under the chairmanship of Judge Poland of Vermont. A parade of the looters passed in review before the committee - the corrupt Chief Justice McClure appearing a few days before General Sheridan, playing the Radical game from New Orleans, made his proposal to the President to declare great bodies of men in Louisiana and Arkansas 'bandits,' to be tried by military commissions. But neither cajoleries, importunities, nor threats of reprisal would budge Luke P. Poland, Republican, whose fidelity to duty wrecked his ambition for a Federal judgeship, and on February 6, 1875, he submitted a report against Federal interference in Arkansas. And then it was, only two days after the submission of the report, that Grant played the trump card for the defeated. Clayton had offered a resolution calling on the President for a report on Arkansas. The President had been in conference with Clayton and Morton; and his Special Message in response to the resolution was part of a desperate game. Ex-cathedra-wise, he declared Brooks had been elected in 1872 and unlawfully deprived of office, and that the Constitution of 1874 was null and void and the election under it that fall not binding.' It was too much. The 'Springfield Republican' interpreted: "The English of this Message is: Authorize me to make war upon the Government and people of Arkansas, in the interest of my third term' 2— an interpretation to which Rhodes, the historian, agrees. When Congress, sickened by the insolence of the suggestion, refused to act, a shameless attack was made on the integrity of Poland, which fell harmless at his feet. They could thwart his ambition; they could not rob him of his honor. And in due time his report was adopted, with the support of many leading Republicans, and all the Democrats. Thus Arkansas, under Garland, joyously joined the free States, and the carpetbaggers stood not on the order of their going, but went at once, some consoled with petty Federal positions. It was at this time, with Sheridan's 'banditti' message before the people, that Charles Nordhoff wrote: 'Arkansas is, in March, 1875, as peaceable a State as New York, Massachusetts, or Ohio. I assert this on the authority of leading men of both parties.' 4 Meanwhile, the struggle for redemption was on in Mississippi; 2 Merriam, 11, 238. 1 Messages and Papers, x, 4273. * Rhodes, VII, 87. 4 Nordhoff, 34. and in Louisiana, Sheridan, rattling the sword, was spluttering epithets in an attempt to save the Radicals he served from the destruction they merited. Let us follow these events as any in American history. dramatic CHAPTER XXI MILITARY SATRAPS AND REVOLUTION I HE conditions in Louisiana growing out of the election of THE 1872 had directed national attention to Cromwellian methods, and a revolution. The conservatives had elected John McEnery Governor over William Pitt Kellogg, the Republican nominee, but an illegal returning board had given the victory to the defeated without the formality of canvassing the votes. The contest involved not only State officers and a Senator, but the Legislature. The legal De Feriet Board found the conservatives triumphant; whereupon Kellogg had wired Williams, the Attorney-General who prostituted his position to partisan ends, that the fate of the Republican Party was involved; and the drunken Federal Judge Durell, with the trembling fingers of inebriety, had written his midnight injunction against the legal returning board, and instructed United States Marshal Packard, Republican chairman and manager, to take possession of the State House and prevent any 'unlawful' assemblage there of the McEnery legislators. The next morning, the city vibrant in protest, the besotted judge declared the lawful board illegal and restrained it from canvassing the returns. The despotism and audacity of the crime rocked the Nation. Imprecations against the drunken tyrant arose from all quarters and from both parties. 'Reprehensible and erroneous in point of law and wholly void for want of jurisdiction,' was the verdict of a congressional committee.1 This committee, with a majority Republicans, found McEnery had a majority of almost ten thousand, and the conservatives a majority of thirty-nine in the House and eleven in the Senate. Even so, the action of Durell, countenanced by the AttorneyGeneral, resulted in a dual government, with one legislature electing a conservative to the Senate, and the Kellogg body choosing P. B. S. Pinchback, the mulatto. Thus the determination of 1 Senate Report 91, 42d Cong., 3d Sess. the issue had been transferred to Washington, where a series of major battles had been fought for more than two years. When Senator Carpenter, Republican, a brilliant lawyer, cut the ground from beneath Kellogg and his followers in a remarkable report, it seemed for a moment that the travesty in Louisiana would end. Thoughtful Republicans, nauseated by the action of the drunken Durell, were prone to hold for McEnery, or, with Carpenter, for a new election. It was at this juncture that Senator Morton, resembling Stevens in his methods, established his claim to the absolute leadership of his party. Ignoring Carpenter's report and his unanswerable argument, Morton applied the whip to wavering partisans as remorselessly as had Stevens. Autocratic, dictatorial, direct, and almost brutal in his methods of management, he scrupled not to employ any weapon in a fight. Thus nothing was done, and Louisiana was left to the mercy of the President. With a division of sentiment among his counselors, Grant hesitated, preferring to pass the responsibility to others. It was charged, on the responsibility of a reputable man, that he had prepared a message recognizing McEnery, when Morton, in glowering mood, forbade its transmission on the ground that it would cost the party eighty thousand votes.1 This is given color by the assertion of Morton's biographer that Carpenter had influenced Grant until Morton drove to the White House in fighting trim and Grant had wilted before his fury.2 The story is plausible enough, since Morton was by odds the stronger man. The result had been the presidential recognition of Kellogg, but the fight in the Senate over the seating of Pinchback had gone on. II Meanwhile, in Louisiana the domination of the Custom-House clique had become intolerable. With the people driven to distraction by taxation, the levying of taxes was in the hands of scamps and illiterates without property. Nordhoff, an old Abolitionist, visiting the Legislature, was startled — 'not because they were black, but because they were transparently ignorant and unfit.' 1 Dick Taylor, The Nation, May 20, 1873. * Foulke, 11, 284–85. 3 Nordhoff, 49. The most vicious of the ruling element were prospering while the taxpayers suffered. Pass Christian, once the center of elegance and culture, with its fine residences along a beach of five miles' length, had been taken over by the negro politicians, and its social arbiter was now Caius Cæsar Antoine, Lieutenant-Governor by the grace of Grant's decree. Flamboyant, and abysmally ignorant, diminutive, with a head like a cocoanut... pure type of the Congo,' he was the leader of the Black League bent on the political ostracism of the carpetbaggers.1 Under the rule of such men, the propertied class was being rapidly impoverished. Scarcely five in a hundred men were not on the verge of ruin. Houses had declined eighty per cent in value in four years. The distinguished citizen who wrote that 'we are all ruined here and to hold property is to be taxed to death by our African communists' ? painted the picture with fidelity. The auctioneers and pawnbrokers of New Orleans were overworked, since elegant homes were being stripped piece by piece to buy necessities; families once comfortable were selling their beds to sleep on pallets on the floor, and bedsteads of rosewood and mahogany were going for from five to seven dollars. In the spring of 1874, planters were being denied the customary spring advances. One overwrought man, who had seen piece after piece of the family property sold for taxation until only one remained, wrote the sheriff that this was the sole possession of his mother and sister and the day it was put on sale he would attend with his shotgun. 'Now I know the man, wrote Nordhoff, 'and know him to be a peaceable, law-abiding citizen, one of the most important and most useful members of the community.' In the parish of St. Landry alone within two years 821 plantations had gone for taxes,5 and there had been 47,491 tax seizures by the sheriff in New Orleans. Parish papers were giving three and four pages to advertisements of tax sales." To divert attention in the North from these monstrous conditions, the press was fed on fabrications of 'outrages' on 'innocent blacks' and 'loyal men.' Every murder was given a politi 1 New York World, July 23, August 10, 1874. 2 Ibid., January 8, 1873. 3 New York Herald, October 10, 1874, * Nordhoff, 59. Ibid. 6 Ibid., 62. |