The Tragic Era by Claude Bowers, 1929
CHAPTER XXI
MILITARY SATRAPS AND REVOLUTION
The conditions in Louisiana growing out of the election of 1872 had directed national attention to Cromwellian methods, and a revolution. The conservatives had elected John McEnery Governor over William Pitt Kellogg, the Republican nominee, but an illegal returning board had' given the victory to the defeated without the formality of canvassing the votes. The contest involved not only State officers and a Senator, but the Legislature. The legal De Feriet Board found. the conservatives triumphant; whereupon Kellogg had wired Williams, the Attorney-General who prostituted his position to partisan ends, that the fate of the Republican Party was involved; and the drunken Federal Judge Durell, with the trembling finger; of inebriety, had written his midnight injunction against the legal returning board, and instructed United States Marshal Packard, Republican chairman and manager, to take possession of the State House and prevent any 'unlawful' assemblage there of the McEnery legislators. The next morning, the city vibrant in protest, the besotted judge declared the lawful board illegal and restrained it from canvassing the returns.
The despotism and audacity of the crime rocked the Nation. Imprecations against the drunken tyrant arose from all quarters and from both parties. 'Reprehensible and erroneous in point of law and wholly void for want of jurisdiction,' was the verdict of a congressional committee. This committee, with a majority Republicans, found McEnery had a majority of almost ten thousand, and the conservatives a majority of thirty-nine in the House and eleven in the Senate.
Even so, the action of Durell, countenanced by the Attorney-General, resulted in a dual government, with one legislature electing a conservative to the Senate, and the Kellogg body choosing P. B. S. Pinchback, the mulatto. Thus the determination of the issue had been transferred to Washington, where a series of major battles had been fought for more than two years. When Senator Carpenter, Republican, a brilliant lawyer, cut the ground from beneath Kellogg and his followers in a remarkable report, it seemed for a moment that the travesty in Louisiana would end. Thoughtful Republicans, nauseated by the action of the drunken Durell, were prone to hold for McEnery, or, with Carpenter, for a new election.
It was at this juncture that Senator Morton, resembling Stevens in his methods, established his claim to the absolute leadership of his party. Ignoring Carpenter's report and his unanswerable argument, Morton applied the whip to wavering partisans as remorselessly as had Stevens. Autocratic, dictatorial, direct, and almost brutal in his methods of management, he scrupled not to employ any weapon in a fight.
Thus nothing was done, and Louisiana was left to the mercy of the President. With a division of sentiment among his counselors, Grant hesitated, preferring to pass the responsibility to others. It was charged, on the responsibility of a reputable man, that he had prepared a message recognizing McEnery, when Morton, in glowering mood, forbade its transmission on the ground that it would cost the party eighty thousand votes. This is given color by the assertion of Morton's biographer that Carpenter had influenced Grant until Morton drove to the White House in fighting trim and Grant had wilted before his fury. The story is plausible enough, since Morton was by odds the stronger man. The result had been the presidential recognition of Kellogg, but the fight in the Senate over the seating of Pinchback had gone on.
II
Meanwhile, in Louisiana the domination of the Custom-House clique had become intolerable. With the people driven to distraction by taxation, the levying of taxes was in the hands of scamps and illiterates without property. Nordhoff, an old Abolitionist, visiting the Legislature, was startled - 'not because they were black, but because they were transparently ignorant and unfit.'
The most vicious of the ruling element were prospering while the taxpayers suffered. Pass Christian, once the center of elegance and culture, with its fine residences along a beach of five miles' length, had been taken over by the negro politicians, and its social arbiter was now Caius Caesar Antoine, Lieutenant-Governor by the grace of Grant's decree. Flamboyant, and abysmally ignorant, diminutive, with' a head like a cocoanut. . . pure type of the Congo,' he was the leader of the Black League bent on the political ostracism of the carpetbaggers. Under the rule of such men, the propertied class was being rapidly impoverished. Scarcely five in a hundred men were not on the verge of ruin. Houses had declined eighty per cent in value in four years. The distinguished citizen who wrote that 'we are all ruined here and to hold property is to be taxed to death by our African communists' painted the picture with fidelity. The auctioneers and pawnbrokers of New Orleans were overworked, since elegant homes were being stripped piece by piece to buy necessities; families once comfortable were selling their beds to sleep on pallets on the floor, and bedsteads of rosewood and mahogany were going for from five to seven dollars. In the spring of 1874, planters were being denied the customary spring advances. One overwrought man, who had seen piece after piece of the family property sold for taxation until only one remained, wrote the sheriff that this was the sole possession of his mother and sister and the day it was put on sale he would attend with his shotgun. 'Now I know the man,' wrote Nordhoff, 'and know him to be a peaceable, law-abiding citizen, one of the most important and most useful members of the community.' In the parish of St. Landry alone within two years 821 plantations had gone for taxes, and there had been 47,491 tax seizures by the sheriff in New Orleans. Parish papers were giving three and four pages to advertisements of tax sales.
