Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/320

304 but it was dismissed by the court. The McCardle case from Mississippi was at last presented on its merits. "The argument was concluded on the 9th of March, 1868, and the court took the case under advisement. While it was being so held, to prevent a decision of the question, a bill was rushed through both houses and finally passed, March 27, 1868, over the president's veto depriving the court of jurisdiction over such appeals." This was the course in all similar cases involving a constitutional decision, which certainly was revolutionary, and showed a fear that the court would pronounce the law unconstitutional.

The Fourteenth amendment was now presented to the Southern people again. Its behests and the reconstruction acts were carried out in legislation by the bayonet. The States were negroized in succession. "Its practical operation was of course revolutionary in its effects upon the Southern State governments. The most influential white men were excluded from voting for the delegates who were to compose the constitutional conventions, while the negroes were all admitted to enrollment. Unscrupulous adventurers appeared to act as the leaders of the inexperienced blacks in taking possession first of conventions, and afterward of State governments; and in States where the negroes were most numerous or their leaders most shrewd and unprincipled, an extraordinary carnival of public crime set in under the form of law. Negro majorities gained complete control of State governments, or rather negroes constituted the legislative majorities and submitted to the unrestrained authority of small but masterful groups of white men, whom the instinct for plunder had drawn from the North.

"Taxes were multiplied, the proceeds mostly going into the pockets of the white rascals and their confederates among the negroes. Immense debts piled up by processes both legal and fraudulent, and most of the money borrowed reached the same destination. In several of