Although this charge has never been established, the public had some excuse for believing it at the time. As a result of the quarrel between the governor and the treasurer, the governor ordered the bankers who were the financial agents of the state to hold no further communication with the treasurer after June 3, 1869, but to communicate only with the governor.[352] The effect upon the public was an impression of great confusion and irregularity in the finances. The treasurer’s reports could not give a complete account of state moneys, and the governor was not careful to inform the public of the condition of that part of the finances over which he had assumed control. Moreover, the governor and the treasurer kept up a constant interchange of accusation and insinuation in the newspapers. In another way the governor put himself in an unfortunate light. In his letter to the Ku Klux Committee his statements regarding his bond transactions were so vague as to give the impression (rightly or wrongly) of a desire to conceal something.[353] The same laxity of statement appears in Conley’s statement of the use to which the bonds issued by Bullock had been put.[354] His sudden resignation and departure on the eve of a threatened investigation seemed to confirm the evidence of his guilt.
But though he did not keep the public informed, it has never been established that his accounts were wrong. He spent money freely, and in some cases without authority;[355] but none of his accusers has ever proved that he spent any without regular and correct record by the comptroller. And though he issued bonds perhaps in excess, he issued none without proper registration in the comptroller’s records.[356] His apparent efforts to conceal facts do not prove fraud; a sufficient motive would be furnished by desire to conceal the extravagance of his administration. Furthermore, he has been positively acquitted of the charge of fraud. In 1878 he returned to Georgia, and the courts proceeded to give him “a speedy and public trial.” Of his many alleged crimes, indictments were secured for three. One indictment was quashed.[357] Upon the other two the verdict was “not guilty.”[358] His resignation was explained in a letter to his “political friends,” published on October 31, 1871.[359] He said that he had obtained evidence of a concerted design among certain prominent members of the incoming legislature to impeach him (as they could easily do, with the immense Conservative majority), and instal as governor the Conservative who would be elected president of the senate. To resign and put the governorship in the hands of a Republican who could not be impeached was the only way to defeat this “nefarious scheme.” This explanation was of course ignored by Bullock’s enemies when it was made; but in view of the lack of evidence that he was guilty of any fraud, and in view of the positive evidence to the contrary, there is now no reason to doubt it.
The governor made extraordinary use of the pardoning power. According to a statement sanctioned by him, he pardoned four hundred and ninety-eight criminals, forty-one of whom were convicted or accused of murder, fifty-two of burglary, five of arson, and eight of robbery.[360] The leader of the Conservative party at that time, B. H. Hill, emphatically declared in a public statement that the governor had no worse motive than “kindness of heart.”[361]
To sum up the case against the reconstruction government, we have seen that it was extravagant, that it mismanaged the state railroad, and that it pardoned a great many criminals. It was not guilty of the enormities often associated with reconstruction; but it was a government composed of men who obtained political position only through the interference of an outside power—it was the product of a system conceived partly in vengeance, partly in folly, and partly in political strategy, and imposed by force. It was hated partly for what it did, but more for what it was.
CHAPTER X
CONCLUSION
A Confederate veteran recently remarked amid great applause at an assembly in Atlanta that there never was a conqueror so magnanimous as the North, for within six years from the surrender of the southern armies she had allowed the South to take part in her national councils. Nevertheless, within those six years the Congressional Disciplinarians gave the South a discipline which she will never forget. It did not result in permanent estrangement between the North and the South, for sectional bitterness seems extinct. But whether there was any profit in it—whether, in case the South never again attempts to secede, that happy omission will be due to reconstruction—may be doubted.
Was there a clearer gain from the humanitarian point of view? We have seen that at the close of the war a spirit of gratitude and philanthropy prevailed among the most influential of the southern white people as regards the negroes. Instead of allowing this spirit to develop and in the course of time to produce its natural results, the North, believing that suffrage was essential to the negro’s welfare and progress, forced the South to enfranchise him, by reconstruction. This caused the negro untold immediate harm (since reconstruction was a contributary cause of Kukluxism), and delayed his ultimate advance by giving the friendly spirit of the white people a check in its development from which it has not yet recovered.