CHAPTER IV
The Beginning of Warmoth’s Downfall
The first hints of dissension within what may be accurately called Warmoth’s party came as early as January, 1870. The element which was to become so notorious as the “Custom-House” faction had already made its appearance in Louisiana politics. A resolution introduced into the House in the early days of the session recognized the existence of separate organizations contending for recognition as the Central Republican Club, and designated the men of the New Orleans custom-house as “erring” members.[282] A certain tension seems to have been present in the attitude of the House toward all questions respecting the custom-house. When the House sought information concerning its own members who were in the employ of the custom-house, Collector Casey refused it, as he was not a State officer.[283]
The cause of the personal opposition to Warmoth is to be traced, no doubt, to the movement for the removal of his ineligibility for a second term, which caused alarm to the other Republican aspirants for that honor.[284] Organizations were soon covertly started to defeat the amendment at the polls, according to Warmoth’s statement.[285] Opposition, however, first became open at the Republican State Convention which assembled at New Orleans, August 9, 1870, for the nomination of a ticket and the appointment of a State Central Committee. It was felt that the governor was taking extraordinary pains to control that convention, especially as he had been elected a delegate by a club which the committee did not recognize.[286] Both he and the lieutenant-governor, who was also present as a delegate, were nominated to preside, but here the former met his first check: he was defeated by his negro subordinate. As the civil rights bill of the preceding session still lay unsigned in the hands of the governor, a resolution of censure was urged by the custom-house officials on the score that he had sold out his radical principles to the Democrats; but after a heated discussion, in which Warmoth defended his action, the matter was dropped and his conduct virtually indorsed.[287] The convention denounced special legislation and pledged its best endeavors to check it.
The State Central Committee consisted regularly of fifteen members, ten appointed by the convention, five by the chair. As organized, the five appointees of the chair were opposed to the re-eligibility amendment and won over a majority of the whole committee. Hence, the governor refused to contribute to the regular campaign funds or to encourage his friends to do so, but levied forced contributions upon all his appointees on pain of dismissal,[288] organized an auxiliary committee, and began a canvass of his own, in many instances in favor of candidates not regularly nominated by the party.[289] He had tickets printed in favor of the amendment,[290] and, as we have seen, scored a victory at the polls. To Dunn’s complaint that the Warmoth faction had violated custom in organizing an auxiliary committee, he retorted that the regular committee was trying to prevent a fair expression of opinion on the amendment.
Before the legislature met on January 2, 1871, the friends of the governor entered, with his knowledge, into a coalition[291] with the Democrats of the Senate, whereby they robbed the lieutenant-governor of his patronage by taking the appointment of committees into their own hands,[292] and made Democrats chairmen and majority members of several of the committees,[293] thus insuring their seats[294] to certain members who had been fraudulently elected.
By the same coalition Carr was re-elected speaker on the first day, receiving every Democratic vote.[295] The committees of both houses were thus so constituted that anti-Warmoth men were powerless to rid the legislature of ineligible members. Dissatisfaction with Carr’s rulings, however, was so loudly expressed that about the middle of the session he was compelled by a union of Democrats with the custom-house faction to resign, and Colonel Carter of Cameron, old and rather deaf,[296] was elected in his place.[297] Opportunity was now afforded for a reconstruction of the Committee on Elections, which, although unable to complete its investigation before the recess, by an adverse report on four members at the next session, ultimately helped to complicate an already intricate situation.
The choice of a United States Senator on January 10 to succeed J. S. Harris served still further to antagonize the custom-house faction against Warmoth. James F. Casey, collector of the port, who had, up to this time, acted in harmony with the administration party, desired this honor for himself,[298] but the governor threw his influence in favor of General J. R. West, who, supported by the Democrats under fear of the election of the negro Pinchback,[299] was elected on the first ballot in both houses.[300] Casey was soon found among the governor’s most violent enemies.
