ome roads of which not a mile was ever built. The White River
Valley and Texas Railroad never came into existence, but it obtained
a grant of $175,000 from the State of Arkansas. Speaker Carter of the
Louisiana Legislature received a financial interest in all railroad
endorsement bills which he steered through the House. Negro members were
regularly bribed to vote for the bond steals. A witness swore that in
Louisiana it cost him $80,000 to get a railroad charter passed, but that
the Governor's signature cost more than the consent of the legislature.

When the roads defaulted on the payment of interest, as most of them
did, the burden fell upon the state. Not all of the blame for this
perverted legislation should be placed upon the corrupt legislators,
however, for the lawyers who saw the bills through were frequently
Southern Democrats representing supposedly respectable Northern
capitalists. The railroads as well as the taxpayers suffered from this
pernicious lobbying, for the companies were loaded with debts and rarely
profited by the loans. Valuation of railroad property rapidly decreased.
The roads of Alabama which were valued in 1871 at $26,000,000 had
decreased in 1875 to $9,500,000.

The foundation of radical power in the South lay in the alienation of
the races which had been accomplished between 1865 and 1868. To maintain
this unhappy distrust, the radical leaders found an effective means in
the Negro militia. Under the constitution of every reconstructed state,
a Negro constabulary was possible, but only in South Carolina, North
Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi were the authorities willing to
risk the dangers of arming the blacks. No governor dared permit the
Southern whites to organize as militia. In South Carolina the carpetbag
governor, Robert K. Scott, enrolled ninety-six thousand Negroes as
members of the militia and organized and armed twenty thousand of
them. The few white companies were ordered to disband. In Louisiana the
governor had a standing army of blacks called the Metropolitan Guard. In
several states the Negro militia was used as a constabulary and was sent
to any part of the state to make arrests.

In spite of this provocation there were, after the riots of 1866-67,
comparatively few race conflicts until reconstruction was drawing to
a close. The intervening period was filled with the more peaceful
activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Camellia. But as the
whites made up their m