To divert attention in the North from these monstrous conditions, the press was fed on fabrications of 'outrages' on 'innocent blacks' and' loyal men.' Every murder was given a political motive and the victims were usually-the negroes, slaughtered by the whites with impunity. Nordhoff investigated the criminal record of a parish controlled absolutely for five years by the Kellogg crowd, where there had been thirty-three murders, and found that thirty-one were of blacks by blacks; one of a white by a white, and one of a white by a negro because of the seduction of the black man's sister. Not one murderer had been hanged. Overtaxed and underprotected, the whites in the black belt, imperiled by the incendiary talk of carpetbaggers, lived in a state of terror, and women were not safe on the highway.
III
Under these conditions the carpetbag regime determined to disarm the whites. Hunters returning from the hunt were dispossessed of their guns. Negro policemen arrested without cause, beating the victim without provocation, and there was no redress. Women were insulted and assaulted in all parts of New Orleans, and there was no protection. The black militia vied with the police, and the Black League, darling of Antoine, was never so insolent or defiant. In June, nearly every steamboat brought heavy shipments of arms for distribution among the negroes.
Determined to capture the Legislature in the fall of 1874, the whites early began to enroll in the White League, and preparations were made for armed conflict in case of necessity. The color line was drawn by the negroes in the plan to subordinate their white leaders, and Antoine's Black League was busy. The Democrats entered the campaign with an unequivocal declaration for white supremacy. Inevitable clashes occurred -- all grist for the 'outrage' mill- and Grant, ordering troops to convenient points, made the customary gesture that had served political purposes well. The climax came when Federal officials began seizing guns consigned to citizens, and denying the native whites their constitutional right to bear arms. Indignation reached white heat and the rising of the people came.
One September night, in expectation of, another seizure, posters flamed, summoning the people to a meeting at Canal Street the next morning. Appealing to merchants to close their stores, 'The Bulletin' asked citizens to speak ‘in tones loud enough to be heard the length and breadth of this land' and' declare. . . that you are, and of right ought to be, and mean to be, free.'
The morning found three thousand armed citizens at the Clay Monument. They were not a faction - they were the major part of the people in revolutionary mood. Nordhoff had found universal detestation of the rulers of the State, and the business men of New Orleans equal to the same class' in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.' It was these who had assembled in the open, with guns in their hands. These revolutionists moved with precision and formality. A committee was dispatched to Kellogg to demand his abdication, and, was refused admission. The Lieutenant Governor under McEnery immediately called upon all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to arm, assemble as a militia, and expel the usurper. There was a dramatic pause, with negro officials swarming to the State House and Custom-House for protection. Kellogg, in deadly fear, cringed in his office, heavily guarded by metropolitan police.
Thus passed the morning and early afternoon. At three o'clock a large body of armed men, marching in perfect order, began the erection of barricades of paving stones, horse-cars, and boxes. This was revolution. An hour later, General Longstreet with metropolitan police and artillery marched forth to battle, and, greeted by the familiar rebel yell as the revolutionists opened fire, he blanched. Ten minutes was enough - Longstreet's men broke ranks and fled to the protection of the Custom-House. Here, more barricades, another exchange of shots, and the captain of the metropolitan police fell wounded. Papers, still wet from the press, circulated through the excited crowd with a proclamation from Penn, the Lieutenant-Governor, assuring the negroes they had no cause for fear. The cars no longer ran. Night came, with pickets posted along Canal Street, and with the citizen's militia bivouacked in the streets. Thus passed the night.
