The endorsement of railroad securities by the State also furnished a source of easy money to the dishonest official and the crooked speculator. After the Civil War, in response to the general desire in the South for better railroad facilities, the "Johnson" governments began to underwrite railroad bonds. When the carpetbag and negro governments came in, the policy was continued but without proper safeguards. Bonds were sometimes endorsed before the roads were constructed, and even excess issues were authorized. Bonds were endorsed for some roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained a grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the Legislature.
When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them did, the burden fell upon the State. Not all of the blame for this perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators, however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased. The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.
The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in the negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed State a negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand negroes as members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In several States the negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent to any part of the State to make arrests.
In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67, comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to a close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camelia. ¹ But as the whites made up their minds to get rid of negro rule, the clashes came frequently and always ended in the death of more negroes than whites. ² They would probably have continued with serious consequences if the whites had not eventually secured control of the government.
² Among the bloodiest conflicts were those in Louisiana at Colfax, Coushatta, and New Orleans in 1873-74, and at Vicksburg and Clinton, Mississippi, in 1874-75.
The lax election laws, framed indeed for the benefit of the party in power, gave the radicals ample opportunity to control the negro vote. The elections were frequently corrupt, though not a great deal of money was spent in bribery. It was found less expensive to use other methods of getting out the vote. The negroes were generally made to understand that the Democrats wanted to put them back into slavery, but sometimes the leaders deemed it wiser to state more concretely that "Jeff Davis had come to Montgomery and is ready to organize the Confederacy again" if the Democrats should win; or to say that "if Carter is elected, he will not allow your wives and daughters to wear hoopskirts." In Alabama many thousand pounds of bacon and hams were sent in to be distributed among "flood sufferers" in a region which had not been flooded since the days of Noah. The negroes were told that they must vote right and receive enough bacon for a year, or "lose their rights" if they voted wrongly. Ballot-box stuffing developed into an art, and each negro was carefully inspected to see that he had the right kind of ticket before he was marched to the polls.
The inspection and counting of election returns were in the hands of the county and state boards, which were controlled by the governor, and which had authority to throw out or count in any number of votes. On the assumption that the radicals were entitled to all negro votes, the returning boards followed the census figures for the black population in order to arrive at the minimum radical vote. The action of the returning boards was specially flagrant in Louisiana and Florida and in the black counties of South Carolina.
Notwithstanding the fact that the very best arrangements had been made at Washington and in the States for the running of the radical machine, everywhere there were factional fights from the beginning. Usually the scalawags declared hostilities after they found that the carpetbaggers had control of the negroes and the inside track on the way to the best state and federal offices. Later, after the scalawags had for the most part left the radicals, there were contests among the carpetbaggers themselves for the control of the negro vote and the distribution of spoils. The defeated faction usually joined the Democrats. In Arkansas a split started in 1869 which by 1872 resulted in two state governments. Alabama in 1872 and Louisiana in 1874-75 each had two rival governments. This factionalism contributed largely to the overthrow of the radicals.