Pinchback---the 'final answer' by two scholars

RECONSTRUCTING PINCHBACK

GOVERNOR PINCKNEY BENTON STEWART PINCHBACK  (1837-1921)

“Fortune’s fool”? Hero? Brilliant Politician? Crook? ---Here’s the ‘final answer’

 Glenn Stewart                                     

                 

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback

            James Haskins, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1973

“Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback is a stimulating and thought-provoking attempt to present a fresh and objective view of a much-maligned individual.  The P.B.S. Pinchback seen by James Haskins comes to life in his skillfully written book.”---Elizabeth Stewart, Louisiana History Journal, Vol. XV, No. 1, 1974

            The Post Reconstruction Career of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback

            Elizabeth L. Stewart, unpublished manuscript, (1979), 2003 

"P. B. S. Pinchback is a crucial, but neglected figure of the Reconstruction era and, indeed, of 19th-century African American history.  This book is the first serious study of Pinchback and as such will make its mark on the field and will be welcomed by anyone who wants to know more about a pivotal moment in the American past.”---Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University; author of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.

"Where's Pinchback? We hear of Douglas, Langston, Elliott, Greener...and a host of small fry, but not a word from the Louisiana Adonis.  He is one of the bravest, shrewdest, and ablest among the Colored leaders and he should not be overlooked.

Here's one vote for Pinchback."  ---Republican Advocate 

  January1881

I.

In April of 1862, the steamboat Alonzo Childs put-on all speed in the hope of outrunning Union gunboats that were in hot pursuit.  Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, age 24, was a steward on the Alonzo, and already an experienced steamboatman.  His father, a white planter, died in 1848 when Pinckney was barely 11 years old, leaving his mother, a former slave, without resources and ominously subject to re-enslavement, which would mean slave status for her children as well.  After a family friend moved them to the relative safety of a free State, Pinckney’s older brother, Napoleon had a mental breakdown leaving twelve-year old Pinckney to take care of his mother and his sisters, 13-year-old Mary L, and 5-year-old Adeline.

Pinchback’s best shot at an income was the Steamboats, where he spent seven years on the Red, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.  After serving as steward, the highest position a Negro could attain, he became a manservant to gambler George Devol, from whom “he quickly acquired skill with cards, practicing the talent to his advantage and to the regret of many Black deck hands.” (Stewart, The Post reconstruction Career…) 

Union gunboat

passenger steamer similar to the Alonzo Child

      

New Orleans was still in Confederate hands when the Alonzo fled the Union navy upriver toward Yazoo City, where Pinchback expressed his loyalties by jumping ship.  He could not have known of the immanent Union capture of New Orleans, and only his determination to join the Union army could have compelled a Negro to thread his way South through Confederate lines, deeper into the Devil’s den.  It has been said that Pinchback was the ultimate ‘fortune’s fool,’ an observation supported by the fact that by the time he arrived in New Orleans at the beginning of May 1862, the Union Navy had taken the city, and Benjamin Butler’s army had occupied it. 

Within four days in “that emotion charged atmosphere” (p.19, Stewart) Pinchback was arrested by civil authorities for stabbing his brother-in-law, a man named John Keppard, but was quickly released on bail, only to be re-arrested by military authorities and sentenced to two-years.  The incident would be used by enemies time & again in future political battles, and legends surrounding the assault are numerous, but the reality is not known.  Nor is it clear who paid his bail (he may have paid it himself), or why he was re-arrested for that matter.  It is likely the over-protective, puritanical Pinchback did not approve of his sister’s choice of husbands; and equally unlikely that his solution was attempted murder.  But the story does not end there.  After a month or so in jail, “military authorities who had taken an interest in his case had him released on July 28, 1862.” (Stewart, p. 20) Exactly what transpired to gain Pinchback’s release cannot be confirmed either, though Pinchback’s claim of self-defense seems to have carried the day.

In response to General Butler's call for "...free men of color in Louisiana to take up arms in defense of the Union," Pinchback formed a company, was made “Captain P. B. S. Pinchback” and placed at its head.  Angered by poor treatment of his enlisted men by white officers, Pinchback demanded fair treatment, “but when faced with a wall of hostility, he realized he was harming his career with futile gestures, and decided to resign.” (p. 19, Stewart) He tried again and succeeded once more in mustering a company, but when he applied for a captaincy, Major General Banks replied that he had no authority to elevate a Negro above the rank of private or non-commissioned officer.  His last attempt to serve the Union was in 1864, when he traveled to Washington seeking President Lincoln’s permission to recruit colored regiments in Ohio and Indiana, but the war ended before he obtained an answer.

Pinchback’s journey in search of sanction for his ambitions was apparently an eye-opener, as well as impetus to action not in a military realm, but a political one.  In 1865 the 28-year old Pinchback settled his 16-year old bride Nina in Alabama, and for the next two years he wandered about the South speaking at Selma, Montgomery, Mobile, Memphis and New Orleans “to crowds of Negroes eager to learn more about their rights as free men.” (p. 20 Stewart)

Pinchback seems to have felt most at home in New Orleans, where he had spent a good deal of his youth, and where he had many friends and ‘business associates.’  He would have been horrified upon reading accounts in New Orleans newspapers of the July 1866 massacre of dozens of unarmed Blacks by the mayor of New Orleans; his temperament, by all accounts, would have longed for revenge against the murderers of innocent freemen.  But his unique childhood as the favored son of a wealthy white planter would not allow him to embrace the wholesale hatred of his father’s race.  The best course was to find whites they could work with, and get control of the State government machinery by every political expedient available. 

Only months before the “Mechanic’s Institute” massacre, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, followed closely by the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 opening what has been dubbed “The Era of Black power in Dixie,” and one of the most remarkable political careers of any man, White or Black.  Pinchback decided it was ‘safe’ to return to New Orleans where he immediately and adroitly organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club.  The stellar results of his efforts impressed the Republican leaders enough so that he became their choice for delegate to the upcoming State Constitutional Convention.

Pinchback served on several committees at the convention, and revealing the conservative position he would hold for the next 54 years, warned the leaders that dividing the delegates evenly between the races, thereby “putting race above merit,” was a bad idea.  Causing concern among his more radical Republican compatriots, and no doubt the source of some later troubles, he also fought suffrage measures he believed would disenfranchise former Confederates, and were thus unnecessarily punitive. 

Because of his exemplary performance at the convention, his colleagues rewarded him by putting his name forth as a gubernatorial candidate, which he declined, feeling it unwise to put forth a Negro as their first candidate.  Pinchback instead ran for the State Senate from the Second District.  His election would be his first, but not his last contested election.  After several years of service, Pinchback turned down an appointment by President Grant as Register of Land Office in New Orleans, believing the legislature offered better political prospects.  

Pinchback furthered his financial interests with the same vigor and “superb timing” he devoted to politics.  By 1870, he was partner in a factorage with C.C. Antoine, and had purchased the Semi-Weekly Louisianian, a New Orleans newspaper, which became under his ownership the Weekly Louisianian, and operated continuously until 1882.

