BAYONETS IN THE UNITED STATES COURT ROOM.

555

of deputy United States marshals. Warmoth went there, in company with ninety-five other delegates, his adherents, and found, he said, "the main entrance and the gates closed, barred and bolted, and guarded by a large force of armed men, colored and white, mostly employés in the custom house and letter-carriers of the post-office, called deputy United States marshals.” On the second floor of the building in which the court room was situated they were "confronted by a line of United States troops armed with muskets with bayonets fixed-some one hundred and ten men in all." They were refused admission to the room; and so Warmoth and his fellow-delegates retired, and held a convention of their own.

There was also a struggle over the office of president of the senate- - the lieutenant-governor, Dunn, a colored man, having died in November, 1871. The governor, a few days after Dunn's death, summoned the senators to meet in extra session on the 6th of December, for the purpose of electing a presiding officer. A majority of the senators were of the governor's party, while a majority of the house belonged to the custom-house faction, and meditated an impeachment of Warmoth. As, in case of the governor's removal, the president of the senate would succeed him in the executive office, it was important to secure that office; and Warmoth managed, not without suspicion of purchasing at least one vote, to have his candidate, Pinchback, a colored man, chosen. A proceeding in the sixth circuit court revealed the fact that a tin box purporting to contain $15,000, had been deposited in the Louisiana Savings Bank, with a written agreement that the money was to be delivered to a certain Senator Lewis, in consideration of his voting for Pinchback. Lewis was, however, cheated out of his reward, the contents of the box having been delivered, without his knowledge, to one Dr. Southworth, another political adventurer of that era. There is little doubt that Governor Warmoth was cognizant of and a party to the bribery, as well as being a party to the further baseness of defrauding Lewis of the bribe.

A further bone of contention between the two factions was the speakership of the house. George W. Carter, an officer in the custom house, had been elected speaker at the session preceding that which opened on the 1st of January, 1872. On the second day of this latter session a resolution of confidence in him was passed by a vote of forty-nine to forty-five. But the next day the house refused to approve the journal, by a vote of forty-nine to forty-six. This was a test vote, and showed that the Carter party was in a minority. Great confusion followed. A motion to declare the speaker's chair vacant was made and declared out of order. Carter and his friends saw that they were in a minority; and Carter, it is asserted by the governor's friends, promised that, if the house would adjourn, he would resign the next day. The house did adjourn; but, instead of Carter resigning, at noon the next day the governor, lieutenant-governor, four senators, and eighteen members of the house, all opponents of the custom-house faction, were

arrested by United States deputy marshals, on writs issued by United States Commissioner Woolfley, who had been a clerk under Marshal Packard, on a charge of conspiracy to resist the execution of the laws of the United States. They were soon, however, released on bail. This proceeding, perfectly outrageous in its character, accomplished its purpose for the moment. The Warmoth members of the house were thrown into temporary confusion, and nearly all of them left the hall- their withdrawal leaving the house without a quorum. On the fourth day, with only fifty-one members present (claimed to be less than a quorum), the Carter party in a most summary manner unseated seven of the Warmoth men, giving their places to antiWarmoth men. The Carterites were thus once more placed in the majority. As to the senate, it was the purpose of Packard, Casey, and their friends to prevent a quorum appearing; and so fifteen of the senators who belonged to that faction were secreted in the custom house for some time, and were then placed on board the United States revenue cutter, Wilderness, where they were kept from Monday night till the following Friday, being furnished with provisions, wine, and whiskey.

The legislature having, in this condition of things, adjourned over, Warmoth immediately, without giving notice to his enemies, issued a call for his legislature to meet the same day at 4.30 o'clock. The call, or proclamation, was kept a profound secret; and the legislature, Warmoth's portion of it, was in session before Carter's followers were made aware of it. This procedure was, of course, wholly illegal; but it was a less flagrant outrage upon constitutional liberty than the other faction had been guilty of. There being no quorum in the senate, the Warmoth senators adjourned. In the house, the Warmoth men mustered sixty-five members, a constitutional majority, and they proceeded at once to undo the work of the Carter-Packard faction. The office of speaker was declared vacant, and O. H. Brewster was elected to fill the vacancy. Carter was voted out of the speakership by a unanimous vote, and was then expelled from the house by a vote of forty-nine to five. The house then adjourned until the next day.

