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He leaned back in his chair, while his glance moved from face to face and rested, half in challenge, on the member at the foot of the board. "These commissioners appointed off there in Washington," he added. "These carpet-baggers from the little States beyond the Mississippi!"
The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the decade closed, however, he began to grasp a new idea.
We have for years been dominated by semi-civilized barbarians, flattered into the belief that they are as good as white people by unprincipalled Yankee carpet-baggers who have profited by their ignorance. Emboldened by the leniency of their superiors, Negroes have become unbearable.
The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea.
The colonel touched upon the time when buzzards, in the guise of carpet-baggers, had battened upon the recumbent form; and spoke slightingly of divers persons of antiquity as compared with various Confederate leaders, whose names were greeted with approving nods and ripples of polite enthusiasm.
I means dem what lived to git back to dey folks was more'n glad to wuk! Dey done had a sad lesson. Some of 'em was worse'n slaves after de War. "Dem Ku Kluxes was de debbil. De Niggers sho' was scared of 'em, but dey was more after dem carpet-baggers dan de Niggers. I lived right in 'mongst 'em, but I wouldn' tell. No Ma'm! I knowed 'em, but I dasn' talk.
While at Malden he saw something of the doings of the members of the somewhat mysterious Ku-Klux Klan, which in the Cyclopædia of Names is thus described: "A former secret organisation in the Southern United States, of which the object was to intimidate the negroes, carpet-baggers and 'scalawags, and to prevent them from political action.
Curious, it is just a year ago this month than he went over to Illinois. He's an honest fellow, and hard working enough, but he don't know how. He's just a dead failure." "Command a regiment!" laughed the first, again, as of this in particular had struck his sense of humor. "I guess he won't get a regiment in a hurry, There's lots of those military carpet-baggers hanging around for good jobs now."
At the same time among the Negro legislators there was also considerable ignorance, and there set in an era of extravagance and corruption from which the "carpet-baggers" and the "scalawags" rather than the Negroes themselves reaped the benefit.
They came not to help the South, but to make money out of it, and under their rule, the condition of the Southern States became truly pitiful. But at length this wretched time passed. The troops were withdrawn, the carpet-baggers followed, and the government once more came into the hands of better men. Meanwhile bitterness had increased between the President and Congress.
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