Issues of Town and City Bonds
| 1868. | Troy | $75,000.00 | |
| 1869. | Eutaw | 20,000.00 | |
| 1869. | Greensboro | 15,000.00 | |
| 1871. | Mobile | 1,400,000.00 | |
| 1871. | Selma | 5 00,000.00 | |
| 1872. | Prattville | 50,000.00 | |
| 1873. | Mobile | 200,000.00 | |
| Opelika | 25,000.00 |
And in addition each county and town had a large floating debt in “scrip” or local obligations. Speculators gathered up such obligations and sold them at reduced prices to those who had local taxes, fines, and licenses to pay.
[1624] Auditor’s Reports, 1871-1872; Report of Committee on Public Debt, 1876; McClure, “The South: Industrial, Financial, and Political Condition,” p. 83.
[1625] Report of the Committee on Public Debt, 1876; Senate Journal, 1872-1873, p. 544; Auditor’s Report, 1873.
[1626] Senate Journal, 1875-1876, pp. 212, 213; Report of the Committee on the Public Debt, 1876. In his book Clews tells how he invested in the securities of the struggling southern states, being desirous of assisting them. But when the ungrateful states refused to pay the claims that he and others like him presented, he says it was because they, the creditors, were northern men. See Clews, “Twenty-eight Years in Wall Street,” pp. 550, 551.
[1627] DeLeon, “Ruin and Reconstruction,” in the Southern Magazine, Jan., 1874. The state debts of the ten southern states were then estimated at $291,626,015, while the debts of the other twenty-seven states amounted to only $293,872,552.
[1628] Houston’s Message, 1876; Senate Journal, 1874-1875, p. 7.
[1629] Act of Dec. 17, 1874.
[1630] Later increased to $1,192,000.