also been forged in many cases. It seems that none of the guilty parties were brought to justice.

The mutual charges made by Warmoth and Carter, the leaders of the two factions into which the Republicans of Louisiana were divided, will serve to illustrate the political morality of the times. Carter charged that Warmoth had come to Louisiana poor, and that he had made a "big fortune" and created a "big debt" for the state. Warmoth retorted that Carter had supported all the bills making large appropriations of state bonds, and. that he got his quid pro quo in each and every case. The governor made similar charges against Charles W. Lowell and S. B. Packard, and against James B. Casey, of whom Warmoth said: "My friend Jim Casey is a clever fellow. He hasn't sense enough to be a bad fellow. A bad fellow must have some character. He hasn't any." Carter, the leader of the opposition to Warmoth, was equally free in the use of epithets. He said in a speech in February, 1872: "Louisiana is afflicted with worse laws and worse administrators thereof than can be found in ten states of the Union. Henry Clay Warmoth is the Boss Tweed of Louisiana, except that that amiable villain, with all his infamies, is a gentleman and a saint compared with the unscrupulous despot who fills the executive chair of this state."

It can scarcely be thought necessary to give details of the bribery and cor'ruption of which the testimony taken by investigating committees affords super-abundant proof. Indeed, there is so much of it that one hardly knows where to begin or where to leave off the recital. Warmoth seems to have "covered his tracks," as the phrase is, better than others. He went to New Orleans penniless at the close of the war. He was a native of Illinois, entered the volunteer service in Missouri, and was dismissed by General Grant, on a charge of circulating exaggerated accounts of the Union losses at Vicksburg; but, this charge proving to be groundless, he was restored by Mr. Lincoln. He was in Texas for a short time, where he was indicted for embezzlement and appropriating government cotton; but, no prosecutor appearing, he was discharged. This was before he located in New Orleans, where he was elected to Congress under President Johnson's reconstruction policy. It is said that the voters at the election each contributed half a dollar to pay his expenses to Washington, which fact would imply that he had not been very successful in cotton speculations in Texas. When the committee reported in 1872, Warmoth was estimated to be worth from half a million to a million dollars. He testified that he had made more than $100,000 the first year. Casey, Packard, Carter, Lowell, Herwig, and all the prominent leaders were interested in procuring contracts or charters by which the state or the city was to be robbed and themselves enriched; and these corrupt advantages were procured by bribery. Lowell, the postmaster of New Orleans, was speaker of the state house of representatives in 1868, and voted for most of the obnoxious measures.

CARPET-BAGGERS' MONOPOLY OF OFFICES.

561

Senator Ray, a prominent supporter of the custom-house faction, got through an appropriation for a railroad from Vicksburg to Monroe amounting to $546,000, and he received $70,000 for revising and codifying the laws. He was deeply interested in the Louisiana Levee Company, was its champion in the senate, and called the previous question by which discussion was cut off. When the senate adjourned, he became president of the company, with a salary of $10,000 per annum. The act of incorporation authorized the building of fifteen million cubic yards of levees at the enormous price of sixty cents per cubic yard. Herwig, Casey's deputy, was also a senator; for it was a cardinal principle with carpet-baggers in all the reconstructed states to monopolize at least two offices. Herwig was interested in the "act to incorporate the New Orleans Shed Company," which occupied the levee front from Common to Poydras streets, and was invested with power to impose a tariff on commerce, like the Algerine pirates on the Barbary coast, or the noble German pirates on the Rhine. Casey, the collector, was also interested in this piratical scheme; but Mr. H. Boardman Smith, in his elaborate apology for the custom-house faction, put in the extenuating circumstances that some of the most "respectable and distinguished Democratic leaders of the state were implicated in the same scheme. The fact that Casey had such"distinguished and respectable" Democratic confederates in the scheme of levying these contributions upon commerce, exonerated him from reproach in the estimation of Mr. Congressman Smith.