It is in about 1870, before leaving the legislature that Pinchback begins to earn his adult-reputation for corruption.  Stewart, in The Post-Reconstruction Career… (the source of this biographical summary), does not provide details, but nor does she gloss-over the record: “Pinchback's participation in the Mississippi Riverboat Packet Company and the land deal he

made while park commissioner resulted in profit for him while the state many thousands of dollars.  Those two incidents and the bribe he accepted for his vote for passage of the Jackson Railroad Bill made up a small portion of the web of corruption, bribery, and unethical practices for which the Republicans were blamed during Reconstruction in Louisiana.”  (Stewart p.21)

In 1871 the factionalism that had already contributed to the impeachment of a Republican president was still tearing at the infant Republican Party.  Lt. Gov. Oscar Dunn, a revered Negro leader, was seething over what he thought was Governor Warmoth’s “treachery” regarding Negro political rights.  Warmoth, a newly minted Missouri lawyer, who became Louisiana’s first Republican governor at age 26, arrived in Louisiana from Illinois just before the war ended, and convinced a large number of Blacks that he was the man to represent them. His choice of Dunn, a mullatto, to be Lt. Governor was held up as proof of his claim. 

Dunn became ill and died while in office, and Warmoth quickly called upon Pinchback to fill the vacancy.  Pinchback was the only other Negro who even approached the beloved Dunn’s prominence, and seemed to many the natural choice.  But there were other reasons for wanting Pinchback; Warmoth was under threat of impeachment, which he thought would come to naught when all involved, especially the former-Confederate Democrats, realized a Negro would become governor should they succeed.  Pinchback worked well with Warmoth, although he was alarmed at the governor’s support for presidential hopeful Horace Greely, a ‘liberal’ Republican whom he adamantly opposed. And though he was for Sumner, he ultimately found himself with the Regular Republicans as a “Grant man.”  The Warmoth-Pinchback ‘marriage of convenience’ did not last.

When Election Day came, Louisiana found itself, not for the last time, with two separate sets of State officials.  The Grant victory meant that in spite of Warmoth’s considerable tricks, the Pinchback-supported “Kellogg” ticket and its representatives were the recognized government, which freed Warmoth’s opponents to proceed with the impeachment he thought he had prevented by his placement of Pinchback in the line of succession. 

The impeachment was helped-along by Pinchback himself, who presented a letter from Warmoth offering a $50,000 bribe if the Lt. Governor would organize the legislature to certain dictates.  The record shows that Pinchback turned down the bribe.  Still, all things considered, we may allow that Pinchback ignored the bribe not on strictly moral grounds, but rather the former riverboat gambler characteristically slipped the card up his sleeve to be played on another day.  He wouldn’t be the first Louisiana politician to do such a thing.  In any event, upon Warmoth’s removal from office, P.B.S. Pinchback, in December of 1872 became the first governor of African descent in American history.

Warmoth and his associates never ceased their attempts to undo their loss, but Pinchback controlled the Metropolitan Police and the militia---And not a small thing, President Grant had

by December declared him,  "...the lawful executive of Louisiana...[and]...the body assembled at the Mechanics Institute, the Kellogg Legislature...[as] the lawful legislature of the State.”

(Stewart, p. 23) 

For thirty-five days P.B.S. Pinchback was the lawful-governor of Louisiana.  Setting somewhat of a record for production, Gov. Pinchback extended an extra-session of the legislature, and signed ten bills into law.  On January 13, 1873, Pinchback formally surrendered the office, delivering a gracious speech in which he expressed his hope that "...your administration will be fair toward the class that I represent, as mine has been toward the class represented by you." (Stewart, p. 23)

The McEnery-Warmoth faction stubbornly continued the fight by assembling their body of officials and holding their own inauguration ceremony.  The Kellogg legislature, meanwhile, had elected Pinchback Senator, even though he had been elected Congressman-at-large by prior arrangement.  Before the House was able to refuse to seat him, he relinquished his claim to the House seat, stating in effect, that given the choice, who would not choose ‘U.S. Senator’ over congressman?  (Stewart p.23) 

For the ensuing three years Pinchback fought for acceptance to the Senate.  In January of 1875, Frederick Douglas declared Pinchback’s fight was no longer a personal matter, but is “now a cause of the American colored people.” (Stewart, p.24)  In 1876 Pinchback was again elected to the Senate, but his opposition was not persuaded.  The Senate “revealed mixed feelings” upon finally refusing to seat Pinchback when they awarded him $16,096.90 for the expenses he had incurred in his three-year struggle. (Stewart, p.24)

The next few years would be active ones, and not without their pleasures.  Pinchback no doubt enjoyed visiting Warmoth in the parish prison, where he was being held, ironically, for stabbing D.C. Byerly, manager of the New Orleans Bulletin in what was apparently a duel-gone-wrong.

In the 1870’s, after his short tenure as governor, Pinchback served as director of the New Orleans School Board and was delighted, based upon his glowing recollections later, to be selected as a special Louisiana commissioner to the Vienna Exposition.  After spending part of 1873 travelling about Europe, Pinchback returned to Louisiana as a private citizen for the first time in nine years. 

In 1876 Louisiana had once again elected dual governments, which meant there were two governors, Republican S.B. Packard and Democrat Francis T. Nicholls.  It is best to let Mrs. Stewart explain what happens from here:  “…In Washington also, two men, the Republican

               candidate for President, Rutherford B. Hayes, and the Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden,     
               claimed victory.  Tilden needed one more electoral vote for a majority in the Electoral
               College, and Hayes needed twenty votes.  The nineteen votes from Louisiana, South
               Carolina, and Florida and one from Oregon were challenged by both candidates.  In that
               unprecedented situation, Congress passed a bill to settle the controversy.  The eight to seven
               vote of the Commission, supposedly determined by party loyalty, was in favor of Hayes, who
               became President.  The behind-the-scenes activity to achieve that victory for the Republican
               candidate included Hayes' promise to end military Reconstruction in Louisiana in return for
               the support needed from the Democrats on the Commission.” (Stewart, p. 25)

Pinchback did not consider the Senate-seat matter entirely resolved, and was apparently incensed at the Packard government’s election of William P. Kellogg as Senator, thus allowing the election of James Eustis for the short-term in the Senate to stand.  Mrs. Stewart continues her explanation of Pinchback’s highly controversial, albeit brief break with the Republican Party: “He still wanted to be senator and his chances were fast disappearing.  In January, Pinchback appeared before the

Packard legislature and denounced them for their crimes, announcing that he recognized the Nicholls legislature.  Later that same day, he telegraphed President Grant and several senators of his decision, reminding them that he was the head of the State Executive Committee of the Republican Party.  His motivation was partly revenge, but there was also sufficient reason for disenchantment with the efforts of the Republicans in promoting Negro interests when the record of the past eight years was examined.” (Stewart, p. 25)

II.

