USA > Arkansas > Biographical and pictorial history of Arkansas. Vol I > Part 49
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53
67
530
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
spoliation and plunder, overleaped and trampled on laws of their own making.
The act on which these bonds are based is utterly void on other grounds. The constitution of 1868 provides that every bill and joint resolution shall be read three times, on different. days, in each house before the final passage thereof, unless two- thirds of the house where the same is pending shall dispense with the rules. This mandatory provision of organic law in the passage of the act was disregarded. An inspection of the journals of both the house and the senate discloses the fact that the bill passed three readings in the house in one day, and on the same day it was passed in the senate without any sus- pension of the rules, and on the day following it was signed by the governor. That there was no suspension of the rules on the third reading in the house. Our supreme court say : "This is a strong case, and leaves no room for presumption in favor of the regularity of the proceedings." This decision is founded in law, and wisdom, and justice, and it will forever challenge the respect of a liberty-loving and law-abiding peo- ple. The court rendering it was composed of Judges E. H. English, David Walker and William M. Harrison. All are eminent for the untarnished purity of their lives, and their good name and fame is the State's heritage. The two former, after long, useful, eminent and laborious lives, have passed away, and a million of their fellow citizens exclaimed, when their labors were finished: " Well done, thou good and faithful servant." You have achieved the distinction of having hurled the first shaft of calumny at their good name; but it will . never reach the exalted niche which shelters them from ruthless
ยท hands.
The power to tax and take property from the citizen is the highest attribute of sovereignty, and must be exercised in strict conformity to law. No right has been more strictly guarded by our race in both hemispheres, and they have submitted to greater sacrifice of blood and treasure to maintain it than any other question of public policy. The landed proprietors of the State, for sympathy and participation in the civil war, were disfranchised. This element paid nine-tenths of the taxes. An assertion of the right to tax without representation led to
531
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
the revolution headed by Washington and the dismemberment of the British empire, and led to the most important results recorded in the history of mankind. This check against the encroachment of legislative and the exercise of arbitrary power is indispensable to the existence of free institutions. The con- stitution of every State in the American federation proclaims the determination of the people to preserve inviolate this fun- damental provision in their social compact. And no era in the history of free institutions presents such a striking exemplifica- tion of the necessity for such guards, as the era of radical domination in the southern States. The amount of bonds which represents radical spoliation in the southern States dur- ing the era of reconstruction is absolutely appalling. Stripped of the specious plumage which surrounds their acts, the issue of the bonds representing this vast aggregation of debt amounts to an effort to evade law and legalize robbery. The unre- strained power of taxation exercised here in Arkansas, for which the people got nothing in return, amounted to virtual confiscation.
Within a period of three years, the Clayton government (1869-1871) sought to fasten on the people of Arkansas an enormous debt, as shown by the following table, taken from the record :
Six per cent funding bonds, 1869.
$910,000 00
Six per cent funding bonds, 1870.
905,000 00
Seven per cent bonds to Memphis and Little Rock R. R. Co. Seven per cent bonds to Arkansas Central Ry 1,350,000 00
1,200,000 00
Seven per cent bonds to Little Rock, Pine Bluff and New Orleans .. .
1,200,000 00
Seven per cent bonds to Little Rock and Ft. Smith R. R. Co.
1,000,000 00
Seven per cent bonds to the Mississippi, Ouachita and Red River R. R. Co.
600,000 00
Seven per cent levee bonds.
1,986,773 74
Total
.$10,419,773 74
Our supreme court have declared the railroad aid, levee and Holford bonds void, aggregating $8,604, 773.74.
Now what are the plain facts on which this enormous debt was based? Few and simple! The levee bonds were issued in aid of private enterprise and jobbery, in which the State never had any interest. The Little Rock, Pine Bluff and New
532
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
Orleans road started out on a basis of two hundred and sixty miles, but with its three millions of assets very poorly built the " main stem " from Little Rock to Pine Bluff, and aban- doned it without equipping one mile of road, only about fifty miles of road-bed built with $3,000,000 of assets. Seventy- five per cent of the assets of this company are unaccounted for on any estimate consistent with common honesty, and yet the people of Arkansas are asked to make good the larceny these enormous figures represent. The Arkansas Central, controlled and manipulated by Stephen W. Dorsey, the northern adven- turer, of senatorial and Star Route fame, comes in for an honest stipend of fame and sympathy you so liberally bestow on his ilk -a pensioner on the bounty of fame you deal out to the shaded and faded memory of radicalism in Arkansas.
