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 Washington,
 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 government
 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 opportunity
 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 Connecticut,
 who objected, on the ground of “sympathy
 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-