Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1868

By Ella Lonn

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Title: Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1868

Author: Ella Lonn

Release date: January 23, 2025 [eBook #75190]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918

Credits: Carla Foust and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECONSTRUCTION IN LOUISIANA AFTER 1868 ***





  UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

  RECONSTRUCTION IN LOUISIANA
  AFTER 1868

  BY
  ELLA LONN

  A THESIS
  PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN
  PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
  THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1918




  COPYRIGHT, 1918
  BY
  ELLA LONN


  The Knickerbocker Press, New York




Reconstruction in Louisiana




CHAPTER I

A Brief Resumé of Reconstruction in Louisiana before 1869


By January 1, 1869, Louisiana had suffered the throes of reconstruction
for seven weary years, but the hostile fates had decreed for her
more than another seven before she should be able to wrench herself
free from the grasp of her colored and carpet-bag despots. The first
uncertain attempts at reconstruction were made at the close of 1862 by
Governor Shepley with the consent of Lincoln. The President’s policy
was based upon the belief that there existed in every Southern State
a loyal element which might be made to prove the germ of a civil
government owning allegiance to Washington. In the course of that
year, as the North gained a foothold, he had appointed General Shepley
military governor, whose duty it was to resurrect the loyal element
among the people. Thanks to the vigorous grip over New Orleans of
Generals Butler and Banks, a considerable body, stronger in numbers
than social prestige, became firmly wedded to the Union cause. The old
Douglas men sprang into evidence at Butler’s arrival on the scene;
members of the Irish Unionists came out strongly; while still others
were won by the favors distributed with an eye to political gain.
General Shepley ordered an election on December 3 for two Congressmen.
The successful candidates proved to be B. F. Flanders and Michael
Hahn, both of whom were allowed to take their seats in the National
legislature.

There appeared a certain group of men eager to push on the work of
reorganization, either for the plums of office, or, on the part of the
old slave-holders, for the sake of saving a portion of their slaves,
or for the sake of casting off martial law. This group, the Free State
Party, working through the Union Clubs, urged on in 1863 a registration
and convention to frame a new constitution. But it made such slow
progress that Lincoln developed his famous “Ten Per Cent” plan by
his proclamation of December 8, 1863, which offered pardon and the
restoration of property to all who would take a prescribed oath; and
declared that the President would recognize as the true government of
any of the seceded States, except Virginia, the organizations set up by
loyal citizens, provided that they constituted one-tenth of the voting
population of 1860.[1]

General Banks, in accordance with this plan, ordered an election
of State officers for February 22, 1864. Hahn, the successful
administration candidate, was inaugurated on March 4. About ten days
later he was invested with the “powers exercised before by the military
governor.” It is of importance to note that as early as this campaign
the issue in the radical party was the treatment of the negroes
after emancipation. Delegates to a constitutional convention were
subsequently chosen and April 6, ninety-four[2] of the men elected
met in New Orleans, a fair set of men, but already showing a tendency
toward that extravagance which was later to be such a blot upon
reconstruction. The convention abolished slavery,[3] but restricted
suffrage to white males, although it empowered the legislature to
confer it on “such persons, citizens of the United States, as by
military service, by taxation to support the government, or by
intellectual fitness may be deemed entitled thereto.”[4] A constitution
was adopted and submitted to the people, but only 8402 votes were cast
in ratification as compared with 11,411[5] in the election of Hahn. The
new legislature provided for met October 3, elected two Senators, and
adopted the Thirteenth Amendment unanimously. Although this government
was duly recognized by the President and its ratification of the
Amendment gladly counted to help embody it in the organic law, its
authority was restricted to a very narrow limit--that actually within
the Union military lines[6]--and neither branch of Congress admitted
the members chosen by the new government, while the Presidential vote
of 1865 was rejected.

The legislature of 1865, fully representative of the State, and
just as fully Democratic, met in extra session to elect two new
Senators in case the two elected previously be rejected as not
truly representative. With these two Senators, Henry Clay Warmoth
presented himself at Washington as territorial delegate of the radical
Republicans of the State,[7] his expenses defrayed by his negro
constituents, who joyfully deposited their half-dollars with their
first ballots to pay the expenses of their impecunious delegate.[8]

Some thirty or more of the members of the convention of 1864 were so
angered at seeing the offices of the State passing to the ex-rebels
that, with the consent of the governor and a judge of the Supreme
Court, they began to meet and plan how they could evict them. Before
adjourning, the convention of 1864 had decreed that it might be
reconvoked at the call of the President “for any cause, or in case the
constitution should not be ratified, for the purpose of taking such
measures as may be necessary for the formation of a civil government
for the State of Louisiana.” This resolution, however, had not been
incorporated in the constitution and had never been passed upon by the
people.[9]

The opponents of negro suffrage denied the right of the convention to
resume its functions and the controversy over the matter became very
fierce. July 30, 1866, the delegates who favored reassembling proceeded
to do so, according to call in New Orleans. A street procession of
negroes, on their way to the hall, became involved in a serious fight
with the police and crowds of white spectators. The number killed
and injured amounted to about two hundred and the fact stood out
conspicuously that of this number only about a dozen were policemen
or their white allies. The North and, more especially, Congress was
forced by this episode, together with the rejection of the Fourteenth
Amendment[10] and the passage throughout the South of the “Black
Codes,” to the conclusion that the colored people were not safe in the
hands of their former masters.

Hence, the Congressional plan of reconstruction, long brewing,[11] was
forced on the South in the Acts of March 2, 1867, which reëstablished
military rule and provided an entire new organization of government
through a convention, elected by negro as well as white vote, and
a new constitution, which should be acceptable to Congress[12]; in
the Supplementary Act of March 23 which placed the initiative in the
hands of the military instead of the State[13]; and the additional
Act of July 19 which substituted for the liberal interpretation
of the earlier acts by civil officials the most rigorous possible
and stripped the Executive of the power of determining removals by
explicitly conferring certain powers of appointment and removal on the
general of the army.[14] Louisiana and Texas constituted one military
department, placed first under the direction of General Sheridan,
and in August under General Hancock. Under these two commanders
registration was pushed on so as to record as many blacks and as few
whites as possible. In September a convention of ninety-eight members
was elected, consisting by previous agreement of blacks and whites in
equal numbers, all but two, Republicans. The body sat in daily session
from November 23 to March 9, ostensibly to frame the new constitution,
but, because of the lack of a revenue, constituting itself also a
legislative body. The constitution framed by it was the most severe in
its disfranchising clauses of any in the South.

It was quietly ratified April 16 and 17, 1868, and State officers
chosen. H. C. Warmoth was elected governor and the mulatto, O. J.
Dunn, lieutenant-governor. The military governor was removed and the
governor-elect placed in power at once although his formal inauguration
did not occur until July 13, 1868. The first legislature of the new
régime, in which a sweeping radical victory against the unorganized,
disheartened conservatives had seated a strong Republican majority,
was in session from June 29 to October 20. The ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment by this body opened the door of re-admission to
the Union so that by the act of June 25, 1868, Louisiana was once more
empowered to send W. P. Kellogg and J. B. Harris to occupy the seats
in the Senate vacated defiantly seven years before by John Slidell and
J. P. Benjamin. By July 18, five Representatives had been seated in
the House, including the first colored person to present himself for
admission to Congress; and reconstruction would seem to be a matter of
history.[15]

But the military was not withdrawn, for Louisiana and Arkansas were
created into the Department of Louisiana under General Rousseau. Troops
were so stationed at different points throughout these States that
they could be called upon to coöperate with the State authorities to
preserve the peace and to sustain the new governments.

The Presidential election of the fall of that year once more centered
attention on the State by an undesired and wholly unexpected victory
for Seymour and Blair, and still more by the disorders and outrages
on the negroes.[16] Congress was not allowed to forget that it had a
right to a directing influence in the matter through committees of
investigation and decisions on disputed elections to its own body.[17]

At the beginning of the year 1869 carpet-bag government was in full
swing and the picture of the situation in the State is not a bright one.

The political condition might well have caused an aristocratic
Louisianian to withdraw himself from the contamination of politics
with a shudder of despair: a carpet-bagger the recipient of the first
honor in the gift of the State, and a negro house-painter of the
second. Warmoth, young, handsome, and magnetic,[18] was a native of
Illinois, who had entered the army from Missouri. He had had trouble
with General Grant after the battle of Vicksburg; was charged with
circulating exaggerated reports of the Union losses while on parole
North, was dismissed from the service by Grant, but restored to his
command by Lincoln, evidence having shown his dismissal to be unjust.
He retired from the army in 1865, went to Texas, where he was indicted
for embezzlement and for appropriating government cotton. But when
the case was called, no prosecutor appeared and the prosecution was
abandoned. He returned to Louisiana and before reconstruction was sent
as a delegate to Congress as narrated above. He was at this time only
twenty-six years old, apparently at the height of his powers, social
and political, for even his foes admitted the dignity of his appearance
and the charm of his manners and conversation.

The balance of parties in 1868 stood twenty Republicans to sixteen
Democrats in the Senate, fifty-six to forty-five in the House.[19]
White members had been almost entirely supervisors of registration.
Warmoth had selected for this office in the parishes a large number of
men left in New Orleans as flotsam after the war. They had so impressed
the negroes that they were returned to the legislature or were
mysteriously counted in by the returning-board.[20] Almost one-half
of the House were negroes, while there were at least seven sable-hued
Senators.[21] The lower State and parish offices were given over
largely to negroes and scalawags, not always chosen by the governor
with wisdom.[22]

The comment of one of the New Orleans papers is suggestive of the
sentiment of the people toward their legislature. Speaking of the
revenue bill of 1869 it said:

  It was the work of the lowest and most corrupt body of men ever
  assembled in the South. It was the work of ignorant negroes[23]
  coöperating with a gang of white adventurers, strangers to our
  interests and our sentiments. It was originated by carpet-baggers and
  was carried through by such arguments as are printed on green-backed
  paper. It was one of the long catalogs of schemes of corruption which
  makes up the whole history of that iniquitous Radical Conclave.[24]

Or note the _Crescent_: “The troupe which is now playing a sixty-day
engagement at the corner of Royal and Conti streets,[25] which appears
daily in the farce of ‘How to be a Legislature,’ a day or two since
introduced among themselves a bill...”[26] And that paper printed later
daily the following unique “ad,” “Go at once to the St. Louis Rotunda
to see the astounding curiosity &.”

No less important to the State than its own political condition was
the attitude of the National government. The defeat of the Republican
party in the South in the fall election was like a dash of cold water.
To an indifference or even a desire to be rid of the whole subject of
reconstruction, which had characterized Congress in the fall of 1868,
succeeded a resolute purpose to take advantage of every opportunity
to gain an effective and permanent control for the Republican party.
Even the law passed during the session of 1868-9, which provided that
equal eligibility to office should inhere in those who had had their
disabilities removed by Congress and had taken the oath to support the
constitution in the act of July 11, 1868, was only a party measure to
win more firmly the scalawags,[27] as the list of pardons reveals the
fact that most had become Republicans.[28] Grant’s attitude was of
importance to a degree that Johnson’s was not, for he came into office
early in 1869, a popular and trusted executive, who would be free, to a
large extent, to direct the policy of the government in the South. But,
unfortunately for Louisiana, a brother-in-law, J. F. Casey, was soon
put in charge of the port there and so completely won Grant’s ear that
the latter approached Louisiana problems with a bias. Friction between
the State and National authorities was bound to come, for already at
the opening of 1869 the radicals had lost the respect of the army, and
recrimination was passing back and forth between the military commander
and the executive of the State.[29]

Socially, the problem was largely a race question, though the
bitterness of feeling toward her conquerors and contempt of
carpet-bagger and scalawag enter to complicate the matter. The
intensity of her bitterness toward the North found expression in such
paragraphs as the following:

  The black and bloody chapter of American subjugation reads so much
  like the scenes of the Netherlands and the Palatinate that it cannot
  claim even the vile merit of distinguished infamy. Let it be blotted
  out and closed. Let the American government publish and execute this
  amnesty in good faith. Let them seek new fields of glory and cease to
  promote men merely because they have distinguished themselves by the
  slaughter of Americans or by laying waste the regions that Americans
  have planted.[30]

In moments of calmness appeals to the better sentiment of the North
are heard, coupled with promises that a spirit of conciliation would
be seconded by the masses of the South, which were prepared to accept
all necessary and reasonable conditions imposed by the result of the
war.[31]

Their particular spleen was vented now vindictively, now humorously,
on the carpet-baggers: “Only call off the carpet-baggers and you
are welcome to substitute an army of hand-organists in their stead.
No sounds can punish our nerves, our patience, and our tympanums so
much as the ‘base bawl’ of carpet-baggers.”[32] The host of traders,
capitalists, and adventurers, who had come down during and just after
the war to seek a new field for investment in the conquered country,
were, naturally, regarded more or less as harpies. The number was
formidable, for already by the fall of 1866, between five and ten
thousand Union soldiers had settled in the State.[33] The exasperating
feature was that they immediately undertook to run the government for
the natives, securing office through negro votes.[34] Capital, energy,
and talents were desired, but not men to tend to their politics.[35]

Two great facts are to be remembered in the negro question in
Louisiana. In the first place the negroes were in a slight majority.
After the war the Southerner saw his former slaves avoiding him,
careless, insolent, acquiring habits of vagrancy, manifesting little
fear in indulging their propensity for theft, believing that under the
guidance of disinterested councillors, they would soon become landed
proprietors without labor, scholars without study, and the social
equals of their former masters. For so many years the fear of a servile
insurrection had hung over him that he instinctively tried to erect a
defense against it. The officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau had also
helped to complicate the situation. For the most part, indiscreet army
officers, often bent on their own fortunes, the directors managed
the work in such an inefficient manner that the planters found it an
intolerable nuisance. In the general demoralization of labor, the
Southerner turned in despair to the legislature for relief and its
impolitic response was the so-called “Black Codes,” which subjected
the negro to oppressive restrictions not imposed upon the whites and
smacked strongly of the slave codes. But it is to be remembered that
the extremely rigorous code of this State was passed before the dreaded
holidays of 1865-6 when the negroes were confidently expecting Uncle
Sam’s gift of “forty acres and a mule.”[36] In the second place, the
Gulf States had an element of especially vicious negroes, due to the
fact that before the war criminals for offenses less than murder were
traditionally sold “South.” There were also more free colored persons
in Louisiana than in all the other Southern States, negroes who were
likely to have developed some leadership and initiative,[37] but were
on the average less intelligent than in most of the former slave
States.[38]

Every effort was made by the radicals to encourage the negro to claim
full equality with the whites, political and social, until by 1868
they were demanding not only the franchise, but mixed schools, a share
in public affairs and even social rights. The Southerner, as has been
said so many times, did not hate the negro, but he did not believe
that he could rise in the scale of civilization. He felt that most of
the negroes had not sufficient intelligence to desire the franchise,
and hence that it was superimposed upon him. Nordhoff declares that
“without whites to organize the colored vote--which means to mass it,
to excite it, to gather the voters at barbacues, to carry them up
with a hurra to the polls, to make ‘bolting’ terrible, to appeal to
the fears of the ignorant and the cupidity of the shrewd; without all
this the negro will not vote.” And it was a well-known fact that the
“organizers”[39] were Federal officers with little else to do. And,
in addition, the campaigns did interfere with the work rendered. The
following passage from Nordhoff, the words of the bitterest Democrat he
met in the State, shows how direct this was: “And they work just about
as well (as in slavery), except when some accursed politician comes
up from New Orleans with a brass band, and sends word, as was done
last fall, that General Butler had ordered them all to turn out to a
political meeting.”[40]

Nowhere, perhaps, is this sentiment more accurately reflected than in
a speech of Senator Ogden’s in the State Assembly: “Do you not know
as well as I that all the disgust, all the anger and bitterness that
arose between these different political factions was engendered by the
ill voices of certain politicians, who haranguing the ignorant and
superstitious, in private and in public, poured into their ears voices
as poisonous as nightshade.”[41]

Negro suffrage was the burning question, and they were not reconciled,
even after it had become a fact, even when they consented, as they
did in the fall of 1868, to use the negro vote. But valiantly did the
Democratic party in that election turn to win them; helped them to form
clubs, promised protection, and offered to give Democratic negroes the
preference in employment, enlisted negro orators; and often had them
speak from the same platform as white Democrats. Yet all this was but
for the purpose of securing white ascendency, for it was in this very
year that the Knights of the White Camelia became perfected into a
Federal organization, pledged to secure white supremacy, and to prevent
political power from passing to the negro. The negro franchise might be
a fact, but, if organized effort could prevent it, negro office-holding
should not.[42] The Southerner felt that the last scourge of defeat,
Congressional reconstruction, was founded on falsehood and malice.
He declared that the reports concerning outrages on negroes had been
distorted and exaggerated. The only purpose he could see in the zeal
to put the ballot in the hands of men too ignorant to use it without
direction was to prolong party power.

This hostility to the negro vote led to ingenious modes of reasoning
to evade the results of the polls. On the eve of the assembling of the
legislature of 1869 one of the city papers suggested that a certain
negro Senator had been rendered ineligible by the adoption of a new
registry law. As his ballot had been the casting vote which seated
another negro, the latter held his seat illegally, and the article
closes with the pertinent query whether laws made by such legislators
would have any validity.[43]

Another factor in the social problem, unique to the South, was not
absent from Louisiana--the numerous “poor whites” in the northern part
of the State. Living close to the subsistence line on the thin soil
of the pine hills back of the bottom lands, without schools, with
but few churches, given to rude sports and crude methods of farming,
their ignorance and prejudice bred in them after the emancipation of
the negro a dread of sinking to the social level of the blacks. The
dread, in turn, bred hatred, and it was from this class, instigated
very probably by the class above them, that the Colfax and Coushatta
murders[44] took their unfortunate rise.

And still one other element, mischievous in the extreme, must be added
to the social complex--men who pursued no occupation, but preyed on
black and white alike, as gamblers and tenth-rate politicians, drinking
and swaggering at the bar, always armed with knife and revolver,
shooting negroes now and then for excitement. This class was recruited,
largely, from the descendants of the old overseer and negro-trader of
ante-bellum days. With just enough education to enable them to dazzle
the negro by a political harangue, they were both disliked and feared
by the decent white people. According to the testimony of a Northern
observer,[45] the first duty of the Republican leaders in Louisiana
was “to hang them by the dozen.” And it was just because they were not
crushed out, except so far as the respectable conservative could combat
them, that Louisiana had to endure such a drawn-out purgatory before
she was reconstructed.

Economically the State presented no better view. Louisiana had
suffered particularly from the war, as a part of her soil had been
held by Federal troops through a great part of the conflict, and the
plantations had been drained, in consequence, of a large part of
their labor. Taxable property had been reduced almost two-thirds. The
returning rebel found his plantation in the worst possible state of
repair, or his title subject to dispute under the confiscation laws,
while much had been seized by treasury agents or dishonest speculators.
He turned, in the absence of capital, labor, currency, to the one thing
he knew--the raising of cotton. Even here he had to adjust himself to a
complete change of system from fixed, forced labor to payments at set
times or planting on shares where he was at the mercy of his planter.
It cannot be charged, on the whole, that the planter drove unjust
bargains.[46] If the negro suffered, it was at the hands of the poor,
small farmers, as ignorant as the negro himself. But a blighted crop in
1866 was followed the next year by an almost complete failure, while
the Mississippi exacted the penalty of neglected, broken levees by a
devastating flood. Only in 1868 did the planters obtain an average crop
in the great staples. Grinding necessity, as well as the remorseless
political ostracism, drove the better class into indifference to public
concerns and engrossment in their private affairs. Moreover, ignorant,
unprincipled legislation bred a certain temporary apathy even to their
own interests.