The poor little Mississippi, Ouachita and Red River Railroad Company, with its pitiful allowance of only $600,000 aid bonds, duplicated by a like amount of mortgage bonds and a large contribution from other sources, sent up Honest "Tom Bowen," its contestant for the United States senate in 1873, and as might have been foreseen, with so trifling a corruption fund, in the classic language of the times, "got left." The assets of another company, Little Rock and Fort Smith railroad, receiv- ing a million of these aid bonds is said, on strong authority, to have tickled the palate of a presidential aspirant for his valuable rulings when speaker of the national house of representatives. History is said to repeat itself : "Nero fiddled whilst Rome was on fire." The satires of Juvenal pale into insignificance at your effort to clothe Powell Clayton's administration of the government of Arkansas with honesty and purity. That ad- ministration will go down to posterity clothed in the same character of fame which has handed down the name of the aspiring youth who fired the Ephesian temple. The white population of Arkansas, in 1860, was 324,325; at the same time the slave population was 111,115, representing a moneyed value of $60,000,000. The Federal census of 1870, shows an increase on this population in round numbers of only 50,000. And why this fatal, unerring indication of a people's decline ? Radical maladministration supplemented the ravages of war, and was as fatal to political prosperity as the Upas tree is to
533
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
animal life. What was the effect when we cleared out the Augean stable in 1874, and gave honest government to Ar- kansas ?
Let the census of 1880 speak of the wonderful effect the restoration of confidence and prosperity had on the destinies of . Arkansas. In round numbers the population of the State in- creased to eight hundred thousand, and to-day numbers more than one million. Development has been no less remarkable in other fields. The pecuniary losses of the people of Arkansas growing out of the civil war did not represent less than $150,000,000. When it closed every interest was prostrate, many thousands were without seeds to sow and animals to till the soil. Devastation had swept every thing like a cyclone. When in this prostrate condition the northern parasite fastened his fangs in her bleeding flesh and began the work of spolia- tion and plunder, aided here and there by southern apostates, who turned on kith and kin in the hour of their desolation and sold, at least, the inheritance of a good name, for a mess of radi- cal pottage, that they might fatten on their country's blood. Thus tainted are the bonds you bought before the day of reck- oning overtook the party who issued them. And yet you in- dulge in eloquent wonder, that a re-enfranchised, a disenthral- led, a free people, refuse to indorse and perpetuate the wrong, and to augment the booty.
It is not repudiation to refuse to pay an assumed obligation that never had any sanction in law. There never was a con- tract on the part of the State to pay the bonds. Repudiation is refusal to comply with the terms of a contract. There can be no repudiation where there is no contract. Repudiation has never spread its blight over Arkansas, but the slanderer and spoliator have hissed their serpent tongues at her good name, until the ignorant and misinformed in some quarters have been led to believe it. The doctrine of innocent pur- chaser has no relation to securities issued wholly without au- thority of law. It only applies to that class of securities where the power to issue exists, but has been abused. There was no abuse of authority in your case, because none existed. What I have said in relation to the railroad aid bonds applies with equal force to the levee bonds issued under radical administra-
534
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
tion in 1871. The latter act is as obnoxious to constitutional objection as the one we have discussed. So held by our su- preme court. (See 33 Arkansas Reports, 17.) Judges English, Eakin and Turner were on the bench then; the latter deliv- ered the opinion of the court. No purer men ever adorned our bench. What you say of our constitutional amendment is without foundation to support it. All the issues touching the validity of levee and railroad aid bonds have been pre- sented and ably argued) to our supreme court, and have been judicially determined by learned, able and pure jurists. The amendment to our constitution, adopted by a vote of the peo- ple in 1874, simply withdraws all further consideration of these bonds from the political department of our government, for obvious reasons. The vast amount of these worthless bonds with the accumulated interest, in themselves, would supply a vast corruption fund, if vitality could be imparted to them. I have purposely not discussed the purely legal questions affecting every class of these bonds declared void, because it would involve too much repetition and unnecessary time.
