In South Carolina and the Gulf States negro government had a clean sweep, and if we are to believe the records of the times, it was a period of corruption such as had never been known in the history of the country. The blacks having nothing to lose, were ready to vote to impose any tax, or to issue any bonds of town, country or State provided they had a share in the booty; and this negro government manipulated by the carpet baggers, ran riot over the South. It was chaos come again. The former masters were governed by their servants, while the latter were governed by a set of adventurers and plunderers. The history of these days is one which we cannot recall without indignation and shame. After a time the moral sense of the North was so shocked by their performances that a Republican administration had to withdraw its proconsuls, when things resumed their former condition and the management of affairs came back into the old hands. These national crimes which so woefully afflicted the people of the South after peace was made were: 1. The refusal to carry out Mr. Lincoln's cherished plan of reconstruction by immediate readmission of seceding States after an orderly and legal abolition of slavery. 2. The sudden emancipation of millions of African slaves. Gradual emancipation would have been so much better for their interests and for the welfare of the country. 3. The conferring of civil rights so early upon the freedmen. If they had not been made citizens they could have been colonized in due time and provided for, as the Indians have been, with land and homes. 4. Enfranchisement of these grossly ignorant Africans. 5. Disfranchisement of the best people of the South. 6. Arming the blacks and disarming the white people. 7. The un-American crime of uniting church and state and the employment of a religious society to carry out directly the schemes of a political faction. Jesus Christ never authorized any such work. He never gave the least authorization of any church machinery through which such a union could be effected. God wants the good lives of men, and not compact and imposing church organizations. They can be so easily perverted to unholy purposes and made so effective in destroying human liberty and crushing human rights. The union of church and state was the curse of the middle ages and the blight of modern Europe.