Already the finances of the State were in a sad condition. Back taxes
were in arrears, possibly, as was charged, because the property owners
were organized in opposition to the existing government,[47] but more
probably because they were unable to pay. It did not help the situation
that few filling State positions were tax-payers.[48] By January 19,
1869, only about one-tenth of the amount of the city taxes for the
preceding year had been collected.[49]

Inability to get in the taxes, resulted, naturally, in inability on the
part of the State to meet its obligations. It had been found necessary
in September, 1868, to levy a special one per cent tax to provide
for the payment of the past due coupons on the bonds of the State,
outstanding warrants, certificates of indebtedness, and convention
warrants.[50] It was not even able to pay the interest on current debts
and so it was necessary for the legislature early in 1869 to empower
the governor and treasurer to negotiate a loan to meet such approaching
obligations.[51] Of course, credit had suffered in consequence until by
October, 1868, bonds were selling in the market at forty-seven cents on
the dollar. Certain levee bonds had sunk so low at one time as to be
sold for thirty and even twenty-five cents.[52] A motion offered in the
House in the session of 1869 that not less than fifty cents be accepted
is sufficiently illuminating.[53] Many State officials were paid by
warrants and suffered, except where the Assembly favored the recipient,
as in the case of the executive and its own members, the loss of the
difference between their face value and the market value.

Loans were negotiated only with the greatest difficulty and on
exceedingly hard terms. On November 1, 1868, the interest on
$2,000,000 of levee bonds was to fall due without means to meet it.
Hence, a new loan of $100,000 was necessary, but it was secured
only for the short period of ninety days at seven per cent with the
privilege of the purchase of one hundred of these bonds at sixty
cents by the loaner. At about the same time a commission was sent to
New York to sell 1300 State bonds. They found a general distrust of
all Southern securities, but especially of those of Louisiana. Its
bonds were not quoted on the stock exchange, and the only offer on
the street was of a lot at fifty-two cents which found no buyers. The
commission at last had to accept fifty-one and one quarter cents and,
as a preliminary condition, had to agree that provision should be made
for the payment of interest on all bonds due in January and February of
1869.[54] Naturally, such loans were secured only at great additional
expense. The ninety-day loan cost over $3700, while the sale of the
3100 bonds mounted up to $2213, $1000 of which went to pay the cost of
the trip of the three commissioners.[55] The necessity of paying by
warrant involved a loss to the State not only directly,[56] but in the
depression of State credit.

An attitude of extravagance and corruption was already becoming
apparent in the State administration. The Senate at the close of its
session in 1868 authorized twelve committees to sit between sessions.
Practically every Senator sat on some committee and each member drew
pay for twenty-six days, amounting to $34,620.40 besides $15,000 for
clerks.[57] One committee alone drew between $16,000 and $17,000. Money
was doubly squandered by one committee, which drew pay for its time and
pay for witnesses who were never examined.[58] And one clerk is quoted
as having had time to serve on three committees and drawing warrants
for four.[59] But this corruption did not come to light until the
Assembly had entered upon its labors of 1869.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Richardson, _Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, VI.,
214.

[2] Ficklen’s _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_, states
that the highest number on the roll at any time was ninety-eight, 68.

[3] By a vote of 72:13. Ficklen, 70.

[4] Lincoln’s plan. See letter of March 13, 1864, to Hahn,
Nicolay-Hay, VIII., 434.

[5] Rhodes and Ficklen differ slightly in their numbers.
Rhodes depends upon Sen. Exe. Doc., 38 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 91, 4.

[6] Within the Union lines was about one-third the area of
the State, according to the census of 1860, and two-thirds of the
population.

[7] Already Thaddeus Stevens had devised and won followers
for his territorial scheme of reconstruction. For a full statement see
Rhodes, United States, V., 551.

[8] Ficklen regards this story as well-substantiated (113),
though Warmoth himself stated that he received the money to defray his
expenses from the Executive Committee. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 211, 350. The writer has not regarded this as within her
investigation.

[9] Debates of the Convention, 1864, 623. Illegal also was
the effort of the mayor to suppress the convention. See Cox, _Three
Decades_, 430-2.

[10] Blaine regarded this as the “original mistake” of the
South. Suffrage would have then followed as a necessity and boon to the
South. Blaine, _Twenty Years_, II., 474-5.

[11] The Congressional Committee reported the plan as early as
April 30, 1866. _Globe_, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., 2286.

[12] Statutes at Large, XIV., 428. The essential sections, 3
and 4, were later held unconstitutional. Cases of U. S. _vs._ Reese, 92
U. S., 214, and U. S. _vs._ Cruikshank, 92 U. S., 554.

[13] United States Statutes at Large, XV., 2.

[14] _Ibid._, 14. This act was drafted by Stanton. Gorham,
_Stanton_, II., 373.

[15] _Globe_, 40 Cong., 2 Sess., 4216.

[16] For a full account of the early period of reconstruction
in this State see Ficklen, _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_.
As evidence that election disorders were not wholly a result of
reconstruction, it might not be amiss to call attention to the
governor’s valedictory message of 1856. Society in Louisiana before
the war, while polite and even more--brilliant, had been far from
law-abiding with its frequent encounters under the duelling oaks, the
Plaquemines frauds of 1844, and the riot of 1855. See Gayarré, IV.,
679.

[17] For an account of the conflicting testimony on these
outrages see House Misc., Doc., 41 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 13.

[18] Based on House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 24-5.
See also _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_. Carpenter’s
sketch of him to the Senate may be quoted: “There is in Louisiana a
very remarkable young man, dignified in mien, of elegant presence,
and agreeable conversation; a man full of resources, political and
social,--gallant, daring, and with a genius for politics; such a man
as would rise to power in any great civil disturbance, embodying in
himself the elements of revolution, and delighting in the exercise of
his natural gifts in the midst of political excitement.” _Globe_, 42
Cong., 3 Sess., Appendix, 200.

[19] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1868, 434.

[20] Nordhoff tells of the rise of a young New Yorker who
returned from acting as supervisor in an up-country parish to present
returns which proved him the unanimous choice of that parish. Though
not the nominee, two years later, his name appeared, strangely enough,
on the tickets and, although not elected, the returning-board seated
him. Nordhoff, _The Cotton States_, 48.

[21] The writer has been unable to get exact figures. The
_Commercial Bulletin_ of Feb. 22, 1869, enumerates seven Senators;
while a negro in debate stated that there were forty-two of his
brethren in the House. House Deb., 1870, 281.

[22] A negro Justice of the Peace issued a warrant which is a
rare curiosity for bad spelling and grammar: “This is to cite, fy that
i. the underseind, Justis. of. the. Peace O Pint. and in Pour. John. A.
Stars. to. A-rest the Body. of Henre Evens and Bring. Hit, be four, me
John Fields.” Copied from _St. Mary’s Banner_, a parish paper.

[23] It was not uncommon for a legislator to sign his name
with a mark.--_Crescent_, Jan. 13, 1869.

[24] New Orleans, _Commercial Bulletin_, Nov. 17, 1869.

[25] At this time the legislature was convening in the Banque
de la Louisiane.

[26] Jan. 13, 1869.

[27] The scalawag was the war-time Unionist or reconstructed
rebel who had ceased opposing Congress. A negro preacher defines
the difference between a carpet-bagger and scalawag as follows: “A
carpet-bagger came down here from some place and stole enough to
fill his carpet-bag, but the scalawag was a man who knew the woods
and swamps better than the carpet-bagger did, and he stole the
carpet-bagger’s carpet-bag and ran off with it.” House Misc. Doc., 42
Congress, 2 Sess., No. 211, 478.

[28] The writer did not find this especially true of
Louisiana, but of the South generally.

[29] “Apparently the Radical authorities have lost the
confidence and respect of the army. We do not think that writing to
Washington letters of complaint is exactly the way to regain it.”--New
Orleans, _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 21, 1869.

[30] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 6, 1869. For a
similar expression of feeling, _Times_, May 9, 1875.

[31] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 14, 1869. “Wise
liberality on the part of the northern people and of the government
that ought to represent them would certainly be followed by strict and
willing acquiescence.... We ought to prove by our demeanor toward those
who come among us to buy our vacant lands ... that they are welcome and
that liberal legislation will not be wasted upon us.”

[32] _Ibid._, Sept. 25, 1869.

[33] Ficklen gives this number, _History of Reconstruction in
Louisiana_, 176.

[34] It might be noted that the following officers who figure
conspicuously in the pages of this account were carpet-baggers:
Warmoth, Kellogg, ‘, McMillan, Dewees, Jacques, who will figure in the
frauds of ’72, Speaker Carr, Campbell, Packard, Dibble; 3-5000 settled
in New Orleans, proportionally less in the parishes.

[35] See _Times_, May 9, 1875. From the evidence I have met,
I do not believe the feeling against them was so hostile as it became
a little later when the South was determined to drive them out. Blaine
makes a real point when he says, “Northern men recalled in an offensive
manner the power that had overcome and, as they thought, humiliated
them,--recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new
order of things.” Blaine, II., 472.

[36] Nordhoff tells of a negro in St. Mary’s parish who still
in 1875 was retaining a mule halter he had purchased in anticipation of
Uncle Sam’s gift, 49.

[37] It does not seem to me that Vice-President Wilson’s
argument that the experiment of negro self-government would therefore
have the greatest chance of success (_Times_, Aug. 21, 1876) here is
necessarily true. It would rather turn upon whether the leadership they
would assert were vicious or not.

[38] Due partly to the fact that they came from the large
plantations where the civilizing contact with the white race was
reduced to a minimum.

[39] A person sent into country parishes some months before
election to gather up the colored vote; to hold meetings, to instruct
the local leaders, mostly preachers and teachers, and to organize the
party. Nordhoff, 67. As late as Dec., 1874, a leading negro replied to
the query concerning his vote, that “they had not got the word yet.”
House Rpts., 43 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 101, 89. Pinchback understood such
organization and that gave him his strength. _Ibid._, 67.

[40] Nordhoff, 56.

[41] Sen. Deb., 1870, 218.

[42] Note the frank reply of a lawyer to a negro politician:
“I stand ready, as far as in me lies, to protect them in their rights
as citizens. Here my friendship stops; I am not their friend when
it comes to official life. The colored man has just been redeemed
from slavery, and in his new character he is unfit for office. It
is an insult and outrage to place him over the white people as an
office-holder.” Granting that slavery was wrong, that did not prove
“that you should be put into office to run the government before your
people have learned anything about the laws.” Sen. Rpts., 44 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 701, xxxv.

[43] _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 4, 1869.

[44] See, this volume, Chapters XI. and XII.

[45] Nordhoff, 18.

[46] It was Nordhoff’s opinion in 1875 that few laborers as
ignorant as the average plantation hand could do as well anywhere else
in the world, 21. Nordhoff was a young German immigrant who visited
Louisiana as reporter for the New York _Herald_, and published his
impressions after an investigation which bears every mark of care and
fairness. One can scarcely accuse him of Southern bias when one reads:
“I have been opposed to slavery ever since I sat on my father’s knee
and was taught by him that slavery was the greatest possible wrong,”
49.

[47] Such a charge was made by a member in the House.

[48] Herbert says that ten paid taxes, _Why the Solid South_,
401.

[49] _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 19, 1869.

[50] Laws of Louisiana, 1868, No. 114.

[51] _Ibid._, 1869, No. 48.

[52] House Deb., 1869, 393.

[53] _Ibid._, 287.

[54] House Deb., 1869, 43-4. The lack of faith in Southern
bonds was partly due to the unsettled condition, but also to the fact
that just before the war many Southern States had repudiated their
debts--an action later to be repeated.

[55] _Ibid._

[56] One member asserted that $75,000 was thrown away in 1869
by the sale of the warrants on the streets to pay members. _Ibid._,
1870, 15.

[57] Sen. Journal, 1870, 12.

[58] Lowell testifies: “I can show that the greatest fraud
ever perpetrated was the action of the Senate Committee on Election,
whose clerk went out on the streets and coaxed men to come into the
committee-room to act as witnesses in order that he might get half the
fees. I state further that witness after witness has been paid by the
Senate Election Committee who never gave one hour’s testimony.” House
Deb., 1869, 12-13.

[59] _Ibid._, 50.




CHAPTER II

A Carpet-bag Legislature in Session


The general character of the work done in the Louisiana Assembly
during the sessions of 1869 and 1870 was distinctly inferior; the
tone of the debate low; and the conduct paralleled only in the worst
of the reconstruction legislatures. The ignorance of the members does
not appear glaringly in the records of 1869, for the more illiterate
did not engage in the debate, certainly did not venture upon lengthy
addresses. It is only occasionally that we are appalled by the dense
ignorance revealed, as when the colored legislator Burrel broke out
into a mass of incoherent repetitions in defense of the St. Charles
pavement bill.[60]

The debate was distinctly partisan. The following outburst, provoked by
the debate on the militia bill, is sufficiently suggestive:

  Is it possible that men in broad daylight will say that we should
  not call on the Republican party to give security to the people?
  That we receive this amendment that men should be organized into
  a militia, that will call every disturbance of the peace a “nigger
  insurrection”? Men should prove that they are loyal before they
  can be trusted to go into the militia. This amendment ought to be
  dammed by this House. What, this democracy to be organized into a
  militia to execute Andrew Johnson’s policy! This amendment is full of
  deviltry.[61]

On another occasion even the speaker stated as a good reason why a
certain bill should pass that the board to be affected by it were all
good Republicans. The bill promptly passed.[62] January 19 a cool
resolution was offered that the persons voted for in the parishes
where a fair election had been held, the twenty-six parishes where
the Democrats had had a majority being calmly ignored, should meet to
vote for President and Vice-President.[63] It is significant, however,
that sharply drawn as was the party line, the sectional feeling
manifested was distinctly pro-Southern. When a measure was offered
for a contribution to a Lincoln Monument, few spoke for it, while
most felt it frankly impossible that the South could be expected to
contribute.[64] On the other hand, when the appeal to help bury the
Confederate dead at Fredericksburg came up the following session, even
such a hot-headed Unionist as Mr. McMillan spoke reverently in advocacy
of the appropriation.[65]

But worse than partisanship was the lack of dignity, even frivolity,
which characterized the proceedings. So serious did this become that
the speaker was frequently forced to call the members to order for
their senseless motions and tone of levity.[66] Amendments were
repeatedly refused by the chair as absurd[67] and even improper. It
was proposed to add to the oath required by the school bill, “shall
take whiskey straight without regard to race, color, or previous
condition.”[68] Some, when ordered read to satisfy the curiosity of the
House, proved even indecent.[69] The greatest discourtesy on the part
of one member to another prevailed, while even the president of the
Senate was guilty of recognizing a Senator in the following undignified
way: “Well, just pitch in.” One member cried: “I don’t know what he
is going to talk about. I don’t wish to hear him talk at all, and I
therefore call for the previous question.”[70] Because one member
read his speech, another called out rudely, “There’s that document
again.” Or again, “I move the gentleman be allowed to speak all night.
He occupies the floor more than any other member of this House.”[71]
Freedom of speech both as to time and language and wordy altercations
made confusion and tumult almost the rule in both houses until such a
remark as the following was possible: “I hope the Sergeant-at-arms will
call to his assistance a sufficient number of the Metropolitan Police
to keep order and to see whether we cannot have silence, and quiet,
and stillness to hear what is going on,” while the president weakly
added, “It is really a shame that we cannot have better order.”[72] It
frequently became necessary for the chair to order the sergeant to seat
obstreperous members and to threaten public censure.[73] In at least
one instance the threat was executed.[74] Carter even boldly said of
the speaker, “I must say that the man who knows the facts of this case,
as he said he did, and is acquainted with the law, and then says that
I am a defaulter, is either a fool or unadulterated liar.” Then less
vehemently, “I will be square and honest and polite to you all, but I
will be hanged if I am to be bullyragged, and I’ll be switched if I am
to be ridden over by the Speaker or anybody else.”[75]

Reprobate and scoundrel that he proved to be, Speaker Carr[76] had a
certain power of command, which made it possible for him to control the
House. Whenever he called anyone else to the chair, the House broke
into disorder like a set of unruly schoolboys, leaving him problems
to disentangle on his return. Legislators indulged in pranks such as
withdrawing a member’s chair while he was speaking in order that his
fall should convulse the House.[77] So notorious was the disorder that
one member acknowledged as a well-known fact that gentlemen came from
the North to see what kind of a House they had. The speaker found it
difficult to hear the motions, while over and over again the reporter
inserted in the debates “confusion” and a statement to the effect that,
owing to the disorder, he had lost part of the speech. The pages, who
made as much noise “as a lot of young colts, dodging about the floor,
standing up, talking and laughing all the time,” according to the
speaker, added to the disturbance.[78] It would be difficult to read
the pages that record the proceedings on the 30th of January, 1869,
without feeling convinced that the open bar, which it was charged
was to be found at the capitol, had had its due effect.[79] The last
evening closed fittingly with a mock session, when, as the debates
assure us, “the members had a good time, and the reign of fun prevailed
for a few minutes.”[80]

Low as was the tone during the second session of the Assembly, it
degenerated even lower by the time the Assembly gathered for the third
time. Debate descended more often to vulgarity[81] and bad grammar and
rhetoric came to the surface more often.[82]

  Mr. President, I have not expressed on none of these bills termed
  political bills, but, as the gentleman who preceded me from Orleans
  has not entirely represented me, I claim on this floor the privilege.
  In the first place, he says we have elected a demagogue,--or some
  such word.... I say on the other hand, if the way that he holds
  to that he has done what he proposes that he should have done, it
  is because the Democratic members on this floor, when some bills
  were introduced in this House, opposed them bills, and they did not
  become laws.... I do not know what done it, except it was their own
  classes--except it was someone that stood in the ranks in the days of
  old.[83]

It was of a legislature which assembled only a year later that Eustis
told his famous story: “There was a member of Parliament brought me a
letter of introduction, and he asked me if I had any great curiosity to
show him. I told him I had--such a curiosity as he would never see in
any other civilized country, and I took him to the legislature.”[84]

