Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/334

318 were restored, for many years there was a large element of the Republican party that still desired to interfere in the internal management of the States. Some force bills were passed by Congress to carry into effect the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. This uncertainty, in again resorting to extreme legislation, kept capital away and made it timid. It had become thoroughly panic-stricken during the corrupt days of reconstruction, and had fled from the South and sought other channels, mainly in the development of the Northwest. It showed no disposition to return for many years, even after recuperation had begun in earnest with Southern hands and Southern capital.

The struggle of Southern men during reconstruction, in fact, of the whole Southern people, under adverse political, social and commercial circumstances, was the most remarkable feature in those dark days. They never lost confidence in themselves, patiently bided their time, and achieved a most remarkable victory over all malign influences. Although they had had such sad experience with the carpet-baggers, they at once invited immigration to assist in building up the South, but they preferred bona fide citizens, not the class which had lived off of them so long, and which had fled when the purse and power had been stripped from them.

It cannot now be a question that the policy of the Northern statesmen was a failure, and that the wisdom of Southern leaders was superior in their ideas of reconstruction. "Reconstruction accomplished not one useful result and left behind not one pleasant reflection. "History will certainly condemn the legislation that entailed such misery, such corruption, such profligate expenditure of the money of an impoverished and crushed people, and in establishing negro governments at a time when the whites of the South had the best intentions of protecting the negroes in their new given freedom. "The experiment being tried, all interests, not least those of