" " * <:> I*- »T.'\/ "o^-?^-?/ V,'.^\/ "o^-^-'/ V -?>:^ %: ^v^ •/•.' ^^0^ 4 o ■a/ %<> s ' * * ' \> o V d> «, '■ft "?^^ ,< • "^^ ^ •..n....^ '^^ ■'^ ... p.V ,_ " o - '^o n^ «#'. .4 o^ ,4 o * b K r,^^^::::^'. -^^ o"^ c" * o „ ' -a" O ».,• O ^ '^ ^^>~^ * <».' O r\* .owe / "My Memoirs of Georyia Politics" WRITTEN AND PUBI,ISHED BY v-> '-4 if ^ Mrs. William H. Felton AFTER SHE HAD REACHED HER 75th birthday. // was her husband^s request that she should collect and publish the story of his Congressional and Legislative life as connected with Georgia politics — froyn 1874 — during more than twenty years of public service in State and Nat- ional Legislation. 1911 Atlanta, Ga. Thb Index Printing Company Printers and Binders 1911 PREFACE WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN. There came a time in Georgia, soon after the war, when even well-informed men, and honest politicians seemed to be impervious to the dictates of reason and prudence, in their political efforts. Sectional prejudice completely blinded their political judgment. War experiences were too recent perhaps for the complete exercise of sound judgment or even common business sense. The people despised carpet-baggers. They became disgusted with Bullockism. Down at the bottom of their unrest was the ever present dread of negro domination. The negro and his future in politics became a bug-bear — a scarecrow, used by crafty office-seekers to infuriate the minds of Southern men and women. It was the clamp that held thousands of good men to the Democratic party after it was known to be domi- nated by industrious grafters, who worked the party for per- sonal ends with selfish motives. It became a choice of evils to a great many patriots in the South, especially the old Whig element. They held on to what they could not approve, because of the Republican party and its alliance with the negro. The "Solid South," really meant antagonism to negro- ism. It was skilfully worked to perpetuate in office many of the men who urged on the war, and who now fanned this war prejudice into fury, for political success, regardless of prog- ress or financial development. We could not obtain clear vision on either side of Mason and Dixon's line. The Northern politicians worked in a simi- lar way to produce the same political effect — on fanatical negropolists. Demagogues in both the great parties discovered a rare op- portunity and snatched it. The negro was the popular subject worked ad nauseam. At the North they professed false friend- ship for him. In the South they perpetually lambasted him, 8 Preface required a man of courage to step out into the open and "de- fend the bridge at Rome." Both the great national parties had swollen to immense pro- portions by covering up graft and condoning the vices and immoralities, which disgraced free government. This luxuri- ance evidenced the rankness of the soil, and the tree was known by its fruit. We reached a place in Congress where the blight of Pacific Lobby money overshadowed legislation. We reached a place in Georgia where a State treasurer, plead guilty and offered to resign. The indignant people said impeach him — the House of Representatives indicted him — but a weak Senate pro- nounced "Not guilty." Public opinion located a collar un- der some of the elegant neckties of that awful era. Nothing was left to a patriot but a protest, weak or loud, according to the manner of the man. A conscientious voter had the choice of throwing away a vote, or staying at home. But the man who staked his reputation, his peace of mind, his strength and maybe his life on a protest, was certain to meet tlie ' ' paid detractors and purchased calumniators. ' ' Also shot and shell from the fort, called "organized Democracy," but which was officered by grafters in many cases — and some of Bullock's old veterans were in command — very frequently. The hullaballoo was deafening. The "rebel yell," from tlie mouths of the detractors and calumniators was tremendous and the party lash cracked incessantly, so it is not strange that the timid, and especially the ignorant, were carried by this flood of slush and vituperation to the polls for the speci- fied purpose here indicated. That it brought suffering to men of patriotic motives, who were exhibiting lofty courage, and noble resolves, to be so un- justly defamed and recklessly disparaged does without saying, and while disappointment was keen and the remembrance of stuffed ballot boxes very sore to the sufferer, the deepest grief still lingered around the patriot's wail, "How long. Oh Lord, how long!" From Bullock's time until those lease profits expired by limitation and until their feet went down on death's sound- less shore ; no oligarchy was ever more absolute or more formid- I^Jfl*v My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 9 able than Bullockism in Georgia under its new name of "or- ganized Democracy." And bossism in Georgia filled every of- fice in the State for nearly thirty years, except in a few notable instances. The "catchword" was "loyalty to party decisions," and the bosses issued the decrees and announced the decisions. The real issue was "Drive Independents to the wall and crush them eternally." So long as the decisions could not be con- troverted, obedience was the only thing left to the faithful! Senator Hill expressed it tersely and accurately: "You must join them, let them alone or fight them!" But the pity of it lay in the transformation, in my native State. From being known everywhere, among all men, as one of the bravest, most patriotic and most capable of the Confederate States, our public men seemed to shrink into an attitude of cowardly fear and endured most surprisingly the party lash in the hands of those who were filling their own pocket-books with the revenues belonging to the tax payers. Their supreme attention was given to their own Democracy, and a perpetual defense of its quality, before the assumacy of their political masters. A capable governor, who succeeded to the position as president of the Georgia Senate, was outlawed because he wrote a few friendly letters to Governor Bullock — and yet the highest ofiice in the State of Georgia was given to Bullock's ex-Chief Justice — by a Simon-pure Democratic governor- of Georgia. Old veteran troopers under Bullock came over and acted as "Drum Majors" in these political drillings, and the chieftains of that veteran army drove the Band Wagon and conducted the nominating conventions, otherwise "pulling- mills" belonging to the Boss! At the North the Republican party sunk so low in morale that Mr. Blaine, convicted and exposed in the famous "Mulli- gan letters," secured the nomination for the Presidency in 1884. He nearly succeeded twice before — in 1876 and 1880. In Georgia, our Democratic judiciary declined in morale until a sham trial for ex-Governor Bullock was gone through with before the astonished eyes of a Georgia public. The ex- Governor fled the State in a spasm of guilty fear and was 10 Preface indicted and brought back to Georgia a prisoner. His guilty haste was needless. He was secure in the house of his friends. The power of corrupt politics was never more clearly ex- emplified — nor the peculiar quality of our political judiciary more accurately and definitely exposed. In truth, character seemed to have gone out of politics. There were plenty of legislative investigations, but they proved to be nil. Each failure evidenced our helplessness as a people and as tax payers. The moral salt of character could not be rescued, inside the party, controlled by such machinery. A real demand for higher standards of political duty was obliged to come from outside or from elsewhere. These men in the saddle were full, fat and saucy ! No genuine Republican candidate had the ghost of a chance. Bullockism, with carpet-baggism, Loyal Leagues and negroism, put them out of the running. A rescue party was obliged to be either insurgent or independent. No Lisurgent could live and try to expose the inside — and it was only an Independent who could raise a banner and cry out for reform. Some made the effort, with varying success and astonish- ing fortitude. Reform, like salvation, comes through suffering. There have been many Gethsemanes in political life. Not all the martyrs were burned at the stake ! For more than fifty years I walked side by side with a reformer — a native-born, independent son of Georgia. The full story of his protest and what followed in the wake of protestation would fill more than one volume like this one. What I saw — felt — suffered in sympathy and endurance, is graven on mind and heart as with an iron pen in the rock forever ! Perhaps I have waited too long to give the story the vigorous force it deserves — but my life has been busy — full of work. It was Dr. Felton's earnest desire — often expressed, particularly in his last days — that I should address myself to the task. I did begin the story in his lifetime. He approved the outline and begged me not to delay. I have reinforced every chapter with the contents of my voluminous scrap-books. I preserved the data, that others might also be quoted in con- firmation and with accuracy. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 11 I have been impressed with the necessity for thirty years. I have seen paid detractors spring up to warp quoted asser- tions into sinister meanings. This chronicle should be given to the public — the facts should be printed — this story of politicail heroism and forced contact with political desperadoes, great and small, should be given a place on the book shelves of our people. The young men of Georgia should read it. They have heard but one side elaborated — the other is misty in tradition and necessarily meagre and indefinite — when the press was cen- sored. There are true things in this book of national importance that a venal press in Georgia was hired not to print. There are calumnies and detractions that have been glossed over by their employers and instigators. But above all, here is the story of unpurchasable patriotism — which accepted defeat, where thrift could follow "fawning" — as a patriot's duty to his country. It will show where timid people were not ready to push a glorious cause to victory — with all that victory meant to their own financial progress. Dr. Felton's modesty made him decline to hire "boosters," as many public men have done. He left the work of this volume to his companion in all these struggles — whose loyal comradeship and zeal for the right had been tested and ap- proved for more than half a century ! The work has been laborious — but duty always has its com- pensations. SHORT SKETCH OF DR. FELTON'S LIFE FROM "MEMOIRS OF GEORGIA." Dr. Felton was born in Oglethorpe county, June 19, 1823. He was the only child of John and Mary D. Felton. His father was born and reared in Oglethorpe county, where he lived until 1835, when he moved to Athens for the purpose of educating his son. In 1847, John Felton, his wife and son, Dr. William H. Felton, moved into Cass, now Bartow, county, where John Felton died in 1870. William H. Felton was reared on a farm and received his 12 Preface preparatory education in the "old field" schools. When he was twelve years old he entered the grammar school under the preeeptorship of Ebenezer Newton. He matriculated in Frank- lin College in 1838 and graduated from the State University in 1842. He became known as a speaker in the society debates in which he took part. He was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society. After leaving college Dr. Felton took up the study of medicine under Dr. Richard D. Moore, a famous practitioner of Athens. He graduated from the Medical Col- lege of Georgia at Augusta, in 1844, the valedictorian of a large class of students. Dr. Felton was twice married: first to Miss Ann Carlton, daughter of J. R. Carlton, of Athens, whom he married in 1844. She died in 1851, leaving one daughter, now Mrs. Ann Gibbons, of Arkansas. His second wife, who is now living, was Miss Rebecca Latimer, daughter of IMajor Charles Latimer, late of DeKalb county. Mrs. Felton is no less famed than her husband, for she has long been known as a writer and lecturer through the Southern States. It is said that there has perhaps not lived a couple in Georgia who have, independent of each other, gained so much fame for themselves as Dr. Felton and his wife. Dr. Felton joined the Methodist church in 1839, when only sixteen years of age, and was made superintendent of the Sunday School by his pastor, Rev. W. J. Parks. Upon moving to Bartow county Dr. Felton entered upon the practice of medi- cine, but the strain of the work was too much for his nervous system, and he was forced to give it up. He i^iirsiieu iiis literary studies, however, and entered upon an agricultural life. In 1848 he was licensed as a local preacher by the Methodist church. For more than forty years he filled preaching ap- pointments in this and other counties. He preached the first sermon that was ever delivered in a Methodist church in Car- tersville, and for nearly half a century he filled his appoinments without ever receiving one cent of salary. It is said that Dr. Felton performed more marriage ceremonies than any man of his generation. He was made a deacon of the Methodist church by Bishop Andrew. He was later ordained an Elder by Bishop George F. Pierce. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 13 The political career of Dr. Felton has been most remarkable. He joined the Whig party in early life, and his first vote for president was cast for Henry Clay. He made his first political speech in Watkinsville, Ga. He went from Cass county as a "Whig representative to the Legislature in 1851. He became a Democrat after the Civil War. He was in sympathy with the cause of the South, and served as a volunteer surgeon at Macon, Ga. In 1874 Dr. Felton made the race for Congress from the Seventh district as an independent candidate. His campaign lasted over a period of more than six months. The fight was so picturesque and stirring that it gave the cognomen, "the Bloody Seventh," to this district. Dr. Felton had perhaps no superior as a political speaker, and his campaign over several counties in this campaign is remembered as one of the most notable events in the history of the district and he was elected to the Forty-fourth Congress by eighty-two votes. In Congress, he soon distinguished himself by his matchless oratory, and gained the reputation of a national character as a statesman. He was appointed by the speaker on the com- mittee of commerce, with the rivers and harbor improvements. He succeeded in placing the Coosa river upon the list of federal undertakings. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of his career in this Congress was his skillful diagnosis of the financial'depression then afflicting the country. He brilliantly advocated the re- monetization of the silver dollar. His speeches read like prophecy in the light of present financial disasters. Hon. Alexander H. Stephens pronounced his famous "wrecker speech" to be the equal of the finest efforts of the early states- men of this republic, when orators were giants in debate. He stood for equal valuation of treasury notes, gold and silver coin, and maintained his position that each should have equal purchasing power, and that they should be interchangeable at the treasury of the United States : that they should all be legal tender for the payment of public and private debts. It is said that his idea presented the clearest system of practical finance ever known to this government. He introduced a bill, which passed, making national quar- antine effective. Dr. Felton was placed upon the ways and means committee of the forty-sixth Congress by Speaker Randall. His colleagues 14 Preface were such men as Garfield, afterwards president of the United States; Fernando Wood and Carlisle. Dr. Felton secured a revision of the tariff which admitted the much-needed drug, quinine, to the free list. He stood for a tariff for revenue, raised from the luxuries of life. In 1880 Dr. Felton was defeated for Congress. In 1884 he was elected as representative from Bartow county. While there he earnestly advocated the passage of the local option law. The measure was passed. He opposed the sale of the Western and Atlantic railroad and through his efforts largely, it is said, the lease of the road was made to the Louisville and Nashville road at a rental )f $35,000 per month. It will be seen that the honest work of the "Grand Old Man of Bartow" will have caused more than $12,000,000 to roll into the treasury of the State within the twenty-nine years, the term of the lease, one-half of which sum is devoted to the schools of the State. While in the General Assembly, Dr. Felton was the author of two bills seeking to establish reformatories for juvenile convicts. He advocated his measure through a storm of per- sonal abuse and criticism, but, as history has proven, the seed that he then east upon the ground have brought forth good fruit. Dr. Felton was behind a number of reforms that were brought about in the convict system of Georgia. The defense of the railroad commission, when that body was threatened by the Legislature, will go down in history as one of the grandest achievements in the life of Dr. Felton. Dr. Felton has always been a thinker upon financial ques- tions, and, in 1894, on account of his belief in free coinage of silver and the issuance of treasury notes by the government, he joined the People's party and allowed his name to go be- fore the convention. He led the Populist forces through a heated campaign. Letters of Sympathy What Senator A. S. Clay Thought of Him — And He Always Fought Dr. Felton. And What Hon. Thos. E. Watson Said of Him — Who Never Fought Him. My Dear Mrs. Felton: My heart goes out to you and your son in the deepest sympathy in the death of Dr. Felton. 1 would have attended his funeral, but I have been in bad health for two years and have not been well for the last two weeks. In fact, I did not feel well enough to go to Cartersville. Dr. Felton had no superior in Georgia. I served with him in the Legislature for six years and his splendid work in behalf of a better system of education for our girls and boys and in favor of just treatment for that class of our unfortunate citizens — convicted of crime, will always be remembered and appreciated by the best thought of the State. He took special interest in looking after the lunatic asylum. He was, beyond question, one of the ablest, if not the ablest, member of the Legislature — always faithful to the best interest of the people of Georgia. As a public speaker he had no superior in the State. He had opinions of his own and, regardless of popularity, pressed them with great force and power. He served his district in Congress for six years and made a brilliant record. If Dr. Felton had been in line with his party, he would have re- mained in Congress a quarter of a century. What valuable history he would have made for Georgia and the South. In my judgment, we have sent no man to Congress from Georgia, during my recollection, better equipped for congressional life than Dr. Felton. I wish I could see you and talk to you and give you such sympathy as I really feel. I am now in my fifty-seventh year and during the last few years my health has been so precarious that I am mentally depressed. I have ap idea that I will never live to serve out my present term in the Senate. Our work in this life is soon finished — we may live to be old, but it is only a short while till the end comes. If we have served our day 16 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and generation well, we should feel content to go when the time comes. Dr. Felton lived an honest, industrious and useful life. As an orator and debater he had no siiperior in this State. He was recognized as one of the best informed men in Georgia. Above all, Dr. Felton possessed strong religious convictions and lived and practiced what he taught and believed. Please accept my heartfelt sympathy in this, the greatest sorrow of your life. Your friend, A. S. CLAY. The following is from "The Jeffersonian:" Dr. Felton Dead. An orator of the first class: a constructive statesman: a pure-minded and high-minded man : he soared above the storm as the eagle does ; he yearned passionately to serve his people : he never held an office that he did not adorn, and never had an opportunity to do good for the public that he did not fill with fruit-bearing work; he was cast aside because he did not bow to every idol of the market-place, did not bend his neck to every yoke that smaller men wanted him to bear. A whole generation has come and gone, during the long afternoon in which William H. Felton sat at his hearthstone in isolation, sadness, amid heart-eating memories. At length, the prisoner is free. At length the Outlaw can join the kindred spirits of the other outlaws who stole fire from the heavens, for the benefit of benighted mankind, and reaped the bitter reward of ingratitude that gnaws and gnaws the vitals. Farewell, old soldier! The Great Commander never had a faithfuller standard-bearer than you. No flag was ever dipped to the foe, while you held it ; and never once did you say to triumphant Wrong, "I surrender." You had fought a good fight : your day was over ; you were tired and in pain : you have fallen on sleep and are at rest. Peace to your great and fearless soul! Introductory Chapter It seems like going a long way back, to write about the Harrison campaign of 1840, but I can remember some of the striking events of that period clearly. I was only five years old, but the workings of an active child's mind can begin very soon. I was born in DeKalb county, ten miles below Decatur. My parents owned a plantation through which ran the main road leading from Decatur to Covington, Madison, Greens- boro and on to Augusta. The only public transporta- tion at that time was confined to stage coaches. The mails were carried in the same way. I thought then nothing could be grander than to see a great stage coach, with an immense leather boot attached to the rear, drawn by four sleek, well- groomed horses, coming down the big road in a sweeping gallop while all the folks gathered about the store-house door to watch the travelers or wait for the mail bag to be opened. The stage-driver sounded a horn about a mile or three-quarters distant, so that the hostlers might be ready with another team of horses, to be driven another ten miles, either up or down. We had a stage stand at our place, where the horses were stabled for the stage contractors, and these stage stands were placed ten miles apart, all the way to Augusta. The city of Augusta was the great market place of Eastern Georgia in my babyhood. "When my father went to buy goods, either in Augusta or Charleston, he traveled by the stage coach and it was a journey to be talked about and long remembered. Our place was very popular at that time. In addition to the stage stand and plantation equipment, my father owned a store, a wood shop and blacksmith's shop. An excellent school-house was erected on an eminence fronting our dwelling place. There was a militia court ground there also and muster days oc- casionally. I have distinct remembrance of those muster days, for my father was a militia major, and always bore the title afterwards. There was considerable travel in private conveyances and l8 My MEMores of Georgia Politics so few lodging places, outside of the towns, that a hetel be- came a necessity at our place. These hotels were called taverns and I remember the pride I indulged in to look up and see the long sign-board swinging on high with ''Latimer's Tavern" thereon, in bright gold letters with a sable background. But few people indulged in the luxury of a weekly news- paper — in fact, but few were able to read a paper if they had subscribed for one. So, after the stage coach resumed its trip it was the most natural thing in the world for my father (also the postmaster) to read aloud to the eager people, who learned all they knew of national politics in that way. I became familiar also with ' ' Tippecanoe and Tyler too ! ' ' I can look backwards, through a long vista, and see a little girl with pantalets and short dresses, as she stood beside her father and listened to the wonderful things going on in the outside, busy world. There was inspiration in those well-intentioned, uncultured neighbors' faces and great delight to me in the clear tones of my father's voice as he read from the "Southern Recorder," which was coming to my home when I could first remember, and continued to come as long as it had existence as a newspaper before the war. I have known my father to send off $20 at a time to the "Recorder," to encourage the editor and he didn't propose to lose a copy — the publications were so interesting to his loyal Whig principles. I remember also the "Saturday Evening Post," which was my dear mother's paper, and she told me of the wonderful stories and the illustrations were charming to me. Our cook's fine waffles and beautiful biscuit became well advertised from one end of the stage line to the other. Well- to-do people who traveled in luxurious carriages were fond of resting at our house — and I expect I had as familiar acquaint- ance with the faces of Georgia notables as anybody of my size or larger. I heard a great deal of discussion among the politicians — and once when the Editor of the "Southern Recorder" stopped over with us for several days, I remember walking around him and wondering to myself how such an average-sized man could know so much and write so well ! His wife wore an elegant velvet dress and lace that my mother imi My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 19 pronounced to be real, and according to my estimate of things in general, she was as highly honored in being the partner of this great man as if she was born to royalty. My ignorance was bliss, and continued until I began to make personal ac- quaintance with some of the newspaper fraternity in later years — in the Seventh district. My father was a Whig of the rankest sort, and I followed along in the faith with equal loyalty. I decided that Henry Clay was the greatest man in the American nation, and as I did not hear any other political doctrine, I am sure I have no reason now to complain or apologize. "With such training in babyhood, it is not surprising that I became a loyal politician after I came to years of maturity. I confess to a real liking for political questions. It was my habit for many years to keep up with the progress of great questions in the national Congress and I found interest and food for thought in the daily, but dull. Congressional Record. But there were so few books and papers seventy years ago in the South that Georgia people could do nothing more than to take sides in politics — Whig or Democrat. They read no papers on the opposing side, and voted solidly for the can- didate of their party on election day. There was no buying of votes, and a man who was known to be dishonorable in public or private life, had no showing at all. He might drink, as many did — or play cards, as was common, but a lobbyist, or liar, perjurer, or grafter, was an unknown quantity among our early Georgia politicians. The Georgia Railroad was in process of construction for a number of years. Some of the civil engineers of that under- taking were frequent sojourners in my father's house. They were cultured gentlemen and interesting to me, because they were kind and obliging to the little girl, in the way of highly- prized books and pictures. Only a short time since I cam.3 across a delightful letter written by Col. L. P. Grant, Atlanta's worthy citizen and benefactor as long as he lived. His kind allusions to my comfortable home and the devotion of my parents to me, are still most pleasing to remember and recall. When the W. & A. Railroad was almost ready to use a train, 20 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics an engine was brought from Camak, the then terminus of the Georgia Railroad, over the dirt road — also one freight ear and a small passenger coach. It required twenty mules to pull the engine. The dirt road, as before mentioned, ran by our home and I remember well the excitement which prevailed when this scanty equipment of the Stat€ road was halted near our house, and I was allowed to walk through the passenger car and carefully survey the others from the outside. They were all tiny affairs compared to railroad engines and cars of today, but the show was equal to a circus for drawing a crowd. After the three indispensables were conveyed to Marthas- ville, the authorities decided to have an excursion to Marietta, with a banquet and dance at Kilby's hotel. My delight was boundless when I found I was to accompany my parents, as invited guests of the generous-hearted civil engineer corps, and the whole affair was faithfully photographed on my mem- ory, never to be dimmed or erased. With a new dress for the occasion — the pleasure that came to me was unalloyed. The excursion trip was only twenty miles long, but it occupied a considerable part of a cold winter's afternoon and many dis- tinguished Georgians were on hand to inaugurate the opening of this wonderful line of railway — to be owned and operated by the State of Georgia — and which was then the most mo- mentous public improvement known to a Southern State. I was nearly nine years old when the Polk and Clay cam- paign begun. It was hot from the start. There were no car- toonists then, but Polk stalks and Clay roots were sufficient to create a diversion. We had some near kinspeople who were rampant Democrats, and I remember that my mother was more than anxious that they might not make us a visit while this political tempest was rushing over the land. It was a terrible affair — it ruptured friendships, split up neighborhoods and got among church people. Commend me to politics to break down friendships in church as well as state. Hearing but one side of the subject, and as loyal to my father's politics as it was possible for a child to be and a girl child, at that, I read the papers very diligently — only to be assured that Henry Clay's election was a foregone conclusion. His ability My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 21 as a statesman was so transcendent ; defeat was unthinkable, and I was equally certain that the country would certainly go to the "demnition bow-wows" if Jas. K. Polk happened to get in. Perhaps I did not lose much sleep, but I certainly kept busy in the daytime — with a comparison of the records of the opposing candidates — and while I could do very little, I cer- tainly could show my father there was one loyal heart on his side in politics. I have always understood since that time how the soldiers felt at Thermopylae or at Waterloo ! And a Waterloo it was for us ! I remember the last days — when the crisis was at hand. The mail-bag was eagerly grasped and opened. There seemed to be some sort of a hitch down in Louisiana. ''Harry of the West" had some supposed adherents who were not truly loyal! The news not only traveled slowly, but the returns were dif- ficult to gather. It was perplexing. It got to be exasperating. The Democrats begun to push in and claim the victory, but final figures were still in doubt. The stage occasionally had an accident or got water-bound. There were no telegraphs, no telephones, no wireless messages — nothing but stage coaches and weekly newspapers. (The first telegraphic dispatch sent in America was in 1844.) But at last the horn sounded over the long red hills, and directly the stage coach hove in sight, the horses coming at break-neck speed and the crowd eagerly expectant. I trembled so, with my little hand in my father's strong, loving clasp, that I am not able to say whether he trembled or otherwise, but it was a sad blow to his hopes, lie had been so confident, and had said so many positive things concerning the election that I was timid in looking up into his face. I wanted to hide out and I guess he did also. In Decatur, the jollification of the Democrats was something that made me angry to think about. They got a coffin and set it on the front porch of a rabid Clay man. They groaned and they moaned, in mock sympathy with the patriot inside, and called on him to come forth with a candle and let them pray in company. I was glad we lived ten miles distant. I wanted to move away from our home, the Democratic cheering was so uncom- fortable, as I listened from my play room, up in the garret 22 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and where Black Mammy carded the wool and cotton rolls and sung the tunes of "Ole Virginny." It kinder made me weak to hear the stage-horn blow — and I lost some of my exuberant faith in the "Southern Recorder!" A few days later a man came along with a bridle in his hand and passed a few words with my dear father, as he sat on the store-house piazza. I saw him point to "Big Jim's" stable and the man with the bridle soon led out the handsomest bay horse we owned, and went off with him. I burst into tears, ran to my mother, who quietly remarked: "It is an election bet, my child. I told your father so." .Ever since that time I have had a holy terror concerning election bets ! But I was only suffering through sympathy. My zeal was without knowledge, and my good mother tried to laugh me out of the whole thing, but I never did take kindly to President Polk, and was never reconciled to the situation until General Taylor made the trip and gained the Presidency, in 1848. That was an exciting time, to be sure — at the close of the Mexican War. We were sojourning on our river plantation, seventeen miles below Atlanta, and I was largely restricted to the newspapers for my acquaintance with political news, but there came a memorable afternoon — when my father returned from a great political mass meeting — and told us of a bloody encounter between Judge Cone and Hon. A. H. Stephens, which had taken place in Thompson's Hotel in Atlanta. Father was still an extreme Whig and of course greatly incensed against Judge Cone because of the attack on "Little Aleck," but when he told us how the horses were taken out of "Little Aleck's" carriage and the Whigs caught hold of a long rope fastened to the vehicle and pulled the Whig speaker over town — mother quietly remarked, "Well, they must have looked and felt like a set of donkeys. ' ' Down inside of me I thought she was about right. Judge Cone was contemptuous also — said something and hence the bloody scuffle that took place in Thompson's Hotel ; but it was a ten-strike for Mr. Stephens, and effectually retired Judge Cone from activity in Georgia politics. I doubt if Mr. Stephens ever was nearer to the zenith of his fame. It was a political lesson in which he went up head and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 23 Judge Cone went down foot the same day in the political spelling class. Mr. Stephens always had the advantage which physical weakness recognizes, and he always could retire himself out of difficulties by falling back "on the state of his health." How often he declined to run for office, pleading ill health, merely to take a running start over his political opponents — I can hardly count on my fingers and toes. Georgia history is full of it, and nobody ever worked this particular scheme to greater perfection or with more success. The Mexican War — made General Taylor President, and the Whigs won the victory because a war President always gets there. I enjoyed the newspapers, played the Mexican airs that our soldiers picked up and was a loyal "Whig