Judging Reconstruction governments: Dunning and Du Bois

“In the maladministration that brought ruin to the finances, inefficiency and corruption played about equal parts. The responsible higher officials were in many cases entirely honest, though pathetically stupid, in their schemes to promote the interests of their respective states. But the governments numbered in their personnel, on the other hand, a host of officers to whom place was merely an opportunity for plunder. The progressive depletion of the public treasuries was accompanied by great private prosperity among radical politicians of high and low degree. . . . Bribery became the indispensable adjunct of legislation, and fraud a common feature in the execution of the laws.”

[Radical: here, the Radical Republicans who controlled the Reconstruction state governments.]

“There is danger to-day that between the intense feeling of the South and the conciliatory spirit of the North grave injustice will be done the negro American in the history of Reconstruction. . . .

“In the midst of all these difficulties the negro governments in the South accomplished much of positive good. We may recognize three things which negro rule gave to the South:

“1. Democratic government.

“2. Free public schools.

“3. New social legislation.”

[Du Bois uses phrases common in his day, “negro governments” and “negro rule,” for the Reconstruction state governments that Black voters helped elect.]