Year: 1873




nothing do they display this weakness


more conspicuously. than in the capita
which they try to make out of the condition
OF South Carolina, Louisiana, and othe
southern states If you go to those states
you will find greater evidences of materia
development and thrift there than in Vir
ginia. But the complaint is Of their govern
ments. These, he admitted, were not all thai
they should be. The white people of those
states had refused to take the advice o
Governor Orr, who urged them to go into
the Republican party and secure
the management of public affairs. They
refused to accept the situation. They
refused to live up to their oaths OF
allegiance. They deliberately permitted
the control of public affairs to pass into
the hands of inexperienced negroes, who
would have taken their advice and ac-
cepted their guidance, if they had con-
sented, for the public good. to give it to
them. Governor Orr argued rightly,
that if only as many as fifty white men
in each county would join the Republican
party, the negroes would be glad to place
public affairs under their control. But he
insisted that their joining the Republican
party was an essential condition of the
confidence Of the negroes because it was
the party which had given the negroes
their freedom, their citizenship, and their
equal satues before the law, because it
was the party supporting the Union and
its government, and, as such, was the only
party which the negroes could be induced
or expected to join.


But the whites stubbornly refused, and
nothing was more natural than that the
inexperienced negro should fall into the
hands of vicious white men, Of whom none
were more corrupt and INSCRIPTIONS
than Warmoth, the Greeley governor of
Louisiana.


Aside from the irregularities which thus
resulted from the refusal of the whites
themselves to act the part of good citizens,
the condition Of the southern states would
compare very favorably with that OF
Virginia. In nothing do the Con-
servative speakers so egregiously mis-
lead the people than in their repre-
sentations of the financial condition
of the southern states. We happen to have
in Virginia an authentic document on the
subject, the accuracy of which our Con-
servative friends cannot dispute. 1t is a
statement of the debts of the states given
by Governor Walker in his last winters
message on the assumption of state debts
by the national government.


Governor Walker said of this statement
that early in January last | addressed
circular note to the cover nor of each state,
requesting statement Of the exact |
amount of its debt, the amount of its
sinking fund applicable to the reduction
of the debt, together with the |
amount and character of its contin-
gent liability. The above statement is
made up from the answers which have |
been received from most of the states, and |
extracts from the census of 1870, and other |
public documents"


Colonel Hughes thought, therefore, that
we had statement of the debts of the |
southern states which no Conservative
would question. lie then proceeded to re-
cite from Governor Walkers message the
several debts of these states, placing the
southern states in one class
ind the Republican southern states in the
other, as follows: