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Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch
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Born into slavery on a Louisiana plantation, John Roy L...)
Born into slavery on a Louisiana plantation, John Roy Lynch (1847-1939) came to adulthood during the Reconstruction Era and lived a public-spirited life for over three decades. His political career began in 1869 with his appointment as justice of the peace. Within the year, he was elected to the Mississippi legislature and was later elected Speaker of the House. At age twenty-five, Lynch became the first African American from Mississippi to be elected to the United States Congress. He led the fight to secure passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. In 1884, he was elected temporary chairman of the Eighth Republican National Convention and was the first black American to deliver the keynote address.
His autobiography, Reminiscences of an Active Life, reflects Lynch's thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the past and of his own experience. The book, written when he was ninety, challenges a number of traditional arguments about Reconstruction. In his experience, African Americans in the South competed on an equal basis with whites; the state governments were responsive to the needs of the people; and race was not always a decisive factor in the politics of Reconstruction.
The autobiography, which would not be published until 1970, provides rich material for the study of American politics and race relations during Reconstruction. It sheds light on presidential patronage, congressional deals, and personality conflicts among national political figures. Lynch's childhood reflections reveal new dimensions to our understanding of black experience during slavery and beyond. An introduction by John Hope Franklin puts Lynch's public and private lives in the context of his times and provides an overview of how Reminiscences of an Active Life came to be written.
(The Facts of Reconstruction is John Roy Lynch's fascinati...)
The Facts of Reconstruction is John Roy Lynch's fascinating and detailed account of the USA's political situation following the conclusion of the American Civil War.
As a Speaker in the Mississippi House of Representatives, John R. Lynch was one of the first-ever black politicians. As such, the victory of the Union forces in 1865 directly influenced his life and career. Simply by virtue of emancipation, Lynch was a major stakeholder in the reconstruction efforts between the Union north and the secessionist south. He consequently felt obliged to author this retrospective history covering the major political events and turning points.
Immediately after the American Civil War concluded, the USA was in a fractured and fraught state. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who sought to mend bridges and reconcile with the secessionist states, exacerbated the situation further. The 1860s, 1870s and 1880s were thus a tumultuous time for American politics, in which reforms were hard fought and incremental in the various states and nationally at the federal level.
Writing in 1913, Lynch charts the journey made over those difficult decades, drawing on his personal experience as a member of Mississippi's House of Representatives, and the national record. He charts the various elections, and the evolution of the Republican and Democratic parties as distinct wings of the political landscape. Various events, such as the rise of Democratic radicalism in the South, and the election of Grover Cleveland to the Presidency, are detailed.
In all, The Facts of Reconstruction offers a reasonable overview of a transitional period in U.S. politics from an insider. The ongoing racial conflicts following the emancipation of African American slaves are charted alongside the personal traits, ideals and acts of the various politicians of the time.
John Roy Lynch was an American politician, soldier, and lawyer. He was the Justice of the Peace in Natchez County, Mississippi. He served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Mississippi's 6th district from 1872 to 1877 and 1882 to 1883.
Background
John Roy Lynch, the third son of Patrick Lynch, a native of Dublin, Ireland, and Catherine White, a African-American slave, was born on September 10, 1847, on Tacony plantation near Vidalia, Concordia Parish, Louisiana, United States. Patrick Lynch, the manager of Tacony plantation, purchased his wife and family and was preparing to remove them to New Orleans when he became ill. Shortly before his death he transferred title in them to a friend, who promised that they would be free in every way except in name, since manumission required their removal from the state. The friend did not keep his promise. Instead, he sold the Lynch family to another planter. John Roy Lynch accordingly remained a slave until 1863, when Union forces occupied Natchez, Mississippi, to which his mother and her family had been taken by their owner.
Education
Lynch's formal education was meager, consisting of only four months of study in an evening school operated by northern teachers in 1866. Informally, however, he pursued an education with diligence, reading books and newspapers during his spare time and listening daily to the recitations in the white public school located just across the alley from his studio. Within a few years he had become literate and had developed a capacity for expression that made a favorable impression upon audiences.
Career
After working at a variety of jobs, Lynch in 1866 learned the trade of photographer and became the manager of a thriving business in Natchez. His first participation in public affairs was his support of the Mississippi state constitution of 1868. Writing and speaking in its behalf, he became quite active in one of the local Republican clubs in Natchez, coming in this way to the attention of Governor Adelbert Ames, who appointed him a justice of the peace in 1869. Later that year he was elected to the Mississippi house of representatives, in which he served until 1873, in his last term as speaker. In 1872 Lynch was elected to Congress from Mississippi's 6th congressional district. He was reelected in 1874. Defeated in 1876, he ran again in 1880, and when the Mississippi Democrats certified returns indicating Lynch's opponent, General James R. Chalmers, as the winner, Lynch successfully contested the election, taking his seat in the House on April 29, 1882.
After he lost his bid for reelection that year he returned to Adams County, Mississippi, to manage the plantation he had meanwhile acquired.
Lynch continued to be active in Republican circles for many years. He was chairman of the Republican State Executive Committee of Mississippi, 1881-1892, and represented his state on the Republican National Committee from 1884 to 1889. He was a delegate to the party's national conventions of 1872, 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1900. At the 1884 convention a group of younger Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge successfully engineered the election of Lynch to the position of temporary chairman, over Powell Clayton, the choice of the Blaine forces that had expected to control the convention.
In 1889 President Harrison appointed Lynch to the position of fourth auditor of the Treasury for the Navy Department. He declined reappointment at the hands of President Cleveland in 1893, however, fearing that he would be called upon to give general support to the Democratic administration. This was the second time he had turned down a Democratic appointment, the first having been in 1885, when he was offered the post of special agent of public lands by his fellow Mississippian, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, Cleveland's Secretary of the Interior. The offer no doubt grew out of their close association in Mississippi politics; for during the early 1880's, feeling that such an arrangement then offered the best prospects for his race, Lynch, along with his fellow leaders of Mississippi's Negro Republican faction, Blanche K. Bruce and James Hill, had entered into an informal alliance with the Mississippi Democrats, of whom Lamar was a principal leader.
Turning his attention to the practice of law in 1896, Lynch was admitted to the Mississippi bar, secured a license in the District of Columbia, and opened law offices with Robert H. Terrell, who had been his chief assistant in the Treasury post. Lynch remained active in politics, however, and in the presidential campaign of 1896 he worked assiduously for the election of his friend William McKinley. On the outbreak of the Spanish-American War McKinley asked him to join the United States Army as additional paymaster of volunteers with the rank of major. Lynch enjoyed the assignment, and in 1901 he accepted a commission in the regular army. His tours of duty included service in Cuba, Omaha, San Francisco, and the Philippines. Soon after his retirement from the army in 1911 he settled in Chicago, where he practised law for more than twenty-five years.
In his later years, distressed over the manner in which historians were writing about the Reconstruction period, he wrote one book and two lengthy articles seeking to refute their interpretations. He spent his final years writing his autobiography.
During Reconstruction, Lynch joined the Republican Party in Mississippi. While in Congress, he was particularly interested in federal aid to education, civil rights, and the enactment of a federal elections bill. His speech in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was one of the most impressive statements in its behalf. In 1876 Lynch spoke out against the White League and racial divisions in his state.
Personality
Lynch was a man of slight build and almost ascetic mien. He was charming and amiable associate in personal relations.
Connections
In 1884 Lynch married Ella W. Somerville, by whom he had one daughter, Alice. They were divorced in 1900. In 1911 he married Mrs. Cora Williamson, who survived him.