Carpetbag Government
The negroes had exercised without hindrance their new privilege of the suffrage. Their incapacity as voters was illustrated in the character of the men who assumed office after the election in 1868.
In Sumter county, Tobias Lane was elected probate judge, but during the period of uncertainty when the constitution was in abeyance, concluding that congressional action respecting it would be unfavorable, he packed his carpetbag and returned to Ohio, having been one of the migrants from that state, so prolific of birds of his feather.
Beville, the sheriff, was an appointee of General Swayne. He was unable to give bond, but Swayne waived that formality and ordered him to continue in office without bond. In 1868 Richard Harris, a negro, who could neither read nor write, became his worthy successor.
As solicitor the discriminating voters chose Ben Bardwell, a negro, who was wholly deficient in theknowledge of reading and writing, a deficiency which made him “an easy mark” for one of the most learned bars in the state.
George Houston, a freedman, was sent to the lower house of the legislature. As his colleague Ben Inge, another “person of color,” absolutely illiterate, was selected.
An army captain, one Yordy, received the state senatorial honors, which he wore while serving Uncle Sam in the custom house at Mobile. He was a long-distance representative, having no domicile in Sumter, nor ever making his appearance there.
John B. Cecil, reputed federal army sutler and coming with the influx from fecund Ohio, was elected treasurer. He gradually and logically degenerated into a partnership with a negro in a grog-shop enterprise.
Badger, another bird of passage, became tax assessor. The revenue and road commission was a motley aggregation which comprised one carpetbagger and three negroes.
Edward Herndon, a native Union man, by grace of appointment and election, simultaneously devoted his talents to the offices of circuit clerk, register in chancery, notary public, justice of the peace, keeper of the poorhouse and guardianad litem,—andperhaps felt aggrieved that he didn’t have “all that was coming to him.”
It would seem that, with this multiplicity of trusts, Mr. Herndon monopolized the privilege of plurality in office holding; but not so, for Mr. Daniel Price, a typical scalawag, with the reputation of a jailbird and desperado, made flight from Wetumpka to Sumter, and was endowed with a bunch of federal and county jobs,—register of voters, superintendent of education, postmaster and census taker. Insatiable, like Oliver Twist he wanted more, and as a side line to his multifarious activities, employed his scholarly attainments in the conduct of a negro school, meanwhile boarding and associating with negroes.
The harmony of the “color scheme” of the official colony in Perry county, adjoining Hale county, was never broken by a trace of the ebony hue.
Without exception, all of the county offices were held by carpetbaggers, officers of the 8th Wisconsin regiment, originally sent on garrison duty. Their characters are illustrated by the fact that, under the guise of selling properties which they had acquired in the county, all of them sold their offices in the time of political regeneration and betook themselves to the north. During Lindsay’s administration the sheriff, charged with conniving at the escape fromjail of a prisoner incarcerated for murder, sold his job for $1,500. Democrats succeeded the aliens.
In Marengo county there were more places than “loyal and reconstructed” place-seekers, and consequently Charles L. Drake, who made his advent in 1866 as an army captain, was burdened with the cares and responsibilities of register in chancery, circuit clerk, United States commissioner and agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau; yet had time for political activity which made him especially obnoxious.
Another conspicuous character in Marengo was one Burton, a carpetbagger, who established in Demopolis a weekly newspaper,The Southern Republican. He had incorporated in the oppressive tax laws a provision that where a deed was made to a purchaser at a tax sale, it should be made conclusive evidence, whether the sale was legal or illegal, that all requisites to a valid sale had been complied with. In order to increase the advertising, a section of land was divided into sixteen parts and each part advertised separately. Legal advertising was confined to “loyal” papers, the test of loyalty being allegiance to the Radical party.The Southern Republican, being the only loyal paper in all that unreconstructed region, was designated as the official organ of Marengo, Greene, Perry and Choctaw counties.
The newspaper statute referred to was in these words:
“That it shall be the duty of the probate judge in each county of this state to designate a newspaper in which all local advertisements, notices, or publications of any and every character required by law to be made in his county shall be published. Provided, that no newspaper shall be designated as such official organ which does not in its columns sustain and advocate the maintenance of the government of the United States and of the government of the state of Alabama, which is recognized by the Congress of the United States as the legal government of this state; and if there be no such paper published in the county, then the probate judge, whose decision upon the question shall be final, shall designate the paper published nearest the county seat of his county which does sustain said government.”
The “loyal” papers so designated had no circulation beyond a small free distribution among office-holders. Few of the negroes in their general illiteracy could read them, and none of them were concerned in the advertisements. The white people, to whom all of the advertisements were addressed, would not permit a copy of the publications to be sent to them. Consequently, the payment of fees was a waste of public money. The purpose of thelaw was to create and sustain a detestable press at the expense of the taxpayers, or seduce the existing papers.
In 1870 Burton was nominee for lieutenant-governor. On account of some personally offensive publication, Mr. E. C. Meredith, of Eutaw, a Democratic leader (“Bravest of the Brave”), severely chastised him in Eutaw. Thereafter the “trooly loil” journalist made his periodical collections of fees in Greene county by proxy. About the time when frost touched with withering chill his budding political aspiration, Burton received an ominous communication, not intended for publication, but for his own guidance. It was embellished with pictures of cross-bones, skull and dagger, and inscribed with a legend which he interpreted as a sort of “move on” ordinance. And he stood not on the order of his going, but hiked.
General Dustin, a northern soldier, of good family connections, who settled in Demopolis and allied himself by marriage with one of the old and prominent families of the town, was appointed major general of militia, and endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to organize a force. The law provided that whenever forty or more men should enroll themselves and choose officers, the governor upon application should recognize them as a volunteercompany. Governor Smith could not be persuaded to encourage the formation of a militia force; he preferred federal regulars, and they were always available.
