Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/333

Rh improper and corrupt legislation, to restore economy in public expenditures, to reduce taxation, to do away with useless offices, to make the schools efficient, and to build up the waste places. The conservative element in Congress was strong enough to enforce "hands off." In fact, Congress, as early as May, 1872, had passed a general amnesty bill removing political disabilities from almost all citizens who had been disfranchised, still excepting those who had been officers in the judicial, military, or naval service of the Confederate States. The carpet-baggers had taken their "carpet-bags" and gone to a more congenial clime, where they lost their identity as a class, having the scorn and contempt of all respectable citizens.

The supreme court, too, had rendered several decisions tending to recall Congress from its proneness to legislate beyond the limits of the Constitution. The negroes, who could not resist being led to extremes in the hands <of the "masterful" carpet-baggers, now easily and readily yielded to the will of the Southern whites, and began to return to more industrious habits and conditions, and were less disposed to spend their time as politicians and lawmakers. They began to realize that they were not competent to withstand the nerve and moral pressure of the white man, whether he was a carpet-bagger and using him for his own advantage, and for corrupt and vindictive purposes, or the Southern white man who intended to rule and preserve white civilization and society at all hazards. The normal condition of the Southern States, being again ruled by the whites, by the educated people and the property-holders, was accepted by the people of the North as the only true solution in the reconstruction of the States. The restoration of the governments of the States to their own people, left them heavily burdened with debts put upon them under the guise of law. They had to start with this great burden upon them in their work of restoration. Even after the States