In view of the peaceful election of the preceding autumn and the general quiet of the State, the hopeful words of the governor’s message do not sound as absurd as events destined to occur within little more than a year were to prove them:
I cannot pass from this subject to other details, in justice, without calling your attention to the general and peaceable acquiescence of our people in the results of the reconstruction policy of the general government. Their acceptance of it as a finality has been much more satisfactory in Louisiana than in any other state in the South.[301]
While urging the encouragement of public improvements, he warned the Assembly against certain schemes of plunder “which are already organizing and will continue to be organized and presented to you for votes,” and insisted that the commonwealth’s state of bonded indebtedness must preclude any further appropriations as subsidy. Adequate penalty for bribery,[302] which had, he acknowledged, become a “crying evil,” amendments to the public land laws, the police jury system, the restoration of the old capitol at Baton Rouge, and a larger measure of home rule for New Orleans are subjects which appear in his message for the first time.[303] Although defending the legislation of the previous session, he recommended with studied vagueness of expression the modification of the election and registration laws:
The violent rancor of that period (1868) having now given place to a more liberal and just acknowledgment of the true relations of all our citizens, I commend to your consideration the modification of the registration and election laws to an extent, that, while securing the inalienable rights of all, will make the usage under them less irksome and exacting to the few.[304]
Together with his message he returned without his approval ten bills to the Senate,[305] and three to the House. The veto power was very freely used by Governor Warmoth. Up to January 1, 1871, he had vetoed thirty-nine bills[306] and suffered others to become law without his approval by lapse of the constitutional time limit, because they were passed by such a majority as to have made “his veto a useless bit of friction.”[307] His courage in boldly vetoing some measures very close to the hearts of his legislators should not pass unnoted, nor the strength of his influence, for only five, up to this time, were able to muster the requisite two-thirds majority in the face of his opposition.
The legislature took to heart the governor’s statement that the questions most urgent were such measures as would most speedily “bring railroads, open natural watercourses, and facilitate ocean commerce,” without heeding his warning of the need for rigid economy. The orgy of voting away paper money to aid paper railroads and canals went on with even greater frenzy than before. It was unfortunate that the governor did not carry the courage of his convictions further and instead of vetoing but six bills, do his part to quash the thirteen laws[308] which appropriated over $800,000 in actual subsidies; which granted away valuable timber along with the right of way to a new railroad; and which granted exemption from taxation to another canal company. The loose extension of $40,000, which had been appropriated the preceding session for the removal of obstructions in Bayou Bartholomew, to “what more might be necessary”[309] is indicative of the business care applied to the State pocket-book. The governor’s signature to the bill for the purchase of a site and erection of a State capitol[310] may be regarded as raising the State indebtedness by one and one-half million dollars. He suffered an act guaranteeing the second mortgage bonds of another railroad to become law without his signature,[311] but the measure which guaranteed the principal and interest of a warehouse company to the amount of over a million dollars was obliged to pass over his veto.[312] The total amount added to the State debt by this Assembly amounted to about four million dollars. Nineteen different appropriation bills were passed, aside from those granting subsidies.
But it was apparent by this time that much of this effort to stimulate development by State aid was barren of result. Some roads which had received State aid had nothing to show for it, and committees of investigation “to ascertain whether the said company has complied with the conditions of the act” incorporating it were beginning to appear.[313] So strong was the feeling that the governor recommended to the next legislature that unless work be begun actively within six months, certain railroads should lose their charters.[314]
The vexatious levee problem seemed to have found a solution. When the serious crevasses which threatened New Orleans with inundation appeared in the spring, the governor assumed control and closed the breaks with the aid of State engineers. The Louisiana Levee Company was then formed and its interests made identical with those of the State. The company contracted to construct, maintain, and control levees on both banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries according to the requirements of a competent commission of three able engineers; to construct at least three million cubic yards each year until the levee was completed to the required standard. To get the company started the State subscribed a considerable sum and levied a special tax of two-tenths per cent for twenty-one years for a repair fund, and, in the absence of any tax for the current year, issued bonds to the amount of one million dollars.[315]