While awaiting opportunity for employment of his warrior genius and acquirements, General Dustin, equally soldier and statesman, served the people of his adopted county in the legislature. His colleague in that august assembly of solons was Levi Wells, a “ward of the nation.”
Others who made reconstruction history in Marengo county will be mentioned incidentally as this narrative progresses. They were a rare lot, and equally with the others worthy of a place on the scroll of fame.
Choctaw county officials distinguished themselves in some features of their administration of affairs, according to testimony before a government commission. Dr. Foster was appointed probate judge and elected state senator, and served in the dual capacity. Receiving the appointment of revenue collector at Mobile, he discarded the probate judgeship, to which Hill was appointed, but polygamously refused to be divorced from the other love, the senatorship. Hill had been appointed treasurer before receiving the appointment to the judgeship. Withdrawing from the former place, his brother,Alexander, succeeded. It may not too much confuse the already complex situation to mention incidentally that the industrious Alexander filled in spare time by discharging the humble duties of justice of the peace, having before him the example of his eminent brother, who scorned not the lesser duties of register in chancery, with which also he was charged. In the progress of time, an inquisitive grand jury, nosing into matters, ascertained that Treasurer Aleck had received from the county tax collector fees to the amount of $3,600. While the jury was investigating, a disturbance occurred on the streets; the sheriff resigned, rather than interfere with the disturbers, and sought pastoral scenes. Circuit Judge J. Q. Smith, serving as a substitute for Luther R. Smith, adjourned court without receiving the jury’s report. Immediately after adjournment Probate Judge Hill, who had received a significant communication, with skull and dagger adornment, and maybe had been playfully shot at, retired to his farm, leaving his office in the care of the overburdened but willing Aleck. The circuit clerk accompanied the probate judge to his sylvan retreat, and imposed more work on Aleck by making him custodian of his office also. By the way, this clerk was first elected, but failed to qualify, whereupon Judge Smith cured the defect by appointing him to theplace. Such was the situation of affairs when, at midnight, April 14, the structure burned, and, excepting documents in the hands of the jury, all of the records of the two offices, together with the treasurer’s account of moneys received and disbursed, fed the hungry flames. The treasurer said that all the funds were in the safe, but only charred packages of Confederate “shinplasters” were found therein when the safe was opened. The succeeding treasurer, an expert accountant, under instructions from the commissioners’ court, investigated accounts between the collector and former treasurer, and reported that the latter was in default to the extent of about $7,000, and the tax collector about $2,700. Meanwhile, the tax collector had sought a change of air in “the glorious climate of California.” Before his departure he related a tale of woe, the burden of which was that highwaymen had despoiled him of official collections of between $5,000 and $6,000.
The fire fiend had marked Choctaw officials for its victims. According to his own statement, the dwelling of the county superintendent of education was the repository of $4,000 of county funds when said “fiend” consumed it. The superintendent was the author of his own official bond, and in his inexperience omitted therefrom the customary penalty clause, which omission rendered the instrumentnon-enforceable. Feeling the inadequacy of local employment for his talents, he took up residence across the line in Sumter county, and thus qualified for election to the legislature, but there was no requisition for his services.
The superintendent was law partner of Joshua Morse, attorney general of the state. They were jointly indicted for the murder of Editor Thomas of the county paper at Butler, the county seat; they obtained a change of venue and were tried and acquitted in Mobile, the principal witness against them having disappeared.
William Miller, a former slaveowner and one of the largest landowners, became probate judge of Greene county in 1868. Judge Oliver, the incumbent, refused to recognize his claim, and Miller invoked the ever-responsive military powers; the soldiers forced entrance to the office and inducted the claimant. Oliver filed a protest and retired. Alexander Boyd, a nephew of Miller, became county solicitor and register in chancery.
Judge Luther R. Smith had a brother, Arthur A., who was languishing in Massachusetts, with talents unemployed and maybe unrecognized. The judge imported his brother and made him county superintendent of education. There were not many white Republicans in Greene, and it happened that thecircuit court clerkship was “lying around loose,” and the judge thought Arthur was the man for the place. The latter accepted the gift, but failed to relinquish the superintendency of education. One Yordy figured as agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
These officials were unable to obtain board and lodging at either of the taverns or elsewhere, and jointly established and maintained for some time a bachelor establishment, duly ostracised by the people of the town and county.
Hale county had a complement of officials in keeping with the layout common to the counties of the district, including a negro legislator. The most troublesome was Dr. Blackford, probate judge. He had served as a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1867. He displaced Judge Hutchinson, a popular gentleman who had lost three brothers in one of the battles in Virginia, members of the famous Greensboro Guards.
Blackford was a skillful physician and surgeon, and of fair education. He served as surgeon in the Confederate army, and was stationed at Vicksburg during the siege. Subsequently a story circulated that he was there court-martialed on a charge of appropriating to his own use hospital stores, including liquors. However that may be, his services were dispensed with and he took up abode in Greensboro,and began to practice his profession with much success. In an evil hour he was tempted to cast his lot with the adventurers who were greedily fastening their clutches upon the substance of the country, and fell. Going from bad to worse, he affiliated with negroes and soon obtained absolute control of them. Claiming, as probate judge, that he had the right to supervise contracts between them and their employers, he constantly meddled in private affairs. Calling league meetings and taking the hands away from their work, he caused much vexation and loss to the planters.
About the time when he became probate judge an incident occurred in Greensboro in which was exhibited by the soldiers an unusual disapprobation of the administration of affairs. The agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, one Clause, incurred the displeasure of some of them who were inclined to insubordination, and they administered to him a beating. Varying the proceeding, they seized a negro school teacher and conveyed him to a pond, in which they ducked him repeatedly.
