It was an ominous day for America and a woeful day for the South, when, upon the enfranchisement of the negroes, the politicians in power and the fanatical Northern Methodist Episcopal Church organized and transplanted in the South the African Methodist Episcopal Church and employed it directly in manipulating the votes of the ignorant negroes. The great iron wheel controlling the whole machine was put into the hands of a political boss committee in Washington. Just within this was the wheel turned by an absolute bishop in each State. The most malignant of all the Southern negro politicians, Bishop H. M. Turner, had the control of the Georgia wheel and turns it to this day. Then came the smaller wheels, turned by the presiding elder in each Congressional district, enclosing the little wheels in the hands of the preachers and circuit riders and stewards. The ignorant negroes were wound tightly by the ropes into a solid mass, and voted like slaves by the officers of the new imported Northern church and the strikers of the Union League. It was enough to make a patriot despair of the country and a Christian to despair of religion to witness these scenes. It made the white people of the South get together in self-defence. It inevitably set race against race in politics. This slimy trail of this union of church and state has done sad work for the South and dangerous work for the whole country. The church iron wheel organized a solid mass of ignorant negro voters on one side of the Southern ballot box. This necessitated a "solid South" of white voters on the other side. 8. Demoralizing the negroes for generations by making them believe themselves to be special wards of the nation and holding out to them the delusive promise of "forty acres and a mule" as a pension for slavery and a reward for party loyalty. 9. Taking away by act of Congress, without a dollar of compensation, the slave property of orphans, widows and Union men, the property recognized by the Constitution of the government. 10. By force of bayonets keeping in the Southern high places of power the carpet-bag adventurer from the North and the irresponsible, unprincipled scalawag who had for the sake of office turned his back upon his native South. 11. Unlawful confiscation of Southern lands, much of it belonging to orphans and widows. 12. Enormous and unjust tax on cotton, at that time the only marketable product of the Southern farms. These were the woes which the "Reconstruction" measures of the Federal Congress made for our Southern people, a burden mountain-high, Ossa on Pelion, Pelion upon Ossa. But grimly, patiently, bravely did our men bear up under it. Political crimes always hurt the women more than the men. Our women stood by and cheered and comforted and helped as only such women can help through all the toil, the gloom and wrongs of those dark days. God bless their memories! BRAVE TO THE LAST [Eggleston's Recollections, pages 73-76.]