Pinchback’s defection to the Democrats in 1876 made him a marked man for the rest of his life, which it should not have, considering that by 1877 he was again functioning as a leader in the Republican Party.

For a second time, (and calling into question Pinchback’s supposed ‘lust’ for office), he refused to be considered for the Naval Office in New Orleans, citing as his reasons civil service restrictions that prevented virtually all political activity.  Speculation of the conspiracy sort abounds regarding Pinchback’s refusal of the Naval Office appointment, but there is only credible evidence for Mrs. Stewart’s surmise that he turned down a secure income because he intended to continue as a spokesman for his race.

Pinchback, only 41 years old, was already financially secure, and essentially a ‘retired’ politician by 1878.  Still, he remained active, and was in high demand as a speaker and organizer.  He and Frederick Douglas, a fellow ‘Grant man,’ were the featured speakers at the memorial service of Senator Oliver P. Morton in Washington D. C., who had been one of his champions in his struggle with the Senate.  Soon after, he was honored at a Colored Citizen's reception and told by the assemblage "we attach great importance to your utterances at this time."(Stewart, p.28)  By 1879 Pinchback was again on his way to Washington D.C., this time to accept an appointment by President Hayes as Internal Revenue Agent.

Upon his return to Louisiana the first murmurs of a resuscitated ‘convention’ movement were calling Negro leaders everywhere, including Pinchback.  In New Orleans the ex-governor chaired a meeting to consider holding "...a National Conference at some southern center...

           to discuss and lay before the American People the present status of the Colored race.

           The group chose Nashville, Tennessee as the Conference site and set May 6 as the opening day.  
           They honored Pinchback by choosing him as Chairman of the Executive

           Committee, a post of some importance since the delegates would not be elected but rather
           chosen by the Executive Committee.”  (Stewart, p.28) 

Also in 1879 Pinchback resigned his 8-dollar-a-day job as Internal Revenue Agent so that he could take his place as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention for a per diem of four-dollars a day.  His most notable contribution was his proposal and the adoption of a provision for a University devoted to  “the education of persons of color; provide for its proper government, and shall make an annual appropriation of not less than five thousand dollars nor more than ten thousand dollars for its maintenance and support.” (Stewart, p. 31) 

Pinchback interrupted his service at the convention in order to attend the four-day National Conference of Colored Men at Nashville, where he had ample opportunity to share his philosophy that would later be termed derisively, “accommodationist,” and would place him in the Booker T. Washington ‘camp’ forever more.  After the convention, Pinchback set about on an arduous campaign schedule on behalf of Republicans throughout the State, attending meetings of the National Republican Committee in Washington, and seemingly endless conventions and conferences and campaign events in Chicago, New York, Memphis, and Nashville.  As the century rolled over, he was a wealthy man, and a respected leader of both his Party and his people.

The years near the end of the nineteenth century were especially difficult for whatever Negro leadership there was.  Attempts to combat increasing prejudice were met with both institutional and majority resistance in the form of white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, and a rise in lynching’s that wouldn’t peak until 1918.  Republican compromises and the near complete absence of Negro appointments to federal jobs disheartened Pinchback no less than his colleagues.  But Pinchback did not agree with the pleas from some Negro leaders who “advocated meeting violence with violence,

accommodation, compromise, self-help, political activity, and withdrawal into the black world.  It remained for the words and actions of Booker T. Washington to polarize those philosophies at the beginning of the twentieth century.  In the 1880's survival was the Negroes' primary concern.  For the average black person who lived in the rural South, often under conditions of near peonage, survival literally meant staying alive, somehow meeting the minimum requirements of food and shelter necessary for existence.  Most of the black leaders lived in a more sophisticated world where survival involved maintaining the relatively high standard of living they had achieved, and engaging in whatever activities they deemed appropriate for securing political and economic rights for themselves and their people.” (Stewart, p. 37)

After several years in an attempt to obtain a federal appointment, in 1882 Pinchback was appointed Surveyor of the Port of New Orleans.  He supported the ‘accidental president’ Chester A. Arthur, who had been responsible for his position as Surveyor of Customs, but found himself on the losing side when James G. Blaine got the nod from the Republican Convention.  Blaine was unable to defeat Grover Cleveland in 1884, causing the White House to be occupied by a Democrat for the first time in 24 years. 

Most of Pinchback’s Republican compatriots saw only disaster, their fears running the gamut from possible disenfranchisement to the ultimate horror of re-enslavement.  Pinchback himself was less worried, and perhaps more cynical regarding the new government.  In truth he thought both parties had abandoned his people, and he believed, in a surprising and perhaps exculpatory display of naïveté that what they had gained could not be taken away.

Facing four years in the political wilderness, Pinchback attended law school at Straight University and was admitted to the bar on April 10, 1886 at age 50, the same year his oldest son, Pinckney Napoleon, graduated from the College of Pharmacy at Philadelphia.

The last throes of the convention movement that was born in 1830 would be the stage for Pinchback’s final political contributions.  On February 3^rd, 1890, he joined 565 other delegates in Washington D.C. to convene the National Convention of Colored Citizens, where Pinchback was elected permanent chairman.  The convention was fairly evenly divided between pro and anti administration factions, with the chairman walking a fine line between the two.  Pinchback’s leadership made the most of the conference, though many had lost faith in the notion that seemingly endless conventions and conferences would do, or had done any substantial good.  The ex-governor still believed that if they spoke clearly and rationally with a single voice, they would be heard, and to that end, "The Convention petitioned the American people to become aware of the "terrible

outrages perpetrated upon Colored citizens in the Southern states and to ...wake up from the slumbers of indifference and hearken to the piteous mournings of their rejected brothers in black."⁸²  The Convention's most outstanding accomplishment evolved from Pinchback's appointment of a committee to report a plan for a national organization.  On Thursday, February 8, Pinchback, as presiding officer, announced, "a national organization had been affected."⁸³  The American Citizens Equal Rights Association was formed with P.B.S. Pinchback as Chairman of the National Executive Committee.” (Stewart p. 45)

Internal frictions and rivalry between the American Citizens Equal Rights Association and the more radical Afro-American League caused both to become inactive, or at least ineffective until the League was revived in 1898 as the Afro-American Council under Booker T. Washington's supervision.

No one knows for certain why in 1891 Pinchback decided to leave Louisiana and move his family to Washington D.C.  Stewart’s conclusion that Pinchback saw only worsening conditions in Louisiana is probably correct.  “It was becoming increasingly difficult to pursue the "good life" in Louisiana, and
         Pinchback was too astute not to foresee that the time was coming when he, as a Negro in
         Louisiana, could lose even the most basic civil rights.  Second-class citizenship was not for
         Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback.  He had money; he had pride; he had dreams for his
         family's future.  It was time to leave Louisiana.” (Stewart p. 47)

The new Pinchback home in Washington D.C. cost $10,000, a considerable sum, but was both smaller and more modest than their beloved Camp St. mansion in New Orleans.  Pinchback purchased 6 additional lots in the neighborhood, and the family, including his three adult children, Nina, Pinckney and Napoleon, moved into the 9 room, 3 story Brownstone on Bacon St.  Pinchback continued his activities, speaking, organizing, and holding out hope for a federal appointment.  His assets were dwindling, and he needed an income in order to maintain the comfortable, secure lifestyle he had spent his life building for his mother, his wife, and his children. 

