The New South | Page 7

war and the Reconstruction Acts had so reduced property values that payment of the full amount was impossible. The last reason is true of some States, though not of all. The prompt payment of interest on the reduced indebtedness has done much to restore the credit of the South, and the bonds of some States now sell above par.
Extravagance had helped to overthrow the carpetbag r��gime. The new governments were necessarily forced to be economical. Expenditures of all kinds were lessened. Government was reduced to its lowest terms, and the salaries of state officers were fixed at ridiculously small figures. Inadequate school taxes were levied; the asylums for the insane, though kept alive, could not take care of all who should have been admitted; appropriations for higher education, if made at all, were small; there was little or no social legislation. The politicians taught the people that low taxes were the greatest possible good and, when prosperity began to return and a heavier burden of taxation might easily have been borne, the belief that the efficiency of a government was measured by its parsimony had become a fixed idea. There was little scandal anywhere. No governments in American history have been conducted with more economy and more fidelity than the governments of the Southern States during the first years after the Reconstruction period. A few treasurers defaulted, but in most cases their difficulties rose from financial incompetence rather than from dishonesty, for a good soldier did not necessarily make a good treasurer. Few fortunes were founded on state contracts. The public buildings erected were honestly built and were often completed within the limits of the original appropriations. So small an amount was allowed that there would have been little to steal, even had the inclination been present.
The decline in the prices of agricultural products after 1875 made living harder. The Greenback agitation[1] found some followers, and in a few scattered rural districts Greenbackers or Greenback Democrats were nominated. In a few districts the white men ventured to run two tickets, and in a few cases the Greenback candidate won. This activity was a precursor of the agrarian revolt which later divided the South. There were also some Republican tickets with qualifying words intended to catch votes, but they had little success. Some strong men were sent to Congress, a very large proportion of whom had seen service in the Confederate army. Their presence aroused many sneers at "rebel brigadiers" and an immense amount of "bloody shirt" oratory. They accomplished little for their section or for the nation, as they were always on the defensive and could hardly have been expected to have any consuming love for the Union, in which they had been kept by force. They were frequently taunted in debate in the hope that indiscreet answers would furnish campaign material for use in the North. Sometimes they failed to control their tempers and their tongues and played into the hands of their opponents. They advocated no great reforms and showed little political vision. They clung to the time-honored doctrines of the Democratic party--tariff for revenue only, opposition to sumptuary laws, economy in expenditures, and abolition of the internal revenue taxes--and they made ponderous speeches upon the Constitution, "viewing with alarm" the encroachments of the Federal Government upon the sphere of action marked out for the States.
[Footnote 1: See _The Agrarian Crusade_, by Solon J. Buck (in _The Chronicles of America_).]
Partly because of constitutional objections, partly because of fear of Federal supervision of the administration of the measure, a majority of the Southern representatives opposed the Blair Bill, which might have hastened the progress of their section. This measure, now almost forgotten, was much discussed between 1882 and 1890 when it was finally shelved. It provided for national aid to education out of the surplus revenues of the Federal Government, the distribution to be made in proportion to illiteracy. Though the South would have received a large share of this money, which it sorely needed for education, the experience of the South with Federal supervision had not been pleasant, and many feared that the measure might result in another Freedmen's Bureau.[1] Not all Southerners, however, were opposed to the project. Dr. J.L.M. Curry, agent of the Peabody Fund, did valiant service for the bill, and some members of Congress were strong advocates of the measure. Today we see a measure for national aid to education fathered by Southerners and almost unanimously supported by their colleagues.
[Footnote 1: See _The Sequel of Appomattox_, by Walter Lynwood Fleming (in _The Chronicles of America_).]
Though rotation in office was the rule in the representation in the House, the policy of reelecting Senators was generally followed, and some of them served long periods. Looking upon themselves as ambassadors of their States to an unfriendly court,