as usual — but there was no enthusiasm like that experienced in the Polk and Clay campaign. Henry Clay, to the Whigs, was like Lin- coln's name to the Republicans, and after the demise of Clay the Whigs never touched high-water mark any more. When Franklin Pierce was nominated, I remember my father said: ''At their old game — digging up a candidate. If the Democrats should be forced to put up one of their real leaders, his record would floor him. They must dig up somebody, and he can run because nobody knows anything about him — and they elect him because he is nondescript." I have noticed so much of this policy in modern elections that I am constrained to believe it has become one of the established rules of modern Democracy. Some few men have been promoted on merit, but modern politics is mostly com- mercial, and the men who are useful to their promoters are those who serve them best and therefore longest. Large wealth sometimes seeks political preferment, as a rich Americaa girl buys a titled husband, because it comes high and excites envy — but the nondescript is the fellow who holds on and does but little, except to hold on. We seem to be, therefore, living in a day of small men, politically. My political fervor waned as I became interested in college life and when I married a Whig, and not an office holder, my interest in politics was neither compelling or annoying. A few years later a Temperance Convention was called to 24 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics meet in Atlanta and to nominate a candidate for the office of governor. When Dr. Felton reached the place he found he was their choice for president of the Convention. Hon. Basil H. Overby was made the standard bearer, and a gallant standard bearer he became, with his zeal and his in tellectual capacity — but the great State of Georgia was joined to its idols and Mr. Overby polled only a few votes — against liquor domination. A little over six thousand votes for gov- ernor of Georgia, all told. I preserved the newspaper accounts of the Temperance Con- vention until a few years since, when another Temperance ticket was placed in the field. A Georgia editor borrowed my newspaper and promised faithfully to return it, and it was full of distinguished names, who had participated in Mr. Overby 's nomination, but I never saw that paper any more ! I suppose the office cat ate it up ! It effectually deprived me of the paper — for I couldn't ob- tain temperance ammunition to fire on the faithless ones who blcs^ hot and cold out of the same mouth forty years ago ! I have always been willing to allow any seeker of truth or facts to copy from my scrap-books, but I don 't loan any more ! Dr. Felton served a term in the Georgia Legislature — 1851-52 — and our wedding day was October 11, 1853, but he did not seem to care or evidence any disposition to seek public office for more than twenty years afterwards. He had tlie ability, of course, but his thoughts did not drift, apparently, towards active politics. Therefore I had no disposition to clip nev\'s- papers or paste away the sayings of politicians, and if he had never entered the political arena it is doubtful if I ever should have been sufficiently- interested to keep a newspaper file or do more than bewail the trend of commercial politics in the State and nation in my later life. Disunion and Secession began to loom up, as a dark cloud on the horizon, in the late 50 's and Congress was in a lurid state of smouldering indignation — North and South — on the subject of slavery and the extension of slavery in the Terri- tories. Dr. Felton supported Governor J. E. Brown in his four cam- paigns for Governor. At first, because he liked his policy My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 25 better than the others, and lastly because he feared to swap horses in the middle of the stream. We were in such danger- ous places that unity a»d loyalty to the Confederacy seemed to be imperative. I have always been surprised that Governor Brown should have been so unremitting in his political an- tagonism to Dr. Felton. Hon. Ben Hill, Dr. Felton's college- mate, ran one race for governor, and Hon. Warren Akin, also, in his own county. There was a severe test of party principle in each case, and yet Dr. Felton supported our war governor. It was claimed by Governor Brown's friends that he never was known to forsake a friend or forgive an enemy, but I can bear witness that Governor Brown never failed to support the people who fought Dr. Felton and never refused to use all his influence with the State's railroad, the convict lease or with Bullock Democrats and Bullock Republicans to beat him down — and he was, for a third of a century, the ruling spirit of the Democratic party. It was an awful crisis to me when we were brought face to face with secession from the Federal Union. I never shall for- get the night when cannons were fired in Rome, Ga., and the guns were heard by us, twenty-five miles distant, to celebrate the passage of the Ordinance of Secession. It gave me almost a nervous chill — because a woman's intuition furnished me the forebodings that we were plunging headlong into the dark un- known. I was not a secessionist. I almost wept when my small son, John (long since dead) came home one day from town with a blue secession cockade pinned on his little hat. "My baby," I cried, "you may live to suffer and die for this !" Nothing but my endeavor to keep within bounds, because Dr. Felton was a secessionist, made me remain quiet in this emergency. I loved my country. No heart ever was more loyal to the South and Southern honor — but danger lurked in every passing breeze and was concealed under every hasty legislative act of our political war leaders. I have in my possession today the official record of the Georgia Secession Convention. The front pages have dropped off from use and abuse, but the proceedings of January 19, 26 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 1861, the day the Ordinance of Secession passed, are still intact and perfect. There were 208 yeas and 89 nays. On motion of Mr. Toombs, the ordinance was twice read. B. H. Hill sought to amend, with ex-Governor Johnson's resolutions, but everything was voted down until the ordinance was brought to a final vote. Herschel V. Johnson and A. H. Stephens voted nay— but B. H. Hill voted with Toombs, Nisbet, the Cobbs, et al. President George W. Crawford voted yea, and then said, "it was his privilege and his pleasure to pronounce Geor- gia free, sovereign and independent." It makes my heart sink within me, to know how easily the tide could be turned — when the tide-turners set about doing it, and I shall always believe that Messrs. Hill, Stephens and Johnson could have gained time enough for Georgia to "stop and consider," but for the fact that Hill and Stephens were bitter political enemies. HOW GEORGIA WENT OUT OF THE UNION. (- I In all great revolutions there is a beginning — a fountain head — a well-defined leadership that will develop and become tangible in course of time and in progress of events. This is especially true in regard to the secession of the Southern States and the formation of the Southern Confederacy in the year 1861. South Carolina has been charged with the initia- tion of the scheme, and it is true that South Carolina passed the first Ordinance of Secession — closely followed by Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, but their revolutionary intentions would have remained unimportant had not Georgia enlisted on their side and cast its political fortunes with the dissenters. In 1860 no Southern State was more prominent than Georgia in national legislation. For a decade Mr. Toombs had made a business of "firing the Southern heart" against anti-slavery agitation in Congress. Hon. Herschel V. Johnson was a can- didate for the vice presidency on the Douglas ticket, and Hon. Howell Cobb was President Buchanan's Secretary of the Treas- ury when Mr. Lincoln was first elected. Hon. A. H. Stephens enjoyed national reputation, and Governor Joseph E. Brown My IVIemoirs of Georgia Politics 27 had been elected tjipe^ times in Georgia as a "fire-eater," or State 's right politician. This was a formidable array of talenl , sagacity and authority, unparalled in any of the Confederate States after the organization was completed and Civil War inaugurated. The completion of the Confederate organization was largely due to the influence of the persons named — which was harmonious for a time, but which culminated in disastrous dissensions among themselves before the Confederacy col- lapsed. The historian who omits their dominating influence in chronicling the rise and fall of this short-lived confederation will certainly fail to discover the main-spring of the movement and the etfect would resemble the playing of Hamlet, with the character of Hamlet left out. Had Georgia refused to leave the Federal Union, neither Tennessee, North Carolina or Virginia would have passed Ordinances of Secession, for their great reluctance to secede was ' ' known of all men. ' ' Without the help of Georgia, the schism would have frit- tered into nothingness except for the time being — but the secession of Georgia solidified the whole and put the under- taking upon a footing that was both serious and dangerous. During the year 1860 this State was filled with political excitement. Breckinridge, Bell and Douglas had each an elec- toral ticket, and the strife was so general that every hamlet in its limits was permeated by heated politics. All united in defending slavery and in denouncing the election of Lincoln and when the success of the Republican ticket was officially reported a prominent member of the Legislature, then in ses- sion, introduced the following : "The election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin having shown that it is incompatible with the interest and honor of Georgia longer to remain a member of this Confed- eracy; Therefore be it resolved: That it is the sense of this General Assembly that the State of Georgia ought to recall the powers she has delegated to the General Government and re- sume the position of independent sovereignty. ' ' On the same day a bill was read for the second time in the Senate authorizing "retaliatory legislation" on the States of Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 28 J\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics Pennsjdvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, "who had virtually nullified the fugitive slave law." These movements were formidable and were so recognized by friend and foe. Another resolution was unanimously passed asking the distinguished gentlemen already mentioned in this article, with others, to address the Legislature and "to unite in recommending some line of policy which will save us our honor and our rights, and which will save our people from fur- ther dissensions among themselves, and from all the sad con- sequences of such dissensions." The words here italicized are full of meaning — and were ominous in the light of future events. "Dissensions among themselves" had marked the canvass of the fateful year 1860, and it would appear that some persons were sufficiently divested of passion and prejudice to see the danger which threatened a "house divided within itself." Responses came, quick and emphatic. Messrs. Cobb and Toombs lost no time in advocating immediate action. They denied the constitution- ality of Lincoln's election. They declared it the power of the Legislature to take Georgia out of the Union, instanter. Both advised unconditional secession. Mr. Toombs, then in the vigor of mature manhood, a profound master of the arts of eloquence, closed his impassioned speech to a cheering, clapping, shouting multitude with the words : "He that dallies is a dastard — he that doubts, is damned!" Governor Brown addressed the State Military Convention, then in session at the capitol, and the building was packed to its utmost capacity. He advocated resistance to Lincoln's ad- ministration. He said: "For thirty years the South had sub- mitted to aggression upon aggression, and forbearance had ceased to be a virtue." He rejoiced that the State had ap- propriated a million of dollars to reorganize her military. He closed with this extraordinary statement: "Should Georgia see fit to secede and any effort be made to coerce her back, I would resist to the last extremity — that every Georgian that was killed in the act of resistance should be avenged by the death of two of those whom he was fighting." Hon. A. H. Stephens was the next speaker in order and he My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 29 might have applied to Georgia what he sarcastically said of Virginia: "The Virginians will debate and speak though war be at the gates of their city." When he had occasion thus to estimate Virginian oratory — he was a commissioner from the seceding States to prevail on Virginia to follow Georgia's ex- ample — a successful attempt despite the debaters, whom he de- precated. Mr. Stephens was recognized as a Unionist in some particu- lars and his argument was listened to with anxious hearts, for there were thousands of Georgians who were determined to hold on to the Federal government so long as it was possible to do so. He said: "My countrymen, I tell you frankly, can- didly and earnestly, I do not think we ought to secede because Mr. Lincoln has been elected. To make a point of resistance to the government — to withdraw from it because a man has been constitutionally elected, puts us in the wrong. We arc pledged to maintain the Constitution — many of us have sworn to support it. Whatever may be said of Georgia, never let it be said we were untrue to our national engagements. I do not think Mr. Lincoln will do anything to jeopardize our safety and security. He can do nothing unless backed by the power of Congress and it is against him — a large majority in the House and four in the Senate. Why should we disrupt the Union when his hands are tied? I think one of the evils that beset us, is a surfeit of liberty. Mr. Cobb said the other night the government had proven a failure. There is no failure in the government yet. Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations — that is true — from that comes the great part of our troubles. As to the retaliatory measures, I think we have the right to pass them — provided they be in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. ' ' So far, the speech was super-excellent, but the speaker, knowing the hot-headed people he was addressing, threw a sop to Cerberus — with fatal effect. "Let us call a convention. Let all these matters be submitted to it. The State should wait until Mr. Lincoln com- mits some unconstitutional act." Mr. Toombs, interrupting, "Commit some overt act?" Mr. Stephens: "No; I did not say that. I use the word unconstiutional act, which our people un- derstand better. Reaffirm the Georgia platform" — which made 30 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics the abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia, with out the consent of the slave-holders or in the slave-holding states, or repressing the slave-trade between the Southern States, or a refusal to admit slave-holding states or territories, or prohibiting slavery in Utah or IMexico, or the repealing oi modifying of the fugitive slave law — a full and sufficient cause or causes for the "disruption of every tie which binds her (Georgia) to the Union." Mr. Lincoln, everybody knew, was elected on that very issue — that he would throw his influence towards promoting such legislation — was morally certain and Mr. Stephens' labored effort failed to stop the tide of disunion, simply because the factions differed solely as to the time to begin hostilities. There was no sort of difference as to their attitude when the accepted time arrived. Toombs, Brown and Cobb shrieked "Now, now!" Mr. Stephens said, "wait awhile — until we are in- sulted, then I'll help you fight." They rejoined, "We are in- sulted now!" "To arms!" A convention was called and Mr. Stephens won a small vic- tory for his conciliatory argument. Hon. B. H. Hill was the next speaker. He had been a candidate for governor against Governor Brown in one of his races, therefore it was not prob- able he would side with his opponent's extreme views. He and Mr. Stephens had had an acrimonious political controversy on knoAV-nothingism, which induced the latter to fall back on the code duello, and forward a challenge to the rising states- man, whose eloquence at the bar placed him head and shoulders above his colleagues in all legal contests, but Mr. Hill was well aware that he could not risk a ridiculous personal rencontre with the meagre, diminutive, irascible politician who tipped the scales at seventy pounds. So, with infinite tact and policy, he made the following reply to Mr. Stephens ' second : "I have a conscience and a family. I cannot afford to fight Mr. Stephens, who has neither." This episode had not been for- gotten when the great secession debate was en tapis. It was agreed that the gulf was too deep to bridge the chasm thus easily, and therefore both sides claimed him — and sure enough he talked for both sides ! He set out by showing the Republican party to be the only My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 31 disunionists in sight — that they were destroying the govern- ment "as the only hope of the slave." He quoted from the record, a bold, bleak declaration made by an Abolitionist speaker, "the dissolution of the Union is the abolition of slavery." He declared eternal, unconquerable resistance to such a party "at all hazards." "The safety and peace of the slave-holder and the Union demand this agitation shall not longer be allowed. I believe we can make Mr. Lincoln obey the laws, for if fifteen Southern States will take the Constitu- tion and the laws, and his oath, and shake them in the face of the President, and demand their enforcement and observance he cannot refuse. If we succeed Law will triumph over mob- ocracy — if we fail, we cannot be damaged, but great benefits will be secured by the effort. We shall. have time to get ready for secession. We are not prepared now. While we seek to redress our wrong in the Union we can go forward getting ready to go out, if necessary. It is our right certainly to go peaceably any way. The government has no right to coerce back a seceding State. But the attempt might be made and the peace broken. Let all the Southern States get ready and go out together and no earthly power will interfere and molest. ' ' There remained only Hon. Herschel V. Johnson to be heard from, among the towering intellects of the State. When he spoke, he made, or begun to make, a genuine union speech, which filled the rampant fire-eaters with dismay. The noon hour approached before he finished. An adjournment for dinner was carried — the speech to be concluded in the after- noon. The dinner was good — the wines skillfully mixed, and temptingly plied, until the company including the speaker, were hors du combat. The hopes of the country perished in the hands of trusted leaders, and liberty veiled her face and wept for the coming woes of a section which suffered from a ' ' surfeit of liberty. ' ' The convention passed the ordinance of secession. Having cut the bridges in the rear, Georgia bent every energy to carry other States out of the Union. The blame of it — the wrong of it — the injustice of it is chargeable to the men who were dis- appointed in their ambitious purposes, and who hoped to float 32 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics into safety, after they had scuttled the ship of State, and the wreck was scattered in mid-ocean. Georgia went out, with waving banners, pealing drums, and salvos of artillery. After Mr. Lincoln's death, a letter of his came to light, addressed to a prominent Georgian, who was a member of that fatal convention, in which he allayed, as far as possible, any apprehension concerning his action as President, in which letter he asked : ' ' Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would di- rectly or indirectly interfere with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If they do I wish to assure you as once a friend, and still I hope not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger than in the days of "Washington. I suppose this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended. \ think it is wrong and ought to be abolished. This I suppose is the rub. It is the only substantial difference between us. Yours truly, A. Lincoln, Dec. 22, 1860." I remember, when a child, seeing two great oxen crossing a bridge, without railing or banisters. They took a stubborn fit, and butted against each other. They glared, they pushed, they shoved until their very backs were in contact before they at last went over into the rushing waters. They were yoked to the same wagon tongue, and they were rescued with dif- ficulty. Our ambitious Southern leaders were, in some cases, as ready to fight each other as to fight the Yankees, and the pity of it was their ability to pull overboard the loaded wagon and all the wagon was conveying to a supposed place of safety. The secession convention then proceeded to name the Con- gressmen, who were to represent Georgia at Montgomery, the Confederate Capital. They made up a slate for themselves and then the willing convention answered: "Yes." To read over the names of those who picked their own places of honor, it almost fatigues one's disrespect and disgust to the destruc- tion and outrage of common patience and common decency. Having successfully forced Georgia to the war point, they fixed nice shelter nooks, immediately for their majesties! Not one of these Congressmen had been voted on by their respective districts — the common people at home had no more My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 35 say-so about it than an empty shell in last year's bird nest has power to procreate itself into a living bird, and all over the whole South and, in every State the heat of prejudice was successfully fanned into a tornado of scorching heat and flame ! ! Wendell Phillips once said : prejudice is the strongest motor in the whole wide world. He instanced the crusades of Peter, the Hermit, where "a crazy sentimentalism flung the half of Europe over Asia, and changed the destinies of many kingdoms. ' ' After Lincoln's election, the South went actually crazy, be- cause of his election, forgetting that the South had put three presidential tickets in the field against his one ticket, and his consequent election was as easy as falling off a log. Volumes would be insufficient to carefully review the high-handed legis- lation authorized by that secession convention, and my space is too limited in this book to even mention all the disputes and controversies between men in the political offices of the Confederacy, or the fatal disagreements between the men in the executive departments of the short-lived government, or the rivalries among the military authorities in camp and field. From all I can gather, the North was full of the same sort of disagreements, controversies, disputes and disorders, be- cause even General Garfield was shown to be a traitor to Gen- eral Rosecrans, his commanding officer, and conniving at his overthrow, at a time Avhen the Federal advance failed at Chat- tanooga, and the entire North was in a state of suspicious anxiety as to the dire influences at work behind the army of the Tennessee. Hon. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, was inimical to Hon. Jefferson Davis, the President of the same. Senator Hill, who was not on speaking terms with Stephens, was in close alliance with Jefferson Davis, while Gov. Brown was at daggers point with Mr. Davis and in close intimacy with Vice-President A. H. Stephens. Charges and countercharges were constantly heard in Richmond and echoed throughout the ten seceding States. Generals were displaced and other generals were installed, and there were quarrels in the Cabinet and rivalries in the camp. But for the solid fighting strength and dogged loyalty of the common soldiers and the patience 34 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics and fortitude of the women at home, the whole thing would have gone to pieces like Holmes', "one-horse shay — "long be- fore the bottom dropped out at Appomattox, wliich left the deluded, unhappy and disappointed South to the "tender mer- cies" of the conqueror with all its hopes and former prosperity, stranded on a barren shore. Vice-President Stephens quit Richmond in "disgust (some people spelt it sulks), came back to his home in Crawfordville, Ga., and talked freely about his dissatisfaction, etc. He went down to Fortress Monroe on a supposed peace mission and had an interview with Mr. Lincoln from which the poor blood- drenched South expected great things, but it all petered out into nothingness. I have always believed Mr. Stephens had promised himself to appear in the role of Deliverer or Libera- tor, or some sort of a Pacificator after the Hampton Roads Conference, and that he did not get what he went after. He grew more and more uncomfortable in Richmond and deter- mined to come home and talk where there was nobody to reply to him. To be heralded abroad as such an important consulta- tion there have been the fewest of explanations, and the scantiest of declarations presented to the reading public. I have been living for more than forty-five years since that world-wide event was chronicled, and all I have extracted from ir, good, bad or indifferent, was a joke from Mr. Lincoln. Hon. Mr. Stephens was a very delicate person, weakly in body and anemic in looks. He wore clothes upon clothes, wraps over wraps, undercoats and overcoats until he felt him- self sufficiently screened from the outside cold. It is said that Mr. Lincoln was not far off when the unwrapping took place on that occasion, and he watched the performance with lively interest. At last the Georgia statesman was sufficiently un- loosed from these outside entanglements to seat himself in his appointed chair. Mr. Lincoln, in a half whisper, remarked : "That's the very smallest nubbin to the amount of shuck that has come my way!" En passant I will add, that Hampton Roads Conference was the biggest shell, without any kernel that ever came my way. It has not been a week ago since an astute editor inquired if I had ever gathered anything from anybody, or anywhere, / / My INIemoirs op Georgia Politics 35 concerning what was really done by the Confederacy led by Mr. Stephens, and the Federal Union, led by Mr. Lincoln, when they met under a flag of truce, to stop carnage and put an end to hostilities ? I replied : ' ' Nothing except that nobody did anything that they dared to speak about in the open. ' ' So the carnage went on, and hostilities were quickly renewed — i. e., if they had ever stopped. "Madness ruled the hour." There was nothing left but blood and carnage to the end. I attended a public meeting in Cartersville just after Geor- gia seceded. A distinguished politician, afterwards judge of the Superior Court, rose up to say: "I am ready to drink every drop of blood that secession will bring to this country. iT ankees will not fight ; one Southern man could whip a dozen lany where." He did not estimate the size of his contract. It ffvas reported at the close he did not get near enough to a Rattle field to see any blood, much less to undertake to drink a jdrop of it. On this sort of bravado our people were fed, and 'I am satisfied that there never was a section of country where the masses were so completely deceived as to the future, ahead of them. Georgia furnished as many, perhaps more, active politicians than any State South of Mason and Dixon's line. Gov. Joseph E. Brown was the foremost of our war governors. Before Georgia seceded, he gave orders to Col. Francis Bartow to seize Fort Pulaski. He seized the Augusta arsenal three days after the ordinance of secession became a law. These seizures took place in January, 1861. In less than four months he and Col. Bartow were at loggerheads, and the whole South stood up to watch the scrimmage and see how it ended. Colonel, then Gen. Bartow, was soon killed in the first Manassas battle, in July of the same year. Hon. B. H. Hill was a member of the Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Ala., before the seat of government was moved to Richmond, Va. During a debate in the Confederate Con- gress, he and William L. Yancey, of Alabama, got into a fight and Hill threw an inkstand in Yancey's face. There a breach was made that never was bridged over and which had serious effect on the fortunes of the Confederacy. From what I know of our Georgia politicians and what I have heard of the other 36 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Confederate politicians, it does seem a pity that we should have selected so many crowing roosters from the same game- cock variety! Gov. Brown kept up a fiery correspondence with President Davis for four solid months, beginning in April, 1862, and ending in July of the same year, a controversy over the Con- script Act, etc. If words could have been made hotter they would have scorched the paper on which they were written. A biographer of Gov. Brown, Mr. I. W. Avery, says the "gov- ernor wrote a letter dated July 22, 1862, which struck Mr. Davis a center stroke," and then the controversy ended. Stop and think of what was going on in camp and field, in j hospitals, in the homes of widows and orphans all over the^j entire country, North and South, and then consider these ehieft politicians playing battledore and shuttlecock with uewspa^l pers and what quarrels did with the destinies of the tottering/ Confederacy ! The ' ' center stroke ' ' was a combined affair. lU struck a deadly shot everywhere ! For there can be no possible* doubt, concerning the deleterious influence of these conteutiouslj politicians, on the destinies of the Southern people. I hold printed copies of the correspondence between GovJ Brown and Secretary Sedden, of Confederate War Departj ment. The governor was really after his chief, the president,! but that voluminous correspondence was like the speeches de\ livered before the legislature in Milledgeville just before thej secession convention met in January, 1861. It was a time j when everything seemed hell-bent, and every politician in j public position was "spilin' for a fight." The armies in the ' field were equipped with guns and ammunition, and the poli- ticians had pens, ink and general stationery with a ''diarrhea of epithets." I It was the natural bent of our Georgia politicians. They were in the constant habit of "dropping into it" on every pos- sible occasion. I have Hon. Ben Hill's "Notes on the Situa- tion," published soon after the war ended, and ex-Gov. Brown's j replies to Hill's assertions. It demonstrated the apparent fact that they couldn 't help it ; the habit was so fixed and the in- j clination so strong. War had swept off billions of values and I thousands of brave men had died on the battlefield and in ' My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 37 hospitals, but the smoke had hardly been lifted, long enough to view the damage and desolation, until these two game-cocks were at it again, despite their bloody combs, and drooping tail feathers ! They were so full of personal animosity that they stepped lightly over the collapsed Confederacy, and all the rotting-dead-men's bones, from the Potomac to the Ri>> Grande; and amazed the startled suffering people in their poverty-stricken homes, with a first-class chicken fight in and around the Capital City of the State. And what did this polit i ■ cal rivalry and exhibit of passion stand for? They were sim- ply sparring for position, and each trying to outwit the other in control of the politics of the State of Georgia! It was the same old political rivalry before the war, rejuvenated, and many of the old leaders were dead. This old book of the Secession Convention, which lies before me as I write, is weather-beaten, dilapidated and was poorly gotten up at the start and at least ninety hundredths of the 300 men who composed the convention are now dead and largely forgotten. It is a sadder thing to look at than the many cemeteries filled with dead soldiers' graves. Why? Because one represents the fateful cause, and the other the deadly result. I do not think the world furnishes a more complete exhibit of gall, cheek and assumacy than the public capers of the two political headlights just named performing before the war-swept, blood-soaked and poverty-stricken peo- ple of Georgia, when the records proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, that both were leaders in the very movement which pushed these disasters upon us. I do not question their loyalty to their State and section, but I do say the time had arrived in the very nature of the prevailing conditions, for both to go back and sit down, at least long enough for a season of rest and relief from their much talking and writing on public business. They had been blind leaders of the blind in 1861; they had been active Confederate politicians from 1861 to 1865 ; they had had full scope and authority and it was not modest, or becoming to clutch at the reins of government be- fore the military had left the State's borders. It was simply the old cases set for trial with Hill vs. Stephens, and Brown vs. Davis, and Davis vs. Stephens in renewed political litiga- 38 My Memoirs of Georgla. Politics tion. Their interest in the failing fortunes of the Confederacy- waned, of course, but their personal animosities were alive, vigorous and rampant under all conditions. Of all these liti- gants, President Davis deserved most sympathy for he suf- fered more than all the others. He was made the South 's vicarious sufferer. On his head the vials of wrath were emptied to the last drop. He paid the penalty of supposed greatness, and while he was a prisoner in the dungeons of Fortress Monroe, all the others were making friends with the "mammon of unrighteousness." in a political sense. In the year 1877 there was printed in a Georgia newspaper some interesting correspondence pertaining to the election of United States Senators just after the war closed. Hon. James Johnson was made Georgia's provisional governor, and Gen. James B. Steadman was Federal commandant of the post, in Augusta, Ga. The Georgia Legislature was booked to meet in Milledgeville early in January, 1866, and it was proposed to elect Senators and Congressmen for the Federal Congress at Washington city. The surrender took place in 1865, during April, and Hon. A. H. Stephens spent a considerable time in Fort Warren as a prisoner of State, but he was in Augusta on the 25th of November, 1865, and guest at a supper along with Gen. Steadman, Federal major-general. Some time during the evening, Gen. Steadman sent the following telegram to Presi- dent Andrew Johnson. It was received by the President at 10 :30 p. m. on the day named : ' ' To the President of the United States : "I am requested to ask you if you would consider it any violation of the parole of Hon. A. H. Stephens for him to per- mit his name to be used for United States Senator for this State. He is a friend of the government, and a sincere sup- porter of your policy." (Signed) "Jas. B. Steadman, Maj.-Gen., Commanding." This telegram, I have learned, was suggested at the supper in Augusta, at which both Stephens and Steadman were pres- ent. Steadman was always "a warm friend and admirer of Stephens," and exerted himself to procure Mr. Stephens' re- lease from Fort Warren. Here is President Johnson's reply: ]\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics 39 "Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 26, 1865. "Private and confidential. To Maj.