Pinchback’s beloved daughter Nina, at age 28 married the 52-year-old Nathan Toomer over her father’s vehement objections.  Soon thereafter the Pinchback’s first grandson Jean was born to the marriage that did not last, forcing Nina to return with her baby to the Pinchback home in 1898.

Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise “brought instant fame to the black educator and profoundly affected Pinchback's life after the turn of the century.” (Stewart p.48)

The divisions that would open later between W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington would force Pinchback’s hand, but the old gambler knew how to make the best of whatever hand he was ‘dealt,’ and so “he would arrive at an understanding with the Tuskegeean [Washington], who by 1902 had started on his ceaseless task of securing posts for the “governor.” (Stewart p.48)

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson seemed to be the ‘backlash’ Pinchback and fellow conservatives had feared would be the ultimate result should they push too hard for reform.  The decision, which established the principle of separate but equal as the law of the land, was followed by a new State constitution in Louisiana, replacing the one on which Pinchback had left his mark. Under the new laws, Negro voter registration was reduced by 90%---within 10 years, Negro registration fell from 295,000 to 1743.

Although their relationship was strained when they supported different presidential candidates, Pinchback eventually allied himself firmly & finally with Washington, in no small part because he believed his chances for a federal job were better under the aegis of the Tuskegeean.  By 1902 Pinchback needed the salary an appointment would carry, but the Democrats in Washington elevated no one of his race above traditional ‘Negro jobs.’  Additionally, demand for the ex-governor’s services as a speaker and political organizer had nearly disappeared. 

Pinchback and Washington were aligned in their belief that economic assimilation would do more for the cause of Negro rights than perhaps anything else.  Washington’s statement at the turn of the century that "no race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is not long in any degree ostracized" seems perfectly aligned with Pinchback’s sentiments in an 1875 address to a crowd of Negroes at the New Orleans Courthouse, where he advises them to "cultivate honesty, integrity, and morality...pay their debts...and attain a character for respectability."(Stewart, p.50)

By 1902 Pinchback was 65, an age when most men of means retired.  But his restlessness, and his becoming-desperate need for an income kept him in the fray, though inactivity was for a time his nearly unbearable lot.  Pinchback and Emily retreated at times to North Louisiana, but it was for her benefit, and not his: “Inactivity would always be onerous to Pinchback and with wry humor, he confessed to his friend [Sen. Blanche K. Bruce]: "I am in the country, and by all the Gods...it is all I can do to remain here."¹² (Stewart, p. 27)

It is at this point that Booker T. Washington’s efforts on Pinchback’s behalf become especially pro-active, in part because Washington’s relationship with President Theodore Roosevelt was cordial, and their correspondence steady, and in part because friends deluged Washington with pleas on Pinchback’s behalf. 

Though the administration decided to give the traditionally Negro Naval Yard position to a white man, Roosevelt promised that sufficiently important positions would be found for Negroes.  Washington, employing his legendary tact, pleaded with the President to consider Pinchback: "If you can possibly spare the time I wish very much that you would send for him [Pinchback] and have a conversation for a few minutes with him.  I think he can give you some information that will be of value.  He is modest (emphasis mine) and does not want to call upon you without knowing that you want to see him." (Stewart, p. 54)

Roosevelt never did grant Pinchback an appointment; in fact 8 years would pass before President Taft appointed him Internal Revenue Agent in New York, an appointment that was in part the result of Booker T. Washington’s continued effort on Pinchback’s behalf.  In a "Memorandum of prominent Colored Men for the use of President Taft,” he implores the president to elevate Negroes to responsible positions, citing Pinchback as an example of the kind of men he means:   “Greater New York. --‑Ex-Gov.  P.B.S.  Pinchback....Has great influence among Colored people throughout the nation.  
         Would be satisfied with a place that paid not less than $2000.  Should advise that place be one
         where mere routine work is necessary.  He would fill well position of Deputy U.S. Marshall
         either in New York City or Brooklyn and would be satisfied with such a place.  Few
         appointments could have better immediate effects on Colored people throughout the country than
         that of Pinchback's.” (Stewart, p. 58)

  

Nina, the child Pinchback adored above all died in 1909 of complications from an appendectomy,* leaving her home in Washington D.C. to her son Jean.  Only three years earlier the Pinchback’s had been notified by telegram that their oldest son Pinckney Napoleon had died.  There is no evidence of Pinchback’s reaction to loss of two of his four children; there is only record of months of vigorous campaign activity on behalf of the national Republican ticket.  After the election, the elder Pinchbacks moved-in with their youngest son Bismarck and his wife in Washington.

(*The ‘cause’ of Nina’s death is typical of the erroneous information thrown about regarding Pinchback. I read two graduate research papers, as well as other ‘articles’ that claimed Nina died giving birth to her son Jean. The truth, easily found in Toomer’s own writings, is that Jean knew and in fact “hated” his very-live mother’s new husband, ‘Frank,’ and as a result moved in with his grandfather and grandmother Pinchback for a short time.  Additionally, one finds reports of Pinchback & Emily having variously 4 to 11 children, and so it goes…)

In 1910 the new National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, lead by W.E.B. Dubois, with more speakers and greater resources than the conservatives, almost immediately overwhelmed Booker T. Washington’s efforts.  The rift that would open, and the emphasis on different areas of activity would set the tone and terms of the factious efforts for another half-century.

The 1912 election further divided Pinchback and his fellow Negro leaders.  Many of his friends supported Wilson, believing the Republicans under Taft and Roosevelt had been unproductive, if not counter-productive.  Pinchback personally had reason to support Taft, who had favored him with an appointment.  Additionally, Pinchback was too smart to have any illusions that a Democratic administration would be any better than the Republicans.  In a rare miscalculation, Pinchback underestimated the Democrats’ capacity for harm to his people.  Stewart, in The Post Reconstruction Career… is unambiguous concerning Wilson, the Democrats, and Negro rights, an issue of controversy to this day:  “Wilson's election was a disaster for the Negroes, he failed to make even the traditional 

               appointments that the blacks had come to expect and the new president acquiesced in the    

               wave of segregation that hit the capitol shortly after his election.¹¹⁰ President Wilson 
               dismissed fifteen of the seventeen Negroes appointed by Taft and his new appointment list 
               included only two Negroes.¹¹¹  Pinchback remained in his position as Internal Revenue 
               Agent until 1913 when he resigned, "undoubtedly requested to do so." (Stewart, p. 60) 

The next seven or eight years saw Pinchback’s fortunes fall precipitously.  The home on Bacon St. was sold, and Pinchback and Emily moved into a small apartment on U St.  Their grandson Jean attended college and visited his grandparents regularly.  Stewart, alluding to the controversy that would surround Toomer later, concludes that is was “just as well that Jean Toomer did not live with his grandparents,” for Pinchback, “the practical old gentleman, schooled in business and politics, and not given to introspection,” did not understand his restless grandson, who seemingly “refused to settle-down.”  Pinchback of course could not know that his grandson would eventually be acclaimed by the literary world.

