school houses, established charitable institutions,
built and maintained the penitentiary system, pro¬
vided for the education of the deaf and dumb,
rebuilt the jails and court houses, rebuilt the
bridges and re-established the ferries.
In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the road to prosperity and, at the same time, by our acts of financial reform, transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by more than $2,500,000 than was the bonded debt of the State in 1868, before the Republican Negroes and their white allies came into power.”[1]
So too in Louisiana in 1872 and in Mississippi later the better element of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and joining with the Democrats instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagances and started toward better things. But unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge and efficiency.
Paint the “carpet-bag” governments and Negro rule as black as may be, the fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the overturning
- ↑ This speech was made in the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1890 which disfranchised the Negro, by the Hon Thomas E. Miller, ex-congressman and one of the six Negro members of the Convention. The Convention did not have the courage to publish it in their proceedings but it may be found in the Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy No. 6, pp. 11-13.
