what was occurring over the mountains to the south in the State with which their own history had long been closely interwoven.

For in South Carolina we come upon an entirely different scene. The ex-slaves outnumbered the whites, and therefore the history of South Carolina during these years was full of interest. It exhibited a trial of the policy of conferring the suffrage upon the blacks without qualification of property or education. The white people, on the other hand, began to stand together, and the old Whigs and Democrats assumed here as elsewhere throughout the South the neutral name of Conservatives. Their candidate for governor was W. D. Porter, of Charleston, a man of integrity and ability. R. K. Scott, of Ohio, one of the officers of the Freedmen's Bureau, was the Republican candidate, and was supported by the northerners who had recently come into the State, by some whites, and by the great mass of negroes. The election resulted, as might have been anticipated, in the choice of Scott by a majority of two to

one.

The new government went into office in July, 1868, the Senate containing ten colored members and twenty-one whites, of whom seven were Democrats. The House numbered one hundred and twenty-four, of whom seventy-eight were colored and forty-six whites-fourteen being Democrats. F. J. Moses was chosen speaker, and he gradually became even more famous than Scott.

The general voting power in the State was 78,000 colored voters against 46,000 whites, so that the negroes could not fail to rule, and were therefore for some years in complete control. Scott's term was two years, and he succeeded himself in 1870. In 1872, Moses ceased to be speaker of the House and became governor, a place of greater power, and at the same time Patterson was elected United States Senator under flagrant accusations of bribery.

The picture of the time drawn by James S. Pike in 1873 is good also for earlier years, and is of the more value

because he was an abolitionist, of considerable public experience, and a trained observer, with power of literary expression. The negro had now been in office long enough to realize his power, and we see the perfect fruit of his political education.

"The assembled wisdom of the State," says Pike, “issued forth from the State House. About three-quarters of the crowd belonged to the African race. They were

such a looking body of men as might pour out of a markethouse or a court-house at random in any Southern State. Every negro type and physiognomy was here to be seen, from the genteel serving man to the rough-hewn customer from the rice or cotton field. Their dress was as varied as their countenances. There was the second-hand black frock-coat of infirm gentility, glossy and threadbare. There was the stovepipe hat of many ironings and departed styles. There was also to be seen a total disregard of the proprieties of costume in the coarse and dirty garments of the field; the stub-jackets and slouch hats of soiling labor. In some instances, rough woolen comforters embraced the neck and hid the absence of linen. Heavy brogans, and short, torn trousers, it was impossible to hide. The dusky tide flowed out into the littered and barren grounds, and, issuing through the coarse wooden fence of the inclosure, melted away into the street beyond. These were the legislators of South Carolina.

"It is the spectacle of a society suddenly turned bottomside up. The wealth, the intelligence, the culture, the wisdom of the State, have broken through the crust of that social volcano on which they were contentedly reposing, and have sunk out of sight, consumed by the subterranean fires they had with such temerity braved and defied.

"In the place of this old aristocratic society stands the rude form of the most ignorant democracy that mankind ever saw, invested with the functions of government. It is the dregs of the population habilitated in the robes of their intelligent predecessors, and asserting over them the rule of

ignorance and corruption, through the inexorable machinery of a majority of numbers. It is barbarism overwhelming civilization by physical force. It is the slave rioting in the halls of his master, and putting that master under his feet. And, though it is done without malice and without vengeance, it is nevertheless_none the less completely and absolutely done. In this crucial trial of his pride, his manhood, his prejudices, his spirit, it must be said of the Southern Bourbon of the Legislature that he comports himself with a dignity, a reserve, and a decorum, that command admiration. He feels that the iron hand of Destiny is upon him. He is gloomy, disconsolate, hopeless.

"This dense negro crowd they confront do the debating, the squabbling, the law-making, and create all the clamor and disorder of the body. These twenty-three white men are but the observers, the enforced auditors of the dull and clumsy imitation of a deliberative body, whose appearance in their present capacity is at once a wonder and a shame to modern civilization.