Carter was an apostatizing preacher, and ex-Confederate colonel, who, as a last resort, turned loyal patriot and became the leader of the anti-Warmoth faction in the assembly. He also had an interest in the Louisiana Levee Company, which was given him, according to Warmoth, in consideration of the services which he rendered to the bill as speaker. He also enjoyed as a sinecure the attorneyship of the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas Railroad Company, at a salary of $10,000 per annum. Warmoth says that the contract for his employment was made with Carter by the company after he had kept in his pocket for thirty or sixty days a bill which had passed the legislature almost unanimously, providing for subscription to two millions and a half of its stock in lieu of indorsement of its second mortgage bonds; and that immediately after this contract was made, by which he became the attorney of the company, the bill was signed by him. Carter was also the paid attorney of the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad Company, receiving $5,000 per annum.

Packard, the governor stated, caused to be prepared and introduced in the legislature the Nicolson Pavement bill, which would have cost about one and a quarter million of dollars. The Democratic members of the committee, Speer and Archer, stated that Casey was already proved to have been interested in, and the holder of, a corruption fund of $18,000, being part of a $50,000 fund raised by himself and others to bribe the legislature to pass a bill in which he was named as an incorporator.

Such were the tried and trusted friends and supporters in Louisiana of President Grant's administration.

At the general elections in November, 1872, for President, congressmen, legislature, and state officers, Pinchback, the colored lieutenant-governor, deserted Warmoth and formed a coalition or fusion with the custom-house faction. The election took place on the 4th of November, the day previous to the elections in the other states, and resulted in victory for each party, according to the decisions made by the two returning boards. According to the count of the Warmoth returning board, Greeley received 66,467 votes, and Grant 59,975. According to the custom-house or Kellogg board, Greeley received 57,029 votes, and Grant 71,663. McEnery, the Democratic or liberal candidate for governor, according to the custom-house count, received only 54,079 votes, while Kellogg received 72,890. But according to the Warmoth returning board, McEnery had a majority of 7,000. The custom-house board gave seats in the senate to twenty-eight Republicans and eight Democrats, or Fusionists, and gave seats in the house to seventy-seven Republicans and thirty-two Fusionists.

The Fusionists claimed that they had elected a majority of the legislature, and that body met in the city hall; the Mechanics' Institute, which was the temporary state capitol, being occupied by General Emory in the interest of Packard, Casey, and Kellogg. The Fusionist legislature petitioned the President to withdraw the military force which had taken possession of the state capitol for the purpose of awing and restraining the action of the governor, but the President refused to grant their petition. In other words, he assumed the responsibility for the overthrow of the state government by his subordinates.

The Packard legislature met in the capitol on the 9th of December, 1872, although the 1st of January was the day fixed in the constitution. Pinchback, the president of the senate, claimed to hold over in that capacity. The house, Lowell the postmaster presiding as speaker, immediately proceeded to impeach Governor Warmoth for "high crimes and misdemeanors," and thereupon Pinchback assumed the office of governor. Judge Elmore, one of the state judges, issued a writ forbidding Pinchback to take charge of the executive office; but a dispatch from United States AttorneyGeneral Williams assured Pinchback that his authority was recognized by President Grant, and that the state would be protected from disorder and violence. It was not the habit of President Grant to wait upon "the law's delay," or upon the slow deliberations of courts and legislatures, when an order from headquarters or a rescript from the White House could dispose of the matter in a moment. Mr. Ogden, the attorney-general of the state, and Mr. McEnery, who claimed that he had been elected governor and held Governor Warmoth's certificate to that effect, petitioned President Grant to suspend his decision in the premises until the facts could be laid before him; but no attention was paid to their request.

PROTEST OF THE TAX-PAYERS.

563

A meeting of the people-the property-holders and tax-payers-appointed a delegation of one hundred of their number to proceed to Washington and lay their grievances before the President. This was on the 10th of December, 1872. Mr. McEnery telegraphed to the President, asking him to delay the recognition of either government until that committee could reach Washington and lay the case before him and Congress. To his request he received a reply, signed by Attorney-General Williams, in these words: "Your visit with one hundred citizens will be unavailing so far as the President is concerned. His decision is made and will not be changed, and the sooner it is acquiesced in, the sooner good order and peace will be restored."

