THE WORK OF COMMISSIONERS 113 
phase of the general misgovernment all over the 
South after 1868, that it was a logical outcome 
of the policy of the administration at Washing- 
ton, and he further showed that the bank officials 
were closely connected with the administration. 
Naturally this way of proving the responsibility 
of Congress did not appeal to the Republicans. 
Bradford further declared that “since the gov- 
ernment was organized no such stupendous fraud 
has ever existed under its protection.” It was not 
meant, he said, that there should be any branch 
banks, but the speculators wanted them for the 
purpose of draining the money from the South. 
They “went as missionaries all over the land and 
declared to the colored people of the southern 
country that this bank would take care of this 
fund for them and that its management and its 
solvency were guaranteed by the United States 
government.” Weak officials were chosen in 
order that others might use them as tools, and 
the bank had been treated as the carpetbaggers 
and the Federal administration had treated the 
entire country. 
Other southern congressmen seized the oppor- 
tunity to score the “friends of the Negro.” When 
in 1875 Durham of Kentucky was trying to have 
an act passed to relieve the depositors, he was 
opposed by such Republicans as Hawley of Con- 
necticut, who objected, on the ground of “sym- 
pathy for the Negro,” to any measure that would 
legislate Purvis, the Negro commissioner, out of 
office. Durham answered him thus: “These 
TL See Bradford’s speech in Cong. Record, April 22, 1876, pp. 2701-