Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 27

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 27

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Who killed Amasa Sprague? John Gordon repeatedly asserted : "I did not shed any of Amasa Sprague's blood." The enigmatic suggestion in this specific but non-communicative denial of homicide may be attributed either to an Irish idiomatic use of English, or to the probability that John Gordon knew the identity of the murderer, but preferred death to betrayal. One of the many traditions associated with the belief that John Gordon was inno- cent relates that the murderer made a key for Gordon, and watched by the prison wall one night with horses to assist Gordon's escape. John Gordon opened the door of his cell, but was stopped before he had passed the outer gate. The General Assembly, while John Gordon and Nicholas S. Gordon were held as prisoners, ordered them housed at opposite ends of the prison, thus to prevent communication between the brothers. The finding of Nicholas Gor- don's gun, destroying one of the circumstances pointing to a member of the Gordon family as the probable murderer, would be considered, in the twentieth century, sufficient reason for reprieve and a new trial. Another tradition relates a death bed confession by the murderer, who absolved John Gordon.

Amasa Sprague was a man of burly, vigorous type, hot-tempered and overbearing in his method of obtaining what he wanted ; he had incurred not a few enmities in the neighborhood in which he lived. He employed Irish in his factories, but otherwise accorded them the treat- ment all too often used with respect to immigrants. It was the last, along with the particular enmity aroused because of interference with Nicholas S. Gordon's application for a liquor license, and an affray, in the course of which Amasa Sprague wantonly assaulted Nicholas S. Gordon violently and used the epithet "Get out of here, you d-d Irishman," that suggested a neighbor as the probable murderer and pointed suspicion eventually to a Gordon. The bloody gun, the coat, the trail in the snow from the scene of the murder to the Gordon house, the wet clothing found at Gordon's-all were circumstances corroborating the clue. Again it was Sprague's well-known attitude toward Irish that aroused sympathy for John Gordon among his countrymen, and convinced them that the prosecution was aimed at them as "for- eign desperadoes," in the language of the times, with Gordon as the victim to be sacrificed. Another unusual detail of the trial of John Gordon was the pledge exacted from newspaper reporters who attended it, that they would not report testimony or incidents of the trial until it had been concluded by verdict. Public interest had been keyed to such a pitch by the promi- nence of Amasa Sprague that a stenographic report of the trial was made and printed; in pamphlet form. The Gordon house was standingt in 1930, identified easily by the long, one- story ell planned for a store and attached to the two-story living quarters. The house, the stone bridge near which Amasa Sprague died, and the oak tree behind which, it is believed, the murderer was concealed as he fired the bullet that disabled Amasa Sprague, are within the boundaries of St. Ann's Cemetery in Cranston. Close to the Gordon house is an older ceme- tery, with slate stones marking the graves of early residents of the Cranston Print Works section.

#Reprinted 1884.

Preparation for demolition was underway.

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THE HAZARD CASE-A trail of crime is suggested by State vs. Hazard .* George B. Hazard was indicted by the grand jury of Newport County at the August term, 1863, for perjury because of testimony, alleged to be false, given at a criminal trial on August 31, 1860. The indictment disappeared mysteriously from the office of the clerk of the court, and was missed for the first time in January, 1864. The statutes of the time limited the finding of an indictment to three years after the commission of an offence. The General Assembly amended the statute in February, 1864, adding to the text: "If any indictment found within the time limited in and by the statute to which this is an amendment shall be stolen, lost or destroyed before a judgment shall have been rendered thereon, a new indictment may be found for the same offence at any time within a year after the theft, loss or destruction of the original indict- ment." The first indictment was stricken from the docket, and the grand jury returned a second indictment at the August term, 1864. The second indictment was stolen from the office of the clerk, which was forcibly broken open, in November, 1864. The grand jury returned a third indictment for perjury at the September term, 1865. For Hazard it was urged that the second indictment was void, because the amendment to the statute under which it had been obtained was ex post facto, and because, otherwise, it had been returned more than three years after the alleged offence, and that the third indictment was void because not returned within one year of the loss of the original indictment. The court avoided the question of ex post facto, holding that the third indictment had not been returned within one year of the loss of the first indictment.

