William H. Smith, who was made governor under the Reconstruction Acts, was a native of Georgia, a lawyer, formerly a Douglas Democrat, and had opposed secession, but was a candidate for the Confederate Congress. Defeated, he consoled himself by going over to the Federals in 1862. Smith was a man of no executive ability, careless of the duties of his office, and in few respects a fit person to be governor. He disliked the Confederate element and also the carpet-baggers, but as long as the latter would not ask for high offices, he was at peace with them. It was his plan to carry on the state government with the 2000 or 3000 “unionists” and the United States troops. He did not like the negroes, but could endure them as long as they lived in a different part of the state and voted for him. In personal and private matters he was thoroughly honest, but his course in regard to the issue of bonds showed that in public affairs he could be influenced to doubtful conduct. It is certain that he never profited by any of the stealing that was carried on; he merely made it easy for others to steal; the dishonest ones were his friends, and his enemies paid the taxes. As governor he had the respect of neither party. He went too far to please the Democrats, and not far enough to please the Radicals. He exercised no sort of control over his local officials and shut his eyes to the plundering of the Black Belt. He was emphatically governor of his small following of whites, not of all the people, not even of the blacks. During his administration the whites complained that he was very active in protecting Radicals from outrage, but paid no attention to the troubles of his political enemies. His government did not give adequate protection to life and property.
His lieutenant-governor, A. J. Applegate of Ohio and Wisconsin, was an illiterate Federal soldier left stranded in Alabama by the surrender. During the war he was taken ill in Mississippi and was cared for by Mrs. Thompson, wife of a former Secretary of the Treasury. Upon leaving the Thompson house he carried some valuable papers with him, which, after the war, he tried to sell to Mrs. Thompson for $10,000. Lowe, Walker, & Company, a firm of lawyers in Alabama, gave Applegate $300, made him sign a statement as to how he obtained the papers, and then published all the correspondence.[2088] The charge of thievery did not injure his candidacy. Before election he had been an attaché of the Freedmen’s Bureau. After the constitution had been rejected in 1868, Applegate went North, so far that he could not get back in time for the first session of the legislature. A special act, however, authorized him to draw his pay as having been present. In a letter written for the Associated Press, which was secured by the Democrats, there were thirty-nine mistakes in spelling. As a presiding officer over the Senate, he was vulgar and undignified. His speeches were ludicrous. When the conduct of the Radical senators pleased him, he made known his pleasure by shouting, “Bully for Alabama!”
The secretary of state, Charles A. Miller, was a Bureau agent from Maine; Bingham, the treasurer, was from New York; Reynolds, the auditor, from Wisconsin; Keffer, the superintendent of industrial resources, from Pennsylvania. Two natives of indifferent reputation—Morse and Cloud—were, respectively, attorney-general and superintendent of public instruction. Morse was under indictment for murder and had to be relieved by special act of the legislature. The chief justice, Peck, was from New York; Saffold and Peters were southern men; the senators and all of the representatives in Congress were carpet-baggers. There were six candidates for the short-term senatorship—all of them carpet-baggers. Willard Warner of Ohio, who was elected, was probably the most respectable of all the carpet-baggers, and was soon discarded by the party. He had served in the Federal army and after the war was elected to the Ohio Senate. His term expired in January, 1868; in July, 1868, he was elected to the United States Senate from Alabama. George E. Spencer was elected to the United States Senate for the long term. He was from Massachusetts, Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska. In Iowa he had been clerk of the Senate, and in Nebraska, secretary to the governor. He entered the army as sutler of the First Nebraska Infantry. Later he assisted in raising the First Union Alabama Cavalry and was made its colonel. Spencer was shrewd, coarse, and unscrupulous, and soon secured control of Federal patronage for Alabama. He attacked his colleague, Warner, as being lukewarm.