The next morning, early, there was an unconditional surrender, with the revolutionists in possession of public buildings. Penn was formally inducted into office, and, in due form, all 'legally elected in 1872' were sworn in. The barricades were speedily removed, business houses opened again, the citizen's militia marched triumphantly through the streets, the McEnery Legislature was summoned to assemble, perfect order was maintained, and Ogden, general of the victors, issued a statement:
'To that God who gave us the victory we commit with confidence and hope the spirits of our heroic dead; and, strong in the consciousness of right, record anew our holy purpose that Louisiana shall be free.'
Mass meetings applauded throughout the country, and it was generally agreed, by all but the radical press, that there had never been a better justification for evoking the right of revolution.
But the people had not won - not until Washington had spoken. The white-faced Kellogg appealed to Grant, who ordered the 'turbulent' people to 'disperse within five days.' They had dispersed within five hours after the victory. But that was not all- they were ordered to accept again the yoke of Kellogg, Packard, and Casey; and, to enforce the order, three men-of-war and Federal troops were hurried to New Orleans. Governor McEnery thereupon surrendered the public buildings under protest, and Kellogg emerged from his hiding to resume his station at the State House.
Grant had crushed the rising of the people.
IV
These incidents only intensified the. determination of the people to win the election. The Democrats proclaimed their policy – to employ no negroes who voted against them, to boycott merchants voting with the Opposition, to refuse advances to planters renting land to the Radicals, to publish the names of whites voting the negro ticket and to challenge the Radical speakers in their meetings. The Kellogg party, however, was not disturbed - not with the Federal Army and Government to lean upon. Packard, the Marshal and boss, began arresting citizens without cause, dragging Democratic leaders to New Orleans from distant parishes. Negroes were ordered from the fields to political meetings 'by order of General Butler,' and blacks were threatened with arrest and punishment if they voted the Democratic ticket. The Custom House clique set up the cry of coercion early, and put in their plea for troops.
That year even Packard' admitted that no more than five thousand whites voted the Republican ticket and that as many as five thousand negroes voted with the Democrats in a State where the whites had a majority. Packard was in the saddle, in shining armor - the man for the crisis. He was a leader of courage and iron will, despotic in his sway, utterly without scruples. He was a master of organization - better still, he knew how to organize victory without majorities. These, however, were sought, and soon great numbers of negroes from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama were pouring into the upper parishes and being registered. One parish proudly reported to Kellogg that the previous parity of the races had been overcome, the registration showing two hundred whites to twenty-three hundred negroes - mostly imported from Tennessee. The correspondent of the 'New York Herald' estimated that as many as fifteen thousand had been brought in within the year.
Efforts were made to bring on racial clashes, and when one occurred, Morton, in Washington, was delighted. The army was ready - always ready. But the manipulation of election machinery was the stoutest reed on which to lean. After the election, an investigation disclosed fifty-two hundred false registrations in New Orleans alone, and a little later Nordhoff attended a court in an upper parish which adjourned for want of a jury because three fourths of the names drawn from the registration lists for jury duty were found to be fictitious.
Election day found the Kellogg party amply protected, eleven companies of Federal soldiers in New Orleans and on the Red River, and a fleet of gunboats frowning from the stream upon a sovereign people. The ballots cast, the. determination of the result passed to a board packed for corruption, which did its dirty work in secret session, but it required two months of manipulation to count a Republican majority in the Legislature. The delay was due to the hesitation at Washington to give assurances of support for the conspiracy. The pledge made, the crime followed. Even in the North the press protested against the manifest dishonesty of the count. Bitterness was at white heat; the head of the canvassing board narrowly escaped assassination; and Warmoth, former governor, knocked down in the street, defended himself with a knife and killed his man. It was a clear case of self-defense.
With two results announced, with two legislatures in prospect, and a conflict approaching, Grant sent General Sheridan on a secret mission to Louisiana. He carried authority to assume command in the South and act as he saw fit. A microscopic search of the army could not have discovered a single officer less fitted for the task or more provocative of the people of New Orleans.
