. The prompt payment of
interest on the reduced indebtedness has done much to restore the credit
of the South, and the bonds of some States now sell above par.

Extravagance had helped to overthrow the carpetbag regime. The new
governments were necessarily forced to be economical. Expenditures of
all kinds were lessened. Government was reduced to its lowest terms, and
the salaries of state officers were fixed at ridiculously small figures.
Inadequate school taxes were levied; the asylums for the insane, though
kept alive, could not take care of all who should have been admitted;
appropriations for higher education, if made at all, were small; there
was little or no social legislation. The politicians taught the people
that low taxes were the greatest possible good and, when prosperity
began to return and a heavier burden of taxation might easily have been
borne, the belief that the efficiency of a government was measured by
its parsimony had become a fixed idea. There was little scandal
anywhere. No governments in American history have been conducted with
more economy and more fidelity than the governments of the Southern
States during the first years after the Reconstruction period. A few
treasurers defaulted, but in most cases their difficulties rose from
financial incompetence rather than from dishonesty, for a good soldier
did not necessarily make a good treasurer. Few fortunes were founded on
state contracts. The public buildings erected were honestly built and
were often completed within the limits of the original appropriations.
So small an amount was allowed that there would have been little to
steal, even had the inclination been present.

The decline in the prices of agricultural products after 1875 made
living harder. The Greenback agitation[1] found some followers, and in a
few scattered rural districts Greenbackers or Greenback Democrats were
nominated. In a few districts the white men ventured to run two tickets,
and in a few cases the Greenback candidate won. This activity was a
precursor of the agrarian revolt which later divided the South. There were
also some Republican tickets with qualifying words intended to catch votes,
but they had little success. Some strong men were sent to Congress, a very
large proportion of whom had seen service in the Confederate army. Their
presence aroused many sneers at "rebel brigadiers" and an immense amount
of "bloody shirt" oratory. They accomplished little for their