A part of the money raised by taxes and by bond sales was used for legitimate expenses and the rest went to pay forged warrants, excess warrants, and swollen mileage accounts, and to fill the pockets of embezzlers and thieves from one end of the South to the other.In Arkansas, for example, the auditor's clerk hire, which was $4000 in 1866, cost twenty-three times as much in 1873.In Louisiana and South Carolina, stealing was elevated into an art and was practiced without concealment.In the latter state, the worthless Hell Hole Swamp was bought for $26,000 to be farmed by the Negroes but was charged to the state at $120,000.A free restaurant maintained at the Capitol for the legislators cost $125,000 for one session.The porter who conducted it said that he kept it open sixteen to twenty hours a day and that someone was always in the room eating and drinking or smoking.When a member left, he would fill his pockets with cigars or with bottles of drink.Forty different brands of beverages were paid for by the state for the private use of members, and all sorts of food, furniture, and clothing were sent to the houses of members and were paid for by the state as "legislative supplies." On the bills appeared such items as imported mushrooms, one side of bacon, one feather bed, bustles, two pairs of extra long stockings, one pair of garters, one bottle perfume, twelve monogram cut glasses, one horse, one comb and brush, three gallons of whisky, one pair of corsets.During the recess, supplies were sent out to the rural homes of the members.
The endorsement of railroad securities by the state also furnished a source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked speculator.After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments began to underwrite railroad bonds.When the carpetbag and Negro governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper safeguards.Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were constructed, and even excess issues were authorized.Bonds were endorsed for some roads of which not a mile was ever built.The White River Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a grant of $175,000from the State of Arkansas.Speaker Carter of the Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad endorsement bills which he steered through the House.Negro members were regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals.A witness swore that in Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the legislature.
When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did, the burden fell upon the state.Not all of the blame for this perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern capitalists.The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely profited by the loans.Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased.The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868.To maintain this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the Negro militia.Under the constitution of every reconstructed state, a Negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk the dangers of arming the blacks.No governor dared permit the Southern whites to organize as militia.In South Carolina the carpetbag governor, Robert K.Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand Negroes as members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them.The few white companies were ordered to disband.In Louisiana the governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard.In several states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent to any part of the state to make arrests.
In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67, comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a close.
The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia.But as the whites made up their minds to get rid of Negro rule, the clashes came frequently and always ended in the death of more Negroes than whites.* They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the whites had not eventually secured control of the government.
* Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.
