Reconstruction
period. It may be that this much paraded extravagance amounts to more
than the fiction of distorted facts; but, in view of the audacious
corruption of the era which preceded it, and the gigantic peculations of
that which has followed, the financial profligacy of Reconstruction may
not have been so bad after all.

Replying to a characteristic speech of Senator Tillman delivered in the
recent South Carolina Constitutional Convention, in which he arraigned
the financial legislation of Reconstruction in that State Mr. Thomas E.
Miller, one of the six Negro members of the convention, said:

"The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling up
of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period
between 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice
eloquent enough, nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable
gifts bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro
legislators--the laws relative to finance, the building of penal
and charitable institutions, and, greatest of all, the
establishment of the public school system. Starting as infants in
legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not thought of, many
injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration of affairs
for the next four years, having learned by experience the result of
bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching every
department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These
enactments are today upon the statute books of South Carolina. They
stand as living witnesses of the Negro's fitness to vote and
legislate upon the rights of mankind.

"When we came into power town governments could lend the credit of
their respective towns to secure funds at any rate of interest that
the council saw fit to pay. Some of the towns paid as high as 20
per cent. We passed an act prohibiting town governments from
pledging the credit of their hamlets for money bearing a greater
rate of interest than 5 per cent.

"Up to 1874, inclusive, the State Treasurer had the power to pay
out State funds as he pleased. He could elect whether he would pay
out the funds on appropriations that would place the money in the
hands of the peculators, or would apply them to appropriations that
were honest and necessary. We saw the evil of this and passed an