South Carolina
New York (state) Liberal Republicans
New York (state) Republicans
People from Calais, Maine
People of the Reconstruction Era
Politics of the Southern United States
Radical Republicans
19th-century American diplomats
19th-century American journalists
American male journalists
1854 in American politics
1870s in South Carolina
19th-century male writers
Maine Whigs