In 1915 Booker T. Washington died; Frederick Douglas had died in 1895 leaving Pinchback the last of the “Old Guard” still alive.  Within a couple of years, Pinchback’s health would fail, and soon thereafter Emily’s would as well.  By 1920 he "broke...after that he was a doddering old man, not dying, not living, just hanging on." (Stewart, p. 61)  Jean devoted more and more time to caring for his grandparents, especially his grandmother “with whom he had always shared a special bond.” 

Pinchback grew senile; Emily watched as both her husband and what little money there was left slipped away.  Toomer continued to cook, clean and care for his grandparents, all the while working on his signature novel, Cane.  When it became too much, Toomer moved his grandfather to a hospital, hired a housekeeper for his mother, and headed-out for Georgia to take a job as a temporary school principal.  When at the end of the session he returned to Washington, he found the end very near for his grandfather.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback died on Wednesday morning, December 21, 1921.

In contrast to the crowds who greeted him at the New Orleans train station in the 1870’s and 1880’s, those waiting for the return of Pinchback’s body in 1921 consisted of only a few local Black people. 

The ex-governor was not relieved of controversy when he died, for even the size of his funeral cortege was an issue of contention.  On January 21, 1922, the St. Paul and Minneapolis Appeal carried the following headline: "Prejudice Stops Not At the Grave,” referring to the fact that the small funeral was less because memories of Pinchback had faded, and more due to the fact that he was the first Negro to be buried in the cemetery at Metairie.  The news story continued, and provides both a telling and poignant conclusion to Pinchback’s life:  "Thirty-five or forty years ago the Pinchback family legally became the owners of a tomb in that exclusive cemetery and the remains of the late P.B.S. Pinchback
            were taken there for interment… and a stream of protest was raised by the owners of tombs, but
            as the family owned the tomb, they rested on their rights and the interment was made, but no 
            ceremony of any sort was allowed to be made and only one automobile [permitted] to
            accompany the hearse.  On Resurrection morn, we wonder what those color prejudiced people
            will do when they learn that a "nigger" is among them?" (Stewart, p. 63) 

Pinchback's tomb, Metairie, La.

III.

The post-Reconstruction South, P. B. S. Pinchback’s habitat, gave birth to an historical paradigm emboldened by the zeitgeist of a region determined to throw-off any notions that they had fought against, or had been forced to accept, full-citizenship for Blacks.  The war they lost in 1865 was, they contended (and I often heard my grandmother say), a “War of Northern Aggression,” no more and no less. “States Rights was the issue,” the Revisionists would assert, and not in fact the South’s fervor to defend chattel slavery, nor the North’s desire, albeit latent, to see slavery eradicated from the land where all men were declared nearly a hundred years prior, to be created equal. 

Revisionist Historians, novelists and movie moguls attempted to shine a warm, nostalgic light upon the ante-bellum South, some portraying slavery as a beneficent institution.  Blacks were diminished by various ‘theories of Ham’ in strained efforts to sanction by God what was already sanctioned by government.  Masses of white citizens, exposed almost exclusively to dim-witted and nefarious caricatures, were persuaded that Black citizens could not be trusted with political power, and men such as Pinchback were held up as proof of that claim. 

 But the Jim Crow laws that swept like fire across the South in the early part of the twentieth century, as well as attempts to frame the war provoked by secession from, and dismemberment of the Union as a “just” war for the rights of free citizens, belied their contorted arguments.  Poor whites in the South feared a free Negro population, wealthy whites feared the loss of their fortunes, and thus their way of life premised upon the enslavement of an entire class of Americans.  Attempts to re-write History meant that Pinchback and his colleagues, at least in so far as their fight for full citizenship was concerned, were either lost to history, and if not ‘lost,’ then maligned as “corrupt,” and even “dangerous.”

The “flurry of scholarship on Reconstruction in the 1970’s” to which Eric Foner refers in his landmark book, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2006, Forever Free, Inc.), gave birth to two ‘Pinchback’ books---the only two books on Pinchback; one by professional writer and renown educator, James Haskins, and the other by Historian Elizabeth L. Stewart.  The two lonely volumes nicely compliment each other because the first one, by Haskins, covers Pinchback’s life from birth to the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and the second, by Stewart, focuses on the ex-governor’s post-reconstruction life until his death in 1921. 

Stewart’s book, like Haskins’ provides a chronology of Pinchback’s life until she reaches the real subject of her research---Pinchback’s remaining 44 years after 1877, where her use of primary sources is most evident.  The complexity of post-bellum Louisiana politics does not lend itself to brevity, but Stewart nevertheless manages to capture the nature, and much of the relevant, provable detail of Pinchback’s place in that infamous milieu in less than 100 pages of narrative.

The Post Reconstruction Career of P. B. S. Pinchback was conceived in the early 1970’s as a master’s thesis, which quickly became a quest, as they sometimes do, that spanned over ten years, several States, and dozens of libraries & hundreds of archives.  A colleague suggested that Pinchback’s correspondence with the presidents would yield valuable material, and with that the search took form.  When Mrs. Stewart began her research into Pinchback, there did not exist a single comprehensive volume on his life and career, with the narrow exception of a scholarly account of Pinchback’s Reconstruction years by Agnes Smith Grosz written in 1944, but her narrative tapers off after the year 1877, leaving Pinchback’s life after Reconstruction largely unexamined.

James Haskins’ Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (MacMillan, 1973) appeared while Elizabeth Stewart was engaged in research on Pinchback under the tutelage of Joe Gray Taylor, Chairman of the History Dept. at McNeese State University.  At that time Dr. Taylor was the leading expert on Reconstruction in Louisiana, and so was asked to review Haskins’ newly released book on Pinchback for the Louisiana History Journal.  (Dr. Taylor died in 1987, leaving us his own award-winning Louisiana Reconstructed, which remains the gold standard on the subject.) 

Although Mrs. Stewart was still a graduate student, Dr. Taylor asked her to write the review in his stead for the simple reason that she was in the midst of intensive research on Pinchback, and was by his estimation the most qualified to write the review.  As the new book was composed by James Haskins, an established and respected author of dozens of books, she worried being viewed as immodest, or even an ‘upstart’ should she reveal flaws in the work. (In the ‘interest of full disclosure,’ I should say that I know how Mrs. Stewart felt because I was there; she was my mother.) 