"And the line of race very nearly marks the line of hostile politics. As things stand, the body is almost literally a Black Parliament, and it is the only one on the face of the earth which is the representative of a white constituency and the professed exponent of an advanced type of modern civilization. The Speaker is black, the Clerk is black, the door-keepers are black, the little pages are black, the chairman of the Ways and Means is black, and the chaplain is coal-black. At some of the desks sit colored men whose types it would be hard to find outside of Congo; whose costume, visages, attitudes, and expressions, only befit the forecastle of a buccaneer.. These men, with not more than half a dozen exceptions, have been themselves slaves, and their ancestors were slaves for genera

tions."

Such was the legislature; what was the legislation? The fierceness of the African freeman became docility in the American slave. Into what form would be transmuted the

energy of the negro when he had become a freedman, himself master in his new home? Perhaps it could be best expressed in the one word, Corruption. If it be proper to say the blacks learned it from their white leaders, the carpetbaggers in particular, they had learned it well even before Pike came to record what he saw and heard.

The foundation of liberty in any American community is the purity of elections. South Carolina was unfortunate in this respect. Not only was the voting majority composed of ignorant people, but the governmental machinery was controlled by designing men. The means by which they did this was, as in some other Southern States, a militia law. In March, 1869, there was approved a militia act, which attracted little attention at the time, but in connection with the election of 1870 played a considerable part. A reform movement, so called, had then started and Judge Carpenter, an independent Republican, ran for governor as its representative. Scott thereupon organized a negro militia throughout the State, with the result that fourteen full regiments were enrolled. On them and in other ways the governor spent during this canvass $374,000. Resolutions of 1869 authorized him to purchase two thousand stands of arms, and in point of fact he bought ten thousand stands of light loading and Winchester rifles and one million centre-coppered cartridges. The militia and the constabulary were freely used for purposes of intimidation and this led to a system of terrorism by brutal negroes. The whites gradually organized in turn, although not accepted as militia, and the Ku Klux movement assumed form. Disorders became marked in the upper counties and led to President Grant's suspension of habeas corpus and to the reign of martial law by irresponsible military officers.

The only method to detect fraud committed in the elections was to subpoena the voters. In this way it was found that in Beaufort the commissioners returned that six voted for one candidate when forty-one men swore that they had voted for him, and the same story was told

elsewhere. In Chesterfield County, where the whites were largely in the majority, the commissioners nevertheless returned as elected to the lower house two men who were friends of Scott. Even Republican papers denounced such procedure; but the House seated them.

The governor generally exercised the power given him over the troops for political purposes, such as to effect his own reëlection and that of his friends. The Republican legislature of that day through an investigating committee say they are "forced to the acknowledgment, however unpleasant or humiliating it may be, that the moneys expended

were not all paid out for [military] purposes. In the enrollment and organization of the militia, as well as in the armed force employed by the governor, there was a most ample and complete opportunity for ambitious political partisans and aspirants for reëlection to arm and equip a force. of personal friends and advocates and pay them not out of their own purse but out of any moneys in the treasury not otherwise appropriated."

Their opinion of the governor was reciprocated by that of this official as to them. In his one veto message, filed on March 7, 1871, returning without approval an act for legislative expenses, he remarks: "I regard the expenditure of the money already appropriated during this session, and the sum included in this bill, amounting in the aggregate to $400,000, as simply enormous for one session of the Legislature. It is beyond the comprehension of any one how the General Assembly could legitimately expend onehalf that amount of money. I cannot refrain from expressing the opinion that there must have been some secret agency in fixing the sum at that amount, as a number of members, both of the House and Senate, have expressed their surprise at finding the appropriation changed from $125,000, as it was believed to have passed, to that of $265,000."

As elsewhere the development of transportation facilities was a crying need and the State went into internal