custom almost immemorial, would involve a joint canvass of the state and discussion of the issues by the opposing candidates. The chief duties of the Guards would be to appear in military array at various places of public speaking, under pretense of protecting the Republicans from "rebel" assaults, and in the freedom of speech. On the 6th of March, Wm. G. Brownlow, now acting as Governor, candidate for re-election and Commander-in-Chief of the Tennessee State Guards, began work by issuing Order No. 1. This order called for the enlistment of troops to serve for a period of three years, unless sooner discharged. To effect this enlistment he commissioned certain persons as captains, and authorized each of them to enlist one hundred able-bodied men, who, when enrolled, should elect their other officers, who were to be commissioned when the captain should certify the same. Twenty-five of each company were to be mounted to act as scouts, etc. Every officer and private was to take an oath, set out in full in the order, before entering the service. Discipline was enjoined, and trespassing upon private property prohibited. Under these captains commissions twelve companies were organized and the command of the force turned over to General Jos. A. Cooper in a subsequent order, in which the Commander-in-Chief is pleased to say, that, "while he has no difficulty in raising companies, there will not be called into active service more than twelve or fourteen companies, all told, unless the rebellious conduct of the people make it necessary to increase the force." "The length of time this force will be continued in the service," he said, "will depend altogether on the conduct of the people."

General Cooper was one of the defeated candidates for Congress in 1865, in the Knoxville district, represented by Maynard. His ability was commensurate with the character and extent of his command, and the object to be obtained by his campaigns. The actual service of the troops consisted mainly in going from place to place in the state and showing themselves, the infantry traveling on railroads, and reaching no other points than they were thus enabled to reach; while the horsemen took care of interior seats of radical weakness.

Upon the whole, their conduct and bearing were quite as good as could, under the circumstances, be expected.

They were charged with unnecessarily shooting only a few citizens, and for these came in with pleas of full justification. They engaged in broils sometimes that did not lead to bloodshed. One of the notable triumphs of this heroic service was the riding a too free spoken citizen on a rail. It was alleged that they extended their jurisdiction to a case of domestic infelicity, and ordered a divorce from the bonds of matrimony. But the crimes committed by these licensed disturbers of the public-repose were not nearly so many or so flagrant as might have been expected.

Governor Brownlow was afflicted with a nervous disease, a kind of palsy, which prevented easy locomotion, and from this cause he was prevented from making a canvass of the state with his competitor. He, therefore, issued an address to the people, which he procured to be published in many of the most widely circulated papers in Tennessee. This address was a review of the events of the past two years, and a defense of his administration and of all the radical legislation by the General Assembly. Little or no attention was paid to state economies and the extravagant expenditure of the public moneys, and the issue of additional bonds was ignored.

In his canvass for Congress in 1865, Etheridge had expressed in strong terms a very decided opinion of the irregularities attending the inauguration of the State Government, and also concerning the authority of Mr. Lincoln to set the slaves free by a stroke of his pen. Indeed so pronounced were these opinions and their expression, that a squad of Federal soldiers was sent from the military post at Columbus, Ky., to arrest and convey him out of the state; thus relieving him from a continuance of his labors in the political harvest of that year. His nomination as the competitor of Governor Brownlow, was a step by "the enemy," which the Governor construed into a purpose to precipitate a conflict upon him, which would inevitably lead to scenes of turbulence and bloodshed. In this address he was particular to say he would allow the greatest freedom of speech, even to the severest criticism of himself and his public acts, and

those of his party friends; but he concluded in emphasized letters, "I do not consider it the duty of the State Guards to stand quietly by and hear men excite the mob spirit by denouncing the Federal and State Governments, counseling resistence to the courts and setting aside their decisions by mob violence."

This allusion to the decisions of the courts, referred to a decision of the Supreme Court of the state, delivered on the Third day of May declaring the constitutional validity of the Franchise Law of May 3, 1866, (Ridley vs. Sherbrook, 3 Cold. 56, from Rutherford County.) Any violation of this law or that of February 25, 1867, amending it, by improper registration or voting would accordingly be resistance to the courts and setting aside their decisions."

With this address and the registration machinery in his hands with power to correct any mistake, the Governor was content to remain at his home in Knoxville, where he had retired after the final adjournment of the Legislature, until his duties again called him to the Capital.