In the meantime, a large number of policemen were appointed to guard the Mechanics' Institute, which was used as the state capitol, and to protect the governor and party. The police were heavily armed. Carter attempted to enter the building, but the police, acting under orders, excluded him. He and his friends then attempted to organize as a house in another hall; but, failing to obtain a quorum, most of his friends joined the majority in the Mechanics' Institute.

Pending these anarchical proceedings, the administration at Washington, in deference to public sentiment, was constrained to order the commander of the Wilderness to "unload"- to borrow the expressive phrase of General Grant, used by him on another occasion. The cutter was accordingly brought to the city, and the recusant senators disembarked. They, how

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE FACTION DEFEATED.

557 ever, refused to join the senate while there was an armed force around the capitol. Hatred of Warmoth gave them the sympathy of the people of New Orleans; and on the 20th, Carter was emboldened to issue a proclamation declaring his intention to take forcible possession of the state capitol, and inviting the citizens to join him. He accordingly raised several thousand men and took the field for the purpose of executing his threat; but the interposition of General Emory, the United States military commander, who had received orders from Washington to prevent a conflict, put a stop to the enterprise.

Under these depressing influences the spirit of the custom-house faction gave way, and the standard of rebellion against the state government was abandoned. On the same day, January 22, which was marked by the defeat or abandonment of Carter's military venture, the absent senators joined those of the Warmoth faction; and when it was declared, by a vote of seventeen to sixteen, that the election of Pinchback in December, 1871, at the extra session of the senate was legal and valid, some of the followers of Carter belonging to the house of representatives also joined that body, thus establishing an ample quorum, with a large Warmoth majority. The expulsion of Carter and the election of Brewster as speaker were promptly confirmed.

These extraordinary and exciting events, marking and growing out of the struggle between two reckless factions for the control of the state government and for the opportunities of plunder which such control could give, are set forth in great detail in the testimony taken by a select committee of the Federal House of Representatives, appointed under a resolution of the 15th of January, 1872, "to inquire into the origin and character of the difficulties which have arisen between the government and the officials of the State of Louisiana and the United States officials in said state." The committee consisted of Glenni W. Scofield, of Pennsylvania, George W. McCrary, of Wisconsin, H. Boardman Smith, of New-York, R. Milton Speer, of Georgia, and Stevenson Archer, of Maryland. The two first-named members concurred in making a report indicating that the parties to the controversy were actuated by none but honorable motives, and that their violations of law were merely the offspring of excessive zeal for liberty. They did not even hint that the Federal officials involved in the attempt to overthrow the state government deserved rebuke, if not removal; and they recommended no action on the part of Congress. Mr. H. Boardman Smith made a more elaborate report, directed principally to the vindication of the wisdom of Congress in passing the Reconstruction acts, and to the defense of the course pursued by the custom-house faction. But the report made by the two Democratic members of the committee, Messrs. Speer and Archer, was a fair and thorough analysis of the occurrences; and it is chiefly from it that the foregoing summary has been made up. It concluded thus: "The committee has no

power to relieve the people of Louisiana. Under a fair and honest election they will relieve themselves."

Warmoth was thoroughly unscrupulous, and still it is difficult to avoid a degree of sympathy with him in his struggle with the United States offcials, whose equally unscrupulous and dishonorable experience was winked at and seconded by the national Administration. They were allowed to employ the United States Army in supporting one wing of the Republican party to defraud another of its equal rights in the convention; and the same favored faction was allowed to use the custom house and the revenue cutter for the execution of their unlawful schemes. Worst of all, this faction, headed by United States officers, by Packard, the United States marshal, by Casey, the collector of the customs, and by Lowell, the postmaster of New Orleans, was countenanced, and therefore aided and abetted, by the Administration at Washington in the treasonable act of arresting the governor of Louisiana.

