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tance between him and Washington, his friendliness to the Government, the ease with which his acts could be concealed, made him bold and careless. He knew his game. Clayton's policy was extermination. Nothing could divert him. He is not a milksop, but a man of genius and his field is fruitful.'1 His was the master mind that organized the Republican Party in Arkansas, that directed the framing of the constitution, making a despot of the Governor; and he took the governorship. He waved his wand, and a system emerged that destroyed civil liberty, and reduced overwhelming majorities to impotency. This Clayton system reserved the loaves and fishes for the carpetbaggers alone. Adventurers from abroad, including the Governor and two Senators, controlled the executive department, the courts, the Treasury, the military power. Nowhere such concentration of power as in the hands of Clayton. He distributed printing patronage to party papers, exacting as a consideration absolute obedience to his will. In him was lodged the power to award millions 'in aid of railroads, and he demanded that aid be given.1 His militia was so tied up with registration as to make it a partisan army. In one campaign he set aside the registration in eleven counties, ten with heavy Democratic majorities, on the ground of 'interference with registration.' By the waving of his wand, this cavalryman wiped out a Democratic majority of almost three thousand. When the people grumbled, he evoked the sword. His militia was frankly an instrument of party, his followers having demanded an instrument that 'would strike early and strike hard.' The 'Daily Republican' boldly proclaimed that of course the militia was to be armed to enforce the policies of the party. Immediately the negroes were enlisted and armed with the approval of Washington. The Republican Congressional Executive Committee was sending assurance that Federal troops were at Clayton's service whenever he declared martial law. The Northern press was being fed with stories of 'outrages' in Arkansas. Soon the proclamation of martial law; soon two thousand 1 Louisville Courier-Journal, January 25, 1869; quoted, Doc. Hist., II, 38–40.

* Staples, 278.

Arkansas Gazette, December 22, 1869; quoted, Doc. Hist., 11, 279.

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undisciplined negroes were preying on the people of ten counties, stealing, arresting, imprisoning, executing, looting houses, and occasionally violating women. Clayton soon was sending the officers lists of men to be arrested, with the comment that many of them could be executed. 'It is absolutely necessary that some example be made,' he wrote.' So infamous did the brutality become that the 'Daily Republican' bitterly denounced the proceedings, but when he was disciplined by his removal from the Speakership of the House, and deprived of public printing, the editor made a hasty recantation with the inspiring statement that 'we'll make Arkansas Republican or a waste howling wilderness.' 2 This political army, mobilized for partisan war, cost the people $330,676.43.3

With a military autocrat as Governor, with terror spread by gun-men from the mountains, and armed negroes posing as militia, with no recourse to the ballot, the people, oppressed with unbearable taxation, have no recourse to the courts for these too are packed with the tools of the system. Chief Justice John McClure, a notorious carpetbagger, is boasting of his guilt of bribery, editing the 'Daily Republican' from his chambers, and handling the slush funds for the debauchery of the Legislature.*

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Our Southern survey is over. We have met and mingled with the loyal men, and observed the saturnalia of corruption everywhere. To understand the times, we must bear in mind that distinguished statesmen in Washington, honored with monuments to-day, were loudly defending the Scotts, the Moseses, Bullocks, Warmoths, Caseys, Ameses, and Claytons; that pious women in Northern villages, shamefully deceived, were praying for the success of these 'good men and true.' But some were growing weary of the sordid game, and Greeley, in the fall of 1871, was giving warning: 'Men and brethren, there is to be a general overhauling of pretensions, a sweeping-out of dark corners, a dragging to light of hidden iniquities the coming winter. If there be those who dread such an ordeal, they may wisely put an ocean between them and the scene of their misdoings without delay.' 5

1 Staples, 290; Doc. Hist., 11, 73. 4 Staples, 365.

2 Staples, 302.

5 New York Tribune, November 13, 1871.

3 Ibid., 305.

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CHAPTER XVIII

THE RADICAL RANKS BREAK

I

ONGRESS met in December in an atmosphere heavily

charged with cynicism and corruption. The lobby was more than ever open and insolent, that of the railroads, under the vigilant eye of Tom Scott, the most brazen and defiant of all. A correspondent suggested that Congress permanently adjourn with an explanatory placard on the door: "The business of this establishment will be done hereafter in the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad.' Indeed, several of its attorneys were in Congress, and not a few press correspondents on its payroll. It was generally assumed that the Pacific Railroad had scored a triumph in the substitution of Williams, of Oregon, for Akerman as Attorney-General.1

Since the adjournment of Congress there had been colorful exposures of corruption in New York, the scandals involving the local Democratic organization in the case of Tweed, the National Republican organization in the case of Murphy and the CustomHouse. Reformers had appeared in both parties to slay the dragon and the Democrats under Samuel J. Tilden and Charles O'Conor won. The Republican reformers went down before the Grant forces under the dynamic leadership of Conkling in the State Convention. Tweed was exposed and arrested, and of the two Democrats who led the fight against him, one was to be nominated as the straight-out Democratic candidate for President within a year, and the other was to be the presidential nominee of a united party in 1876.

