potism enforced by bayonets. His valor is discretion; his industry perpetual strife; and his eloquence 'the parcel of a reckoning* of chances as he smells out a path which may lead from the White Hovfse to a custom house, a postoffice, the internal revenue bureau, or perchance, to either wing of the Federal capitol. His shibboleth is 'The Republican Party.' From that party he sprung as naturally as a maggot from putrefaction. Wherever two or three or four negroes are gathered together, he, like a leprous spot, is seen, and his cry, like the daughter of the horse leech, is always, Give, give me office. Without office he is nothing ; with office, he is a pest and public nuisance. Out of office he is a beggar; in office he grows rich till his eyes stick out with fatness. Out of office he is, hat in hand, the outside ornament of every negro's cabin, a plantation loafer and the nation's lazerone; in office he is an adept in 'addition, division and silence.' Out of office he is the orphan ward of the administration and the general sign-post of penury; in office he is the complaining suppliant for social equality with Southern gentlemen." (Norwood.) This is a splendid picture in general of the carpet-bagger during the days of reconstruction.
Alabama had become insolvent, and "Governor Lewis, Republican, said to the legislature that he could not sell for money any of the State bonds." The State debt had grown to the enormous sum of $25,500,000, besides county and city debts of vast sums. "Corruption marked the Republican management as its own. The scoundrel class was in office. Strife between whites and blacks still stirred up by Spencer and his henchmen. Immigration was prevented, emigration from the State by whites going steadily on. Capital shrank from the State into which it had corruptedly rushed a few years ago. For six years the State had been losing at all outlets." Such was Alabama. It was even worse in South Carolina, Louisiana and other States.
