The clutch of the carpet-bagger was broken; most of them left the State; and there was at once peace between whites and blacks. A new Constitution was adopted. Superfluous offices were abolished. Salaries were cut down and fixed by the Constitution, some of them, perhaps, at too low a figure; and it is believed that, in many respects, the limitations upon the power of the Legislature were made too stringent. It was the necessary reaction, the swing of the pendulum from corruption and extravagance to the severest simplicity and economy in government. The consequences have been most happy. The credit of the state has been fully restored.

When the election of 1874 took place, the State had in circulation one million dollars of obligations called "Patton or "Horse-shoe money." Although this was receivable for taxes, and bore 8 per cent. interest, it was hawked about, before the election, at 65 to 70 cents on the dollar. After the Democrats went into power these obligations went promptly to par, and were soon paid off and discharged.

The indebtedness of the State, which was in 1868, $8,355,683.51, and in 1874, all told, $25,503,593.00, was, September 30th, 1888, $12,085,219.95, and every outstanding interestbearing bond is now above par. To replace old bonds the Governor recently sold 4 per cent. bonds amounting to $900000 at a premium.

Taxes are low. Life, liberty and property are protected by law, and foreign capital is coming in. The property in the State as assessed for taxation in 1876 was $135,535,792,00; in 1888 it was $223,925,869.00.

There are no official figures that show accurately the number of white and colored pupils in the public schools during the six years of public ascendancy, but ex pede Herculem.

From a total school revenue of $524,621.68 in 1869, the Republicans paid to their school officials other than teachers $75,173.92. From a total school revenue of $539,209.04 in 1888 (not counting funds arising from local taxation), school officials were paid $13,992.80.

The teachers are paid partly by the State and partly from private sources. Attendance upon and interest in these schools is rapidly growing.

The Census showed the following number of whites and blacks within school age:

This decrease in the number of white children (11,819) while the blacks were increasing (12,531) though, probably due, in some slight degree, to inaccuracies in the census, is to be accounted for by the exodus of whites in the winters of L 1871, '72 and '73, fleeing from bad government.

The increase in the number of schools from 1870, when the state was under the Republican rule, to 1880, when it had been six years under the Democratic control, as shown by the same census returns was as follows:

The census of 1890, now near at hand, will show a gratifying increase in the value of properties held by colored men. It may be mentioned as a significant fact that Nathan Alexander, recently appointed by President Harrison as Receiver of Public Monies at Montgomery, gave a bond of $60,000, and it is said that all his bondsmen are colored men. They qualified in the sum of $120,000.

The colored population is progressing everywhere in the state-slowly in the black-belt, where the negro predominates; much more rapidly in the counties where the whites outnumber the blacks. Their progress is marked in morality, intelligence and property. If the next census shall corroborate, as it will, the truth of this observation, viz.: that the negro prospers most where the power and influence of the white man is greatest, then it is submitted that the fair conclusion is that, though Southern whites do not wish to be governed by a black man's party, yet they are, in fact, the best friends the negro has.

A careful study of the life of Abraham Lincoln must always cause fresh regret to well up in the heart of every Southerner as often as he shall recur to the awful deed of his assassination. Mr. Lincoln would have left suffrage to the states to regulate. Then it would have come to the colored man gradually and as he was fitted for it; and the negro would have regarded the Southern white man, who conferred it, as his friend. As it was, suffrage came to the colored man through an act of Congress. That act would never have been passed if the majority of Southern white men had been voting with the Republican party. It was passed because the colored men were expected to vote against the views of the electors legally qualified by state laws.

To see that the newly-made voters performed this duty the Republican party sent gentlemen like Messrs. Wilson and Kelley down South to tell them that they must all vote together for the party that gave them the ballot. Already among them were other men, correctly described by Senator Fessenden as "adventurers, and broken-down preachers and politicians," consorting, day and night, with these ignorant freedmen, poisoning their minds against their white neighbors and mustering them, with uplifted hands in midnight meetings, into a political league, which, by its very constitution, excluded most of the Southern whites. Under these circumstances the domination of either a black man's party or a white man's party was not to be avoided.

The facts of history are that the people of Alabama, prostrated by an unsuccessful war, and divided by the bitter memories of the past, were very loth to oppose what seemed to be the behests of the strongest government man had ever seen. They were utterly unable to unite and agree on any policy whatever. For six long years they suffered degradation, poverty and detraction, before they made up their minds to come together to assert, as they finally did, their supremacy in numbers, wealth, education and moral power. They have now in successful operation a government that, for the protection it affords to the lives, liberties and property of all its people, white and black, may safely challenge comparison with that of any state in the Union. Education and the

liberalizing influences of the age, to which Alabama is fully alive, will gradually, and surely, and safely solve every problem that can arise within her borders if she herself is left to deal with them. Will the American people, in the light of the terrible experience of the past, permit outside influences to prevent this consummation?

HILARY A. HERBERT.

No account of K.K.K. or Write?

CHAPTER III.

RECONSTRUCTION IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Hap

THE HE greatest physical punishment we can inflict upon man is death. There is a vast difference in the atrocity of crimes which we call capital, but the penalty is the same. The man who slays his parent, his child or his brother is simply hanged, as he is for the murder of a stranger. pily, however, public sentiment superadds something to the penalties of such offences, by holding up the perpetrators to the execration of mankind. So it is with many offences against the social or political laws of civilized communities; for the infraction of which, in the nature of things, no adequate punishment is provided. The heinousness of such offences consists in an element of faithlessness-a betrayal of trust treachery.

The destruction of the flock by the shepherd; the robbing of the ward by the guardian; the scandalizing of religion by a dissolute priest are all crimes which find their most appropriate punishment in that public contempt which is society's excommunication.

In this catalogue is to be placed the betrayal of constitutional liberty, in its supreme home and by its especial guardians, in what is falsely termed the reconstruction of the Southern states.

This was a crime against the principles of free government for which no adequate punishment is provided by law. In fact, the criminals assumed to be above the law which they enacted, and the law itself was the crime.

The criminals sat in the law-making chamber, on the bench and in the jury-box, instead of standing in the dock. It is with the hope that at this distance and in these more dispassionate times, I may aid in directing upon that