certain and final settlement of the bonded indebtedness and appealed to their Democratic legislators to stand by the Republican legislation on the
subject and to confirm it. A faction in the Democratic party obtained a majority of the Democrats
in the legislature against settling the question and
they endeavored to open up anew the whole subject of the State debt. We had a little over thirty
members in the House and enough Republican
senators to sustain the Hampton conservative
faction and to stand up for honest finance, or by
our votes to place the debt question of the old
State into the hands of the plunderers and speculators. We were appealed to by General Hagood,
through me, and my answer to him was in these
words: ‘General, our people have learned the difference between profligate and honest legislation.
We have passed acts of financial reform, and with
the assistance of God, when the vote shall have
been taken, you will be able to record for the
thirty-odd Negroes, slandered though they have
been through the press, that they voted solidly
with you all for the honest legislation and the
preservation of the credit of the State.’
The thirty-odd Negroes in the legislature and their
senators by their votes did settle the debt question
and saved the State $13,000,000.
“We were eight years in power. We had built
