blindfolded official, the difference in length or in the texture or quality of the ballot made possible the withdrawal of an undue proportion of Republican votes. Usually separate boxes were supplied for different sets of officers, and it was often provided that a ballot in the wrong box was void. An occasional intentional shifting of boxes thus caused many illiterate negroes to throw away their votes. This scheme reached its climax in the "eight box law" of South Carolina which made illiterate voting ineffective without aid. Immediately after any literate Republican, white or black, left the polling place the boxes were shifted, and the illiterates whose tickets he had carefully arranged deposited their ballots in the wrong boxes. White boys of eighteen, if well grown, sometimes voted, while a young negro unable to produce any evidence of his age had difficulty in proving the attainment of his majority. In some precincts illiterate Republicans were appointed officers of elections, and then the vote was juggled shamelessly. A study of election returns of some counties of the black belt shows occasional Democratic majorities greater than the total white population. The same tricks which were so long practiced in New York and Philadelphia were successful in the South.

Conditions such as these were not prevalent over the entire South. In a large proportion of the voting precincts elections were as fair as anywhere in the United States; but it may be safely said that in few counties where the negroes approached or exceeded fifty per cent of the total population were elections conducted with anything more than a semblance of fairness. Yet in some sections the odds were too great, or else the whites lacked the resolution to carry out such extensive informal disfranchisement. For years North and South Carolina each sent at least one negro member to the House of Representatives and, but for flagrant gerrymandering, might have sent more. Indeed negro prosecuting attorneys were not unknown, and many of the black counties had negro officers. Some States, such as North Carolina, gave up local self-government almost entirely. The Legislature appointed the justices of the peace in every county, and these elected both the commissioners who controlled the finances of the county and also the board of education which appointed the school committeemen. Judges were elected by the State as a whole and held courts in all the counties in turn. To this day, a Superior Court judge sits only six months in one district and then moves on to another. Other States gave up local government to a greater or less extent, while still others sought to lessen the negro vote by strict registration laws and by the imposition of poll taxes.

In many sections the negro ceased to make any attempt to vote, and the Republican organization became a skeleton, if indeed it continued at all. There was always the possibility of a revival, however, and after 1876 the North often threatened Federal control of elections. The possibility of negro rule was therefore only suspended and not destroyed; it might at any time be restored by force. The possibility of the negro's holding the balance of power seemed dangerous and ultimately led to attempts to disfranchise him by law, which will be considered in another chapter.

The relation of the races was not the only question which confronted the whites when they regained control of the state governments. The problem of finance was equally fundamental. The increase in the total debt of the seceding States had been enormous. The difference between the debts of these States (excluding Texas) in 1860 and in the year in which they became most involved was nearly $135,000,000.[1] In proportion to the total wealth of these States, this debt was extremely high.

[Footnote 1: See W.A. Scott, The Repudiation of State Debts, p. 276. Texas had practically no debt when it passed under Reconstruction government, but added $4,500,000 in the period. The total increase in the debt of all these Southern States was then nearly $140,000,000.]

Not all of this increase was due to carpetbag government. While, of course, the debts incurred for military purposes had been repudiated in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment, several of the States had issued bonds for other purposes during the War or immediately afterwards before the advent of the Reconstruction governments. There were other millions of unpaid interest on all varieties of debts incurred before or after 1860. The Reconstruction debts had been incurred for various purposes, but bonds issued ostensibly to aid in building railroads, canals, or levees made up the greater part of the total. These bonds, however, had been sold at a large discount, and only a small part of the money realized was applied to actual construction.

Some of the States had escaped almost entirely any considerable increase of debt; others were burdened far beyond their ability to pay, especially as property valuations had declined nearly one-half.

The wholesale repudiation of their debts injured the credit of all the Southern States, and they have been loudly denounced for their action. Their spokesmen have justified their procedure in regard to the bonds issued by the carpetbag legislatures on the ground that they were voted by venal governments imposed by military force; that many of the bonds were fraudulent on their face; and that those who purchased them at a great discount were simply gambling upon the chance that the governments issuing them would endure; that the greater part of these bonds were stolen by the officers; and that little or no benefit came to the State. Not all of the bonds which were repudiated or scaled down, however, belonged to this class. Many were undoubtedly valid obligations on the part of the States. The repudiation of these bonds was excused on the ground that they were generally issued to aid railroads which had been practically seized by the Confederate or the United States governments and had been worn out for their benefit; that interest could not be paid during the war; and that 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 régime. 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