THE SPRAGUE CASES-The panic of 1873, the failure of the A. & W. Sprague Manufac -. turing Company and other Rhode Island corporations, partnerships and individuals, precipi- tated litigation that engaged the attention of Rhode Island courts for years after 1873. The panic opened with the bankruptcy in September, 1873, of Jay Cooke & Company of Philadel- phia. Hoyt, Sprague and Company of New York, buying and selling agents for the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company, failed with Jay Cooke. The A. & W. Sprague Manufac- turing Company sought loans and extensions of credit to avoid suspension, but yielded in October to a suspension that had become almost inevitable. An unsuccessful effort was made to obtain loans from Rhode Island banks which were not already embarrassed-as were two savings banks and three national banks-by holding excessive amounts of Sprague notes. Banks which had available more than the $3,000,000 which might have carried the Spragues through the crisis could not be persuaded that the credit was warranted by the financial con- dition of the Sprague companies and the prospects for an immediate return of prosperity throughout the country, following what had been one of the worst panics in American history.

With respect to this phase of the Sprague failure a marked difference of opinion persisted in Rhode Island among persons who were acquainted with the facts, and remains as a tradi- tion. The refusal to extend credit was characterized by friends of the Sprague family as approaching financial freebooting. The charge of piracy rested upon an assumption that jealousy of rival and competing manufacturers had ripened into ill-feeling, which prompted measures to remove the Spragues from their position of prestige and influence in Rhode Island. Resentment because of Senator Sprague's scathing speeches in the Senate of the United States suggested an additional provocation or motive. The Senator entertained and expressed views on the monetary problems of the period following the Civil War, which startled his conservative colleagues in the Senate, and passed so far beyond the boundary line between orthodox and heterodox and between conventional and unconventional as to be consid- ered inflammatory and radical. Speaking in 1869 in the Senate discussion of the currency pre- cipitated by the bill "to strengthen public credit and relating to contracts for the payment of coin," Senator Sprague, advocating relief for manufacturers with small ready money capital

*8 R. I. 273.

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and limited bank credit, proposed a national bureau to loan money on credit .; The "Provi- dence Journal," in an editorial treating Senator Sprague's remarks as Pickwickian, said: "The Senator's intense application to his official duties and to his extensive private interests, we fear, cause him to take too gloomy a view of the situation." At the time interest rates were high, and money was scarce; Senator Sprague had been experiencing difficulty in obtaining extended credit for his various enterprises, including the actual money needed for pay rolls and other cash payments. He was sensitive, and construed the "Journal" editorial as an attempt inspired by Brown & Ives to injure his credit with the purpose of accomplishing his ruin. He made another speech, in the course of which he declared: "There is in my state a great capital centered in one family, and that family has a newspaper organ, and that news- paper organ is conducted by my colleague. There are throughout the state those who receive, or expect to receive, stipends at the hands of that family, or whose business rests on its favor. They and their agents are in possession of most of the moneyed institutions of the state, and when they sneeze there is a great deal of sneezing from one end of the state to the other." The references were to the firm of Brown & Ives, which controlled the most extensive textile manufacturing corporations competing with the Spragues and which was associated with the strongest financial interests in Rhode Island; to the "Providence Journal," and to Senator Anthony, as editor of the "Journal."

Senator Sprague alleged further that an agent of Brown & Ives had approached him in 1857, during the business depression in that year, with a proposition substantially as follows : "Let us join forces, prevent a suspension of specie payments, break down those who are our rivals in business or otherwise, and buy up their property. At that time," the Senator con- tinued, "I had no debts whatever pressing me. But did I unite with them in carrying into effect their vicious and pernicious wishes? Sir, I did not. I repudiated and spurned his pro- posal." So serious a statement, made in the Congress of the United States, was privileged in the sense that a member of Congress may not be sued for slander occurring in debate, and Brown & Ives had neither effective legal remedy by suit for damages nor recourse to any tribunal for vindication. Senator Anthony, by adroit parliamentary practice, read into the record of the United States Senate a specific denial by Brown & Ives that any proposition of the sort had been made by them, or on their behalf, to William Sprague in 1857. There had been a difference of opinion in Rhode Island in 1857 as to the necessity for or desirability of suspension ; it appears in the facts (1) that twelve of thirty-three banks in conference were not in favor of suspending specie payments, and (2) that six strong banks ignored altogether an invitation to send representatives to the conference called to discuss suspension.

