not amount to more than $250,000 for the four
years; we created a commission to sift that indebtedness and to scale it. Hence when the Democratic party came into power they found the floating debt covering the legislative and all other expenditures, fixed at the certain sum of $250,000. This same class of Negro legislators, led by the State Treasurer, Mr. F. L. Cardoza, knowing that there were millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the credit of the State, passed another act to ascertain the true bonded indebtedness and to provide for its settlement. Under this law, at one sweep, those entrusted with the
power to do so, through Negro legislators,
stamped six millions of bonds, denominated as
conversion bonds, ‘fraudulent.’ The commission
did not finish its work before 1876. In that year
when the Hampton government came into power,
there were still to be examined into and settled
under the terms of the act passed by us and providing for the legitimate bonded indebtedness of
the State, a little over two and a half million
dollars worth of bonds and coupons which had not
been passed upon.
Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wallace and in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned themselves under the provision enacted by us for the