Post-Reconstruction Justice in South Carolina: The Prosecution and Pardon of Francis Lewis Cardozo.

This paper will examine the 1877 corruption trial of Francis Lewis Cardozo, his resulting conviction, and his subsequent pardon. This study will seek to determine whether Cardozo was the conspiratorial thief convicted in 1877 of stealing $4,000 of state finds, or the incorruptible champion of "reform" Republicans who survived an 1875 attempt by corrupt legislators to remove him from office.
Early Twentieth-century historians fixed on the notion of the "prostrate state" assumed that all Republican office-holders in Reconstruction South Carolina, including Cardozo, were corrupt, lining their pockets with embezzled state funds. More recent historians with their sympathies on the side of pioneering black officeholders such as Cardozo have simply avoided the issue of corruption in Reconstruction governments by asserting that the American political culture of the era was one of corruption. bribery, and graft. Yet, no legal historian has ever examined Cardozo's trial to test the validity of the verdict; and no adequate assessment of Cardozo's legacy has been made. In this regard, the, Cardozo case presents a unique opportunity. Cardozo did not flee the state upon his indictment by the Redeemers as many of his former Republican colleagues did; nor did Cardozo plea bargain for immunity like many other former officials did. Instead, Cardozo proclaimed his innocence and stood trial, leaving the historian with a wealth of documents from which to assess the validity of the charges brought against Cardozo with a depth simply impossible with regard to those indicted officeholders who never entered a courtroom.
By examining the record of the "impeachment" effort brought against Cardozo the prosecutor's trial notes, the "diary" of the chief prosecution witness and other records of his corruption trial, and his pardon file, this paper will probe the various intersections between politics and justice in Reconstruction South Carolina and Redeemer South Carolina. Often bizarre, and continually shifting, these connections and disconnections between South Carolina's politicians and lawyers do not lend themselves to easy analysis. Conundrums abound, How and why was Cardozo, perhaps the most influential African-American in Reconstruction South Carolina, an impeachment target in 1875 by members of his own race and his own party? But after the Compromise of 1877, and the Redeemers took power, why would prominent white Democrat politicians who had supported Cardozo during his impeachment cut deals with the corruptionists of 1875 and demand Cardozo's conviction for corruption in 1877? Was Cardozo simply targeted because of his race or was it because he was the most powerful leader of his race and had to be eliminated? But then why was Cardozo pardoned in 1879 with the support of some of his chief adversaries when Cardozo's trial had been the centerpiece of the Redeemers' systematic prosecution of ex-Republican officials and his conviction one of their greatest victories? This paper will seek to answer these questions, and in the process examine the use or abuse by the Redeemers of the criminal justice system.