Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/325

Rh much on the market as a South Carolina bond. It would puzzle even a Yankee carpet-bagger to make anything out of the office of State treasurer under the circumstances." Governor Chamberlain, a Republican, said that when at the end of the Moses administration, he entered on his duties as governor, "two hundred trial justices were holding office by executive appointment, who could neither read nor write the English language." (Noted Men of the Solid South.)

If anything, the border States of Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri, while passing through the same ordeal of adjustment, between war and peace, had a more revengeful and vindictive experience than the States which were reconstructed by Congress. The population of these States sympathized with the people of the South, but a minority, upheld by the army of the Union, were kept in power; and their legislation was bent to but one purpose, to retain themselves in power, which they did by disfranchising all who sympathized or were suspected of sympathizing with the South. In West Virginia, test oaths were freely used, and the laws framed only by those who could take them. To illustrate: "For five years after the war, in West Virginia, an ex-Confederate was not a citizen, could not hold office, could not practice law, could not sit as a juror, could not teach school, could not sue in the courts, could not make a defense for charges brought during his absence, could not be administrator or executor. " This policy was pursued with more or less severity in the other border States. In Missouri, the constitution framed was most prescriptive, and could not be excelled in this particular.

The Union League in the South was formed to establish the black man's party, and bind the negroes by secret organization to the Republican party, so they could be