Charges of corruption were brought against members of the Assembly not only by the press[95] and by the leading citizens of the State, but charges were openly brought on the floor of the House. In the debate on the Ship Island Canal bill the remark was dropped that some people thought there were millions of dollars in that bill, and similar charges were made in regard to many other bills.[96] One member even boldly challenged another: “I want to know how much the gentleman gets to support this bill.”[97] That unnecessary clerks were employed seems incontrovertible when the House decided that the auditor might employ six clerks to do the work which had always been performed by two or three. So notorious became the corruption in many directions that the House felt it obligatory to appoint committees of investigation, even though one member contemned the charges as beneath their dignity. The wording of one resolution offered in the House early in January of 1869 reveals a whole tale: “Resolved, that the President of the Board of Metropolitan Police be directed to furnish this House with the names of any members who have been employed as special officers, and under what assumed names they drew their salaries for such services.”[98] The debates bring out the fact that two or, possibly, four members were laboring under such charge.[99] Likewise, the House became exercised over a complaint that members serving on different House committees were also employed in the custom-house and drawing a salary from each source.[100] The Assembly was not slow to put on foot investigations of other bodies, for corruption seems already to have vitiated most departments of the government and the institutions connected with it.[101]
Although the finances of the State were calling for the most skillful handling, the legislative body acted without even the most ordinary business prudence. While the time limit for the payment of the city taxes and for the collection of the special one per cent tax levied in September, 1868, had to be extended[102]; while the credit was so weak that it was found necessary to enforce under penalties the acceptance of the State warrants for licenses and taxes by the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and Bernard; while the State was in such straits that an annual tax became necessary to pay the interest on bonds[103]; and legislators were being put to the embarrassment of being told that the Waterworks Company had suspended the water until they should pay their bill,[104] they were voting themselves their pay with a generous hand and squandering State funds in sheer extravagance. They early[105] manifested anxiety for their pay, appropriating $250,000 in 1869, $500,000 in 1870, for the mileage and per diem of members and clerks.[106] Their selfishness took the form in 1869 of instructing the warrant clerks to sell the warrants at their market value in order to pay the members in currency,[107] and in 1870, of giving their warrants the preference. Their attitude toward themselves is perhaps illuminating in explaining their actions. One member had insisted that they ought to accept their money in warrants, “in which form the government pays the community,” when another angrily retorted, “I desire to assure him of the very important fact that what we, as the Legislature, give to the community ... is without money and without price. They are so valuable that the price cannot be fixed—there is no standard.”[108] And another member naïvely wants to know if he does not consider the General Assembly the State. Even more telling is the following exhortation of a member to the House: “I would like to know if there is a great thing and a good thing, in the name of God, why not let the Representatives of the State of Louisiana have a hand in it.”[109]
Small extravagances helped to swell the total cost of this Assembly to $264,278.06.[110] There were certain items in the general appropriation bill which looked unnecessarily large. When a mere clerk of a district court received a salary of $6,000, and the rental of a building for a state house cost $13,000 for nine months; when the always elastic clause for contingent expenses was stretched to $16,000; when printing and advertising mounted up to $183,000, the people might well begin to question and murmur. A bit of sarcasm was unconsciously incorporated in the printing appropriation of 1870 when a motion to substitute $200,000 for the original $140,000, asking some of these liberal-hearted gentlemen to open their hearts a little wider and take in every official journal of the State, was adopted.[111] The interest alone on bonds issued to railroads is probably accurate enough, but had reached the terrifying sum of $461,014.14. The only spasm of economy which the House suffered during the entire session of 1869 was really a pick at the police, when a few minor officials were struck off or reduced in salary.[112]
The law which was to provide the income seemed to bear no relation to the expenditures. Unwisely wasting their time on a bill to enforce collection of taxes already paid to the Confederacy,[113] they rushed the revenue bill through with a haste which explains its inadequacy. Urged by the Committee on Ways and Means to accept its work as complete, even the reading was dispensed with, and the act, which was referred to in a later session as a disgrace,[114] adopted by the House without discussion on the evening of March 3.[115] A clause which provoked the greatest criticism was one licensing gambling-houses, which appeared in the published bill and came up for a perfect storm of debate in the session of 1870. The chairman of the committee stated that it had not been in the original law, and that he believed it had been surreptitiously introduced after it had been acted upon by the House.[116] Moreover, a bill which made no provision for the interest on the debt, which made an appropriation for an institution which did not exist,[117] and which failed to meet the liabilities of the State by $500,000,[118] indicated business financiering which sooner or later must bring the State to bankruptcy.
And just when the finances called for a policy of retrenchment was the time when the legislature saw fit to embark on a system of extensive internal improvements. As has been remarked by many reconstruction writers, there was a conscious purpose to introduce in the South the energy and methods of the North and West in the hope of similar economic results. It was recognized by the conservatives that introduction of new railroads was necessary for economic rehabilitation. But it must not be forgotten that the sable statesmen who were called upon to ponder problems of high finance were ex-slaves who had had the experience of a porter’s tips or the extra half-dollars of a plantation hand. Of the numerous bills of that nature introduced, a considerable number passed, lending State aid with a liberal hand.