Senator Sprague followed his attacks upon Brown & Ives and the "Journal" by others- upon General Burnside, the First Rhode Island Regiment because of alleged cowardice at Bull Run, upon conditions in Rhode Island and in the country generally. Occasionally he attacked a colleague in the Senate, among them Senator Simon Cameron, whom he accused of tempting him to drink: "He would take me down to his committee room and set out champagne and ask me to drink. Finally I said to him: 'Cameron, you are a vicious old fellow. I am a young man and you are an old sinner, and you are always putting temptation in my way.'" An attack on Senator Abbott of North Carolina, threatened to result in a duel. Some there were who circulated a story that Senator Sprague was insane. Distracted from time to time to other men and other subjects, Senator Sprague invariably returned to denunciation of the "money power." Thus he was approaching that day in which, his argosies failing, like Antonio he must pay forfeit to Shylock.

Contrary to the view that Senator Sprague's political, business and financial enemies united in 1873 to accomplish his destruction, one fact is outstanding and decisive: The sus-

¡Not unlike the farm banks of later days, and federal reserve banking as a device for maintaining an elastic currency.

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pension of the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company, and the assignment for the benefit of creditors were not made a pretext for forcing the Spragues into bankruptcy under the national bankruptcy act; instead, the Spragues were permitted to negotiate with a committee of their creditors a three-year moratorium. But the difference of opinion noted above is not related to restraint from action that would have precipitated liquidation in bankruptcy so much as the refusal of strong financial interests in Rhode Island to loan additional money. For this conservative attitude several reasons were assigned, among them (1) that the financial embar- rassment of the Spragues was not sudden and momentary so much as chronic over a long period preceding 1873; (2) that Senator Sprague's altogether radical views* on economic questions did not accord with financial soundness; (3) that the Sprague family, and particu- larly Senator Sprague's own immediate branch, had become extravagant ; (4) that the Sprague enterprises, including the steamboat line to New York, had suffered excessive disasters; (5) that there was reasonable doubt that the Sprague investments of borrowed money in property for development were not rather highly speculative than sound; and (6) that the rigid exam- ination of the Sprague business in 1873 did not yield an assurance that additional credit would solve the problems. Briefly, the Sprague enterprises had passed the line at which bankers distinguished safety from danger in making loans.

The Sprague factories in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine in 1873 provided employ- ment for 10,000 to 12,000 operatives at 280,000 spindles and twenty-eight printing machines, the output of which exceeded 1,000,000 pieces of cloth annually. The Spragues were enter- prising, and members of the family had invented and introduced improvements on calico printing presses, and in dyeing and printing processes. Their iron factories made and mar- keted the Sprague mowing machine, horseshoes made by a new process, as well as nails of new design. They owned and operated the street railway in Providence, as well as a line of freight and passenger steamers between Providence and New York, and they held large blocks of shares in steam railroads, including the Providence and Fishkill, the line of which had been constructed to pass through one of their factory villages. They were interested by investment and stockholding in a great variety of manufacturing and other corporations. They owned real estate in almost every town in Rhode Island, additional to factories, factory sites, water rights and factory villages. In Maine, besides a factory operating 34,000 spindles and a water right at Augusta on the Kennebec River, they held land as sites for other factories, and vast areas of timber lands with sawmills as part of a project for a lumber company. West- ward their holdings of land extended to Kansas and Texas; their purchase of a water right and land at Columbia, South Carolina, suggests that they had grasped the possibility of manu- facturing cotton cloth in the South as supply for their vast converting factories in Rhode Island and Connecticut. The conception of expansion was gigantic, and the Spragues through years of uninterrupted success had become convinced of their own invincibility. The house had risen because of the tremendous ability of the family for several generations.