-Gen. James B. Steadman, Augusta, Ga. "I am free to say it would be exceedingly impolitic for Mr. A. H. Stephens' name to be used in connection with the sena- torial election. If elected, he would not be permitted to take his seat, or in other words, he could not take the oath of office required, other difficulties being out of the way. He stands charged with treason and no disposition has been made of his case. His present position will enable him to do more good than any other." (What was his position? Was he in a coalition with Andy Johnson?). "Mr. Stephens knows there is no one whose personal feelings are more kind than mine, and have been so since we first met in Congress. The infor- mation we have here is that all the members-elect to Con- gress from Georgia will not be able to take the oath of office. A modification of the oath by the present Congress is ex- tremely doubtful. I hope you will confer with Mr. Stephens on this subject freely — not as coming from me. There seems in many of the elections something like defiance, which is al- ways out of place at this time. (Signed) "Andrew Johnson." Mr. Stephens did have a conference with Gen. Steadman, and was given the tenor of the telegram, according to pub- lished accounts. "When the Legislature met, Mr. Stephens was called to Milledgeville and urged to enter the senatorial race. In a letter dated January 22, 1866, and addressed to Messrs. J. F. Johnson, Charles H. Smith and others, and pub- lished in "Southern Recorder" extra, Mr. Stephens declined to address the General Assembly, refused to give his consent to the use of his name. "I do trust that no member will give, even a complimentary vote to me in the election. "Yours truly "Alex. H. Stephens.." On January 29, 1866, various citizens from Augusta urged him to allow the use of his (Stephens') name in the senatorial canvass. He made the following reply: 40 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics "Milledgeville, Jan. 29, 1866. "Messrs. Casey, Gibson and others., "In reply to your interrogatory, I can only say I can not imagine any probable case in which I would refuse to serve the people of Georgia in any position that might be assigned to me by them with or without my consent. "Yours truly, "Alexander H. Stephens." The next day, January 30th, Hons. A. H. Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson were elected Senators. The question then arose: "Will they be allowed to take their seats?" (I desire to ask: Did Andy Johnson conciliate?) It is evident that these legislators were not informed as to Mr. Stephens' friendship with Jas. B. Steadman, or that he was a "friend to Andy Johnson 's policy." Why Mr. Stephens did not afterwards expatiate on this particular episode is something strange if Steadman acted with his permission, or what is more appreciable, acted without it. It is impossible to suppose that Mr. Stephens did not see this telegram of Steadman and Johnson's reply printed in the year 1877 if he did not see either of them during November, 1865. No person Avas more active than Mr. Stephens in keeping watch over what Georgia newspapers said of himself. I am forced to think, he concluded to let "sleeping dogs lie." Therefore, I feel it a duty I owe to my dead husband, who was openly denounced in public speeches made in Macon and Atlanta, when Hon. A. H. Stephens was candidate for governor of Geor- gia in the good year 1882, and when Mr. Stephens not only repudiated Dr. Felton's true and tried personal friendship in those speeches, but arraigned him as politically unworthy be- cause Dr. Felton had said some kind words of President Ar- thur and because certain Republicans in Georgia were friendly to him. Here is the proof that the Vice-President of the dead Confederacy, which went to smash in April, 1865, was on November 25, 1865, sitting at a supper table in Augusta, Ga., with a Yankee officer and virtually conferring with Andy Johnson in Washington City about being elected as United States Senator and refusing to "allow a complimentary vote" in Milledgeville, two months later. Whether Andy My Memoiks of Georgia Politics 41 Johnson changed his mind before the Legislature met in Milledgeville in January, 1866, I am unable to say, or whether the "charge of treason" had been taken off the books in Wash- ington by active Republican coalitionists with Mr. Stephens this record fails to show, but there is positive proof to my mind that there was a "capital understanding" and a coalition that the young men in the State of Georgia may well read and ponder over. More of this coalition politics will appear in later chapters, but my scrap-book, containing this publication, in which the telegrams of Steadman and Andy Johnson are set forth, is open to any person who desires to copy the full text of the story which was headed — "STEPHENS AS SENATOR. A Page of Unrecorded History of Reconstruction." I have never seen any vindication of himself furnished by Mr. Stephens, but it was daring providence when this aged candidate rose before Macon and Atlanta audiences to de- nounce a clean-handed man as a "coalitionist with Republi- cans in Washington city." In this connection I will copy here some paragraphs from the official record of the trial of Jefferson Davis, which was begun in Richmond, Va., on May 13, 1867, although the indict- ment against him was returned in May, 1866. He was im- prisoned on 19th April, 1865, and subjected to many and vio- lent persecutions as a political prisoner. Chas. 'Conor spoke for the defendant, who came into court as a prisoner in charge of H. S. Burton, colonel and brevet brigadier general of the United States Army. He said: "On this return no reason was stated for the imprisonment of Jefferson Davis, and it now remains for the court to take such action as was requisite on the part of the civil authorities to bring the prisoner within the proper limits to meet the indictment." Then Mr. Evarts, counsel for the government, rose to say: "In behalf of the government, it is not its intention to prosecute the trial of the prisoner at the present term of the court." Later the question of bail came up and Horace Greely's name was placed first on the bond. The court said: "The marshal will dis- charge the prisoner," and the house was filled with deafening 42 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics applause. The place was wild with cheers. "After Mr. Davis reached Spotswood House, Rev. Dr. Minnegerode in the com- pany of Mr. Davis and his family offered up prayer and thanks- giving and directly the weary and worn prisoner with his wife went out to the grave of their dead son in Hollywood ceme- tery, ' ' so the story was published ! I can not insert more of this trial and this scene in Richmond for it is a matter of official re- cord and open to all seekers of truth. There was a marked dis- tinction and difference in the government's treatment of the President and Vice-President. Look at the dates which you have just read in the last pages to convince yourselves that Andy Johnson's government made fish of one and fowl, (I had almost written foul) of the other. But the libraries and book shelves are full of this matter, all over the United States, and our Georgia politicians have been perpetually explaining the whys and the wherefores ; but always, as I think, to con- fused purpose and with small effect. It may be thought that I have made harsh criticism of the Georgia secession leaders, and I agree that I am not varnishing any of the facts in the case for history is only a correct report of past events. I am here to say that our Georgia leaders, in many cases, were afflicted with what somebody has called "candidate-phobia," and if it could be properly called a spe- cies of rabies, there is no disputing the violence of their malady. It is my honest impression that the peaceable division of the Methodist church in 1844 had much to do with the politi- cal secession of the ten Southern States. I knew Bishop James 0. Andrew well, over whose head this split took place, or as well as an eight-year-old school girl could know a good preacher for I went to school in Oxford, Ga., with his daugh- ter during my school life. I heard him preach often in Deca- tur, Ga., when I was living with my parents in that prosperous town for the most of five years where they moved for benefit of Dr. Wilson's high school. I have been a member of the Methodist church since 1851, and I speak advisedly when I say politics and the fight over slavery was at the bottom of the split of the Methodist church in 1844. Bishop Andrew's wife owned, or inherited, some slave prop- erty and the abolitionists of the North and West decided they My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 43 would not tolerate a slave-holding bishop if they still continued their membership in the Methodist church. Thus they came to where the roads parted and they each went their separate way. Because the preachers divided and departed without firearms or gunboats to interfere it became a precedent for other separations, divisions or secessions. Our Southern peo- ple put up a game of bluff and South Carolina boasted of nullification and political courage. After South Carolina went out, the other States were implored, urged and prevailed upon to do likewise; but it was negro slavery that created the real disturbance. If there had been no slaves, there would have been no war. It tires me to read about the alleged causes, other than the ownership of slave property. It was the owner- ship of slaves that made Bishop Andrew obnoxious to his abolitionist brethren. It was the ownership and profit that went with slave property, which made the North eager to rid the nation of negro slaves. They could always stir up dissen- sion with angry discussions before Congress and then the preachers and the demagogues worked for it. Human kind are very much like a flock of sheep. The bell-wether leads them. I have seen a stalwart bell-wether take a sudden notion to caper, fling his legs about and shake his tail as he cavorted, and it is remarkable how the smaller sheep spring up to per- form in the same way. I heard a sheep-herder once say he could put a stick in front of his bell-wether and make him jump high over it. Then his flock would come along and jump likewise, although the stick was not in front any more. We are all creatures of habit, likewise a nation of imitators or political followers. Therefore we were satisfied, when assured that there would be a peaceable separation. A great many sanguine people believed it would be only a skirmish when the two sides came in contact. The North only called for three- month volunteers, after Fort Sumter was fired upon, but there was one factor which was not appreciated, or reckoned with, but fatally overlooked. Behind the slavery question there was a politico-religious element, a fanatical host bent on be'ating down slave owners as well as freeing the slaves in the South. When that crowd tasted blood it ran wild. Down in the South there were a great many non-slave owners. When 44 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics these men were asked: "how would you like to see a black, buck negro sitting in church or calling to see your daughter?" it woke up a spirit of indignation that was not quenched by human gore or starved out in the prison pens of the North. The negro was played like a ball from both sides, and the preachers played the game along with the politicians and many times were first "at the bat." This is plain talk, but plain truth! After thinking over this dreadful business for more than half a century, I am convinced the time had come in the provi- dence of God, to give every human creature its title to free- dom, and negro slavery was doomed and disappeared! It was not the South alone that had sinned on this line for the North had brought these slaves over here and made big money with the slave trade, and sold them Southward for strictly profit and gain, but the slaves were located in the South and this theater of current events located in the South made the South the battlefield and the sufferer from the devastating inrush of armies. The hullaballoo in Congress was no more unreasonable or intractable or universal than in church gatherings and news- paper offices. The country went on "a tare" and stirred up the mud under the rottenest mud sills in the United States of America. I am not going to write about the suffering, the desolation, the poverty, the widowhood or orphanage that came along in the wake of war, I am only trying to turn our politicians around like a dressmaker shapes for me a garment and let you see Avhat politics did do or tried to do in flinging misery, ruin and death broadcast over our common country, for politics did it. It was a very significant sentence that Mr. Collis P. Hunting- ton, of Pacific Lobby fame, penned for the consideration of his partner, Colton, in California. The government had do- nated to the Pacific railroads a great deal of land that the Railroad King wished to convert into money, so he telegraphed the following: "Dec. 24, 1876. "Friend Colton: "I am doing all I can to have the government take 6,000,000 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 45 acres of land and give the railroad credit for $15,000,000. I wish you would have the newspapers take the ground that this land ought to be taken by the government and held for the people. The demagogues can then work and vote for it. ''C. P. Huntington." Our demagogues worked and voted, and the "newspapers took the ground" and the preachers and the politicians were coaxed along by shrewd men in the lead until the world stood aghast at "man's inhumanity to man." Hon. A. H. Stephens, once said in a public speech that he warned the people of Georgia, as early as September, 1860, of the dangers which were menacing the State, etc. He said the listeners were incredulous. The speaker rose to a climax and shouted: "You need not be surprised to see this country involved in civil war in less than six months. " The gravest men in Augusta, my oldest and best friends, said: "Stephens is going crazy, the infirmities of his body have gone to his head." He continued: "In less than six months, the thunders of war were heard. " He said further : "While I believed in the right to secede, I never believed in the policy of its assertion." So, when he admitted to the members of the secession convention, that secession was right, the balance of his prolonged oratory was to them simple rot ! All that the demagogues wanted was the privilege of working and voting for secession, because offices were not in plenty under the government and there would be plenty of places when the new Confederate govern- ment got to working steadily. Hon. Herschel V. Johnson made the best and most clinching argument for non-secession and it was freely told afterwards that he was plied with mixed liquors until he was unable to finish after the noon recess — for to this desperate complexion had it come — to rule or ruin the State of Georgia rather than yield to "Republican tyranny" in Congress. Both sides were mad! Lincoln's election "was a certainty and it took but four years and a half to wreck the fortunes of the Confederacy! But for the fortitude of the soldiers in the field and the fortitude of the women at home, I again repeat, the bottom would have dropped out before April, 1865. Such heroism was unexampled ! The South has reason to be proud of its 'yi^t 46 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics soldiers and its women. The story of their courage will bear repeating, because it was genuine, sincere and patriotic. Like all other military achievements, the officers earn and receive all the honors of war, but it was thp plain soldiers and true- hearted women of the defunct Confederacy who deserve the medals of merit. President Davis had a Herculean undertaking. If his Con- ^.^ress and the army leaders had been in harmony with him, he woul^have been weighted down with care and anxiety. But he had dissensions in Congress — rival generals, disappointed office-seekers, unfaithful men in his employ, and a desolated country to furnish supplies. It was a superhuman task and after the blockade an impossible one. He never sought office any more. He had enough of it. He was not faultless — he had many and violent enemies, and the old antagonisms were smouldering even after he went to his Mississippi home to end his days. He was victimized by newspaper reporters. Every act was scrutinized and enlarged upon — good or bad; but nobody ever questioned his loyalty to the Confederacy. He gave it the best that was in him — and went down with it iu defeat. "While such an end has its irritations, because it is human to resent injustice, there was in his case the supreme satisfac- tion that nobody could question his loyalty to the South — he had nothing to show for his service, either in money or later political ambitions — but he was entitled to and did receive the loyal respect and homage of the plain people of the aforetime Confederacy, in default of any other possible tribute to his faithfulness. There are some things much worse than political defeat. A name without tarnish and a record that is unassailable, is even far better than success in error. Politics After the War For a considerable time, after the war, I had too much to do, school teaching, making a living and assisting Dr. Felton •in restoring our war-swept plantation and home to decent shape, to bother very much about the doings of our Georgia politicians, in Milledgeville and Atlanta. I had but little money to spend. I could not travel much, and our neighbors were in the same condition. But there was a lively scrimmage going on all the while, and scores of our ever-ready politicians hung around Governor Rufus B. Bullock getting all they could out of him in jobs and positions, only to become ingrates and afterwards to abuse the man unmercifully until they finally ran him out of the State. The people were clamorous for all in sight, which promised either money or office — they used their offices to make money and too many of them were not particular as to how they made it. They backed up this Republican governor in all his schemes for public plunder and then posed as Simon pure Democrats, immaculate and truly patriotic. I have often wondered how Governor Bullock could hold his tongue when some of these Judas Iscariots were hurling anathemas in his very face. I can not take time to write down, or to pay for printing the full record of this unhappy era in Georgia politics, but I feel sure the governor had either the "patience of Job," or was so deep in the mire, that he was afraid to reveal the inside secrets. If ''Mr. Foster Blodgett's tin box" is ever opened to the pub- lic, there will be "richness," a-la-Squeers ! In 1870, the Atlanta Constitution published a flaring head- line : "Georgians Prepare to Howl." The editor called it a "campaign document," and the opening sentences detailed the "vile clerk system" of Bullock's Legislature. Then the "pay of members" was told in lurid language, then the "Bond is- sues" and the other issues which have made a continual text for our ever active and money-seeking Democrats. One senjbence it will be well to copy here. "Any man who will start on the tremendous journey of traveling through the 48 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics particulars of Gov. Bullock's administration will often pause, wearied, heart sick at the dreary waste of official mismanage- ment, disregard of law, reckless extravagance and wanton favoritism." But when I compared records I found Gov. Bul- lock appointed Gov. Joseph E. Brown chief justice, and Gov. Colquitt appointed the same man United States Senator. I found Mr. Bullock paying Georgia gold bonds, illegally, and I found Governor Colquitt pajang Northeastern railroad bonds illegally. I found Gov. James M. Smith rasping Bullock about the iniquitous convict lease and State road lease entered into by spurious Democratic politicians, and I found Gov. Smith fastening for twenty years, the same sort of, and a worse convict lease on the taxpayers of Georgia. I found Mr. Kim- ball cheek by jowl with Gov. Bullock, and I found Gov. Col- quitt in the same fix with Gov. Brown, and I concluded that it was only ' ' chin music, ' ' and the ' ' outs ' ' were after the " ins " in Bullock's time, and that Georgians "howled" all the time. There were two acts of Gov. Bullock's administration that were absolutely vicious — unworthy and dishonorable, namely, the illegal signing of fraudulent railroad bonds and the illegal and dishonorable methods used in building or buying the State Capitol from Mr. Kimball. The tracks that went in and were seen in those transactions were the double tracks of Bullock and Kimball, and Kimball was only the governor's "alter ego." Neither Dr. Felton or myself were acquainted with, or inter- ested in Mr. Bullock or his Democratic helpers until the con- gressional campaign had opened in the 7th congressional dis- trict in June, 1874. A friend, now dead, came to us to tell us that lobbyists were making ready to remove Bartow county from its regular Chero- kee judicial circuit, and shift it into the Rome judicial circuit — that a written contract had been seen in a banlf located in Cartersville, where a prominent and wealthy citizen of our county had contracted with the most noted lobbyist in Chero- kee, Georgia, to pass such a bill through the Legislature, and if he did so, then the prominent and wealthy citizen was to pay the lobbyist five hundred dollars for securing this legisla- tion. Judge McCuteheon, the Superior Court judge, had made My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 49 the citizen angry by some of his decisions and this (Bartow) county must be lifted over to the Rome circuit, where a so- called Bullock judge had authority and where things would be different. That begun to wake us up, and we had the best of reasons for knowing that this lobby contract had been placed in the bank for safekeeping by both parties because one was afraid to trust the other. How many of such contracts were in other safekeeping we had no means of knowing then or later. This was the starter of the most extraordinary campaign ever known to the State of Georgia in the Cherokee section of Georgia. But the "Atlanta Constitution" was on the ground in 1868-69-70 and could speak with authority. I have an old copy of the paper containing a long editorial on Gov. Bullock, and it was generally understood, at the time of writing, that Gov. Brown had weakened on Gov. Bullock for some reason. Says the editor: ''The evidence is volumin- ous and decisive of boundless guilt. Bullock and Kimball are copartners, etc. Bullock allowed Kimball to borrow State money and use it privately. He paid out State money on Kimball's private loans. Wherever Kimball figured there was Bullock. Bullock was a Mitchell heir — was in the opera house purchase, etc. Bullock paid $140,000 to forty-two newspapers and this was outside State printing or State road printing. Of this $28,000 is still unpaid." (Somebody was so unkind as to say that if the $28,000 had been paid, all would still have been lovely!) Rewards were offered after captures were made. The State road was bled to support the "Era" bought v/ith the State's money. Bullock borrowed for himself and Kimball $3,334,000. There is still due $762,654. Bullock tried to subsidize lawyers as well as the press. Bullock pardoned 523 cases. Bullock sinned broad guage. The penitentiary property was stolen. Grant and Alexander paid $5,000 to influence Bullock to get convicts ! The committee says Bul- lock shared in the plunder. Bullock indorsed the Brunswick and Albany Railroad bonds, and lied repeatedly in the matter. These are the bonds, which were lobbied before the Georgia I legislature, and Charles L. Frost declared upon oath that he turned over to Kimball 65 of these thousand-dollar gold bonds 50 ]\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics to settle the claims of the Trammells for services rendered in pushing this Brunswick and Albany Railroad bond legislation to success. "He paid John Conley $11,500 for an unnecessary analysis of the Constitution. If he failed to do a gubernatorial wrong it was because he lacked a chance." I have not copied one-twentieth of the indictment, but this is enough for the present writing. I am moved to make a note of this review of Bullock's regime because I found the following in an issue of the "Atlanta Journal," twenty years later: "If the people of Georgia are willing to welcome an- other motley regime, then let them consent to be cudgeled or cajoled, by Felton, the veteran trick-master of independent- ism." I do not suppose partisan hate ever reached its zenith, until that unworthy and malicious slur was cast on the very man who did more than any other politican in Georgia to ex- pose the corruption that prevailed in Bullock's time. It so happened that I found out how Mr. Bullock made sup- porters in his line of business. A Georgia Superior Court judge was ready to join Bullock, but was afraid he might lose caste, etc. Bullock's attorney-general met him in a certain town, where he was holding court, and told the judge the time had come for him to declare himself. The judge was "not ready." "All right," was the reply. "You will declare yourself to- day, or there will be another judge on this circuit when I reach Atlanta tomorrow." Somebody twitted the judge who said: "I am in position to say I have neither politics or a country," but he went over to Bullock, body and breeches. It was to his court that our Bartow county was to be subjected if the lobbyist had not failed to make the removal. No one acquainted with Georgia politics will make the mis- take of supposing that the Simon pure Democrats were not truly indignant. The judiciary of the State of Georgia has had, a few men, exceptional for probity as well as ability, but there have also been various legislative investigations and newspaper contro- versies, which have demonstrated to a certainty that politics in Bullock's time ruled the bench as well as the Legislature. It was a far cry to herald Dr. Felton as a "trick master" My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 51 like Bullock! With a venal press and a swarming pack of Bullock Democrats in the best offices of the state, it was only a cry of ' ' stop thief ! ' ' In the month of July 23, 1868, Gen. Howell Cobb discoursed in Atlanta on Gov. Bullock's judiciary system. You can find the speech reported in the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel, August 12, 1868. "I would say to him, Mr. Bullock, the people of Georgia have done you wrong. Remember the circumstances under which you have been called to execute the duties of your Gubernatorial office and my advice to you is to behave your- self just as well as your nature and education v/ill admit. You have got a judiciary to appoint. I would advise you to send for the official copy of the address of the chairman of the Grant and Colfax committee, written by one Joseph E. Brown, in which he assumes to announce for you that the judiciary of Georgia will be corruptly appointed to subserve base and partisan purposes, and when you get it make a bonfire of it, and blot from your memory the recollection of its contents!" When I saw this publication I was sufficiently interested to hunt up the "official copy," and it sets forth the additional fact that it was "adopted at a meeting, held in Atlanta on the 25th day of June, 1868, and is signed by Joseph E. Brown, chairman of the Republican Executive Committee." I find still more. "Assemble at your respective county sites and other convenient places, on the 4th of July, and send up one united, patriotic shout, which shall be heard from the Savannah to the Chattahoochee, and from the Seaboard to Chickamauga, rever- berating from the mountains to the hill top, echoing and re- echoing through every valley and upon every plain — Grant, Colfax — Victory, progress ! ' ' Listen to it a little further : ' ' The Republican party elected several negroes to the legislature, and the so-called Democrats regularly nominated two negroes in Houston county as its can- didates — one for tax collector and the other for receiver of tax returns. The former is elected. The tax collector of Houston county, one of the largest and wealthiest counties in the state, is a negro, elected as the regular nominee of the Democratic party. Why should you longer bend the knee to the pretended 52 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics aristocracy of the State ? The God of nature made you their equal. Arise and assert your equality!" I published the foregoing in the year 1886, when Dr. Felton was denounced from one end of the state to the other, because he was not in favor of General Gordon for governor, as against Major (now) Senator Bacon. I did not then copy the de- nunciation heaped upon Governor Brown, because Governor (afterwards Senator) Brown held his seat in the senate by Governor Colquitt's appointment and was again placed there by Democratic votes. I said, in 1886, and say it now, I entertain no unkind feeling to Senator Brown. He made a far better senator than the man who preceded him and, while I may be mistaken, I do feel sure that Mr. Brown would not have been found in Huntington's employ in Washington City. He had plenty of money, and he was not obliged to give up the sena- torial seat because he was "heavily in debt, and couldn't sup- port his family on the salary," — and General Gordon so ex- plained his action in regard to himself in 1886, even while he was pleading for the governor's place, with only a $3,000 salary. I set it down at the time, that Governor Brown was quite as good as the men who were on their knees to him for his political influence and the "use of his money in elections." That Houston county incident recalls a story told me by a citizen of Houston county in those troublous times, as to how they elected their candidates. The negroes outnumbered the whites anywhere from three to five to each white man. At one election, when Grant was candidate on one side and maybe Greely on the other, the citizens agreed among themselves to place a Radical manager at one ballot box for negroes and a Democrat at the other. Before the polls opened a squad of men had an interview with the Radical manager. They said, "Here's $200. You must sign your resignation right here; but as the polls are about to open, here's another hundred, if you hold the election at the black box today." He held the election and it was published far and wide that Houston's election was as quiet as you could ask. That night they threw out the box, where the Radical took in the votes (because he had resigned) with every vote in it. Another party has given me a description of the way that My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 53 Crawford county was counted, and a large majority secured in the congressional race between Col. Reuben Arnold and Col. Nat Hammond. There was an abandoned precinct that hadn't been opened in a year, maybe more. The Hammond men had a box fixed with enough majority to defeat Mr. Arnold, ready made, and they used it for that purpose with the abandoned precinct. The whole state of Georgia was run over by such tricksters, and it was only, in my opinion, occasionally that an honest election was held. Governor Brown also, on June 6, 1867, thus reported his (Brown's) political views: "I belong to no party organization of any character, except the Reconstruction party of Georgia. My platform is the Sherman act, with the Wilson amendment. ' ' It was this speech, made by Governor Brown (and it was scat- tered over Georgia broadcast by thousands) that I now recall for these pages. On July 16, 1867, a short time after Governor Brown de- livered himself so freely, Mr. Hill, in reply, thus expatiated : "You will by these measures inaugurate a war of races. Some of you are taking the negro by the arm, telling him you are his friend — that you gave him his liberty ! Ye hypocrites ! Ye whited sepulchers ! You mean in your hearts to deceive and buy up the negro vote for your own benefit. If I had an enemy and desired him to become forever infamous, I would ask no more of him than he should support the hellish schemes of those now seeking to subvert the constitution and destroy our liberty. He is digging a grave for himself which posterity will never water with a tear! How many people in Atlanta belong to the Loyal League? Save yourselves before it is too late. Destroy all evidence of your membership, bind all your comrades to mutual concealment of the fact that you were members and come out!" "Save yourselves now, or be forever lost to decent society and your own self-respect ! " It is now the time and place for Governor Brown to say something in his own defense. This defense appealed in the columns of the Augusta Chronicle under its new editor, Hon. Pat "Walsh, who took charge on August 1, 1868. Said Governor Brown: "You have lately 54 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics published a series of 'Notes on the Situation,' by B. H. Hill, in which he thought proper to attack me by name — which makes it proper that I notice them appropriately. In No. 14, I find the following : ' Sumner and Stevens — Brown and Hol~ den are not accidents, nor are they original characters. Such men have ever been treacherous by principle, faithless to trust and deceitful in professions, but always consistent in the com- mon end of destruction to government.' " With this for a starter, the governor made it plain that Mr. Hill started in life professing to be a Democrat, was defeated for congress as a know-nothing in 1855, defeated on the elec- toral ticket in 1856, defeated as know-nothing candidate for governor in 1857, and elected a state senator from Troup in 1859, when he advocated War. When Mr. Lincoln was made president he was for the union — opposed secession in the con- vention, but voted for it and signed it. In the secession con- vention, he said there would be no war in a public s^peech, and made his way to the Confederate senate over General Toombs as a know-nothing. While in the senate he voted under oath for the conscript bill. In Milledgeville he was very severe on me (Brown) and said the country would have been ruined if the bill had not passed. During the war Hill volunteered as a private in LaGrange, and then refused to go, because it would be unconstitutional for a senator to draw the pay of a private soldier. Yet Mr. Hill says in No. 14, 'I never felt I made war on the union.' This reckless calminator de- nounces the congress of the United States, the president of the United States and supreme court — asserts that Longstreet, Beauregard and Hampton are no better than a burglar — de- nounces Lee, General Johnston and General Gordon, and all other Confederate generals who passively submit to the same acts in congress." Mr. Hill came back again, of course, in reply. "He (Brown) cares not for the suffering of the people or the subversion of the people, so that he may reap and rule. He was a traitor to the Union — a traitor to the Confederacy, and would sell the honor of the people who trusted him, all for greed and for place, first from his own people and then from his people's oppressors. How can such a man be moved by the voice of honor, or made to listen to the