Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/332

816 moral pressure and presentation of the open frauds and crimes accomplished under form of law, were irresistible. It amounted almost to another revolution, and one after another, the States were recovered by the white people within their borders. Illegal and corrupt returning boards, under semblance of law, prevented the consummation for a time, as the Federal power was slow to relax its hold, but it was seen on every hand that the end was near, and that the corrupt governments, set up under the reconstruction law, remained only because held up on the points of the bayonets of the United States army.

The carpet-bag government in Louisiana fell in a day (September 14, 1874), and was powerless when the military (United States troops) were not interfering. One company of United States troops, after a few days, reinstated the corrupt government for a time. This was an object-lesson that every citizen of the North could understand, and the conservative men there began to change their views in regard to the South, and to understand that Congress had made a mistake in its zeal, as it supposed, to gather in the results of the war, and afford protection to the negro race in its freedom. It was shown, too, that no change could be made under Republican rule in the South, as was demonstrated by Governor Chamberlain's effort in South Carolina. Their regime was a stench in the nostrils of every respectable man, North or South. It could only be done under the Democratic party, and all good citizens flocked to its standard and worked under it, till what was desired was accomplished. "The conduct of the Republican party in the South was such as to repel patriotism and decency . . . and a monumental warning to those who seek party advantage through illegitimate legislative enactment." (Noted Men of the Solid South.)

The cost to the South was great, but her citizens did not repine, but began to work with a will to revoke all