USA > Georgia > The history of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881, embracing the three important epochs: the decade before the war of 1861-5; the war; the period of Reconstruction, v. 1 > Part 8
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This message put the Governor's views on the subject of the Legisla- ture interfering with pardons in a pointed and unmistakable manner, but it did not settle the matter. The members were somewhat taken aback at the sharp terms the Executive used, but the practice of going to the Legislature when the Governor would not interfere in criminal cases had ripened into too fixed a precedent, and was too convenient to be readily abandoned. It was a pernicious practice and plainly illegal, yet it had been permitted. Gov. Brown was resolved to check and if possible stop it entirely. The Legislature clung to the custom. A man by the name of John Black had been convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung in Habersham. The Legislature passed an act commuting the death penalty to life imprisonment. The Governor
1
STATE AID.
vetoed the bill in a lengthy message of remarkable ability. The Legis- lature in changing the penalty fixed by law to a crime committed in violation of the law, after the courts had finally passed upon the criminal, made an assumption of the functions of the Judicial by the Legislative branch of the government, and it was unconstitutional. To annul the judgment of the court and pronounce another judgment was a judicial and not a legislative function. The constitution forbids the exercise of the powers of one by the other. The Governor went into the question elaborately, quoting largely from the authorities to show that the legis- lative power to pardon in murder cases did not carry the power to commute. They either had to pardon entirely, or not at all. The message was closed with a reference to the facts of the case, and to the considerations of public policy involved. If the Legislature was allowed to cominute as well as pardon, all murder cases would be brought before the body, and there would be no more punishments by death for the most flagrant murders. The bill was lost in the house after the Gov- ernor's veto by a vote of 27 yeas to 55 nays.
Among other vetoes that illustrate the Governor's views, was one of a bill allowing a number of married women to run business on their own account, on the ground of its destroying the unity of marriage. He clung to his old-fashioned ideas which he had so strenuously advocated and voted for in the Legislature of 1849 when he was a State Senator.
The subject of state aid to railroads was very fully discussed by this Legislature, but finally voted down. The state aid leaders were Mr. Speaker Underwood, D. W. Lewis, Mr. Smith and Col. Hardeman. The anti-state aid leaders were Mr. Bigham, Col. A. H. Kenan, Mr. G. A. Gordon and Col. Jno. Milledge. At that time the aid of the state had already been pledged to the Main Trunk and Brunswick railroads to a million of dollars. The removal of the state penitentiary from Milledgeville to Stone Mountain was fully argued, but finally defeated after an able speech against it by Senator L. H. Briscoe, a very brilliant young fellow who had been a secretary of the executive department · under Gov. Johnson. The new counties were created of Wilcox, White, Schley, Pierce, Mitchell, Milton, Glasseock and Dawson. The salaries of the following officers were increased: Governor from $3,000 to $4,000; Judges of Supreme Court, 82,500 to $3,500; Judges of Superior Court, $1,800 to $2,500. The practice of biennial sessions was also changed back to annual sessions, which had been the law before 1840, and the sessions were limited to 40 days, unless lengthened by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
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PETERSON THWEATT.
The Legislature had elected as state house officers, J. B. Trippe, Treasurer; E. P. Watkins, Secretary of State, and Peterson Thweatt as Comptroller General. Mr. Thweatt deserves special mention. Before his administration the reports of the comptroller had been very meager affairs. He instituted a system of statistical returns that have been invaluable. He improved the collection of taxes, very largely increasing the return of taxable property and the revenue of the state. His administration of his office was conspicuously able. He is a short, very stout little gentleman with some oddities of manner, such as vocif- ' erous whispering to his friends, and a wonderful faculty for hearty laughter; and he was sometimes very irascible, but withal a true-hearted and generous gentleman, and as capable and faithful a public officer as the state ever had. He was comptroller a long time, but was defeated after the war, and could never get his consent to do anything else. His soul was in his office, and he clung for years to the hope of return to it, but vainly. He had taken his salary during the war in Georgia war notes, which were repudiated, and he spent years getting the legis- lature to let hin sue the state for his notes. Legislature after legislature refused him the privilege, but with indomitable persistence he kept on until he succeeded only to have his suit dismissed. Some of his annual addresses to the members were remarkable papers, exhausting the printer's fonts of quotation marks, italics and capitals; and indulging in such a labyrinthine net-work of parentheses as to make his documents rhetorical puzzles.