Blackford became alarmed at this manifestation of displeasure, and fled to the hills north of the town. There he was pursued by the rioters in uniform, and, resuming his flight, sought refuge at the home of a citizen, who apprised leading citizens ofGreensboro of his whereabouts and peril. They informed the military commander, who, in turn, dispatched a squad of cavalry to rescue him and conduct him to town. Blackford, on his return, renounced his political heresies and aspirations to the judgeship, which he declared he would not accept; but, recovering his confidence in the stability of the military powers and his negro backing, he quickly recanted and relapsed into arrogance.
Tuscaloosa county was not neglected by place-hunters, but the preponderance of whites in that county was a restraining influence.
Luther R. Smith, a carpetbagger from Michigan, provisional circuit judge in 1866, was elected to that position in 1868, and simultaneously a member of the legislature, but had decency to resign the latter trust. Notwithstanding he subsequently violated the judicial proprieties by presiding over a radical state convention in Selma. He was one of the most respectable of the intruders, and reputed to be just, impartial and courteous on the bench. Nevertheless he shared, in a lesser measure, the odium which attached to all. The feeling of the people was that no right-minded man would thrust himself into public position under the peculiar circumstances.
All the members of the United States House ofRepresentatives from Alabama were carpetbaggers—officers in the United States army. Charles W. Pierce represented the fourth district. He held a commission as major. His course in the interval when the constitution was in abeyance was the same as that of Colonel Callis, who caused more discussion. Colonel Callis was elected to Congress from the Huntsville district, in competition with General Joseph W. Burke, a man of character and education. General Burke was the Republican nominee, and Callis bolted. Callis was a federal soldier and agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, at Huntsville. While canvassing, he was attired in the uniform of a colonel. When the constitution was rejected and declared rejected by General Meade, and the fact communicated to General Grant and by him communicated to Congress, and the action of Congress looked to the rejection of the constitution, Colonel Callis left Huntsville and went upon duty to Mississippi as an army officer. When Congress accepted the constitution and admitted Alabama under the “omnibus” measure, Callis hurried to Washington and took his seat as a representative from Alabama, notwithstanding he had never been a citizen of the state and was then a resident of Mississippi. Pierce was succeeded by Charles Hays, of Greene county, in November, 1869.
The state was represented in the federal Senate by Willard Warner and George E. Spencer, the first named a northern general, the other, an army contractor. Judge Busteed, under oath, said that when elected Warner was not a citizen of Alabama; that when summoned a short while before as a juror in his court, Warner claimed exemption on the plea that he was a senator of the state of Ohio. Governor William H. Smith, in a letter published in theHuntsville Advocate, said: “Spencer lives upon the passions and prejudices of the races. The breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and despised.” And Spencer characterized his colleague as a “a trifling and worthless man.”
Being unobjectionable as to “loyalty,” all of these non-citizens were permitted to take their seats; and for the first time since 1861 Alabama was represented (?) in the federal Congress, notwithstanding the fact that during a part of that period the people were taxed by the government which denied them representation—taxed unconstitutionally (in the case of cotton), as the Supreme Court subsequently decided.
William H. Smith, of Randolph county, displaced Governor Patton. His character will be revealed as these pages multiply.
The state supreme court justices were evicted,and S. W. Peck, Thomas M. Peters and B. F. Saffold substituted for them. There is little to be said of them by a layman, except that the first named favored suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, during the Ku Klux era, and the last named declared unconstitutional the law under which a justice of the peace was convicted of solemnizing the rites of matrimony between a white man and a negro, and reversed the judgment of the lower court.
President Lincoln in 1863 appointed Richard Busteed United States district judge, and in 1865 the appointee came to the state and assumed the bench. Whatever else may be said of him, he was bold in expression of opinion, judicial and personal; and during the carpetbag régime he testified that “the general character of Alabama office-holders for intelligence and honesty was not good.” In 1870 Francis S. Lyon, of Demopolis, testified that a bill was filed in Judge Busteed’s court to foreclose two mortgages on the Alabama Central Railroad (Selma to Meridian), and the cost of that suit, paid by New York creditors of the road, amounted to $122,000. The institution presided over by Judge Busteed was costly to litigants, to say the least.
A. J. Applegate became lieutenant-governor. Mr. William M. Lowe, of Huntsville, testifying before the congressional commission in 1870, said of him:
“I had occasion to look into his record, and published a statement in reference to his character, in which I proved conclusively that any petit jury in any New England state would have convicted him of grand larceny upon the evidence by his own declarations,—his own letters. These charges were made by me when he was living. Every opportunity was given him to make his defense; he had no defense to make but a lie. He had been a member of McPherson’s body-guard that stopped near Mrs. Jacob Thompson’s residence in Mississippi. He was there taken sick and taken into her house and nursed and kindly treated by her. At that time and under those circumstances, he, or some one with his knowledge and connivance, stole the deeds and patents and valuable papers belonging to the Thompson estate. After the war he settled here and wrote a letter to Mrs. Thompson. In his first letter he thanked her for her kind and Christian treatment of him while he was sick, although he was an enemy to her cause, saying that he would ever hold it in remembrance. The second letter called to her mind the fact that she had lost those valuable papers, and offered to return them or have them returned to her for a consideration. She wrote him back. The correspondence was published in full. Finally, he wrote to her if she wanted these papers better thanshe wanted $10,000, to send him on the money and get the papers. That was about his language, written in the most abominable and illiterate style.” The matter was placed in the hands of lawyers, who induced Applegate with $300 to surrender the papers.
General James H. Clanton, under oath, spoke thus of Harrington, speaker of the house of representatives:
“Mr. Harrington came to Mobile very poor, from the northeast somewhere. He was never a soldier that we knew of. He is now very rich. Just after the war he was charged with running free negroes into Cuba. I do not know whether it is true or not. The present sheriff of Montgomery county showed me a reward offered for him, from what purported to be a northwestern paper, on a charge of bank robbery. He requested me to say nothing about it lest Harrington should get away. He said he was going for him that night; that he had his accomplice in jail, and the accomplice said Harrington was the man. The description he showed me was lifelike.”