Failing to obtain fresh loans or more favorable terms, members of the Sprague family, as individuals and as stockholders and owners of the Sprague factories, executed a trust mortgage, November 1, 1873,t to secure the payment of 16,500 promissory notes, amounting to $14,000,000. The execution of the trust mortgage followed a meeting of creditors, at which the controlling motive for the composition accepted was avoidance of the expenses of bankruptcy. Zechariah Chafee became trustee. The notes were new, and were issued on surrender of outstanding claims; they were to run for three years and carry interest at 7.3 per cent. annually. The trust mortgage witnessed what was practically an agreement for a moratorium of three years. Its purposes were avoidance of forced liquidation and the imme- diate sale of the Sprague properties. The mortgage itself was an act of bankruptcy, as an

*For the times.

tAcknowledged and delivered December 1, 1873.

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assignment, but it was expected that creditors would accept it and waive bankruptcy proceed- ings. The National Bank of Commerce filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy a few hours before the time at which the right would expire by limitation, but withdrew the petition after there had been excitement and demonstration of opposition, suggesting the possibility of violence. The house of Sprague was still popular in Providence, and the people had confi- dence in the Spragues, even if the banks and bankers had not. Besides that, a resort to bank- ruptcy was considered hostile to the interests of creditors who were friendly to the three-year agreement. Thus the tragedy was postponed, and a comedy of errors lasting ten years began. While the trust mortgage was assailed in subsequent litigation as fraudulent in fact and in purpose, there was a disposition in the period immediately following the assignment to carry the agreement into effect. The Spragues, at the request of the trustee, turned over to him additional property, including stock in the Quidnick Company not included in the trust mort- gage, thus to facilitate the plans for continuing the operation of factories, and Chafee became treasurer of the Quidnick Company.

A contract was made by and between the Quidnick Company, which was owned by the Spragues and which was solvent, and the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company, under the provisions of which the Quidnick Company was to manufacture and supply gray cotton cloth for printing, thus to keep the Sprague corporation operating. The Quidnick Company agreed to furnish "the necessary means, stock and supplies for running their mills and print- works," the stock and supplies to remain the property of the Quidnick Company until sold for the benefit of the Quidnick Company, the Sprague corporation to have the profits of sales over and above a commission of one-quarter of one per cent., which was to be paid to the Quidnick Company. Senator Sprague entered the employment of the trustee, and the plants of the Quidnick Company and the Sprague corporation were continued in harmonious opera- tion until 1881. The hopes that the embarrassment of the Sprague corporations might be overcome during the three-year moratorium were not realized. The panic of 1873 left in its wake a business depression from which the country made a slow recovery. The effect upon the market for print cloths, the staple product of the Sprague textile factories, appeared in the uncontradicted statement made in later litigation that the trustee by 1881 had "incurred an unexplained loss of about $2,000,000" in the operation of the Quidnick Company and the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company. The notes secured by the trust mortgage were defaulted, and the courts were busy with the trial of suits brought by creditors in a frantic effort to retrieve something from the disintegration of the trust estate .*

Eventually open quarrels developed between the Spragues and Chafee, which resulted in a long series of sharply contested cases, in the trial and argument of which Rhode Island counsel were assisted by lawyers from other states, including Benjamin F. Butler of Massa- chusetts as counsel for Senator Sprague. Justice Elisha R. Potter of the Supreme Court, who dissented from every decision of his colleagues, a majority of the court, on the Sprague cases, died while the litigation was still in progress. Senator Sprague was divorced by Kate Chase Sprague and remarried. With the announced purpose of removing from the Supreme Court justices whom he accused of participation in a plot to ruin him, and of obtaining from the people of Rhode Island a "vindication," he became the Democratic party candidate for Governor in 1883, and though unsuccessful in a campaign which the "Journal" declared had been without precedent because of extravagant expenditure of money by both parties, t polled a remarkably large vote in spite of opposition by Democrats who supported a third candidate. Twenty years and a day from that hot afternoon of July 20, 1861, on which when Colonel Slocum had been killed, as Governor he had rallied the Rhode Island Second Regiment at the