In methods of procedure gross irregularities occurred as a result
of carelessness or deliberate manipulation until the procedure
occasionally became a mere travesty of the forms of government.
Wiltz in the House charged that he was never notified to attend a
single meeting of the Committee on the City Charter of which he was a
member.[85] A bill was declared on third reading when the House had
refused to engross it and had ordered it placed on the calendar. An
interested member detected the irregularity.[86] A member of the Ways
and Means Committee charged that the revenue bill had been returned
when only two members had been present to act on it.[87] One striking
offense was the extraordinary omnibus motion put and carried amid
boisterous laughter late on the evening of February 23: “I move that
the reading of the bill be dispensed with, the bill be put upon its
first reading, the constitutional rule be suspended, the bill be
put upon its second and third readings and final passage, the title
adopted, and that the bill be sent to the Senate for concurrence.”[88]
One member remonstrated at what he properly termed an “extraordinary
proceeding.” “The Governor has sent in a veto of some bills, and in his
message has given very grave reasons for so doing. Now, sir, I want
to see the bills. I don’t know them at all. They were ordered to be
printed this morning, and now the House desires to take up those bills,
involving millions of dollars, without ever giving the members an
opportunity to make themselves acquainted with their provisions.”[89]
Another member was excused from voting on a bill, which he insisted on
hearing read, only after the following declaration of independence: “I
will throw myself back upon my reserved rights, and I will not vote,
and the House may take, with all respect, the course they may think
proper.”[90]

Even the speaker acted on one occasion without knowing what the forms
were carrying through, for, on the query of a member as to the nature
of the bill under debate, he replied: “Something about taxes. The
gentleman from Orleans moves it be referred to the Committee on Ways
and Means.” It was so referred.[91]

The powerful majority did not even manifest the ordinary courtesies of
debate to the minority, but replied coldly to the very reasonable plea
of the opposition for more time on an important bill: “It seems to be
the disposition of the committee to work further.”[92] By dispensing
with the reading of the bill and various other devices to gain time,
bills were often crowded through to adoption at a single sitting.[93]
Under the operation of the previous question, debate was peremptorily
cut off until one member indignantly cried out: “It is impossible
to sit here and see the funds of the State voted away without an
opportunity to remonstrate against it.”[94]

Charges of corruption were brought against members of the Assembly not
only by the press[95] and by the leading citizens of the State, but
charges were openly brought on the floor of the House. In the debate
on the Ship Island Canal bill the remark was dropped that some people
thought there were millions of dollars in that bill, and similar
charges were made in regard to many other bills.[96] One member even
boldly challenged another: “I want to know how much the gentleman gets
to support this bill.”[97] That unnecessary clerks were employed seems
incontrovertible when the House decided that the auditor might employ
six clerks to do the work which had always been performed by two or
three. So notorious became the corruption in many directions that the
House felt it obligatory to appoint committees of investigation, even
though one member contemned the charges as beneath their dignity. The
wording of one resolution offered in the House early in January of
1869 reveals a whole tale: “Resolved, that the President of the Board
of Metropolitan Police be directed to furnish this House with the names
of any members who have been employed as special officers, and under
what assumed names they drew their salaries for such services.”[98] The
debates bring out the fact that two or, possibly, four members were
laboring under such charge.[99] Likewise, the House became exercised
over a complaint that members serving on different House committees
were also employed in the custom-house and drawing a salary from each
source.[100] The Assembly was not slow to put on foot investigations
of other bodies, for corruption seems already to have vitiated most
departments of the government and the institutions connected with
it.[101]

Although the finances of the State were calling for the most skillful
handling, the legislative body acted without even the most ordinary
business prudence. While the time limit for the payment of the city
taxes and for the collection of the special one per cent tax levied
in September, 1868, had to be extended[102]; while the credit was
so weak that it was found necessary to enforce under penalties the
acceptance of the State warrants for licenses and taxes by the parishes
of Orleans, Jefferson, and Bernard; while the State was in such straits
that an annual tax became necessary to pay the interest on bonds[103];
and legislators were being put to the embarrassment of being told
that the Waterworks Company had suspended the water until they should
pay their bill,[104] they were voting themselves their pay with a
generous hand and squandering State funds in sheer extravagance. They
early[105] manifested anxiety for their pay, appropriating $250,000 in
1869, $500,000 in 1870, for the mileage and per diem of members and
clerks.[106] Their selfishness took the form in 1869 of instructing
the warrant clerks to sell the warrants at their market value in order
to pay the members in currency,[107] and in 1870, of giving their
warrants the preference. Their attitude toward themselves is perhaps
illuminating in explaining their actions. One member had insisted
that they ought to accept their money in warrants, “in which form the
government pays the community,” when another angrily retorted, “I
desire to assure him of the very important fact that what we, as the
Legislature, give to the community ... is without money and without
price. They are so valuable that the price cannot be fixed--there is
no standard.”[108] And another member naïvely wants to know if he does
not consider the General Assembly the State. Even more telling is the
following exhortation of a member to the House: “I would like to know
if there is a great thing and a good thing, in the name of God, why
not let the Representatives of the State of Louisiana have a hand in
it.”[109]

Small extravagances helped to swell the total cost of this Assembly to
$264,278.06.[110] There were certain items in the general appropriation
bill which looked unnecessarily large. When a mere clerk of a district
court received a salary of $6,000, and the rental of a building for
a state house cost $13,000 for nine months; when the always elastic
clause for contingent expenses was stretched to $16,000; when printing
and advertising mounted up to $183,000, the people might well begin to
question and murmur. A bit of sarcasm was unconsciously incorporated in
the printing appropriation of 1870 when a motion to substitute $200,000
for the original $140,000, asking some of these liberal-hearted
gentlemen to open their hearts a little wider and take in every
official journal of the State, was adopted.[111] The interest alone on
bonds issued to railroads is probably accurate enough, but had reached
the terrifying sum of $461,014.14. The only spasm of economy which the
House suffered during the entire session of 1869 was really a pick at
the police, when a few minor officials were struck off or reduced in
salary.[112]

The law which was to provide the income seemed to bear no relation to
the expenditures. Unwisely wasting their time on a bill to enforce
collection of taxes already paid to the Confederacy,[113] they rushed
the revenue bill through with a haste which explains its inadequacy.
Urged by the Committee on Ways and Means to accept its work as
complete, even the reading was dispensed with, and the act, which was
referred to in a later session as a disgrace,[114] adopted by the House
without discussion on the evening of March 3.[115] A clause which
provoked the greatest criticism was one licensing gambling-houses,
which appeared in the published bill and came up for a perfect storm
of debate in the session of 1870. The chairman of the committee stated
that it had not been in the original law, and that he believed it had
been surreptitiously introduced after it had been acted upon by the
House.[116] Moreover, a bill which made no provision for the interest
on the debt, which made an appropriation for an institution which did
not exist,[117] and which failed to meet the liabilities of the State
by $500,000,[118] indicated business financiering which sooner or later
must bring the State to bankruptcy.

And just when the finances called for a policy of retrenchment
was the time when the legislature saw fit to embark on a system
of extensive internal improvements. As has been remarked by many
reconstruction writers, there was a conscious purpose to introduce in
the South the energy and methods of the North and West in the hope
of similar economic results. It was recognized by the conservatives
that introduction of new railroads was necessary for economic
rehabilitation. But it must not be forgotten that the sable statesmen
who were called upon to ponder problems of high finance were ex-slaves
who had had the experience of a porter’s tips or the extra half-dollars
of a plantation hand. Of the numerous bills of that nature introduced,
a considerable number passed, lending State aid with a liberal hand.

The enterprises were chiefly of three kinds: canals, railroads, and
the ever-pressing levees. The Mississippi and Mexican Gulf Ship Canal
Company profited by this spirit to the extent of $600,000, issued in
the form of State bonds under a first mortgage, running the generous
period of thirty years[119]; the New Orleans and Ship Island Canal
Company to the extent of $2,000,000 and a large bonus in lands.[120]
The House did not find it necessary to debate at any great length the
measure which legislated away the former sum,[121] but far otherwise
was the history of the latter act. Introduced into the session of
1868, it had been thoroughly discussed in the Senate and passed by
that body and came up in the House in 1869 as unfinished business.
Its objectionable features had not been so clear while passing the
Senate, but by the next session it had been thoroughly aired by the
press.[122] It declared the system of the Drainage Commissioners of the
Metropolitan District “erroneous in principle and unsuccessful from
experience,” and so gave over into the possession of the new Canal
Company all the funds and assets of the commissioners to the amount
of nearly $2,000,000 and public lands in installments to the extent
of 400,000 acres, on the ground that this canal would accomplish
the drainage of the entire district. As this fund had been raised by
assessment for the special purpose of drainage, the opposition held
that it could not thus be diverted. But, nevertheless, this bill was
pressed through the House January 29,[123] under heated personal
debate, extending through several days, and after having suffered much
amendment. Although vetoed by the governor, it passed both houses with
the requisite majority March 2.[124] Smaller sums were donated to minor
enterprises, as $50,000 for the improvement of Loggy Bayou; $20,000 for
improving Bayou Vermilion[125]; and $80,000 worth of credit loaned to
the Bœuf and Crocodile Navigation Company.[126]

Aid to railroads was equally liberal. In its zeal the House on February
23, without the reading of the bill, pushed through all its stages the
incorporation of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad Company, granted
it exemption from taxation for ten years, a right of way three hundred
feet in width, and the privilege of all the timber for one mile on
each side of the road through the public lands.[127] But of all the
railroad bills, by far the most conspicuous was that which extended
a helping hand to the New Orleans, Mobile, and Chattanooga Road. It
came up in the House February 4 and was pressed to a final vote that
very afternoon and its amendments concurred in by the Senate February
14.[128] The bill provided for the guarantee of the company’s bonds
by the State under the security of a second mortgage to the amount
of $12,500 for each mile within the State west of New Orleans.[129]
Parishes along the route of the Vicksburg Railroad were encouraged
to aid that road by the purchase of stock or the issue of bonds, in
addition to the State guarantee of its second mortgage bonds to the
usual amount of $12,500 per mile.[130] Still other roads had found it
worth while to besiege the legislature.

The great problem of improvement most urgently pressing was not
adequately met--the construction of a satisfactory series of levees
for the Mississippi River. A State loan of $4,000,000 had been
provided for in 1867 for that purpose but the bonds had not been
readily disposed of.[131] The Board of Levee Commissioners had made
contracts for a large amount of work but the legislature of 1869
found no work accomplished--only the bonds of the State pledged for
work authorized to be done--and so was placed under the necessity
of authorizing the sale of the bonds.[132] The House made a valiant
effort to meet the problem in the passage of a bill to issue bonds to
the sum of $5,000,000 to provide means for the construction, repairs,
and maintenance of the levees and other works of improvement, but the
effort died there.[133]

A lack of discrimination characterized the action of the Assembly
on this subject. To aid all projects just because they savored of
prosperity would seem to express the attitude of some thoughtless
legislators. “I am glad that I have one more chance for internal
improvement,” generously declared one member.[134] Again, a project
for the northern part of the State was advocated that no charge of
partiality to the Southern part should be brought.[135] Nor is it
fair to lay all the burden of debt arising from these grants of aid
at the door of the radicals. It was rather a response to a universal
desire for an extension of railroads and improvement of the waterways
of the State, voiced by the moderate conservative press as well as
the radical. “It is noteworthy as a sign fraught with good promise,”
says the _Commercial Bulletin_, “that the railroad spirit is alive
in the Northern parishes of this State, and that those whom it
inspires are evidently bent on the early accomplishment of substantial
results.”[136] In like strain the _Crescent_ concerning the work of the
Chattanooga Railroad: “It is certainly to be hoped that we shall soon
have direct railroad communications with Mobile, and that all efforts
to prevent the consummation of so desirable an object will fail.”[137]
But the _Picayune_, while on the whole encouraging the measures, was
more conservative and urged that promises of aid be few, “unless they
are of certain and undoubted practicability and profitableness, and
are secure beyond all peril of loss.”[138] Such measures were supported
by members of both parties, often introduced by Democrats, in every
case supported by a large majority of Democrats in both houses.[139]
The leading movers, outside of the legislature, of these bills were men
of both parties; and the lobbyists who advanced the corrupt measures
were of both faiths.[140] This fact was admitted by the Democratic
press.[141]

The legislature of 1869, with which the _Commercial Bulletin_ sourly
assured its readers the people wanted as little as possible to do,
convened January 4 and sat until March 4. The governor’s annual message
to it, a plea for freedom from prejudice, struck a tone of optimism
which subsequent events did not justify: “The issues of the past eight
years have been settled, we hope, forever. Slavery has been swept away,
and along with it all the train of evils growing out of its wickedness,
and has left us--master and slave, white and black--with the same
rights under the law, the same chance to succeed in life, and with
equally unrestricted aspirations and hopes.” He professed faith in a
“wise, economical, moderate, and firm administration of the nation and
the State as curing animosities and bringing prosperity to the people.”
That portion of his message which alluded to the violence of 1868 and
to his measures to allay the excitement was severely challenged by the
Democratic press.[142]

The Assembly during the two months of its existence passed 152 laws,
many of which were local, many personal relief bills.[143] There was
beginning to be apparent that tendency to vest autocratic power in
the hands of the governor, which reached, as we shall see, such a
culmination in the next session. In some instances, it is true, the
propositions could not muster sufficient strength to pass the Assembly,
but it is significant that such propositions could be offered as Ray’s
amendment to the charter bill for New Orleans, which suggested vesting
in the Governor power to appoint the first mayor and council until
the election in 1872, and the amendment to the volunteer militia
bill, which left to him large discretionary powers.[144] The act which
prohibited the mayor of New Orleans from exercising any police duty or
authority is equivalent to an enlargement of the governor’s powers,
for the body with such control, the metropolitan police, was virtually
his servant through his appointive power.[145] Quite as important was
the negative action of the Assembly in refusing to force the governor
to order elections in certain cases where for political reasons he was
leaving vacancies.[146]

One group of laws attempted to deal with the race and labor questions.
A vagrancy law, which finally overcame the hostile majority in
the Senate, while not so severe as those of the “Black Code,” did
still define rather narrowly and imposed heavy penalties.[147] This
stringency arose, at least largely, from the need of labor and devotion
to the crops to which economic conditions forced the planters.[148] A
measure to organize a Bureau of Immigration was passed, appropriating
$20,000 to secure a share in the foreign labor which they saw flooding
the North. Unfortunately, this did not solve the labor problem,
and dissatisfaction with the Bureau,[149] and especially with its
carpet-bagger chief, J. O. Noyes, was loudly voiced in the session of
1870. Efforts to secure new workers by legislation continued throughout
the next session. A bill to accord negroes equal civil rights had been
up in the session of 1868 but had not been signed by the governor,
who was forced to explain to a body of their race assembled en masse,
February 4, 1869, his reasons for not doing so.[150] And Pinchback’s
civil rights bill, which forbade common carriers and places of public
resort to discriminate on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude,[151] came up as unfinished business from the preceding
session. As was to be expected, feeling ran high and lengthy discussion
resulted, usually of a serious character. Twenty-six Senators were
reported as desirous of speaking on the bill. Pinchback in debate
made use of the expression “refused a drink of common whiskey in a
common grog-shop,” which was seized on by the conservative press as
a convenient whip. The cry of the Conservatives was that the colored
people had too much sense to force themselves where they were not
wanted, and this view was borne out by the negroes themselves. “I
consider myself just as far above coming into company that does not
want me, as they are above my coming into an elevation with them.... I
do not believe that any sensible colored man upon this floor would wish
to be in a private part of a public place without the consent of the
owners of it. It is false; it is wholesale falsehood to say that we
wish to force ourselves upon white people.” But he did insist that they
receive equal accommodation.[152] The former set down the agitation to
a political move to renew the strife.[153]

When the bill had passed both houses, the press took a more aggressive
attitude in an effort to frighten the negroes from any attempt to
claim their rights. “Will any negro, or gang of negroes, attempt to
exercise the privilege it confers?” belligerently asked the _Commercial
Bulletin_. “If they do, it will be at their peril.... He may be able
to obtain a ticket of admission, but no New Orleans audience will ever
permit him to take his seat except in the places allotted for colored
persons.”[154] The _Bee_ declared that if the governor dared to sign
that bill after vetoing the former, “legal means would not be lacking
to set aside this arbitrary law, this outrage to the law of propriety,
and to individual liberty.”[155]

The civil rights bill was backed up by a measure intended to prevent
the intimidation of negroes by punishing the bribery of witnesses or
preventing a witness by force, threat, or intimidation from testifying
in a criminal proceeding.[156] It is striking that a Ku-Klux bill--a
bill “to prevent people from agoing abroad disguised”--was quickly
referred and evidently died in committee.[157] Another effort in the
next session to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons met no better
fate.[158]

A measure allied to the above legislation, but of vastly greater
importance because of its National character, was the ratification of
the Fifteenth Amendment, which was accepted perfunctorily by a vote
of 18 to 3 in the Senate; 59[159] to 9 in the House, 36 Republicans
refusing to vote.

Particularly confusing were the various measures which finally evolved
into the slaughter house bill. Vigorous opposition and much ridicule
manifested themselves at its first appearance in the House, but all
amendments against the monopolistic features were voted down, debate
choked off abruptly, all attempts at filibustering defeated, and the
bill adopted by a large majority under the operation of the previous
question.[160] Scanty indeed is the record of its history in the
Senate. “After a short fight the bill was concurred in as a whole and
the motion to reconsider tabled by a vote of 23 to 9.”[161] By it the
slaughter of animals, except by the Crescent City Live Stock Landing
and Slaughter House Company was prohibited within the city of New
Orleans or the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard after
June 1, 1869. All animals destined for sale or slaughter must be landed
at the live stock landings and yards of the company, occupying the
levee from Common to Poydras streets, which naturally exacted a fee for
each steamship and craft landing at its wharves.[162] The excessive
haste with which the bill was rushed through was pretty generally
believed to be due to the fact that legislators had bought stock
with the privilege of paying at convenience.[163] A perfect hue and
cry against monopoly and violation of private rights went up at the
passage of this bill. Hear the _Bee_: “So the bill has passed, just
as it came from the House, and with provisions so monstrously unjust
that if it be not arrested by veto, and be subjected to an ordeal by
the two Houses, in review, which it is believed it cannot survive, it
will at least become a byword of reproach to all concerned in it.”[164]
Or the _Picayune_: “Nay, monopolies have themselves such elements of
corruption and are so odious in the land that they can and will be set
aside. It may take time and a reformation of the polluted courts of
justice to bring this about, but it will be done when the people awake
to the necessity of driving the money-changers and the false Scribes
and Pharisees from the temple.”[165]

As there were about one thousand persons employed in the business in
the parishes concerned, the effect was broad-spread. The butchers
held a meeting immediately to consult on the best plan to defeat the
bill[166] and organized an association on July 21. Some hundreds of
suits were brought in the various district courts on the one side or
the other, sometimes in combinations, sometimes by individuals. The
ground of this opposition was that the act created a monopoly and
was a violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and of
the Louisiana Bill of Rights. The Sixth District Court held the law
unconstitutional, while in the Fifth, in which the new company had
instituted suit against the association, the verdict was in favor of
the company. Appeals from these several decisions came before the State
Supreme Court by what is there known as “suspensive appeals,” but the
decision was not rendered until April 11, 1870, when the rights of
the new company were upheld. In course of time,[167] the cases came
before the Supreme Court of the United States when the decision of the
State court was sustained on the ground of police regulation, “a power
incapable of any very exact definition or limitation.”[168]


FOOTNOTES:

[60] “The city of New Orleans will be what we intend to make
it, and we intend to make this city bloom as the rose, and we intend to
enhance and increase this city of New Orleans, and we intend to open
every by-road, and this very bill is going to make the city bigger,
and we are going to pass this act. We intend not only to legislate for
the city of New Orleans, but to stamp our record upon the door of this
House of Representatives, so it will remain a century of years,” etc.
House Debates, 1869, 359-60; also, 415.