Asked whether it could not be a mistake, the general replied:
“No, sir; a man of marked physique. I did not give this information at the time to any of my lawpartners, but they smiled when I told them that Harrington would pay more reward to Barbour (the sheriff) and we would never hear of it again. And we never did hear of it till we published it in the last campaign, to which Harrington, who still lives there, made no response whatever. Colonel Thomas H. Herndon, a prominent lawyer of Mobile, said to me that a friend saw Harrington, during the last session of the legislature at which he presided, take a crowd off to drink champagne at a barroom known as the Rialto, in Montgomery, and when remonstrated with for his extravagance, he ran his hand in his pocket and pulled out seventeen one-hundred-dollar bills, with the remark that he could afford it, as he had made that much in one day in engineering a bill through the house.” The general further testified that Eugene Beebe, of Montgomery, told him he paid Harrington a sum of money to advocate a lottery charter before the house. He said that of the representatives whom he “approached” on the subject of the lottery, only one, a negro, exhibited any qualms, and he accepted fifty dollars, protesting that it was only “as a loan.”
When Colonel Joseph Hodgson became superintendent of education, he said that county superintendents had embezzled between $50,000 and $60,000of school funds. Two sons of the former state superintendent were fugitives on that account.
Mr. P. T. Sayer, speaking of the Montgomery county representatives in the lower house of the legislature, said: “One of them is a man who came from Austria, by the name of Stroback. I understood that he was a sutler or something of that kind in the federal army. I further understood that he never has been naturalized; I do not know about that. He was said to be a gentleman in his own country; I do not know about that, but he certainly is not one in Montgomery. He is a man of a great deal of sense, and I think a dangerous man in any community situated as ours is. The others are three negroes.”
These character sketches of radical officials might be multiplied indefinitely, but the monotony would weary the reader. Necessarily others will be mentioned incidentally as this story of reconstruction progresses.
Ruinous Misgovernment
Only misrule could be expected from such officials. Nothing was sacred from their greedy grasp. The most cherished institutions were debased to their purposes. In time the university was avoided by all who were unwilling to forfeit public esteem. One of the early arrivals from fruitful Ohio was Rev. A. S. Lakin. He was commissioned by Bishop Clark, of the Cincinnati conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to organize negro churches in Alabama. He was a fanatic of the extreme type, and his work of the politico-religious character. He regarded the Methodist Episcopal Church, south, as an aggregation of rebels, and aimed to array his negro proselytes against it by preaching political sermons, in which he reminded his audiences of their former bondage and alleged there was danger of its renewal. According to his own statements, he was the unterrified victim of a concatenation of Ku Klux attacks. In prosecuting his roving missions in the mountains of northern Alabama, Lakin’s morbid fancydistorted every lone hunter encountered on the roadside into a lurking assassin, and every innocent group of gossiping rustics into a band of Ku Klux. He organized a camp-meeting, and one night at an early hour during its progress a party of horsemen rode through. Lakin wrote for publication in one of the church organs a hair-raising story of the incident, magnifying it into a Ku Klux foray. His explanation of the cause of the intrusion was that the klansmen were offended because of a rumor circulating in the camp that an infant born in the neighborhood was “a Ku Klux child,” an exact image in miniature of a disguised Ku Klux, horns and hood included. Lakin solemnly affirmed the fact of the birth of the monstrosity, but ungenerously robbed it of distinction by adding that six other infants in that klan-infested region were similarly “Ku Klux marked.” The woods must have been full of human curios!
In 1868 the regents elected this superstitious and prejudiced emissary president of the University of Alabama! Accompanied by Dr. N. B. Cloud, state superintendent of education, Lakin journeyed to Tuscaloosa to assume the station which the people once hoped would be graced by the illustrious Henry Tutwiler. Professor Wyman was in charge of the institution and held the keys; the former president had withdrawn and appointed him custodian. Onthe ground that the board of regents was illegally constituted, Professor Wyman refused to yield to Lakin, and the latter, discerning signs of popular displeasure, lost the courage which had nerved him to assert his claim, mounted his horse and hurriedly rode away in the direction of Huntsville, while Dr. Cloud departed with equal celerity in the direction of Montgomery.
Some time afterward Lakin related a blood-curdling story of pursuit from Tuscaloosa by a band of Ku Klux and his almost miraculous escape from the horrible death to which the band had condemned him. This story provoked the publication of a counter charge,—that while Lakin was preaching somewhere in New York State he ill requited the hospitality of an entertainer by dishonoring the household.
And this man’s ultimate aspiration was to represent Alabama in the United States Senate!
One of the most scandalous chapters in the history of the Republican régime relates to railroad subsidies. The Lindsay administration favored encouragement to the building of railroads, as means for development of natural resources, and in 1867 the legislature passed, and the governor approved, an act which authorized the state to indorse bonds of new railroads to the extent of $12,000 per mile,with an additional endorsement for bridges; but indorsement was safeguarded carefully, and no wrongs were committed in connection with the execution of the law until the Radicals assumed control. Then there began a riot of bribery and corruption.
November 10, 1871, I. F. Grant, state treasurer, submitted to the congressional commission investigating affairs in the southern states a statement from which the following extracts are made:
“Bonded debt of the state January 11, 1861, $3,445,000.
“The state is and was bound to pay in perpetuity for annual interest on the school fund the sum of $134,367.80.
“Interest unpaid during the war, accrued up to and including January 1, 1867, was then funded and new bonds issued for the sum of $621,000, which made the total bonded debt on
“Cause of increase, sale of bonds to carry on the government.
“There is a prospective liability for an indefinite amount growing out of the passage of an act, approved February 19, 1867, and amended August, 1868, whereby the state is required to indorse railroad bonds to the amount of $12,000 per mile, which act was further amended in March, 1870, so as to increase the indorsement to $16,000 per mile.