Although a number of additional schools had been put in operation,[316] the superimposed Northern school law still proved unsatisfactory for Louisiana and came up for further amendment. Forty thousand dollars was fleeced from the people annually for salaries of school administrators and incidental expenses, outside of the teachers’ salaries and other expenses. School directors were often unable to write their names. A letter from the president of the school board of Carroll Parish, as printed in the National Republican, is so ungrammatical and misspelled that it is almost impossible to read it.[317] Cain Sartain, who later figured as a Representative, now a school teacher, was appallingly ignorant.[318] Naturally demands for the abolition of this costly and inefficient establishment were incessant. The supplement passed this session tended to simplify the law, but the chief change was provision for the appointment by a State board of subordinate boards of school directors for the several parishes, towns, and cities, who should have charge of all the funds and school records, all to be under the direction of the division superintendent. An additional tax of one to two mills was to be levied on the taxable property of the parish. Special individual provision was made for the board in New Orleans and for the levying of a special tax to the amount requested by the board. But a section of the revenue law which prohibited the city from collecting taxes in excess of two per cent[319] would have closed the schools, as the limit had already been exceeded, except for the aid rendered by the State superintendent and the city government.[320] Still the system awakened great dissatisfaction, even the colored people grumbling. The governor, by the appointment of Conway, a Republican and intimate friend, to the headship of the school-system, erected it into a political machine.[321]
Agreeably to the governor’s recommendation, bills to modify both the election and registration[322] laws were introduced into the Senate about the middle of the session, but were not pressed through, largely, it was charged, because of the governor’s secret opposition. An effort to tamper still further with the government of New Orleans,[323] and a generous appropriation for the militia[324] passed both houses but failed, apparently, to secure the governor’s signature. Some attention was devoted to the labor problem and to the question of creating parishes. The latter subject, probably for political reasons, had been something of a mania with the legislature, until at this session[325] the proposition was urged with much force “to stop the legislature from creating new parishes unless authorized by the voters of the parishes to be divided.”[326]
The extravagance and state of utter corruption of the legislative body in 1871-2 were only the natural result of the conditions started in 1868-9.
The amount of the State debt was disputed. The governor held that it was, in round numbers, $22,000,000, while the auditor claimed it to be $41,000,000, the difference to be accounted for by a contingent debt of $18,000,000 dependent on the construction of railroads, the second mortgage bonds of which the State had agreed to indorse.[327] The bonded debt was $19,188,300, the annual interest on which amounted to $1,403,820, besides which there was a miscellaneous debt of $3,187,490.[328] A comparison of the debt with the period just preceding the Warmoth administration is suggestive, as it had increased over $8,000,000 since 1868, taking the conservative estimate,[329] growing by deficiencies at the rate of over $1,000,000 a year. The expenditures in 1870 had exceeded the income by over $1,000,000 although the deficit was more than covered by the balance in the State treasury at the beginning of the year. The total amount of bonds or aid granted by the State to various corporations, prior to 1871 and for which bonds had not yet been issued, was over twelve millions. The auditor estimated the probable expenditures of 1872 at something over three millions, but as a matter of fact they far exceeded that sum.
The total amount of taxable property in the State at the close of 1871 was $250,594,417.50 from which $4,605,475.02 in taxes was collected.[330] With this should be compared the valuation and taxes in 1870 to show the decrease. The valuation was the same—$251,296,017.02,—but the taxes collected were $6,490,028.[331] The unpaid taxes amounted in 1871 to nearly five millions, exclusive of the taxes due for 1870 and of the taxes in a number of parishes where no rolls of assessment had been made.[332] The aggregate tax in the State was fourteen and one-half mills on the dollar.[333] So great was the burden of this taxation that in some parishes whole forty-acre tracts of land, as rich as any in the Nile, were sold that year by the tax-gatherer for one dollar, and in many instances estates absolutely found no bidders. Large owners were willing to give half their acres to immigrant families on the sole condition that they should settle on and improve the land given them. A company was being formed in northern Louisiana to divide 50,000 acres of land in tracts of fifty acres to a family. Real estate declined within the years 1870-1 not less than twenty-five per cent.[334] What was formerly considered very good security, mortgage paper for instance, had become of little value, because in a few years at that rate of taxation no one could pass the papers, for in case of foreclosure the property bore with it the burden of five, six, or seven per cent taxes which would leave no revenue.[335] The picture of the financial state drawn by a distinguished Democrat about this time is worthy of quotation.