In his inaugural Gov. Brown devoted much attention to the state road. In 1856 it had paid into the state treasury $43,500. Necessa- rily large amounts had been used in equipping the road, but still the people grumbled that it was not a source of more revenue to the state. On the 1st of January, 1858, Governor Brown appointed John W. Lewis, his faithful friend, as superintendent of the road, under an order remarkable for its concise comprehensiveness of reform and man- agement. It directed cutting expenses, dismissing every supernum- erary, reducing salaries the same as on other roads, requiring absolute subordination, discharging dissipated employés, using economy, demand- ing trip settlements from conductors and weekly settlements from depot agents, and paying every dollar of net earnings monthly into the treasury. Lewis faithfully carried out his instructions. During His administration Gov. Brown paid as high as $400,000 in a single year into the treasury. An amusing incident is related that soon after the appointment of Dr. Lewis as superintendent, he and Gov. Brown were
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THE STATE ROAD.
seen walking the track, picking up the iron spikes that were scattered and wasting along the line of road. The incident was circulated at the time in derision of the picayune economy of the new regime. Of course there was no truth in the story, except that the track hands were made to not only pick up the large quantity of loose spikes that had been left to rust along the line of the road, but all of the waste iron was gathered and advertised for sale, and brought the handsome sum of 820,000. The incident illustrates Governor Brown's watchfulness of the public interest, and to what an extent his vigilance ran to details. There was between six and seven hundred tons of this loose scrap iron thus collected and sold.
It forms a curious coincidence of Governor Brown's life that this state road which he managed so successfully for the state while he was Governor, and whose brilliant and profitable handling made so marked a feature of his gubernatorial administration, should have come under his control as president of a leasing company that rented it from the state. The road seems to have been destined to become an important factor in his career. IIe is to-day the president of the lease company, and the road is most ably managed. It is a strange fact that the road has never paid much to the state except under his management. As Governor he made it pay from three to four hundred thousand dollars a year. And its regular rental is now $300,000 a year.
One of those mammoth concerns that filled so large a share of South- ern attention, but never seemed to have resulted in any practical benefit, a Southern Commercial Convention, assembled during this year in Montgomery, Alabama, on the second Monday in May. Gov. Brown appointed the following delegates which we give in full, as showing who were the leading men of the State at this time :
Delegates from the State at Large .- Wilson Lumpkin, George R. Gilmer, Win. Schley, Geo. W. Crawford, H. V. Johnson, HI. Warner, Hines Holt, Thomas W. Thomas, C. J. Jenkins, Wm. H. Stiles, Jas. Gardner, B. H. Hill, F. H. Cone, L. Stephens, E. A. Nisbet, M. A. Cooper, D. J. Bailey, A. H. Chappell, Joel Crawford.
First District .-- A. H. Hansell, P. Cone, E. J. Blackshear, Charles Spalding, J. H. Cooper, F. S. Bartow, J. P. Sereven, G. P. Harrison, Jno. W. Anderson, A. R. Lamar.
Second, District .- Win. Dougherty, T. Lomax, J. N. Bethune, J. A. Jones, Jr., Juo. A. Tucker, R. H. Clarke, L. M. Felton, A. H. Col- quitt, W. A. Hawkins, W. M. Brown.
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THE SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONVENTION.
Third District .- W. Poe, O. A. Lochrane, W. K. De Graffenried, P. W. Alexander, D. P. Hill, C. Peeples, A. F. Owen, Geo. R. Hunter, J. D. Watkins, A. R. Moore.
Fourth District,-E. Y. Hill, L. H. Featherstone, A. J. Boggess, B. H. Overby, J. W. Duncan, Robert J. Cowart, J. O. Gartrell, W. C. Daniel, Wm. A. Harris, H. Buchanan.
Fifth District .- Jno. H. Lumpkin, H. V. M. Miller, S. Fouche, Jno. A. Jones, W. T. Wofford, Lindsay Johnson, Joseph Pickett, G. J. Fain, C. B. Wellborn, Elisha Dyer.
Sixth District .- Sumner J. Smith, Robert McMillan, Asbury Hull, Wm. L. Mitchell, John Billups, Wm. A. Lewis, Jas. P. Simmons, Samuel Knox, W. Boyd, S. Reid.
Seventh District .- Augustus Reese, George R. Jesup, P. Reynolds, Miller Grieve, Sr., S. N. Boughton, R. M. Orme, Sr., David W. Lewis, J. W. Burney, Robert R. Slappey, Junius Wingfield.
Eighth District .- Isaiah T. Irwin, Jno. Milledge, Jas. T. Nisbet, W. Gibson, Thomas Barrett, A. J. Lawson, A. R. Wright, E. H. Pottle, Robert Hester, Dr. W. Willingham.