“The same legislature in March, 1870, made a loan to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad Company of $2,000,000 in Alabama 8% bonds, over and above the indorsement of $16,000 per mile for the entire length of the road, thereby adding to the direct and collateral liability of the state for this one road the sum of $6,700,000. In addition to this, the Republican governor, W. H. Smith, issued to the road bonds to the amount of $500,000 above what the road could ever by any possibility claim under the law.
“The said road made default in payment of January and July, 1871, interest, which the state paid as its owner and creditor, $508,000.
“There are eight or ten other roads for which the state, under the law above referred to, is liable as indorser.”
The state auditor reported this summary of liabilities September 30, 1871:
Under Democratic administration, a committee of the legislature investigated the railroad deals and reported that “Two millions of state bonds which the law authorized the governor to issue in aid of said company (Alabama and Chattanooga) in sums sufficient to pay off the cost of having constructed a certain amount of road in excess of the state indorsement of $16,000 per mile, were issued in bulk, with reckless haste, and were hurried away to the money marts of Europe”; that “there has been no record kept by any officer of the state of the number and amount of the bonds issued or indorsed by the state in favor of the various railroads entitled by law to the aid of the state, except as to loans of bonds to the Montgomery and Eufaula Railroad Company, $300,000 in amount, and the indorsement of bonds in favor of the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad Company.”
R. M. Patton testified that although he had accepted the presidency of the Alabama and ChattanoogaRailroad Company, he was ignored because he opposed the loan bill. D. N. Stanton, of Boston, was elected president, and Patton “was not invited or expected at the consultation of friends of the road. He said: “I do not think the stockholders ever paid in any of the capital stock of the company.”
Arthur Bingham, state treasurer from 1868 to 1870, asked whether he knew of any fraud or illegality in connection With the issue or indorsement of the railroad bonds, declined to answer upon the ground that by so doing he would criminate himself.
Mr. Holmes testified that on the last day of the session of the legislature of 1869-70 Mr. Gilmer, president of the North and South Railroad, borrowed from him and Mr. Farley $25,000. Next day Mr. Gilmer complained that John Hardy, of Dallas county, chairman of the committee of the legislature, had treated him shabbily; that “he had agreed to pass the bill for him for $25,000, but that at the eleventh hour he went back on him and made him pay $10,000 more, making in all $35,000.”
Jere Haralson, colored, Mr. Hardy’s colleague from Dallas, was a shrewd negro, but at that time a cheap commodity. Later he appraised himself more highly. Ben Turner, a negro (successor to the carpetbag congressman), continued for some timeafter regeneration to represent the Dallas district in Congress, and Jere spent much time with him in Washington, engaged in profitable political work. But at the Montgomery distribution only fifty dollars was apportioned to him. He ingenuously explained that he accepted it as a loan.
When the state, some years later, attempted to make Mr. Hardy disgorge the $35,000 (bonds) and imprisoned him, he escaped on the plea that it was imprisonment for debt.
Ex-Governor Patton published a statement in which he said that, when in Boston, parties to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad complained to him because legislation in Alabama had cost the company $200,000.
J. P. Stowe, a Montgomery county representative, asserted, and the assertion was published, that John Hardy took away the night the legislature adjourned not less than $150,000, but not all of it was his—he had much of it for distribution.
Construction of the Alabama and Chattanooga (now the Great Southern) Railroad, extending from Meridian to Chattanooga, referred to in the report quoted from, was under direction of D. N. Stanton. He was a skilled and unscrupulous lobbyist and get-rich-quick builder. There was testimony to the effect that the only money used in construction workwas that which was derived from state indorsement. The indorsement for bridges was $60.00 per lineal foot of structure. In the hill country, beginning in Tuscaloosa county, the line of road described a serpentine trail among the hills. Mere increase of mileage presented no great disadvantage to Stanton, but tunneling, cutting and filling were difficulties studiously avoided. Consequently, when the road passed into other hands and reorganization was effected, changes necessary in straightening left the landscape with marks of peculiar interest to civil engineers. Travelers by that road may observe from car windows at many points abandoned roadbeds to right and left, winding among the low places and avoiding hills which were so formidable to Stanton, reminding the observer of meandering brooks seeking lower levels. Lines of least resistance were most attractive to Stanton, regardless of circuitousness.
While government was thus growing in costliness, the resources of the people who had to foot the bills were diminishing.
State Treasurer Grant’s statement showed that the average cost of state government in Alabama for 1859 and 1860 was $813,000; for 1868, 1869, 1870, $1,514,000; and the increase, he said, waspartly due to increase of bonded debt, but mainly to ignorant and corrupt legislation.
The report of the superintendent of census showed:
Now consider, as representing average conditions in the counties of the Black Belt, these facts derived from the report of Judge Hill, an expert, employed to investigate affairs in Marengo county.
Taxes in 1870 were threefold greater than in 1860. The value of subjects of taxation had diminished two-thirds; 22,000 slaves, of an average value of $500 each, had ceased to be enumerated as taxable property; lands had depreciated in value sixty per cent.; there was less than one-half as much live stock as formerly; two townships had been lopped off and given to the newly-created county of Hale.
The Whites Aroused
The people of the Black Belt had borne with all possible patience the multiplied grievous wrongs recited in the foregoing pages. During the transition from master and slave to the new relations between them there was a strong disposition in both races to live in peace and harmony and make the best of their altered relations; the negroes were civil and confiding, scarcely realizing the change in their status, while the whites appreciated their good behavior during the war, when families of men in the army were unprotected, and were disposed to gratitude for it. But since the establishment of the league friendly intercourse between the races had been growing rarer, and now ceased altogether; the estrangement was complete.
