“The dishonesty in the Reconstruction of the South was helped on by three circumstances:
1. The former dishonesty of the political South.
2. The presence of many dishonest Northern politicians.
3. The temptation to Southern politicians at once to profit by the dishonesty and to discredit Negro government.
4. The poverty of the negro.”[341]
He fails to furnish any authorized evidence of the first; but the three last should be accepted as in some degree exculpatory of the Negroes.
There is something almost pathetic in Dr. DuBois’s description of the Negroes’ contribution to Reconstruction:
“Undoubtedly there were many ridiculous things connected with Reconstruction governments: the placing of ignorant field hands who could neither read nor write in the Legislature, the golden spitoons of South Carolina, the enormous printing bill of Mississippi—all these were extravagant and funny, and yet somehow to one who sees beneath all that is bizarre, the real human tragedy of the upward striving of down-trodden men, the groping for light among people born in darkness, there is less tendency to laugh and gibe than among shallower minds and easier consciences. All that is funny is not bad.”[342]
And this he follows with what he means to be an indictment:
“—the greatest stigma on the white South is not that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented theft and incompetence, but that when it saw the reform movement growing and even in some cases triumphing, and a larger & a larger number of black voters learning to vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to a campaign of education, and disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing rascals.”[343]