appeals of My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 55 patriotism? How can he, a traitor to truth, be convinced by argument? How can he, whose ambition seeks only his own good, be turned from his purpose by the exhibition of the wrong of others? The fiery flames of sulphurous hell could not burn out the lusts of power and pelf from the ambitious minds of ambitious Lucifer and his fallen followers ! How can truth reach or shake the purpose of the hardened wretch — this political Lucifer — who is willing to make a pandemonium of this country; because to reign is worth ambition, even in hell." It is a good time just now to refer to the "Columbus pris- oners," — and a season of fearful excitement during the year 1868. It will be remembered that Governor Brown was em- ployed by General Meade to prosecute the Ashburn murderers, at a reported salary of $5,000 for the service. It was a mili- tary court and conducted for the United States government. I, along with thousands of southern women, was enraged at the vindictive treatment of those Columbus women at the time. Hon. Louis Garrard had a newspaper controversy with Gov- ernor Brown in later years, and I will allow him to speak just now. "The Columbus prisoners were put on trial in July, 1868. On July 25 Doctor Kirksey, Messrs. Chipley, Bedell, "Wood and five others published a card in the Columbus Sun, giving an account of their treatment, which harrows the feel- ings of any human being with a heart. General Dunn's courtesy during the trial, especially after 'Duke's alibi,' was in strong contrast with the vindictive, ungenerous and unmanly conduct of Joe Brown. Let it be understood what the Duke alibi was. Some of the depraved and sub- dued witnesses for the government had sworn that Duke was one of the murderers and the truth of the whole testimony was based on the fact that Duke was present and fired at Ash- burn. Numbers of respectable and intelligent people — the * family and neighbors of Duke in Meriwether county, were put on the witness stand and proved him at his father's house in said county, forty miles from Columbus, on the day of the murder, and on the night of the same. The person with whom he boarded swore he was not in Columbus, the man who hired him the buggy swore to it, so did the man who slept in bed 56 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics with him on the night in question. A dozen other witnesses proved his arrival in Meriwether county that day — among them a prominent physician, Dr. Stiles, and others who knew the date of certain cotton transactions in LaGrange, and their recollection was confirmed by the books of the cotton dealers in LaGrange. This was an unquestioned alibi, established and not by Columbus witnesses. The cross-examination of Gov- ernor Brown on these witnesses of Duke's, as the stern truth came out that the witnesses for the government had wilfully lied, was a model of its kind — a desperate struggle to beat back the truth at all hazards. He did not move to release Mr. Duke after such a perfect alibi. After such an alibi one moment of imprisonment of Duke was a hideous crime on the part of the "powers that were," and Governor Brown says it was his contract to control the case after his employment. General Meade could not withstand the wrath of the liberty- loving people of America, and he published his so-called vin- dication. Governor Brown had made civil fame. Was he not warned by every means possible that he had better repent and vindicate himself then — if he did not intend to go down on the pages of history as a renegade and traitor to the people who had honored him? Let us see by his own utterances at that time if he was in a frame of mind to repent the crime. He was made chief justice of Georgia. God save the mark! After his appointment (by Governor Bullock) to this exalted office, he made a speech on August 10, 1868, to a large assembly of negroes in Atlanta in which he is reported to have said : "The object of Democracy is to destroy negro suffrage in the south. When did you ever hear of four millions of freemen, Avith the ballot in their hands, surrendering it without blood- shed? They would be less than men if they did. If you let them alone they will vote peaceably; if you don't, my white friends, you will provoke a state of things in which you will be the greatest sufferers. Your houses, your villages and your towns are pledged to peace! There are 30,000 white Repub- licans in Georgia — there are 90,000 of you, my colored friends ! ' ' It was a time of great excitement ; the Grant campaign was at its highest; the negroes were inflamed and looked upon the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 57 whites as their natural enemies, and but a spark was needed to inflame them to any violence. Under such circumstances, it was this chief justice of the state who suggested to them that the houses, villages and towns were pledged to peace. How? What did he mean — how was he understood at that time? The next issue of the Constitution, alluding to this speech, said: 'The thing by whom the office of chief justice of this state is to be disgraced has grown violent since his ap- pointment to that position. His speech to the negroes on Tuesday was highly tinctured with red. Was this the man to help Georgia and her people by controlling a trial of citizens before a military commission with a full knowledge of all the barbarities practiced on the prisoners, before and during the trial?" Again, on July 3, 1868, an affidavit was made by one Wm. H. Reed, government detective in Washington, D. C, which affidavit was presented to the military court and pub- lished in the Atlanta papers. This man, Reed, was a sub- altern under H. C. Whitley, the chief detective. It detailed the barbarities and the means used by Whitley to make wit- nesses perjure themselves, as he says: ''These parties gave no Evidence until they were imprisoned, tied out and the evidence wrung from them," and the witnesses were "drilled to tell the same story." Reed says in conclusion, "Whitley re- marked to me frequently that this whole case (Ashburn's murder) was a political move and the conviction of the pris- oners would be a big thing." "Did Governor Brown quit the case when this disgusting affidavit, revealing the practices of Whitley, was read in the military court? On the contrary, he went on as calmly with the business of the day in court as if nothing had happened and continued as counsel. Did Whitley tell the truth? Was this a "political move," and did Governor Brown think to "help Georgia and her people, by aiding the Radical party in June and July, as he did in the speech of August 19, 1868?" (Signed) LOUIS F. GARRARD. I append some of Governor Brown's reply to Garrard: "I have so demonstrated the correctness of my position and the jategrity of my motives in the matter of the Columbus pris- 58 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics oners, by the statements of gentlemen cognizant of important facts at that time," (I recollect Hon. A, H. Stephens remem- bered certain things told him by Governor Brown at the time, and Gen. Wm. Phillips gave voluminous testimony as to what he heard, etc., and I always expected General Phillips to rise up and answer when Governor Brown called for him) "that it seems this instrument of the prompting committee (Garrard) is being required to stand up and reiterate a false charge and feels very nervous and disagreeable. He is conscious that there is a low vileness about the position of calumny and de- traction which he occupies, is so close a-kin to the petty larceny of robbing a hen roost, that his only reply to the conclusive testimony of Major Campbell Wallace, who gives General Meade's statements at the time, which were substantially the same as my own, is the fabrication of a hen-roost story." Mr. Garrard came back again, and as a contribution to Georgia's political history, in regard to the killing of Ash- burn in Columbus and the prosecution of certain prisoners, for which prosecution it has been frequenty stated General Meade employed Governor Brown to do, with a salary or fee of $5,000 attached, I will copy from Mr. Garrard's open let- ter a part of Reed's affidavit in regard to the witnesses; the affidavit was dated July 4, 1868: "At the fort (Pulaski) one of the negroes, John Wells, was taken out of his cell and put in a chair in one of the casemates with a cannon pointed at his head and a soldier hold of the string, ready to snap the cap, apparently to shoot the gun — a barber slushed his head full of lather and pretended to be ready to shave his head. This was done to have him give evidence in regard to killing Ashburn, the negro all the time contending he knew nothing about the murder. This farce was kept up about ten minutes. Finally they put him back in the cell, with the understanding if he did not tell something it would be worse for him. They took the other negro, John Stapler, and put him before the gun with no better success. He was afterwards put in a sweat-box and kept there in great punishment for at least thirty hours, until his legs swelled. I took him out of the sweat-box, because I was convinced he knew nothing of the case. * * * Ij2 my frequent conversations with this man, My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 59 Bennett (one of the main witnesses for the prosecution) his prevarications convinced me if any one was guilty of killing Ashburn, this man Bennett was guilty. After this, Bennett was put in a cell with Betz, to see if he could not draw some evidence from him, and later Bennett admitted to me he was in the crowd that done the shooting of Ashburn, and persuaded Betz and Stevens to acknowledge the complicity of the pris- oners arrested with the murder. The witnesses were told that the government had offered a large reward and if the parties under arrest were convicted they (the witnesses) would get their share of the reward offered. He also swore that Whit- ley, the chief detective, told him the whole case was a "political move." This military commission had no authority to try these prisoners, but the military of 1868 did proceed with the case, and Governor Brown sought a conviction of the Columbus prisoners, after it was apparent by sworn evi- dence that the testimony for the government was false, and extorted by cruelties unhear^ of in this age and country, and as the press of the country at that time termed it, a revival of the Inquisition of the twelfth century. ' ' This controversy and the revival of the story of the Colum- bus prisoners grew out of a legislative investigation of the principal keeper of the penitentiary. Governor Brown was in the committee room, where this investigation was being car- ried on, and Mr. Garrard was one of the committee. The governor demanded that his stenographer be allowed to take down the testimony, and "that Col. Nelms (principal keeper) be permitted and all other parties interested be permitted to come before the committee and examine and cross-examine witnesses when they have an interest," etc. The committee refused his request, as he was only a witness himself. Then this irate governor (Brown) called the investigation a "star chamber" affair and two of the committee retaliated — told him of his connection with the prosecution of the Columbus prisoners, eleven years before. Why did I preserve all this literature, you will ask ? Because my husband, who had noth- ing to do with Bullock and his gang, who was true to his state and section, had no dishonest money in his pocket and had no alliance with political eorruptionists in Georgia, was 60 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics being hounded over fourteen counties in the Seventh Con- gressional district of Georgia as a "dishonest" politician, as "allied with Radicalism," etc., and the pack that pursued and the gang that yelped from the Chattahoochee to the Tennessee line, were the traders and tricksters who were doing it con- tinually, and every mother's son bent the knee in homage to ex-Governor Brown ! He placed two of his Bullock Democrats in the field against Dr. Felton and it has been said that all but one of the rest were secretly tagged with his mark. It is an old French saying that you "might scrape the hide of the parvenue millionaire, and you would always find the sabot." "We never failed to find that Governor Brown had either his hand over or under Dr. Felton 's political opponents in the Seventh Congressional district. I had a personal experience in May, 1865, when I was a refugee, that gave me much light on political matters in Geor- gia just after the war. In our refugee home, near the Clinton road, four or five miles from Macon, Georgia, just after the surrender we were attacked after dark by an armed man, either black or white, we could not be certain which, and Dr. Felton returned the fire on him — just outside the yard. We sat up all night, ex- pecting to be attacked again. Next morning a good neighbor furnished me his buggy and his son, a lad of fourteen, to go with me to Macon to ask protection from General Wilson, in command of the Federal forces. This was before the capture of President Da^ds, and the woods were full of roving people, including a number of Confederate soldiers who had not sur- rendered. I left Dr. Felton and my ten-year-old son at home with a suffering, anxious heart. When I reached Macon I drove to Rev. J. W. Burke's house, on the hill, and there found a Yankee chaplain to whom I was introduced and who volun- teered to accompany me to General Wilson's headquarters, in the Lanier House. We went together to the Lanier House, and as the general's headquarters were on the second floor and the chaplain knew all about his commander, we got half way up the steps before we were halted by an officer in full regimentals. "What's the matter?" said the chaplain. "The general is Taken in 1880. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 61 very busy." "All right," replied the chaplain, "this is some- thing that cannot be postponed and I will explain to the gen- eral at the door." "But you can't go in," persisted the officer. "I have strict orders to admit nobody." "I am not going to leave here until I know the reason," retorted the now angry chaplain. "Well, I hope you will be quiet and I'll tell you. He has been shut up with Governor Brown all the forenoon, and I am instructed to allow nobody to go in or interrupt." I heard every word myself and the chaplain lifted his eyebrows as he remarked, "I guess we will have to go elsewhere." "We then crossed over to the provost marshal's office and secured a guard, who was with us two weeks and while there he learned of the capture of Mr. Davis and brought us the news from Macon-. (This episode was written for the Macon Telegraph nearly thirty years ago, and was published among my "War Reminiscences.") I had another encounter in the year 1867 that has remained with me. I had a serious spell of illness, and was hardly able to be propped in a chair by the window when I saw a hired hand come out of my garden with an arm load of young roasting-ears before we had gathered any for ourselves. I called to him, in remonstrance, and he became insulting and abusive. When Dr. Felton came to the house he called the negro from his cabin and told him to get off the place, and if he appeared again what he would do to him. That afternoon Dr. Felton was arrested, carried before the military satrap and had the semblance of a trial. A young man, relative of mine, waited until the negro came toward the door and then he said to him, "If you are in this country after dark tonight, your hide won't hold shucks." He disappeared and as there was no other witness for him, the trial went by default. But for the abounding mercy of the Lord Almighty, this entire section might have been like San Domingo, in assassinations and bloody violence. At the time when Governor Brown received the appoint- ment of United States senator from his Excellency Governor A. H. Colquitt, ex-Governor James M. Smith had something to say of political conditions just after the war. "Permit me to direct attention to some features of the history of Governor 62 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Brown. For years after the war we all felt that every Geor- gian at least ought to be a Democrat, to stand squarely with his people in sentiment and conduct, but where was Governor Brown? In the dark days, when the honor of the state was trampled in the dust, did this gentleman show to his people, who had honored him so frequently and so highly, that living or dying and to the end their fate and fortune should be his? When the flag of the Confederacy went down Joseph E. Brown left the ranks of the Democratic party, and in so doing de- serted southern men and southern interest and aligned him- self with the authors of our humiliation and defeat. Why did he forsake, and join the ranks of our oppressors? Could he not prove to his masters that he submitted to them, with- out uniting with them to taunt, insult and revile those who had honored and loved him so much? Why did he join the Radical party in this state? Why did he go to their conven- tions? Why did he assist in nominating their candidates? Why did he lend all his powers for the defeat and destruction of the Democratic party of this state? Why did he continue so to do until the abdication of Governor Bullock showed that the Democrats had recovered the government?" As I am now concerned with politics just after the war, and before the year 1874, when Dr. Felton entered the political arena — I think the younger men of the state should know something about the State Road lease, which occurred under Governor Bullock's sanction, and to the benefit of his friend and adviser, Governor Joseph E. Brown. In a congressional investigation regarding affairs in the Southern states, a num- ber of our most notable people and politicians were sworn and testified. I chance to find the testimony of Hon. A. R. Wright at my hand — the good Roman friend to whom I owe many obligations of good will and good cheer when Dr. Felton was fighting with the "Beasts at Ephesus." Hear him: "Before the war it (the State Railroad) made $600,000 a year over and above expenses. It is owned by the state ; every dollar in it was paid by the state. Governor Brown the other day, trying to vindicate the smallness of his rental, admitted that the in- come for the month of March (1871) was $128,000." Ques- tion by Mr. Blair: "You say Governor Brown?" "Yes, sir; My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 63 he has it now under a release, a fraud on the part of Demo- crats and Eadicals. Governor Brown is the head of the com- pany, the only man who perhaps was guilty of treason, for he captured public property (Fort Pulaski) before Georgia seceded, and perhaps was the bitterest man during the war to Union men (of whom I am one). Now I am denounced by this same class of men, because I did not stand there and see them plunder the government." Question: ''These men (Brown & Co.) got your road under these circumstances?" "They did." ''And it is believed by your people to be a combination, and while better than the Blodgett fraud, still a fraud on the people?" Answer: "They do regard it as a terrible fraud; Governor Brown, in trying to excuse himself about the mean- ness of the pittance paid into the treasury, put down the gross income for the month of March at $128,000. I wrote to a friend in Atlanta to employ some man to go into the record (it is difficult to get into these things for information) with- out the knowledge of what he is at, and send me the expenses of the road under Wallace's administration and when Joe Brown was governor. According to the record, the running expenses were a little over $30,000. Brown said, if I remember correctly, they were $124,000. In order to deceive the people he had put in his ordinary expenses — the purchase and refitting the road and everything of the sort, for which he is to be paid by the state. In the Yazoo Fraud the people of Georgia poured down by the thousands and with a glass, by fire from the sun, burned up the deeds by which the land was given away. If they were justified in that, I think they would be in burning up this lease." "Do you believe these secession leaders have repented of their acts?" "Very few of them. Some of the worst among them have been pardoned by the government and put at the head of the present Radical gov- ernment down here, and it is the worst element of discontent among us. How can I stand to see Brown, who persecuted me all through the war, put at the head of the government and with more influence with General Grant than any man in Georgia?" "Did I understand you to say Governor Brown was making a million dollars a year out of the State's road?" "In my opinion, he will make this year from half a million 64 My IMemoirs of Georgia Politics to a million dollars, and as soon as he gets the thing a little regulated he will make a million clear profit annually — and I think the state ought to have it. " "I understand you to think there was no honesty in this lease transaction?" Answer: "I do not!" In the year 1886 General Gordon, in a public speech, de- clared that B. H. Hill, United States senator, offered to him (Gordon) a share in the State Road lease and his conscience was so tender he could not accept, and General Gordon's state- ment was investigated by responsible parties, and one of the orignal members of the lease declared it to be untrue, for Hill had no authority to offer a share to anybody (and his offer to Gordon was unknown to the rest), and Mr. Stephens took a share, but afterwards returned it to the state (and the state never heard of it any more.) The name? of the lessees will appear in another place, with their debts and liabilities elim- inated from the amounts set to their names, and this original lessee in the year 1886 declared he had never in all that inter- vening time heard General Gordon's name ever connected with the lease, directly or indirectly. General Toombs and Mr, A. H, Stephens had a serious rup- ture over this lease share returned by Mr. Stephens to the state. General Toombs decided to bring the matter before the courts, so that the secret inwardness of this lease act might be un- covered. Mr. Stephens agreed to the proposition and then reconsidered — and in some way there was a letter written by General Toombs, directed to Mr. Stephens, in which he called for an immediate reply — or perhaps it was Mr. Stephens who wrote for an immediate answer, but the letter was directed to "Washington, D. C., instead of "Washington, "Wilkes county, Georgia, and lay in the post office there three months before the dead letter authorities returned it to the writer. Both grew fiery hot and the rupture was serious while it lasted, be- cause the missing and misdirected letter held the key to the mystery. Somewhere in my scrap-books I have the card signed by both of these gentlemen, announcing a cessation of hostilities and peace between the belligerents. General Toombs held Governor Brown in thorough detesta- tion and I have a copy of a speech made at Cedartown, by My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 65 General Toombs, that has in it more concentrated wrath and contempt than anything I have ever seen in the English language. The speech was delivered on August 25, 1868, when the Grant-Colfax campaign was on, and the Columbus prisoners were just released, etc. Said Toombs of Brown: "He has betrayed his natural and foster mother. More bit- ter than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! He is false to nature. What more can I say to commend this wretch to your detestation? "He has fatigued public indignation; it is no longer equal to his crimes! Ignoble villi an! Buoyant solely with corrup- tion, he only rises as he rots ! ' ' Governor Brown was not silent, by any means, under this tide of indignation. Although he went to Washington in 1880 as a Democratic senator, he sought, in 1868, to be a Republican official, in these words: "I am a Republican. I expect to give Grant and Colfax a cordial support. I know, sir, that your party, the so-called Democracy in Georgia has but one common tie that holds it together, and that is op- position to the reconstruction measures in congress, and that tie will be a rope of sand as soon as congress ceases to legislate on the question and to give the leaders of your party new causes of agitation and complaint, which enable them to apply the party lash to hold the organization together. It is a heterogeneous mass of as antagonistic elements as ever banded together in one common cause. It is composed of original Whigs, Democrats, Knov/-Nothings, Secessionists, Union men, white m.en, mestizoes and negroes. Your large majority in this state was obtained by unfairness, intimidation and fraud." Public Documents, 40th Congress. Third session. The governor was a delegate to the National Convention that nominated General Grant in 1868, and in connection with one George Paschal, of Texas, is reported to have introduced a 'rank resolution in behalf of negro suffrage, which even Thad Stevens and Joshua Giddings refused to adopt. Some- where between 1868 and 1874, Governor Brown turned over in his politics and emerged as a rampant Democrat. I pre- served an open letter, written in 1874, to some of his Demo- cratic friends in Georgia, in which the following sentence 66 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics occurs: "It was a hard enough fate upon us, for our con- querors to abolish slavery and wrest from us, without a dol- lar of compensation, the billions of dollars invested in that property, then to compel us to stand upon terms of legal equality with our former slaves and meet them as equals at the ballot box. In my judgment there are but two con- tingencies which can avert the evil; one is the overwhelming defeat of the Republican party this fall. If this should fail, the only remaining hope is the veto power of the president." Was there ever such a whirligig in regard to negro suffrage? I would like to ask in this connection what president? General Grant was president during eight years — from March, 1869, to March, 1877 — and this pessimistic wail was heard in 1874. Had Governor Brown any idea that General Grant would forsake Republicanism for Democracy? I trow not. President Hayes went in March 4, 1877, and the governor denounced his election as the "grandest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. Entertaining these views, I cannot recommend my friends to President Hayes for any position whatever, and I shall uniformly decline to do so." Signed J. E. Brown, Atlanta, March 26, 1877. ' ' Now pay your money and take your choice ! ' ' The ex- tremes are before you. In 1868 his "Radicalism" was oozing out in every pore. In 1874, his Democracy was burning him up with its fire and fury ! Was this a Janus face, to be turned only to patronage? In his bush arbor speech B. H. Hill said: "He (Brown) was bought up to co-operate in this foul work" (Republicanism). Somebody cried out "Brown!" Said Mr. Hill : " I do not call his name, for it should not be mentioned in decent company ! ' ' Yet Mr. Hill declared Governor Brown to be "a man born and reared in the school of fidelity to his party" — namely, Democracy — when he went out of his way to eulogize Senator Brown's pure politics in the senate — after Governor Colquitt gave him the seat. Another extraordinary scene occurred in the United States senate about the same time — when Senators Bayard and Pen- dleton opposed Senator Conkling, who had moved to go into My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 67 executive session, and Senator Malione, of Virginia, voted for an executive session. Mr. Stephens wrote me of Senator Hill's outburst against Mahone, in these words: "This attack on Mahone was unwise, because it was unjust and unfounded in fact. Such unjust attacks as this one makes more heroes than anything else upon earth. ' ' The Baltimore American was very severe on Mr. Hill. The New York Tribune said: "Mr. Hill completely lost his prudence. ' ' The National Republican called Hill "The Georgia bull in the Senatorial China shop." The Washington Post approved Mahone and decried Hill 's ferocious attack. Mr. Hill named Senator Brown again, along with Senator Harris, of Tennessee, and Senator Johnston, of Vir- ginia, as "men who were born and reared in fidelity to the Democratic party." "Who is this one?" speaking against Mahone, "who is ambitious to do what no man in the history of this country has ever done, to be the first man to stand up in this high presence and proclaim from this proud eminence that he disgraces the commission he holds?" What did Ma- hone say? "The senator has assumed not only to be the cus- todian here of the Democratic party of this nation, but as- serts his right to speak for the constituency that I have the privilege, the proud and honorable privilege on this floor of representing without his assent and without the assent of such Democracy as he speaks for. I come here as a Virginian to represent my people, not to represent the Democracy for which you stand. I come with as proud a claim to represent the people of Georgia, won on fields where I have vied with Geor- gians whom I commanded and others in the cause of my peo- ple and of their section in the late unhappy contest. As one engaged in it, and who has neither here or elsewhere, any apology to make for the part taken ; I am here by my humble efforts to bring peace to this whole country — peace and good will between sections, not as a partisan, and not to represent the bourbonism that has done so much injury to my section of the country. Now, this gentleman undertakes to say what constitutes a Democrat. I am a better Democrat than he, who is nominally committed to a full vote, free ballot and an honest count, and I should like to know how he stands for 68 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics these things in Georgia, where tissue ballots (he should have said bogus tickets) are fashionable." Still, Mr. Hill failed to understand what he was doing against himself. "I say, if he votes as you (Logan) want him to vote, God save him, for he is gone!" Up rose Senator Hoar, and who then and there administered to Senator Hill a scathing rebuke, closing thus: "It is none of the business of the senator (Hill) how any other senator shall cast his vote. Each of us is responsible to his state, his conscience, to his God, and no slave-master or plantation overseer is to wave his whip in this way, over the heads of the American senate ! ' ' Perhaps it was the effect of his cancer malady that led Mr. Hill into such an embarrassing condition, and I am lenient enough to hope that it was the same evil ailment which made him run amuck in his later tirade against his old school-mate, Dr. Felton, but the evidence is plentiful that Mr. Hill's last days in the senate were not effective for his state or nation, and there is nothing to look back upon that reflects any real benefit to his constituency at that time. But I have strayed from the era in Georgia politics when Governor Brown was Governor Bullock's right hand man, and when Mr. Hill made himself an idol among Georgians by con- stantly tiptoeing in public to denounce Governor Brown. They were both men of strong will and determination, and it should not be forgotten that Governor Brown gave Mr. Hill a share in the State Road lease directly after these tirades had been scattered all over Georgia, as political documents. They were never far apart in making profit out of their politics. When the Gordon-Newcomb alliance looked to overturning the Brown faction in the State Road lease, Mr. Hill stated to Dr. Felton in my presence, that he had been retained with $10,000 "to prevent the other side from employing him." It was also Mr. Hill who said to us, that General Gordon's em- ployment with Newcomb was only for two years and $14,000 for the same two years. In my opinion there was no real friendship anywhere. It was so much for so much, and "you tickle me and I'll tickle you." Governor Brown made his alliance with Governor Bui- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 69 lock pay him handsome returns in cold cash. The State Road lease was a fortune and came to him, as a gift, so to speak. But Governor Brown had no difficulty in getting as much or more profit out of the convict lease, by managing his Excellency James M. Smith. That was another fortune "picked up in the road." When he put pressure on Governor Colquitt he went to the Senate as easily as if the track had been greased for that purpose and nothing else. Governor Brown knew how to manage his men, and they were all his men after he had tagged them into his employ. I do not mean that their efforts were like those of Colonel Trammell or General William Phillips. His ownership of the first named was not continuous — but sporadic ; with the other gentlemen, it was constitutional. They were apparently always ready, in or out of season. I could understand why Mr, Julius Brown, deceased, in a spasm of contempt, withdrew the bequest in his will which looked to building or paying for a seperate monument to Messrs. Trammell and Phillips, after he realized a weakening of some sort in his father's staunch adherents — during his own life. It was sad but significant. Governor Brown was always a master-hand in managing his men. He never lost sight of what was coming to himself — but he was liberal to his candidates, provided they obeyed his call. His influence nominated Col. L. N. Trammell in the campaign of 1874. The same influence nominated Judge Les- ter in 1878. He nominated Colonel Clements in 1880, as we understood, and it has been the old, old story, all down the line, until death relieved him of the task of ruling Georgia — by his peculiar methods, in politics and in owning and man- aging the revenues of the state, railroad and convicts. His life was stormy but successful, because he knew that money made power and both money and power were necessary to run politics. Mr. Stephens was never at "outs" with Governor Brown after the Confederacy collapsed. He might have been fractious, if Governor Brown had ever put his finger in his congressional campaigns — but they agreed to stand apart and each "tote his own skillet." Governor Brown always regu- lated the Bullock Democrats as well as the Bullock Republi- cans. They belonged to him — because he knew their inside 70 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics complications. For a good many years he did not annoy him- self with the "Kirkwood Ring," and he had ironical contempt for their drum and fife, but there came a time when he either knew too much or they were willing to surrender enough to give him what the Georgia people had once refused to give him — namely, a seat in the senate. In this connection I remember a scene which occurred in the United States senate, after these two "ambitious Lucifers" had reached the goal of their ambitions and were seated side by side, when Mr. Hill felt called upon to defend Governor (then Senator) Brown's Democracy. These two politicians had done as much if not more to plunge Georgia, into war, than any two men, living or dead, and both had exhausted themselves in acrid vituperation of each other — but Mr. Hill was in no- wise embarrassed by those voluminous "Notes on the Situa- tion," or his remembrance of "Bullock's Chief Justice," or the "Loyal League," or anything pertaining to Radicalism. With a face resplendent with his Democratic zeal and per- sonal friendship, he pronounced Governor Brown to bo a true-blue Democrat from his cradle up. These "Lucifers" were billing and cooing like a pair of turtle doves, under friendly eaves, and joining forces to beat down Dr. Felton and the Independent movement in Georgia. VOORHEES AND BROWN. Politics Make Strange Bedfellows. North Georgia, Aug. 2, 1883. — Editors Telegraph and Mes- senger: In yesterday's Atlanta Constitution we find what is purported to be the bottom facts of the late Tilden and Hen- dricks boom. If the statement was not manufactured in the office of that paper, as is sometimes alleged, we may begin to see how and where the Tilden barrel is being manipulated, and who will tap it. After quite a dissertation upon the attitude of Senator Voor- hees towards McDonald and Hendricks, these words appear: "I think Senator Joe Brown, of Georgia, and Voorhees originated the scheme." Granting this statement to be true (and it is likely Senator Brown previously inspects all the political statements of his My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 71 organ), it will be well to note the relations that formerly ex- isted between these Senators, and to compare them with the relations existing at present. In the house of representatives, on the 23d day of March, 1872, Daniel "W. Voorhees made a speech on the "Plunder of the Southern States by the Republican party." It will do no harm to quote him now, for he will be quoted from it often if he and Senator Brown have laid their heads together to foist the "Greystone imbecile" upon the Democratic party, at a time when it will need all the brains and the physical strength of the whole organization. If sly Joey B. can by any means reach the second place on the ticket, there will be policy in having a head to it that is likely to die off conveniently. Tilden's hands are said to be already palsied. But to return to our muttons, namely. Senator Voorhees and Senator Brown. In discussing the plunder of Georgia by Brown, Bullock & Co., he uses these eloquent and truthful words : "Georgia was the fairest and most fertile field that ever excited the hungry cupidity of the political pirate and the official plunderer. She was full of those mighty substances out of which the taxes of a laboring people are always wrung by the grasping hand of power. She was the most splendid quarry in all history for the vultures, the kites and the carrion crows that darken the air at the close of a terrible civil war, and whet their filthy beaks over the fallen ; and they speedily set- tle down on her in devouring flocks and droves. "AVhen the calamities of war broke upon the country in 1861, Georgia was free from debt. If she had outstanding obligations they were for mere nominal amounts. Her people felt none of the burdens of taxation. ' ' The expenses of her State government were almost wholly paid by the revenues of a railroad between Chattanooga and Atlanta, which was constructed and owned by the State. The burdens of- government were easy on her citizens. Taxes were trifles lights as air. "Now look at her today, under control of the Republican party. Her governor is an alien — a stranger spying out the possessions of a land that was at his mercy, and embracing every opportunity to seize them. He neither knew or cared for the people or their wants. I have been reliably informed that his advent into the State was as the agent of some express company. He went into the South on the wave that bore so many eager, inhuman, hungry sharks in quest of prey. "The mind recoils, filled with wonder and indignation, in 72 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics contemplating this fearful and gigantic crime. All the seven vials of the Apocalypse have been opened on this great and beautiful but unhappy region. "The authors of this stupendous burden did the work in about three years. In 1868 (the year that Senator Brown voted for Grant and Colfax, and was supported for the United States Senate by the very worst elements of the Republican party, and the same year when he received the position of chief jus- tice from the hands of Governor Bullock), a year more fatal to the interests of the people of the State than the scourge of famine, pestilence or war, the most venal and abandoned body of men , ever known outside the boundaries of penal colonies, State prisons or Southern reconstruction was chosen as the legislature of Georgia. They were the leaders and representa- tives of the Republican party. "With such a governor as Bullock and such a legislature in full and perfect sympathy and harmony with each other, mor- ally and politically, a career of villainy at once opened on the soil of Georgia which will go down to posterity without a peer or rival in the evil and infamous administrations of the Vorld." After a full, free exposure of the extravagance of the State administration, Senator Voorhees gives the inside facts of Blodgett's management of the State road, closing thus: "But the work of spoliation did not stop with the close of Bullock's management. A law was obtained from the legis- lature of which I have spoken, authorizing the road to be leased in the interest of Bullock and his friends. (Bullock and his friends!! Aha!!) Under that law it has been leased for $25,000 a month, about half its real value. One of the lessees under this most valuable contract is a member of the present cabinet, and was so when the lease was made, and another is a distinguished Republican member of the Senate ! ' ' Will the readers of the "Telegraph and Messenger" give careful attention to the new political combination (as set forth in the "Constitution") — one part of which stigmatized the other with crimes the most infamous in 1872, and which now, in 1883, joins hands to resurrect the half-dead Tilden for the future success of a far-reaching political scheme? Will the Democratic party of Georgia give its allegiance to the plot and condone the past record of the plotters? With such leaders, can you hope for success? With such agents, banded together in a common cause, how can you expect anything but contempt and deserved defeat? . Plaindealer. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 73 BULLOCK'S REGIME ACCORDING TO ATLANTA CON- STITUTION IN 1872. Republished for the Young Men of the State. Editors Telegraph: When historical events are being col- lated and arranged for the instruction and guidance of the people, it is well to keep all prominent facts in mind, that no injustice may be done to the dead, or injury to the living. Gov, Bullock had his many faults, but a great many people are of the opinion, he was more sinned against by his confederates, than sinning. The year 1872 was a notable era in Georgia politics. This was the year when Gov. Brown used money to corrupt newspapers and buy lobbyists to prevent an impartial understanding by the legislature of Gov. Bullock's methods in leasing the State road to the present lease company. This was the year, that Hon. John C. Nichols, E. F. Hoge, S. A, McNeil, W. H. Payne, and C. J. "Welborn, reported on Bul- lock's official mismanagement, as governor. Bullock's con- nection with the State road "was attended to by another com- mittee," to use the editorial language of the Atlanta Consti- tution on Wednesday, the 24th July, 1872. "But," says that sapient editor, "the committee satisfied itself that Bullock was in the frauds." (Alas,^:hat the Constitution could not say more !) In the resume of Gov. Bullock's sins, now before me, one is obliged to smile at such meager notice of the State road lease frauds when it is recollected that Governor Brown was paying to the Constitution lessee money to influence the legislature and public opinion about this very time. He kept no account of the amounts, he testified on oath, but he or H. I. Kimball always paid up whenever Manager Hemphill called for "more," like the horse leech's daughter. This was the notable year in which Gov. Brown says on oath Senator Hill placed $15,000 in the Savings Bank in Atlanta to indemnify the president of that savings bank, who went on Foster Blodgett's bond, which action was approved by the lessees. (It will be remembered just here that Foster Blodgett was also a fugitive from justice. and accused of various crimes against the State). On Sep- tember 3, 1872, Governor Brown paid J. P. Simmons $1,000 to obtain his "influence." Simmons gave two receipts. Au- gust 5, 1872, Herbert Fielder took $500 from W. C. Morrill, State road treasurer, to do the same work. On August 16, 1872, Herbert Fielder took another $500, this time from Gov- ernor Brown. On 7th September Geo. N. Lester gave a receipt to Governor Jos. E. Brown for $1,000 for "services rendered the lease company." 74 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics R. B. Knight took another $500 on August 22, 1872, for the same work. These things are recalled here merely to give a proper estimate to the Atlanta Constitution's review of Bul- lock, on July 24, 1872. It is a great pity that Governor Brown did not take some sort of a receipt from Mr. Hemphill, for we must certainly suppose that the attack on Governor Bul- lock's character, which we will presently review, occurred before the Constitution began to bank ad libitum on the money of both Gov. Brown and H. I. Kimball, Bullock's partner. We are compelled to believe that the following expose of Bullock induced those two worthies to unloose their purse strings to Manager Hemphill, and thus choke off a threatened review in their paper of both Brown and Kimball. Oh, for a receipt, merely to show the exact date ! But let us see for ourselves what the Constitution thought of Bullock, who was then a fugitive from justice, and so poor in friends that he had to hide out for several years afterwards. Blodgett's friends could put up $15,000 in bank to save his precious scalp, but poor Bullock, who had made the chief justices, solicitor-generals, judges and every other official in Georgia by the wholesale, had to scuttle off and helplessly read the following criticism in the Atlanta Constitution: "The complicity and partnership of Bullock and Kimball is clearly proven. E. S. Jones testified that Kimball admitted it and enjoined him to 'keep mum.' They kept their bank accounts together. As State's agent, Kimball borrowed $250,000 and owed $54,000 on the opera house. He paid $160,000, leaving $149,000 still due the State. Bullock permitted Kimball to borrow money on the State's credit and use it privately, and also paid out the State 's money interest on Kimball's private loans. Bullock overdrew his personal account in the Georgia National Bank, $88,057.98. He has a special account in the same bank made up of State items to $776,834. The balance of this account in said bank due him was $122,- 953.59. Bullock permitted State's money to be used on Kimball's account. The purchase of the opera house is shown to have been corruptly aided by Bullock. A fraud was perpetrated at the start, in which Bullock participated. Bullock framed the papers himself. To cover the mortgage of $60,000 on the build- ing, Kimball deposited with the governor a certificate for $130,- 000 of city bonds. The city was only due $100,000 of bonds, therefore the certificate was a false one. These bonds were apprcpriated by Kimball and Bullock to their private use. Bullock was charged with the care of these bonds, and cor- ruptly permitted them to pass out of his hands. Kimball was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 75 to return $54,500 advanced to him for fixing the opera house. Bullock issued all the bonds to him without requiring the re- turn of the money. The mortgage of $60,000 is unpaid, the bonds to cover the mortgage gone, and Kimball's $54,500 still unpaid, all of which is due to Bullock's official corruption and venality." Mitchell Property. "Bullock had an interest in the Mitchell property. Wher- ever Kimball figured, there was Bullock. The property brought at one time $215,000. The heirs got $50,000. A bid was registered offering $100,000; and Bullock sent a message to his legislature favoring $35,000. The committee report the measure carried through by the most shameless expedients." Public Printing. "Bullock contracted to the press for advertising and procla- mations $140,395, including forty-two papers. This is outside public printing and State road printing. Of this amount $28,- 446 is still unpaid, $111,951 having been paid. The purchase of the Era the crowning outrage of this sort of thing. The committee report Bullock the real owner of the paper, and do not doubt that he bought it with the State's money. Bul- lock, the business manager, understood from Dr. Bard, the editor, that Bullock was the real owner — that Bullock directed the management, retained employes, raised salaries, etc. The paper was forced on the State road employes, who were dis- charged if they did not take it. The State road was bled to support the "Era." Borrowed Money. "Bullock and Kimball borrowed for the State and them- selves .$3,334,267. There is still due $702,054. The Fourth National Bank, New York, advanced $1,285,263 for coupons and expenses. The committee report against paying $35,000 to Fulton Bank, of Brooklyn, on $50,000 currency bonds loaned to Kimball, against $75,000 to Russell Sage, loaned on $130,- 000 by Sage to John Rice for Kimball. Bullock subsidized lawyers as well as the press. ]Te paid lawyer's fees to the sum of $49,361. He paid his uncle, R. H. Brown, $7,000." Pardons. "Bullock pardoned broadcast. He pardoned 523 cases. Money could get pardons. Some of the governor's staff had a pardon brokerage. Pardoning before conviction was a fa- vorite practice. Pardon for political fealty was much on docket. Bullock sinned broad guage in this particular." 76 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Penitentiary Stealage. "The management of the penitentiary under Bullock was a wholesale system of stealage. Keepers are proven to have stolen penitentiary property. Grant Alexander & Co. paid Hurlburt $5,000 to use his influence with Bullock to let them have convicts. The committee conclude that Bullock shared in the plunder. The committee looked very little into the State road and express no opinion." State Aid. "Bullock indorsed bonds for railroads and lied repeatedly to help the sale of illegally indorsed bonds. He would not have repeatedly violated the law, except for pay." "Reconstructor" Bullock. "The record of Bullock as a "reconstructor" was diaboli- cal. George P. Burnett is satisfied that Bullock paid Wash- ington expenses out of State road." Bullock's Extravagance. "He sent through express company $5,533,000 in bonds. He paid the express company $6,583 in freights. He paid the telegraph companies $2,297. He paid a half dozen papers $800 to publish his letter on State rights, addressed to Senator Scott. He paid John L. Conley $11,500 for unnecessary analysis to Constitution of Georgia. The cost of the analysis was $1,924. Ht paid Atlanta Intelligencer $2,000 to publish decision in the "White case, the publication unauthorized and an infringe- ment on vSupreme Court reporter's rights. He paid $32,900 to minority members of legislature for time never served, and which was also paid to those who did serve the time." If Bullock failed to do any gubernatorial wrong it was be- cause he lacked the "chance." His chance was fine, while it lasted, but the Constitution's "chance" came later. Your correspondent has, perhaps, been tedious in setting before the young men of the State, this fearful indictment of Governor Bullock ; but these matters have so far faded from public rec- ollection, that the ex-governor was ready to deny everything herein charged, even in your columns, during this present year, 1887. He had only one trial — if trial it could be called — on a single indictment, and that sham affair developed the unhappy fact that the conviction of every defaulting Republi- can brought to light two rotten Democrats in his shadow, so closely connected were Bullock Republicans and Bullock Democrats in the days when the State of Georgia was un- sparingly bled by both. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 77 Young men should not be left in ignorance on these mat- ters. Money satisfied the State road lease in the year 1872; money bought lobbyists and corrupted newspapers; money "talked" in the year 1872 — money is 'talking" now, if signs and symptoms are to be relied upon. This expose of ex-Gov. Bullock was made when he was in exile — and it is remarkable that Bullock's partner, Kimball, and Bullock's chief justice, did not extend their sheltering wing to the fugitive, in his time of need. It smacks of in- gratitude, to say the least of it. Bullock leased the State road for $25,000 per month, when $35,000 was rejected. Brown and Kimball were active managers to hold this lease, hiring lobbyists and corrupting newspapers, at the very time the Constitution was so bitter on Bullock, Kimball's former part- ner. Nothing will cover the situation as a satisfactory explana- tion for this treason, except the fact that Bullock was then useless as help to both parties, and the lessees of the State road had no extra money to spare to Bullock's character, while the present need of "influence" was great — and news- paper managers were taking the liberty to bleed the lessees "whenever they wanted money." In the year 1872, "Lex" appeared in the Constitution regu- larly. The investigation of 1876, developed the fact that "Lex" was Col. Julius Brown, but 'who is "Lex" in the good year 1887, who hits from the same elevation for the convi(!t lease? Governor Brown, when Manager Hemphill was on the witness stand, asked the following: "When I wanted the ex- clusive use of your columns for our side, didn't you tell me the other side was paying you 25 to 50 cents a line for their articles?" "Yes, sir." Didn't you publish a communication signed "Lex," written by Mr. Julius Brown, and didn't the opposition keep a stand- ing reply in your paper for three weeks?" "Yes, sir." By Mr. Walsh — "Did you, Mr. Hemphill, charge the lessees so much a line?" "No, sir." By Mr. Peeples — "Who did you make out accounts against?" Answer — "When I wanted monej'' I called upon them." By McDaniel, chairman — "Was it publicly known that the articles published in your paper were paid for in that way?" Answer — "I think so." Question — "How was it known. Did you make it public?" Answer — "No, sir. I keep my business to myself." Question — "How then do you suppose it became known?" 78 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Answer — ''I suppose it must have been taken for granted from our publishing so many of them. In such cases, those who put the articles in do not want it known that they do it, for fear it might destroy their effect." Manager Hemphill is worse than Dugald Dalgetty. That brave ( ?) soldier hired out his sword for so much money it is true, but he cut away in broad daylight. Hemphill hires out his sword to anybody and hits in the dark where the victim is unsuspecting. Therefore, the young men of the State can read his columns understandingly. When he advocates a scheme he is supposed to be doing it for somebody who pays for it. When he fights a legislator he is likely drawing pay for it — in secret, and he consents to assassinate the State's interests — not to destroy the "effect." Remember his newspaper enmity to certain public men ! In the year 1872 Manager Hemphill swore he influenced the legislature and public opinion, "because he drew money from the lessees when he wanted it," and charged from twenty- five to fifty cents per line to those who answered these sub- sidized arguments. Cast your eye down one column of the Telegraph and see what it would make at two lines to the dollar, or four lines to the dollar! Remember, young men, what money will and can do under such a schedule of prices and principles, and if the State is unable to set up a reformatory prison, or protect her revenues from the State road, do not forget that a great big Columbian is mercilessly firing away at the taxpayers, but instead of the guuijers being actuated by principle, they are, perhaps, secretly drawing money as "they want it" from the lessees. If (jiovernor Bullock's flight had not obscured his financial judgment and confused his pecuniary sense, he might have saved himself the terrific onslaught that is copied above. The questions is : How much did it cost him to get back into their good graces, and did he pay by the line, or did he open his purse freely, when he came back to Georgia as their pet and club member? Georgia. The Pacific Lobby and its influence on Legislation For the very good reason that Dr. Felton, in his lifetime, had various controversies with certain public men in Georgia, on the stump and in the columns of newspapers, in which contro- versies the subject of the lobby money of the Pacific Railroads was frequently mentioned, and because it was mentioned by myself (in my defense of myself), when I was falsely accused in the winter of 1879 by interested people of begging for "Radi- cal money" to aid Dr. Felton 's campaigns for Congress; I deem it not only proper, but prudent to place certain facts relating to this lobby money in a place where it can always be referred to after I am dead, and especially when Dr. Fel- ton 's words may be used and distorted (as has been frequently done when he was alive and able to reply for himself) by per- sons who were then known to be "cheek by jowl" with lobby- ists in Washington City and around the State capitol in At- lanta, and who viciously antagonized him in print. I have no desire or disposition to offend those who survive the actors in those attacks upon my late husband or myself, but the facts should appear with sufficient explanation to make sure that detraction and slander may not pursue his name and memory without a proper record of the era when Jay Gould and Huntington used money without stint in "Washington City to defeat the taxpayers of this Union in their efforts to secure the repayment of vast sums of money advanced by the government to construct these Pacific Railroads. Besides it will be a small contribution to the history of the time when Georgia politics were dominated by parties who used the State road lease and the convict lease of Georgia to fill their own coffers and who also used their power in State politics to con- vey themselves into the highest offices in the nation outside the presidency itself. Dr. Felton was a target for every shaft of malice and 80 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics venom that they or their henchmen could secretly shoot against him, and but for his acknowledged integrity and lofty cour- age, they would have destroyed his reputation, personal and political. For this reason and because my husband in his lifetime, urged me to do this present work for the printer's hands, I propose to give the main facts of this Pacific Rail- road lobby to the reading public, such as this opportunity affords me. It will be only a cursory glance at best for volumes would not contain what is known and freely charged against the demoniacal use of monopolistic syndicate money to debauch men and morals in both State and national legislation by this railroad company. "History is simply a correct report of past events," and the history of the influence of the Pacific lobby in Congress and the departments and the Supreme Court has been gathered from three great exposures, twice under the scorching glare of congressional investigations, testimony given under oath, by sworn officials of the United States government, and once by a most fortuitous circumstance when C. P. Huntington was forced into a law suit in San Francisco, Cal., and his own letters and private telegrams were exhibited in court and incorporated in the testimony of the pending case. It was im- possible that he should deny their authenticity for they bore every mark of genuine truthfulness and the record was com- plete when compared with congressional data as to the intro- duction of bills and those who voted for and against. The audacity of the lobby and the frankness of Mr. Hunting- ton were equally astounding to the people of the United States who read these disclosures as printed in San Francisco news- papers and which were copied into New York papers. I found my first information in the columns of the New York Sun, where they were copied. It speaks plainly for the absolute political subjection of the masses of Georgia that no Georgia newspaper gave a single mention of these corrupted officials until Dr. Felton and myself were attacked in Washington City, by a high of- ficial from Georgia and published as seeking "Radical money" to elect himself to Congress. Every prominent newspaper My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 81 was censored, it appears, not a line of Huntington's use of money to debauch public men was printed and the drum and fife were frantically used to drown the outcry when the no- tice to suppress was given and when no denial was possible to those who were caught in Huntington's tell-tale letters and telegrams by name and their genuineness as facts were never denied anywhere. The Pacific Railroads were completed and opened in the year 1869, when the line from Omaha, Neb., to San Francisco begun active operations. Under the terms of their contract with the United States government when bonds to the amount of sixty-four millions of dollars were issued to aid in the con- struction of this line of railroad, they were to set aside 5 per cent, of their gross earnings each year as a sinking fund to be used in paying these bonds when due thirty years from date together with their accrued interest. In addition to these bonds, which were actually a debt or obligation upon the taxpayers of the United States, public lands sufficient to make seven of the smaller States of the Union were also donated to these Pacific roads. From Omaha this railroad line was called Union Pacific (until the Rocky mountains were crossed) and Central Pacific on the California side. Jay Gould was acknowledged master in the East and C. P. Hunting- ton on the Pacific slope. Sometime in the year 1872 it was discovered that these railroads were paying out enormous dividends to stockholders and no sinking-fund-money had ever been set aside or paid. Suspicions were excited by the rapid fortunes accumulated by certain Congressmen and Senators who were very intimate with Congressman Oakes Ames, of Massachusetts, who was also the recognized leader of Pacific railroad legislation in Congress. An investigation was demanded and the infamous ''Credit Mobilier" combine was uncovered. It was developed that the government had only a second mortgage on these roads and the first mortgage had been given by the directors to the "Credit Mobilier" company, which was simply the directors themselves. They, on paper, contracted with themselves to pay the earnings of the road to themselves and the government 82 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics with a second mortgage might eventually have its ''trouble for its pains" and the old road bed with rotten crossties and scrap iron for its assets with a debt of more than one hun dred and sixty millions to pay as a result of bribery in the capitol, and the voting away of the taxpayers' money bj unfaithful men. Oakes Ames was expelled with others and the black taint of suspicion was fastened on dozens of public men who were not so prominent, or were better shielded than the others. The story of the "Credit Mobilier" can be found in the official records of that period and in various public libraries, newspaper files, etc. It was a shameful affair and the first exposure of the Pacific lobby now under discussion in these pages occurred at that time, 1873. The next exposure came in the year 1883, when a law suit was instituted in San Francisco courts to compel C. P. Hunting- ton to settle with the widow of a former partner, D. D. Colton, Huntington having denied partnership before the law suit was begun by Widow Colton. It was necessary that she should establish the partnership and she did so by dumping into court a mass of telegrams and letters sent by Huntington, of New York and "Washington City, to "Friend Colton" in San Francisco in the progress of llie lobby legislation by which his measures were carried through Congress or by which he defeated other legislation looking towards the payment of the railroad's honest obliga- tions to the government. The exposure was as frightful as murder! "While it was understood that heroic measures were used to cover up and destroy many of these incriminating missives, quite enough of them were given to the public to make it convincing that neither Dr. Felton nor myself had erred in giving public notice that C. P. Huntington had an active supporter in the Senate of the United States from the State of Georgia whose name was bandied about in the public places of the capitol as Huntington's "man." In a letter to Colton, Huntington made free to claim the Senator and claim his bill introduced in January, 1877, as "my bill" and also declared that in fixing up the Railroad My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 83 Senate Committee he had the Senator placed thereon in March, 1877, and was indignant two weeks later that his man's name was taken off and Bogy, of Missouri, put on. This picturesque railroad magnate wired Colton that this bill ("his bill") could be passed through the Senate for $200,000. But it did not pass and Huntington wrote to Colton that the Senator was willing to chaperone a dozen or so of South- ern Congressmen over the road, which jamboree would cost the road at least $10,000, but it "would be money well spent." Later he wired his California partner that the Georgia Senator was quite willing for the trip, but the Southern men backed away, "were afraid to go." Just about the time that Huntington's bill was introduced by this Georgia Senator I got my first inkling as to Hunting- ton's men and methods in Congress. Hon. A. H. Stephens had rooms in the National Hotel, where we were also lodged for the winter. He was desperately ill before Christmas and his demise was announced at one time. He, however, was convalescing when one day I called at his room to inquire for his health. He said to me: "Please get the Congressional Records for January, 1877, and find if you can, a bill to relieve Pacific Railroads, introduced by a Georgia Senator. (Hon. B. H. Hill was then elected to the Senate, but was not sworn in until March 4, afterwards). The old "Commoner" was eager and excited and said he had been informed that day by a visitor, a Congressman, that Sen- ator Allen G. Thurman was saying: "that bill caused him to lose faith in some Southern Men." I hunted up the bill in- troduced January 12, 1877, and read it aloud to Mr. Stephens and the statements made by other Senators on the occasion of its consideration, all of which can be seen by any person who is disposed to overlook the proceedings of the 44th Congress last session, where the bill will ever stand as a mute witness for its purpose, as explained by Huntington himself to his partner, Colton. So far as I know, Mr. Stephens' opinion of the purpose of the bill, or its introducer, was never changed in life. Senator Thurman was interviewed in the Chicago News 84 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics some years later and his interview was copied into the New York Sun, which lies before me at this writing. He said his bill (the Thurman bill that became a law in May, 1878), was the joint work of Senator Edmonds and him- self and made it obligatory on these railroads to set aside one- fourth of the net earnings to meet their obligations to the United States government. Up to that time the roads had evaded the law requiring them to establish a sinking fund. A desperate effort was made by these companies to defeat it. "Immediately," says ex-Senator Thurman, a frightful lobby sprang up. It was the most formidable lobby I ever saw in Washington — Gouid, Huntington and Dillon were all there together. As for railroad lawyers and agents the town was full of them. They carried things with such a high hand that it was hard to tell what to expect or in whom to place con- fidence." (Italics mine.) "At one time the lobby thought it had us down and I feared so, too, but we kept up the fight. Besides the efforts of Dorsey, of Star Route notoriety, and of Stanley Matthews, both of whom were then in the Senate, aided by the powerful influ- ence of the lobby and backed by the personal presence of the principal representatives of the two roads, Jay Gould, Dillon and Huntington — Mr. Blaine, after the debate had been run- ning a week, came forward and ranged himself on the side ol die railroad magnates and his associate Senators in opposi- tion, Dorsey and Matthews." * * * Shortly after, Mr. Blaine proposed an amendment, which Mr. Thurman is em- phatic in saying "was only introduced to kill our bill." "Rather, said I, at the time than that the government should surrender its right (and I say it now), we might better have thrown the money involved in the Atlantic ocean. We had a hard fight. Blaine, Matthews and Dorsey were the most pow- erful men against us. ' ' The Sun said further: "Mr. Thurman commanded the re- spect and confidence of all the best men in the Senate. His honesty and integrity were never called in question." He was nominated in 1888 by Democrats as vice-president. Ex-Senator Thurman, a few years before his death, was interviewed again, in which interview he stated that he was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 85 defeated for re-election to the Senate in Ohio by Huntington's money in revenge for his advocacy of the bill which forced these roads to set apart one-fourth of their earnings to meet their indebtedness when the bonds with accrued interest fell due. As I read today of the shameless bribery of Ohio and Illinois legislators in the campaign of 1910, I am quite convinced that ex-Senator Thurman spoke from experience and from the facts in the case. It has never been a question in my mind as to the employ- ment of Huntington's money in more than one Georgia politi- cal campaign. He not only provided the munitions of war, but he took care of his lame ducks — not knowing how or where he might find useful employment for them. Dr. Felton was reliably informed that Huntington's money was paying for published articles in a Georgia newspaper in the year 1878, and the charge was boldly made in the Cartersville Free Press, which I then owned, and no man came forward with the proof to offset the charge and the time may come when another congressional or legislative exposure will uncover the men and methods which compelled a whirligig in Georgia politics in the spring of 1880, when a seat in the Senate was exchanged be- tween dark and daylight and Columbus citizens held a mass meeting of indignation, and a procession filed through her streets "with drums draped in black," because the State had been "disgraced" and "brought to shame." After I learned from Mr. Stephens what was seriously dam- aging the respect and confidence hitherto felt for "some South- ern men," I could only judge from what I saw and heard as to the various fluctuations of fortune or the desperate exigen- cies of spendthrift extravagance to convince myself that Huntington and Jay Gould were sometimes spending money more freely in Washington than at other times, and I became satisfied in my own mind that Mr. Blaine used his diatribes against Southern men and lurid accusations urged against rebel treatment of Union soldiers to cover up completely (or so far as possible), that close bond of union in the United States Senate between them, some of whom Mr. Huntington might claim as "his men" and whose floods' of money made 86 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics them "flock together like birds of a feather." At the very time when Huntington put forward his bill in January, 1877, which he believed he could pass through the Senate, the amnesty debate in the House of Representatives was doing two things. First, "firing the North" and also "firing the South" for political effect and reddening anew the "bloody shirt." Second, giving to Blaine, Matthews and Dorsey full and free acquaintance with other Huntington men in the Senate. Huntington cared for neither party except as he might use them and pay for their support, but the Union soldiers of the North and the Confederates in the South were infuriated well- nigh to madness. Poor old Georgia followed the drum and fife and Mr. Blaine laid plans for the presidency in 1880. Hav- ing been defeated by the "Mulligan Guards" in the year 1876, he saw a "channel" in which he could be "useful" and he would not be a "dead-head" in Pacific Railroad legislation, either. Nor do I forget the fire and fury just over in South Carolina when a nimble trick was played which seated Mr. Hayes, a Republican, in the White House and which counted in Gen. Hampton as Democratic governor. This thimble-rigging has never been quite explained, but Mr. Huntington's "man" was active with Hon. Smith Weed and Nephew Pelton arranging for a coup de'etat in Baltimore, where Nephew Pelton was expected to bring in $70,000 or $80,000 to buy the electoral vote of South Carolina for Tilden. Failing to get the promised pay from Mr, Tilden in Decem- ber, 1876, the next movement early in January, 1877, was this railroad bill owned by Huntington and which he thought he "could pass for $200,000" and which was the bill I hunted up in the record and found as expected, and, as before stated, I read aloud to Hon. Mr. Stephens, who had been awakened by stunning news from Senator Thurman. Such a kaleidoscope pictures as then were passing and such clever disguises as then were used to deceive and befool the populace have never had an equal in the history of this coun- try! All the time these thrifty people were filling the com- mon people at home with hatred of "Radicals," and the bloody My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 87 shirt was even more in evidence than the Stars and Stripes; the little politicians in Georgia and the 2x4 newspapers were hooting after ''Felton, the enemy of the Democratic party." Huntington had his forefinger on his "men" and they voted as his puppets in company with Messrs. Blaine, Matthews and Dorsey, all Radicals, in a well planned effort to rob the tax- payers of this union of more than a hundred millions of dollars ! In the correspondence, which I will copy in other places, discussing other subjects germane to the methods of the Pa- cific lobby much of which has been heretofore published al- ready in print and never controverted or overturned as to its authenticity and which can not be impeached because of Huntington's tell-tale correspondence — this chapter will now close with a short review of the third and up to this date, the latest exposure of the amounts expended by Gould, Dillon and Huntington to influence legislation. This exposure followed a report made by a sworn official of the United States govern- ment whose duty it was to go over the declared profits and expenditures of these Pacific roads by which the 25 per cent of the net earnings might be reckoned and laid aside to meet their obligations when the thirty-year bonds of the govern- ment fell due with accrued interest. He was Gen. Spinner's expert accountant for many years in the treasurer's office. His name was Theophilus French and his title, after his later appointment, was "Commissioner and auditor of accounts of Pacific Railroads." This exposure came in the year 1887. When the Pacific roads turned in their exhibits of earnings and expenses, he (Mr. French) was frequently faced with large sums presented as expenses, with no vouchers and no showing as to where the money went. His figures had to be cheeked off in another office and he plainly informed these men that he would be forced to go behind these figures, and they must make a showing as to the use made of the money or they would be disallowed as expenses. I copy from The New York World, February 5, 1887, an editorial : "The items of 'disallowed' expenditures of the Union Pacific company, as set forth by ex-Railroad Commissioner French in the World of yesterday, are of the same general 88 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics character as those of the Central Pacific. They are less in amount, but bear similar testimony and equally require ex- planation. "The unexplained disbursements mentioned are $204,856.56. Mr. Huntington, who considered the $2,000,000 distribution too insignificant to be noticed, will probably be amused by any allusion to a still paltrier sum than that of the Central Pacific. The senate judiciary committee has voted unanimously that the management of the subsidized Pacific roads, which The World so recently exposed shall be investigated. It has recom- mended the appropriation of $100,000 for this purpose. It recommends an increase in the share of net earnings from 25 per cent, required by the Thurman act, be increased to 40 per cent. After such a report no oblivion-seeking funding bill will stand a chance in congress. This is the answer of the judiciary committee to the Tweed-like echo of Senator Stan- ford, saying 'it is no concern of the people what was done with that two millions.' The senate committee has done well." It will be now remembered that Leland Stanford, Hunting- ton's partner, was at this time a senator from California — lodged in the senate, managing the concern with his expenses paid by the tax-payers, as a bona fide legislator in the United States senate. He refused to tell what was done with two millions of money, but the senate committee were not his slaves at that time — although the department of justice failed to prosecute and sought to confuse the situation, for an evident purpose. At the time here mentioned (February, 1887) the Central Pacific represented a capitalization of more than $500,000,000 — with 5,000 miles of railroad, steamship lines, ferry lines, street railroads, hotels, etc. The New York World said, in 1887: "It also exercised un- limited power in California — dominating courts of law, political conventions, elections and legislature after legislature, and while Stanford and his deputies controlled California, Huntington and his lobby force in Washington City not only controlled legislation, but legislators, courts, departments, and all else that stood in the wav of their schemes." My Memoiks of Georgia Politics . 89 From 1869, through 1870, they spent, according to their own figures, $64,000 in "Washington City. In 1871 they disbursed over $77,000. During 1874, $53,000. In 1875, over $195,781. In 1876, $300,000. In 1877, when a senator of Georgia introduced Huntington's bill, they spent $279,573.44. (These are their figures, brought in as expenses, and which they refused to show vouchers for). In 1878, when the Thurman funding bill passed in May of that year, more than $300,000 was spent in Washington during the first six months. The Georgia senator went into the senate March 4, 1873. The date of his alliance with Huntington is not given, but he introduced Huntington's bill on January 12, 1877 — the bill which Huntington said it would require $200,- 000 to put through. It is my opinion that the alliance with Huntington never ceased so long as the senator remained in public life, and his election to the governorship in Georgia, and subsequent election to the senate, can be explained in no other way. He never answered a question or protected his character by denying Huntington's statements, . and from 1879, when he attacked me, by name, as seeking and ''pite- ously pleading for Radical money," his open and positive connection with Huntington in Washington City was never denied so long as he remained in public life. This is history. My name was, without warrant, dragged, by one of Hunt- ington's "men," into Georgia newspapers to injure both my husband and myself, and I have always felt that I had a mission, authorized by every code of ethics or morals, to warn the unsuspecting and over-confiding people of my native state to beware of public men who could be bought and sold, in congress and legislatures, as "Praetorian guards sold their purple. ' * The last figures, concerning the amount of Huntington's money, used and disbursed in Washington City that 1 have seen, amounted to nearly six millions of dollars, and I well under- stand that Pacific railroads have appointed some of our well known government directors and applied tens of thousands of dollars towards presidential campaigns, and are credited with the appointment of members of interstate commerce commis- sion. 90 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics How far-reaching this corruption has extended, no outsider can declare, but the abuse of position by subsidized congress- men and senators, reached such proportions in the year 1887, where they were engaged to defend Pacific railroads as "legal counsel" — that Senator Beck, of Kentucky, introduced a bill, called the railroad attorney bill, which passed the senate on February 4, 1887, and of which he remarked just before the bill was put on its passage: "Any senator or representative might appear as counsel in the great suits of railroad com- panies. They might sit in either house with $100,000 of the money of the Union Pacific, or the Central Pacific, or Northern Pacific in their pockets, and they might be regarded as dis- interested men, etc. Today there is a government controversy with these great railroad companies, involving over one hun- dred millions of dollars," etc. This railroad attorney bill passed the senate with 39 yeas and 14 nays — Leland Stanford's name appearing with the nays. The following is the text of the bill: That it shall be unlawful for any member of either house of congress to accept employment as attorney-at-law or payment of services of any kind in opposition to the United States in any case to which the United States may be a party or in whicli its interests may be concerned, or from any railroad company, if such member shall have reasonable cause to believe that measures specially affecting the interests of such company are pending before congress, or are about to be so pending during his term of office. Any person who violates the provisions of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and may be punished by imprisonment not exceeding one year or by fine not ex- ceeding $500, or by both, in the discretion of the court. No vote was recorded from Georgia, and there were many absentees. This "legal counsel" business was the convenient cloak under which untold sums were really paid for votes, but which were duly reported as "legal counsel" fees. Doubtless this is one of the curses that follow our methods of carrying on civil government, and the evil is so cleverly dis- guised that it is next to impossible to root it out — even when such commercial politics have been spotted or exposed. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 91 I remember distinctly, when a legislative investigation un- covered the fact that a railroad commissioner in Georgia was given a bond of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad for $1,000, for some sort of secret service rendered to this rail- road, and he being afraid to hold or own the bond because of the inhibitions laid on these railroad commissioners, returned it either to the president of the road or the attorney or the road, and was given $500, instead, in cash. If my memory is not at fault, this episode occurred in the year 1887, near the time when the honest members of the United States senate felt obliged to curb the lucrative business carried on by cer- tain congressmen and senators — who had Huntington's money in their pockets and which money was doubtless used to defeat better men for the responsible office at the next elec- tions. I am also aware that a noted lobbyist — then and later — prowled around Georgia's state capitol when the old lease of the W. & A. R. R. was on its last legs, seeking whom he might devour, and supposed to be kept there (when he did not per- form in "Washington City) to control legislation for the benefit of his employees — the L. & N. Railroad. No reader of Georgia history of that time will have forgotten his arrogant claim for "betterments," when the old State Road lease should expire, and his very presence was an insult to those patriotic members of the Georgia legislature who travailed with the same earnestness which possessed Senators Thurman and Ed- munds, to save the tax-payers of Georgia from untold and utter spoliation in their valuable railroad property. Dr. Felton was there on the ground and fully cognizant of the danger that lurked in the corridors (and lodging houses) of the State Capitol, and all the time, convinced in his own mind, that the Pacific Railroad lobby had been instrumental in shaping Georgia politics for a number of years, and that there was some strange and malign influence in the state which was able to prevent the publication of the exposures of this Pacific railroad lobby, where the general reader might see them and discover their perfidy, as other states had done. And it has never been a question in my mind but that 92 ^Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics Huntington's money was used in Georgia to defeat some can- didates for congress and to set "back fires" on those who could not be bought or would not sell their votes — but it was not until Major Stahlman testified before the investigating senate committee when the Southern Methodist Publishing House claim was under fire, a few years ago, and he made pertinent allusion to his friend, C, P. Huntington, as his quasi endorser, did I understand how easy it might be to influence a Georgia legislature in the fateful years between 1880 to 1890, when the politics of Georgia seemed as soft as a lump of putty in the hands of designing men, backed by floods of monej', that were of mysterious origin and indefinite ownership, for nothing was certain save its ubiquitous presence and its ab- solute authority in every election of general importance. The signs of the times are still ominous, for I was told a few months ago that lobby work had not ceased around the State capitol, and so long as railroads prefer to corrupt officials, rather than use square dealing, we 6iay watch for developments as well as the tracks that money will make — where sudden wealth is in indisputable evidence and only a small salary in sight. We need also a railroad attorney bill in Georgia — stringent enough to compel commercial politicians to follow the law, in lieu of politics, and vice versa. This chapter will not be complete without a transcript of some of C. P. Huntington's frank and suggestive letters, writ- ten to his "Friend Colton," and furnished by the "Widow Col- ton to her counsel, in San Francisco. Although they were printed in the leading papers of California and in New York City and such news is of a striking nature, such as to bo eagerly sought as sensational, the political newspapers of Georgia were not only as dumb as oysters, but ready to beat down anybody who was courageous enough to allude in print to these corruptionists. As matters of political history they should be read and understood by the young men of Georgia, into whose hands all legislation will be obliged to be given when the present participants must relinquish their hold, and their endeavors must fall unfinished from lifeless hands. Before I pass to the exposure made by Huntington of his My Memoiks of Georgia Politics 93 methods I desire to say that the newspapers and politicians of Georgia did a cruel wrong to Hon. Amos T. Akerman, when he was attorney general in President Grant's cabinet. He was appointed to the position in 1870 and his ability to fill the place was never questioned by those who knew him. "When he went into the cabinet he got along well until the Pacific railroads became dissatisfied with a ruling he made in regard to a subsidy in public land, which the attorney general said their charter did not authorize. The Secretary of the In- terior sided with the railroads, and sought to override the decision. Then the conflict begun. I think the secretary's name was Delano, one of the men who got into the State Road lease in Georgia, and he understood the temper of our half frenzied people in Georgia against Republicanism — a frenzy that was fanned into a consuming flame by so-called Demo- cratic politicians who were busy all the time in cramming their pockets during Bullock's reign. It is awful to remember the persecution put upon Col. Akerman. It makes my blood boil to think of it even now. This honest man, this upright lawyer, was actually hounded out of General Grant's cabinet by men in "Washington Cit^'^, owned and used by these Pacific railroad authorities, and the run-mad politicians in Georgia actually danced in fiendish glee over the result. General Grant stood by his friend for some months, but at last he yielded and asked Col. Akerman 's resignation, but not until an interested person went to Col. Akerman 's wife and hinted that $50,000 would not stand in the way — and all opposition to Col. Akerman would be with- drawn, if the Pacific railroad land subsidy was allowed to stand. General Grant's letter to Col. Akerman I have seen. The president offered him a judgeship in Florida or Texas, or any diplomatic appointment then available. He bore testi- mony to his fine character and ability, but he must have "harmony in his cabinet," and certain men demanded his resignation. I have seen a copy of the reply made by Col. Akerman to this letter of the president. He had then six little children — he could not take that family to the malarial climate of Texas or Florida. He was no diplomat; his train- 94 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ing had been for the law. He could not accept something he did not feel amply qualified to fill, and he came back to Geor- gia — hounded out of Washington City by the pimps and paid agents of Huntington and Jay Gould — and hounded in Georgia by our political desperadoes — organized Democrats — until he could hardly represent his clients in the courts. He would not sell his integrity to the Pacific railroads — he was persona non grata to these bribe-givers, who owned more than one of the departments, and yet when he reached Georgia — this faithful man, this good Confederate soldier, was persecuted to the limit by our own people, who thus aided the lobby crowd in robbing us of an honest official. I get these facts from reliable hands, I know what I am talking about. I put them in print fifteen years ago, after this good man, this Christian gentleman had gone to his tomb and who died with the respect and confidence of all who enjoyed his acquaintance and friendship. Not all martyrs have been burned at the stake I When Col. Akerman died in our town and Dr. Felton wrote a beautiful tribute to his life and character while we were in Washington City and at a time when we hoped he would have been soon appointed to a district judgeship, Hon. Mr. Stephens said to me: "When Hon. Thomas W. Thomas, of Georgia, lay on his death-bed he told his wife that he wished to advise her as to the future. Said the dying man: 'If you need a lawyer, and you will need one, I tell you to employ Col. Akerman. I know him — he is absolutely honest. He will serve you well and he will treat you right.' " I went to my room, in tears, for the bereaved widow and her seven little fatherless boys, and I cried out: "How long! Lord, how long?" I under- stood what political desperadoes could do. I had also felt the sting of political hate ! Those Damning Letters HUNTINGTON, THE GREAT EXPLAINER, EXPLAINED AND SELF-CONVICTED. New York World. Mr. C. P. Huntington's evidence before the Pacific railroad commission proves one of two things, namely, he is either be- come insolently defiant of the taxpayers of the United States, from whom he borrowed many millions of their money on very doubtful security, or there is a Nemesis on his track, which will bring his methods into strict account, and "whom the gods destroy they first make mad." His flippancy and utter contempt for the people of this country, whose congressmen and senators are openly purchased, if C. P. Huntington's words stand for the facts, positively "fatigues the indignation." But, like some other shrewd men in business, he is reckless and impolitic on the witness stand, and for his benefit, as well as to refresh the commission's recollections, allow me to review some of his letters to "Friend Colton," thereby illustrating the manner in which his "explanation" money was used at the seat of government. "Friend Colton." Those of The World's readers who never heard of "Friend Colton" will understand that Mr. Huntington had a partner or business agent by that name in San Francisco. While Mr. Huntington supervised his "pure men" in the Capitol City — perhaps personally superintending the disbursement of the large sums which he says were used "to explain" railroad legislation in congress (or while he loitered in New York City, to be handy in an emergency, when Franchott and Sherrill were unable to teach the disciples to vote) — "Friend Colton" held the fort on the Pacific slope, and their correspondence was what might be called unique and entertaining. It was, at any rate, voluminous and far-reaching, and any other man would have hesitated before he risked its public exposure, but Central Pacific Huntington never heeded the sage's advice, "Beware, my son, of stationery. More men have been killed by old letters than ever died by the bullet." The Explainer Explained. "Friend Colton" was not to blame for the exposure. Cen- 96 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics tral Pacific Huntington may set down their publication to his own account, or perhaps, to his innate contempt of the duty he owes to his fellow-man and to his creditors. After "Friend Colton" died, his widow asked for a settlement, which C. P. H. refused, going so far as to deny, it is understood, any business connections. Mrs. Colton, to her credit be it said, had the proof in her possession before she requested a settlement, and when the proof was brought into court Mr. Huntington, the "explainer," was himself "explained." Such wonders in letter-writing never had a parallel since the emigrants landed on Plymouth Rock, and C. P. H. may be so strongly intrenched behind his monopoly as to snap his fingers in the face of an outraged public, but he demonstrates to a certainty that his veracity vegetates in "slippery places." The Contract Made. New York, October 21, 1874. Friend Colton : Yours of the 10th is received, and I am happy to learn that the contract has been completed and that from this time you are to work with us, and I sincerely hope we shall have many pleasant and profitable years together. You will find it is no sinecure, the looking after the vast in- terests you have bought into, but that there is much to be done — so much that it will take nearly all your time to do it, that is to do it as you will want to do it, well. Gould and Dillon are back here. Was all our junction matter fixed up with them*/ They are slashing around here as usual, talking about the Pacific Steamship Company. * * * Yours trulv, C. P. HUNTINGTON. (When Jay Gould fixed his "breastworks" in the senate and put his bugler behind them, who played that old tune, the "Mulligan Guards," "Friend Colton" was ready enough to go "slashing around" in that direction himself.) Here's another: A Roundabout Method. New York, December 8, 1874. Friend Colton : Yours Nov. 27 is received, with inclosures. It certainly was a shabby thing in Vining to write such a let- ter. Towns wrote him and sent me a copy of the letter. I saw Dillon and he seemed to be much offended at V. for writ- ing it. I said nothing of the kind should ever happen again. I think I shall show your letters to Gould, but they are not our kind of people. It certainly is very important to San Fran- cisco that we build the S. P. into Arizona, and it would be well for you at once to write some letters for the influential men of San Francisco to sign, to send to all our members of con- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 97 gress and senators to go for the bill as we want it, and if you do not think it right as it is fix it and send it back, but if you can get it as it is I would be satisfied. Storrs says it will make Scott very mad, and he thought it not wise. * * * My only fear is that then there would be the cry that the S. P. and the C. P. was all one, and would be a vast monopoly, etc., and that is what we must guard against, and that is one reason you should be in Washington. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Would language be able to express the intention here de- fined? What sort of "influential men" are they who "sign" such letters? What sort of senators and members of congress are they who receive such orders and obey them? When the following letter to Tom Scott is examined who would be simple enough to believe Mr. Huntington in any matter in which his railroads are connected, for we have seen that he intended to deceive congress and the people, who had been so lavish in their loans to the Central Pacific? "False in one, false in all," and who can affirm that he is not playing a part at this present time? "A Double Game." December 10, 1874. Hon. Thos. A. Scott, President Texas and Pacific Railroad Company, Philadelphia, Pa. Dear Sir: I have your letter of the 9th inst. and am some- what surprised. * * * My great interest is, of course, the Central Pacific, which will not be benefited by the construc- tion of the road, but the parties who control the Southern Pacific are very anxious to have the Southern line completed at an early day. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. "But Such Is Life." Washington, D. C, Dec. 20, 1874. Friend Colton: I am having the roughest fight with Scott I have ever had, but hope to drive him into something we can- accept. I should not have had much trouble if matters could have been left as we fixed them when you were here ; but since some of our people have become convinced that the S. P. is being built by the C. P., and they have raised the cry of monopoly against us, which makes it very hard for us ; but such is life. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Suggestions to the Commission. The Central Pacific, he tells Tom Scott, will not be benefited by the construction of the S. P. Now will Governor Pattison 98 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ask him this direct question: "Did you, Mr. Huntington, ex- pend the money of the Central Pacific railroad to build the Southern Pacific, when your vast indebtedness to the United States government made it an imperative duty to pay that money over to your creditors? Did you deliberately use the money of the Central Pacific to get it invested in a business which your creditor, the United States government, could not levy upon or secure to itself otherwise ? "If you wrote the whole truth to Scott and the full truth to Colton, what answer can you make to the taxpayers who pay millions of interest every year (that your vast earnings should be made to pay), and who will find themselves nil when this bonded debt is due and will be forced to pay this money to the money sharks who bought up these bonds at a low rate — who have reaped enormous profits every year on the investment, and who are supposed to have been bond- holders — construction companies and railroad beneficiaries of this public loan at every step during the entire thirty years which the bonds cover?" No Subject for Flippancy. These are subjects that are vital and to which no flippant reply should be received. The "explanations" which Mr. Huntington hired Franchott and Sherrill to make, using money to brighten the understanding of faithless congressmen and senators, is one thing, but an open, unwarranted, illegal and dishonest scheme, by which property under mortgage is con- veyed to another party, is a matter away beyond the un- righteous lobby schemes which have long disgraced the na- tional capital — for it touches on the boundary line over which an honest creditor would decline to go, and which, having been passed, makes a criminal of the perpetrator, whether ho be king, potentate or Collis P. Huntington. If the law is good for anything it will protect the labor of this country from such a violation of a declared agreement, for the money of a rail- road can be used as dishonestly as the money of any other swindler in the United States, and unless there is some pro- tection for the people who loaned this money, and who sweat and toil to pay the interest on what they themselves borrowed, to confer a benefit on Mr. Huntington, and which they will be forced to pay at the time of the expiration of loan, then no one need wonder when political reactions with most extreme tenets will prevail in the United States, and wreck and ruin shall stalk boldly in our money centres. Danger Ahead. When men carry on their high-handed schemes with insult- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 99 ing arrogance and brazen insolence one of two things is about to happen, viz., the country will be wrecked beyond hope of redemption or their race is nearly run as usurpers. Iniquity and corrupt wealth in high places has caused blood- shed and revolution in times past. When anarchy, communism and socialism capture the strongholds of ill-gotten gain, among those who will perish by the sword will be found those who robbed the country, and who, Tweed-like, taunted us with "What will you do about it?" No lover of his country will desire to see such a result, but precedents go to show that it is much easier to tear down than to build, and "woe to him by whom offenses come." But to return to our "moutons" of the Colton-Huntington breed. These are all excerpts from letters to "Friend Colton," signed by Huntington, the authenticity of which has not been denied and does not admit of denial. The Hungry Congressmen. November 20, 1874. Friend Colton : I think this coming session of congress will be composed of the hungriest set of men that ever got to- gether, and that the d — 1 only knows what they will do. "A Slippery Fellow. " October 10, 1875. I have given Gilbert C. Walker a letter to you. He is a mem- ber of the forty-fourth congress, ex-governor of Virginia and a slippery fellow, and, I rather think, in Scott's interest, but not sure. I gave him a pass over C. P. and got him one on N. P., so do the best you can for him, but do not trust him much. ' ' A Promising Investment. January 14, 1876. In view of the many things we have before congress, and also in the sinking fund we wish to establish, it is very im- portant that Carr's friends in Washington should be with us, and if that could be brought about by paying Carr, say $10,000 to $20,000 a year, I think we could afford to do it, but, of course, not until he has controlled his friends. "Costs Money to Fix Things." January 18, 1877. It costs money to fix things so that I would know Scott's bill would not pass. I believe with $200,000 we can pass our bill. 100 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics A Valuable Representative." May 7, 1877. Sargent is worth more to us than any six new men, and he should be returned. "Jones Can Do Us Much Good." November 24, 1877. When you write pay Jones no part of the $25,000, because there is an unsettled account of $6,000. I have paid him the $25,000, as he told me he needed it very much. I hold the $70,000 S. P. that he was to have in the trade — that is, he is to have the coupons for ten years, then the bonds. Jones can do us much good, and says he will. Money Used Freely by Gould December 17, 1877. Jay Gould went to Washington about two weeks ago and saw Mitchell, Sr., from Oregon, since which time money has been used freely in Washington. * * * Gould has large amounts of cash, and he uses it without stint to carry his points. Switching A Committee. March 4, 1877. The railroad committee of the house was set up for Scott, and it has been a difficult matter to switch it away from him, but I think it has been done. A Move by Scott, March 14, 1877. After the senate railroad committee was made up Scott went to Washington in a special train and had one of our men put off and one of his put on. G — , of Georgia, was put off and Bogy, of Missouri, put on. Ready-Made Letters. November 20, 1877. When you find parties that are personally known to mem- bers of each house, get them to write letters or sign such as are written for them. We can be helped much in this way. Do all you can ; I am having a rough fight. An Obliging Statesman. October 29, 1877. I saw Axtell, governor of New Mexico, and he said he thought if we would send him such a bill as we wanted to have passed into a law he could have it passed with little or no money. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 101 Land Matters "Fixed." October 29, 1877. I think our land matters in Washington have been fixed. Scott's Big Fight. September 23, 1875. Scott is expecting to make his biggest fight this winter, and as he owes nearly everybody he will have many to help him, as they will think by doing so they will be helping themselves. Distributing Passes. March 3, 1875. The passes have gone on as fast as they have come from Dillon. I have just sent over for the last lot. A Dangerous "Cuss." New York, November 20, 1874. Friend Colton : I am glad to learn that you have under your charge, but you must be careful and not let him have anything to strike back with, as he is a cuss, and I do not think it safe for Stanford to talk with him on our matters, as it would be just like him to get up in congress and lie about what I said to him. He must have solid reasons, or he will go back on you. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Unparalleled Corruption. Can the world produce such another system of corruption? Passes, influence in elections, money downright, Franchott and Sherrill empowered to hand over with only a wink for a voucher, letters signed and newspapers controlled by the gross- est methods, and the whole business of the United States — legislative, executive and judicial — beleaguered by Mr. Hunt- ington's paid agents — all their schemes being pushed to the end by the "infernal force of gold!" Supreme court judges pur- chased by a handsome subscription to a campaign fund, and candidates for president pushed on the people after they had served as Jay Gould's hired soldiers — behind his senatorial breastwork — government commissioners, taking $25,000 from the Pacific railroads to pass over a bridge that was not suitable for acceptance by the government, and in all the history of the world there never was a more tangled maze of deceit,corruption and swindling ever chronicled ! How many poor, weak mortals were controlled by a "pass" it will be impossible to tell, but the fruits of lobby money blossomed in all sorts of soil in Washington official circles. A man who could be bought was a fine fellow, and newspapers are hired to say so. A poor creature who retained some semblance of a free agent, ameu- 102 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics able only to his constituents, was hounded down, at home and abroad. Huntington's ''influential" men, who signed letters at his bidding, can always be relied on to defame when he issues an order, and a mighty smoke has often been raised to retire an honest legislator and to plant a vote where it could be used and handled. The United States senate has for a term of years held in its number more or less of these willing sena- tors, and so bold have the Pacific roads become that the Cen- tral Pacific has actually transplanted its president to where he votes for his own interest and talks for his railroad ad libitum. THE HUNTINGTON LETTERS. The Huntington letters, copied from the New York Sun newspaper, have elicited much comment and criticism. In a letter dated December 12, 1875, Huntington says : "Sargent, as you no doubt have seen, has gone off the rail- road committee, but there is a good man in his place, 'that is friendly to the Central Pacific' — Eaton, of Connecticut." The Congressional Record shows this to be true. Sargent was put on in March of that year, and Eaton was put on in December; and in place of Sargent. In a letter dated December 24, 1875, Mr. Huntington writes : "I am doing all I can to have the government take 6,000,000 acres of land, and give the railroad credit for $15,000,000. I wish you would have the newspapers take the ground that this land ought to be taken by the government and held by the people. The demagogues can then work and vote for it." Now, if you will go to the Record bearing date of December 13, 1875, you will find Mr. Sargent introducing a bill to that effect, which was referred to the committee on judiciary. Score another for Huntington. In another letter dated January 14, 1876, he says: "In view of the many things we have now before congress and also in the sinking fund which we wish to establish, it is important that Carr's friends in Washington should be with us, and if that can be brought about by paying Carr, say $10,000 to $20,000 a year, I think we could afford to do it ; but, of course, not until he has controlled his friends." Who was Carr? Now, a sinking fund bill was introduced by Senator John B. Gordon in the 44th congress; but whether Carr, or Carr's friends, were engaged in it, the Record does not say. A letter dated January 17, 1877, he proceeds: My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 103 "It costs money to fix things so that I would know that Scott's bill would not pass. I believe with $200,000 I can pass our bill." The sinking fund bill of Senator Gordon was introduced on January 12, 1877, and five days afterwards Mr. Huntington thinks he could pass it with two hundred thousand dollars. It did not pass, but died on the expiration of the 44th con- gress, so we presume two hundred thousand dollars were in- sufficient, and Huntington gives his opinion in a letter dated March 7, 1877 : "The sinking fund bill did not pass, but it is in much better shape to pass than it has ever been before. I stayed in Wash- ington two days to fix up the railroad committee of the senate. ' ' Huntington spent two days fixing up the committee. In that time he fixed it so that he secured every vote in it, except Lamar, of Mississippi. He tells a little more of his experience in the letter dated March 14, 1877 : "Scott went to Washington and got one of our men put off, and one of his men put on, but that did not give him the com- mittee. Gordon, of Georgia, was taken off, and Bogy, of Missouri, was put on." Huntington and Scott fighting for the prize, and Scott thought he had undermined his opponent by getting off the sinking-fund statesman from Georgia. In a letter dated December 17, 1877, he says : "Jay Gould went to Washington about two weeks ago, and I know, saw Mitchell, senator from Oregon, since which time money has been used very freely in Washington." How painful a state of facts is here disclosed! "Money spent freely," through a senator of a sovereign state! Look at the debates in that congress, and see how Mitchell worked for "the money." Ingalls, Mitchell, Sargent, Blaine, Eaton! Under date of August 7, 1876, C. P. Huntington wrote to "Friend Colton" that he was "making friends in the south," adding that, "I have telegraphed to you today to have you get some of the prominent men in San Francisco to telegraph to Gordon, senator from Georgia, with some other southern men, to go." Go where? Why, over to California, on a jamboree with Huntington. But, writes Huntington to "Friend Col- ton," "while Gordon and some others are not afraid to go, Gordon tells me that some of his friends do not like to go on an invitation from the railroad company." On the sixth of November he wrote another letter, strongly urging Colton to secure the desired services of the mysterious blank. This is his language : 104 My IMemoirs of Georgia Politics "But some political friend must see him and not a railroad man, for if any of our men went to see him he would be sure to lie about it and say that money was offered him ; but some friend must see him and give him solid reasons why he should help his friends. "If Scott kicks at it I propose to say to congress, 'We will build east of the Colorado, to meet the Texas Pacific, without aid,' and then see how many members will dare to give him aid to do what we offered to do without." In the same letter he says, concerning the necessity for de- ceiving the people : ' ' My only fear then would be the cry that the Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific was all one, and would be a vast monopoly, etc., and that is what we must guard against." And in another letter on the same subject : "I think the Texac Pacific or some of their friends will be likely to take the ground that the Southern Pacific is con- trolled by the same parties that control the Central, and that there must be two separate corporations that run roads into San Francisco, and that it will be very hard for us to make head against that argument, and I am disposed to think that Colton had better come over and spend a few weeks in Wash- ington at least." That Huntington was not a party man, and that he could be uncomplimentary is proven by the following remarks about Congressman Luttrell : "I notice what you say of Luttrell. He is a wild hog. Don't let him come back to Washington ; but as the house is to be largely Democratic, and if he was to be defeated, likely it would be charged to us, and hence I should think it well to beat him with a Democrat, but I would beat him anyway, and if he got the nomination, put up another Democrat and run against him, and in that way elect Republicans." Another complimentary allusion to a blank congressman is the following: "New York, Nov. 20, 1877.— Friend Colton: I am glad to learn that you have under your charge, but you must be careful and not let him get anything to strike back with, as he is a cuss, and I do not think it safe for Stanford to talk with him on our matters, as it would be just like him to get up in congress and lie about what I said to him. He must have solid reasons, or he will go back on you. Yours truly, "C. P. HUNTINGTON." He thus coolly proposes to ruin the Pacific Mail Steamship Company : "I am surprised to learn that any one should think that it My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 105 was for our interest to put on the China line seven steamers to start with. I think three is plenty, and we shall, no doubt, have such opposition on the start that we shall have to run them at a loss. But with these three we can make the price for the old line, and I think three is enough to break them with, unless the managers of that company are changed, and then we most likely can get their steamers." He pays his compliments to the newspaper press of the country in this manner : "If you could get some well written articles published in the San Fancisco papers showing up the great value of the country traversed by the Southern Pacific and the vast business that road must do to take into market the product of the country, in fact, such articles as would tend to induce people to buy Southern Pacific bonds and lands, I should get the articles re- published in the newspapers on this side to as great an extent as I could, which is a very effective and very cheap way of advertising." A fine distinction between honor and pocket is thus pleasantly drawn in a letter written February 8, 1875, by Crocker to Huntington, who was then in Washington : "The telegraph informs me that the house sub-committee will report favorably on Scott's bill and ignore our amend- ment. Well, stand up to the work, as you did in the early days when you defended the jail at Siskiyou. Your honor was in danger then; your pocket now." Of Senator Jones' railroad scheme, Huntington wrote to Colton : "Gould asked me what I thought of Senator Jones and his railroad scheme, etc. Of course, I spoke well of our friend Jones, called him a good fellow, and that I did not know just what he was going to do ; but that he was too smart to build a railroad from Independence, a point say 400 miles from San Francisco, 200 miles to such a point on the ocean where there is no harbor, and 500 miles from San Francisco, and showed Gould the map, so he could see I was right. When he com- menced to talk of Jones' matters he said he knew but little of them, etc. ; but in talking with him I found he knew the names of all the places, and he had been told of the vast amount of the precious metals in the different localities, etc. ; but he did not understand how the localities were situated to San Francisco ; but I posted him, and I about came to the con- clusion that he was not likely to invest money in Jones' road. But doubtful things are uncertain." Another letter concerning Senator Jones' scheme: "Sutton, the California shipper, via Cape Horn, was in yes- 106 My MEirfoiRS OF Georgia Politics terday, and showed me a letter he had just received from Phila- delphia, asking his best rates of freight on thirty tons fish plates and nuts and bolts as these are, as I understand, for Jones' narrow gauge road, there should be enough to lay say sixty miles of track. Every time that I look upon the map to see Jones' road, I leave it with the satisfaction that we can afford to let him build this road. ' ' Huntington's estimate of Gould, as well as his desire to gobble the Union Pacific, are noted in the following letter to Colton : "I think I will talk with Gould in relation to coal, as you suggest, but I am not certain that I shall, for if we should ever get control of the Union Pacific, I want to be as little mixed up with Gould as possible, as he is so much of a speculator that it is very difficult to tell just where his interest is, or whether he is working to put stock up or down." Of the price of the Arizona legislature, Huntington's views changed with time. On September 27, 1875, he wrote : "Cannot you have Safford (then governor) call the legisla- ture together and grant such charters as we want at a cost of say $25,000?" He then thought $25,000 would buy it, but two months later he thought he could get it for $5,000. On October 29, 1875, he wrote : "1 am inclined to believe that if you could get the right man on that line in Arizona to work with the few papers they have there to agitate the question in the territory, asking that some arrangement be made with the Southern Pacific, at the same time offer the Southern Pacific a charter in the territory that would free the road from taxation, and one that would not allow of any interference with rates until 10 per cent, interest was declared on the common stock, I believe the legislature could be called together by the people for $5,000 and such a charter granted." Huntington feared while he ministered to congressional ap- petites, and in November, 1874, he wrote to Colton, concerning the Texas Pacific subsidy : "Scott is prepared to pay, or promises to pay, a large amount of money to pass his bill, but I do not think he can pass it, although I think this coming session of congress wall be com- posed of the hungriest set of men that ever got together, and that the devil only knows what they will do." He would pay good prices if compelled to do so, but pre- ferred to buy cheap, for he wrote another letter the same day, saying : "It would not do to have it known that we have any in- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 107 terest in it, for the reason that it would cost us much more money to get such a bill through if it was known that it was for us. And then Scott would fight it if he thought we had anything to do with it." It appears from the following letter, written by the same to the same in January, 1876, that Huntington and Scott both had "arrangements" for "switching" statesmen; also that Huntington didn't like Piper: "Scott is working mostly among the commercial men. He switched Senator Spencer, of Alabama, and Walker, of Ver- mont, this week, but you know that they can be switched back with the proper arrangements when they are wanted. All the members in the house from California are doing first rate ex- cept Piper, and he is a damned hog any way you can fix him. I wish you would write to Luttrell, saying that I say he is doing first rate and is very able, etc., and send me copy." Huntington also believed in "convincing" people, and he wrote to Colton: "I would like to know what is being done with the Cali- fornia Pacific extension bonds. Has any of our people en- deavored to do anything with Low and Frisbie? They are both men that can be convinced." "May 7, 1877. — I notice what you say of Conover, of Florida. He is a clever fellow, but don 't go any money on him. I think, if any Republican is elected in Sargent's place, he (Sargent) is worth to us, if he comes back as our friend, as much as six new men, and he should be returned." "May 15, 1877. — Am glad you are paying attention to Gen- eral Taylor and Mr. Kasson. Taylor can do us much good in the South. I think he would like to get a position, with us in California. Mr. Kasson has always been our friend in con- gress, and as he is a very able man he has been able to do us much good, and he never lost us one dollar. I have written to you before about Senator Conover. He may want to borrow some money, and I don't see how we can let him have any in California. I have just given Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, a letter to you. He is a good fellow, and can do us much good. I think "lie is well disposed toward us. Senator Martin is coming over, also his brother-in-law, Burbank. Both are good fellows, but B. means business." "June 14, 1878. — Fremont has been appointed governor of Arizona. I shall give him passes. I think it is important that you see him on his arrival, and see that he does not fall into the hands of bad men. He is very friendly to us now. " Scott tried hard to defeat his being confirmed." 108 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics TAKEN FROM NEW YORK WORLD, SATURDAY, JAN- UARY 15, 1887. The Huntington Letters to Colton. The following letters, taken at random from the Hunting- ton correspondence, published in the San Francisco Chronicle the latter part of 1883, may explain some of Mr. Huntington's disbursements. When one reads how he spent a week in Wash- ington "fixing senate committees" and fighting adverse legis- lation, every one will understand that sort of thing costs money. Solid Reasons Needed. New York, November 29, 1874. Friend Colton: Yours of the 12th received. I am glad to learn that you have Luttrell in your charge, but you must be careful and not let him get anything to strike back with, as he is a cuss, and I do not think it safe for Stanford to talk with him about our matters, as it would be just like him to get up in congress and lie about what Stanford said to him. He must have solid reasons or he will go back on you. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Infernal Newspapers. October 26, 1875. Friend Colton : I notice by the Alta of the 18th that some correspondent of a San Diego paper has been interviewing Mr. Crocker. It is very difficult for any one to be interviewed by an infernal newspaper without getting hurt, and Mr. Crocker is not the most unlikely to get hurt of all the men I know. * * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Another Hog. In a letter dated New York, January 29, 1876, he says, in speaking of the California members: "All the members of the house from California are doing first rate except Piper, and he is a damned hog any way you can fix him." His opinion of Mr. Luttrell seems to have improved, for he says: "I wish you would write a letter to Luttrell, saying that I say he is doing first rate and is very able, and send me a copy." C. P. Prospering. New York, November 11, 1876. Friend Colton: Yours of the 2d inst.. No. 2, is received. I am glad to learn that you will send to this office $2,000,000 by the 1st of January. About $2,000,000 on the old C. P. on My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 109 October is good. I hope Luttrell is elected and Piper defeated, as it was generally understood here that our hand was under one and over the other. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. The Funding Bill of 1877. New York, March 7, 1877. Friend Colton ; * * * The P. M. SS. Company got no aid. I will tell you some things about that some time. The sinking fund bill did not pass, but it is in a much better shape to pass than it has ever been before. I stayed in Washington two days to fix up railroad committee of the senate. Scott was there working for the same thing, but I beat him for once certain, as the committee is just as we want it, which is a very im- portant thing to me. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. $25,000 for the California Legislature. In a letter dated New York, September 27, 1875, he asks if Governor Safford will not call the legislature together for a certain charter which he needed. He thought that could be done for about $25,000, and directed that it be done if it could be done for that money. Firing Committees. New York, March 14, 1877. Friend Colton ; * * * After the senate railroad committee was made up Scott went to Washington in special train and got one of our men put off and his put on, but that did not give him the committee. Gordon, of Georgia, was taken off, and Bogy, of Missouri, was put on. Scott could not have troubled us with the S. P. if the S. P. had been left by itself, as we had it, but putting it with the C. P., as has been done, makes it an ugly bight, and it will continue to grow more so until the S. P. is built a long way east of where it is now. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Not Happy. New York, December 5, 1877. Friend Colton: I have just received telegram from Wash- ington that Matthews and Windom have been put on the senate railroad committee in place of Howe and Ferry. This looks as though the Texas Pacific had control of the senate as far aa appointing commissioners is concerned. I am not happy to- day. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. 110 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics Jay Gould and C. P. H. at Odds. New York, December 17, 1877. Friend Colton: * * * Jay Gould went to Washington about two weeks since, and I know, saw Mitchell, senator from Oregon; since which time money has been used very freely in Washington, as some parties have been very hard at work for the T. & P. N. P. with the Salt Lake Branch, that never work except for ready cash, and Senator Mitchell is not for us as it was, although he says he is. But I know he is not. Gould has large amounts of cash and he pays it without stint to carry his points. * * * There are many things I would like to say to you, but I will say the outlook is not good. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. The Good Jones Can Do. New York, November 24, 1877. Friend Colton ; * * * When you write pay Jones no part of the $25,000, because there is an unsettled account of say $6,000. I think you forget his position. I have paid him the $25,000, as he told me he needed it very much. I hold the $70,000 S. P. that he was to have in the trade ; that is, he is to have the coupons for ten years, then the bonds. Jones can do us much good and says he will. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. (Two Senator Jones. One from Florida; the other from Nevada.) A Blue Look. New York, November 22, 1877. Friend Colton . * * * Matters never looked worse in Washington than they do at this time. It seems as though all the strikers in the world were there. I send with this a copy of one of their letters I received yesterday, all of the same tenor. The one I send is from ex-Senator Pomeroy. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Pomeroy 's Bid. (Personal — Copy.) Washington, November 20, 1877. Mr. Huntington. — Dear Sir: I have noticed the movement of the committee on the judiciary and send the published pro- ceedings relating thereto. Of course my advice is gratuitous, and if it is worth nothing will cost you nothing, but I am not sure as you will get anything from the committee that you can accept. Indeed, I am sure you cannot accept anything they report, but can you beat it? To that question I address my- self. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics, 111 First — I say, not by proposing to that same committee the bill of last session. They are set in another direction. Second — Not by having no counter measure. How then can you hope to defeat them ? I reply : First, by at once putting before the committee on the Pacific Railroad such a bill as you can accept and by pressing a report from that committee. If you rely upon moving it as an amendment or substitute you will fail, as it then has the sanction of no committee of this congress and cannot be pushed successfully. Second, let Mr. Mitchell, of the Pacific Railroad committee, call his committee, thoroughly discuss and report such a bill as you can accept. Then antagonize the report of the judiciary committee with a report from the Pacific Railroad committee and our friends can sustain the report of the one committee against the other. The Thurman bill will pass if no determined and concerted effort is made to defeat it. I live close by and see often two members of the judiciary committee, and they have another measure to fol- low their bill if they pass it. The new measure is : Put, by law, your roads into the hands of a receiver until and while the requirements of the law are being fulfilled, so if you take the case growing out of this new law to the supreme court, in the meantime your roads and funds are controlled by a re- ceiver. I only allude to this as a plan I have heard spoken of. These suggestions are entirely gratuitous, but, as you know, I am, yours truly, S. C. POMEROY. Friends in Congress. New York, May 15, 1877. Friend Colton : I am glad you are paying some attention to General Taylor and Mr. Kasson. Taylor can do us much good in the South. I think, by the way, he would like to get some position with us in California. Mr. Kasson has always been our friend in congress, and as he is a very able man, has been atle to do us much good and he has never lost us one dollar. I think I have written you before about Senator Conover. He may want to borrow some money, but we are so short this sum- mer I do not see how we can let him have any in California. I have just given Senator Ingalls, of Kansas, a letter to you. He is a good fellow and can do us much good, and I think is well disposed towards us. Senator Morton is coming over, also his brother-in-law, Bur- bank. They are good fellows, but B. means business; not there, but in W. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. 112 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics New Mexican Expenses. New York, October 29, 1877. Friend Colton : I saw Axtell, governor of New Mexico, and he said if we would send him such a bill as we wanted passed into a law, he could get it passed for very little or no money ; when if we sent a man there they would stick him for large amounts. He thought, and so do I, that a general law is what we want, giving any company the right to build railroads; they do not interfere with the rate of fares and freights until the earnings made 10 per cent, on the cost, and not to be taxed, say, for six years. He said if you would make such a bill and send it to him or a Mr. Waldron, it would be passed. I think this should be attended to. I think our land matters at Washington have been fixed. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Sherriirs Anxiety. New York, October 30, 1877. Friend Colton : * * * The committees are made up for ths forty-fifth congress. I think the railroad committee is right, but the committee on territories I do not like. A different one was promised me. Sherrill has just telegraphed me to come to Washington tonight. I shall not go, as I am not well, and to always go at Sherrill's call would kill me or any one else in one session of congress. I think there never were so many strikers in Washington before, and I think there will be more bills of an unfriendly character offered than ever before. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. Temper of Congress Not Good. New York, November 9, 1877. Friend Colton: I do not think we can get any legislation this session for extension of land grants or for changing line of road unless we pay more for it than it is worth. Scott seems to be very confident that he can pass his T. & P. bill. I do not believe he can. Some parties are making a great effort to pass a bill through congress that will compel the U. P. and C. P. to pay large sums into a sinking fund, and I have some fear that such a bill may pass. Jim Keene and others of Jay Gould's enemies are in it, and will pay money to pass. We have a hearing tomorrow before the judiciary committee. The temper of congress is not good, and I fear we may be hurt, and somehow I do not feel so much like doing battle with the whole human race as I once did. I go to Washington tonight. * * * Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 113 Doctoring Reports. New York, February 23, 1878. Friend Colton: Yours of the 14th inst. is received, with memorandum showing amount of floating debt on December 31. Is it not possible to change some part of the above amount so that it will be all right and show this debt less? If not, I have fears that when our next annual report comes out it will compel us in some way to take off this floating debt in a way that would be very inconvenient for us. I returned from "Washington last night. The sub-committee of the house have agreed to report Scott's Texas and Pacific bills through to San Diego, and I am disposed to think the full committee will report to the house. It can be helped, but I doubt if it would be worth the cost, as I do not think it can pass the housa, although many think it can be passed. Scott will, no doubt, promise all — say $40,000,000 — that the act would give him. Very likely two sinking fund bills will be reported to the house next week, one from the judiciary and the other from the railroad committee of the senate. The latter one, I have little doubt, we could accept, and I think we can pass it. Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. The Congressional Market. New York, May 3, 1878. Friend Colton ; * * * The T. & P. folks are working hard on their bill and say they are sure to pass it, but I do not be- lieve it. They offered one member of congress $1,000 cash down, $5,000 when the bill passed and $10,000 of the bonds when they got them if he would vote for the bill. I have no doubt this offer was made and I have no doubt they would make this offer to enough to carry their bill if they could get parties to vote, but no one believes they would get anything more than the first sum if the bill should pass, Yours truly, C. P. HUNTINGTON. November 28, 1874. "I think this coming session of con- gress will be composed of the hungriest set of men that ever got together, and that the d — 1 only knows what they will do." September 25, 1875. "Dr. Gwin was unfortunate about the railroad committee. There was not a man on the committee that was on his list. I must say I was deceived." January 4, 1876. "In view of the many things we have before congress, it is very important that Carr's friends should be with us. If it can be brought about by paying Carr, say 114 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics from $10,000 to $20,000 a year, I think we could afford to do it." May 15, 1877. "I think I have written you before about Conover. He may want to borrow some money, but we are so short this summer, I do not see how we can let him have any in California." (Conover was from Florida). June 1, 1877. "There has been quite a number of senators and members of congress in the office here in the last few days." (Remember congress adjourned on March 4th, and there was no extra session that year. I presume they were borrowing money.") August 21, 1877. "Of course in treating with Jones, under- stand the importance of keeping our relations with him friendly. I am told he thinks you did not use him well in some mining or stock matters. Jones can do us much good and says he will." May 9, 1878. "The T. & P. folks offered one member of congress $1,000 cash down, $5,000 when the bill passed and $10,000 of the bonds, when they got them, if he would vote for the bill." October 30, 1877. "I think the railroad committee is all right, but the committee on territories I do not like. A dif- ferent one was promised to me." November 9, 1877. "I do not think we can get any legisla- tion this session for extension of land grants or for changing the line of road unless we pay for it far more than it's worth." November 30, 1877. "When you can find parties that are personally known to members of either house, get them to write letters or sign such as are written for them. We can bf helped much in that way. Do all you can, for I am having a rough fight." June 20, 1878. "I think in all the world's history never before was such a wild set of demagogues honored by the name of congress. We have been hurt some, but some of the worst bills have been defeated, but we cannot stand many such congresses." 