[61] House Debates, 1869, 110.

[62] _Ibid._, 354.

[63] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 22, 1869.

[64] House Debates, 1869, 389.

[65] _Ibid._, 1870, 287. See also Campbell’s speech, Sen.
Deb., 679.

[66] “The gentleman from Lafourche has spoken of bribery.
Now, there is another absurdity, for a member gave him a cigar for a
bribe, but he did not offer me one.” House Debates, 1869, 126. And “I
rise to a point of order--this bill is a swindle,” 264. Again, a member
proposed in all seriousness that the House adjourn in respect to the
recent marriage of one of its members. When the speaker objected to
such levity, he retorted: “It is a very serious event for the gentleman
from St. Charles.” _Ibid._, 135. Another member rose to make the point
of order that “the committee had no dignity,” 264.

[67] On the immigration bill the following irrelevant
amendments were offered:

  That 2000 shall be Chinese and 1000 Arabs.
  That a thousand thugs of India be included.
  “I move to include 500 monkeys.”
  That the company bring over half the population of Europe.

_Ibid._, 1870, 281.

[68] _Ibid._, 1869, 242.

[69] _Ibid._, 1869, 112; Sen. Deb., 1870, 771, 749.

[70] _Ibid._, 1870, 178.

[71] _Ibid._, 149.

[72] House Deb., 1869, 139; 1870, 191, 231. Sen. Deb., 1870,
705.

[73] Sen. Deb., 1870, 639-40. House Deb., 1871, 87, where the
gentleman from Orleans declared that he would not come to order, and
did not heed the sergeant.

[74] House Deb., 1869, 294.

[75] _Ibid._, 1871, 90.

[76] Carr had come from Maryland in 1865, was now twenty-six
or twenty-seven years old, shrewd and wily in the extreme. House Misc.
Docs., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 217.

[77] _Crescent_, Jan. 26, 1869.

[78] House Deb., 1871, 135-6.

[79] _Ibid._, 1869, 111-12. The following statement of the
speaker establishes the fact for 1871 clearly: “I will not allow while
I am speaker of the House, to have spirituous liquors brought into the
House. I must maintain the dignity of this House, if the House will not
maintain its own dignity. I do not desire such a thing shall be done
again.” _Ibid._, 1871, 114.

[80] _Ibid._, 1869, 524.

[81] Senate Deb., 1870, 222-3.

[82] See speech on the constabulary bill, _Ibid._, 223-4.

[83] Sen. Deb., 1870, 222-3.

[84] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 534. Note
also the opinion of Nordhoff, prejudiced for negro rights. He was
“unpleasantly startled,” not because they were black, but because they
were so transparently ignorant and unfit, 49.

[85] House Deb., 1870, 236.

[86] _Ibid._, 1870, 345.

[87] _Ibid._, 326.

[88] House Deb., 1869, 331.

[89] _Ibid._, 1871, 7-8.

[90] _Ibid._, 200.

[91] _Ibid._, 1869, 204.

[92] _Ibid._, 1870, 78. Mr. McMillan characterized this spirit
as follows: “That the House will pass it, I am convinced, for there is
always something peculiar in the air which tells me when a bill of this
character is sure of being put through, and I feel the breath of that
air distinctly at this moment,” 268.

[93] House Deb., 1869, 330.

[94] _Ibid._, 264.

[95] “Such influence we all know has been exerted for personal
aggrandizement and to such an extent that in point of fact the General
Assembly was actually turned into a machine for the advancement of the
individual interests of its leaders.” _Bee_, Jan. 24, 1869. See also
_Commercial Bulletin_, Feb. 6, 22.

[96] Charges of bribery were brought in connection with the
penitentiary bill, the slaughter house bill, and Chattanooga Railroad
bill. The boldest charge came out on the paving bill: “I know who are
lobbying this bill, and know the men they are using, and state upon the
floor of this committee that this is simply for the benefit of that
very man, and for the benefit of the lobbyists.” _Ibid._, 357-8.

[97] House Deb., 1869, 72.

[98] House Jour., 1870, 21.

[99] House Deb., 1870, 10.

[100] House Jour., 1870, 46.

[101] Committees were appointed to investigate if bribery had
been used in the appointment of officers of the Insane Asylum, the
sale of levee bonds, the school-money, the defalcation of the Land
Registrar, the councilmen of Jefferson City, the Metropolitan Police
Commissioners, and Board of Public Works.

[102] Session Laws of Louisiana, 1869, Nos. 10, 88.

[103] _Ibid._, 1869, No. 66.

[104] Sen. Deb., 1870, 771.

[105] In 1869, the appropriation bill passed the House Jan. 7,
the Senate Jan. 12; in 1870, it passed the House Jan. 10, the Senate
Jan. 12.

[106] Session Laws, 1869, No. 15; 1870, Nos. 2, 49.

[107] _Ibid._, No. 52. The governor, unwilling to veto this
bill, allowed it to become law by expiration of the time limit. Herbert
says the overissue of vouchers forced these warrants down to two and
one-half cents in 1871, 403.

[108] House Deb., 1870, 22.

[109] _Ibid._, 1869, 122. The speaker of 1871 considered that
he had used his patronage very sparingly when he gave “three or four
indigent friends places as messengers and clerks.” _Ibid._, 1871, 136.

[110] House Jour., 1870, 62; Sen. Jour., 19-20. It was
proposed to allow the chairman of each standing committee in the House
$5 extra per day.

[111] Sen. Deb., 1870, 845.

[112] House Deb., 1869, 225.

[113] _Ibid._, 17.

[114] _Ibid._, 1870, 83.

[115] _Ibid._, 484.

[116] Session Laws, 1869, No. 114, Sec. 3,* 30; House Deb.,
1870, 9.

[117] Sen. Deb., 1870, 848.

[118] House Deb., 1870, 313.

[119] Session Laws, 1869, No. 116. The company drew $36,000 in
bonds and was then merged with another company for a different purpose;
and fell into the hands of a man who in 1875 was doing drainage at a
cost 100% higher than responsible citizens were ready to accept.

[120] _Ibid._, No. 51.

[121] House Deb., 1869, 266.

[122] “But why dwell further on a scheme the whole aim and
purpose of which is to speculate, for individual or associate profit,
at the expense of the people? What more need be said to demonstrate its
impracticability--its utter disregard of the interests, the welfare,
the health, and happiness of this community, and the unscrupulous
motives and purpose of its designers and advocates.” _Picayune_,
Jan. 7, 1869. Jan. 22, it advocated government aid to railroads and
denounced the ship canal as an iniquitous project--wild and visionary.

“It is susceptible of proof that certificates of stock in this
wildcat speculation have been freely distributed among members of the
legislature and others, for the purpose of influencing their votes in
favor of this impudent proposition. Not only this but the principal
individual whose name heads the list of corporators has boasted of
the cheap rate at which our new legislature hold themselves.” _Bee_,
Jan. 27, 1869. See also the _Picayune_ of Jan. 7 and Feb. 10, the
_Commercial Bulletin_ of Jan. 11, 25, Feb. 12, New Orleans _Times_,
Jan. 23.

[123] House Deb., 1869, 106.

[124] The Assembly of 1870 granted further aid against great
opposition in the form of drainage taxes, amounting to about $2,000,000
per year. Session Laws, 1870, No. 4. Extra Session. This law was
passed despite the complaint that in two years not a spadeful of earth
had been dug, nothing done but the purchase for cash or credit of a
dredge-boat. Sen. Deb., 1870, 751.

[125] Session Laws, 1869, No. 147. It is interesting that even
this early the wiser of the legislators were turning to the Federal
government for help on their problem of bayous and levees.

[126] _Ibid._, No. 146.

[127] _Ibid._, No. 140. Its achievement was the removal of
twenty stumps, people complained.

[128] It must have been this date because it vanishes from
the record after the 12th and the record of this one day is missing in
the files of the paper. For the record of the Senate for 1869 we are
dependent on the report in the _Commercial Bulletin_, no journal nor
Senate debates being extant.

[129] Laws of Louisiana, 1869, No. 26.

[130] Session Laws, 1869, Nos. 143, 145.

[131] _Ibid._, 1867, No. 115.

[132] _Ibid._, No. 123.

[133] House Deb., 1869, 446. It was eloquently and lengthily
debated on March 1. _Ibid._, 399-429.

[134] House Deb., 380.

[135] “We have passed a bill to-day for Claiborne Parish, and
where is the consistency of refusing to aid improvements in the parish
of Lafourche?” House Deb., 1869, 381. Senator Ray declared it one of
the “fundamental principles of my political theory that the State of
Louisiana ought to aid all the works of internal improvement that
appear to be beneficial.” Sen. Deb., 1870, 627.

[136] _Commercial Bulletin_, Sept. 21, 1869. See also the same
paper, same date, for agitation of opening of the southwest pass.

[137] Jan. 3. See also issues of Jan. 26, 29, 30. This paper
failed in September of that year.

[138] Jan. 23.

[139] Warmoth adduces proof of these statements. House Misc.
Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 285.

[140] In the State bond bill were implicated some of the most
respectable distinguished Democratic leaders of the State. House Misc.
Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., 333. See Scott’s testimony which shows a
written contract between the bankers of New Orleans and certain lobby
brokers, by which several millions of dollars were to be paid for
getting a measure through which failed. _Ibid._

[141] “That there were ‘rings’ formed in both houses of the
legislature for the sole and express purpose of blackmailing the people
and plundering the treasury of the State, is perhaps a lamentable and
humiliating fact. That there are men of both parties engaged in this
disgraceful proceeding--men who would sell out their birthright for a
mess of pottage, may also be true.” Quoted from the _Crescent_ in a
Congressional document.

The _Bee_ says, Feb. 17, 1869, being reproached with accusing Democrats
of joining in the corruption: “It was only yesterday that one of their
own number, in our hearing, confessed the truth of the charge.”

[142] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1869, 394. The _Bee_ dismissed it
with the following terse comment: “Nous n’assomerons pas nos lecteurs
de cette prose peu intéressante. Une analyse succincte suffira pour
leur faire connaître ce que dit M. Warmoth.... Après avoir distillé
son venin, le gouverneur aborde les affaires sérieuses.” Jan. 5.
The _Abeille_ or _Bee_ had English pages at this time, a fact which
accounts for both English and French excerpts.

The _Crescent_ was no more kindly: “This portion of the message
is strictly and narrowly partisan, a tissue of bold, unqualified
assertions and of self-evident exaggerations which would be indecent
even in a campaign document; a weak but spiteful jumble of accusatory
phrases in which there is but a single pretense to an argument, and
that so puerile and idiotic in its fallacy as to be simply ridiculous.”
Jan. 5.

“The Governor applies harsh terms to our people. He attributes to them
all the violence which may have existed in the State. Does he really
think that he himself and his associates have had nothing to do with
this excitement? Have the publications made by Republican papers,
speakers, and writers contributed nothing to these troubles?” New
Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Jan. 7, 1869.

[143] Session Laws, 1869, Nos. 23, 27, 31, 33, 34, 41, 64,
etc.

[144] House Deb., 1869, 196.

[145] Session Laws, 1869, No. 60.

[146] Case of Minden, House Deb., 29.

[147] Session Laws, 1868, No. 87.

[148] An excerpt from _St. Mary’s Banner_ of Sept. 15
corroborates the statement which is often made of the planter’s
indifference to politics. “Never did planters of this country show such
devotion to business, such singleness of purpose to make money, and
such utter want of interest in all things save crops, as at the present
time.”

It is to be regretted that none of the regular parish papers were
available, but we are fortunate enough to catch many reflections
through the editorial bickering in the columns of the city papers,
which give us fairly accurately the position and spirit and consequent
influence in molding public thought of each. Members of Congress
accommodatingly brought in many excerpts in the course of debate.
We scarcely need the files of the Shreveport _Times_, thanks to the
assiduity of Morton and the Radicals in quoting it.

[149] “Every Southern State, save only Louisiana, is receiving
accessions to her population from the tide of European immigration
that daily strikes our shores.... The Bureau gives no sign. Then
let it be abolished or let us have a change of personnel ... that
which individual enterprise has accomplished for other States, this
State-maintained institution has lamentably failed to do for us.”
_Pic._, Dec. 19, 1870.

[150] _Commercial Bulletin_, Feb. 8.

[151] Session Laws, 1869, No. 38.

[152] House Deb., 1869, 258-9.

[153] “Apparently this state of calm does not suit the Radical
leaders. Their continual control over the State must depend on the
jealousy of the black towards the white people. They feel that the
colored race have more confidence in the old citizens of Louisiana
than in any newcomers. Hence the effort to revive a strife which would
readily quiet itself without such stimulus.” _Comm. Bulletin_, Feb. 19,
1869.

[154] _Ibid._, Feb. 22. As a form of revenge, it published the
vote with the names.

[155] Feb. 23. See also issue of Feb. 25.

[156] Another social equality bill, passed by both houses in
the extra session of 1870, was returned by the governor on the first
day of the next session. Sen. Jour., 1870, 290; House Jour., 327; and
Sen. Jour., 4.

[157] House Deb., 1869, 195.

[158] Sen. Deb., 1870, 29.

[159] _Ann. Cyclop._, 1869, 396, gives 55 but I think it in
error as the Debates give 59.

[160] House Deb., 1869, 191.

[161] In the absence of the Senate journal or debates for
1869, I have had to rely upon the brief legislative report of the
_Commercial Bulletin_, Feb. 17.

[162] Session Laws, 1869, No. 118. See the act in full.

[163] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Mar. 17, 1869.

[164] February 23, 1869.

[165] Mar. 14.

[166] _Comm. Bull._, Mar. 17.

[167] April 14, 1873.

[168] 10 Wallace, 36, 298.




CHAPTER III

The Climax of Warmothism


The question of the governor’s power of appointment[169] involved two
serious conflicts with municipalities during 1869, from one of which,
at least, Warmoth emerged victoriously. A law of 1868 provided for the
filling of all vacancies of State or parish offices by appointment
for the remainder of the term by the governor with the consent of the
Senate, but by the Governor alone, if the Senate were not in session,
the appointment to expire the third Monday after the next session of
the Assembly.[170] Governor Warmoth chose to interpret this as giving
him the appointment even when the vacancy occurred by the expiration of
the term of office. In 1868 the legislature had amended the charter of
Jefferson City, requiring an election on the first Monday of January,
1869, and every two years thereafter for mayor, treasurer, comptroller,
and aldermen.[171] Section 4 also provided that the governor should
remove the existing aldermen and officers and appoint others until new
incumbents should be elected. Warmoth did not execute this portion
of the law but allowed matters to remain as they were until January,
1869, when an election should have been held. But none was ordered,
instead of which the governor proceeded the following May to appoint,
as in case of a vacancy. The original mayor, Kreider, refused to
yield office, and so the appointee applied to the district judge for
a mandamus to require the delivery of the books, which was granted.
The new board was installed May 19, by aid of the metropolitan police.
This action called out some violent demonstrations on the part of
the citizens but no serious disturbance resulted and it was decided
to leave the matter to the courts. Kreider carried an appeal to the
Supreme Court, which held that the term of the occupants in office had
not expired, for the failure to hold an election did not vacate the
office.[172]

The case of New Orleans was analogous. The term of office of one-half
of the Council had expired; and a special election was held May 19 to
fill the vacancies. But the governor under his unique interpretation
of the law made appointments to fill them. The old board claimed that
there were no vacancies, as, according to law, they were to hold their
offices until their successors were duly elected and qualified; namely,
until the next regular election. In this form it went to the courts
on July 19. A three-cornered comedy of injunctions took place; one,
granted by Judge Collins, admitted the newly elected members to their
seats; a second, by Judge Leaumont, placed the governor’s appointees
in office and a Democratic howl went up; a third, from Judge Cooley,
restored the elected members, and a Republican howl went up,[173] but
this latter injunction was dissolved December 25. Appeal was taken from
the decision of Judge Leaumont to the Supreme Court by the city of New
Orleans, but was dismissed November 19, because of a technicality.[174]
At the close of the year, the Governor decided to use the “mailed
fist.” December 28 the sheriff of the Fifth District Court read an
order before the council to exclude certain members and install the
appointees of Warmoth. The approaches to the council-room were crowded.
The board decided to obey under protest and the governor’s _protégés_
were seated and proceeded to organize. One old member stayed in his
seat, but as he made himself somewhat troublesome, he was ejected
and another with a commission seated. In the other chamber of the
city council that same evening one of the appointees appeared within
the bar. President Wiltz ordered him put out. After adjournment the
sheriff entered the chamber and read the above-mentioned order of Judge
Leaumont.[175] On December 30 the sheriff of the Sixth District Court
called the names of the appointees and served a paper upon each from
the elected members. But the attorney advised obedience to the orders
of the Fifth District Court and with this action the governor remained
triumphant.

The wrangle between the governor and Wickliffe, the auditor of public
accounts, which extended during most of 1869 and up until March of the
new year, resulted in a victory for the former. He accused Wickliffe
of extortion and corruption and had him arrested on several specific
charges. Fourteen indictments for malfeasance to the amount of $1800
were found by the grand jury. While awaiting the trial, the governor
suspended Wickliffe and appointed L. T. Delassize, a wealthy negro,
auditor _ad interim_, installing him by the aid of the metropolitan
police. But Wickliffe, nothing daunted, gave notice through the papers
that he had opened his office at No. 53 Conti Street, “opposite where
the Auditor’s office formerly was,” and warned the public not to pay
taxes or transact any business with the bureau until the auditor could
retake possession of his office.[176] A war of injunctions followed:
a writ from the Seventh District Court prohibited Delassize from
performing his duties on the ground that the governor had no power to
make the appointment; a counter injunction from the Fifth District
Court, March 29, restrained Wickliffe from acting. This conflict in
jurisdiction went before the Supreme Court,[177] but before a decision
could be rendered, two of the criminal cases came up for trial, in
both of which Wickliffe was acquitted, but in the one case the judge
considered it necessary to dismiss the jury with a reprimand.[178] The
remainder of the charges were dismissed by the attorney-general on the
ground that the auditor could not be tried until after impeachment.
Party feeling ran high in the press concerning the controversy, some
Democratic papers coming out emphatically for Wickliffe, due possibly
to mere opposition to the governor.[179] The governor withdrew his
opposition and allowed Wickliffe to resume office. In December the
auditor decided to move his archives at night into the building used
as a state house, but the governor on the 30th had his effects removed
from Mechanics Institute to the sidewalk.[180] But this fact created
no excitement in the city, as the affair seems still to have been
regarded as a petty, personal squabble.

