rought
in agriculture, business, and transportation by military operations. And
as if to fill the cup to the brim, the task of reconstruction was
committed to political leaders from another section of the country,
strangers to the life and traditions of the South.

THE SOUTH AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR

=A Ruling Class Disfranchised.=--As the sovereignty of the planters had
been the striking feature of the old regime, so their ruin was the
outstanding fact of the new. The situation was extraordinary. The
American Revolution was carried out by people experienced in the arts of
self-government, and at its close they were free to follow the general
course to which they had long been accustomed. The French Revolution
witnessed the overthrow of the clergy and the nobility; but middle
classes who took their places had been steadily rising in intelligence
and wealth.

The Southern Revolution was unlike either of these cataclysms. It was
not brought about by a social upheaval, but by an external crisis. It
did not enfranchise a class that sought and understood power, but
bondmen who had played no part in the struggle. Moreover it struck down
a class equipped to rule. The leading planters were almost to a man
excluded from state and federal offices, and the fourteenth amendment
was a bar to their return. All civil and military places under the
authority of the United States and of the states were closed to every
man who had taken an oath to support the Constitution as a member of
Congress, as a state legislator, or as a state or federal officer, and
afterward engaged in "insurrection or rebellion," or "given aid and
comfort to the enemies" of the United States. This sweeping provision,
supplemented by the reconstruction acts, laid under the ban most of the
talent, energy, and spirit of the South.

=The Condition of the State Governments.=--The legislative, executive,
and judicial branches of the state governments thus passed into the
control of former slaves, led principally by Northern adventurers or
Southern novices, known as "Scalawags." The result was a carnival of
waste, folly, and corruption. The "reconstruction" assembly of South
Carolina bought clocks at $480 apiece and chandeliers at $650. To
purchase land for former bondmen the sum of $800,000 was appropriated;
and swamps bought at seventy-five cents an acre were sold to the state
at five times the cost. In the years between 1868 and 1873, the debt of
the state rose