With the imposition of the constitution began the reign of the carpetbagger—“demon of discord and anarchy”—and the negro, and the infliction of “the horrors of reconstruction”; a civil convulsion in which the foundations of society were broken up;“a vast sluice of ignorance and vice was opened; a race which never had evolved anything of its own motion was given the ballot, the highest right of American citizenship,” and never regarded it as more than a personal perquisite, while white men of the highest type were disqualified from voting by the constitution of their state; negroes were made eligible to all offices, while the federal Constitution deprived the people of the wisdom, knowledge and experience in office of former leaders at a time when they were most needed. A comment of the time was, that a proscribed white man could not have been bailiff to his former slave if that former slave was a justice of the peace, as he might well have been, if he was not in fact. Democrats had not opposed negro suffrage in order to oppress the negroes, but to prevent negroes from crushing them; and the situation produced by the imposition of the constitution attested the reasonableness of their fear of the effect of the endowment of the negro with the ballot. They realized that “in popular government where two races exist in mass who are from any cause so different that they cannot mingle in marriage and become one, the exercise of political power must be confined to one or the other of those races if there be a wish for security and peace.”
In the fourth district, the whites were greatlyoutnumbered by the blacks, and, comparing voting strength, a contest with them at the polls seemed hopeless.
The census of 1870 credited Choctaw county with 5,802 whites and 6,872 blacks; Greene county, 3,858 whites and 14,541 blacks; Hale county, 4,802 whites and 16,990 blacks; Marengo county, 6,090 whites and 20,058 blacks; Sumter county, 5,202 whites and 18,907 blacks; Tuscaloosa county, 10,229 whites and 8,294 blacks.
Thus, excepting the first- and last-named counties, the whites were outnumbered by more than three to one.
All of the towns in the section under review were small, the populations ranging from 1,500 to 2,000. Greensboro in Hale, Eutaw in Greene, Demopolis in Marengo, Butler in Choctaw, Livingston in Sumter, and Tuscaloosa in the county of the same name, were the seats of government of their respective counties, centers of religion, education and sociability. At Tuscaloosa were located the State University and a fine girls’ school; in Marion were the Seminary, the Institute, Judson, and Howard College; in Greensboro, the Methodist Southern University and an advanced girls’ school. These towns had been founded as the home places of wealthy and cultured planter families whose plantationswere in the fertile prairies and canebrakes. Office-holding had always been their honorable distinction, gained by highest merit.
An epitome of conditions in the southern states at that period will serve to portray those in Alabama: “Legislatures in some instances composed in part of pardoned felons and penitentiary convicts enacting laws; the judiciary in the hands of charlatans and bribe-takers; every office, from the highest to the lowest, filled with ignorance, vice and unblushing corruption; with the land swarming with libelers and malignant slanderers; the country divided into military districts and garrisoned with troops, whose officers were ever ready, at the slightest bidding, to annoy and oppress an unarmed people.”
But the whites realized that in this section, at least, civilization itself was at stake, and notwithstanding the adverse odds and other disadvantages, resolved to risk all in combat with the forces arrayed against them. They were acquainted with the character of the Union League; aware of its horrible objects and aims; the almost daily crimes of lustful fiends, assassins and incendiaries were regarded as the fruits of its teachings; its responsibility for the existence of courts of law void of decency and recognized authority, and for officials incapable ofenforcing law and order, for injury to public credit by prodigal pledges, and waste of public money, was fixed by its foolish and persistent allegiance to false leaders. This league was the institution marked for destruction. An organization pledged to undertake the task relentlessly and unflinchingly was regarded as a necessity. As the mighty Anglo-Saxon race on this continent had ever proved equal to emergencies, so now the men of this race, war-trained in arms and horsemanship, sensible that the great stake of Christianity and civilization lay in the balance, nerved themselves for the conflict.
The rule of the carpetbagger and scalawag and freedman was a “reign of terror,” and thrilling as well as deplorable were the incidents of the struggle to throw off the yoke. The mere recital of them, without comment, would fill volumes. Only those regarded as culminating events in the several counties of the district will be related. And in the relation sworn testimony of the time supports the writer’s statements where personal observation was lacking. They illustrate the sacrifices of the devoted men who were impelled to deeds distasteful but regarded as a necessary choice of evils, and who rescued that garden spot of the state from savage domination and again made it fit abiding place for the race which before had dispossessed theaborigines. These men knew that the negroes were misguided dupes of designing and ruthless leaders, and pitied them, but for the ultimate good of both races sternly resolved that they should be compelled to discard those leaders and submit to the legitimate rulers of the land.
The Ku Klux Klan
Before proceeding with the narrative, an explanation of the origin and purposes of the Ku Klux Klan may interest the reader. The facts mentioned were derived from authentic and official sources.
The first den was organized in Pulaski, Giles county, Tennessee, in 1866, and Pulaski continued to be the centre of the order throughout its existence as an interstate organization. Six men organized the den for diversion and amusement in a community where life was dull and monotonous. The original name was Ku Kloi (from the Greek word Ku Klos), meaning band or circle. It was changed to Ku Klux and Klan was added.
The constitution of Tennessee was imposed by a fraction of the people. The legislature passed an act restricting suffrage which disfranchised three-fourths of the native population of the middle and western parts of the state. This obsequious legislature also passed acts ratifying the illegal edicts of the autocratic and tyrannical Governor Brownlow(“The Parson”); the sedition law was revived and amplified; freedom of speech and press was overthrown, and a large militia force composed of negroes was created and made responsible to the governor alone. At an election enough men had been permitted to register to thwart Brownlow’s plans. He threw out the entire vote of twenty-eight counties. Registrars were removed, registration set aside, the counties placed under martial law, and negro militia quartered therein. The legislature had become unanimously Republican in both branches.
