And still one other element, mischievous in the extreme, must be added to the social complex--men who pursued no occupation, but preyed on black and white alike, as gamblers and tenth-rate politicians, drinking and swaggering at the bar, always armed with knife and revolver, shooting negroes now and then for excitement. This class was recruited, largely, from the descendants of the old overseer and negro-trader of ante-bellum days. With just enough education to enable them to dazzle the negro by a political harangue, they were both disliked and feared by the decent white people. According to the testimony of a Northern observer,[45] the first duty of the Republican leaders in Louisiana was “to hang them by the dozen.” And it was just because they were not crushed out, except so far as the respectable conservative could combat them, that Louisiana had to endure such a drawn-out purgatory before she was reconstructed. Economically the State presented no better view. Louisiana had suffered particularly from the war, as a part of her soil had been held by Federal troops through a great part of the conflict, and the plantations had been drained, in consequence, of a large part of their labor. Taxable property had been reduced almost two-thirds. The returning rebel found his plantation in the worst possible state of repair, or his title subject to dispute under the confiscation laws, while much had been seized by treasury agents or dishonest speculators. He turned, in the absence of capital, labor, currency, to the one thing he knew--the raising of cotton. Even here he had to adjust himself to a complete change of system from fixed, forced labor to payments at set times or planting on shares where he was at the mercy of his planter. It cannot be charged, on the whole, that the planter drove unjust bargains.[46] If the negro suffered, it was at the hands of the poor, small farmers, as ignorant as the negro himself. But a blighted crop in 1866 was followed the next year by an almost complete failure, while the Mississippi exacted the penalty of neglected, broken levees by a devastating flood. Only in 1868 did the planters obtain an average crop in the great staples. Grinding necessity, as well as the remorseless political ostracism, drove the better class into indifference to public concerns and engrossment in their private affairs. Moreover, ignorant, unprincipled legislation bred a certain temporary apathy even to their own interests. Already the finances of the State were in a sad condition. Back taxes were in arrears, possibly, as was charged, because the property owners were organized in opposition to the existing government,[47] but more probably because they were unable to pay. It did not help the situation that few filling State positions were tax-payers.[48] By January 19, 1869, only about one-tenth of the amount of the city taxes for the preceding year had been collected.[49]