In this shape the matter came before the General Assembly in 1870.
Rumors of impeachment had been rife,[181] and even before the
governor’s message was sent in, a resolution had been adopted by
the House for a joint committee to examine into the affairs of the
auditor’s office and the action of the governor in suspending the
auditor.[182] In the special message promised by the governor in his
annual address, he charged that the auditor’s offenses had seriously
embarrassed the government and rendered it difficult to pay the
interest on the State bonds. He specifically accused him of extortion
against individuals and the charitable institutions of the State,
and of fraud against the Commonwealth and collusion with evil-minded
persons.[183] The special committee of the House, to which the message
was referred, offered on January 31 a resolution of impeachment which
was debated at some length and adopted on the evening of February 1
with but five dissenting votes.[184] The seriousness of the question
sobered the Assembly so that the proceedings were marked throughout
the trial by a dignity and decorum sadly wanting in their other
discussions. Articles of impeachment were ordered prepared and the act
suspending him from office became effective by the prompt concurrence
of the Senate on February 4.[185]

February 3, Wickliffe brought thirty-four distinct counter charges
against Warmoth of violations of the constitution and laws, of
frauds upon the treasury, charges of corruption in levying blackmail
upon citizens, of bribery of witnesses, and numerous other acts of
malfeasance. “In short,” the accusation concludes, “his conduct in this
respect is so notorious that it can be proved that he never signed a
bill of pecuniary benefit to anyone that he did not demand and receive
money or other consideration for his signature.”[186] He summed up the
frauds to the State to the grand total of $800,000 and “untold millions
from forgery.” But the only effect this venting of his spleen had upon
Warmoth’s loyal vassals was to cause an investigation to be made which
enabled Warmoth to go before the people exonerated by an official
inquiry.[187]

The House preferred twenty-eight articles of impeachment against
Wickliffe, most of them for exacting bribes to issue his warrants for
money appropriated for printing and charitable institutions, and for
exceeding the appropriations.[188] The trial began February 14, and
continued almost daily until the close of the session, when on the
evening of March 3, the Senate found him guilty upon the fourth article
by unanimous vote.[189] A resolution removing him permanently from
office followed immediately. At the last moment he tried to escape
sentence by resigning,[190] and by fleeing from the State,[191] but
the Senate proceeded calmly to ignore such cowardice and to vote him
out of office. Whatever may be the fact as to Wickliffe’s dishonesty,
he was clearly guilty of gross irregularity and carelessness in the
keeping of his records.[192] And the governor had demonstrated to the
State that his hold on the legislature was sufficiently firm to enable
him to crush a presumptuous subordinate.

The legislation of 1870 marks high tide in Warmoth’s power. The rudder
he held firmly in his hands for almost two years longer; but against an
ever-increasing wave of opposition, it became constantly more difficult
to steer in the direction he would. Because of friction within his own
ranks, legislation did not again, after 1870, become the mouthpiece for
promulgating his decrees.

There were, in reality, two sessions, but the extra session followed so
closely on the heels of the first, and so much of the work was but the
completion of the unfinished business of the first session, that for
purposes of convenience the legislation will be treated as emanating
from one body. The Assembly convened for the first session at noon,
January 3. After a slight struggle over the speakership in the House,
Mr. Carr of Orleans was elected and the House reported itself ready for
the governor’s message. Its congratulatory tone sounds a bit forced
when he felicitates his people upon “the good feeling that exists among
the people of both races”; and the cheerfulness with which they are
accepting the new order of things, and the earnestness with which “our
people are addressing themselves to further protect the great interests
committed to their hands.”[193] But it is taken up, for the most part,
with a businesslike discussion of the various measures which, in
his estimation, called for action: encouragement of immigration, the
finances, levees, public improvements, emendation of the school law of
1869, charities, and gambling-houses.[194]

For the first time we hear the note of caution in regard to the
financial condition. The governor warned the Assembly that it was
not satisfactory and was such as to embarrass his administration. He
admitted that the credit of the State had not always been used for
practicable purposes, but insisted that under proper checks it might be
safely used to a still greater extent.[195] The usual expedients were
again resorted to: loans were negotiated to meet the interest due; and
the floating debt was provided for by the issue or exchange of fresh
bonds. But the same extravagance and folly which characterized their
actions in 1869 continued undiminished.[196]

By the session of 1870 an old feature of parliamentary tactics was
introduced: the opposition, though unavailing as to the final vote,
had become thoroughly organized for filibustering purposes and threats
of recourse to its use were held over the heads of the radicals as
a whip.[197] Mr. Lowell proposed once to make a bargain with his
party, to which he was opposed on a particular bill, by exchanging
his filibustering advantage for a grant of time.[198] By debates on
rules of order, appeals from the chair to the House, demands for the
roll-call on every little insignificant vote, they were able to waste
time and wear out their opponents until practically no business was
done at certain sessions.[199]

Four of the five measures which were destined to become the most
important of the session--indeed of the reconstruction period in
Louisiana--and the storm center about which the opposition to
the governor gathered, were, together with the appropriation and
revenue bills, introduced into the Senate as early as the third
day, thus gaining for that active body the questionable distinction
of initiative.[200] Nor did that body lose its zeal in pushing
legislation, for toward the close of the session bills went through
with a haste amazing even after the facility displayed on occasion in
1869. At a single evening session twenty bills were acted on,[201]
and yet, despite regular night sessions for about two weeks, the
session approached its close without concluding much important
legislation,[202] and without making provision for the revenues or
expenses of the government. And so, in accordance with the general
expectation,[203] the governor on March 3 notified the two houses of
the necessity to reassemble March 7 for ten days. In this extra session
the Assembly took up and passed the tremendous number of ninety-eight
bills, as compared with one hundred and seven in the first session.

An effort to tackle the problem of the government of New Orleans had
suffered indefinite postponement at the end of the session of 1869.
Both houses introduced bills early in 1870, but it was only late in
the extra session, after lengthy, heated debate, numerous amendments,
and the creation of committees of conference, that the two houses
could agree upon a measure which consolidated Jefferson City with New
Orleans, forced through by the country members, it was vehemently
declared, against the vigorous opposition of the city members. The
smaller city did not want to be saddled with the debt and taxes of the
larger. A representative of Jefferson said: “I say, sir, here in my
place, that the people--the masses--do not want to be forced to pay an
additional 2½ per cent tax.... There are not 150 people in Jefferson
who would vote for consolidation.”[204] An amendment to submit it to
popular vote was undemocratically voted down. The enlarged city was
to be governed by a mayor and seven administrators, presiding over as
many departments, who were to constitute the city council. Vacancies in
these offices were to be filled by appointment by the governor prior to
January 1, 1871, and subsequently by popular election.[205]

New Orleans was one of the few Southern cities which had had a system
of public schools before the war. Even in 1865 there were 141 schools
for freedmen and 19,000 pupils, the result of a free system for
twenty-five years.[206] A school law, providing in great detail for
the public education of all persons between six and twenty-one years
of age “without distinction of race or color” had been passed in
1869. But it had been a failure,[207] proving in the governor’s words,
“cumbrous and expensive.”[208] The governor, therefore, suggested that
the plan be simplified, the districts enlarged, and the powers and
discretion of the State board increased.[209] Shortly after the opening
of the session a bill was reported in the House and received, despite
attempts to choke it, full, heated discussion and amendment, section by
section, passing only on February 10.[210] In the Senate it came up for
a lengthy debate on the last evening, when it was crowded out by the
pressure of business so that it had to go over to March 9 and 10 in the
extra days of grace when, somewhat amended, it passed by a very large
majority, the dissenting votes coming from the city members.[211] The
House concurred in the Senate amendments the next day.

For the purposes of this bill the State was divided into six divisions,
of which New Orleans formed one. The State superintendent was
required to nominate to the governor, and the governor to the Senate,
a superintendent for each division to hold office three years. The
division superintendents with the State superintendent as president
constituted a board, having the general supervision and control of the
public schools throughout the State, while the division superintendents
were to have full control in their respective divisions. The system of
New Orleans was connected with that of the State by the selection of
a city board of directors by the State board, thus repealing all laws
granting control to the municipal authorities of that city. The State
board was also to appoint a board for every town, city, and parish in
the State with full corporate powers to sue and be sued. The general
school tax was fixed at two mills on the dollar in addition to a tax of
two mills to be collected in each parish. It continued, however, the
provision for the admission of all children between the ages of six and
twenty-one to the schools.[212]

A special civil court, the Eighth District Court, created at the
special session, proved of transcendent importance, when supported by
the criminal court,--created several sessions earlier. The two had
jurisdiction over all public matters, while the power of appointing the
judges was vested in the governor, thus circumventing the constitution.
All cases of a public character, contests for office, writs of quo
warranto, injunctions, mandamus had to be submitted to the former
court, to which all cases then pending before other district courts
must immediately be transferred.[213]

Numerous petitions to the legislature of 1870 showed that the idea of
improvements had now seized upon a large number of the constituents as
well as legislators.[214] Not only did members now propose to raise the
State to economic glory through the ordinary avenue of new railroads
and navigable bayous, but in their enthusiasm they were willing to
legislate parks[215] and factories into existence and to develop the
mineral resources of the State by the same agency. Bayou Bartholomew
was now to be improved; the New Orleans and Chattanooga Railroad
boosted by State bonds[216]; and a large sum of stock subscribed in the
Mississippi Valley Navigation Company.[217]

A number of amendments to the constitution were offered this
session,[218] but only four mustered sufficient strength to pass both
houses. The most noted were the one which removed the governor’s
ineligibility for a second term[219] and the amendment to Article
99, which removed the last restriction on the ex-rebels. It had been
offered in the Assembly, both in 1868 and 1869, and the governor had
urged it in his annual message in the latter year.[220] It stands out
in pleasing relief to most of the partisan legislation of that period,
inasmuch as it was introduced, we are told in debate, by one of the
most bitter opponents of the Democrats,[221] aroused very little
debate, and passed almost unanimously in both houses at a single
sitting.[222] Several speeches, all in favor, were made by negroes
to give, as one of them innocently said, “a little coloring to the
matter.”[223]

A third amendment was intended to secure the safety of the public
funds,[224] and the fourth was a most important restriction on the
public debt, namely, that prior to January 1, 1890, it could not be
increased beyond $25,000,000.[225]

But certain bills were of such transcendent importance that they all
but effaced the consciousness of other legislation, at least in the
mind of the public. These were the four great bills, the election,
registration, constabulary, and militia bills, which, together with
the constitutional amendment which removed ineligibility for a second
gubernatorial term, made it possible for Governor Warmoth to determine
the personnel of all offices practically at will, and, but for the
stumbling-block of the nominating convention, to continue himself
indefinitely at the head of affairs.

Whatever may have been the distrust of the governor in the State at
large--and complaints were not wanting from the first in Democratic
circles--confidence in their young leader was unshaken in the men who
constituted this Assembly. Even when opposing individual bills, members
were careful to express confidence in Warmoth[226] in some such terms
as follows: “Not that I have anything against the governor himself, but
I think it improper to give such extraordinary power to any man, were
he an apostle.”[227]

These measures were introduced together, as has been stated, on the
third day, and action on them extended during the entire period up
to the very close of the extra session. The greatest effort of the
opposition was expended on the election bill. This was not a new
conception of 1870, for a strenuous effort to press through such a
bill under cover of the excitement of the closing days of the session
of 1869 had failed. The note of alarm was sounded almost as soon as
this bill was reported to the Senate by the Judiciary Committee.[228]
“Now, sir, here is a bill giving the governor more than imperial
power--behind it is concealed an armed Grecian horse, with which he may
ride over the rights of the people....”[229] Debate raged every day
from January 18 to 24. The party aspect of the bill was so evident that
it was assailed at once as a device to perpetuate the Republican party
in power.

“I believe,” declared one member, “the only persons belonging to this
State who desire this enactment are those in office, and who are
afraid that unless such a bill as this is passed, they will not retain
the positions they now occupy, and this fear, Mr. President, is not
based on any fraud or violence that might occur at the next election
in which they might become candidates, but in the simple fact that a
revolution has taken place in public opinion.”[230] Even a Republican
felt obliged to break from his party because of its objectionable
features.[231]

Feeling reached a perfect climax of frenzy and sank to depths of
despondency for which it was difficult to find language sufficiently
vehement.

“Therefore, I hope you will believe me when I tell you that this is
the snake in the grass--the form that the devil himself assumed when
he seduced our mother Eve. I tell you that this is a devil, covered
and concealed perhaps, under perfumed flowers, but nevertheless, the
devil--his tail and horn comes out, and not only his tail, but his
horns and hoof. I tell you that this bill is a devil of a bill--the
concocters are devilish fellows, and the only way we can destroy their
sulphuric power is to give them hell.”[232] Another outburst was
clothed in more funereal garb:

  I believe really that if ever there has come a day to the State of
  Louisiana when the whole edifice of her political government ought to
  be draped in mourning, that day has come now. I believe if ever there
  has come a day when all the pomp and glory of the past had forsaken
  her--widowed as she is in affection, destitute of all those glorious
  sympathies that used to awaken a nobler people--we have arrived,
  unfortunately for us, at that miserable period.[233]

In his excitement one member cried: “By God! I do not vote when they
are passing bills here to take away the lifeblood of the people.”[234]

The Republicans rested their defense on the necessity of an election
law which would secure to every citizen entitled to vote a free
exercise of his rights.[235] They turned the debate on the Democrats
by declaring that if they could not carry an election without violence
and were unwilling to pass a law to insure a fair election, they did
not want an honest vote.[236] Radicals who were not satisfied with the
bill declared that the opposition by their refusal to discuss it fairly
and by filibustering had prevented any modification. The attitude
of the mulatto leader, Pinchback, was that it was the lesser of two
evils.[237] It reëmerged from a special committee, to which it had been
committed, January 24,[238] and which again submitted a majority and
minority report, for a second period of debate from January 27 to 31,
on which latter date, much amended and fought to the bitter end, it was
adopted by a vote of 20 to 12.[239]

It came before the House on February 4, where it was argued at length
from February 11 to 16, in keen, searching debate. Members did not
scruple to speak plainly: “This bill, as I believe it, and as I know
it, makes the Republican party dominant; it makes the Governor,--not
clearly, but tacitly--all power; it makes the many parishes of this
State but fiefs of the Executive. It adds one more power to those he
is already endowed with.”[240] Note the succinct condemnation of it
as a party measure in the following query: “Why is the whole State
outlawed in consequence of the misbehavior of portions of it? Outlawed,
I say, for it provides for the outlawry of those who refuse to vote
a Republican ticket.”[241] Party feeling ran as high as in the other
House, and members found threatening documents on their desks, placed
there, Republicans declared, by the Ku-Klux.[242] Finally, suffering
much amendment here too, it was passed February 18 immediately after
prayer, with a burst of party effort: with the reading of only thirteen
sections,[243] the passage of the bill as a whole was moved and
carried, the reading of more than fifty sections being thus suppressed,
notwithstanding the protest of the Democrats at the unconstitutional
manner in which it was passed.[244] February 19 the Senate concurred in
the House amendments.[245]

The other measures seem almost to have turned on the fate of the
election law, for the opposition evidently exhausted its great effort
on that bill. There was little heat over the other measures; little
filibustering, few long speeches. Such few members as spoke seemed to
do so to discharge a moral duty.[246] The registration bill passed
the Senate, February 9[247] without amendment and the House entirely
without debate on the last evening of the regular session.

The history of the militia bill in the House was truly remarkable.
It was introduced March 9 from the Senate, where the interest was so
slight that only seven Senators were present to register their vote
against the fourteen votes which carried it[248]; the necessity of
considering it in Committee of the Whole was dispensed with, and it was
hurried to its third reading. The story of its passage on the evening
of March 14 is told in the following brief passage from the debates:

“Chief Clerk Vigers read the bill.

“I move its final passage, and on that call the previous question.

“The Speaker put the question on the final passage _viva voce_, and it
was declared carried.”[249]

This action caused the greatest confusion, surprise, and protest.

The registration bill threw into the control of the governor the power
to declare who should vote, as the election bill allowed him to declare
for whom the votes were cast. With the consent of the Senate he was to
appoint a State registrar, and one supervisor in each parish--except
Orleans, where the State registrar was to serve--whose duty it should
be to cause every qualified voter to be registered and make out lists
of the registered voters for the commissioners of election at each
polling-place.[250] The decision of any supervisor was final. Courts
were prohibited from interfering in any way with him or his assistants.
The supervisors, in turn, appointed three commissioners of election at
each poll.

The election bill vested in the governor power to take all necessary
steps to secure a fair, free, and peaceable election; and gave him on
election day paramount charge and control of the peace and order of
the State, over all peace and police officers, and over all sheriffs
and constables. Parish and district judges were forbidden to issue
writs of mandamus or injunction or other order to compel a commissioner
of election to do his duty, as the latter was to be responsible only
to the supervisor and he to the governor. On election day citizens at
large were expressly forbidden to carry arms except under orders of
the executive or his appointees. In all parishes except Orleans, the
duty and function of sheriffs were superseded by men appointed by the
governor. The governor and his officers were to be able to withhold
certificates of election to the General Assembly whenever in their
discretion they might see fit, in all cases where fraud, violence,
bribery, or other irregularity might be reported. The capstone of
the structure, as it has been aptly called, was the returning-board,
consisting of the governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary of State,
and two Senators indicated by name--John Lynch and T. C. Anderson,--in
whom was vested the entire revisory power. They were empowered to fill
vacancies within their own number by a majority vote.[251]

In order fully to comprehend the opportunity for fraud in elections, it
must also be noted that the State constitution gave the right to vote
in any parish or in any part of a parish after a residence of ten days,
so that a man, armed with his registration papers, could vote at as
many polls as he could visit in one day.

The purport of the third bulwark of Warmothism, the constabulary
law, was to vest in the governor special power to keep the peace.
With the consent of the Senate he might appoint one chief constable
in each parish, whose duty it should be to preserve the peace, quell
disturbances and riots, and upon warrant of any competent court,
summarily arrest all persons charged with murder, assaults, robberies,
arson, and riots, subject to the power of the governor. The chief
constable of the parish was to assign to each precinct a deputy
constable to perform his duties. Offices of all existing constables
were declared vacant and the governor empowered to bring in a set of
his loyal followers at once.[252]

The militia bill provided the necessary military power to enforce the
execution of the preceding laws. Under its provisions the governor was
constituted Commander-in-Chief of all the militia and could organize,
arm, equip, and uniform as many of the able-bodied male citizens
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five as he deemed necessary and
call the same into active service. Full lists were to be submitted from
each parish to the governor from which he might assign a sufficient
number of persons to make up five regiments. He was to appoint officers
for terms of two years to carry out details under his direction. And
the sum of $100,000 was appropriated to carry out the act.[253]

Several minor bills helped to build up this autocratic power of the
executive. Against stormy debate and attacks on its constitutionality,
a bill was passed which authorized the governor to issue a warrant for
the arrest of any person committing a crime punishable by death or
penitentiary imprisonment upon failure of the regularly constituted
officials to seize him, to be tried in a parish or district court.
Although the accused was assured of the service of attorney, the
bill violated State feeling by obliterating parish lines, and by
allowing high fees to the sheriff, levied on the parish where
the offense occurred.[254] Likewise, the bill which rendered the
Metropolitan Police Board no longer responsible to the recognized
legal tribunals,[255] and which did not require a bond in case suit was
brought against it, was only freeing his hands the more. Nor should
the reader fail to notice in this connection, as the last link in the
chain, that the governor could, under the new city charter, absolutely
control the city politics until after the election, a period of seven
months of grace for manipulating his wires.