V
The special political functions of Sheridan are clearly indicated in the ignoring of Sherman, head of the army. 'Neither the President nor Secretary of War ever consulted me about Louisiana affairs,' wrote Sherman, who knew Louisiana well. 'Sheridan received his orders directly from the Secretary of War [Belknap]. . . I have. . . tried to save our army and officers from dirty work imposed upon them... . and may thereby have incurred the suspicion of the President. Washington knew of Sheridan's hate of the South and his relations with Radical politicians; knew, too, that he was anathema in New Orleans. Entering the breakfast room of the hotel there, he was 'greeted by hisses and groans.' Pleased, rather than ruffled, he had astonished Hoar of Massachusetts with his idea of restoring peace. 'What you want to do, Mr. Hoar, is to suspend the what-do-you-call-it' - meaning the writ of habeas corpus.
When it was learned that Sheridan was ordered to New Orleans, 'The Picayune' commented that 'if there is one man more responsible than another for the misfortunes of Louisiana, that man is General Phil Sheridan,' and the 'New Orleans Times' saltily observed that 'as a soother of political difficulties and corrector of political abuses. . . he is anything but a success.'
Events thereafter moved with the rapidity of a screen drama. The Democrats in the Legislature, catching their enemy napping, elected Wiltz, a strong man, Speaker, and organized the House. Within the chamber there was no confusion; in the corridors milled a tumultuous crowd. To clear the corridors, the Speaker summoned General De Trobriand, who appeared with soldiers and fixed bayonets, to announce his purpose to eject five members who had been seated. Thus did Charles I come to America. Wiltz declared he would yield to nothing but force. Clearly embarrassed, by the' dirty work' he was called upon to do, the General hoped this would not be required.
'I am thankful to you, General, for that,' said the Speaker. 'I recognize in you a gentleman and an officer, and while we submit to the United States Government, it is my duty to ask you to use force. Until then the five men refuse to leave the room.'
Thereupon the General ordered his soldiers to put the Radical Secretary in the chair - escorted there by Federal soldiers with bayonets. Wiltz rose to the occasion with the dignity of a Hampden, protesting against 'the invasion of our halls by soldiers of the United States with drawn bayonets and loaded muskets'; and concluded: 'I solemnly declare that Louisiana has ceased to be a sovereign State; that it is no longer a republican government; and I call on the representatives of the people to retire with me before this show of arms.'
The Democrats withdrew, to organize a legislature elsewhere; soldiers guarded the State House with cannon; and Sheridan spurred himself into the picture with the clatter of a cavalryman. He sent his notorious telegram to Washington, reeking with partisanship, packed with misrepresentations of conditions, with the suggestion that, if Grant would proclaim the protesting people 'banditti,' 'no further action need be taken except that which would devolve upon me.'
No such shocking proposal, made with the rattle of a saber, and aimed at the liberties of a people, had ever been made by a responsible American official, civil or military.'
VI
With the Nation stunned, the reaction quickly came in passionate protests and unmeasured denunciation. Here was a propaganda telegram charging that "twenty-five hundred people had been murdered in the State since 1868, and a plan to declare the most substantial people of two States bandits, to be dealt with by military commissions. 'Since blood must flow in defense of their liberties,' said a Southern paper, 'then let the streets of the Crescent City again be the scene of the conflict of patriots against the most infamous usurpation.' The 'New Orleans Bulletin' pictured Grant 'grasping his sword to play the part of Caesar.' Business men from the North, East, West met at the St. Charles Hotel and wired Belknap a denunciation of the charges. Clergymen of all sects and denominations signed a protest against the slander. The Board of Underwriters in resolutions denounced it as a lie. The Cotton Exchange, the Merchants' Exchange Association, the Chamber of Commerce joined in the protest.
The twenty-five hundred murders were figments of the fancy. Practically all political murders had antedated 1868, most murders had been of blacks by blacks 'instigated by whiskey and jealousy,' and in the forty-one murders in the most unruly parish in seven years but three negroes had been killed by white men.
The North, too, rose in protest, and conservative Republicans were dismayed. 'This is the darkest day for the Republican Party and its hopes I have seen since the war,' wrote Garfield in his diary. 'To march a file of soldiers into the Representative Hall of a State. . . will not be tolerated by the American people,' he wrote a correspondent. 'The most outrageous subversion of parliamentary government by military force ever attempted in this country,' said 'The Nation,' savagely attacking the 'banditti' message. Comparing Sheridan's act to that of Claverhouse's dragoons, it declared that 'at no time in the present century would a general in any country in Europe, except Russia, have dared to send such a dispatch to his government.' Bowles, of the' Springfield Republican,' excoriated Grant for sending soldiers 'on a revolutionary, treasonable errand.' Mass meetings were hastily called at Faneuil Hall, Boston, and Pike's Opera House, Cincinnati; where resolutions denouncing government by bayonets were adopted.