Of these gentlemen Wilson Lumpkin, George R. Gilmer, Win. Schley, Geo. W. Crawford and H. V. Johnson had been Governor of the state. Judge F. H. Cone was the founder of the Know-Nothing party in Georgia, a man of great power in his day, who had a desperate personal conflict with Alexander H. Stephens, in which he cut Mr. Stephens badly with a knife. Mark A. Cooper was a wealthy iron manufacturer, who was very prominent in Georgia politics. He was one of the famous trio of Colquitt, Cooper and Black that in 1840 revolutionized the politics of the state, and established the Democratic party in power. He was a leading candidate for Governor at one time. His large fortune was ruined by the war, and for many years he has been passing his old age in quiet retirement. A. H. Chappell was a noted man for many years, a distinguished Congressman. He was known for his long speeches, which tradition says he used to recite in advance of their delivery to his faithful horse in his rides horseback. It is also told of him that in a courtship after he was sixty years of age. while visiting in Monroe county, where the lady lived, he engaged in a game of " blind man's buff" with her. The incident is probably not true, as Mr. Chappell was a very stately, dignified gentleman, and it was likely invented as a piece of campaign badinage. A. R. Lamar has been for the last twenty-five years one of the conspicuous editors of
74
JUNIUS WINGFIELD.
the State, conducting the Savannah Georgian and Columbus Times. Few men can equal him in his command of a pure, forcible and elegant style of writing. He has been one of the men who have labored long for party without reward. Wm. Dougherty, who is dead, was the great lawyer of his day-a man of wonderful legal ability. He took little interest in politics, devoting himself, unseduced by any charm of public station, to his profession. He was a strikingly handsome man. W. K. De Graffenreid was a lawyer of ability, much above mediocrity. He is dead. Cincinatus Peeples became a judge. He was a large, genial gentleman, possessed of unusual speaking talent, with a rich vein of humorous illustration. His warm heart and generous impulses made him very popular. P. W. Alexander was a power as a journalist, editing the Savannah Republican. As a war correspondent he was the most famous one we had in the South. His war letters were models of critical accuracy, and clear, forcible descriptiveness. Of all of these leading Georgians of two decades back, none of them recall tenderer memories of a beautiful manhood than Junius Wingfield of Putnam county. He was a gifted lawyer, possessing both high ability and a profound knowledge of the law. But the charm of the man was in his pure, gentle, lovable nature and spotless moral life. His domestic qualities were exquisite. He was one of the few men who to manliness and intellect added an almost womanly tenderness of character. He died a few years ago.
Of the hundred gentlemen above recorded seventy of them have passed away, and many of them who were conspicuous persons in their day, are almost wholly unknown now. Individuals of brain, culture, influence and fame as they were then, they have lapsed out of recollec- tion, their names buried in unused records of important events. The learned judge, the eloquent advocate, the famous orator, the influential leader, the honored statesman, the illustrious Chief Magistrate, have alike been rewarded with the same undiscriminating forgetfulness.
The Southern Convention that met in Montgomery in 1858, like its predecessors, did nothing tangible. Resolutions by the wholesale were passed, but no practical scheme was inaugurated for increasing Southern power and enlarging Southern independence. Tennessee, Virginia, the two Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Delaware were represented. Mr. A. P. Calhoun of South Carolina was made President, and Mark A. Cooper of Georgia one of the Vice Presidents. Mr. Spratt of South Carolina set the convention wagging fiercely upon a proposition to reopen the slave trade. This inflamma-
15
SOUTHERN CONVENTIONS AGENCIES FOR DISUNION.
ble issue, and another equally perilous condemning the conference bill for the admission of Kansas as a state in the Union, which the entire Southern delegation in Congress had taken as the best they could do, were the two main topics of discussion. Looking back to that day in the calm philosophical retrospection of this, these conventions were simply potential agencies for driving sectional differences to an inevitable rup- ture and the logical war that followed so swiftly. Win. L. Yancey of Alabama, and Mr. Rhett of South Carolina were the moving spirits of this convention. While its members were patriotic, its objects, its delib- erations, its conclusions were sectional, irritating and defiant. Compar- ing these Southern movements with the Northern abolition aggressions, we can see now what we could not realize then, that the Northern cru- sade, while fanatical and unreasoning in its zeal, was without local benefit to its zealots and embodied the protest of all disinterested civilization against slavery. The natural resistance of the South to these extra- constitutional assaults upon the chief institution of Southern wealth and labor, and the prop of the Southern social polity, was based upon local interest, looked to home prosperity, Southern independence of the Union, and the withdrawal of Southern business patronage from the North. Not only were they thus practically antagonistic to Northern interest in their objects, but in their spirit and language they were bit- ter against Northern sentiment. They simply therefore fed sectional hostility and division. It would be impossible to conceive of more powerful instrumentalities of sectional strife. Not so intended by us or so regarded by the North, they yet thus resulted. They were an ef- fective part of the preface to the great struggle in which Providence had doomed slavery. They were the concentrated utterance, intense, open-voiced, impassioned and majestic, of Southern resentment against Northern aggression upon slavery, and they both stimulated and foreshadowed the inevitable conflict that was coming so soon. Even though their final action was legitimate, that could not remove the effect of the fiery sectional deliberations that frenzied the very fanaticism sought to be thwarted. This Convention met, argued, acted and adjourned, but its only legacies were fuel for the impending Revo- lution.