Legislation so vital and revolutionary as the measures just outlined
and those appropriating State aid, naturally, aroused hostility, not
only within the legislature, but also outside, where it raged even more
violently, if possible. The Democratic press was thoroughly alarmed; it
attacked the various bills continually and held the most dire threats
over the heads of the Senators who dared to support them.[256] Fiery
language was intended to stir the people to action.[257] Feeling rose
to its greatest intensity over the four most important bills.[258]
Significant calls for secret meetings, signed K. W. C. and I. C.
U.,[259] appeared in the papers, and mass meetings began to be held
both for and against the bills. The Republican party met in mass
meeting on January 27 in the hall of the Representatives to urge the
Assembly to pass these bills without delay. This action was probably
to forestall and nullify the effect of a vast mass meeting of the
opponents of the legislation, which was arranged to take place, January
31 in Lafayette Square. The call was issued to all citizens “opposed to
the financial schemes now pending before the legislature, calculated to
increase the burdens of the people, depreciate the bonds, and ruin the
credit of the people, and cripple commerce.”[260] The enthusiasm of the
crowd here almost outstripped that of the leaders. Said one speaker:
“It is designed not to defend, but to plunder the country, and take
away the liberties of the people. What is to be done?”

“Kill them,” came the prompt response from the crowd.

“Ah, no, not yet. But put your foot down and say that this thing shall
not be. There is power in the fixed determination of the people, and if
the bills are then passed, do as Boston did to the minions of George
III. What is to be done with a Legislature that does these things?”

“Lynch them,” was the verdict of his hearers.[261]

A series of resolutions was passed protesting against the proposed
bills as destructive of the freedom of elections and as creating an
absolute despot of the executive, and denouncing their advocates as
public enemies. Men gave the world notice that they intended to use
all the means in their power to prevent the payment of any bonds or
other obligations of the State which were not indispensably necessary
to the proper administration of the government, and threatened openly
to vote for no man who would not refuse to vote any appropriations for
such obligations.[262] Committees in every parish sought to obtain the
signatures of the citizens of the State to the above resolutions, and
a delegation of one hundred citizens was chosen to present them to the
governor and the Assembly.

The governor’s reception of the committee was cordial, but his response
contained some remarkable charges; he laid the blame for the excesses
on lobbyists who knew how to manipulate the negroes, and laid the
corruption at the door of individuals and corporations who represented
the very best people; nor did he scruple to withhold names.

“The bill (the five million bond bill) went to the Senate. I walked
into the Senate chamber and saw nearly every prominent broker of the
city engaged in lobbying that bill through the Senate, and it was
only by exposing the fact that one of their emissaries had come into
this very chamber and laid upon the desk of my secretary an order for
$50,000 that I was able to defeat it. Mr. Conway, the mayor of your
city, came here and offered me any consideration to induce me to sign
this bill.”[263]

The visit of the delegates to the Senate on February 2 degenerated
into pure farce. A long and amusing debate as to whether they should
receive them or not took place before the delegates, as by some
misunderstanding they had crowded into the chamber before the Senators
had settled this momentous question. And Pinchback explained in
great detail that he had been obliged to admit them at once or they
“would go off with an additional excuse that we would not listen to
the representatives of the people.”[264] After the reading of the
resolutions the delegates were virtually asked to leave[265] and the
indignation of the Senators found wordy expression.[266] Though the
suggestion to return the resolutions as “disrespectful and insulting”
was not adopted, the latter were promptly tabled.

The attempt with the House on the same day met with no more success,
though preliminary arrangement for a ten-minute recess prevented any
such undignified parley as had occurred in the other body. But the
House took much the same attitude of offense toward the resolutions and
buried them in a special committee.[267]

Nominating conventions for the selection of candidates for State
officers were held in the month of September by both the Republican and
Democratic parties. A feature of both conventions was the appearance
of a large number of colored delegates. Inquiries were sent to the
Democratic State Central Committee as to the admission of colored
delegates and so the committee in the regular address to the people
took occasion to voice the party sentiment in the following language:

“The interests of both white and black men are identical in this
struggle. Whatever rights and privileges either enjoy under the
constitution are sacred, and it is the duty of every citizen to see
that they are maintained. The Democratic party has always upheld and
defended the constitution of the country and will now, as ever in the
past, protect and defend every citizen in the full and free exercise
of all rights guaranteed by that instrument.”[268] It declared its
platform to be retrenchment and reform, reduction of the debt and
taxation, rebuilt levees, restored confidence, and a desire to develop
the agricultural resources of the State.

The election was remarkable for its peaceful character.[269] But later
investigation established the fact that there was much fraud both in
connection with the appointment of registrars and in the count of the
election ballots. The law required the appointment of registrars six
months before election. Yet in August but two had been appointed. It
was charged that the governor purposely delayed appointment in order
to influence the August convention.[270] He had appointed in at least
sixteen parishes Democratic supervisors of registration on the score
that it was hard to find competent Republicans willing to undertake
it and that it was good policy.[271] The same investigation concluded
that “there is no doubt that most scandalous frauds were committed by
and with the connivance of some of these registrars,[272] sometimes in
the interest of Republicans and sometimes in the interest of Democratic
candidates.”[273] An old negro, who had been nominated, was astonished
at the result of the count and cried: “Is it possible I have no vote
come out of the box? ’Fore God, I know I vote for myself.”[274]

A considerable number of registrars, clerks, and friends of registrars
were returned elected to the legislature.[275] Carr, who was returned
from De Soto Parish without a nomination, was not even a resident
of that parish,[276] nor was his the only case of that kind. It was
conspicuous that fraudulently returned members were friends of the
governor,[277] and he was charged with direct complicity in two
cases. Some rioting, notably at Donaldsonville and Baton Rouge, was
reported.[278] This naturally gave rise to many contested elections
which hung on to furnish the opponents of the governor their
opportunity in 1872.

It was a clear Republican victory. Graham and Dubuclet, the Republican
candidates for auditor and treasurer, came in with majorities of about
twenty-five thousand each, and that party secured majorities in both
branches of the Assembly. The four constitutional amendments were
submitted to popular vote and adopted. The amendment to Article 99 was
indorsed unanimously.[279]

An interesting fact is to be noted here. In the spring of 1868, while
the Democracy was wholly unorganized and the negroes aggressive
under the protection of the military government, the State went
Republican, but was carried by a reinvigorated Democratic party in
the Presidential election of November of the same year; but in 1870
it swung back to the party in power.[280] But there are two perfectly
intelligible explanations which do not necessarily invalidate the vote
for Seymour in 1868: the new election law and the Enforcement Act of
May 31, 1870,[281] which imposed heavy penalties for infringement upon
the right to vote.


FOOTNOTES:

[169] Under this apparently harmless clause of the
constitution he controlled even the lowest local offices in the
remotest parts--constable, justice of the peace, etc.

[170] Session Laws, 1868, No. 27.

[171] _Ibid._, No. 75.

[172] 21 Louisiana Ann., 483-485.

[173] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, July 19, 1869.

[174] No pecuniary interest was at stake for the city, because
the positions of aldermen had no salaries attached. 21 La. Ann., 744.

[175] New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_, Dec. 29, 1869.

[176] New Orleans, _Comm. Bull._, _Bee_, Mar. 27, 1869.

[177] The Supreme Court subsequently affirmed the judgment of
the Seventh District Court, which sustained Delassize. 21 La. Ann.,
710-12.

[178] _Ann. Cyclop._, 1869, 398.

[179] “We do not propose to inquire into the legality of the
action of the Governor in ejecting Mr. Wickliffe from his office and
appointing a person to supply his place, because we consider it too
clear for dispute that Mr. Warmoth has no such power, and that his
proceeding is a naked trespass.... The white population of Louisiana
are entirely callous to the result, and don’t care whether ‘Mossup
whip Barry’ or ‘Barry whip Mossup.’ They are in the situation of the
onlookers at the fight of the Kilkenny cats, and would have no cause to
weep if the combatants scratched each other’s eyes out.” _Bee_, Mar.
27, 1869.

The _Bulletin_ and the _Picayune_ took the same side more
conservatively. See _Bulletin_, Mar. 27.

[180] Sen. Jour., 1870, 138 (rear of book).

[181] Sen. Deb., 1870, 51.

[182] House Jour., 1870, 7.

[183] “He has extorted sums of money from the creditors of
the state as a condition precedent to the issuance to them of the
certificates of indebtedness or warrants to which they were entitled by
law.” _Ibid._, 1870, 11-12.

[184] _Ibid._, 1870, 141.

[185] _Ibid._, 1870, 141, Sen. Jour., 130.

[186] House Jour., 1870, 152-5.

[187] “After a lengthy and thorough examination of all the
witnesses whose attendance your committee has been able to procure,
they have been able to find from the testimony elicited no foundation
whatever, for any one of the charges preferred by George Wickliffe
against his Excellency.” _Ibid._, 1870, 310.

[188] See Sen. Jour., 1870, 2-7 (rear) for articles in full.

[189] _Ibid._, 1870, rear, 191. For full account of the trial
see Impeachment Proceedings in rear of _Ibid._, 1870.

[190] _Ibid._, 1870, rear, 176, March 3.

[191] On the authority of Herbert, _Why the Solid South_, 410.

[192] “I found that the books were not written up to date, or
those that were written up, the columns were not footed up; addition
had not been made. A great many appropriations had been overdrawn.”
Sen. Jour., 1870, 66.

[193] House Jour., 9.

[194] For the full text of the message, see House Jour., 1870,
9 ff.

[195] House Journal, 1870, 9.

[196] They were very generous with the fees for postage,
lavish to their officers and employees, made a specialty of special
committees, passed a most liberal and loose pension act for the
veterans of 1814-15, and took active steps for the erection of a new
state house. They had learned nothing from the deficiency in the
revenue of the preceding year but proceeded to quibble about levying
a tax of four or five mills though Federal investigation would show
that agricultural property could easily bear a heavier tax. Sen. Jour.,
1870, 41, 57; House Deb., 1870, 238; Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess.,
No. 41, Pt. i., 203.

[197] “But I say, take up the city charter bill, and if you do
not, I assure you that you will not make much progress on the school
bill.” Sen. Deb., 1870, 783. Also House Deb., 200.

[198] “I now make a fair, honest proposition to the friends of
the bill. If they will give me time--say till to-morrow, to read this
bill, to examine it--I promise then, upon my word and sacred honor,
that I will not oppose its passage by resorting to those parliamentary
tactics commonly known as filibustering.” House Deb., 1870, 74.

[199] Jan. 21, _Ibid._, 48-57; Jan. 24.

[200] Sen. Jour., 1870, 12, 13.

[201] _Ibid._, 216-22.

[202] The militia, registration, and New Orleans charter bills
had run the gauntlet of the Senate but were still pending in the House.

[203] The House had already consulted the attorney-general
about the constitutionality of prolonging the session. House Jour.,
1870, 97.

[204] House Deb., 1870, 295.

[205] Laws of Louisiana, Extra Session, 1870, No. 70.

[206] Sen. Reports, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, 279.

[207] McMillan charged ineffectiveness of the law. “There is
not in my whole parish, as far as I know, a single schoolhouse, no
sirs, not even a shed devoted to educational purposes. There has not
been a cent of the taxes raised for educational purposes expended in
Carroll Parish since the war. We have a statute providing for a system
of common school education, and under that superintendents have been
appointed. The salary set apart for such officers has been punctually
drawn.” House Deb., 1870, 115-16.

[208] “Under the law of 1869 we find that the sum of $262,000
would be required for the salaries of officers, leaving nothing with
which to pay teachers, or build or rent schoolhouses.” New Orleans
_Republican_, Jan. 25, 1870.

[209] Governor’s Annual Message, House Jour., 1870, 10.

[210] House Deb., 1870, 188. House Jour., 220. On this
question and the social status the negro could wax eloquent.

[211] Sen. Jour., 1870, 267.

[212] Session Laws, Extra Session, 1870, No. 6.

[213] _Ibid._, No. 2.

[214] The writer noted twenty-six such bills reaching various
stages of progress, besides the fourteen bills which succeeded in
becoming law. There were doubtless many more which were never reported
from committee.

[215] Session Laws, Extra Session, 1870, No. 59.

[216] _Ibid._, No. 31.

[217] _Ibid._, No. 84. This bill became law without the
governor’s signature by lapse of the time limit.

[218] The writer counted seven.

[219] It appears almost incredible that this most personal
measure of all passed both houses with almost no opposition. The
explanation may lie in the bribery later charged. House Misc. Doc., 42
Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 272-73.

[220] “In this spirit (of forgiveness) I recommend the
abrogation of the 99th Article of our Constitution, and believe, if
an amendment should be submitted to the people at the next general
election, it would receive their almost unanimous approval. I regretted
its insertion in the constitution, favored the proposition to abrogate
it at the last session, and now officially recommend it.” _Cyclopedia_,
1869, 394.

[221] Senate Deb., 1870, 61.

[222] Sen. Jour., 1871, 37; House Jour., 146-47.

The House Committee reported it as a “partial proscriptive measure in
direct conflict with the spirit of the age and unnecessary.” House
Jour., 1870, 146.

[223] House Deb., 1871, 42. Only one voice was raised in
opposition.

[224] No person who had been a collector or had been otherwise
intrusted with public money was eligible to any office of trust until
he had obtained a discharge for the amount with which he had been
intrusted. Session Laws, 1870, No. 21, Regular Session.

[225] Session Laws, 1870, Extra Session, No. 12.

[226] “Although I would have the greatest confidence in
whatever he reported.” Senate Deb., 1870, 118.

“I do not say the present governor would abuse these powers,” says even
a Democrat, 744.

[227] _Ibid._, 120.

[228] Two minority reports came in, in one of which Packard
urged that a new apportionment must precede any election law. _Ibid._,
143.

[229] _Ibid._, 147.

[230] Senate Deb., 1870, 155-56.

[231] “I believe the object of the bill, as it stands, is
to perpetuate the power of a certain political party--the Republican
party.” _Ibid._, 149.

[232] _Ibid._, 1870, 168.

[233] _Ibid._, 164-65.

[234] _Ibid._, 180.

[235] Sen. Deb., 150.

[236] _Ibid._, 187.

[237] “If any gentleman can show me where we can repose the
execution of this law outside of the Executive of the State, I would be
glad to hear it; but we must have some protection, sir.” _Ibid._, 172.

[238] _Ibid._, 190.

[239] _Ibid._, 347, Sen. Jour., 110.

[240] House Deb., 1870, 213.

[241] _Ibid._, 207.

[242] House Deb., 217.

[243] These thirteen sections had been read February 15 and
on February 18, immediately after prayer, a motion was made to suspend
the rules in order to put it upon its third reading and final passage
at that time. No vote was taken, but the speaker asked if there were
any objection to the suspension of the rules, and immediately announced
that there was none, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Wren and
many other members did object, but they were unheeded by the chair.
According to the protest of the Democrats. House Jour., 254.

[244] _Ibid._, 236, 254. Vote was 247 to 26.

[245] Sen. Jour., 1870, 188.

[246] On the final suspension of the rules on the registration
bill, a Senator remarked briefly: “I object to the suspension of the
rules because I wish to give the senate as much time as possible to
repent.” Sen. Deb., 470.

[247] Sen. Jour., 150.

[248] Sen. Jour., 245.

[249] House Deb., 1870, 343. McMillan was refused permission
to record his protest. House Jour., 360.

[250] Laws of Louisiana, 1870, No. 99.

[251] Laws of Louisiana, 1870, No. 100. The power to reject
votes for fraud or violence was capable of abuse and yet was held by
Republicans inadequate as a remedy, as it did not add the Republican
ballots which would have been polled.

[252] Laws of Louisiana, 1870, No. 74.

[253] _Ibid._, Extra Session, No. 75.

[254] _Ibid._, No. 40.

[255] Session Laws, 1870, No. 55.

[256] My authority for this is the statement of a Senator in
debate. Senate Deb., 1870, 618. But names were printed in the papers on
important bills so that it is probably true.

[257] “Let us have a united meeting and prompt action to bring
our lawmakers to their just responsibility to an outraged community.”
_Bee_ of Jan. 30.

[258] “We then protest against this bill on constitutional
grounds,” declared the _True Republican_, “for by this bill Warmoth
actually fills three offices. Now, we know that this is a moderate
demand for him, who wants to be the political Brigham Young of this
State. We, Gentiles, are naturally satisfied with one office, but this
political Mormon wants them all.” Quoted Sen. Deb., 1870, 537.

[259] The writer has come across no clue to the meaning of
these letters. The first are, doubtless, Knights of the White Camelia.

[260] The movement for concerted action against bad
legislation had begun in 1869 when the Taxpayers’ Organization had been
created in a mass meeting, Oct. 23. _Commercial Bulletin_, Oct. 25,
1869.

[261] _Pic._, Feb. 1.

[262] For the resolves in full see House Jour., 148-9.

[263] _Cyclopedia_, 1870, 455. One of his charges was against
the leading brokers, who subsequently denied the charge against them;
and other persons indicated by the governor, while admitting their
attempts to bribe him, alleged that he was interested against them,
or that he was not satisfied with the prices offered. Sen. Repts., 42
Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, 202.

[264] Senate Deb., 360-1.

[265] A very pointed hint is given: “But all the Senate can
do in self-respect is to intimate to this body of citizens the rules
of the Senate, and their own sense of propriety should dictate to them
what to do.” Senate Deb., 358.

[266] “I looked upon that as an act of the grossest incivility
and abuse; and sir, as a matter of self-respect and vindication
of the privileges of the House, I deem it right that a rebuke be
administered.”

[267] House Jour., 184.

[268] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1870, 457.

[269] The Governor called it “the most quiet, peaceable, and
orderly election the State has witnessed for many years.” Sen. Jour.,
1871, 23.

[270] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 121.

[271] House Reports, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 4.

The attempt to control the negro vote made by the Democrats in 1868
seems to have been abandoned. See Nordhoff’s story of how a prominent
citizen dismissed a personal servant for voting against him and then
restored him with the resolution never again to try to control a black
man’s vote.

[272] Packard states that the registrar in West Feliciana made
a contract with the Democrats whereby he agreed to give a certain vote
to the Democratic parish officers in return for Democratic help in
electing a Republican Senator. House Misc. Doc., No. 211, 143.

[273] _Ibid._, 18, 438, 439. A part of Caddo Parish where
eight hundred voters lived was cut off by water and so no registrar
went to that section at all, 50.

[274] Senate Reports, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 457, 718.

[275] According to Bovee fifteen or twenty registrars were
returned. House Misc. Doc., No. 211, 245.

[276] He was put on the ticket by the Parish Committee as
the man named by the convention said he could not leave. Part of the
tickets bore his name, part the name of the former nominee, so that the
friends of the latter who could not read were tricked into voting for
Carr. _Ibid._, 224-25.

[277] Bovee stated: “I think there was a regular system of
fraud entered into with a view of electing certain men.... As far as I
can learn, all were perpetrated in the governor’s interest.” _Ibid._,
243.

[278] Sen. Jour., 1871, 32.

[279] _Ibid._, 1871, 24.

[280] See the table which illustrates this shifting in Sen.
Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, 250.

[281] United States Statutes at Large, XVI., 140-6.