But there was a time in the judicial history of Arkansas which well warrants all you say about a corrupt judiciary, and it will no doubt pain you to learn that all the men composing this distinguished body of jurists in the days of reconstruction (1873-4) belonged to the same political organization to which you then subscribed allegiance. John McClure was then chief justice, and E. J. Searle, M. L. Stephenson, J. E. Bennett and Lafayette Gregg were associate justices of the supreme court of Arkansas, and John Whytock was then judge of the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas. Judge Gregg, the author is glad to say, upon information which is satisfactory, was not in the conspiracy to overthrow the State government, and is not included in the criticism which follows. But the other judges named made their own official record and must abide it. A short historical resume is here necessary to a full and en- lightened understanding of the acts and facts discussed.
In 1872 Elisha Baxter and Joseph Brooks were rival repub- lican candidates for the office of governor. The election came off in November, and the legislature, which convened in Jan- uary, canvassed the vote and declared Baxter elected, and he
535
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
was inducted into office. The constitution of 1868 clothed the legislature with exclusive jurisdiction to try contested elections to State offices. That tribunal rejected Brooks' application to contest the election, and thus, in legal contemplation, ended the controversy. Brooks was a bold, bad man, and sought the gratification of his ambition without regard to consistency, com- mon honesty, or the interest of the people.
In June, 1873, the attorney-general, at the relation of Brooks; filed in the supreme court, composed of the judges above named, an application for a writ of quo warranto against Bax- ter, designed to oust him of his office as governor, and in an elaborate and satisfactory opinion, filed on the 29th of Septem- ber, 1873, the application was denied on the ground that it was a political question over which the judiciary had no jurisdic- tion. Every lawyer and jurist in the State not blinded by political partisanship concurred in this opinion. Hon. Henry C. Caldwell, judge of the United States district court, eminent alike for great learning, exhaustive research, integrity and purity of character, both in public and private life, with many other eminent lawyers and jurists, concur in this construction. Soon after this precedent was established it was re-affirmed by the same tribunal in the case of Berry v. Wheeler, a proceeding to get possession of the office of State auditor by issuing a writ of prohibition against John Whytock, circuit judge, pre- venting his further proceeding on the ground that the courts had no jurisdiction. Soon after the decision in the quo war- ranto case, Brooks commenced a proceeding against Baxter in the circuit court before Judge Whytock to get possession of the office of governor. Baxter's counsel interposed a demurrer. Whytock, as circuit judge, permitted Brooks' counsel to clan- destinely call up this case on the 15th day of April, 1874, and he overruled the demurrer and gave judgment of ouster against Baxter, in pursuance of a conspiracy, as alleged, and then and yet believed, between Brooks, Whytock and the above-named judges of the supreme court, and others except Judge Gregg.
Immediately after this revolutionary and corrupt combina- tion between the judges named and Brooks and others was advanced by Whytock's stealthy and illegal judgment, Brooks, with an armed force, ejected Baxter from the State house and took possession and proclaimed himself governor. With this
.
536
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
explanation the reader will understand the result of the indig- nation meeting of the Bar of Little Rock as set forth in the following resolution :
Resolutions.
Resolved, That it is the deliberate sense of the members of the Little Rock Bar here signing, that the late act of the cir- cuit court of Pulaski county, in rendering a judgment in the case of Brooks v. Baxter, at a time when the case was not set for trial; at a time when it was known and foreseen that his counsel would be absent, and when it had been announced that no business, during the week, would be taken up unless by con- sent, involving the exercise of jurisdiction in a case which the supreme court twice, in well-considered opinions, decided that the circuit court had, under the constitution and laws of the State, no jurisdiction, is one of the most extraordinary acts in judicial history ; that the judgment rendered therein is wholly null and void for want of jurisdiction ; is not a judicial act, but merely the private act of the individual exercising the func- tions of judge, and of the attorney of the plaintiff, who was accessory to said proceedings, and does not afford, in a legal point of view, the slightest pretext or color for the revolu- tionary proceedings which have been ostensibly based upon it.
