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Within, some coal-black members, but most of lighter hue, though Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, presiding over the Senate, is a black. The abysmally ignorant eschew debate, some of the coal-blacks speak incoherently. It is a monkey-house with guffaws, disgusting interpolations, amendments offered that are too obscene to print, followed by shouts of glee.' Bad in the beginning, the travesty grows worse. The vulgarity of the speeches increases; members stagger from the basement bar to their seats. The Speaker in righteous mood sternly forbids the introduction of liquor on the floor. A curious old planter stands in the galleries a moment looking down upon the scene, and with an exclamation, 'My God!' he turns and runs, as from a pestilence, into the street. Visitors from the North organize 'slumming expeditions' to the Legislature or go as to a zoo. A British member of Parliament, asking if there are any curiosities in the city, is taken forthwith to Mechanics' Hall.'

Corruption is inevitable, and members openly charged with bribery are not offended. 'I want to know how much the gentleman gets to support this bill,' demands one member of another, and it is not an insult. Measures involving millions, many criminal, and having to do with railroads, canals, and levees, are passed without examination, and members vote vast sums into their pockets openly, defiantly. The mileage and per diem for members and clerks leap from a quarter of a million in 1869 to half a million the next year. Careless with the people's money? Preposterous. 'What we give to the community,' exclaims an outraged member- 'What we give to the community is without money and without price. It is so valuable that the price cannot be fixed-there is no standard.' 'I should like to know,' says another, if there is a good thing, in the name of God, why not let the representatives of the State of Louisiana have a hand in it.' When the Appropriation Bill reduces the printing bill to a mere one hundred and forty thousand dollars a tearful plea that legislators 'open their hearts' and embrace more newspapers brings an amendment adding sixty thousand dollars."

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For in Louisiana, too, the party press is heavily subsidized out of the Treasury. The Board of Printing Commissioners, dominated by the Governor, had been a godsend to Warmoth, who sent his agents to edit papers to which contracts were given, and, as fourth owner of the 'New Orleans Republican,' the chief beneficiary, he profited both politically and financially. Through his subsidized press he brought pressure to bear in favor of four measures intended to give him dictatorial power and prolong his reign. The Registration Bill made every parish registration official his minion, and gave them power to accept or reject votes without interference from the courts. Thus he could determine nominations. The Election Bill superseded sheriffs on election day with Warmoth's appointees, forbade the courts to interfere, and authorized him to deny certificates of election to successful candidates as he saw fit; and all this was climaxed by the creation of a returning board composed of members of the machine specified in the bill itself. The Constabulary Bill authorized Warmoth to name a chief constable in each parish who could name a deputy, and these were absolute. And the Militia Bill empowered him to organize and equip as many men as he wished and placed one hundred thousand dollars at his disposal for the purpose.1

These four revolutionary measures were the concentrated essence of Radicalism. The people in mass meeting protested violently, speakers denouncing the measures as designed for/ plunder and the perpetuation of pillage, and attacks on the legislators favoring them were greeted with cries of 'Kill them!' and 'Lynch them!' But behind the Legislature was Warmoth; behind him his militia and constables; and behind them Federal bayonets - and the laws went into operation.

X

But Warmoth had created a Frankenstein monster, and aroused the fiends of jealousy. His was a power worth fighting for, and in the Republican Convention of 1870 the struggle began. The Custom-House crowd, with the negro Lieutenant-Governor as its candidate, defeated Warmoth for the chairmanship, and almost

1 In his MS. Reminiscences Warmoth says the Returning Board Law was 'a dangerous law' making possible the absolute control of elections.

defeated a resolution endorsing his administration. Never, however, had Warmoth seemed stronger than when the Legislature met in January, 1871, with his Speaker packing the House committees with Warmoth men, and with his followers in the Senate depriving the Lieutenant-Governor of power and packing the committees there with minions of the Governor. But he had undergone a strange metamorphosis. He vetoed a gigantic swindling levee scheme in which members were financially interested. The House raged and overrode the veto in a tempestuous session, but in the Senate the steal was stopped, and the defeated corruptionists turned on Speaker Mortimer Carr for vengeance. Bargaining with Democrats to seat their contested members in return for votes to unseat Carr, the latter was forced out, and an enemy of Warmoth, not one whit better, became the commanding figure of the House. 'Thus,' said the 'New York Tribune,' 'by taking advantage of an outburst of virtuous indignation among a gang of thieves . . . was laid the foundation of ... the first systematic organization in opposition to the power of Governor Warmoth.' 2

3

The defeat of the senatorial ambitions of Collector Casey by the Warmoth forces intensified the feud, and the Governor's newfound passion for reform poured in as many as thirty-nine vetoes, only five of which were overridden. Thus Warmoth stopped steals - the veto of the Paving Bill alone saving the people a million and a half. Manifestly this man would not do. When the session of 1871 cost $958,956.50, where the average cost before reconstruction had been one hundred thousand dollars, Warmoth denounced the squandering on extra mileage, on services never rendered, on publications in obscure newspapers, some of which did not exist, on elegant stationery, and on champagne. It was civil war.

