6. The agriculture of the period was rapidly advancing in the perfection of its details. Concentrated fertilizers were coming into general use and the area of cotton culture was immensely expanding. The farms were about equally divided as to the style of their management. The best farmers still hired their "hands" and superintended the details of operation in person, but many leased their lands to laborers and furnished the teams and supplies needed by the tenants.
7. Under the sensible and moderate rule then seen in the State, prosperity seemed rapidly returning, but as the United States Congress still refused to allow any representation in that body, there was great and increasing uneasiness as to the terms that would be finally exacted from the South in the proposed reconstruction measures.
1868.
8. Early in the year 1868 a convention, so-called, was held to frame a new Constitution under the Reconstruction Act of Congress. The election for the delegates was held under General Canby's orders, and the returns were sent to him at Charleston. Upon his order the Convention met and upon his order its delegates were seated and unseated.
9. In the latter part of April the Constitution thus framed was submitted to such of the people as were allowed to vote, at an election held as before, under General Canby's order, and by him, in Charleston, South Carolina, the returns having been sent to him there, declared to have been adopted. It is now generally known as the "Canby Constitution." In June, by order by telegram from General Canby, Governor Worth, who had been elected Governor by the people in 1866, was turned out of his office and Governor Holden put in his place. The only authority for this and other outrages was the might of Federal bayonets.
10. The Legislature elected under the recently adopted Constitution met on the 1st of July, 1868. It was comprised largely of negroes and of men from the North who had lately come to North Carolina. These latter were popularly known as "carpetbaggers," and as a class were mere birds of prey who came here for plunder. As might have been expected, the legislation of such a body was both corrupt and injurious. Ignorant of the resources of the State, of its people and their necessities, it would have been a miracle almost, no matter how honest, had their legislation not been harmful. Unfortunately, there was added to gross ignorance the most unblushing corruption and wanton extravagance. Many millions of debt, in the shape of "Special Tax Bonds," as they were called, were attempted to be fastened upon the State by this Legislature, but the people have persistently refused to recognize them.
11. The Convention and elections of 1868 will ever be remembered. The act of Congress, passed on February 20th, 1867, was in vain vetoed by the President. It was made the law of the land, and under its provisions, while twenty thousand white men of North Carolina were deprived of the right to vote, that privilege was extended to every colored male in the State who had attained the age of twenty-one years.
12. The year closed with great apprehensions to all classes. The new State government possessed neither the confidence nor the affection of the people, and in the pandemonium of bribery and corruption there was justification for the fears of men, who, in corrupt and reckless appropriations and corrupt and reckless expenditures, foresaw ruin to all material interests of the State.
12. In Robeson county, life and property were so insecure that extraordinary measures were adopted to extirpate the bandits who slew and plundered as if no legal restraints were left in the land. The story of Henry Berry Lowery and his "Swamp Angels" will ever stand as a convincing proof of the incompetency of the government of that day or of its wanton disregard of its duties to its citizens.