*The following cases incidental to the Sprague litigation reached the Supreme Court : Blaine vs. Bourne, 11 R. I. 119 ; Sweetland vs. Quidnick Co., 11 R. I. 328; De Wolf vs. A. & W. Sprague Mfg. Co., 11 R. I. 380 ; Bank Commissioner vs. Franklin Inst. for Savings, 11 R. I. 557 ; De Wolf vs. A. & W. Sprague Mfg. Co., 12 R. I. 133 ; Tilley vs. De Wolf, 12 R. I. 347; Bank Commissioner vs. Cranston Savings Bank, 12 R. I. 497. See Chapter XXIII.

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battle of Bull Run in Virginia, William Sprague assumed command in Rhode Island and opened a battle to retrieve the Sprague factory property from sacrifice in forced sales to satisfy creditors. The contract under which the Quidnick Company had been delivering the fruit of its looms to the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company for "finishing" was terminated on July 21, 1881, by the notice stipulated. Zechariah Chafee, trustee in possession of the Sprague factories that had been insolvent in 1873 and of other property conveyed to him for the benefit of creditors, was ousted as treasurer of the Quidnick Company. William Sprague, as president of the Quidnick Company, with Colonel Henry T. Sisson, hero of Little Wash- ington, as agent and manager, ejected the superintendent of the Quidnick factory, took pos- session and continued operation. The Quidnick Company entered three actions at law and two suits in equity against the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company, the bills in equity praying injunctions against sale of property unless and until ordered by the court. Counter suits were entered by Chafee as trustee for the creditors of the A. & W. Sprague Manufac- turing Company. The factories of the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company were closed, as the business through which they had been operating was terminated by the action of the Quidnick Company. Thus the battle opened with heavy blows and with issues clearly defined; the stakes included possession of the largest textile manufacturing properties in Rhode Island, and the regeneration or ruin of the house of Sprague. Besides charges against Chafee of inefficiency, if not of wanton and purposeful maladministration hostile to Sprague interests, which were developed as the litigation proceeded, refusal by Chafee to entertain proposals by William Sprague for a settlement with creditors and an open personal quarrel between Chafee and Sprague were pretexts for drastic action. Chafee in a bill in equity filed by him against the Quidnick Company made these allegations, all of which were significant: "That said Sprague made sundry propositions to Chafee for a full settlement with the credi- tors, which were declined, whereupon William Sprague threatened that he would do all in his power, by litigation and otherwise, to embarrass the sales of the trust estate; that one John Rooney of Brooklyn, alleged to be a person of small financial ability, offered to purchase all the trust estate upon terms stated in his offer, which is believed to be in the handwriting of William Sprague's counsel, and of which offer, 'Your orators, of course, took no notice whatever'; 'that Thomas A. Doyle, the brother-in-law of William Sprague, made in writing to Nelson W. Aldrich,' one of the complainants, 'a proposition for the settlement of the indebtedness of the Spragues.'"# Briefly, William Sprague, by 1881, had obtained funds or credit that made it possible for him to begin overtures for a settlement with creditors, but the trustee and other representatives of the creditors rejected offers made by Sprague and others on his behalf. In December, 1881, Benjamin F. Butler, as counsel for William Sprague, made a further offer to purchase the Sprague property, which was rejected. The situation late in 1881 might be summarized briefly as follows: (1) The Quidnick Company was operat- ing under control and management of William Sprague; (2) the printing factories of the A. & W. Sprague Manufacturing Company had been closed; (3) a battle for possession of the Sprague property was being contested in the courts of Rhode Island.

At this time, and with reference to this situation, William Sprague had reason, if at no other time, for his assertion that a combination had been formed against him. As events progressed it became clear that there was no disposition to relent. The Sprague properties were taken under the trust mortgage, and William Sprague was driven from one position to another as the mortgage was foreclosed. His enemies understood the vengeance of which he was capable, had he been permitted to return to power; they were determined that that should not occur.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 27

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716