Many instances are then related by the Attorney-General to confirm his statements. Some of these are worthy of the attention of the reader, although they may have been mentioned on a preceding page. In one district the so-called Governor of a State was deposed under a threat of military force, and another person, called a Governor, appointed by the military commander to fill the place—thus presenting the strange spectacle of an official intrusted with chief power to execute the laws of a State, whose authority was not recognized by the laws he was called on to execute.

In the same district a Judge was, by military order, ejected from his office, and a private citizen was appointed Judge in his place by military authority, and exercised criminal jurisdiction "over all crimes, misdemeanors, and offenses" committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the court. This military appointee was certainly not authorized, as a member of a military tribunal, to try any one for an offense; and he had just as little authority, as a Judge of a criminal court of the State, to try and punish any offender. This person was sole judge in a criminal court whose jurisdiction extended to the life of the accused. In capital cases he might well change places with the criminal, for, if the latter had unlawfully taken life, so too did the Judge.

In another district, a military order commanded the nominal Governor of the State to forbid the assembling of the Legislature, and thus suspended the proper legislative power of the State. In the same district an order was issued "to relieve the Treasurer of the State from the duties, bond, books, papers, etc.", appertaining to his office, and to put an "assistant quartermaster of the United States Volunteers" in place of the removed Treasurer. The duties of this quartermaster-treasurer were thus summed up: He was to make to the headquarters of the district "the same reports and returns required from the Treasurer, and a monthly statement of the receipts and expenditures; he will pay all warrants for salaries which may be or become due, and legitimate expenditures for the support of the Penitentiary, State Asylum, and the support of the provisional State government; but no scrip or warrants for outstanding debts of other kind than those specified, will be paid without special authority from these Headquarters. He will deposit funds in the same manner as though they were those of the United States." These instances will suffice, although many more might be related.

Illegal, unjust, and vindictive as were these gross usurpations of the Congress of the United States in their immediate results, the consequences which followed were still more disastrous. When the late Confederate States were restored to representation in Congress, a large portion of their white citizens remained disfranchised, and the political power of each was in the hands of the blacks and the remnant of the whites. Nor was the military force withdrawn, but it was placed in convenient localities, under the pretext of maintaining order, but in reality to sustain the new rulers. It must be manifest that the sovereignty of the people was now extinct, and those ruled who had the bayonets on their side. With the disfranchised were the intelligence, the virtue, and the political experience; with the voters were the ignorance, the lawless passions, and soon a body of political adventurers from the Northern States, greedy for power and plunder. These quickly won for themselves the distinctive epithet of "carpet-baggers". The governments under the control of such popular sovereigns demonstrated the vindictiveness rather than wisdom of Congress, and soon brought forth their natural fruits of anarchy, fraud, and crime. One or two examples must suffice in which to exhibit these results.

The debt of the ten Confederate States in 1874 was as follows:

Virginia, funded and unfunded . . . . . . . . $45,718,119.73
North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38,921,848.05
South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,866,627.35
Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,620,809.27
Georgia . . . . . . . . $8,105,500 funded
8,000,000 fraudulent 16,105,500.00
Alabama $10,452,593.30
15,051,000.00 railroad endorsement 15,503,593.30
Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,558,629.24
Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,933,407.90
Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,012,421.00
Arkansas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,561,000.00
———————-
$148,801,955.80

It is not claimed that all this amount of indebtedness had been accumulated since the close of the war. Some of the States had debts previous to the war, but a large proportion of the amount had been contracted by the spendthrift governments instituted by Congress, and very little could be found to offset the expenditure.

Again, in Arkansas, on April 16th, Governor Brooks seized and occupied the State-House with a body of armed men and two cannon. On the same day, Governor Baxter proclaimed martial law, and marched with a body of armed men from St. John's College to the Anthony House, and established his headquarters there. Guards were placed along the principal streets, and the State-House was completely surrounded by a cordon of sentinels. Subsequently, he marched to attack the State-House, but a body of troops belonging to the Government of the United States appeared before it. Two so-called Republican Governors of the State, with their troops, were about to fight for the executive office.

In Louisiana, on January 4, 1875, a body of troops of the Government of the United States, on the order of Governor W. P. Kellogg, marched into the hall of the House of Representatives of the State Legislature, while that body was in session, and forcibly seized and took out five members as not entitled to seats. The General in command (De Trobriand) then proceeded to eject the Clerk, and arrested the proceedings of the House. When expostulated with by the Speaker, he replied: "I am but a soldier. These are my orders." The members then retired.

In Mississippi, on December 7, 1874, a serious conflict occurred in Vicksburg between whites and blacks, which resulted in great loss of life and caused a widely-spread alarm. It grew out of frauds committed by public officers.