The people began to consider means of counteracting this high-handed tyranny. The Pulaski Ku Klux organization had attracted much attention and branches of it had been organized in many parts of the state. Leaders of the people quickly saw that it could be utilized for the purpose in view. And this was done. The order, thus perverted, soon spread from Virginia to Texas. The ritual was simple and easily memorized and was never printed; but a copy of the prescript was obtained and used in a trial in Tennessee and reproduced in United States government publications. At a meeting in Nashville of delegates from all dens this was modified. That convention designated the southern territory as “The Invisible Empire.” It was subdivided into “realms” (corresponding to states); realms weredivided into “dominions” (congressional districts); dominions into “provinces” (counties); provinces into “dens.” Officers were designated as follows: Grand Wizard of Invisible Empire and his ten Genii (and the grand wizard’s powers were almost autocratic), Grand Dragon of Realm and his Eight Hydras, Grand Titan of Dominion and his Six Furies, Grand Cyclops of Den and his Two Night Hawks, Grand Monk, Grand Scribe, Grand Exchequer, Grand Turk, Grand Sentinel, The Genii, Hydras, Furies, Gobbins and Night Hawks were staff officers. It is said that the gradation and distribution of authority were perfect, and that no more perfectly organized order ever existed in the world. The costume consisted of a mask with openings for the nose and eyes; a tall, pointed hat of stiff material; a gown or robe to cover the entire person. Each member was provided with a whistle, and with this, and by means of a code of signals, communicated with his comrades. They used a cypher to fix dates, etc., and published their notices in the newspapers, until repressive laws forbade this. Their horses were robed and their hoofs muffled.
Meanwhile, other orders formed: White brotherhood, White League, Pale Faces, Constitutional Union Guards and Knights of White Camelia; but all evidence shows that they were for the most partshort-lived, the very name of Ku Klux having caught the fancy of the members. General Forrest is credited with having consolidated all of them into the one grand order. An interview with General Forrest was published in theCincinnati Commercialin September, 1868, in which he was quoted as saying that in Tennessee the klan embraced a membership of 40,000, and in all the states 550,000. He said to the congressional commission that the order was disbanded by him when it had fulfilled its purpose. No doubt he meant that the general organization was disbanded, for certainly detached bodies existed after the date fixed by him as that of the disbandment. Fleming says that the general was initiated by Captain John W. Morton, formerly his chief of artillery, and became Grand Wizard. In his testimony General Forrest said that the klan in Tennessee was intended as a defensive organization to offset the Union League; to protect ex-Confederates from extermination by Brownlow’s militia; to prevent the burning of gins, mills and residences.
Congress and the radical legislatures resorted to all possible means to break up the klans, but they existed until after white supremacy was restored. Even then, counterfeit bodies perverted the name until they were suppressed by the natural rulers of the land. Congress passed a bill which provided forsuspension of civil government in any district in which Ku Klux lawlessness existed, thus depriving all the people of trial by jury and other rights, and placing whole communities under the ban of military power. The Alabama legislative enactment pronounced anyone found in disguise a felon and outlaw. It also provided that if a person was whipped or killed by men in disguise, the county could be sued for a penalty ranging from $1,000 to $5,000; and it made it the duty of the prosecuting attorney of the county to institute suit for and in behalf of the victim or his relatives, in any case where no indictment was found.
After the Nashville convention the order courted publicity, in order to inspire respect for its powers, and the Ku Klux sometimes paraded in daylight. Their appearance in public was sudden and unheralded; and they disappeared as silently and mysteriously. The perfection of their movements in drill revealed the training which the members had received as cavalrymen during the war. Sometimes the parades were at night, and then the mystery of their sudden appearance and the weirdness of the spectacle were heightened. One of the night parades was in Huntsville, and the story of it was circulated throughout the north as evidence that another revolution was imminent. It was in the nature of anacceptance of challenge, and the circumstances connected with it were as follows:
On October 30, 1868, C. C. Sheets, a Grant candidate for elector, made a speech in Florence. About ten o’clock that night a band of disguised men visited his sleeping apartment. He attempted to escape by way of a gallery, but was caught and taken back to his room. After a short stay the band retired without having in any way harmed him. Sheets said that they exacted from him a promise that he would desist from making inflammatory speeches. Later in the same month Sheets delivered a speech in Huntsville. It was reported that in the course of that speech he told his colored audience that he had been interfered with a few nights before in Florence by Ku Klux, and that he had promised them then that he would not make the abusive and inflammatory speeches that he had been making; but up there, where there were so many colored people, he wasn’t afraid to say what he pleased, and that if the colored people would do what was becoming in them, they would carry with them weapons and shoot down those disguised men wherever they found them; that the reason the Ku Klux paraded the country was because the negroes were weak-kneed.
The speech excited the negroes. They remainedin town all day, and at night a meeting was held in the court-house and many negroes, with guns, attended. During the day leading negroes loudly proclaimed that Ku Klux would never again be permitted to enter the town; that if they attempted to do so, they would be shot on sight. A federal military officer had said it would be lawful to do this. A rumor circulated that Ku Klux were assembling at a point some miles distant, and about dark two large posses of negroes, under command of deputy sheriffs, repaired to points along principal roads to intercept them. While the speaking at the court-house was in progress, fugitive negroes from the posses, which had suddenly dissolved at the approach of danger, rushed to the court-house and announced that Ku Klux were marching on the town. The meeting broke up in confusion and the people hurried into the yard. All the near-by streets and the sidewalks surrounding the square were thronged with people, white and black. Suddenly the cavalcade, numbering about two hundred, fully uniformed in tall conical hats, long gowns, and hoods with eyeholes, some armed with guns and sabres, wheeled into the square, and without sound save the whistle signals—then almost as awe-inspiring as had been the “rebel yell”—rode in military order completely around the court-house, and then turnedinto one of the streets. Proceeding along this some distance, the column halted and formed into battle line. After maintaining this formation for a few minutes, the march was resumed and the band disappeared.
There was stationed in Hunstville at that time a regiment of regular troops, and their commander, General Cruger, with some of his staff officers, from a hotel veranda viewed the spectacle of the Ku Klux parade. His comment was that “it was fine but absurd.”
