THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 13 



Northern Republicans whose critical sense was not 

 entirely blinded by sectional prejudice and passion. 

 The keener-sighted of the Northerners began to 

 suspect that Reconstruction in the South often 

 amounted to little more than the looting of the 

 governments of the Southern States by the greedy 

 freedmen and the unscrupulous carpetbaggers, with 

 the troops of the United States standing by to 

 protect the looters. In 1871, under color of neces- 

 sity arising from the intimidation of voters in a few 

 sections of the South, Congress passed a stringent 

 act, empowering the President to suspend the writ 

 of habeas corpus and to use the military at any time 

 to suppress disturbances or attempts to intimidate 

 voters. This act, in the hands of radicals, gave 

 the carpetbag governments of the Southern States 

 practically unlimited powers. Any citizens who 

 worked against the existing administrations, how- 

 ever peacefully, might be charged with intimida- 

 tion of voters and prosecuted under the new act. 

 Thus these radical governments were made practi- 

 cally self-perpetuating. When their corruption, 

 wastefulness, and inefficiency became evident, 

 many people in the North frankly condemned them 

 and the Federal Government which continued to 

 support them. 