CHAPTER X.
THE SPIRIT OF 1858 IN GEORGIA.
The State Judiciary .- Its Personelle -Judge W. B. Fleming and D. F. Hammond only Survive in 1881 .- H. L. Benning .- The Bank Cases .- E. G. Cabaniss .- A New Fight of the Banks .- What Gov. Brown did as a Bank Reformer .- Brown as a Foeman .- The Cotton Planters' Convention .- The State Newspapers .- Wm. T. Thompson .- Joseph Clisby .- A. R. Lamar .- Deceased Journalists .- Legislative Dots .- The State Road and Brown's Sweeping Reforms -John A. Tucker -John E. Ward .- Henry R. Jackson and his magnificent address upon the Expansion of American Empire and its effect on Southern Institutions.
THE composition of the Georgia judiciary in 1858 was as follows : Supreme Court .- Joseph H. Lumpkin, Chas. J. McDonald, Henry I .. Benning.
Superior Courts .- Brunswick Circuit, A. E. Cochran; Blue Ridge Circuit, Geo. D. Rice; Chattahoocheercuit, E. H. Worrell; Cherokee Circuit, R. Trippe; Coweta Circuit, O. A. Bull; Eastern Circuit, W. B. Fleming; Flint Circuit, E. G. Cabaniss; Macon Circuit, A. P. Powers; Middle Circuit, W. W. Holt; Northern Circuit, James Thomas; Ocmulgee Circuit, R. V. Hardeman; Pataula Circuit, David J. Kiddoo; Southern Circuit, Peter E. Love; South-western Circuit, Alex A. Allen; Talla- poosa Circuit, Dennis F. Hammoud; Western Circuit, N. L. Hutchins.
Of these officials all of the gentlemen who were Justices of the Supreme Court are dead, and fourteen out of the sixteen Superior Court Judges. The only living ones of this array of judicial talent are Judge W. B. Fleming, who is now Judge of the Eastern Circuit, and very old, and Deumis F. Hammond, who lives in Atlanta, in fine law practice and vigorous health. Judge Hammond is a gentleman of peculiar and original character, and has been perhaps as strong a man physically as we have ever had in Georgia. A thick-set, massive frame of iron strength, backed by a most resolute will and a most remarkable volubility of words in talk, belongs to him. While he is a preacher as well as lawyer, he belongs to the church militant, and has been ever ready to enforce his spiritual expoundings upon refractory subjects with a physical drubbing. The anecdotes of his ready and irresistible combativeness are numerous and racy. Nature never made a sincerer or kinder or a more stubborn spirit. Judge Fleming has been an upright and able Judge, and has the gratification of serving ou
Charles Ankanald
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HENRY L. BENNING.
the bench of the Eastern Circuit, while he has a son equally able and respected, who presides in the Albany Circuit, Judge William O. Fleming. Judge Henry L. Benning, of the Supreme Bench, was a very marked man in Georgia. He made a gallant record as a Brigadier General in the late war. He won for himself the sturdy soubriquet of " Old Rock." He was a man of absolutely crystal truth. He had a candor and directness proverbial. He spoke with a low, guttural tone and a syllabic precision, that heightened the idea of his manly force of character. He was able to take unpopular positions without loss of respect, so strong was the confidence in his sincerity. A very strong effort was made in the General Assembly of 1858 to strike down " Old Rock." The suit of Beall vs. Robinson, from Muscogee county, was a case involving the liability of the stockholders of a broken bank for bills that had been issued. Judge Benning was the son-in-law of Col. Seaborn Jones, a stockholder, and had been attorney for Gen. D. McDonald, another large stockholder of another bank. He presided in the case and gave decision against the bill-holders. A petition was presented to the General Assembly urging the body to take some action against Judge Benning, and a resolution was introduced in the Senate advising and requesting Judge Benning and McDonald to resign their offices. The matter created a good deal of feeling, but the Senate voted to lay the resolution on the table for the balance of the session by a vote of 67 yeas to 45 nays. Judge Benning had been urged not to preside in the case, as it was similar to cases in which his client and his father-in-law had been interested. He presided because he deemed it his duty not to shirk his responsibility, and in the decis- ion he explains this very urgency of his duty. The famous lawyer, William Dougherty, was the moving power in these cases, and he inspired the hostile proceedings in the legislature. The incident unjustly did great injury to Judge Benning a long time, which he keenly felt. 'And after the war, when he was defeated for the Supreme Bench in the legislature by Dawson A. Walker, it was through the active agency of Mr. Dougherty on account of this very decision, Dougherty declaring that he would support Benning for Governor, or anything else, but he should not go on the Supreme Bench if he could help it. Benning, who was a man of sensitive honor, though of unbending will, afterwards declined to allow Gov. Smith to appoint him Judge of the Supreme Court, because he considered the action of the legislature in defeating him as a condemnation of his course in the Beall-Robinson matter.
