Monday, February 15, 2016

Reconstruction in South Carolina

 Voorhees

In 1872, Daniel W. Voorhees, a Congressman of Indiana, made a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives in which he described conditions in the South after the war, during the period (laughingly) known as “Reconstruction.”  He accused the United States government, under the control of the Republican Party, of plundering and slandering the conquered Southern states, sending “powerful missionaries of mischief in the form of committees, backed by the money and power of the government, whose labors are to blacken the character and fame of their people, under the guise of official investigations and reports.”

Speaking of South Carolina, “the once proud land of Marion and Sumter,” then under Carpetbagger (Republican) control, Voorhees, stated the following:
…South Carolina…now the most wretched state that the sun shines on in its course through the heavens.  There is no form of ruin to which she has not fallen a prey, no curse with which she has not been baptized, no cup of humiliation and suffering her people have not drained to the dregs.  I am told that disorder has reigned in some counties within her borders, and we behold martial law, worse than the lawless tyranny of the dark ages, ravaging her firesides and scattering her households. 

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