A. H. Garland, President,
G. B. Reardon,
J. M. Moore, Secretary, W. L. Terry,
John Green,
Geo. E. Dodge,
Robert A. Howard,
B. S. Johnson,
Geo. L. Basham,
R. C. Newton,
Sol. F. Clark,
James M. Pomeroy,
Z. P. H. Farr,
C. B. Moore,
George A. Gallagher,
R. A. Watkins,
U. M. Rose,
J. M. Smith,
Sam W. Williams,
F. M. Parsons,
Dick Gantt,
L. A. Prindall,
Thos. Fletcher,
John Fletcher,
Newman Erb,
S. R. Cockrill,
F. W. Compton,
E. H. English,
J. W. Martin,
A. D. Jones.
Those who are acquainted with the Bar of Arkansas will readily recognize in the above list many names eminent for great learning and purity of life.
John McClure, chief justice of Arkansas, administered the oath of office to Brooks as governor, in the teeth of the decisions of the court over which he presided, above referred to. John Whytock carried out his part of the programme, by refusing to
-------
. . .. ++
-
537
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
set his judgment aside, and thus earned the infamy of a Jeffries. Baxter had been in the exercise of the office sixteen months before this conspiracy culminated. One of the ablest and purest jurists in the State, Judge U. M. Rose, has gone on record in the following language : " That Chief Justice McClure is one of the principal leaders in the revolt of Mr. Brooks is a well-known fact. In such a case we would clearly be entitled to apply the maxim, Omnia, presumunter contra spoliatorem. Sir Robert Wright, lord chief justice, and Mr. Justice Allybone, the former of whom was elevated to office solely on account of his unscrupulous servility, and the latter owed his place to the very dispensing power, as to the legality of which he was in that case called on to decide, may have been very honest men in private life, but they were none the less judicial knaves, for the acts they did were knavish acts. The tree is judged by the fruit. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles ?" Five days after Whytock rendered his clandes- tine judgment of ouster the following telegram was sent to the president :
LITTLE ROCK, April 20, 1874.
SIR- We, the undersigned, being State officers of the State of Arkansas, since the Pulaski circuit court rendered the judg- ment of ouster against Elisha Baxter, for the office of gov- ernor, and awarded the said office to Joseph Brooks, and he qualified as governor and entered upon the discharge of his duties as such, we do now recognize said Brooks as governor of said State in all official intercourse with the executive of the State.
JOHN MCCLURE, Chief Justice, E. J. SEARLE, Associate Justice, M. L. STEPHENSON, Associate Justice, (Judges Gregg and Bennett are not in the city.) HENRY PAGE, State Treasurer,
J. WHEELER, Auditor of State, LUCIEN J. BARNES, Insurance Commissioner,
J. C. CORBIN, Supt. Public Instruction, W. H. GREY, Commissioner State Lands, EDWARD CARY, Secretary of State ad interim. HIS EXCELLENCY, U. S. GRANT,
President, Washington, D. C.
68
538
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
The insurgent governor and his pliant tools understood each other perfectly well ; we believe this is demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt when we group all the facts and circum- stances together. I now quote from the report of the Poland committee to congress. " One more case will close what is called judicial authority over the question. While Brooks claimed to be in the exercise of the office and authority of gov- ernor, he drew warrants on Page, the treasurer of the State, for funds for official use, and on Page's refusal to pay he ap- plied for a mandamus from the supreme court to compel him to do so. Page pleaded that Brooks was not governor. The court granted the mandamus, holding that the judgment of the Pulaski circuit court was conclusive on that question, as the court had jurisdiction, and the judgment on demurrer had been allowed to become final." Further on the same commit- tee say, " the Arkansas legal authorities are too conflicting to deserve any consideration." Referring solely to radical, po- litical and revolutionary judges who dragged the ermine through the sluices of corruption.
This last shameful and, to the last degree, disgraceful decis- ion was rendered on the 7th day of May, 1874, and on the same day Joseph Brooks telegraphed the president as follows :
Supreme court decided to-day that the Pulaski circuit court has jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the case of Brooks v. Baxter, and the judgment is regular and valid, and that I am governor of Arkansas. A certified copy has been telegraphed Attorney-General Williams.
