[54] House Deb., 1869, 43-4. The lack of faith in Southern bonds was partly due to the unsettled condition, but also to the fact that just before the war many Southern States had repudiated their debts—an action later to be repeated.
[55] Ibid.
[56] One member asserted that $75,000 was thrown away in 1869 by the sale of the warrants on the streets to pay members. Ibid., 1870, 15.
[57] Sen. Journal, 1870, 12.
[58] Lowell testifies: “I can show that the greatest fraud ever perpetrated was the action of the Senate Committee on Election, whose clerk went out on the streets and coaxed men to come into the committee-room to act as witnesses in order that he might get half the fees. I state further that witness after witness has been paid by the Senate Election Committee who never gave one hour’s testimony.” House Deb., 1869, 12-13.
[59] Ibid., 50.
CHAPTER II
A Carpet-bag Legislature in Session
The general character of the work done in the Louisiana Assembly during the sessions of 1869 and 1870 was distinctly inferior; the tone of the debate low; and the conduct paralleled only in the worst of the reconstruction legislatures. The ignorance of the members does not appear glaringly in the records of 1869, for the more illiterate did not engage in the debate, certainly did not venture upon lengthy addresses. It is only occasionally that we are appalled by the dense ignorance revealed, as when the colored legislator Burrel broke out into a mass of incoherent repetitions in defense of the St. Charles pavement bill.[60]
The debate was distinctly partisan. The following outburst, provoked by the debate on the militia bill, is sufficiently suggestive: