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. 2 > Part 9
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This revolting matter created a profound sensation over the whole country. The press dealt with Gov. Bullock severely. The New York Herald pronounced it an "infamous attempt to influence legislation." The Philadelphia Age spoke of the "Georgia Conspirators." The Chicago Times characterized the developments as "scandalous facts." The Chicago Tribune, the leading Republican journal of the North-west, was very pungent, declaring the connection of Forney's Chronicle with the affair, " disgraceful to journalism." The New York Commercial Advertiser, another Republican journal, thus discoursed:
"The people of the United States are just about sick of the name of Bullock. A Senator remarked last week that Congress had 'Bullock on the brain.'"
Sumner, Hamilton and Morton were the leaders on the Bullock side, making bitter speeches. Morton especially delivered a truculent, bad- spirited enunciation. Senator Hamilton of Texas, closed his speech by saying, that the people of the South were the "most blood-thirsty set of cut-throats God had ever permitted on his foot-stool." The reporter stated, that "Gov. Bullock of Georgia and Gov. Clark of Texas shook hands with Hamilton on his conclusion." The Constitution made this commentary upon this incident :
"The thoughtful and fervent lover of his State sees matter for amazement in the affair under any possible supposition creditable to the man. An honorable and patriotic spirit, giving credence to a state of public disorder that hard facts would not let him disbelieve, would mourn over the sad state of things, and seek its correction in a remedy that carried as little of shame to his people as possible. The exultation he exhibited over the mendacious expositions of the man Hamilton, finds a parallel alone in the ribaldry in which a drunkard might indulge over the graye of his father.
"Let us turn the leaf over one of the most sickening pages of Georgia's history."
Edmunds, Norton, Carpenter and Ferry made biting speeches against Bullock's scheme. Senator Norton said:
" When we are told that the Ku Klux Klan are ravaging that State, the Governor of that State is here in the Senate chamber, lobbying and log-rolling to keep himself and his friends and his political party in power. Sir, let him go home !"
Senator Edmunds gave Gov. Bullock a severe punishment. Senator Ferry also used some very harsh terms in denouncing the measure.
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BULLOCK RETURNS HOME SMARTING.
Schurz and Trumbull followed in able speeches against the iniquity. The Senate passed, April 19, 1870, a substitute for the whole matter, which recited that irregularities had existed in both organizations of the Georgia Legislature, and declared the government of Georgia pro- visional to continue under military rule, but that a new General Assem- bly should be elected on the 15th of November, 1870.
""" "The bill thus changed, went back to the House. The bribery investi- gation in the Senate followed, holding up Gov. Bullock to the scorn of the whole country. Baffled and stung, smarting under the excoriation of the ablest Republicans in Congress, Gov. Bullock returned to Georgia. The Legislature convened on the 18th of April, 1820, and adjourned on the 4th of May, to take a recess until the 6th of July, appointing committees to investigate the Governor and Treasurer, the State Road and the penitentiary.
The Bullock-Angier committee was Bethune, Shumate, Bell, Price and Darnell.
The State Road committee was Lee, Parks, Maxwell, Phillips and Tweedy.
The fact is, that in the defamation of Georgia peacefulness it was overdone upon the United States Senate, and resulted in horrifying Congress to such an extent that there was a disposition to undo not only the State's reconstruction, but Bullock himself. The Senate bill went to the House. Four substitutes were offered for it. The measure was accommodatingly postponed ten days on Ben. Butler's account, at his request, as he was called away.
The House Reconstruction Committee consisted of thirteen members, of which Butler was chairman. It had four Democrats, Beck, Wood, Woodward and Morgan, who stood gallantly to Georgia. Our people owe a special debt of gratitude to Representative Beck of Kentucky,; now Senator from that State. The committee adopted Butler's Georgia bill by a majority of one on the 19th of May, 1870. Gov. Bullock was in Washington on the 16th, having been summoned to testify in the bribery investigation matter. The new bill admitted the State at once, leaving the question of the tenure of the Legislature an open one, to be settled in the State and, not in Congress, and gave the Governor the power to organize the State militia. The bill was the same as the acts admitting Virginia and Texas, save that the or- ganization of the militia was allowed. The measure hung until it finally passed the House on the 24th of June, 1870, declaring Georgia en- titled to representation in the Congress of the United States, allowing
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GEORGIA AT LAST RECONSTRUCTED.
the organization of militia, but breaking the Bullock programme in this clause:
" But nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to deprive the people of Georgia of the right to an election for members of the General Assembly of said State, as provided for in the Constitution of said State."
The bill went back to the Senate, was discussed and fought over there for weeks. It at last was amended and passed, the amendment agreed to by the other branch of Congress, and on the 15th day of July, 1870, it was signed by President Grant. The act reads thus:
" Sec. 1. That the State of Georgia having complied with the Reconstruction Acts and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, having been ratified in good faith by the legal Legislature of the State, it is hereby declared that the State of Georgia is entitled to representation in the Congress of the United States, and nothing in this or any other Act of Congress shall be construed to affect the term to which any officer has been appointed or any member of the General Assembly elected as prescribed by the Constitution of the State of Georgia.
"Sec. 2. That so much of the Act entitled ' An Act making appropriations for the support of the army for the year ending June 30, 1868, and for other purposes,' approved March 2, 1867, as prohibits the organizing or calling into service of the militia forces in the States of Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, be and the same is hereby repeated."
This ended Congressional action upon Georgia, though it failed to quell the restless and disturbing demon of reconstruction, which threat- ened and toiled for new phases of interference.
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CHAPTER XL. THE TWIN INFAMIES OF PROLONGATION AND FINAN- CIAL MISMANAGEMENT.
The Semblance of Free Ballot .- Prolongation attempted in the Legislature .- Bullock's Subtlety .- His Message .- Congress Set Aside .- No Election .- Akerman and Far- row against Bullock .- Deep Excitement .- Prolongation Killed .- The Grotesque Election Scheme .- Democratic Folly and Absenteeism .- Legislative Adjournment. -Its Obituary .- Its List of Outrages .- The Kimball Opera House .- Frauds .- Re- port of Legislative Committee on Bullock's Misrule .- Proclamations .- Pardons .- Their Abuse .- Wrongs of State Aid .- Bonds Endorsed for Uncompleted Railroad. -State Bonds Over-issued .- Gold Bonds .- Henry Clews .- The State Road in 1870 under Foster Blodgett .- A Mountain of Infamy .- Wholesale Squandering and Thievery .- Two Millions Gone .- The Road a Refuge for Tramps .- W. L. Clark. -Racy Details of Plunder .- N. P. Hotchkiss and " Rigid Economy."-Blodgett and his "Political Policy " of the Road.
Ir might have been reasonably supposed that the decisive action of Congress, made law by the Presidential sanction, would have termi- nated the matter in Georgia, and given quiet to the long-suffering State. PROLONGATION, that most abominable of all the odious infa- mies of reconstruction, had been expressly rebuked. Even the unspar- ing extremism of the day recoiled from this most antipodal graft upon our free institutions, this perpetuation of dynasties afraid of the popular will. It is a noticeable fact that under all of the tyrannies of recon- struction there was an underlying attempt to preserve the semblance of the free ballot. Prolongation was simply the ugly, unredeemed spirit and practice of despotism, and it was contemptuously crushed. But Gov. Bullock and his allies were not to be thus thwarted.
The struggle for this loathsome thing was transferred to the Georgia Legislature, and the most desperate and exciting conflict of this unprecedented General Assembly, the battle of all its battles, that fired more heat and made intenser rancor, was the one over prolonga- tion. The movement was begun immediately. Gov. Bullock proved himself, through the whole stormy play of his term, an exceedingly able manager. He was subtle and ingenious-inventive in ruses, and as audacious as he was diplomatic in execution. . He addressed a brief message to the General Assembly, which had convened on the 6th of
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ATTEMPT TO DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF AN ELECTION.
July, 1870, in which he communicated the passage of the Act admitting Georgia, but said that Congress had adjourned without having admitted our Senators and Representatives. He then proceeded to say that section five of the reconstruction act of 1867 made the actual admission of Senators and Representatives a condition precedent to the abroga- tion of military authority, which would therefore continue until the assembling of Congress in the winter.
This cool setting aside of the recent act of Congress and attempted continuation in force of the old act of reconstruction, stirred a deep resentment. His message was signed " Rufus B. Bullock." A flood of jeering badinage was showered upon him for thus dodging his title. IIe had, in the first days, signed himself "Provisional Governor," then "Governor, " and then " Provisional Governor" again, and in the non- descript exigency of this last condition he ingeniously put himself down simple " Rufus B. Bullock;" neither " Provisional Governor" nor "Governor," but citizen Bullock, ruling a mongrel concern that was half province and half state, and yet neither the one nor the other, and to be kept shorn of sovereignty for the personal purposes of this Exec- utive and his friends.
A measure was introduced that we should have no election. It was first agitated in the Senate. The State rang with denunciations of the wrong. Col. H. P. Farrow, the Attorney General, published a letter against it, thus splitting from Bullock. Chief Justice Brown resisted it with all of his energy. But Bullock and his friends pressed it with grim persistency. He and they knew it was the only way to get a con- tinuation of rule beyond their term. Never did men cling more stub- bornly to power. It was a deliberate attempt to set aside the right of election and prolong office at the expense of law, and in violation of right and every principle of our republican government; but this mat- tered nothing. The unholy crusade to deprive the people of the ballot and fasten the Bullock dynasty and legislature on the State for two years beyond the term for which they had been chosen, was persisted in as an alleged right under the law.
The Senate showed its resolute partisanship by admitting a man named Wm. Henry, a minority candidate, in place of Senator B. R. Mccutchen, who had died. The Senate then passed the prolongation wrong by a vote of 21 to 14. The papers of the State for days kept standing in large capital letters the prolongation senators, in a column headed " Roll of Infamy." The battle was transferred to the House. Mr. A. T. Akerman had been but a short time before (some time in
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PROLONGATION KILLED BY A CLOSE VOTE.
June) appointed by President Grant, Attorney General of the United States in his cabinet. Col. Akerman, to his honor, rose above the partisan aspects of the case, and wrote a powerful and unanswerable opinion against prolongation, and took an emphatic view that the people should have the right of election in the fall. This document fell with resistless force upon the public. On the 11th of August, 1820, the vote was taken in the House, Chief Justice Brown working zealously against the wrong, and amid an unparalleled excitement, the measure was de- feated by a vote of 63 yeas to 72 nays, 12 Republicans voting with the Democrats.
There never has prevailed at any time a deeper excitement than there was over this indefensible measure. The writer believes that if it had passed the House and been approved by Bullock, its enforcement would have been resisted and there would have been some sort of revo- lution. The feeling was intense. Congress and the Federal adminis- tration had condemned it. And Bullock, not only in the very teeth of. the public will in Georgia but in reckless defiance of the policy of his own party, was pressing this lawless and revolutionary scheme of hold- ing over. The people would certainly have resisted its execution.
But the trouble was not by any means over with this defeat. The fell spirit of reconstruction assumed protean shapes. With an exhaustless invention it took new forms. Prolongation was not only scotched, but killed and buried, and an election was a certainty. The next effort of Gov. Bullock was to tinker that election into suitable shape to enable his party to control the State. The author of the scheme was reported to be Associate Justice MeCay of the Supreme Court, and some ascribed it to Mr. Akerman. Be this as it may, it was one of the most extra- ordinary election plans ever devised, combining the grotesque tyranny of a bayonet machine with the more puzzling novelties of a metropoli- tan packing jugglery. This beautiful piece of partisan mischief was to last three days. This feature was borrowed from Reconstruction. It allowed for the transfer around of the frequent voter. The Governor, with the advice of the Senate, picked three managers and the Ordinary, two in cach election precinct, and such appointees were subject to fine of $100 for failure to serve. This cumbrous and original device was obtained from no existing human experience in elections. No ballots could be refused, and no voter be challenged. This reversal of all civil- ized laws in elections was another original astonisher. Only one man at a time could be at the polls, and the others must stant off in a line fifteen feet distant, while stragglers must hustle away fifty feet. The
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AN ASTOUNDING ELECTION LAW.
Sheriffs were put under the absolute control of the managers. These managers had plenary powers of arrest, and also could fine Sheriffs $100 for contempt of their imperial orders.
Reading the details of this odd, unprecedented, despotic scheme of an election, one can hardly get to the point of believing that any set of sane men under a Republican government could solemnly have voted by the forms of legislative sanction, a plot so preposterous, fantastic and tyrannous-a scheme marked by such blended absurdity and viola- tion of principle. The battle was tough over this monstrosity. It excited derision and resentment. It was denounced as it deserved. It was stiffly discussed, and opposed with intense heat. Chief Justice Brown threw himself against it, as he did every gratuitous oppression, with his whole soul. But it was all unavailing, Democratic absenteeism and folly gave the victory to the Republicans.
