The judiciary was no better than the executive. The chief justice of Louisiana was convicted of fraud. A supreme court judge of South Carolina offered his decisions for sale, and Whipper and Moses, both notorious thieves, were elected judges by the South Carolina Legislature. 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. "Well, boss, I'se been sold 'leben times in my life and dis is de fust time I eber got de money." Godkin, in the "Nation", said that the Georgia officials were "probably as bad a lot of political tricksters and adventurers as ever got together in one place." This description will fit equally well the white officials of all the reconstructed states. Many of the Negroes who attained public office showed themselves apt pupils of their carpetbag masters but were seldom permitted to appropriate a large share of the plunder. In Florida the Negro members of the legislature, thinking that they should have a part of the bribe and loot money which their carpetbag masters were said to be receiving, went so far as to appoint what was known as a "smelling committee" to locate the good things and secure a share.