In South Carolina, if it were possible, the situation was even worse, and the paper contributed to the series to which I have already alluded, by the Hon. John J. Hemphill, to which I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness, outlines briefly the condition of affairs, and presents a picture which ought to be read by every man in the Union. The General Assembly, which convened in 1868, in Columbia, consisted of 72 Whites and 85 Negroes. In the house were 14 Democrats, and in the senate 7; the remaining 136 were Republicans. One of the first acts passed was somewhat anomalous. After defending the rights of the colored man on railroads, in theatres, etc., it provided that if a person whose rights under the act were claimed to be violated, was a Negro, then the burden of proof should shift and be on the defendant, and he should be presumed to be guilty until he established his innocence. This Act was more or less expressive of the spirit in which a good many people at the North still appear to regard all questions arising between the Southern Whites and the Negroes.
When the legislature met, they proceeded to furnish the halls at a cost of $50,000, for which they appropriated $95,000. This hall has since been entirely refurnished at a cost of $3,061. They paid out in four years, for furniture, over $200,000, and when, in 1877, the matter was investigated, it was found that, even placing what remained at the original purchase price, there was left by them in the State House only $17,715 worth; the rest had disappeared.
“They opened another account, known under the vague but comprehensive head of ‘Supplies, sundries, and incidentals.’ This amounted, in a single session, to $350,000. For six years they ran an open bar in one of the legislative committee rooms, open from 8 A.M., to 3 P.M., at which all the officials and their friends helped themselves, with cost—save to the unfortunate and helpless taxpayers.’
They organized railroad frauds, election frauds, census frauds, general frauds—whatever they organized was filled with fraud. They enlisted and equipped an armed force, the governor—one Scott—refusing to accept any but colored companies. Ninety-six thousand colored men were enrolled at a cost, for the simple enrolment, of over $200,000. One thousand Winchester rifles were obtained, for which the State was charged about $38,000; 1,000,000 cartridges cost the State $37,000; 10,000 Springfield muskets were bought, and charged at a cost, they claim, of $187,050; it was all charged to the State at $250,000. The troops, as organized, were employed by Scott and the notorious Moses as their heelers and henchmen. The armed force, or constabulary, were armed and maintained for the same purpose.[92]
Governor Scott spent $374,000 of the funds of the State in his canvass.[93] Eight porters were employed in the State House; they issued certificates to 238; eight laborers and from five to twenty pages were employed; certificates were issued to 159 of the former and 124 of the later. One lot of 150 certificates were issued at once—all fraudulent. During one session pay certificates were issued to the amount of $1,168,255, all of which but about $200,000 was unvarnished robbery.
The public printing was another field for their robbery. The total cost of the printing in South Carolina for the eight years of Republican domination, 1868-76, was $1,326,589. The total cost for printing for 78 years previous—from 1790 to 1868—was $609,000, showing an excess for the cost of printing in eight years, over 78 years previous, of $717,589. The average cost of the public printing under the Republican administration per year, was $165,823; average cost per annum under Hampton’s administration, $6,178. The amount appropriated for one year, 1872-73, by the Republicans, for printing, was $450,000; amount appropriated in 25 years ending in 1866, $278,251. Excess of one year’s appropriation over 25 years, $171,749. The cost of printing in South Carolina exceeded in one year by $122,932.13 the cost of like work in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland together.
In 1860 the taxable values in the State amounted to $490,000,000, and the tax to a little less than $400,000. In 1871 the taxable value had been reduced to $184,000,000, and the tax increased to $2,000,000. In 19 counties taken together, 93,293 acres of land were sold in one year for unpaid taxes. After four years of Republican rule, the debt of the State had increased from $5,407,306 to $18,515,033. There had been no public works of any importance, and the “entire thirteen millions of dollars represented nothing but unnecessary and profligate expenditures and stealings.”[94]
The governor’s pardon was a matter of mere bargain and sale. During Moses’s term of two years, he issued 457 pardons—pardoning during the last month of his tenure of office 46 of the 168 convicts whom he had hitherto left in jail.
In May, 1875, Governor Chamberlain declared, in an interview with a correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial, that when at the end of Moses’s administration he entered on his duties as governor, 200 trial justices were holding offices by executive appointment who could neither read nor write.[95]