The election passed off throughout the state without notable disturbances anywhere. Brownlow received 74,484 votes, Etheridge 22,548; total, 97,032; majority for Browlow, 51,936. The Senate was unanimously radical, and the House contained but a half dozen Conservatives, with 12 of the Senators and 28 Representatives that were members of the last General Assembly. The entire Congressional delegation was radical, as follows: R. R. Butler, Horace Maynard, Wm. B. Stokes, James Mullins, Jno. Trimble, Sam'l M. Arnell, Isaac R. Hawkins and David A. Nunn. There was now certainly no cause for further apprehension or distrust, nor further want of assurance of power on the part of the radical administra

tion.

In 1867, one Alden who had drifted to Nashville in times of commotion, and become Commissioner of Registration, had himself, by the aid of Governor Brownlow's militia, elected to the Mayoralty, his opponent withdrawing from the contest under protest.

The Mayor, of course, brought with him to the city ad

ministration a council that could be relied on to carry out his wishes and plans, and the chief offices were filled by men of his own type-strangers to the people and utterly indifferent to their interest or welfare. This band of freebooters seized the treasury with an avidity difficult to describe, and used it with a greed, only to be compared to hungry hogs at a flowing swill. No old resident was allowed to fill any position which involved the handling of money in important sums.

Public taxes were collected, but their amount was no guide to the expenditures. These were on a scale of magnificent liberality. The Mayor and the cabal of official friends he had gathered around him, soon came to be designated by the public as the "Alden Ring," whose style of living became suddenly grand and imposing. When the treasury was not supplied with currency by the tax-payers, checks were drawn in the name, often, of fictitious persons, payable to bearer, and sold to the street shaver of notes for any price they would bring. These checks were issued, in many cases, without consideration. As they multiplied, and the likelihood of payment decreased, the market quotations for them declined. Bonds were also issued, and when checks did not serve, bonds were substituted.

The extent of the peculation and inexcusable waste of the public money during the year-and-three-quarters they held sway, will never be fully or accurately known. The present Recorder (1890) estimates the amount still unpaid and ascribable to the "ring administration" consumption and waste, at $700,000.

The second election of Alden, 1868, was scarcely to be called an expression of popular will. He selected the members of both branches of the Council; and his second year became more intolerable than the first. It was cumulative in its oppressiveness, and a helpless public foresaw a catastrophe when the day of reckoning should come. A Taxpayers' Association was organized, and methods and measures of relief discussed in their meetings. Halls were secured and people were invited to hear speeches by able and fearless men, exposing the enormity of the situation; and the city was soon

in a glowing heat of indignation. Finally, application was made to the Chancery Court, at Nashville, on grounds deemed tenable, for relief. That tribunal interposed by suspending the functions of the Mayor and placing the general management of affairs in the hands of a Receiver, about the first of July, 1869. John M. Bass, a man universally known and esteemed, and eminently competent, was made Receiver.

Three months after this juridico-angelic visit, the "Alden ring" had dissolved. The cohesion of public plunder was sadly lacking. The members of that cabal of plunderers had packed their carpet-bags, shaken the plentiful dust of Nashville from their feet and departed for other fields of enterprise. At the succeeding election the administration fell into the hands of a merchant and leading business man, K. J. Morris, as Mayor, and a council containing the names of men whose faces were familiar in business walks, and whose character for integrity was established. The task of restoring affairs to order and regularity, was Herculean. The unauthorized checks, so far as known, were litigated; but at last the city was forced to pay every evidence of debt issued in its name by the "Alden ring," and the costs of litigation through the Courts of the state was money only thrown after that already gone. Such was the illustrated working of the "Franchise Machine" under favorable conditions.

The Legislature elected in August met on the 7th of October, 1867.

The power given by the last Legislature to annul registrations, and remove and appoint Commissioners, had been freely used both before and after the last election by the Governor, who in this way, as in 1865, revised the popular vote, and decided what registrations had been irregular or fraudulent. But the surreptitious manner of its passage, it having been sandwiched into a bill about homesteads, bills of costs, natural born children, etc., had excited so much criticism that the present Assembly enacted a law, defining the powers of the Governor in all these matters, and confirming all acts, proclamations of annulment, removals and appointments made by him since the 8th of March, 1867, whether