[34] It might be noted that the following officers who figure conspicuously in the pages of this account were carpet-baggers: Warmoth, Kellogg, ‘, McMillan, Dewees, Jacques, who will figure in the frauds of ’72, Speaker Carr, Campbell, Packard, Dibble; 3-5000 settled in New Orleans, proportionally less in the parishes.
[35] See Times, May 9, 1875. From the evidence I have met, I do not believe the feeling against them was so hostile as it became a little later when the South was determined to drive them out. Blaine makes a real point when he says, “Northern men recalled in an offensive manner the power that had overcome and, as they thought, humiliated them,—recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new order of things.” Blaine, II., 472.
[36] Nordhoff tells of a negro in St. Mary’s parish who still in 1875 was retaining a mule halter he had purchased in anticipation of Uncle Sam’s gift, 49.
[37] It does not seem to me that Vice-President Wilson’s argument that the experiment of negro self-government would therefore have the greatest chance of success (Times, Aug. 21, 1876) here is necessarily true. It would rather turn upon whether the leadership they would assert were vicious or not.
[38] Due partly to the fact that they came from the large plantations where the civilizing contact with the white race was reduced to a minimum.
[39] A person sent into country parishes some months before election to gather up the colored vote; to hold meetings, to instruct the local leaders, mostly preachers and teachers, and to organize the party. Nordhoff, 67. As late as Dec., 1874, a leading negro replied to the query concerning his vote, that “they had not got the word yet.” House Rpts., 43 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 101, 89. Pinchback understood such organization and that gave him his strength. Ibid., 67.
[40] Nordhoff, 56.
[41] Sen. Deb., 1870, 218.
[42] Note the frank reply of a lawyer to a negro politician: “I stand ready, as far as in me lies, to protect them in their rights as citizens. Here my friendship stops; I am not their friend when it comes to official life. The colored man has just been redeemed from slavery, and in his new character he is unfit for office. It is an insult and outrage to place him over the white people as an office-holder.” Granting that slavery was wrong, that did not prove “that you should be put into office to run the government before your people have learned anything about the laws.” Sen. Rpts., 44 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 701, xxxv.
[43] Commercial Bulletin, Jan. 4, 1869.