The enterprises were chiefly of three kinds: canals, railroads, and the ever-pressing levees. The Mississippi and Mexican Gulf Ship Canal Company profited by this spirit to the extent of $600,000, issued in the form of State bonds under a first mortgage, running the generous period of thirty years[119]; the New Orleans and Ship Island Canal Company to the extent of $2,000,000 and a large bonus in lands.[120] The House did not find it necessary to debate at any great length the measure which legislated away the former sum,[121] but far otherwise was the history of the latter act. Introduced into the session of 1868, it had been thoroughly discussed in the Senate and passed by that body and came up in the House in 1869 as unfinished business. Its objectionable features had not been so clear while passing the Senate, but by the next session it had been thoroughly aired by the press.[122] It declared the system of the Drainage Commissioners of the Metropolitan District “erroneous in principle and unsuccessful from experience,” and so gave over into the possession of the new Canal Company all the funds and assets of the commissioners to the amount of nearly $2,000,000 and public lands in installments to the extent of 400,000 acres, on the ground that this canal would accomplish the drainage of the entire district. As this fund had been raised by assessment for the special purpose of drainage, the opposition held that it could not thus be diverted. But, nevertheless, this bill was pressed through the House January 29,[123] under heated personal debate, extending through several days, and after having suffered much amendment. Although vetoed by the governor, it passed both houses with the requisite majority March 2.[124] Smaller sums were donated to minor enterprises, as $50,000 for the improvement of Loggy Bayou; $20,000 for improving Bayou Vermilion[125]; and $80,000 worth of credit loaned to the Bœuf and Crocodile Navigation Company.[126]
Aid to railroads was equally liberal. In its zeal the House on February 23, without the reading of the bill, pushed through all its stages the incorporation of the Louisiana and Arkansas Railroad Company, granted it exemption from taxation for ten years, a right of way three hundred feet in width, and the privilege of all the timber for one mile on each side of the road through the public lands.[127] But of all the railroad bills, by far the most conspicuous was that which extended a helping hand to the New Orleans, Mobile, and Chattanooga Road. It came up in the House February 4 and was pressed to a final vote that very afternoon and its amendments concurred in by the Senate February 14.[128] The bill provided for the guarantee of the company’s bonds by the State under the security of a second mortgage to the amount of $12,500 for each mile within the State west of New Orleans.[129] Parishes along the route of the Vicksburg Railroad were encouraged to aid that road by the purchase of stock or the issue of bonds, in addition to the State guarantee of its second mortgage bonds to the usual amount of $12,500 per mile.[130] Still other roads had found it worth while to besiege the legislature.
The great problem of improvement most urgently pressing was not adequately met—the construction of a satisfactory series of levees for the Mississippi River. A State loan of $4,000,000 had been provided for in 1867 for that purpose but the bonds had not been readily disposed of.[131] The Board of Levee Commissioners had made contracts for a large amount of work but the legislature of 1869 found no work accomplished—only the bonds of the State pledged for work authorized to be done—and so was placed under the necessity of authorizing the sale of the bonds.[132] The House made a valiant effort to meet the problem in the passage of a bill to issue bonds to the sum of $5,000,000 to provide means for the construction, repairs, and maintenance of the levees and other works of improvement, but the effort died there.[133]
A lack of discrimination characterized the action of the Assembly on this subject. To aid all projects just because they savored of prosperity would seem to express the attitude of some thoughtless legislators. “I am glad that I have one more chance for internal improvement,” generously declared one member.[134] Again, a project for the northern part of the State was advocated that no charge of partiality to the Southern part should be brought.[135] Nor is it fair to lay all the burden of debt arising from these grants of aid at the door of the radicals. It was rather a response to a universal desire for an extension of railroads and improvement of the waterways of the State, voiced by the moderate conservative press as well as the radical. “It is noteworthy as a sign fraught with good promise,” says the Commercial Bulletin, “that the railroad spirit is alive in the Northern parishes of this State, and that those whom it inspires are evidently bent on the early accomplishment of substantial results.”[136] In like strain the Crescent concerning the work of the Chattanooga Railroad: “It is certainly to be hoped that we shall soon have direct railroad communications with Mobile, and that all efforts to prevent the consummation of so desirable an object will fail.”[137] But the Picayune, while on the whole encouraging the measures, was more conservative and urged that promises of aid be few, “unless they are of certain and undoubted practicability and profitableness, and are secure beyond all peril of loss.”[138] Such measures were supported by members of both parties, often introduced by Democrats, in every case supported by a large majority of Democrats in both houses.[139] The leading movers, outside of the legislature, of these bills were men of both parties; and the lobbyists who advanced the corrupt measures were of both faiths.[140] This fact was admitted by the Democratic press.[141]
The legislature of 1869, with which the Commercial Bulletin sourly assured its readers the people wanted as little as possible to do, convened January 4 and sat until March 4. The governor’s annual message to it, a plea for freedom from prejudice, struck a tone of optimism which subsequent events did not justify: “The issues of the past eight years have been settled, we hope, forever. Slavery has been swept away, and along with it all the train of evils growing out of its wickedness, and has left us—master and slave, white and black—with the same rights under the law, the same chance to succeed in life, and with equally unrestricted aspirations and hopes.” He professed faith in a “wise, economical, moderate, and firm administration of the nation and the State as curing animosities and bringing prosperity to the people.” That portion of his message which alluded to the violence of 1868 and to his measures to allay the excitement was severely challenged by the Democratic press.[142]