There was an unfortunate episode of the event:
Just as the Ku Klux withdrew there was a discharge of firearms in the courtyard. Some witnesses said that the first discharge, an accidental one, due to nervousness, caused the others. Judge Thurlow, a visitor, was mortally wounded, and said a short while before his death that he was shot accidentally by his Republican friends. A negro seated on the court-house steps was killed instantly. Two white men and a negro were wounded. This tragedy was without design, and the excitement was quickly quieted.
A rumor that a few undisguised Ku Klux were posted about the square was supported by the fact that after the departure of the troop three men, having disguises in hand, were arrested by soldierswhile in the act of mounting horses in one of the side streets. Later in the night they were rescued from jail by their comrades, and were never officially identified. But their paraphernalia was retained by the officials and often exhibited and photographed. Perhaps none other was ever captured directly from a wearer.
A Miscarriage
There were some miscarriages in the operations of the klan. A memorable one of this character is recalled. A cavalcade, supposed to have started from the western side of the Warrior river, rode through Greensboro and proceeded to Marion, a distance of about thirty-five miles, presumably to take from jail and execute a negro who had, with but slight provocation, killed a white man with a paling which he wrenched from a fence. The riders visited the jail and demanded the keys. The jailer’s wife appeared and implored them to desist. The jailer himself, a member of a fraternal order, made an appeal which was recognized and respected by members of the party and was successful, and after much parleying, the invaders withdrew without molesting the custodian of the county Bastile or his charge. But an episode of the foray was embarrassing and dangerous. The riders had proceeded only a short distance when one of the horsesfell and expired, in full mock panoply. Here was an awkward situation for the raiders. A comrade, far away from home, unhorsed and subjected to inevitable detection should he be abandoned! It is not known by what means he escaped and regained the realms of the “Grand Cyclops.”
The warning to evil-disposed persons conveyed by this raid perhaps obviated the necessity for another in that particular part of the county.
Across the border line of Mississippi occurred a lamentable disaster, due to incompetent leadership and ignorance of locality.
In 1870 the carpetbag government in Mississippi reached the zenith of its power, and its baleful influence pervaded every nook and corner of the state. The effects of misgovernment were deplorable. Lands which in ante-bellum days were appraised at twenty-five to seventy-five dollars per acre had so depreciated in value that at forced sales only about one dollar per acre could be obtained. There were few real estate transfers; some of the lands were depopulated; the only immigrants were carpetbaggers seeking offices; taxation was oppressive, especially for the support of schools, and almost the entire burden was laid upon the whites; the scanty possessions of negroes were within the limits of exemption; even the poll tax, devoted toschool purposes, was evaded by them. In some counties tax-payers bore the expense of schooling three negro pupils to one white pupil. At length they resisted collection of the tax.
Robert W. Flournoy, of Pontotoc, distinguished himself in the resultant controversy. When not engaged as deputy postmaster and county superintendent of education, he conducted a weekly newspaper, and made it and himself odious. In his paper he bitterly denounced the Ku Klux as “midnight prowlers and assassins,” and responsible for the suppression of public schools. He insisted that in the schools there should be no separation of races, and engaged in a prolonged and heated controversy with the governor over the question of admitting negroes to the State University.
Colonel Flournoy received from the Grand Cyclops a communication, intimating that at an early date he would receive a visit from the men whom he had denounced. About midnight, May 13, 1871, Flournoy’s office foreman and a companion aroused him from sleep with the startling announcement that a band of Ku Klux had appeared in the village, and the leader was inquiring where the colonel’s residence was located. He had some shotguns, and, arming himself and his callers, departed from home and repaired to a blacksmith shop near by. At thisplace a number of townsmen, well armed, had already assembled. The colonel subsequently accounted for their presence with arms with the statement that during the afternoon they had been hunting, and when the foreman had alarmed them they were engaged in a game of cards. Altogether, these men constituted a strong force, and proceeded to arrange an ambuscade at the shop.
Meanwhile the Ku Klux, who, according to later revelations, were strangers, wholly unacquainted with the locality, having learned the situation of the Flournoy residence, were approaching it, unconscious of the state of affairs. Fronting the place and extending a long distance were deep and tortuous gulleys, and in their progress the horsemen became entangled and bewildered as in a maze and their formation broken. Extricating themselves in groups and singly, they approached the shop. Chancellor Pollard and Deputy Sheriff Todd were with the concealed villagers, and the former emerged from the rear of the shop and commanded the riders to surrender. Simultaneously, someone in concealment fired a shot, and instantly the ambushers sprang from cover and discharged a volley in the direction of the disordered klansmen. The surprise was complete and overwhelming. Horses, becoming unruly, frantically turned and fled. The riders inadvance were thus thrown back upon those emerging from the gulleys. In the resultant confusion there was desultory firing back and forth, but the unfortunate strangers were unable to rally at any point, and singly and in small groups they withdrew to the main street, where they found themselves in little less embarrassing a situation. No one knew in what direction they should retreat. They had lost their bearings and knew not how to reach the road over which they had entered the village. Disbanded, they fled in different directions.
Colonel Flournoy’s supporters, for the most part, were ignorant of the character of the men whom they had assaulted and the object of the foray, and were easily led into the mistake of pressing the advantage they had gained. Consequently, led by Flournoy, they intercepted a small body of the raiders and fired on them.
Stampeded as they were, the resolute riders halted and returned the fire.
After daybreak a man, fully costumed and still in mask, badly shot, was found at the place where he and his comrades had been waylaid. The unfortunate was tenderly cared for, but expired a few hours later. Three others were wounded, but escaped. Sixteen horses, abandoned by their riders, together with the disguises of those riders, werepicked up next day. The original party comprised thirty men.
There was profound sorrow in the little town when the inhabitants learned what an awful mistake had been made.