The triumph over the Custom-House Ring was not so easy. The Collector had been a personal appointee of the President, who had not consulted either Senator from New York. Tom Murphy had won his way to Grant's affections by his familiarity with horses. Bad as he was, he found he had inherited a worse system, due again to Grant's inability to judge men.

1 New York World, January 1, 1872.

Learning of Grant's intention to appoint Moses Grinnell as Collector, a former member of Grant's staff, named Leet, with the rank and pay of a colonel of the army, had solicited from the President a letter of introduction to Grinnell. It was with the presentation of this letter that the latter first learned of his appointment; and when Leet confidently requested the 'general order' business, Grinnell, assuming some connection between the letter and the request, agreed. It seemed to be an order from the President. When only a part of the business was assigned, Leet threatened the new Collector with dismissal, and the whole was given. The result was a wholesale looting of importers. They were forced to send their goods to the Leet warehouses and pay a month's storage, though the goods remained in the houses but a day. Soon Leet and his associates were reaping a rich harvest, importers were bitterly complaining, and Chicago merchants importing from Europe were using the Montreal route to escape the outrageous charges in New York. The New York merchants were wroth over the destruction of the commerce of the city — and nothing was done to stop it. This is the system Murphy had inherited.

In the summer of 1871, in the midst of the clamor of the merchants, Tom Murphy was Grant's veritable shadow at Long Branch. 'If Grant goes to New York,' wrote a correspondent, "Tom puts in an appearance en route. If the President goes out for a walk, Tom accidentally meets him. If Grant wants to take a peep at Monmouth Park Stables to look at the race-horses, Tom decides to look at them also.' 2 That was the summer Murphy opened a restaurant in the Custom-House in a room adjoining his office, where 'Leet and Stocking scored their great victory over Grinnell in securing the general order business,' and 'champagne flowed like water.' 3

With the election approaching, the grumbling increasing, and merchants clamoring for an investigation, the Administration was forced to part with Murphy, though with frank reluctance, and Chester A. Arthur was appointed his successor in the latter part of November. Grant, in accepting Murphy's resignation, 1 New York World, August 30, 1871.

3 Ibid., July 27, 1871.

2 Ibid., June 6, 1871.

paid tribute to 'the efficiency, honesty, and zeal' with which he had 'administered the office,' and this shocked the sensitive. Even the appointment of Arthur, destined to the Presidency, was no reassurance to Greeley. "The General,' he wrote, 'will be in the Custom-House a personal burlesque upon Civil Service Reform. He recently held a ten-thousand-dollar Tammany office from which he was only driven by the 'Tribune's' exposure; and he is a devoted servant of the Murphy clique; but he is not personally an objectionable man.'1 The abandonment of Murphy failed to prevent a congressional investigation, but it was noted that Administration Senators viciously cross-examined witnesses giving damaging testimony of which there was an abundance and that Senator Howe, cross-examining one important witness, had Leet at his side to prompt him.2

Then, in the midst of the investigation the bizarre James Fisk died in his seraglio, for love of a tainted lady, and "The Tribune' said 'his four-in-hand conveyed more spotted reputations than his own,' and 'his box at the Opera House was shunned as if infected by all who had any character to lose.' It was a back-hand slap at Grant, and 'The World' maliciously observed that he had been conveyed behind the 'four-in-hand' and had sat in the box 'without fear of infection.' 3

Thus the embarrassments of the Administration multiplied. The Custom-House mess had left a frightful stench, and 'The Nation' turned on the President. For two years, it said, while the abuses continued and merchants were protesting, ‘he gave no sign of displeasure, paid no attention to the complaints... and let Leet go on for nearly two years preying on the commerce of the port till a second congressional investigation, obtained with great difficulty, and the savage assaults of the press on the eve of an election made the change we have just witnessed imperatively necessary.' Soon the corruptionists and their respectable partisan apologists were whimpering that 'the public is tired of these investigations,' and Godkin was surmising that 'the public, tired as it is, will endure as many more as may be necessary.' Grant had developed a per1 New York Tribune, November 21, 1871. 2 New York World, January 5, 1872.

4 March 14, 1872.

3 January 9, 1872. "The Nation, May 2, 1872.

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