A Democrat offered a resolution that a bare majority could suspend the rules. Before this it had taken a two-thirds majority to suspend the rules. Without suspension a considerable time must have elapsed before the bill could have been reached in its regular order. The Republicans immediately saw the value of this Democratic slip, as well as the Democratic leaders. The inconsiderate mover requested to withdraw his motion, but the Republican presiding officer refused, and there happening to be a Republican majority the new rule was voted through, and the election bill promptly taken up and passed, nine Democratic members being absent, while the majority was only four. This measure became the law in spite of all opposition and the popular censure.
On the 25th day of October, 1870, the House adjourned sine die, though the Senate continued in session until the 6th day of December, taking a recess until November, the 21st. The two houses had disa- greed about adjourning, so a resolution was passed requesting the Governor to adjourn the House, on the 25th of October, and the Senate take a recess until 21st of November, to confirm appointments. Thus even in the simple matter of a final adjournment, this body did some- thing out of the ordinary custom. No deliberative body has ever concluded its sittings in the State under such a deep public execration. The writer at the time in the Constitution published the following obituary, which expressed the popular feeling, and evinces the temper of that time, even among conservative men.
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OBITUARY OF THE RECONSTRUCTION LEGISLATURE.
"IN MEMORIAM. PLAYED OUT. On the 25th day of October, 1870, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES of the General Assembly of Georgia for 1868, '69 and '70. This body Received its squelchment from the hands of One RUFUS B. BULLOCK, Its Master, Whom it served 'not wisely but too well' For the State's good. Born of Despotism, It was a true chip of the parent block. IT Will be forever luminous in the PHOSPHORESCENCE OF ROTTENNESS. It lived But as the tool of partisan villainy, And its disdained dissolution Came most fittingly Through the agency Of the power that despised while using it, And contemptuously killed it The moment its subserviency Ceased to be Profitable. Ransacked History Can show no parallel to this Hybrid For CORRUPTION, WEAKNESS, EFFRONTERY, IGNORANCE, EVIL PLIANCY. It did its best and utmost of wrong faithfully, and what harm it left undone was what it was not asked to do. Criminal Speculators Will mourn with tender grief Its demise. IT Had one Idea, That pervaded it ever and always; And when the most of Its members die, The winds
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LEGISLATIVE RECONSTRUCTION OBITUARY CONTINUED,
Will sing it as their requiem, And Time will make it glitteringly Infamous, That better than Honor, Country or God They loved NINE DOLLARS A DAY. For months It neglected business, Doing the work of but a few days ; And then in,a few days, it hustled Through the work of months, To the State's vast Injury. Its OBITUARY Makes so heavy a draft on Language For words of Wickedness That it can never be thoroughly written. It has emulated Apes In fantastic folly. In ruinous aggression upon popular rights It has been as destructive as the DEVIL. Its monument Is An incongruous heap of Broken Laws, Débris of a shattered Constitution, Outrages upon liberty and sacred law,
Shameless scoopings in the Public Treasury,
Wild havoc with every interest of the State,
Reckless trifling with the vital public credit, And a rubbish pile of the WORST PARTISAN DEVILTRY, That Political malignity aided by human Imbecility Could abort.
Its twin master, The Senate, Still holds its baneful sessions To carry out Executive behests, And Worry an oppressed Commonwealth. But The task of this Memorial Staggers the pen.
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441
INIQUITIES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION LEGISLATURE.
Humanity Would be proud to erase the sad record Of this body. Failing, however, in this, Human nature explains to posterity The dread stigma Of this Legislature's depravity By one word- ' RADICAL !' "
This Legislature was in session 328 days, and cost the State nearly one million of dollars, the accurate amount being $979,055. Its sessions of 1870, alone, cost 8526,891. It had at one time 84 clerks and attachés. The pay was put at $9 a day, and was drawn for twelve days of recess, as well as days of actual session, some of the Democrats, however, refusing to take per diem for the recess. The expelled negro members drew some 828,938 of pay for the time they did not serve. As the members holding their places drew per diem, there was thus a heavy amount of double pay made. And at every session after each recess, no matter how short, this thrifty body drew mileage. The mileage bill, during the year 1870 only, amounted to the moderate sum of 863,996.04, and the clerk hire 851,740. These figures make a startling record, but they are a consistent part of the picture of that unparalleled body. Their significance .may be understood by comparison. Nine years of Democratic legislation, from 1853 to 1862, cost only $866,385, or less than this single Radical General Assembly.