The state constitution and acts passed by the legislature had conferred upon Warmoth, as governor, arbitrary power in the regulation of elections. It was he who appointed the registrars and poll-keepers, and was authorized to prohibit citizens from challenging voters. The constitution gave to registered voters the right to vote in any parish or in any part of a parish in the state, after a residence of ten days; and the effect of exemption from challenge was, therefore, equivalent to allowing anybody to vote who was willing to swear that he was a citizen of the state. Such voters could vote at as many places also as they could reach in the course of the two or more days during which the election continued. It is a well-known fact, that during periods of high political excitement there are many vicious characters in every community who are little scrupulous in the observance of oaths restrictive of suffrage. It is equally true that demagogues have little difficulty in persuading the illiterate and inconsiderate that it is their duty to vote as often as possible in support of what they are taught to believe a good cause. When laws become lawless contrivances to defeat the ends of justice, it is not surprising that the people resort to lawless expedients for securing their rights.

Warmoth, who was responsible for much of the lavish expenditure of the government, was still ambitious of being thought a reformer, while his opponents in the party, equally anxious to throw off the responsibility for plundering the people, joined the Democratic outcry against him. In his message of Jan. 1, 1872, he exposed a degree of legislative profligacy at the preceding session of sixty days, which exceeds anything in the annals of American state legislation, unless it may have been rivaled or surpassed by the carpet-baggers and field-hands of South Carolina, who have been so graphically described by Mr. Pike, in his Prostrate State. The Louisiana law-givers, in the brief period named, managed to expend in salaries, mile

ENORMOUS LEGISLATIVE EXPENSES.

559 age, printing, stationery, and other comforts, the sum of $958,956. Governor Warmoth, in his message, comments very freely upon this extravagance, and speculates upon the ways in which the money went. He says that the expenses of the general assembly for salary for the sixty days' session, and for mileage, even at the enormous rate of twenty cents per mile each way, could not have been more than $100,000; and that the legitimate contingent expenses of both houses ought not to have exceeded $25,000. The excess, $830,956, was squandered, he said, in the payment of extra mileage, of fictitious per diem of salaries of an enormous corps of useless clerks, and of imaginary expenses of committees authorized to sit during the vacation and to travel throughout the state and into Texas, and in a hundred different ways. The enrollment committee of the house had over eighty clerks, most of whom were under pay during the whole session at eight dollars per day, while there were only one hundred and twenty bills passed, and while eight or ten clerks could have performed the whole work of the committee.

A comparison of the legislative expenses for 1872 with those of former years will illustrate the growth of corruption as a result of reconstruction. In 1857 the legislative expenditure was $100,000; in 1858, $85,000, and in 1859 and 1860, $100,000 each. In 1861, which was a year of revolution and extraordinary expenditure, the cost of legislation was $175,000. In 1864 it was $75,000; in 1865, $225,000; in 1866, $170,000, and in 1867, $200,000. In 1868 it leaped up to $250,000; in 1869, to $380,000; in 1870, to $593,000; in 1871, to $647,000, and in 1872, to $958,956. But this climax of legislative knavery cannot be fully appreciated except in association with the other fact that it was achieved by the party which claimed to be inspired by high moral ideas and by the most disinterested love of universal liberty, and whose special mission it was to elevate and educate the down-trodden negro race.

Governor Warmoth obtained an injunction restraining the auditor from the payment of the outstanding legislative warrants, on the ground that the vouchers on which they had been issued were fraudulent. An auditor was appointed by the court to investigate the matter, and the result was the discovery that, in many cases, the original amounts of the warrants had been fraudulently increased. The warrants issued in excess of the appropriations were ascertained to amount to about $240,000. Warrants amounting to $40,000 had been issued to committees and their clerks for mileage and expenses in traveling to and from distant places, when their journals showed that they had not been absent from the city. It was also shown that a regular system of forgery had been practiced by brokers dealing in these warrants. The figures written by the warrant clerk had been changed to larger ones. The names of the officers whose duty it was to sign warrants had