Haskins and Stewart approach their subject very differently, from different points of view, and with overlapping, but differing motives.  Mr. Haskins wrote most of his books for children or young adults, generally on historical themes, with an emphasis on the achievements of African Americans, and more generally the “African American experience” and the history and culture of Africa.  Though he had an undergraduate degree in History, Haskins’ graduate work was in psychology, and later he served as an English professor.  Professor Haskins is best known for authoring The Cotton Club, which was the basis for a Francis Ford Copolla film of the same title.

Elizabeth Stewart had a singular passion, and that was the study and practice of History.  She was additionally a ‘purist;’ the Historian, she believed, dealt exclusively in fact, and did not indulge in

 unsubstantiated speculation.  She was a Research Historian with graduate degrees in History and

Library Science---That the evidence would tell the truth was an article of faith.  But historical material on Pinchback was scarce, and locating data of sufficient historical efficacy meant years of chasing down a lead here, and another there---The ‘here’ & ‘there’ being Memphis, Nashville, Houston, Baton Rouge, San Jose, Palo Alto, Washington D.C. and a dozen other locales.

Haskins’ book about Pinchback is invaluable because he dared bring the controversial ex-governor out of the shadows, as Stewart wrote in her review, he made Pinchback “accessible” to a broader audience, and he gave us a portrait of a man worth knowing about.  That much of Haskins’ book recounts legends and unsubstantiated ‘stories’ about his subject is not a negative, for his biography of Pinchback does indeed give the reader a ‘feel’ for the man, and his fascinating account of Pinchback’s exploits enjoin the reader to discover more about this intriguing and successful political figure.

Making the task of uncovering source material on the ex-governor especially difficult, and perhaps “warning away Historians,” is the fact that Pinchback’s personal papers were destroyed soon after his death, an act that represents only one of many controversies and conspiracy theories that continue to plague his legacy.  Undaunted, Stewart, inspired in part by Haskins took-up the ‘coldest’ trail in Reconstruction history, and was able to provide the only existing wholly reliable portrait of the largest portion of Pinchback’s active and productive life.

Considering Pinchback’s dabbling in Machiavellian endeavors, at times considerable wealth, and the family discord apparent even from the scant evidence available, who may have destroyed Pinchback’s personal papers constitutes a long list of suspects.  Professor Haskins’ does not address the matter, but Mrs. Stewart openly agreed with most in the academic and non-academic world that the destruction was deliberate, though views as to possible motives vary.  Stewart believed the act was self-serving, but she stops short of accusing anyone.  Others’ believe the destruction was a well intended, if misguided attempt to protect the ex-governor’s reputation. 

Still, the fact that my mother did not accuse anyone of destroying Pinchback’s papers did not mean she did not have suspects, and chief among them was Pinchback’s famous grandson, Harlem Renaissance author, Jean Toomer.  Since she could prove no such thing, she did not ‘go there’ in her own book.  However, scholarship since the 1970’s serves only to give more cause to her suspicions of the ‘Grand Old Man’s’ grandson, who seems to have displayed motive enough.

Rudolph P. Byrd, professor of African American Studies at Emory Univ., and Henry Louis Gates, professor of African American Studies at Harvard, recently worked together on a new, Norton critical edition of Toomer’s, Cane, “a masterpiece of modernism composed of fiction, poetry, and drama,” with the intention of writing a new introduction for the re-issue of Toomer’s novel.  In an essay adapted from that introduction, the professors wrote that they immediately “confronted the question of Toomer's race…Literary critics and biographers have long speculated about how he identified himself, but too often they have chosen not to conduct research into public documents about the topic.”  They wanted to understand, and to that end commissioned a genealogist in order to obtain records in the hope of gaining an objective, and perhaps more nuanced view.  

In the 1930 census Toomer allows himself to be designated “white,” and later on his 1931 marriage license he is again listed as ‘white,’ perhaps to avoid the scandal of an interracial marriage to Marjorie Latimer, the feminist theorist and social activist.  There are other occasions where he ‘passes,’ and occasions where he does not, but there emerges an unmistakable pattern---Where he’s listed as “Negro” he seems to have had no say in the matter, as in the draft registrations for both WWI and WWII. 

The professors’ note that as early as 1934, Toomer proposed to a reporter, (and in the manuscript of his unpublished autobiography), “the highly unlikely suggestion (given all extant documentation) that his grandfather P.B.S. Pinchback, the most famous black politician in the Reconstruction era, opportunistically passed for Black to gain political advantage from the freedmen in New Orleans.” (Rudolph/Gates, The Chronicle of Higher Ed., Feb 6, 2011)  The fact that his own white great grandfather took his great grandmother, a mulatto slave, to Philadelphia for the purpose of manumission, is a matter of record Toomer could not erase, though he seems to have tried.  Also in 1934 Toomer commented, this time to the Baltimore Afro-American that, "I would not consider it libelous for anyone to refer to me as a colored man, but I have not lived as one, nor do I really know whether there is colored blood in me or not (emphasis mine)."

On the issue of ancestry, that is, Toomer’s progeny, Rudolph and Gates are satisfied with their own reading of the record, which leads them to conclude that,  “Toomer was right to declare that he was of mixed ancestry, and that the opposition between "white" and "black" was too simplistic. But he was wrong to say that he had never lived as a Negro. He lived as a Negro while growing up. And then he decided to live as an ex-Negro almost as soon as the print was dry on Cane.”

IV.

Haskins’ narrative relies heavily upon the colorful memoir of gambler and card sharp George Devol for information regarding Pinchback’s ‘formative’ years as a cabin-boy on the steamboats, as well as a couple of incidents when Pinchback was governor.  Devol’s Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi (1887) is a collection of stories written 25 years after the events recorded, roughly chronological, comprising mostly details of swindling unsuspecting passengers by way of faro, Rhondo, and variations on 3-card Monte. 

The young Devol seems to have cut his teeth as a camp follower in the Mexican War, when at age 13 (or 14) he cleaned out the farm-boys-turned-soldiers with efficiency far beyond his years.   All roads for a gambler lead to New Orleans (and Galveston), and so "After cheating all the soldiers I could at cards and there was no one else to rob"--- Devol headed to the Crescent City in search of more “suckers.” (Devol, Forty Years a Gambler…)

In the section of Forty Years… titled, “Governor Pinchback,” Devol recalls teaching the teenage Pinckney Pinchback the card trade.  “My boy Pinch” apparently displayed enough talent to be invited into Devol’s schemes to defrock wealthy, unsuspecting travelers, especially---and Devol’s favorite ‘marks’---rich Texans headed north who understandably preferred the luxury of the Riverboat to weeks in a horse-drawn coach.  In describing their rushed disembarkation from the steamer Doubloon, probably a few steps ahead of angry ‘suckers’ seeking retribution, Devol recalled,  “Pinchback got our valises together, and a start was made. A drizzling rain was falling, and the darkness was so great that one could not see his hand before his face. Each of us grabbed a valise except Pinch, who carried along the faro tools. The walking was so slippery that we were in the mud about every ten steps, and poor Pinch he groaned under the load that he carried.  At last he broke out:

"Tell you what it is, Master Devol, I'll be dumbed if this aint rough on Pinch. Ise going to do better than this toting along old faro tools."

