Editing Zebulon Vance (section)

==== Criticism of Reconstruction ====
In one of his earliest speeches before the Senate, Vance addressed an array of issues that had arisen during [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]], in support of H.R. 2, which called for the removal of military oversight in Southern elections, the repeal of laws that gave Federal marshals control of Southern elections, and the removal of the requirement for Federal Court jurors to take the oath of allegiance.<ref name=":30" /> Vance said:
<blockquote>Peace then came—no, not peace, but the end of war came—no not the end of war, but the end of legitimate, civilized war, and for three years you dallied with us. One day we were treated as though we were in the Union, and as though we had legitimate State governments in operation; another day, we were treated as though we were out of the Union, and our State governments were rebellious usurpations...You deposed our State governments and ejected from office every official, from Governor to township constable. and remitted us to a state of chaos...You disenfranchised at least ten percent of our citizens, embracing the wisest, best, and most experienced. You enfranchised slaves, the lowest and most ignorant; and you placed them over them as leaders of a class of men who have attained to the highest positions of infamy known to modern ages...
<P>The new governments went to work, and in a short space of four years, they plundered those eleven Southern States to the extent of $262,000,000; that is to say, they took all that we had that was amenable to larceny...It would be well enough for Republican leaders to remember that the inflexible law of compensation exists in politics as well as in other things...If we violate the laws of health we suffer bodily pains or early dissolution; if we violate the laws of society we suffer in public esteem; if we violate the laws of man we are subject to its pains and penalties; if we violate the laws of God, we will suffer the penalties of sin; if we violate the laws of nature we can reap none of the benefits which our knowledge of them now enables us to derive therefrom. So it is in politics....<ref name=":30" /></p></blockquote>
Later on in his speech, Vance asked, "Was it the Union you fought for or political supremacy?"<ref name=":30" /> He pointed out that the nation has benefitted from the leadership of other political parties.<ref name=":30" /> He also said, "To suppose the States are either unable, unwilling, or too corrupt to hold peaceful and honest elections, is to declare unmistakably that the people therein are incapable of self-government...For one, I can say, with unspeakable pride and absolute truth, that the people of North Carolina who sent me here are able, willing, and virtuous enough to fulfill these and all other higher functions of government; that they have ever done so since the keels of [[Walter Raleigh|Raleigh]]'s ships first grated upon the white sands of her shores; and God helping them, they and their children will continue to do so, if not destroyed by centralization..."<ref name=":30" />

Vance also supported the [[Blair Education Bill]] which requested federal funding to help educate the freed slaves in the South.<ref name=":30" /> Although, Vance says, "I admit that there is no special provision in the constitution or perhaps one looking directly toward it for public education. But the men who formed the constitution had no idea that there would be the great civil war that occurred. They had no idea that 500,000 slaves would be liberated by that war, and still less of an idea that the 500,000 slaves would be forced into...absolute equality of citizenship...They had no idea that their institutions and work of their hand would ever be committed to ignorant and unlettered Africans for protection and preservation."<ref name=":30" /> Vance also pointed out North Carolina's successes in creating schools to educate the freed slaves.<ref name=":30" />

In a speech on January 30, 1890, regarding Senate Bill 1121, which authorized people of color to emigrate from Southern states, Vance came close to speaking against slavery, saying, "Those of us in the South who had deprecated the war and deplored the agitation which led to it, as we sat in the ashes of our own homes and scraped ourselves with potsherds of desolation, yet consoled ourselves for the slaughter of our kindred and the devastation of our fields by the reflection that this, at least, was the end; ''that the great original wrong committed by our fathers had at last been atoned for....''"<ref name=":30" /> [emphasis added]

Nonetheless, Vance's racial views showed when he talked about Reconstruction.<ref name=":30" /> He said, "The truth is, he [the former slave] began to prosper when the [Southern] whites took control. Progress for him would have been impossible under his own rule as it was for the whites. Ten more years of such government as reconstruction fixed upon the South would have made the fairest portion of the American continent a wilderness. In short, it would have been Africanized..."<ref name=":30" /> However, Vance was "glad to say that North Carolina is one of the States in the South where there is the least complaint of infringement of the colored man's rights, either at the ballot box or in the courts of justice...That there are instances of mistreatment and occasionally of cruelty to the negros now and then occurring in the South I candidly admit and regret."<ref name=":30" />

Vance also outlined his vision of the future, with a bit of sarcasm:<blockquote>The millennium has not yet arrived in the land of reconstruction; the reign of perfect righteousness, of absolute justice, has not yet been established south of Mason and Dixon's line, though of course, it is in full operation north of that imaginary division. There is no suppression of the popular vote by jerrymander or otherwise; there is no purchase of the floating vote in blocks of five, no ejection of colored children from white schools or colored men from theaters and barbers chairs, and where we may hope that, in the process of time and in the spread of intelligence and increased appreciation for the virtues of the negroes, one black man may soon be sent to Congress from the North; that some railroad attorney or millionaire will make room in the Senate of the United States for the colored brother; that one colored postmaster for a white town may be appointed in the North; that in the State of Kansas, the soil so prolific in friendships for the colored man, a respectable negro, duly nominated on the Republican ticket, may receive the full vote of his party, and not be scratched almost to the point of defeat by those who love him, as he was in Topeka; that one accomplished colored man may be sent abroad to represent his country in some other land than Hayti [''sic]'' or Liberia.<ref name=":30" /></blockquote>In reality, Vance believed in white supremacy.<ref name=":30" /> He said, "I am not only willing but anxious to have justice done them in everything, and to do all that may be required of me to aid them [former slaves] in the difficulties of their position; but I am not willing that they should rule my people."<ref name=":30" />