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 regime 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 than she 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 law partners, 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 $60,000 of
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.
CHAPTER TEN
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 fancy distorted 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.
On the 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
regime 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
January 1, 1867 $4,066,000
"The war debt, amounting to $12,094,731.95 was repudiated.
"Eight per cent. bonds sold in 1867-68 659,100
"Eight per cent. bonds sold in 1869-70 657,700
"Total bonded debt January 1, 1871 $5,382,800
"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:
Direct indebtedness $ 8,761,967 37
Present conditional indebtedness 15,420,000 00
Conditional indebtedness provided by law 14,200,000 00
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 Chattanooga Railroad 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 time after 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 work was 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, was partly due to increase
of bonded debt, but mainly to ignorant and corrupt legislation.
The report of the superintendent of census showed:
Assessed valuation of property in Alabama,
including slaves, in 1860 $432,198,762
Assessed valuation in 1870 156,770,387
State taxation in 1860 530,107
State taxation in 1870 1,477,414
County taxation in 1860 309,474
County taxation in 1870 1,122,471
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.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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 greatly outnumbered 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 plantations were 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 of
enforcing 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 the aborigines. 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.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE KU KLUX KLAN