chargeable to their enfranchisement? Then too,
a careful examination of the alleged stealing in
the South reveals much: First, there is repeated
exaggeration. For instance, it is said that the
taxation in Mississippi was fourteen times as great
in 1874 as in 1869. This sounds staggering until
we learn that the State taxation in 1869 was only
ten cents on one hundred dollars and that the expenses of government in 1874 were only twice as
great as in 1860 and that too with a depreciated
currency. It could certainly be argued that the
State government in Mississippi was doing enough
additional work in 1874 to warrant greatly increased cost. The character of much of the stealing shows who were the thieves. The frauds
through the manipulation of State and railway
bonds and of bank notes must have inured chiefly
to the benefit of experienced white men and this
must have been largely the case in the furnishing
and printing frauds. It was chiefly in the extravagance for "sundries and incidentals" and direct
money payments for votes that the Negroes received their share. The character of the real
thieving shows that white men must have been the
chief beneficiaries and that as a former South
Carolina slaveholder said:
"The legislature, ignorant as it is, could not have been bribed without money; that must have
