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"'Carpet-baggers' and 'scalawags' mismanaged affairs in the South, and some of your good people, you state, resorted to lawless methods to displace them. The radicals took charge of this lawless organization, you claim, prostituted it, and made a record of crime and villainy in the South so great that eleven large volumes in the records of Congress are required to merely hint at the atrocities.
"I guess, Cap," said Mr Zachariah Lathrope, noticing the quick change of temperature in the air, day by day, as they left the tropics behind the mornings and evenings becoming gradually colder "she air making as straight tracks fur the south as them northern carpet-baggers did after our little onpleasantness, what you folks called the civil war in the States; when they used to rush down from Washington arter postmasterships and other sich like offices, which wer to be hed, they kinder thought, fur the asking!
The unreasonable arrogance and oppressive extravagance of the freedmen where they were in control, under the leadership of reckless carpet-baggers, and still more reckless and malicious white natives, had produced a revulsion in the minds of all at the North who regarded justice, honor, and honesty as essentials of good government.
But it was no part of the policy of those now in power at Washington to leave either black or white alone. "Loyal" Governments were to be formed in the South; and to this end political adventurers from the North "carpet-baggers," as they were called went down into the conquered South to organize the Negro vote.
State governments had been established in which "carpet-baggers" had more or less control. Nearly all the whites in the South had taken part in the war. They were largely disfranchised and their former servants often became the legal rulers. The Klu Klux Klan had begun their unlawful work, of which the papers gave contradictory reports.
The victory of Union guns at Fort Fisher brought many carpet-baggers to Wilmington, many of them thrifty men of enterprise, who willingly assisted their brethren to restore life to that devastated town. Quite a goodly number of these good people worshipped God in Wilmington's Presbyterian Church.
So a swarm of greedy adventurers from the North swooped down upon the South, cajoled the negroes into voting for them, and soon had the government of these states under their control. These men were called Carpet-baggers. For it was said they packed all their belongings into a carpet bag. They had no possessions, no interests in the South.
There was, therefore, never a time when that class of white men known as Carpet-baggers had absolute control of the State Government, or that of any district, county or municipality, or any branch or department thereof.
The carpet-bag politicians promised them every one, for his vote, forty acres of land and a mule. They sed as how the northern government was a-going to give it to um; but the poor devils never got any thanks even for their votes. They had been stuffed with all sorts of notions by the carpet-baggers, and I don't blame um for putting on airs and trying to rule us. It's human natur, that's all.
The much abused carpet-baggers had put the spelling-book within reach of every child of school age in North Carolina, a fact which is often overlooked when the carpet-baggers are held up to public odium. Even the devil should have his due, and is not so black as he is painted.
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