State aid was granted to twenty-eight railroads, aggregating the pledge of the State's liability for over thirty millions of dollars to more than 2,500 miles of road. A system of district courts was created, expensive and cumbrous. The new judicial circuits, the Albany, the' Augusta, and the Allapaha, were created. A public school system was organized, and Gov. Bullock appointed Gen. J. R. Lewis as the State School Commissioner. The school fund, however, to the amount of $327,000, was used for other purposes, leaving the public schools unsup- ported, and the teachers to be paid by Gov. Smith's administration. The act authorizing the lease of the Western and Atlantic railroad, introduced by Dunlap Scott, was passed and approved, October 24, 1870, and was one of the few really meritorious measures enacted. It is under this act that the present excellent lease was made. There were a number of iniquitous measures to gobble the road, but they were thwarted.
The resolution for the purchase of the Kimball opera house was passed, August 19th, 1870, and approved, October 25th, 1870, and the
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445
THE KIMBALL OPERA HOUSE PURCHASE.
resolution for the purchase of the residence of John H. James, for an Executive mansion, was approved October 27, 1870. The first resolution accepted the proposition of the city of Atlanta to donate $130,000 of its bonds, ten acres of unoccupied land, and an Executive mansion, free of cost to the State for ten years, in lieu of the existing contract. The State was to buy the State House from Mr. Kimball, the Governor to issue seven per cent. bonds running 20 years, reserving enough bonds to secure the $54,500 advanced to Kimball by Bullock. The resolution does not mention the price to be paid by the State, but accepts Mr. Kimball's proposition, which was for $250,000 of State bonds.
A committee reporting upon the matter stated that the original hull of the building cost the Opera House company that put it up, $83,000. Kimball paid $32,000 for it, and expended $182,167.56 upon it. Add the $76,871 paid for heating, light and furniture, and the whole cost to Kimball was $291,038.56, of which Bullock illegally advanced him $54,500. Kimball received $130,000 of Atlanta city bonds, said to be worth then, $90,000, and $250,000 claimed worth only 8225,000, mak- ing an actual cash value of $315,000, or a clear profit to Kimball of $23,961.44, at the depreciated price of the bonds. Estimating the bonds at their face value his profit was $88,961.44.
This whole State House matter has proven to be a source of mortifi- cation and trouble. Every step was marked by wrong. Gov. Bullock had, without authority, advanced $31,000 to Mr. Kimball in doing what the city of Atlanta should have done. Though rebuked by the legisla- tive committee and the House, Gov. Bullock repeated his unauthorized act, and advanced 823,500 more to Kimball on the same account. When the sale was made there was a mortgage of 860,000 to the North-West- ern Life Insurance Company from Kimball, which was not paid, though the titles were made, and the full amount of purchase bonds paid and received. This mortgage the City council of Atlanta had to pay, and now holds. The Mayor of Atlanta, Wm. Ezzard, gave a certificate that 8130,000 of city bonds were due on the Opera House, the bonds to be paid to the holder of the certificate. This certificate was untrue, in fact, as by an arrangement with Mr. Kimball, only $100,000 of bonds were to be paid. He had already received $30,000 of rent bonds, of which he had used $10,500, and at the purchase returned the balance, 819,500. This certificate, by written agreement, was turned over to Gov. Bullock to hold until the 860,000 mortgage was paid. The mort- gage was not paid and the bonds were used by Mr. Kimball against the contract, and in neglect of the State's interest.
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THE KIMBALL OPERA HOUSE PURCHASE CONTINUED.
But this is not all. At the time the legislature passed the reso- lution of purchase there were only currency bonds, and these were therefore the consideration. At the greater value of gold securities, the State would pay fully 830,000 more in them than in currency bonds. Gov. Bullock first gave the currency bonds to Mr. Kimball, and then, afterwards, the gold bonds to be exchanged for the currency bonds. The exchange was never made, and thus, not only was the illegal payment of gold bonds made, but both sets of bonds were used by Mr. Kimball.
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