If we were threatened with the continuance of the power which has administered this government, the conflagration of Chicago would not be more desolating than the effect of the continuance of this legislation would be upon the city of New Orleans; and the reason of it is this: when the city of Chicago was burned to the ground the people had at least the ground left, and northern and eastern capitalists have come there to rebuild it, while with us, capital is flying from the state, commerce is decreasing, and everybody who can is trying to get away.[336]
The cost of collecting the tax was excessive. Ten per cent of the amount was allowed for assessment and collection in all but portions of New Orleans where five per cent was deducted. The mere cost to the State of gathering in the taxes in 1871 was close to $500,000 out of a total of $6,500,000.[337] This made the cost of collection over twelve per cent.[338] The poll-tax in the second district of New Orleans for 10,146 persons amounted to but $1911, and of this sum, after the cost of assessment and collection was deducted, only $800.85 was left to the treasury.[339]
The legislative session of 1871 cost $958,956.50, although the Assembly appropriated only $641,400, the average cost of each Senator amounting to about $5300, of each Representative, $7300, making the average cost of a member $113.50 per day.[340] With this statement should be compared the cost before the war, when the largest amount ever appropriated for an ordinary session was $100,000.[341] The explanation of the enormous difference is to be found in the governor’s comment[342]:
It was squandered in paying extra mileage and per diem of members for services never rendered[343]; for an enormous corps of useless clerks and pages,[344] for publishing the journals of each house in fifteen obscure parish newspapers, some of which never existed, while some never did the work[345]; in paying extra committees authorized to sit during the vacation and to travel throughout the State and into Texas[346]; and in an elegant stationery bill which included ham, champagne, etc.[347]
The official reporter in the Senate drew the munificent salary of twenty dollars per day,[348] while each representative of a newspaper received a generous gratuity.
The enormous printing bills were, of course, a result of corruption. The public printing had cost the State in three years $1,500,000,[349] a goodly share of which Warmoth was accused of obtaining because of his fourth interest in the State paper.[350] Under the law the three commissioners named a State printer for the journals, laws, and debates, but they were also authorized to have the printing done by certain country papers. In addition the House and Senate claimed the right to select other country papers to publish these documents officially, to be paid from the contingent funds, so that thirty-five or forty more were so selected. The sum of $180,000 was paid to papers in New Orleans in 1871, outside of the official organ.[351] Many of the papers were sustained only by these contracts.[352] It was generally believed that men were sent over the country to edit these papers in order to build up the interests of the governor, while Carter, on the other hand, openly admitted that he gave his patronage to papers which would support the reform movement.[353]
The entire lack of conscience of the men who were administering the government came to light during the close of this year and early in 1872 with appalling vividness, until one turns away simply sickened by the tale of corruption.[354] Neither party nor class lines regulated integrity,[355] for reputable men of both sides were among the persons who offered bribes. As Carter put it, “There seems to be something in the climate here that affects both parties.”[356] Under oath one man declared that it was generally understood all round that any one who wanted to get a bill through had to pay for it. He thought there was a regular office opened down on Royal Street for that purpose where there was an agent for members. He had seen money paid right on the floor of the House. After the passage of the Chattanooga bill he saw a man with his hands full of money paying it out to members with little attempt at concealment.[357] Senators under false names were incorporators of many of the companies chartered and got their shares of stock after the bills were passed.[358] So wide-spread was the knowledge of their dishonesty that the story was current that the members had not even time to write their promises to vote the passage of such and such a bill, but had to resort to printed blanks.[359]
One of the dishonest measures, not mentioned elsewhere, should not be passed without brief mention, at least. In 1870[360] the legislature authorized the improvement of the old city park, a piece of ground which had been held for the purpose for many years. During the following year two politicians, Southworth and Bloomer, got a written agreement from the owners of a large vacant piece of land—the only large tract near the city—to sell it to them at a fixed price, six hundred thousand dollars. The legislature of 1871 amended the park law so as to allow the commissioners to buy land for the new park and made an appropriation for it. The governor now appointed as park commissioners, Pinchback, West, and Southworth. They next acquired title to the property, but paid only sixty-five thousand dollars, the remainder being left on mortgage. August 15 they sold one-half their purchase to the city for eighty thousand dollars, receiving sixty-five thousand dollars in cash, and one hundred ninety-five thousand in bonds. It was common street talk that Antoine complained that Pinchback had cheated him out of forty thousand dollars, which he in some way expected out of the deal.[361]
