r Union Reform candidate for register was 28,117.--_Ibid._]

CHAPTER XXII

GREELEY NOMINATED FOR PRESIDENT

1872

Although the Tammany exposure had absorbed public attention, the
Republican party did not escape serious criticism. Reconstruction had
disappointed many of its friends. By controlling the negro vote
Republican administrations in several Southern States had wrought
incalculable harm to the cause of free-government and equal suffrage.
The State debt of Alabama had increased from six millions in 1860 to
forty millions, that of Florida from two hundred thousand to fifteen
millions, and that of Georgia from three millions to forty-four
millions. "I say to-day, in the face of heaven and before all
mankind," declared Tilden, "that the carpet-bag governments are
infinitely worse than Tweed's government of the city of New
York."[1342]

[Footnote 1342: New York _Tribune_, September 5, 1872.]

Following such gross misgovernment the reactionary outbreaks
influenced Congress to pass the so-called Ku-Klux Act of April 20,
1871, designed to suppress these outrages. This measure, although not
dissimilar to others which protected the negro in his right of
suffrage, met with stout Republican opposition, the spirited debate
suddenly heralding a serious party division. Trumbull held it
unconstitutional, while Schurz, reviewing the wretched State
governments of the South, the venal officials who misled the negro,
and the riotous corruption of men in possession of great authority,
attacked the policy of the law as unwise and unsound.

Not less disturbing was the failure of Congress to grant universal
amnesty. To this more than to all other causes did the critics of the
Republican party ascribe the continuance of the animosities of the
war, since it deprived the South of the assistance of its former
leading men, and turned it over to inexperienced, and, in some
instances, to corrupt men who used political disabilities as so much
capital upon which to trade. The shocking brazenness of these methods
had been disclosed in Georgia under the administration of Governor
Bullock, who secured from Congress amnesty for his legislative friends
while others were excluded. Schurz declared "When universal suffrage
was granted to secure the equal rights of all, universal amnesty ought
to have been granted to make all the resources of political
intelligence and experience available for the promotion of the welfare
of all."[1343]