CHAPTER IV

The Beginning of Warmoth’s Downfall


The first hints of dissension within what may be accurately called
Warmoth’s party came as early as January, 1870. The element which was
to become so notorious as the “Custom-House” faction had already made
its appearance in Louisiana politics. A resolution introduced into
the House in the early days of the session recognized the existence
of separate organizations contending for recognition as the Central
Republican Club, and designated the men of the New Orleans custom-house
as “erring” members.[282] A certain tension seems to have been present
in the attitude of the House toward all questions respecting the
custom-house. When the House sought information concerning its own
members who were in the employ of the custom-house, Collector Casey
refused it, as he was not a State officer.[283]

The cause of the personal opposition to Warmoth is to be traced, no
doubt, to the movement for the removal of his ineligibility for a
second term, which caused alarm to the other Republican aspirants for
that honor.[284] Organizations were soon covertly started to defeat
the amendment at the polls, according to Warmoth’s statement.[285]
Opposition, however, first became open at the Republican State
Convention which assembled at New Orleans, August 9, 1870, for
the nomination of a ticket and the appointment of a State Central
Committee. It was felt that the governor was taking extraordinary
pains to control that convention, especially as he had been elected a
delegate by a club which the committee did not recognize.[286] Both he
and the lieutenant-governor, who was also present as a delegate, were
nominated to preside, but here the former met his first check: he was
defeated by his negro subordinate. As the civil rights bill of the
preceding session still lay unsigned in the hands of the governor, a
resolution of censure was urged by the custom-house officials on the
score that he had sold out his radical principles to the Democrats;
but after a heated discussion, in which Warmoth defended his action,
the matter was dropped and his conduct virtually indorsed.[287] The
convention denounced special legislation and pledged its best endeavors
to check it.

The State Central Committee consisted regularly of fifteen members,
ten appointed by the convention, five by the chair. As organized,
the five appointees of the chair were opposed to the re-eligibility
amendment and won over a majority of the whole committee. Hence, the
governor refused to contribute to the regular campaign funds or to
encourage his friends to do so, but levied forced contributions upon
all his appointees on pain of dismissal,[288] organized an auxiliary
committee, and began a canvass of his own, in many instances in favor
of candidates not regularly nominated by the party.[289] He had tickets
printed in favor of the amendment,[290] and, as we have seen, scored
a victory at the polls. To Dunn’s complaint that the Warmoth faction
had violated custom in organizing an auxiliary committee, he retorted
that the regular committee was trying to prevent a fair expression of
opinion on the amendment.

Before the legislature met on January 2, 1871, the friends of the
governor entered, with his knowledge, into a coalition[291] with the
Democrats of the Senate, whereby they robbed the lieutenant-governor of
his patronage by taking the appointment of committees into their own
hands,[292] and made Democrats chairmen and majority members of several
of the committees,[293] thus insuring their seats[294] to certain
members who had been fraudulently elected.

By the same coalition Carr was re-elected speaker on the first day,
receiving every Democratic vote.[295] The committees of both houses
were thus so constituted that anti-Warmoth men were powerless to rid
the legislature of ineligible members. Dissatisfaction with Carr’s
rulings, however, was so loudly expressed that about the middle of the
session he was compelled by a union of Democrats with the custom-house
faction to resign, and Colonel Carter of Cameron, old and rather
deaf,[296] was elected in his place.[297] Opportunity was now afforded
for a reconstruction of the Committee on Elections, which, although
unable to complete its investigation before the recess, by an adverse
report on four members at the next session, ultimately helped to
complicate an already intricate situation.

The choice of a United States Senator on January 10 to succeed J. S.
Harris served still further to antagonize the custom-house faction
against Warmoth. James F. Casey, collector of the port, who had, up
to this time, acted in harmony with the administration party, desired
this honor for himself,[298] but the governor threw his influence in
favor of General J. R. West, who, supported by the Democrats under fear
of the election of the negro Pinchback,[299] was elected on the first
ballot in both houses.[300] Casey was soon found among the governor’s
most violent enemies.

In view of the peaceful election of the preceding autumn and the
general quiet of the State, the hopeful words of the governor’s message
do not sound as absurd as events destined to occur within little more
than a year were to prove them:

  I cannot pass from this subject to other details, in justice, without
  calling your attention to the general and peaceable acquiescence of
  our people in the results of the reconstruction policy of the general
  government. Their acceptance of it as a finality has been much more
  satisfactory in Louisiana than in any other state in the South.[301]

While urging the encouragement of public improvements, he warned
the Assembly against certain schemes of plunder “which are already
organizing and will continue to be organized and presented to you
for votes,” and insisted that the commonwealth’s state of bonded
indebtedness must preclude any further appropriations as subsidy.
Adequate penalty for bribery,[302] which had, he acknowledged, become
a “crying evil,” amendments to the public land laws, the police jury
system, the restoration of the old capitol at Baton Rouge, and a larger
measure of home rule for New Orleans are subjects which appear in his
message for the first time.[303] Although defending the legislation
of the previous session, he recommended with studied vagueness of
expression the modification of the election and registration laws:
  The violent rancor of that period (1868) having now given place to
  a more liberal and just acknowledgment of the true relations of all
  our citizens, I commend to your consideration the modification of the
  registration and election laws to an extent, that, while securing
  the inalienable rights of all, will make the usage under them less
  irksome and exacting to the few.[304]

Together with his message he returned without his approval ten bills
to the Senate,[305] and three to the House. The veto power was very
freely used by Governor Warmoth. Up to January 1, 1871, he had vetoed
thirty-nine bills[306] and suffered others to become law without his
approval by lapse of the constitutional time limit, because they were
passed by such a majority as to have made “his veto a useless bit of
friction.”[307] His courage in boldly vetoing some measures very close
to the hearts of his legislators should not pass unnoted, nor the
strength of his influence, for only five, up to this time, were able to
muster the requisite two-thirds majority in the face of his opposition.

The legislature took to heart the governor’s statement that the
questions most urgent were such measures as would most speedily “bring
railroads, open natural watercourses, and facilitate ocean commerce,”
without heeding his warning of the need for rigid economy. The orgy of
voting away paper money to aid paper railroads and canals went on with
even greater frenzy than before. It was unfortunate that the governor
did not carry the courage of his convictions further and instead of
vetoing but six bills, do his part to quash the thirteen laws[308]
which appropriated over $800,000 in actual subsidies; which granted
away valuable timber along with the right of way to a new railroad; and
which granted exemption from taxation to another canal company. The
loose extension of $40,000, which had been appropriated the preceding
session for the removal of obstructions in Bayou Bartholomew, to “what
more might be necessary”[309] is indicative of the business care
applied to the State pocket-book. The governor’s signature to the bill
for the purchase of a site and erection of a State capitol[310] may be
regarded as raising the State indebtedness by one and one-half million
dollars. He suffered an act guaranteeing the second mortgage bonds of
another railroad to become law without his signature,[311] but the
measure which guaranteed the principal and interest of a warehouse
company to the amount of over a million dollars was obliged to pass
over his veto.[312] The total amount added to the State debt by this
Assembly amounted to about four million dollars. Nineteen different
appropriation bills were passed, aside from those granting subsidies.

But it was apparent by this time that much of this effort to stimulate
development by State aid was barren of result. Some roads which had
received State aid had nothing to show for it, and committees of
investigation “to ascertain whether the said company has complied
with the conditions of the act” incorporating it were beginning to
appear.[313] So strong was the feeling that the governor recommended
to the next legislature that unless work be begun actively within six
months, certain railroads should lose their charters.[314]

The vexatious levee problem seemed to have found a solution. When the
serious crevasses which threatened New Orleans with inundation appeared
in the spring, the governor assumed control and closed the breaks with
the aid of State engineers. The Louisiana Levee Company was then formed
and its interests made identical with those of the State. The company
contracted to construct, maintain, and control levees on both banks of
the Mississippi and its tributaries according to the requirements of
a competent commission of three able engineers; to construct at least
three million cubic yards each year until the levee was completed to
the required standard. To get the company started the State subscribed
a considerable sum and levied a special tax of two-tenths per cent
for twenty-one years for a repair fund, and, in the absence of any
tax for the current year, issued bonds to the amount of one million
dollars.[315]

Although a number of additional schools had been put in operation,[316]
the superimposed Northern school law still proved unsatisfactory for
Louisiana and came up for further amendment. Forty thousand dollars was
fleeced from the people annually for salaries of school administrators
and incidental expenses, outside of the teachers’ salaries and other
expenses. School directors were often unable to write their names.
A letter from the president of the school board of Carroll Parish,
as printed in the _National Republican_, is so ungrammatical and
misspelled that it is almost impossible to read it.[317] Cain Sartain,
who later figured as a Representative, now a school teacher, was
appallingly ignorant.[318] Naturally demands for the abolition of this
costly and inefficient establishment were incessant. The supplement
passed this session tended to simplify the law, but the chief change
was provision for the appointment by a State board of subordinate
boards of school directors for the several parishes, towns, and cities,
who should have charge of all the funds and school records, all to
be under the direction of the division superintendent. An additional
tax of one to two mills was to be levied on the taxable property of
the parish. Special individual provision was made for the board in New
Orleans and for the levying of a special tax to the amount requested by
the board. But a section of the revenue law which prohibited the city
from collecting taxes in excess of two per cent[319] would have closed
the schools, as the limit had already been exceeded, except for the
aid rendered by the State superintendent and the city government.[320]
Still the system awakened great dissatisfaction, even the colored
people grumbling. The governor, by the appointment of Conway, a
Republican and intimate friend, to the headship of the school-system,
erected it into a political machine.[321]

Agreeably to the governor’s recommendation, bills to modify both the
election and registration[322] laws were introduced into the Senate
about the middle of the session, but were not pressed through, largely,
it was charged, because of the governor’s secret opposition. An effort
to tamper still further with the government of New Orleans,[323] and
a generous appropriation for the militia[324] passed both houses but
failed, apparently, to secure the governor’s signature. Some attention
was devoted to the labor problem and to the question of creating
parishes. The latter subject, probably for political reasons, had been
something of a mania with the legislature, until at this session[325]
the proposition was urged with much force “to stop the legislature from
creating new parishes unless authorized by the voters of the parishes
to be divided.”[326]

The extravagance and state of utter corruption of the legislative body
in 1871-2 were only the natural result of the conditions started in
1868-9.

The amount of the State debt was disputed. The governor held that it
was, in round numbers, $22,000,000, while the auditor claimed it to
be $41,000,000, the difference to be accounted for by a contingent
debt of $18,000,000 dependent on the construction of railroads, the
second mortgage bonds of which the State had agreed to indorse.[327]
The bonded debt was $19,188,300, the annual interest on which
amounted to $1,403,820, besides which there was a miscellaneous debt
of $3,187,490.[328] A comparison of the debt with the period just
preceding the Warmoth administration is suggestive, as it had increased
over $8,000,000 since 1868, taking the conservative estimate,[329]
growing by deficiencies at the rate of over $1,000,000 a year. The
expenditures in 1870 had exceeded the income by over $1,000,000
although the deficit was more than covered by the balance in the State
treasury at the beginning of the year. The total amount of bonds or
aid granted by the State to various corporations, prior to 1871 and
for which bonds had not yet been issued, was over twelve millions. The
auditor estimated the probable expenditures of 1872 at something over
three millions, but as a matter of fact they far exceeded that sum.

The total amount of taxable property in the State at the close
of 1871 was $250,594,417.50 from which $4,605,475.02 in taxes
was collected.[330] With this should be compared the valuation
and taxes in 1870 to show the decrease. The valuation was the
same--$251,296,017.02,--but the taxes collected were $6,490,028.[331]
The unpaid taxes amounted in 1871 to nearly five millions, exclusive
of the taxes due for 1870 and of the taxes in a number of parishes
where no rolls of assessment had been made.[332] The aggregate tax
in the State was fourteen and one-half mills on the dollar.[333] So
great was the burden of this taxation that in some parishes whole
forty-acre tracts of land, as rich as any in the Nile, were sold that
year by the tax-gatherer for one dollar, and in many instances estates
absolutely found no bidders. Large owners were willing to give half
their acres to immigrant families on the sole condition that they
should settle on and improve the land given them. A company was being
formed in northern Louisiana to divide 50,000 acres of land in tracts
of fifty acres to a family. Real estate declined within the years
1870-1 not less than twenty-five per cent.[334] What was formerly
considered very good security, mortgage paper for instance, had become
of little value, because in a few years at that rate of taxation no one
could pass the papers, for in case of foreclosure the property bore
with it the burden of five, six, or seven per cent taxes which would
leave no revenue.[335] The picture of the financial state drawn by a
distinguished Democrat about this time is worthy of quotation.

  If we were threatened with the continuance of the power which has
  administered this government, the conflagration of Chicago would
  not be more desolating than the effect of the continuance of this
  legislation would be upon the city of New Orleans; and the reason
  of it is this: when the city of Chicago was burned to the ground
  the people had at least the ground left, and northern and eastern
  capitalists have come there to rebuild it, while with us, capital is
  flying from the state, commerce is decreasing, and everybody who can
  is trying to get away.[336]

The cost of collecting the tax was excessive. Ten per cent of the
amount was allowed for assessment and collection in all but portions
of New Orleans where five per cent was deducted. The mere cost to the
State of gathering in the taxes in 1871 was close to $500,000 out of a
total of $6,500,000.[337] This made the cost of collection over twelve
per cent.[338] The poll-tax in the second district of New Orleans for
10,146 persons amounted to but $1911, and of this sum, after the cost
of assessment and collection was deducted, only $800.85 was left to the
treasury.[339]

The legislative session of 1871 cost $958,956.50, although the
Assembly appropriated only $641,400, the average cost of each Senator
amounting to about $5300, of each Representative, $7300, making the
average cost of a member $113.50 per day.[340] With this statement
should be compared the cost before the war, when the largest amount
ever appropriated for an ordinary session was $100,000.[341] The
explanation of the enormous difference is to be found in the governor’s
comment[342]:

  It was squandered in paying extra mileage and per diem of members for
  services never rendered[343]; for an enormous corps of useless clerks
  and pages,[344] for publishing the journals of each house in fifteen
  obscure parish newspapers, some of which never existed, while some
  never did the work[345]; in paying extra committees authorized to
  sit during the vacation and to travel throughout the State and into
  Texas[346]; and in an elegant stationery bill which included ham,
  champagne, etc.[347]

The official reporter in the Senate drew the munificent salary of
twenty dollars per day,[348] while each representative of a newspaper
received a generous gratuity.

The enormous printing bills were, of course, a result of corruption.
The public printing had cost the State in three years $1,500,000,[349]
a goodly share of which Warmoth was accused of obtaining because
of his fourth interest in the State paper.[350] Under the law the
three commissioners named a State printer for the journals, laws,
and debates, but they were also authorized to have the printing done
by certain country papers. In addition the House and Senate claimed
the right to select other country papers to publish these documents
officially, to be paid from the contingent funds, so that thirty-five
or forty more were so selected. The sum of $180,000 was paid to papers
in New Orleans in 1871, outside of the official organ.[351] Many of the
papers were sustained only by these contracts.[352] It was generally
believed that men were sent over the country to edit these papers in
order to build up the interests of the governor, while Carter, on the
other hand, openly admitted that he gave his patronage to papers which
would support the reform movement.[353]

The entire lack of conscience of the men who were administering the
government came to light during the close of this year and early in
1872 with appalling vividness, until one turns away simply sickened by
the tale of corruption.[354] Neither party nor class lines regulated
integrity,[355] for reputable men of both sides were among the persons
who offered bribes. As Carter put it, “There seems to be something in
the climate here that affects both parties.”[356] Under oath one man
declared that it was generally understood all round that any one who
wanted to get a bill through had to pay for it. He thought there was a
regular office opened down on Royal Street for that purpose where there
was an agent for members. He had seen money paid right on the floor of
the House. After the passage of the Chattanooga bill he saw a man with
his hands full of money paying it out to members with little attempt
at concealment.[357] Senators under false names were incorporators of
many of the companies chartered and got their shares of stock after
the bills were passed.[358] So wide-spread was the knowledge of their
dishonesty that the story was current that the members had not even
time to write their promises to vote the passage of such and such a
bill, but had to resort to printed blanks.[359]

One of the dishonest measures, not mentioned elsewhere, should not be
passed without brief mention, at least. In 1870[360] the legislature
authorized the improvement of the old city park, a piece of ground
which had been held for the purpose for many years. During the
following year two politicians, Southworth and Bloomer, got a written
agreement from the owners of a large vacant piece of land--the only
large tract near the city--to sell it to them at a fixed price, six
hundred thousand dollars. The legislature of 1871 amended the park
law so as to allow the commissioners to buy land for the new park
and made an appropriation for it. The governor now appointed as park
commissioners, Pinchback, West, and Southworth. They next acquired
title to the property, but paid only sixty-five thousand dollars, the
remainder being left on mortgage. August 15 they sold one-half their
purchase to the city for eighty thousand dollars, receiving sixty-five
thousand dollars in cash, and one hundred ninety-five thousand in
bonds. It was common street talk that Antoine complained that Pinchback
had cheated him out of forty thousand dollars, which he in some way
expected out of the deal.[361]

The evidence fails of proof that the governor ever received a bribe
for his action on any bill,[362] but it is difficult to escape
the suspicion of his complicity in corrupt transactions, if it be
true, as was alleged, that no bill which the governor favored could
fail and none that he opposed could pass. He admitted his use of
his patronage to remove personal enemies and appoint friends “as a
custom of governors”[363] and that the government had been guilty
of some abuses created by his connivance, but emphatically denied
the perpetration of any frauds,[364] declaring on oath that he stood
before the Congressional committee with “clean hands.”[365] But his
duplicity in other ways seems clear, while the fact stands out that
with a salary of eight thousand dollars a year he testified that he had
made far more than one hundred thousand dollars the first year of his
administration[366] and by 1872 was reported worth a million dollars.
He was surely willfully deluding himself when he uttered this boast:

  I believe I have since I have been governor of the State, under
  circumstances and embarrassments of the gravest character, and under
  difficulties that I am surprised myself that I have been able to
  overcome, administered the State government in the best interests
  of the people of the State, and have produced as much harmony, good
  feeling, and prosperity as it was possible for me or any one else to
  produce under the circumstances.[367]

In a series of remarkable pen pictures the governor brought charges of
dishonesty against most of the custom-house reformers--against Senators
Ray, Casey, Packard, Lowell,[368] Carter.[369] His attack on Carter may
be considered typical:

  Mr. Carter was also, and is now, the paid attorney of the New
  Orleans, Mobile, and Texas Railroad Company, from which he receives
  $833.33 per month, or $10,000 per annum, and for which he has
  never done one hour’s service. The contract for his employment
  was made with him by the company after he had kept in his pocket
  for thirty or sixty days a bill which had passed the legislature
  almost unanimously, and immediately after this contract was made, by
  which he became the attorney of the company, the bill was signed by
  him.[370]

