Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May 29. 1890.
Henry W. Grady.
By 1890 the days were passed when denunciation of Davis or of the South electrified the North, nor did the South on its part longer waste time in impotent resentments or regrets. The brilliant and fervid utterances on “The New South” by editor Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution, went home to the hearts of Northerners, doing much to allay sectional feeling. Grady died, untimely, in 1889, lamented nowhere more sincerely than at the North.
When Federal intervention occurred to put down the notorious Louisiana Lottery, the South in its gratitude almost forgot that there had been a war. This lottery had been incorporated in 1868 for twenty-five years. In 1890 it was estimated to receive a full third of the mail matter coming to New Orleans, with a business of $30,000 a day in postal notes and money orders. As the monster in 1890, approaching its charter-term, bestirred itself for a new lease of life, it found itself barred from the mails by Congress.
And this was, in effect, its banishment from the State and country. It could still ply its business through the express companies, provided Louisiana would abrogate the constitutional prohibition of lotteries it had enacted to take effect in 1893. For a twenty-five year re-enfranchisement the impoverished State was offered the princely sum of a million and a quarter dollars a year. This tempting bait was supplemented by influences brought to bear upon the venal section of the press and of the legislature. A proposal for the necessary constitutional change was vetoed by Governor Nicholls. Having pushed their bill once more through the House, the lottery lobby contended that a proposal for a constitutional amendment did not require the governor’s signature, but only to be submitted to the people, a position which was affirmed by the State Supreme Court. A fierce battle followed in the State, the “anti” Democrats of the country parishes, in fusion with Farmers’ Alliance men, fighting the “pro” Democrats of New Orleans. The “Antis” and the Alliance triumphed. Effort for a constitutional amendment was given up, and Governor Foster was permitted to sign an act prohibiting, after December 31, 1893, all sale of lottery tickets and all lottery drawings or schemes throughout the State of Louisiana. In January, 1894, the Lottery Company betook itself to exile on the island of Cuanaja, in the Bay of Honduras, a seat which the Honduras Government had granted it, together with a monopoly of the lottery business for fifty years.
Francis T. Nicholls.
Matters in the West drew attention. The pressure of white population, rude and resistless as a glacier, everywhere forcing the barriers of Indian reservations, now concentrated upon the part of Indian territory known as Oklahoma. This large tract the Seminole Indians had sold to the Government, to be exclusively colonized by Indians and freedmen. In 1888-89, as it had become clearly impossible to shut out white settlers, Congress appropriated $4,000,000 to extinguish the trust upon which the land was held. By December the newly opened territory boasted 60,000 denizens, eleven schools, nine churches, and three daily and five weekly newspapers. In a few years it was vying for statehood with Arizona and New Mexico.