But the climax of protest was the meeting at Cooper Union, New York. Ten thousand outraged people clamored for admission before the doors were opened, and crowded in to the peril of life and limb. William Cullen Bryant, presiding, shaming Sheridan, thought he should have replied to the order so to act by saying that he would' tear off his epaulets and break his sword and fling the fragments into the Potomac, sooner than go upon so impious an errand.' More tremendous was the philippic of William M. Evarts, leader of the American Bar, and a foremost Republican, merciless in placing the responsibility directly upon Grant. 'I have observed,' he said, a growing disposition on the part of the depositories of political power to separate themselves more and more from the popular support of the party that gave them their ,authority.'
Never had the public turned so ferociously upon Grant.
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| Republican Party Presidential Election Fraud of 1876: click for larger image |
VII
Meanwhile, a mighty struggle was on in the Senate. The fight was led brilliantly by Thurman, with Morton, more savage than usual, directing the defense, and forced to fight his fellow partisans. The galleries were tense when Thurman, in fighting mood, rose to offer a resolution calling upon Grant for a report on the strange proceedings. To Thurman it was an opportunity to impress the public with the threat to civil liberty; to Morton, a chance to revive war hates; to Conkling, assisting Morton, an occasion to display his cleverness in a desperate cause. No sooner, had Thurman's resolution been read than Conkling suavely suggested adding to the call- 'if not incompatible with the public interest.' Thurman was thunderstruck. 'It is simply impossible to conceive of any injury to the public interest that can result from the President informing us what took place in New Orleans yesterday.' Then Morton offered his amendment, asking Grant for information 'in regard to the existence of armed organizations in. . . Louisiana hostile to the government of the State and intent on overcoming such government by force. Utterly reckless in his statements, bent on diverting attention from the issue, Morton surpassed himself in the absurdity of his assertions. 'As many men murdered in Louisiana for political causes in the last six years as fall in many modern wars,' he said.
When, a few days later, Grant's Message appeared, it was evident that Morton had inspired it. Utterly ignoring the solemn issue of the military outrage, the President plunged into charges as reckless as Morton's. Again Sheridan's twenty-five hundred murdered negroes marched in procession. 'The Nation' voiced the popular reaction in its demand for proof, and claimed the privilege of being 'somewhat incredulous about these appalling murders just before election.' The debate dragged along, some, like Conkling, reasoning that Sheridan was really upholding the civil power; some, like Sherman, defending Sheridan's monstrous proposal on the ground that he was not a lawyer; while Morton was constantly interjecting charges of murder against Democrats. The feature of the debate was the masterful constitutional argument and philippic of Thurman, who denounced the Message. 'Nothing so full of errors of statement and of law, nothing so remarkable for omissions of material facts ever emanated from the Executive of the Republic,' he said.
In the end, Morton, standing lash in hand, held his restless majority to its party duty and Grant was voted an endorsement of his action. It was an historic day for the Senate, which formally went on record as finding nothing in the military invasion' contrary to the spirit of Republican institutions,' and voted down Thurman's amendment to the effect that the Senate's action did not mean 'to approve the military interference of the United States troops in the organization of the Legislature of Louisiana.' By a vote of 32'to 24 it declared that it meant just that - nothing less.
But it really meant nothing of the sort. Pinchback; despite Morton's efforts, never was to be seated, and...the Wheeler Compromise was to restore the Democrats expelled from the Louisiana House by bayonets, and thus give that body to their party, while continuing Kellogg in office until January, 1877, immune from impeachment. This, together with the defeat of the Force Bill, was something of a triumph.
But to Louisianans it meant little. The taxes continued to drive once prosperous business men to the verge of beggary, and women, even in towns, could not venture on the streets without a pistol. And Nordhoff still saw negro legislators 'driving magnificent horses, seated in stylish equipages, and wearing diamond breastpins.'
Louisiana was still in bondage, under the shadow of the sword.
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