"What's that, Pinch? What you going to do?"

"Ise going to get into that good old Legislature; and I'll make Rome howl if I get there."


The dialect Devol attributes to Pinchback, and which Haskins’ lets stand cannot be right.  Pinchback and his brother Napoleon attended Gilmore High School in Cincinnati, “founded by Reverend Hiram S. Gilmore in 1844, [where] an excellent staff taught English, Latin, Greek, music, and drawing to the "golden offspring" of well-to-do southern planters as well as to free Negroes from the North.” (Stewart, p. 17)   Only a few years after the Doubloon incident during which he is supposed to have said, “I’ll be dumbed if this ain’t rough on Pinch,” and “Ise going to get into that good old legislature,” Pinchback stated for the record the position he would maintain on civil rights throughout his life: "Negroes did not ask for, or expect to receive `social equality'; but they did demand and would seek `political rights'."⁶ (Stewart p.20)  All of the evidence says the latter Pinchback is the real one.

Additionally, there is no basis for the notion that Pinchback, a Negro, possessed political ambition sufficient to fuel the impossible goal of becoming an ante-bellum Southern State legislator.  Frederick Douglas was already the most famous Black man in America, and Pinchback likely read about the mobs that accosted and beat Douglas, (most recently in Indiana).  And Pinchback must have known that Douglas, though he never campaigned, had been named the vice presidential nominee on the Equal Rights Party ticket.  Pinchback would also have known that even the venerable Douglas had not attempted to run for office in a Southern State. In other words, Pinchback was at least de-facto aware of the issues concerning his race, but such knowledge would not have inspired a 24-year-old son-of-a-former-slave whose most distinguishing trait was pragmatism, to pine for elected office in Louisiana before the end of the Civil War.

Stewart’s mission was to reveal Pinchback’s historical role in the tangled milieu that was Reconstruction politics---“a witches cauldron,” which she accomplished with elegantly pristine prose, even though it is always obvious the volume was originally an academic thesis.  Her huge accumulation of evidence (the footnotes & citations fill over 30 pages) reveals Pinchback’s increasingly nuanced views, though he was unmistakably and unapologetically conservative compared to the African American leaders who would emerge during and after his lifetime.  Pinchback was by composition Victorian, and even as his political career peaked in the late 1870’s, not only race relations, but an entirely a new age and a different society were already apparent.  Mrs. Stewart reminds us that issues of race and politics notwithstanding, at base, “Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was a typical Victorian 
         father, stern and puritanical, yet devoted to his family.⁶  His love of books and music, especially
         opera, was reflected in his aims for his children's education and in the atmosphere of the home he
         had worked so hard to provide.  The maintenance of that milieu must have been uppermost in his
         mind as the end of Reconstruction closed many of the avenues for material and political gain that
         had been open to him previously.” (Stewart, p. 27)

Both Haskins and Stewart assist the layperson in understanding some of the motive for what seems over-the-top maligning of a substantial and significant historical figure, though Haskins, unlike Stewart, intends no such mission.  Mrs. Stewart seems to build a case for the fact that most of Pinchback’s ‘reputation problem’ was a more a result of his politics and the company he kept, and less due to character defects, real or perceived.  Had he emerged from the pinnacle of post-bellum Louisiana politics with clean hands, he would have been the first, and perhaps the last to do so.  Indeed, ‘White Restoration’ Democrats would in just a few years make the chicanery of the 1870’s look like schoolyard games. 

Haskin’s and Stewart agree that Pinchback was not an outlier in the realm of ‘official corruption.’  Haskins’ attributes the Senate’s refusal to seat him to several Northern Senators who thought Pinchback singularly corrupt, and some went further---they believed the legislature that elected Pinchback senator was illegitimate.  Pinchback’s retort was not to deny the accusations, but rather to remind the senators that no legislator, certainly not his competitor for the seat (who came from the same tangled milieu), can claim ethical purity.  Haskin’s adds sympathetically that Pinchback could have cited New York---Was not a murderous Tammany Hall far worse than anything he & his Southern colleagues had done?

In effect, Stewart stipulates to Pinchback’s misdeeds, and then proceeds to gather previously neglected evidence of his accomplishments that in the end outweigh his legendary mischief, and belie supposed fatal character flaws.  Along the way she takes-aim at some of the most egregiously false, or at least unprovable ‘stories’ that have attached to Pinchback, as in the Senate matter, perhaps the most significant and most often miss-reported episode of Pinchback’s career: “It is doubtful that the real reason for the Senate's refusal to recognize Pinchback's claim will ever

be determined.  There are as many arguments against as for the allegation that the Senate wives

did not want to admit a Negro woman to their social circle and that "bachelorhood" would have improved Pinchback's chances. Pinchback consistently alleged that "...if Kellogg is governor, he [Pinchback] is senator---no more, no less." Pinchback has been compared to Adam Clayton Powell as a victim of a "white backlash."  But unlike Powell, he never had a chance to prove how he would have represented his state on the national level. “ (Stewart, p. 24)

For the most part Mrs. Stewart confines herself to the evidence, while allowing falsehoods to fall by way of their often-glaring absence from the record.

Taking a different course, Haskins’, with the flair and skill of a novelist recounts the ‘stories’ along with what is known to be true.  He leaves it to the reader to decide whether or not Pinchback was a great man and a major leader of his people, or an anti-hero, ‘fortune’s fool;’ merely a lucky recipient of the favors allowed a light-skinned Negro for a brief, anomalous period in the 1870’s.  Haskins, like Stewart is clear that Pinchback was indisputably a brilliant opportunist who nevertheless at times seemed naïve.  “Fortune’s fool” may not be far off the mark, but Haskins’ and Stewart agree it is only part of the story.

There is no question that Elizabeth Stewart’s research revealed a man she found easy to admire.  Her close proximity to Pinchback’s place and time added a rare dimension to her understanding.  She was born in 1930 in East Texas, just 9 years after Pinchback’s death, and grew up only 300 miles from his final resting place in New Orleans.  She recalled asking her own Louisiana-born & reared father, whose life overlapped Pinchback’s by 26 years, if he remembered anything about the ex-governor.  “I remember him,” said my grandfather, “he was that New Orleans politician---he was a Negro governor before I was born...I remember when I drove the mail wagon after my father died…about 1908 I think… the ‘ex-governor’ was in the papers I delivered…He vacationed nearby our place in North Louisiana when I was a small boy…never saw him myself.”

James Haskins, 11 years younger than Stewart, was also born in the South, but by the time he reached High School he had moved to Boston.  He was an African American reared in Jim Crow Alabama during and just after WWII, and his life’s work reveals a deep understanding of the challenges and cruelties of second-class citizenship---Institutional, political, and the resulting personal, psychological wreckage suffered upon his people for over 400 years.