Several of the men attempted no reply to these charges, and Carter’s
explanation served only to convince the Congressional committee that
the charge was substantially true.[371] Casey was clearly proved to
have been the holder of a corruption fund of $18,000, part of a $50,000
fund raised by himself and others to bribe the legislature to pass a
bill for a company in which he was an interested incorporator. When the
governor vetoed the bill, Casey unlocked the safe and Herring returned
$18,000. It required just eighteen senators to pass the bill.[372] The
president of the Louisiana Lottery Company had a list of about fifty
members of the House with whom he had made arrangements for the passage
of the Jackson Railroad bill with the amount that had been paid and the
sum still due. The amount with a few exceptions was $600, but Campbell
and Pinchback were rated worth $2000.[373] Many members held two
offices, quite content to interpret the constitution in the Louisiana
way that a member of the Assembly was not a State officer.[374]

The governor made a genuine effort to combat the extravagance of
the legislature. In April, 1871, soon after the adjournment of the
Assembly, he applied to the courts for an injunction to restrain the
auditor from paying warrants for the mileage, per diem, and contingent
expenses of members of the lower house, because fraudulent vouchers
had been issued whereby the amounts had been increased. The injunction
was granted and the auditor, together with several experts, appointed
to investigate the matter. The governor’s real object was to assail
Speaker Carter by the allegation that he had coerced the chief clerk
to sign a fraudulent journal of the House, which authorized five
committees to sit during the recess, thus defrauding the State of
$200,000. Warmoth declared that a number of resolutions, which the
speaker stated as introduced and passed the last night, had been
interpolated into the journal, for it was notorious that they had not
been introduced up to half-past eight o’clock that evening, and that
from that moment until the adjournment the House had been in a constant
state of uproar, during which time it was impossible for the House to
take any action. He advanced what seems considerable evidence of his
charge, while the delay of the publication of this day’s journal for
sixteen days after the adjournment,[375] looks, it will be confessed,
suspicious.[376]

The report of the commission sustained the charges of the governor
but in part. It was shown that the amount of the warrants had in some
instances been fraudulently increased; that warrants to the amount of
$240,000 had been issued in excess of the appropriation of 1871[377];
that many warrants for extra pay to officers and clerks had been issued
on the resolution of but one house, contrary to law; that $40,000 had
been fraudulently issued to committees for mileage on official duty,
when, according to the journals, they had not left the city; and
that the signatures of the State officers had been forged in various
instances. The commission condemned the loose manner of conducting
business in the warrant office, but brought no specific charges. The
opposition press charged the governor with holding up this report for
months and publishing it at the opportune moment for him--just before
the assembling of the legislature in 1872.[378]

An important decision in regard to the limitation of the State debt
was rendered in May by the State Supreme Court. The matter came up on
appeal from the Eighth District Court of New Orleans, where a suit
had been instituted to compel the auditor to issue a warrant on an
appropriation of $50,000 made in favor of a Mr. Nixon. The auditor had
refused because the law authorizing it violated the recent amendment,
as it increased the debt above the constitutional limit. The Supreme
Court affirmed the decision of the lower court in favor of the
auditor, contending that “the evidence in the record leaves no doubt
that the debt of the State exceeded twenty-five million dollars on or
before the first of March, 1871.”[379]


FOOTNOTES:

[282] Jan. 15, 1870. “Whereas different persons and separate
organizations are contending for recognition as the Central Republican
Club of the State of Louisiana.... Resolved That the organization
thus attempted be permitted to take a back seat in the gatherings of
the great Republican party of this state, and that the door of the
Republican Temple shall hereafter, like gospel gates, stand open night
and day, until all political sinners, including even the erring ones
from the New Orleans Customhouse, shall have time and opportunity to
return decently and in order to their father’s house.” La. House Jour.,
55.

[283] See above p. 29. House Journ., 1870, 252.

[284] Warmoth himself thought that “if it had not been for
that amendment there would have been no division.” House Misc. Doc., 42
Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 380. Dibble, however, thought that opposition
began when he refused to sign the civil rights bill of 1868. _Ibid._,
298.

[285] _Ibid._, 298. He alleged that the custom-house party
printed 500,000 tickets in opposition to the amendment and distributed
them through the State. It is also significant that almost all the
Republican votes against the amendment were cast in the third ward
where Dunn and Lowell lived. _Ibid._, 382.

[286] _Ibid._, 128.

[287] House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 9, and House
Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 299.

[288] It would seem that both sides used their patronage.
Warmoth accused the custom-house of using its appointment of 400-500
Federal employees for the purpose of influencing the legislature in the
fight. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 356.

[289] _Ibid._, 155.

[290] House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 3.

[291] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 384.

[292] The vote is indicative of the relative strength, 24 to
11. Sen. Jour., 1871, 11.

[293] Another bit of testimony would indicate that the
bestowal on the Democrats of the patronage in their respective
localities was a part of this bargain. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 211, 126.

[294] The finessing for coalition appears strongly here.
A proposition had been made in writing by Dunn and Packard to the
Democrats, whereby the former agreed to prevent any further legislation
for mixed schools or social equality and to aid in the repeal of the
obnoxious legislation, if the Democrats would help to defeat Warmoth.
The offer was rejected by the Democrats. _Ibid._, 306-7.

[295] La. House Jour., 1871, 1.

[296] _Ibid._, 79. House Debates, 1871, 115. Jan. 31.

[297] On one occasion he apologized for so frequently vacating
the chair, on the ground that he was sick and feeble, and broke down,
“standing up and talking loud enough to keep the members in order.”
House Deb., 1871, 200.

[298] Packard denied that Casey wanted the office, but the
burden of proof is against him. He had acted with Warmoth prior to this
time and a custom-house brother approached Warmoth on the question.
Warmoth’s refusal to support him could hardly do otherwise than
alienate him. House Misc. Docs., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 328-9.

[299] _Ibid._, 327.

[300] La. Sen. Jour., 1871, 20. House Jour., 21. It is
interesting to note Pinchback’s appearance as a candidate thus early.
He was a strong second though not in the race as yet. The vote stood 68
to 24, House Deb., 1871, 9.

[301] Sen. Jour., 1871, 23.

[302] There was no law against bribery in Louisiana.

[303] La. Sen. Jour., 1871, 27-9.

[304] La. Sen. Jour., 1871, 29.

[305] He later withdrew one of these vetoes. _Ibid._, 63. Only
one of these ten bills passed over his veto. He should have credit for
preventing the squandering of a million and a half dollars by his veto
of the Nicholson pavement bill in 1870.

[306] This statement is based upon the table submitted by the
governor himself in 1872 to a Congressional committee. House Misc.
Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 286-94.

[307] By 1872 he had vetoed 70 bills and refused to sign 40.
_Ibid._, 285.

[308] See the laws of La. for 1871, Nos. 35, 40, 46, 53, 59,
70, etc.

[309] _Ibid._, No. 45.

[310] _Ibid._, No. 31.

[311] _Ibid._, No. 28. The Southeastern Railroad Company.

[312] _Ibid._, No. 41. The Louisiana Warehouse Company.

[313] Sen. Jour., 1871, 67, House Jour., 35. In all, the New
Orleans, Mobile, and Chattanooga Railroad Company received from the
State $4,250,000 or over $58,000 a mile besides a grant of the use of a
part of the New Orleans levee, valued at $1,000,000, for it completed
only seventy miles. It remains to be added that two different companies
of Northern capitalists offered to build the Houston and New Orleans
road without subsidy or aid, but the legislature would not grant a
charter. Nordhoff, 58.

[314] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1871, 474.

[315] La. House Jour., 125, Sen. Jour., 121. For the full act
see Session Laws, 1871, No. 4.

[316] In 1871 the total number of schools was 640, the number
of teachers 1240, and the attendance 90,000. _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1871,
474.

[317] Feb. 1, 1872.

    “January the 9th 1872.

  Cor J P York I visited new Welashe Peish in the critmas finnen the
  White People rebelling Jest as much as the dead When You Was on the
  ball field Dod Swan leven in bellvue says by god he Wald like See
  the Dam Yankes start a public School in bellvu are minden ore any
  Whare beteew monre and Scheveport he Shat down a Young man I sew Well
  my names Simon ford on Widarvne lone Plac all so Jhon head and Jhon
  alfard liven in bellvue cauth a young man name Anderson Smith Who
  Went to see a Young collard lady step him Struck Him 3000 licks With
  a new caw hide do for God Sake Send them Peple Petectheon. I promised
  them that I Wold Send You”


[318] _National Republican_, Feb. 6, 1872.

  “Mr. Spaker. I ask the unimus consent of the house to rise to a
  question of privilege. I find in one of the issures of the Times
  last week a burlest on one of my carstituent which was takened from
  a private letter adressed to my collegue who ocuppies a seat on this
  floor as a representative who sent the private letter up to the Chief
  Clerks desk to be read as a memoral. I think that the gentlemen my
  collegue who occupies a seat on this floor he acted very injustice
  with one of his constituents which he stands here to represent, end
  not only don injustice to his constituents he have I consider Mr.
  Speaker have shone a disrespecte this heaverbal body by sending a
  privat letter up to the Clerk desk to be read as a memoral in order
  to flatter one of his constituent he have not had a chance of an
  education, as he have had &&&”


[319] Laws of Louisiana, 1871, No. 42, Sec. 7.

[320] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1871, 474.

[321] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 40.
According to the _National Republican_, Conway was “devoted to the
fortunes of his Excellency just as ardently as he is opposed to the
interests of the people of the State.” Jan. 3, 1872.

[322] This bill immediately upon its appearance from the
committee was made the special order for a certain date, but does not
reappear in the Journal after Feb. 10. Sen. Jour., 1870, 102. Election
law appeared Feb. 1, Sen. Jour., 73.

[323] Passed by the Senate Feb. 16. Sen. Jour., 131; by the
House, Feb. 18, House Jour., 157.

[324] Sen. Jour., 220; House Jour., 222. Passed by both houses
Mar. 2.

[325] Even during this session fourteen new parishes were
proposed.

[326] House Jour., 68.

[327] The governor asserted that there was not the slightest
possibility that those roads would be built, and that if every one
were built, the State would be amply secured from ever having to pay
the indorsement, as the road would be worth four times the amount
guaranteed. Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i, 197.

[328] _Ibid._, 193. The governor’s figures vary slightly in
different statements, 194.

[329] The following total compiled by Secretary Bragdon for
the governor is suggestive:

  Public debt for 1860 $10,099,074.32
                  1868  14,347,051.02
                  1870  23,427,952.29
                  1871  22,357,999.05
                  1872  23,045,790.00  _Ibid._, 200.


[330] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i., 205.

$3,658,879 is quoted by Scott from the _Financial Chronicle_, _see_
Scott, _Repudiation of State Debts_, 110.

[331] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i., 205.
_Cf._ Scott, _Repudiation of State Debts_, 100.

[332] Sen. Jour., 1871, 27, House Jour., 87.

[333] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i., 358.

[334] _National Republican_, Jan. 2, 1872.

[335] Testimony of Eustis, House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2
Sess., No. 211, 534.

[336] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i., 205.
The _National Republican_ reported September 22, “The regular broker
shuns all dealings with it--city paper--and capitalists scorn it, it is
hawked around by its unfortunate owners--clerks and laborers--and sold
to the first man who offers to buy it.”

[337] $493,324. Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt.
i., 358.

[338] Note Herbert’s table comparing the cost in 1871 with
that under the Democrats before the war, 403.

[339] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, 360. Tax
Collector Sheridan said that he cleared about $32,000 in 1871 and
$14,000 in 1872. _Ibid._, 42 Cong., 3 Sess., No. 457, 707. Warmoth
defended those figures as the usual receipts for the office. _Ibid._,
713-14.

[340] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 396.

[341] Sen. Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 41, Pt. i., 359.

[342] Governor’s Message, 1872. _Annual Cyclop._, 1871, 471.

[343] Some committees were authorized to continue during the
recess, some thirty, some sixty days, some longer.

[344] The Enrollment Committee had over eighty clerks at $8
a day, when not more than ten could be required, according to the
governor’s statement.

[345] The printing bill for the House journals was $68,000,
exclusive of New Orleans. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211,
38.

[346] $20,000 was spent in extra mileage above the amount
allowed by law, $40,000 for mileage and per diem of special traveling
committees of the House alone. Carter stated that there were thirty-one
standing committees and twenty special committees with a full
complement of clerks. House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 39.

[347] _National Republican_, Jan. 2, 1872.

[348] Sen. Jour., 1871, 74.

[349] House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 21. The largest
sum ever spent before the war, when they were printed in both English
and French, was $60,000.

[350] This paper was said to pay a dividend of 110 per cent.
But the governor denied receiving any dividend. House Misc., Doc., 42
Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 368.

[351] _Ibid._, 38. Sometimes papers were opposed merely
because others were entitled to the same privileges. House Deb., 4.

[352] _Ibid._, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 39. See House
Jour., 55 and 129 for a list.

[353] _Ibid._ He asserted in the Press Convention that his
patronage should not be used against him, and in several cases where
papers asserted this independence, the contracts were revoked. House
Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 298.

[354] Phelps says: “The corruption was so general and so
notorious that no one connected, directly or indirectly, has escaped
from the mess without taint in the eyes of the people.” _Louisiana_,
369.

[355] Moncure declared that he did not know a public official
who was not worthy of impeachment. _Ibid._, 53-4.

[356] House Misc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 38.

[357] _Ibid._, 238. Another man brought conclusive evidence
and stated that he had witnessed money paid to Carr, Dewees, and
Pinchback. _Ibid._, 474. Nordhoff had the original of the following
interesting document: “Gentlemen of the Finance Committee of La. Levee
Co.: Please pay to Hon. A. W. Faulkner the amount you may deem proper
to pay on account of Levee Bill, I being absent at the time under
orders of the House. But I would have voted for the bill had I been
there. Mr. Faulkner is authorized to sign a receipt for me--Stamps.”
Nordhoff, 59. The value of quotations from Nordhoff may be proved by
stating that he declared himself a Republican, never having “voted
any other Federal ticket than the Republican; I have been opposed to
slavery as long as I have had an opinion on any subject except sugar,
candy and tops; and I am a thorough believer in the capacity of the
people to rule themselves, even if they are very ignorant, better than
anybody else can rule them.” 10.

[358] Most telling is the reluctant reply of the governor to
the question: “Are you able to say from your knowledge, personally
or officially, that all or nearly all of these bills incorporating
monopolies or granting individuals private valuable franchises are
passed through the legislature by corrupt means?” “I wouldn’t like to
say that.” House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 400.

[359] _Ibid._, 534.

[360] The _Picayune_ had combated this measure in 1869 as an
act of folly then. Sep. 24, 1869.

[361] Nordhoff, 62.

[362] The most damaging charge against him was that of a
bribe of $50,000 offered him to sign the Nicholson paving bill. Walsh
published a card, saying that the governor had refused it because
it was too little. The latter, naturally, denied this and tried to
disprove it by the unsupported statement of another man, whereupon
Walsh sent the governor a challenge. And so the matter stood--the
unproved assertion of one man against the other. House Misc. Doc., 42
Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 376.

But Scott on the other hand swore that it cost more to get the
governor’s signature than to get it through the legislature. It is to
be regretted that the defense which Mr. Warmoth still expects to write,
based, the writer understands, upon the fact that he prevented still
more outrageous wrongs from being perpetrated, has not yet appeared,
as it may throw additional light upon this question. The writer has
applied to him repeatedly in vain for a statement of his position now
after the lapse of forty years.

[363] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 380. He
said that he had learned from the Democrats that “to the victors belong
the spoils.” 369.

[364] _Ibid._, 358.

[365] _Ibid._, 351. He declared in a series of replies to
direct questions that he had never tampered with the election of
members, never counseled nor advised such tampering, never held any
stock that he had not paid for, nor had stock presented to him, nor
been promised stock on condition of approving a bill incorporating
monopolies, and never been influenced in any way in his official acts
by any reward or the hope or promise of it. But he admitted having
signed bills after expiration of the constitutional time limit in order
to “quiet the people.” _Ibid._, 351, 371-2.

[366] House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 25.

[367] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 374.

[368] Lowell was a defaulter for a large amount.

[369] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 395-6.

[370] _Ibid._, 396. Carter was an apostatizing preacher and
ex-Confederate colonel, who had turned loyal patriot and anti-Warmoth
leader.--Cox, _Three Decades_, p. 561. With this statement might be
compared Carter’s opinion of Warmoth as voiced in a speech in February,
1872: “Louisiana is afflicted with worse laws and worse administrators
thereof than can be found in ten states of the Union. Henry Clay
Warmoth is the Boss Tweed in Louisiana, except that that amiable
villain, with all his infamies, is a gentlemen and a saint compared
with the unscrupulous despot who fills the executive chair of this
state.”--Cox, _Three Decades of Federal Legislation_, 560.

[371] House Rpts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 23. Of course
the men attacked made counter charges against the governor.

[372] _Ibid._

[373] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 475; and
House Repts., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 92, 26.

[374] E. W. Dewees, another leader of the House, contended
with Carr and Carter for eminence. The investigating committee of
Congress reported that he had been under arrest with seven sworn
charges of burglary against him, and had then obtained of the chief
of police a certificate that his picture was not in the rogues’
gallery.--_Ibid._, 27.

The conclusion to which the Congressional committee came is worth
noting when we recall that they were Republicans: “The world
has rarely known a legislative body so rank with ignorance and
corruption.”--_Ibid._, 24. In May, 1875, five members of this
legislature were indicted for bribery.--_Times._

In this revolting catalog it is refreshing to find one person free
from the taint of dishonesty. The lieutenant-governor was regarded by
the Democrats as incorruptible. “In the view of the Caucasian chiefs,
the taint of honesty and of a scrupulous regard for the official
proprieties, is a serious drawback and enervating reproach upon the
Lieutenant Governor.”--_Times_, August 4, 1871.

[375] House Misc. Doc., 42 Cong., 2 Sess., No. 211, 396. The
fraud took the form of substituting one bill for a similar one which
had been tabled but purported in the journal to have been taken up
that night. It was supposed that the delay was due to the loss of the
original bill alleged to have been passed.

[376] It is only fair to add, as Carr pointed out, that the
testimony of the commission did not bear out these charges.--_Ibid._,
230.

[377] _Annual Cyclopedia_, 1871, 471. The over issue of the
vouchers forced the value of the warrants down to 2½ cents on the
dollar.--Herbert, _Why the Solid South_, 403.

[378] _National Republican_, Jan. 2, 1872.

Strangely enough the report appeared in the _Picayune_, Dec. 29, 1871.

That paper printed one of its rare expressions of approval of the
governor: “The efforts of the governor to defeat so glaring an
infringement of the law will meet with general approval. The court has
issued the injunction asked for by the Executive, and in consequence
over three thousand dollars will be saved to the State.”

[379] 23 La. Ann. 402-8, State of Louisiana _ex rel._ Salomon
and Simpson vs. James Graham.

       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber’s note


New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Other spelling has also been retained as originally published except
for the changes below.

  Page 31: “which look unnecessarily”     “which looked unnecessarily”
  Page 37: “The leaving movers”           “The leading movers”
  Page 61: “but tactily--all power”       “but tacitly--all power”
  Page 94: “instances been fraudently”    “instances been fraudulently”

Footnote changes:

  Footnote 82: The lowercase “i” in “ibid” was capitalized.

  Footnote 199: The lowercase “i” in “ibid” was capitalized.

  Footnote 259: Missing footnote number was added.

  Footnote 374: “evolting” changed to “revolting.”






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