The evidence fails of proof that the governor ever received a bribe for his action on any bill,[362] but it is difficult to escape the suspicion of his complicity in corrupt transactions, if it be true, as was alleged, that no bill which the governor favored could fail and none that he opposed could pass. He admitted his use of his patronage to remove personal enemies and appoint friends “as a custom of governors”[363] and that the government had been guilty of some abuses created by his connivance, but emphatically denied the perpetration of any frauds,[364] declaring on oath that he stood before the Congressional committee with “clean hands.”[365] But his duplicity in other ways seems clear, while the fact stands out that with a salary of eight thousand dollars a year he testified that he had made far more than one hundred thousand dollars the first year of his administration[366] and by 1872 was reported worth a million dollars. He was surely willfully deluding himself when he uttered this boast:
I believe I have since I have been governor of the State, under circumstances and embarrassments of the gravest character, and under difficulties that I am surprised myself that I have been able to overcome, administered the State government in the best interests of the people of the State, and have produced as much harmony, good feeling, and prosperity as it was possible for me or any one else to produce under the circumstances.[367]
In a series of remarkable pen pictures the governor brought charges of dishonesty against most of the custom-house reformers—against Senators Ray, Casey, Packard, Lowell,[368] Carter.[369] His attack on Carter may be considered typical:
Mr. Carter was also, and is now, the paid attorney of the New Orleans, Mobile, and Texas Railroad Company, from which he receives $833.33 per month, or $10,000 per annum, and for which he has never done one hour’s service. The contract for his employment was made with him by the company after he had kept in his pocket for thirty or sixty days a bill which had passed the legislature almost unanimously, and immediately after this contract was made, by which he became the attorney of the company, the bill was signed by him.[370]
Several of the men attempted no reply to these charges, and Carter’s explanation served only to convince the Congressional committee that the charge was substantially true.[371] Casey was clearly proved to have been the holder of a corruption fund of $18,000, part of a $50,000 fund raised by himself and others to bribe the legislature to pass a bill for a company in which he was an interested incorporator. When the governor vetoed the bill, Casey unlocked the safe and Herring returned $18,000. It required just eighteen senators to pass the bill.[372] The president of the Louisiana Lottery Company had a list of about fifty members of the House with whom he had made arrangements for the passage of the Jackson Railroad bill with the amount that had been paid and the sum still due. The amount with a few exceptions was $600, but Campbell and Pinchback were rated worth $2000.[373] Many members held two offices, quite content to interpret the constitution in the Louisiana way that a member of the Assembly was not a State officer.[374]
The governor made a genuine effort to combat the extravagance of the legislature. In April, 1871, soon after the adjournment of the Assembly, he applied to the courts for an injunction to restrain the auditor from paying warrants for the mileage, per diem, and contingent expenses of members of the lower house, because fraudulent vouchers had been issued whereby the amounts had been increased. The injunction was granted and the auditor, together with several experts, appointed to investigate the matter. The governor’s real object was to assail Speaker Carter by the allegation that he had coerced the chief clerk to sign a fraudulent journal of the House, which authorized five committees to sit during the recess, thus defrauding the State of $200,000. Warmoth declared that a number of resolutions, which the speaker stated as introduced and passed the last night, had been interpolated into the journal, for it was notorious that they had not been introduced up to half-past eight o’clock that evening, and that from that moment until the adjournment the House had been in a constant state of uproar, during which time it was impossible for the House to take any action. He advanced what seems considerable evidence of his charge, while the delay of the publication of this day’s journal for sixteen days after the adjournment,[375] looks, it will be confessed, suspicious.[376]
The report of the commission sustained the charges of the governor but in part. It was shown that the amount of the warrants had in some instances been fraudulently increased; that warrants to the amount of $240,000 had been issued in excess of the appropriation of 1871[377]; that many warrants for extra pay to officers and clerks had been issued on the resolution of but one house, contrary to law; that $40,000 had been fraudulently issued to committees for mileage on official duty, when, according to the journals, they had not left the city; and that the signatures of the State officers had been forged in various instances. The commission condemned the loose manner of conducting business in the warrant office, but brought no specific charges. The opposition press charged the governor with holding up this report for months and publishing it at the opportune moment for him—just before the assembling of the legislature in 1872.[378]
An important decision in regard to the limitation of the State debt was rendered in May by the State Supreme Court. The matter came up on appeal from the Eighth District Court of New Orleans, where a suit had been instituted to compel the auditor to issue a warrant on an appropriation of $50,000 made in favor of a Mr. Nixon. The auditor had refused because the law authorizing it violated the recent amendment, as it increased the debt above the constitutional limit. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower court in favor of the auditor, contending that “the evidence in the record leaves no doubt that the debt of the State exceeded twenty-five million dollars on or before the first of March, 1871.”[379]