CHAPTER TEN
Ruinous Misgovernment
Only misrule could be expected from such officials. Nothing was sacred from their greedy grasp. The most cherished institutions were debased to their purposes. In time the university was avoided by all who were unwilling to forfeit public esteem. One of the early arrivals from fruitful Ohio was Rev. A. S. Lakin. He was commissioned by Bishop Clark, of the Cincinnati conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to organize negro churches in Alabama. He was a fanatic of the extreme type, and his work of the politico-religious character. He regarded the Methodist Episcopal Church, south, as an aggregation of rebels, and aimed to array his negro proselytes against it by preaching political sermons, in which he reminded his audiences of their former bondage and alleged there was danger of its renewal. According to his own statements, he was the unterrified victim of a concatenation of Ku Klux attacks. In prosecuting his roving missions in the mountains of northern Alabama, Lakin’s morbid fancy distorted every lone hunter encountered on the roadside into a lurking assassin, and every innocent group of gossiping rustics into a band of Ku Klux. He organized a camp-meeting, and one night at an early hour during its progress a party of horsemen rode through. Lakin wrote for publication in one of the church organs a hair-raising story of the incident, magnifying it into a Ku Klux foray. His explanation of the cause of the intrusion was that the klansmen were offended because of a rumor circulating in the camp that an infant born in the neighborhood was “a Ku Klux child,” an exact image in miniature of a disguised Ku Klux, horns and hood included. Lakin solemnly affirmed the fact of the birth of the monstrosity, but ungenerously robbed it of distinction by adding that six other infants in that klan-infested region were similarly “Ku Klux marked.” The woods must have been full of human curios!
In 1868 the regents elected this superstitious and prejudiced emissary president of the University of Alabama! Accompanied by Dr. N. B. Cloud, state superintendent of education, Lakin journeyed to Tuscaloosa to assume the station which the people once hoped would be graced by the illustrious Henry Tutwiler. Professor Wyman was in charge of the institution and held the keys; the former president had withdrawn and appointed him custodian. On the ground that the board of regents was illegally constituted, Professor Wyman refused to yield to Lakin, and the latter, discerning signs of popular displeasure, lost the courage which had nerved him to assert his claim, mounted his horse and hurriedly rode away in the direction of Huntsville, while Dr. Cloud departed with equal celerity in the direction of Montgomery.
Some time afterward Lakin related a blood-curdling story of pursuit from Tuscaloosa by a band of Ku Klux and his almost miraculous escape from the horrible death to which the band had condemned him. This story provoked the publication of a counter charge,—that while Lakin was preaching somewhere in New York State he ill requited the hospitality of an entertainer by dishonoring the household.
And this man’s ultimate aspiration was to represent Alabama in the United States Senate!
One of the most scandalous chapters in the history of the Republican régime relates to railroad subsidies. The Lindsay administration favored encouragement to the building of railroads, as means for development of natural resources, and in 1867 the legislature passed, and the governor approved, an act which authorized the state to indorse bonds of new railroads to the extent of $12,000 per mile, with an additional endorsement for bridges; but indorsement was safeguarded carefully, and no wrongs were committed in connection with the execution of the law until the Radicals assumed control. Then there began a riot of bribery and corruption.
November 10, 1871, I. F. Grant, state treasurer, submitted to the congressional commission investigating affairs in the southern states a statement from which the following extracts are made:
“Bonded debt of the state January 11, 1861, $3,445,000.
“The state is and was bound to pay in perpetuity for annual interest on the school fund the sum of $134,367.80.
“Interest unpaid during the war, accrued up to and including January 1, 1867, was then funded and new bonds issued for the sum of $621,000, which made the total bonded debt on
| January 1, 1867 | $4,066,000 |
| “The war debt, amounting to $12,094,731.95 was repudiated. | |
| “Eight per cent. bonds sold in 1867-68 | 659,100 |
| “Eight per cent. bonds sold in 1869-70 | 657,700 |
| “Total bonded debt January 1, 1871 | $5,382,800 |
“Cause of increase, sale of bonds to carry on the government.
“There is a prospective liability for an indefinite amount growing out of the passage of an act, approved February 19, 1867, and amended August, 1868, whereby the state is required to indorse railroad bonds to the amount of $12,000 per mile, which act was further amended in March, 1870, so as to increase the indorsement to $16,000 per mile.
“The same legislature in March, 1870, made a loan to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad Company of $2,000,000 in Alabama 8% bonds, over and above the indorsement of $16,000 per mile for the entire length of the road, thereby adding to the direct and collateral liability of the state for this one road the sum of $6,700,000. In addition to this, the Republican governor, W. H. Smith, issued to the road bonds to the amount of $500,000 above what the road could ever by any possibility claim under the law.
“The said road made default in payment of January and July, 1871, interest, which the state paid as its owner and creditor, $508,000.
“There are eight or ten other roads for which the state, under the law above referred to, is liable as indorser.”