Speedily came the clash of the Republican factions as, fighting viciously, they lunged toward the Convention of August, 1871. Bribery and bludgeons now played their part, with hired ruffians smashing meetings with clubs. When Casey added five hundred

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Warmoth had agreed to support Casey if Grant, reputed to be interested, should ask him. MS. Reminiscences.

4 Warmoth in his MS. Reminiscences says 'more than seventy.

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names to the payroll of the National Government, Warmoth added as many to the city payroll. The morning of the convention found business suspended everywhere. Casey had called the convention for the Custom-House, Warmoth for the State House. Casey prevailed, with the energetic assistance of Gatling guns and Federal marshals, and Warmoth and his followers held a convention of their own. The Custom-House crowd read Warmoth out of the party, and Casey sent an explanatory message to Grant, his brother-in-law, at Long Branch.2 A little later, the Warmoth delegation of whites and blacks reached Long Branch to make their explanation. The negroes were sparkling with diamond breastpins, as they pounded the pavement with their gold-headed canes, but Grant was visibly annoyed when they reached his cottage. Brusquely ordering an Associated Press reporter from the room, he received them coldly. He could not see what harm United States soldiers could do to a Republican convention and. said so.3 Standing by a piano, he listened impatiently to the reading of the petition, once banging the piano with his elbow. Once he stamped his foot, and the committee left convinced that Grant was committed to Casey. Consoling themselves with a feast at the Sans-Souci Beer Saloon, they hurried to New York — and the war was on. Soon Warmoth will be leading the Republican insurgents in the campaign of 1872.4

Meanwhile, the propertied citizens of Louisiana could see none of the humor of the situation. Under confiscatory taxation, numerous parishes were seeing tracts of the richest land going under the tax collector's hammer at a dollar an acre. In numerous instances buyers could not be found at that price because of the taxes. Real estate had declined twenty-five per cent in value.5 It was costing half a million a year to collect six and a half million. Ruin everywhere-enforced by Federal marshals, backed, if need be, by Federal soldiers. The school system was a wreck."

XI

Let us turn away and visit Mississippi. Jackson, the capital, impressed an English traveler with its 'many private residences

1 New York Tribune, December 1, 1871; Lonn, 97. 3 Warmoth, MS. Reminiscences.

Lonn, 96-104.

New York World, September 6, 1871.

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denoting a large proportion of people of taste and culture.'1 Vicksburg and Natchez were in the shadows, and Meridian, sprawling over sandy mounds, the ridges covered with yellow pines, was growing rapidly because of the influx of negroes.2 Adelbert Ames, as Military Governor, had taken possession of the State House and Executive Mansion in the fashion of Bombastes Furioso, to rule supreme, and to pass on to the Senate to make way for James L. Alcorn, a handsome, vain, imperious planter of property, with forensic qualities of no mean order. But the Senate soon claimed him, too, and soon he and Ames will be found in a death struggle for Republican leadership. Though a native, there is little that Alcorn can do - he has a Legislature, too. Nearly forty former slaves, forced to make their mark, are enacting laws in the spirit of a lark. These represent the wealthiest and most aristocratic counties. The carpetbaggers lead; these simple souls follow trustingly. A carpetbagger from New York, Dr. Franklin, sits in the Speaker's chair. The old governing element is hopeless, though a few determined spirits like J. Z. George still hope and plan. The gentle Lamar, depressed, is standing by the gate of his cottage at Oxford in the twilight, looking sadly across the solemn fields, watching his neighbors passing in the middle of the road for safety.

Now let us cross over to Arkansas, the baronry of the most astute and stern of the carpetbaggers, Powell Clayton, who has just retired as Governor to enter the Senate, but whose work lives after him. No cowardly mediocrity he, but a daring, resourceful, unscrupulous man of vaulting ambition, with a touch of genius. A brave soldier, even when he dismounted and laid the sword aside he remained a cavalry dare-devil. The fighting had taken him into Arkansas, and when the firing ceased he settled on a plantation and remained. From that point of vantage, he cunningly studied the situation, and at the psychological moment he grasped his opportunity. Gathering the negroes and carpetbaggers behind him, he seized on power. Coldly calculating, unsympathetic to suffering, autocratic, impatient of opposition or restraint, he ruled for three years as an absolute monarch. The argus-eyed Henry Watterson observed him critically. "The dis

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