In the 1970’s, the work of Joe Gray Taylor, James Haskins, and Elizabeth Stewart, and since then the rising tide of scholarship on Reconstruction, in the vanguard of which are Historians such as Eric Foner, Hans Trefousse, and Ted Tunnell, has lifted Pinchback’s historical profile from obscurity.  Pinchback’s revival began with Haskins’ biography in 1973, which was followed by a project to have a bust of the ex-governor placed among his fellow governors in Huey P. Long’s beloved State House.

And while a more enlightened view has emerged since the time of Haskins’ and Stewart’s offerings, the ‘new’ view, at least regarding Pinchback is based more upon a heightened realization of tragedy perpetrated upon all Black citizens of Pinchback’s time, and less upon a thorough study of the elusive ex-governor.  Contemporary observers cannot quite seem to wrap their arms around this most ambitious and energetic man.  Pinchback is mentioned in nearly all books on Reconstruction written since World War II, but as though hoping not to be asked for details, Reconstruction-Historians have so far, with the exception of the present works, neglected to go beyond their minimal obligation to mention the fact of his existence.  And who could blame them?  Information about Pinchback beyond government documents was, and remains difficult to obtain.  As late as 1974, over fifty years after his death, Pinchback was still missing from the roster of governors in my eighth grade Louisiana History textbook.

Historical scholarship has improved the lens through which we are able to view Pinchback, and more broadly the Tuskegeeans led by Booker T. Washington; they now appear essential, and part and parcel of a singular desire for the full rights of citizenship for Black Americans.  Modern scholarship is concerned less about who was ‘right,’ or who best advanced the cause of political and civil rights than seemed important in the years before and immediately following the murder of Martin Luther King.  In the 40 or so years since Haskins’ and Stewart’s efforts, attention has properly focused more upon the skill, the sacrifices, and accomplishments of the men and women who held the line so that later leaders could once again move the cause forward. 

Both James Haskins and Elizabeth Stewart are fair to Pinchback, though Haskins’ book, because of his “skillful blending of fact and supposition,” (Stewart, Louisiana History Journal), muddies the water a bit.  Legends attributing outrageous behavior to Pinchback are given too much weight, and details of his very serious evolution as a respected political leader of his people and an advisor to 5 presidents, not near enough.  Haskins draws largely upon what was already known about the basics.  He gives us nothing ‘new,’ but he does an invaluable service by collecting in one volume for the first time a representative cross-section of the controversy, rumor and hearsay to which Pinchback’s reputation has been subjected since long before his death in 1921.  Without the legends and apocryphal material, Haskins’ book would have many fewer pages.  But also without those ‘extra pages’ we would be deprived of a highly readable, well-constructed and ultimately sympathetic account of one of America’s greatest African American leaders, written by one of our greatest educators.

Much has been made of the notion that Pinchback’s relatively light skin somehow enabled him to move easily in the ‘white world’; even Jean Toomer posited the non-starter that his grandfather “opportunistically passed for Black.” James Haskins devotes considerable narrative to the white leaders’ ‘use’ of Pinchback’s influence among newly enfranchised Blacks without whom no Republican could win an election.  Haskins’ ties his descriptions of Pinchback, i.e., “light skinned” and “slanted/oriental eyes,” indelibly to Pinchback’s acceptability to white leaders.  The reality is no doubt more complicated than Haskins, Stewart, or any scholar is able to articulate, which Stewart seems in a way to acknowledge in her final paragraphs:   “Although P.B.S. Pinchback's skin was light in color, the one-drop in four of "Negro" blood that flowed in his veins made it dark in the eyes of the dominant element of society…

"Even during Pinchback's most productive years, his usefulness to the white politicians who 

dominated the Reconstruction period in Louisiana was determined by the composition of his 

genes.  But even as he was used by white politicians, he turned the situation to his advantage to 

secure the best that the white world had to offer and would continue to do so throughout most 

of his life. 

"One of Pinchback's most admirable qualities proved to be damaging to his reputation and his place in history.  His unwillingness to dwell in the past and his faith in the "impartial historian of the future" permitted Henry Clay Warmoth's description of him as "restless, ambitious...free-lance and dangerous," to stand.²  It allowed him for many years to be coupled with "other self-seeking politicians tainted with corruption."³  The description of "a colored man of the most violent, mercenary, and abandoned character" would appear even in the pages of the Journal of Negro History.⁴  Eventually he would receive fair treatment, and ultimately he would be accredited the status of "one of the two most brilliant politicians of the Reconstruction era.”

"But the philosophy implicit in Pinchback's long record of political activity did not come into its own for over half a century.  W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington had neither the background nor the inclination to understand men like Carl Burton Sokes, Cleveland's first black mayor or Edward W. Brooke, the first Negro Senator since 1881.⁶  P.B.S. Pinchback would have recognized and applauded "the new compulsion for political activity as it began to be felt by black people" in the 1960's.⁷  He has been described by the African American journalist Chuck Stone, who wrote Black Political Power in America, as one who "understood the mechanics of political power and tried to make it work to the advantage of black people."⁸ 

If we’re to have only two books on Pinchback, on-balance we’re fortunate Haskins and Stewart were the authors. Their divergent backgrounds and training combine to provide us with a fairly comprehensive view of Pinchback that neither alone accomplishes.  That one was a professional historian and the other a professional writer & educator means only that we have skillful eloquence and verifiable truth by which to understand the real Pinchback, (both with and without the ‘stories,’ one might say).  These two books offer enough credible information for anyone who wishes to know Pinchback, where previously only scattered references, prurient rumors, and largely self-serving ‘witness’ accounts shrouded the elusive ex-governor in a fog of speculation and derision. 

Because so little was known until the 1970’s, and his own ‘testimony’ was destroyed, a ‘kangaroo’ court of history had convicted Pinchback in absentia.  James Haskins and Elizabeth Stewart provide the long-awaited ‘fair trial’ P.B.S. Pinchback deserves.  Following separate but parallel paths, they seem to have found justice for their subject.  Both books stand the test of time, and together they restore Pinchback to his rightful place among our most notable African American leaders.

It’s too easy to “exacerbate the distinction between the professional historian and the so-called amateur,” wrote Barbara Tuchman in her book, Practicing History, “The question properly framed,” she reminds us, “…is not one of degree of professionalism, but which profession...
        The faculty people are professional historians; we on the outside are professional writers.  Insofar
        as they borrow our function, and we borrow their subject, each of us has a great deal to learn from
        the other.” (p. 37, Practicing History)

Mrs. Stewart borrowed Mr. Haskins’ ‘function,’ and he borrowed her ‘subject’ in a manner agreeable to both professions, and invaluable to anyone who wishes to understand P.B.S. Pinchback, “Who was an acknowledged leader of his people for over 50 years,” and who earned the distinction of holding more political offices than any other African American in Louisiana history. ∞                                                                        

Glenn Stewart   April 2013