The custom-house returning board had no official returns of the election, and had substituted therefor as the basis of its action, rumors and unauthenticated documents. It had counted as so many votes the affidavits of all persons, real or pretended, who declared that they had been wrongfully denied the privilege of registration. A government thus set up by fraud, by President Grant's civil officials, President Grant upheld by United States soldiers. The legislature was worthy of its origin. Of the 140 members of the two houses, say the citizens' committee, sixty-eight were of African descent, most of whom were totally illiterate; and from day to day during the session members were expelled or unseated, their places being given to contestants, until few of the Democratic opposition were left.

A public meeting of the tax-payers, irrespective of party, was held in New Orleans on the 3d of January, to express opposition to the Pinchback government, and to support that of McEnery. A committee which was appointed by the meeting issued an address calling upon the people of the city and state to sustain the legislature (meaning that returned by the Warmoth board) which was about to meet, by giving it their moral support. Pinchback issued a proclamation declaring that Governor Kellogg would be inaugurated, and that the Republican legislature would meet at the appointed time, but that "no pretended governor and no pretended general assembly" should convene and disturb the public peace.

Pinchback had reason to count on national aid in carrying out this declaration; for the President, only three weeks before, had given him the assurance that his government was recognized and would be sustained. But he was doomed to disappointment. The McEnery legislature was quietly organized, being surrounded and protected by the United States troops that were called out to preserve the peace between the rival parties without showing favor to either. The people also turned out in large force to defend the Democratic legislature; but, as Pinchback made no effort to enforce his proclamation, they returned quietly to their homes. It is improbable that General Emory would have failed to sustain Pinchback and to repress the McEnery party if he had not received instructions to that effect; and it is to be inferred, therefore, that President Grant found it necessary, or

prudent, to abandon his decision announced in the letter of Attorney-General Williams.

On the 14th of January, the two governors were inaugurated amid great excitement, Kellogg at the state capitol and McEnery at Lafayette Square. The Metropolitan police and the United States troops were called out for the preservation of peace and order.

On the same day, January 14th, the United States Senate adopted a resolution of inquiry into the condition of affairs in Louisiana, with instructions to report whether there were any existing state government there. The conclusion arrived at by the committee was that, unless the election were held to be absolutely void for frauds, McEnery and his associates in state offices, and the persons certified as members of the legislature by the De Feriet or Warmoth board, ought to be recognized as the legal government of the state; and that there seemed to be no escape from the alternative, that the McEnery government must be recognized by Congress, or that Congress must provide for a re-election. And the committee argued that under the clause of the Constitution which provides that the United States shall guarantee to every state a republican form of government, the power to order a new election existed in Congress. A bill to that effect was accordingly introduced, but it failed to become a law; and affairs in Louisiana were allowed to drift as they might, under the government of Kellogg and the legislature manufactured by the custom-house, or Pinchback, returning board.

Encouraged by the failure of Congress to pass an act authorizing a new election, President Grant returned to his first love, which was the customhouse governor and legislature. This government had enacted rigid laws for the collection of the taxes, more than two millions of which were said to be in arrears, and the militia was to be called out to aid the tax-gatherers. On the other hand, McEnery and his legislature were far from surrendering their pretensions, and on the 15th of February he issued a proclamation forbidding the payment of taxes to the Kellogg faction, and on the 27th he issued another proclamation ordering an enrollment of the militia. These movements of the Democratic governor were backed up by a mass-meeting held in New Orleans on the 1st of March. The whites had a large majority in that city, possessing nearly all its wealth and intelligence, so that the Kellogg movement could not have been maintained a single day but for the support received from Federal bayonets. This mass-meeting adopted resolutions sustaining McEnery and calling on the President to withdraw the troops, or else to re-establish martial law.

On the 6th of March, an effort was made by the people to seize the police stations, which was attended with considerable bloodshed, and was defeated by the Metropolitan police. McEnery disavowed this act of the mob as premature and unauthorized. This failure, however, emboldened the Kellogg party to retaliate by the capture, on the same day, of Odd Fel