Curtis Hooks Brogden

After the Civil War, Radical Republicans in Congress were not content with President Johnson's moderate approach for reconstruction. Concerned that Southern states passed Black Codes restricting freedmen, they passed the Military Reconstruction Acts to temporarily replace state governments and try to remake the societies to incorporate full emancipation of African-American slaves, establish free labor and other rights of citizens for blacks. The Act stipulated that the former Confederate states had to include Negro male suffrage in their new constitutions.

These measures were opposed by most whites in the South, although North Carolina had extended the franchise to free blacks before rescinding it in 1835, following Nat Turner's slave rebellion. In North Carolina before the war, blacks made up about one-third of the population of the state, with a majority in the coastal areas and near parity in some Piedmont counties. Wilmington had had the largest proportion and number of free blacks before the war. Brogden supported extending the franchise.

Brogden followed Holden into the Republican Party after the war.[3] His change of parties and support of negro suffrage shocked his ex-Confederate friends who opposed allowing blacks to vote and because the Republican party in North Carolina was at the time dominated by carpetbaggers, freedmen and scalawags.[4]

He briefly left the Senate in 1867 after being elected to represent Wayne County at a state constitutional convention. In 1868 he was elected to the State Senate as a Republican, serving for three terms. He also was a member of the Electoral College supporting Republican, Ulysses S. Grant. In 1870 he was appointed as a U.S. Collector of Internal Revenue.[1] He supported Holden as governor and voted in the state legislature against his impeachment.

In 1872, he was elected on the Republican ticket as lieutenant governor with Tod R. Caldwell. When Gov. Caldwell died in office in 1874, Brogden succeeded to the position of governor. By then, white Democrats had regained control of the state legislature, in part by a program of suppression of black voting carried out by the Red Shirts.

During his term as governor, Brogden made a stronger attempt to work with the Democrats who controlled the legislature than his Republican predecessors, and focused on railroad construction and higher education. He worked diligently to re-open the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he had been an appointed trustee from 1869 to 1872. Brogden also called for founding a college for blacks.[3] While making efforts to lower the state debt, he supported construction of a state penitentiary as a public good. During his tenure as governor, the federal government completed the Currituck Beach Lighthouse to light the last remaining dark stretch of coastline along North Carolina's Outer Banks, long known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic in 1875.[5] In 1876, Governor Brogden represented North Carolina at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

While serving as governor, Brogden was elected in 1876 as a Republican to the United States House of Representatives from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, which was a predominately black Republican stronghold in the Piedmont area. In Congress. he worked to gain internal improvements for his state and reduced internal revenue taxes. He also advocated direct presidential elections and pensions for Mexican War veterans. His vote with the Democratic majority for the U.S. Army reorganization bill was unpopular with his Republican constituents.

Brogden served one term and was not re-nominated in 1878, a year of intense rivalry among second district Republicans. Amid charges of fraud, the Democrats narrowly elected their nominee, William H. Kitchin. Two years later, Brogden tried to regain his seat in Congress. After many Republicans disputed the outcome of the turbulent convention, he issued a broadside declaring himself an independent candidate against the convention nominee, Northern immigrant Orlando Hubbs. Brogden called for reduction in the tariff and other taxes and accused Hubbs of not representing the interests of the South. But his efforts collapsed when Republicans closed ranks in response to the entry of a third Democratic candidate into the race. Wayne County was redistricted to the Third Congressional District before Brogden’s next campaign for Congress. In 1884, Brogden was nominated, only to be defeated in the general election by Wharton J. Green, a Democrat.

After losing the congressional election in 1884, Brogden essentially retired from public life with the exception of a single term, in 1887, representing Wayne County in the North Carolina House of Representatives. In a House controlled by Republicans and independents, he spoke in favor of changing the centralized, indirect system of county government the Democrats had instituted ten years before in order to “save” Eastern North Carolina from “Negro rule.” The House passed a bill changing the system, but the Senate rejected it. Brogden was not re-elected in 1888. By then one of the largest landowners in Wayne County, Brogden devoted himself to farming.[6]

Brogden's goal of establishing a college for blacks was finally realized more than a decade after he left the governor's office. On March 7, 1887, The North Carolina General Assembly founded North Carolina State University as a land-grant college under the name "North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts." In the segregated system, it was open only to white students. Under terms of the Second Morrill Act, in 1890 states were required to have colleges available to all races of students. In order to qualify for the land grants, North Carolina in 1891 established qualifying programs at what became North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a historically black college, first as part of Shaw Collegiate Institute in Raleigh.

Brogden, a lifelong bachelor, died on January 5, 1901, in his hometown of Goldsboro, North Carolina and is buried there in Willowdale Cemetery.[1]