The state auditor reported this summary of liabilities September 30, 1871:
| Direct indebtedness | $ 8,761,967 37 |
| Present conditional indebtedness | 15,420,000 00 |
| Conditional indebtedness provided by law | 14,200,000 00 |
Under Democratic administration, a committee of the legislature investigated the railroad deals and reported that “Two millions of state bonds which the law authorized the governor to issue in aid of said company (Alabama and Chattanooga) in sums sufficient to pay off the cost of having constructed a certain amount of road in excess of the state indorsement of $16,000 per mile, were issued in bulk, with reckless haste, and were hurried away to the money marts of Europe”; that “there has been no record kept by any officer of the state of the number and amount of the bonds issued or indorsed by the state in favor of the various railroads entitled by law to the aid of the state, except as to loans of bonds to the Montgomery and Eufaula Railroad Company, $300,000 in amount, and the indorsement of bonds in favor of the Mobile and Montgomery Railroad Company.”
R. M. Patton testified that although he had accepted the presidency of the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad Company, he was ignored because he opposed the loan bill. D. N. Stanton, of Boston, was elected president, and Patton “was not invited or expected at the consultation of friends of the road. He said: “I do not think the stockholders ever paid in any of the capital stock of the company.”
Arthur Bingham, state treasurer from 1868 to 1870, asked whether he knew of any fraud or illegality in connection With the issue or indorsement of the railroad bonds, declined to answer upon the ground that by so doing he would criminate himself.
Mr. Holmes testified that on the last day of the session of the legislature of 1869-70 Mr. Gilmer, president of the North and South Railroad, borrowed from him and Mr. Farley $25,000. Next day Mr. Gilmer complained that John Hardy, of Dallas county, chairman of the committee of the legislature, had treated him shabbily; that “he had agreed to pass the bill for him for $25,000, but that at the eleventh hour he went back on him and made him pay $10,000 more, making in all $35,000.”
Jere Haralson, colored, Mr. Hardy’s colleague from Dallas, was a shrewd negro, but at that time a cheap commodity. Later he appraised himself more highly. Ben Turner, a negro (successor to the carpetbag congressman), continued for some time after regeneration to represent the Dallas district in Congress, and Jere spent much time with him in Washington, engaged in profitable political work. But at the Montgomery distribution only fifty dollars was apportioned to him. He ingenuously explained that he accepted it as a loan.
When the state, some years later, attempted to make Mr. Hardy disgorge the $35,000 (bonds) and imprisoned him, he escaped on the plea that it was imprisonment for debt.
Ex-Governor Patton published a statement in which he said that, when in Boston, parties to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad complained to him because legislation in Alabama had cost the company $200,000.
J. P. Stowe, a Montgomery county representative, asserted, and the assertion was published, that John Hardy took away the night the legislature adjourned not less than $150,000, but not all of it was his—he had much of it for distribution.
Construction of the Alabama and Chattanooga (now the Great Southern) Railroad, extending from Meridian to Chattanooga, referred to in the report quoted from, was under direction of D. N. Stanton. He was a skilled and unscrupulous lobbyist and get-rich-quick builder. There was testimony to the effect that the only money used in construction work was that which was derived from state indorsement. The indorsement for bridges was $60.00 per lineal foot of structure. In the hill country, beginning in Tuscaloosa county, the line of road described a serpentine trail among the hills. Mere increase of mileage presented no great disadvantage to Stanton, but tunneling, cutting and filling were difficulties studiously avoided. Consequently, when the road passed into other hands and reorganization was effected, changes necessary in straightening left the landscape with marks of peculiar interest to civil engineers. Travelers by that road may observe from car windows at many points abandoned roadbeds to right and left, winding among the low places and avoiding hills which were so formidable to Stanton, reminding the observer of meandering brooks seeking lower levels. Lines of least resistance were most attractive to Stanton, regardless of circuitousness.
While government was thus growing in costliness, the resources of the people who had to foot the bills were diminishing.
State Treasurer Grant’s statement showed that the average cost of state government in Alabama for 1859 and 1860 was $813,000; for 1868, 1869, 1870, $1,514,000; and the increase, he said, was partly due to increase of bonded debt, but mainly to ignorant and corrupt legislation.
The report of the superintendent of census showed:
| Assessed valuation of property in Alabama, including slaves, in 1860 | $432,198,762 |
| Assessed valuation in 1870 | 156,770,387 |
| State taxation in 1860 | 530,107 |
| State taxation in 1870 | 1,477,414 |
| County taxation in 1860 | 309,474 |
| County taxation in 1870 | 1,122,471 |
Now consider, as representing average conditions in the counties of the Black Belt, these facts derived from the report of Judge Hill, an expert, employed to investigate affairs in Marengo county.
Taxes in 1870 were threefold greater than in 1860. The value of subjects of taxation had diminished two-thirds; 22,000 slaves, of an average value of $500 each, had ceased to be enumerated as taxable property; lands had depreciated in value sixty per cent.; there was less than one-half as much live stock as formerly; two townships had been lopped off and given to the newly-created county of Hale.