JOSEPH BROOKS.
This lengthy opinion was delivered, copied, certified and telegraphed same day. The very lengthy telegram referred to by Brooks was signed John McClure, chief justice, John E. Bennett, E. J. Searle, M. L. Stephenson, associate justices of Arkansas supreme court. This telegram is too lengthy to re- produce here, but we copy one or two passages to show how delicately the delicate court ate its own spawn :
"We feel some delicacy about expressing an opinion upon the question propounded, but, under the pleading, it has to be
.
----
539
HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
passed upon incidentally, if not absolutely, in determining whether the relator is entitled to the relief asked for. His right to the office, if established at all, is established by the judgment of the circuit court of Pulaski county. We are of opinion the circuit court had jurisdiction of the subject-matter, and its judgment appears to be regular and valid. The mandamus will be awarded."
On the next day (May 8, 1874) Brooks telegraphed the president that the supreme court of Arkansas convened on the first Monday in December previous, and that it had been ad- journed from day to day on its own order, and that the present sitting was but a continuation of the December term, and the following confirmatory advice was sent by telegram, dated Baring Cross, May 8, 1874 :
To U. S. GRANT, President United States, Washington, D. C .:
We have seen the dispatch of Governor Brooks to yourself in relation to the meeting and adjournment of the supreme court, and the facts in relation thereto are correctly stated.
JOHN MCCLURE, Chief Justice. J. E. BENNETT, Associate Justice. M. L. STEPHENSON, Associate Justice. E. J. SEARLE, Associate Justice.
This indecent haste and shameless action speaks its own con- demnation. That sterling Union soldier and upright ex-chief justice of the supreme court of Arkansas, afterward a member of congress from the third district, W. W. Wilshire, fought Clay- ton, Dorsey and the Arkansas republican delegation in congress, and carried the administration with him over their heads in the end. It is on record, in reference to these judges, in the follow- ing language : "The apparent cause that brought these judges together, and the circumstances under which they assumed to hold court, and the indecent haste with which their pretended decision was made, can serve no other purpose than to stand as a monument of their judicial partisanship, and a disgrace to the name of the judiciary." This language appears in Judge Wil- shire's address to the president. Those able and fearless men, Pike and Johnson, say: "General Grant cannot afford to let him-
540
BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL
self be made the involuntary instrument of political chicanery and rascality by sustaining an insurrection, which, but for his aid, would have been a contemptible fiasco and abortion. It is the development of a wicked plot arranged to enable a few desper- ate adventurers to retain ill-gotten power, and carry onward to successful completion, schemes of spoliation and rapine." Again, the same distinguished men say : " There is greater dan- ger in these shameless usurpations by the judges than in usur- pations of executives or legislatures. When the courts become corrupt, and judges, pimps and catamites of political rascalities, the State is rotten in its very bones, and such a ' judge' ought to be, like Titus Oates, scourged through the streets at the cart's tail, until the blood runs down to his heels." John Thompson, private citizen and friend of General Grant, writes to him from Philadelphia, May 13, 1874, and says : " In your position you need all the information on matters of much im- portance in which you have to make decisions, and so in regard to the Arkansas trouble. If I attempt to throw a little light in your pathway I hope I will not be considered presumptuous. I have heretofore been in the State fully one-half of my time, and think I know all about the situation and feeling there. Baxter has not only given full and entire satisfaction as gover- nor to his party - the republican - but the entire population of the State." * * " The great trouble and cause of offense has been withholding his signature to certain railroad bonds" (the italics are the author's). It will be remembered that Powell Clayton when railroad commissioner and governor of the State, in three years issued more than $10,000,000 of . bonds, as stated in a former part of this letter. . In addition to this ruinous bonded debt the radical party created a very large floating or scrip debt, amounting to between one and two millions, which flooded the State until depreciated to fifteen cents on the dollar. But we have not done with the con- spiracy which amounted to treason and levying of war against the State. Powell Clayton and S. W. Dorsey, then senators in congress, were among the head and front of the conspirators, and we prove it by their own records.
On the 8th of October, 1873, these leaders published an address to the people of Arkansas, signed by themselves and
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.