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CONTINUED BATTLE OF THE BANKS.
Of the judges mentioned Judge E. G. Cabaniss had a high measure of public esteem and influence. He was a very conservative public man of solid sense, and the personal consequence that belongs to careful judgment and scrupulous conscience. He belonged to that class of citizens known as "safe " men, clear-headed and calm-tempered. Judge Powers of the Macon Circuit soon resigned, and Gov. Brown ap- pointed in his place for the interim Henry G. Lamar, who had been so prominent in the gubernatorial contest that resulted in Gov. Brown's nomination.
During the year 1858 the banks resumed specie payment long before the time specified for resumption in November, but some twenty of the banks failed to make the semi-annual return on the 1st of June required under the law of the suspension. Upon the failure of the banks to do this the law required the Governor to issue proclamation publishing the names of the delinquent banks, and notifying the Treasurer not to re- ceive their bills. This the Governor did, and when the Legislature met in November his message was largely taken up with a continued dis- cussion of the Bank question. The battle of the Executive with the banks had not ended. Popular sentiment had overwhelmingly backed the Governor, but the banks were strong and defiant, and in the exist- ing condition of the law they were powerful and independent. There was no formidable penalty attached to their disobedience of executive authority, and they had under the statutes as they were, in some cases issued as high as fifteen dollars for one, or at least previous returns so showed. Gov. Brown has always been a perilous, foeman, never hold- ing up while he could strike upon a resisting antagonist. If the bank authorities supposed for a moment they could successfully and with impunity defy him in his official authority they were sadly mistaken. He came back with renewed vim. He discussed the whole question with great ability. He urged that the banks be required to pay a pen- alty of two per cent. a month upon their capital stock while they dis- obeyed the statute, which is now the law. He also held up to light im- perfections of the banking system, which needed correction. Reviewing this acrimonious agitation, recalling the abuses that had crept into our bank system, and estimating the value of the reforms made in conse- quence of the stubborn fight of our resolute young Executive against the combined capital of the state in that memorable session of 1857-8, it will be seen that a very large amount of good was accom- plished and a substantial service was rendered to the people. Before this the state treasury had suffered a loss of over half a million of dollars
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COTTON PLANTERS' CONVENTION.
on account of the Central bank and Darien bank. Besides, numerous financial panics in which the banks were controlling agencies had brought upon the citizens of the state individual loss. Gov. Brown was the direct cause of a wholesome and sweeping reform in our whole scheme of banking, a reform going to the very vitals of our prosperity, affecting commerce and agriculture. He so clearly and forcibly brought to light the evils of the then existing system, and he was so unyielding in pressing their reform, that a permanent change for the better was effected through his powerful instrumentality.
During the year 185S a Cotton Planters' Convention was held in Milledgeville on the Sth of June, of which Howell Cobb was President, and Gen. B. H. Rutherford and Gen. J. W. Armstrong, Vice-Presi- dents. This convention illustrates the spirit of the South in that day to organizations for Southern benefit. Mr. Cobb addressed the conven- tion, stating its objects. Committees were appointed on the following subjects, comprehensive enough, it must he admitted: 1. The Cotton Power. 2. Cotton Power as an American Power. 3. Cotton Power as a Southern Power. 4. Cotton Power as a Union Power. 5. Cotton Power as a Peace Power. 6. Cotton Power as an anti-Abolition Power. 7. Direct Trade with Foreign Countries. The cooperation of other states was invited, and the convention adjourned to September, when it re-assembled in Macon. Some reports were made, and the convention adjourned subject to the call of the chairman without any action.
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