The representatives and their records were as follows: F. W. Kellogg of Massachusetts and Michigan represented the latter state in Congress from 1859 to 1865, when he was appointed collector of internal revenue at Mobile. C. W. Buckley of New York and Illinois was a Presbyterian preacher who had come to Alabama as chaplain of a negro regiment. For two years he was a Bureau official and an active agitator. He was a leading member in the convention of 1867. B. W. Norris of Skowhegan, Maine, was an oil-cloth maker and a land agent for Maine, a commissary, contractor, cemetery commissioner, and paymaster during the war. After the war he came South with C. A. Miller, his brother-in-law, and both became Bureau agents. C. W. Pierce of Massachusetts and Illinois was a Bureau official. Nothing more is known of him. John B. Callis of Wisconsin had served in the Federal army and later in the Veteran Reserve Corps. After the war he became a Bureau agent in Alabama, and when elected he was not a citizen of the state, but was an army officer stationed in Mississippi. Thomas Haughey of Scotland was a Confederate recruiting officer in 1861-1862 and later a surgeon in the Union army. He was killed in 1869 by Collins, a member of the Radical Board of Education. It was said that he was without race prejudice and consorted with negroes, but he was the only one of the Alabama delegation whom Governor Smith liked. The latter wrote that “our whole set of representatives in Congress, with the exception of Haughey, are ... unprincipled scoundrels having no regard for the state of the people.”[2089]
In the first Reconstruction legislature, which lasted for three years, there were in the Senate 32 Radicals and 1 Democrat. In the House there were 97 Radicals (only 94 served) and 3 Democrats. The lone Democrat in the Senate was Worthy of Pike, and to prevent him from engaging in debate, Applegate often retired from his seat and called upon him to preside; the Democrats in the House were Hubbard of Pike, Howard of Crenshaw, and Reeves of Cherokee.[2090] In the Senate there was only 1 negro; in the House there were 26, several of whom could not sign their names. In the apportionment of representatives there was a difference of 40 per cent in favor of the black counties. Hundreds of negroes swarmed in to see the legislature begin, filling the galleries, the windows, and the vacant seats, and crowding the aisles. They were invited by resolution to fill the galleries and from that place they took part in the affairs of the House, voting on every measure with loud shouts. A scalawag from north Alabama wanted the negroes to sit on one side of the House and the whites on the other, but he was not listened to. The doorkeepers, sergeant-at-arms, and other employees were usually negroes. The negro members watched their white leaders and voted aye or no as they voted. When tired they went to sleep and often had to be wakened to vote. Both houses were usually opened with prayer by northern Methodist ministers or by negro ministers. None but “loyal” ministers were asked to officiate. Strobach, the Austrian member, wearied of much political prayer, moved that the chaplain cut short his devotions.
SCENES IN THE FIRST RECONSTRUCTED LEGISLATURE.
(Cartoons from “The Loil Legislature,” by Captain B. H. Screws.)
The whites in the legislature were for the most part carpet-baggers or unknown native whites. The entire taxes paid by the members of the legislature were, it is said, less than $100. Applegate, the lieutenant-governor, did not own a dollar’s worth of property in the state. Most of the carpet-bag members lived in Montgomery; the rest of them lived in Mobile, Selma, and Huntsville. Few of them saw the districts they represented after election; some did not see them before or after the election. The representative from Jackson County lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The state constitution prohibited United States officials from holding state offices, but nearly all Federal officers in the state also held state offices. This was particularly the case in the southwestern counties, which were represented by revenue and custom-house officials from Mobile. Some of them were absent most of the time, but all drew pay; one of the negro members, instead of attending, went regularly to school after the roll was called. No less than twenty members had been indicted or convicted, or were indicted during the session, of various crimes, from adultery and stealing to murder. The legislature passed special acts to relieve members from the penalties for stealing, adultery, bigamy, arson, riot, illegal voting, assault, bribery, and murder.[2091]
Bribery was common in the legislature. By custom a room in the capitol was set apart for the accommodation of those who wished to “interview” negro members.[2092] There the agents of railroad companies distributed conscience money in the form of loans which were never to be paid back. Harrington, the speaker, boasted that he received $1700 for engineering a bill through the House. A lottery promoter said that it cost him only $600 to get his charter through the legislature, and that no Radical, except one negro, refused the small bribe he offered. Senator Sibley held his vote on railroad measures at $500; Pennington, at $1000; W. B. Jones, at $500. Hardy of Dallas received $35,000 to ease the passage of a railroad bond issue, and kept most of it for himself; another received enough to start a bank; still another was given 640 acres of land, a steam mill, and a side track on a railroad near his mill. Negro members, as a rule, sold out very cheaply, and probably most often to Democrats who wanted some minor measures passed to which the Radical leaders would pay no attention. It was found best not to pay the larger sums until the governor had signed the bill. A member accepted a gift as a matter of course, and no attention was paid to charges of bribery.[2093]