CHAPTER XII
"CARPET-BAG" AND NEGRO DOMINATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES BETWEEN 1868 AND 1876
[Escape of Virginia, Georgia and Texas from Negro Rule]—[North Carolina's Rapid Recovery from Negro Rule]—[The Loyal League]—[Origin of the K. K. K.'s]—[Methods of the Ku-Klux]—[Periods in the History of Negro Rule]—[The Act for the Enforcement of the New Amendments]—[The Corruption in the New "State" Governments]—[The Supplemental Enforcement Act]—[The President's Proclamation of March 23d, 1871]—[The Ku-Klux Act of April 20th, 1871]—[Interference of the United States Military Power in the Affairs of South Carolina]—[The President's Proclamation of May 3d, 1871]—[The President's Proclamation to the People of South Carolina]—[The Ku-Klux Trials]—[Corruption in the "State" Governments of the South]—[The Revolt in the Republican Party]—[The Liberal Republican Convention of 1872]—[Acceptance of the Liberal Republican Candidates by the Democrats]—[Division in the Democratic Party]—[The Republican Platform and Nominees]—[The Republican Triumph]—[Events in Alabama]—[Events in Louisiana]—[The Downward Course between 1872 and 1874—The Elections of 1874]—[The Change in Alabama, Arkansas and Texas]—[The Status in South Carolina in 1874]—[The Day of Complete Deliverance—The Status in Mississippi in 1875]—[Fiat Money and the Resumption of Specie Payments]—[The Inflation Bill of 1874 and the Veto of it by the President].
Virginia, Texas and Georgia had been in no great hurry, as we have seen, to exchange military government exercised by the white officers
Escape of Virginia,
Georgia and Texas
from negro rule.
In spite of the threats of Congress, and the ever-increasing conditions imposed by that body upon the permission to resume the "State" status, these three communities held out under military rule until so many of their leading citizens had been amnestied by Congress and made again eligible to office and mandate, and until so much better provisions concerning the enfranchisement of the ex-Confederates had been secured, as to put them in a far better position to resume "State" government than was the case two years before. Moreover, these communities had larger white than black populations. After their full restoration, consequently, Virginia and Georgia escaped largely the suffering experienced by most of the others, and Texas also managed to pull through the years from 1870 to 1874 with only about a four-fold increase of taxation, and the creation of a debt of only about 5,000,000 of dollars, when she reached the period of union of almost all her best citizens in the Democratic party, which, in the election of Richard Coke as Governor in 1874, and of a majority of the legislative members, permanently triumphed in Texas. Mississippi also had held back in 1868 and 1869, as we have seen, in order to secure better terms for the ex-Confederates in the enfranchising and disfranchising provisions of the "State" constitution, and by doing so had accomplished this result. But Mississippi was one of the three Southern communities in which the negro population far outnumbered the white. Mississippi was not, for this reason chiefly, so fortunate as Virginia, Texas and Georgia. She was obliged, with South Carolina and Louisiana, to pass through the fiery furnace in order to fuse the respectable white elements in her population into a single political party with a well-understood and a well-determined purpose.
Of all the "States" included in the Congressional Act of June 25th, 1868, only North Carolina had been fortunate enough to rid herself,