and other Northern cities.* So much pressure was brought to bear on Congress that a committee was sent to Louisiana to adjust the differences. A compromise, known as the "Wheeler Adjustment,' was proposed by which all the Democratic members were seated, provided the Democratic majority would not impeach Kellogg for acts committed prior to the adjustment. This adjustment was accepted by the Democrats, but Kellogg and the State auditor were afterward found guilty of embezzling public funds and both officials were recommended for impeachment, though not convicted because of lack of preparation of the case against them.||

In South Carolina we perhaps find the most appalling and disgraceful conditions.

Under Robert K. Scott, an Ohio carpet-bagger and a former chief of the Freedmen's Bureau, and Franklin J. Moses, Jr., "scalawag, licentiate and debauché," the "Robber Governor," the State treasury was looted by the "legislators" who made no pretense of honesty. These patriotic statesmen openly said that they intended to "squeeze the state as dry

* Mayes, Lamar, p. 208 et seq.; Godwin, Life of W. C. Bryant, vol. ii.

The members of which were Hoar, Wheeler, Frye, Foster, Phelps, Potter and Marshall.

McPherson, Handbook of Politics, 1876, p. 200, Fleming, Documentary History, vol. ii., pp. 157160; Andrews, Last Quarter-Century, vol. i., pp. 159-167.

Phelps, Louisiana, pp. 385-387; Nordhoff, The Cotton States, pp. 41-43, 63-68; Cox, Three Decades, pp. 555-570; Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction, pp. 259–265.

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as a sucked orange," and one of these eminent personages asserted that "South Carolina ought not to be a state if she cannot support her statesmen." In 1867 the State debt was $5,800,000, but by the end of 1871 this had become $29,000,000, actual and contingent, and there were so many other obligations that no estimate was ever made of them.* The taxable property exclusive of slaves was $316,000,000 in 1860 on which the annual taxes amounted to $392,000; by 1871 the property values had been reduced to $184,000,000 but the taxes had been increased over five-fold, to about $2,000,000. The public printing for one administration cost more than it had for the previous 70 years, and in one session the legislature spent $95,000 for furniture alone, $80,000 of which was spent to furnish the homes of the members. The state house was refurnished, not so much on an elegant as on a costly scale, some of the items being as follows: Chandeliers cost from $1,500 to $2,000; the $2 window curtains were replaced by others costing from $600 to $1,500; chairs that had cost $1 were discarded and $60 chairs were used instead; $200 sofas took the place of $4 benches; $5 clocks were exchanged for some costing $600 as were $4 looking-glasses for $600 mirrors, and $10 desks for $175

*Pike, Prostrate State, chap. xvii.; Scott, Repudiation of State Debts, pp. 78-93; Cox, Three Decades, pp. 501-507; Governor Chamberlain's inaugural address of December 1, 1874, quoted in Walter Allen, Governor Chamberlain's Adminis tration in South Carolina, pp. 10-30.

Pike, chap. xxxi.

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desks, hand-painted cuspidors at $50 apiece for the members, etc. Beside this each member was furnished a $10 gold pen, a $25 calendar ink-stand and a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary and free use of railroads and telegraph lines. Even the private accounts and gambling losses of the members were paid.*

The legislature invested several millions in railroads and subsequently waived its claim to any share in the roads; it appropriated $1,250,000 to redeem $500,000 in State bank notes and used the securities belonging to the educational fund for State purposes. It also appropriated $700,000 to buy land that was worth $50,000 to give to the negroes. Over $800,000 was paid for lands by the State Treasurer but of this amount about $225,000 was never accounted for. Of the $575,000 supposed to have been actually paid for land about $400,000 represented graft and the balance the actual value of the land purchased.+ Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on supplies for bars and restaurants that the "legislators" might refresh themselves and their friends with food, wines, liquors and cigars. Forty bedrooms were fur. nished as "committee" rooms each session, at the close of which the "statesmen" carried home the furniture. But the most ludicrous part of the whole affair was the character of the supplies furnished.

"Bills

*Ku Klux Report, minority, p. 539; Pike, Prostrate State, p. 199 et seq.

Pike, chaps. xix., xx., xxii.

made by officials and legislators and paid by the state reveal a queer medley!

Costly liquors, wines, cigars, baskets of champagne, hams, oysters, rice, flour, lard, coffee, tea, sugar, suspenders, linen-bosom shirts, cravats, collars, gloves (masculine and feminine, by the box), perfumes, bustles, corsets, palpitators, embroidered flannel, ginghams, silks, velvets, stockings, chignons, gowns, chemises, garters, fans, gold watches and chains, diamond finger-rings and ear-rings, Russia leather workboxes, hats, bonnets; in short every article of furniture and house furnishing from a full parlor set to a baby's swinging cradle, not omitting a $100 metallic coffin."*

Pike, in speaking of the State legislature says: "Here sit one hundred and twenty-four members. Of these twenty-three are white men

Of the remaining one hundred and one "ninety-four are colored and seven are their white allies.

*

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, usages, attitudes, and expression only befit the forecastle of a

*Avary, Dixie After the War, chap. xxx.; Fleming, Documentary History, vol. ii., pp. 59-69; Rhodes, vol. vii., pp. 142-168. See also the Report of the Joint Investigating Committee on Public Frauds * * made to the General Assembly

*

of South Carolina at the Regular Session, 1877–78, extracts from which are quoted in Scott's Repu diation of State Debts, pp. 313–316.

new Governor has the reputation of spending $30,000 or $40,000 a year on a salary of $3,500 This is the kind of moral education the ignorant blacks of the State are getting by being made legislators.'*

In 1871 the legislature accused Governor Scott of misusing public funds and he in turn called the legislature corrupt; a quarrel consequently

ensued and in December of that year impeachment proceedings were brought against Scott and N. G. Parker, the State treasurer, for fraud in connection with an issue of bonds. But with the liberal use of money the proceedings were beaten. In 1872 the conservative element gave only half-hearted support to the Liberal Republican candidate Tomlinson, and Franklin J. Moses, Jr., the regular

* The Prostrate State, pp. 13-15, 26, 28, 29, 50 (D. Appleton & Co.). See also Andrew D. White, Autobiography, vol. i., p. 175.

† Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1871, p. 700; Allen, Governor Chamberlain's Administration, pp. 145-152.

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Republican nominee, won easily. In 1874 Daniel H. Chamberlain was elected governor by the regular Republicans and the opposition gained in the legislature, only 77 of the 157 members being negroes. * After his inauguration Chamberlain vetoed several bills of plunder and refused to sign the tax and supply bill which carried extravagant appropriations.† He refused to sign the commissions of W. J. Whipper, an unscrupulous negro politician and ex-governor F. J. Moses, Jr., who had been nominated and elected judges of the circuit court by the Republicans of the legislature. Cardozo, whom the Republican corHe also supported State Treasurer ruptionists tried to remove, and he disbanded several companies of colored militia who upon investigation he found to have started an outbreak which was charged against the whites. Thus Chamberlain started the State on the road toward resuming a government by its native intelligent whites. This was not, however, to be accomplished without a bitter struggle, which will be related in connection with the presidential election of 1876.