In Alabama there were many illiterate magistrates, among them the city judge of Selma, who in April 1865, was still living as a slave.

Governor Chamberlain, a radical, asserted that there were two hundred trial judges in South Carolina who could not read.
Other officers were of the same stripe.

Leslie, a South Carolina carpetbagger, declared that "South Carolina has no right to be a state unless she can support her statesmen," and he proceeded to live up to this principle.

The manager of the state railroad of Georgia, when asked how he had been able to accumulate twenty or thirty thousand dollars on a two or three thousand dollar salary, replied, "By the exercise of the most rigid economy." A North Carolina Negro legislator was found on one occasion chuckling as he counted some money.

"What are you laughing at, Uncle ?" he was asked.