'They spent $300,000 on this congress from November, 1877, to June, 1878. The New York World said, editorially : "A careful examination of the letters (Huntington's letters^ My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 115 shows that Gwin, the California magnate, who was a South- erner, was hired to go through the South denouncing the Texas' Pacific as a subsidy scheme — and that Senator Gordon, of Georgia, who posed as the representative of everything that was respectable in the South, was a servant of the cor- poration. ' ' The Charleston News and Courier, commenting on this statement of the World, says : ' ' Senator Gwin, though long a resident of California, is 'a Southern man by birth and educa- tion, and General Gordon is deservedly loved throughout the South. The talks about his conduct in congress has taken such a shape, the best course is to meet the accusations once for all, as General Gordon certainly can. Little would be thought of what is said in the Huntington letters, except for the fact that Senator Gordon made himself conspicuous by voting on the Pacific Railroad side when the Thurman bill was passed. Newspapers which are unquestionably friendly to General Gordon invite him to clear away the cloud which is gathering about him." (Did he accept the invitation? Did any Georgia newspaper, in the year 1884, when these letters came out, invite him? I will answer for one. The Cartersville Press invited him and he was at that time a resident of New York, or off continually, somewhere — occasionally in Georgia — but no answer came ! The suppression of the Huntington letters in Georgia news- papers was a concerted agreement — obliged to be, and in my opinion, which may be vrorth little, they were well paid to suppress them. ''They that fear feathers should not flock with wild fowl.") New York, August 25, 1876. "Friend Colton: You must have had a lively time in getting so many good names signed and sent on in so short a time, inviting our Southern brethren to come to California. I saw Gordon and several others just before congress adjourned, and they said they would go, but I have some doubts about it, as most of the members of con- gress are looking after their re-election. I shall get them started if I can." August 18, 1876. "I left Washington on Friday, 11th. T 116 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics think our matters are safe there for the session. I saw General Gordon just before I left. He had received a dispatch from some of the prominent men of San Francisco, and he said he thought they would get up a party of, say thirty prominent Southern men, and visit California this fall, starting from this city about the 1st of September. Yours truly, "C. P. HUNTINGTON." Any "decoy duck" about that? The World, in another place, said: "The debauching influences which surround legis- lation at the national capital are being reproduced as fungi reproduces themselves, about the capitals of the states. But the other day — and a man who had filled the speaker's chair in the legislature of New Jersey — saw the gates of her peni- tentiary swing ajar at his coming — a criminal, convicted of using to his own purposes the power that had been given him by his people. The senate of the United States carries upon its rolls the names of men who have amassed great fortunes, in ways not legitimate, and the interests of the people of the country are set aside at the dictation of corporations that grow in strength and arrogance." My husband received no invitation from Huntington to go to California. He had no telegram from San Francisco to go there. He was not wanted in that crowd, thank God ! — but he was hounded all over the Seventh district by Huntington's "men," as a congressman unworthy of trust by the Demo- cratic party! They stoned Akerman! They vilified Felton! They built a monument to Gordon. THE HUNTINGTON LETTERS AND SOUTHERN STATES MEN. Charleston News and Courier. It was supposed that with the damning disclosures of the Credit Mobilier, which carried down with it many reputations and badly besmirched others, the congressional lobby had received a severe check. But the publication of the San Fran- cisco Chronicle of the Huntington-Colton correspondence de- velops a scheme for bribery and corruption which was suc- cessfully engineered by the power of gold. C. P. Huntington My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 117 and Mark Hopkins, as hardware merchants, Leland Stanford as dealer in oil, Charles Crocker as dry goods dealer, and Judge Crocker as lawyer, with a combined capital to start with of eleven thousand five hundred dollars, all told, man- aged to purchase state legislatures, to bribe senators, repre- sentatives and high officials of the government and to defeat the plans of Tom Scott for the building of a Southern Pacific railway. That Huntington and his conferees should have found it easy to approach and embrace northern congressmen, already debauched by the sudden riches which followed the war, is not strange. That the carpet-baggers, who misrepre- sented the Southern states in both branches of congress, should have eagerly grasped after the swag with offers of their votes and influence cannot be surprising to any one. But we of the South must stand in amazement and mortification at the open charge that our trusted friends and leaders fell under the malign influences of a syndicate that bought its way with money and favors. It does not cause a qualm to hear Spencer, of Alabama, reviled as a rascal. One is scarcely startled to hear that ex-Governor Walker, of Virginia, was considered a weak vessel, for both came from over the line as representa- tives of the Republican party. But this paragraph from an article in the New York World must give us pause, to-wit : "A careful examination of the letters shows that Gwinn, the California magnate, who was a Southerner, was hired to go through the South denouncing the Texas Pacific as a subsidy scheme ; that Senator Gordon, of Georgia, who posed as the representative of everything that was highly respectable in the South, was a servant of the corporation." The venerable ex-Senator Gwinn, though long a resident and representative of California, is a Southern man by birth and rearing. Georgians know General Gordon. It was whispered about Washington that Senator Gordon was lending himself to this scheme. The whisperings were either so low or emanated from sources so irresponsible as to escape his notice, perhaps. There was some talk of this mat- ter in Georgia, and the writer recalls an expression of aston- ishment after these years from a friend of General Gordon, that he made no motion to stop this talk. Conscious of the rectitude of his own conduct, he may then have deemed it beneath the dignity of a senator from a sovereign state to search out the scandal monger of the curbstones. Every now and then, as if in relief from the chronicling of his successes in the fields of finance and railroad building, a suggestion finds its way to the public through the press that General Gor- 118 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics don indulges a desire and an intention to return to political life. If any weight may be attached to these outgivings, in justice to himself and his people, he should clear up the past. So long as he follows the pursuits of a private citizen, he may properly say that his record has been made up. But before he shall ask of the honest and industrious yeomanry of Georgia to clothe him again with honors and powers, he must squarely confront the more than insinuation which is contained in the language quoted from one of the leading journals of the country. We write in all kindness to General Gordon. He has been greatly honored by the people of Georgia and we would be among the last to raise an accusation against the personal and official integrity which have stood unimpeached, and we can- not conclude that the language we have quoted from the World rests upon a basis of fact. GLOOM IN THE WASHINGTON LOBBY. The "Washington correspondent of the New York Sun says: When Mr. Huntington, in the fullness of confidence, gave free rein to his thoughts in the correspondence with Mr. Col- ton six or seven years ago, he had not conceived the possibility of those letters ever seeing the light of day, or of their return- ing to plague the writer. Whatever may be thought of the letters themselves, Mr. Huntington has unintentionally ren- dered a public service in several ways. In the first place, he has exposed the methods employed by the great corporations in procuring legislation at Washington. He has shown sena- tors and representatives in what estimation they are held by the railroad kings, who treat them as merchandise. "In the second place, as the residuary legatee of the Texaa Pacific Company, and the claimant of its forfeited land grant, Mr. Huntington has effectually closed the door against his own pretensions in that respect. After the recent revelations no congress and no secretary of the interior would dare to give him an acre. "In the third place, Mr. Huntington has given an impulse to legislation adverse to all misappropriation of the public domain. Preventive bills will now go through congress by a moral force such as carried the Thurman act over the heads of Huntington, Gould and their associates. "These exposures have admonished the lobby that 1884 is not a good year for its business at the capital." My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 119 HUNTINGTON'S PLANS AND PROSPECTS. Special to the New York World, Huntington is coming here. He usually stops at Willard's Hotel, where he has been fond of entertaining Congressional friends. This time has engaged quarters at Wormley's, where he will be more retired. He will come here for the purpose of conversing with Sherrill, his white-whiskered, long, lank, dyspeptic lieutenant. Mr. Huntington does not seem to com- prehend the full effect of his published correspondence. Mr. Sherrill, the lieutenant, understands the situation, however. The latter is a very plain talker, and it is understood he has given Huntington to understand that there is not much use in his trying to do business here this winter, now that these letters have been printed. In reality there is a regular panic among members and Senators about this Huntington exposure. The virtuous indignation that is expressed in every quarter where public men meet to talk, bodes ill for Huntington's plans. He will hardly obtain any favors from this Congress. It is more than probable that if he attempts to speak to the average Senator, or Representative, the latter would start on a dead run to get away from his contaminating presence. There is a very uneasy feeling among some of the older statesmen who were in Congress at the time the letters were written. One Western Senator said tonight: ''What protection is there against this man? How do I know but what this creature may have called on me some time, and because I did not kick him out of my room he may have gone off and written one of his damned letters, saying that I was friendly to him." The Senator added that he thought the only safe way for a public man was not to admit men with axes to grind to their private quarters. *'I do not intend," he said, "to see a single man who wants to talk about railroads or land grants. The minute one of these cusses opens his mouth to me on such a subject I will tell him to get up and get." It is understood that Huntington is trying to bring pressure to bear upon Cobb's public land committee to see if action on the Texas Pacific land grant can not be delayed. Huntington and his crowd do not expect to obtain any favorable action from Congress. That is too much for even Huntington to hope for, but he is going to try very hard to secure a postponement of action until the scandal has at least blown over. 120 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics The World. Editor and Proprietor, Joseph Pulitzer. Saturday, Jan. 15, 1887. ANOTHER REVELATION. Senators of the United States will find in the World today facts and figures which should cause them to pause and reflect before granting seventy years more of oblivion to the Pacific Railroad's debt and accounts. These corporations are practically partners with the gov- ernment in the ownership of the great properties which they control. They have obtained a magnificent domain and inval- uable franchises from the people. Their projectors are many- millionaires. The companies owe to the government a large amount of money, the payment of which they seek to evade on the plea of inability. And yet an official inspection of the ac- counts of two of them shows the disbursement by their officers of $2,000,000, for which no vouchers, details or explanations have been or will be given. The transcripts from their accounts that we publish today show plainly some of the "improper and unlawful" purposes for which these enormous disbursements have been made. Their character may be further inferred from the fact that the officers permitted them to be rejected by the government officials rather than give any explanation of their purpose. What do honorable Senators think of the revelation that a member of their body, Mr. Stanford, received and disbursed on account of the road of which he was president over $733,- 000, in items ranging from $5,000 to $171,000, of which he gave to the company no detailed account? Is this a fit man to sit in the Senate and instruct his colleagues to vote against the bill giving the government supervision over interstate commerce? The object for which Mr. Huntington kept his "agent" Sherrill in Washington, to "see that the position of the road received no damage" from "the legislative, judicial and execu- tive departments of government," is likewise more fully ex- plained by the extremely interesting accounts of his disburse- ments which the World's enterprise permits the country to see. A blaze of light is also thrown by these revelations and the accompanying correspondence upon the interest which these railroad magnates take in politics. Their $100,000 contribu- bution to campaign funds are easily understood. Their pur- chase of seats in Congress for themselves, their attorneys and agents, and the welcome which they give to congenial and sympathetic millionaires, are explained by the interest which these facts reveal in their control of the government. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 121 Is it not time to cry HALT ! to the encroachments of the money power? Does the Senate of the United States need any further reinforcement from Plutocrats? THE "LEGAL EXPENSES" ACCOUNT. The following items were disallowed for the same reasons as those in the "General Expense" Account — neither "detail" nor "explanation" being given on the voucher: 1875. Dec, Leland Stanford $ 15,117.33 1876. Sept. 22. D. D. Colton 29,974.13 Nov. 2. D. D. Colton 7,500.00 1878. Nov. 12. L. Stanford 46,816.94 ("Nov. 22, 1877, to date"). 1879. Sept. 27. L. Stanford 38,156.03 ("Nov. 25, 1878, to date"). Total $137,564.43 Nov. 1. Leland Stanford 83,418.09 (Disbursed by him between July 30, 1876, and Sept. 30, 1877; no explanation or detail.) Oct. 5. C. P. Huntington 1,500.00 Oct. 15. C. P. Huntington 2,000.00 Oct. 24. C. P. Huntington 1,000.00 Nov. 9. J. E. Gates 5,000.00 Nov. 16. J. E. Gates 5,000.00 Dec. 28. Leland Stanford 52,500.00 (Without detail or explanation.) Dec. 8. J. E. Gates 2,500.00 Dec. 18. J. E. Gates 5,000.00 Dec. 19. J. E. Gates 1,000.00 Dec. 26. C. P. Huntington 2,000.00 Total $279,573.44 1878. Feb. 14. L. Stanford $ 10,000.00 Jan. 11. C. P. Huntington 1,150.00 Jan. 28. J. E. Gates 1,600.00 Feb. 20. C. P. Huntington 2,500.00 March 18. C. P. Huntington 5,500.00 March 19. C. P. Huntington 4,500.00 March 26. C. P. Huntington 10,000.00 122 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics April 12. J. E. Gates 1,750.00 April 18. J. E. Gates 200.00 June 7. L. Stanford 13,000.00 May 4. Jas. H. Storrs 1,000.00 May 20. J. E. Gates 5,000.00 May 25. J. E. Gates 2,500.00 May 27. J. E. Gates 5,000.00 June 28. L. Stanford 111,431.25 June 29. Jos. H. Bell 38,500.00 June 22. J. E. Gates 2,000.00 June 25. J. E. Gates 500.00 June 29. C. P. Huntington 90,167.20 (The disbursement of more than $300,000 during the six months ending June 30, 1878 — the period of debate and passage of the "Thurman" law — without vouchers or explanations of a character to warrant its allowance as a lawful and proper expenditure of the moneys of the Central Pacific Railroad Company by Stanford and Huntington, the president and vice- president, respectively, would seem either wanton waste or improper expenditure.) "General" and "Legal" Disbursements. To accomplish their purposes, and in defiance of all law and their obligations to the United States, the Central Pacific mag- nates have not stinted themselves in the lavish expenditure of the company's assets — money — and have covered up the detail of most of such unlawful expenditures by vouchers without information. These expenditures were charged on the books of the company in California mainly to two accounts, known as "General Expenses" and "Legal Expenses." In examining these accounts it was found by Mr. French that many items of large amount could not be satisfactorily explained by the secretary of the company and were disallowed. Below is given the list in detail of the items as are taken from these two ac- counts that has been furnished by Mr. French. To the cor- rectness of this list of disallowed accounts Mr. French has made formal affidavit. The Need of Investigation. From November, 1869, to Dec. 31, 1880, the total amount of the "general expense" account was $3,985,250.04, and of the "legal expense" account, $1,280,468.91; total of both, $5,265,718.95. From Jan. 1, 1881, to Dec. 31, 1886, the total amount of these two accounts is probably not less than $5,000,000, and possibly still more. How much Or how little of such latter sum has been expended My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 123 for purposes which neither accounts nor vouchers disclose re- mains for an investigating committee of the Senate or House to ascertain ! A SWORN STATEMENT BY THEOPHILUS FRENCH, LONG U. S. AUDITOR OF ACCOUNTS. New York World. During his three years of official service he rejected in the accounts of the Pacific Railroads over $2,000,000 as having been improperly disbursed. These rejected accounts need a brief explanation in order to fully comprehend them. Under the Thurman act 25 per cent, of the net earnings of the subsi- dized roads have to be paid into the Treasury of the United States towards wiping out the debt due the government. In order to arrive at the correct amount of the net earnings it is important to scrutinize closely the items of money disbursed. Money improperly disbursed can not be deducted. Mr. French found in the short time that he was in the office, accounts to the amount of the sum just named which the railroad officials would not explain. This was the manner of their discovery: Mr. French, in running through the accounts, would find an item of large expenditure in the name of C. P. Huntington, Leland Stanford or some other prominent representative of the road. The sum would be on the books without explana- tion. Mr. French would ask, "What is the meaning of this expenditure? For what was this money paid out? There we are: no vouchers here!" In no instance was an explanation ever offered in the list of accounts rejected by him. Mr. French warned the railroad officials that if the accounts were not explained they would have to be rejected. No Explanation Given. In 1876 Lot M. Morrill, Secretary of the Treasury, desig- nated a Treasury Department accountant to go to Boston and assist the District Attorney there in prosecuting the "5 per cent." suit against the Union Pacific. During the progress of the examination of the accounts the above item of $126,000 was met with, and Gen. G. M. Dodge was then in Boston. The government representatives insisted on an explanation of this item, but rather than give it Sidney Bartlett, senior counsel of the Union Pacific, after consulta- tion with Secretary Rollins and some of the directors, con- cluded to have it — stricken out as an "expense" — disallowed. 124 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics BRIBED CONGRESSMAN TREMBLING. A Washington special to the New York Journal says : Since the death of Sherrill, the "King of the Lobby," wild rumors of monumental corruption in Congress in connection with the Pacific Railroad matters have been industriously circulated in Washington. Today the startling announcement was made that a large quantity of Sherrill 's private papers containing indisputable evidence of bribe-giving and bribe-taking to secure favorable legislation for the above railroad had been seized and were in possession of the secret service detectives. These documents, it is further stated, contain the most damaging dis- closures, which, when made public, will wreck the reputations of at least twenty Representatives. That there has been bribery of a wholesale character in Congress by the kings of the Pa- cific Railroad in order to insure the passage of the funding bill there seems now but little reason to doubt. An explosion is imminent, and certain men with perhaps guilty consciences are trying by strenuous efforts to laugh the story out of sight. It is stoutly alleged that boodle has been dispensed among members of the House in the most lavish fashion, and that no less a sum than $2,000,000 has been paid to Congressmen and receipts given by these guilty gentlemen. These men's names are known. The exact amount of money placed in the hands of the guilty legislators is also known, and the service they were expected to render is equally clear. One Western Rep- resentative is said to have received $150,000 cash in hand, which he quietly invested in realty near Washington. An- other is accused of having demanded and received $250,000 for the control of his vote, while another is credited with ac- cepting $100,000 as a bribe. Just before he died, last week, Sherrill paid out over $500,000 in cash for a well-known South- ern Pacific magnate. Calls to the amount of 40,000 shares on Union Pacific stock are held by members of Congress, who are expected to cast their votes on all measures affecting the Pacific roads in favor of these corporations. WRITTEN IN 1884, WHEN BLAINE WAS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. The Sun. The Pacific Railroad Obligations — Mr. Thurman's Remini- scences. Mr. Thurman, of Ohio, has been giving to a corre- spondent of the Chicago News his experience in the Senate of the United States when he had charge of the bill drawn up by Senator Edmunds and himself to compel the Pacific Rail- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 125 roads to meet their obligations to the government. That bill, instead of leaving Pacific roads to make a settlement of their accumulated indebtedness to the government after the expira- tion of thirty years, made it obligatory on them to set aside one-quarter of their net earnings every year as a fund to meet those obligations. Up to that time the companies had entirely evaded the law requiring them to establish a sinking fund. As the bill made this imperative, and fixed irrevocably that the annual accretions to the fund should be derived from one- fourth of the net earnings of the Union and Central Pacific roads, a desperate attempt was made by the companies to de- feat it. Immediately the bill was reported, says ex-Senator Thurman, "a frightful lobby sprang up. It was the most formidable lobby I ever saw in Washington — Gould, Hunting- ton and Dillon were all there together. As for railroad law- yers and agents, the town was full of them. They carried things with such a high hand that it was hard to tell what to expect or in whom to place confidence. At one time the lobby thought it had us down, and I feared so, too, but we kept up the fight. The first move against us on the floor of the Senate was a bill prepared by Dorsey, of Arkansas. This passed through the railroad committee and was reported by Stanley Matthews. It seemed similar to our bill, but virtually amounted to giving the companies $40,000,000 outright. Besides the efforts of Dorsey, of star route notoriety, and of Stanley Matthews, both of whom were then in the Senate, aided by the powerful influence of the lobby and backed by the personal presence of the principal representatives of the two roads — Jay Gould, Dillon and Huntington — Mr. Blaine, after the debate had been running a week, came forward and ranged himself on the side of the Pacific Railroad magnates and of his associate Senators in opposition — Dorsey and Mat- thews. It is said that Mr. Blaine called on Senator Thurman at the house of the latter and tried to influence him to with- draw the bill. This Mr. Thurman says is not true. What Mr. Blaine did was to request Mr. Thurman to go to his (Blaine's) house for the purpose of explaining portions of the bill. Shortly after this interview Mr. Blaine proposed an amendment which Mr. Thurman is emphatic in declaring "was designed to kill the bill," for it required Congress, on condition that the pro- posed sinking fund should be established, "to surrender the right to change or legislate upon the original charter of the road. Rather," adds Mr. Thurman, "than that the govern- ment should surrender this right, I then said, and now say, we might better have thrown the money involved into the Atlantic ocean." He goes on to say: "We had a hard fight. Senator Edmunds made a powerful speech, and so did Senator 126 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Bayard. I made two set speeches. The lobby tried with all its power to secure the adoption of the amendment in order to kill the bill, but we beat them. Blaine, Matthews and Dor sey were most powerful men in opposition to us." On being asked if he thought that Mr. Blaine was in secret collusion with Gould, Dillon and Huntington, Mr. Thurman declared that he knew nothing about it. He then remarked: "It was plain to me that Blaine desired to kill the bill. It is not for me to say what his motive was, or if any improper influences controlled him. But I am willing to say this : I do fear that if the Republican party retains power the Pacific Railroad Companies will evade payment of their indebtedness to the government, and, under legislative protection, build up the worst railroad monopoly ever seen in this country." This is strong language, coming from so temperate and cautious a man as Mr. Thurman. The insight which he had obtained during his long career in the Senate into the methods by which ifiilroad legislation was forced through Congress, and into the character of those who were regarded as the defenders and promoters of all kinds of schemes for the benefit of wealthy corporations, give to his opinion of the consequences that would result from the election of Mr. Blaine and the retention of the Republican party in power a weight and significance that can not fail to impress unbiased minds. During the whole period Mr. Thurman was a member of the Senate he com- manded the respect and esteem of all the best men in it, with- out regard to party lines. His honesty and integrity was never once called in question. Of sound judgment, a jurist of the highest ability, and a statesman whose principles were broad enough to take in the whole country, he was never known to subordinate his convictions to party exegencies, or to cast his vote for any measure that he believed to be unjust at thp solicitation of outside influence. MONEY IN POLITICS. Harper's Weekly. A long article in the New York Times, in the form of a letter from Washington, contains the following statements : "There are today sitting in the Senate of the United States sixteen Senators who owe their election entirely to the indirect use of money and the exercise of corporate power and influence in their respective States. Why mince words? The last presi- dential election was determined by the use of money The Democratic party can not throw stones at the Republican har- lot. They are not without sin. They taught Republicans the art in 1876. Barnum and mules carried Indiana in the October My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 127 contest of that year. They were on hand again in 1880, but Dorsey and two-dollar bills were too much for a Connecticut Yankee and his mules. If Mr. C. P. Huntington can be com- pelled to account for the $190,000 he expended in 1876, it will be found that $75,000 of that amount was a contribution to a campaign fund. It will further appear that the contribution was not unconditionally made, but that the pledge was exacted of a presidential candidate to consider favorably legislation which might be enacted in the interest of the corporations Mr. Huntington represented. If the secrets of Mr. Jay Gould's cabinet could be extracted or abstracted, it would appear that a like contribution was made by him upon a similar pledge given at the same time to the same parties who acted as the go-betweens, the bosses of the corporations, and the presidential aspirant. ' ' An article, less elaborate, but in the same vein, appeared in the Chicago Tribune of January 10, in which occurs the fol- lowing passage : "The Union Pacific Railroad has several Senators, the North- ern Pacific has one, the Pennsylvania Railroad has two. Cen- tral Pacific has two, the Georgia railroads have one, the lum- ber monopolists of Michigan and Wisconsin have two or three, the Chesapeake and Ohio has one, the Wilmington Match Company has one. Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legis- lation, or of some syndicate that has invaluable contracts or patents to defend or push." The Chicago Tribune remarks that the Senate is losing in- tellectual power and representative character, and becoming a merely plutocratic, and therefore an obstructive body. Cer- tainly the only significance that can be clearly discerned in the late senatorial election in Ohio is that the Standard Oil Com- pany was earnestly interested in the success of Mr. Payne. It taints both parties, and such familiar facts as the senatorial election in Ohio, the revelations in the municipal service in New York, the city's "deals" for patronage, and the state- ments of the late Democratic governor of Maryland show the folly of supposing that the Democratic pot could carry the election by calling the Republican kettle black. The talk about monopoly and anti-monopoly signifies the public perception that government is getting to be too much controlled by money. The general remedy lies in the public perception that legislation which is bought by vast corporate interests or spe- cial classes necessarily stimulates reckless speculation and overproduction, and that the inevitable result is panic, dis- aster, and immense industrial suffering. 128 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics MR. HUNTINGTON ON THE BUYING AND SELLING OF MEN. The Sun. Saturday, September 21, 1889. Too little attention has been paid to an extraordinary letter on the suppression of the African slave trade which appeared a few days ago in an obsecure newspaper of this town. The letter is signed by Mr. C. P. Huntington, the well-known pro- moter of civilization and the friend of the oppressed; and it was dated at the Mills building, 23 Broad street. Mr. C. P. Huntington urges the people to join him in a grand effort to exterminate the slave trade in Africa before the end of the present century. His general scheme is the establish- mnt of a system of well-policed steamboat and railroad lines from Suakim to the Zambesi river, and thence across the conti- nent to the mouth of the Congo. The exalted sentiments which impel Mr. Huntington to ap- peal to the public in behalf of the poor African are briefly stated in his letter, and they do honor to a heart that throbs warmly for mankind: "I wish to call the attention of the public to an offense against civilization — the buying and selling of men and women into slavery. * * * Good and thoughtful people, through many generations, have endeavored to destroy this evil, and have so nearly succeeded that at this time no civilized nation engages in or tolerates it, and I believe that if one great united effort were made even the Arab, the descendant of Ishmael, might be made ashamed to traffic in human flesh. ** Others have studied the subject more closely than I, and have more leisure to deal with it, but for many years I have deeply felt the wrongs done to the African race, and have been interested in their future; and I ask all good people to unite in one grand effort against the slave trade with all its at- tendant evils, and thus make it possible for the future historian to say that the blackest crime of the ages — human slavery — was destroyed in the last decade of the nineteenth century." How different is the noble and hopeful tone of this Mr. Huntington's remarks on human slavery from that which marked a series of letters addressed by another Mr. C. P. Huntington a few years ago to the late Gen. D. D. Colton, of California, on the same general subject of the buying and selling of men! The other Mr. Huntington is likewise a pro- moter; he also dates his letters at 23 Broad street, where he looks after a good deal of railroad business as president of the Central Pacific, and vice-president and New York agent and attorney of the Southern Pacific. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 129 It was in the last-mentioned capacity that the other Mr. C. P. Huntington addressed to Gen. Colton a series of letters re- lating to the purchase and sale of human beings, not in Africa, but right here at home in the land of liberty and under the star-spangled banner of freedom. His statements concerning the human slavery at Washington and the gloomy picture which he presented to his correspondent, and afterward to the pub- lic, was made still blacker by an exhibition on his own part of a cynical indifference to the immorality of the traffic. At the time the letters of Mr. Huntington, the railway pro- moter, were written, he was engaged in a desperate struggle with the late Thomas A. Scott for the ownership of enough Senators and Representatives in Congress to secure to one or the other of the rival railroad interests. It was the course of the latter 's confidential narrative to Colton that he told with unequalled frankness how he regarded Senators and Repre- sentatives as human chattels, to be bought and sold in the open market for cash, and to be owned in fee simple by the purchasing corporation. Here is part of one of his letters describing the horrid traffic : ''New York, Jan. 29, 1876. "Friend Colton: Scott is making a terrible effort to pass his bill.* * * Scott is working mostly among the commer- cial men. He switched Senator Spencer, of Alabama, and Senator Walker, of Virginia, this week. But you know they can be switched back with proper arrangement when they are wanted; but Scott is asking for so much that he can promise largely to pay when he wins, and you know I keep on high ground. All the members in the House are doing first rate except Piper, and he is a hog any way you can fix him. I wish you would write a letter to Luttrell, saying that I say he is doing first rate, and is very able, etc., and send me a copy. ' ' Yours truly, "C. P. HUNTINGTON." The Luttrell whose exemplary conduct was exhibited in such marked contrast with that of the blank hog Piper, was a Rep- resentative from a California district. Earlier in the corre- spondence he had referred to Luttrell as "a wild hog," and as "a cuss, to whom it is not safe to talk openly." A little later he had written concerning him : "November 19, 1874 — I notice you are yet on Luttrell 's trail. I hope you will get some one to convince him that we are good fellows — and that should not be a hard thing to do, for 1 have no doubt of it myself." "November 20, 1874 — I am glad you have Luttrell under your charge, but you must be careful not to let him get any- thing to strike back with, as he is a cuss." 130 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics And two years later the changed relations of Mr. Hunting- ton and his friends to the useful and able Luttrell, and their unchanged opinion of the blank hog Piper, were indicated in a brief note at election time : "New York, Nov. 11, 1876. "Friend Colton: Yours of the 2d inst., No. 2, is received. I am glad to learn that you will send to this office $2,000,000 by the 1st of January. About $2,000,000 on the old C. P. in October is good. I hope Luttrell is elected and Piper defeated, as it was generally understood here that our hand was under one and over the other. "Yours truly, "C. P. HUNTINGTON." In the same way, continuing his awful picture of human slavery in Washington and in the West, Mr. C. P. Huntington's letters to Colton described Senator Sargent as "worth as much as any six men;" Wigginton, of Wisconsin, as "a good fel- low, growing every day;" Simons B. Conover, of Florida, as "a clever fellow, but don't go money on him;" and John A. Kasson, of Iowa, as "our friend in Congress, and he has never lost us a dollar." Mr. Huntington, in one letter, asks Colton if he can not have Gov. Safford, of Arizona, call the legislature together and "grant such charters as we want, at a cost, say, of $25,000." In January, 1876, he wrote: "I have received several letters and telegrams from Wash- ington today, all calling me there, as Scott will certainly pass his bill if I do not come over, and I shall go over tonight, but I think he could not pass his bill if I should help him ; but, of course, I can not know this for certain, and just what effort to make against him is what troubles me. It costs money to fix things so I would know his bill would not pass. I believe with $200,000 I can pass our bill (Gordon's bill), but I take it that it is not worth that much to us. "Yours truly, "C. P. HUNTINGTON." In May, 1878, he quoted the ruling rates in the human slave market at Washington: "The Texas Pacific people offered one member of Congress $1,000 cash down, $5,000 when the bill passed, and $10,000 of the bonds when they got them." We might keep on until Christmas quoting from the volumin- ous private correspondence of the other Mr. Huntington his statements bearing on the legislative slave trade and its at- tendant evils. It is a form of slavery far more degrading to the human beings bought and sold than any chain that ever was riveted by the descendants of Ishmael in Africa, and far more disgraceful and dangerous to the civilization of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. How different, we repeat, is the tone of Mr. C. P. Hunting- Mr Memoirs of Georgia Politics 131 ton, the philantli/G~"isc, with regard to the African slave trade. He appeals earnestly to all good people to join with him in an endeavor to wipe out the African blot on civilization. No truly philanthropic man, we are sure, will hold back, or refuse to follow where Mr. Huntington leads. JUNKETING JUDGES. Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution. A very remarkable feast lately occurred in San Francisco. It was a feast given by Judge Sawyer, of the United States Court, to Senator Stanford. There were present at this re- markable banquet Senator Stanford, Judge Field, of the Fed- eral Supreme Court ; Judge Hoffman and a number of promi- nent railroad officials. We have already made brief allusions to this curious affair, but it is worthy of further comment, owing to the peculiar circumstances surrounding it. Take it all in all, it was an occasion full of significance, and it is probably without paral- lel in this country. A few hours before the banquet, Field, Hoffman and Saw- yers were on the bench, and Stanford was at the bar of the court, pleading that he should not be compelled to give -evi- dence which might incriminate himself in the Pacific railway investigation. The hilarious judges, including that great Democratic lumi- nary and presidential candidate, Mr. Justice Field, decided the case to suit the railroad magnate ; and this decision seemed to be so satisfactory to all concerned, that the judges. Senator Stanford and prominent railroad officials, engaged in a general jollification. The whole affair is a disgrace to the country and to the judiciary. The interests and rights of the people can not be properly protected if justices of the Supreme Court are to be permitted to junket and hobnob with the heads of great corporations that have swindled the public. We understand that Senator Stanford says the questions which he refused to answer pertained to individuals which could be of no consequence to the government. The jolly judges, anxious to go on a junketing spree, coincided with Stanford, but the questions that this magnate refused to an- swer pertained, in ten specified cases, directly to the use of money in securing legislation and in influencing legislators. The junketing judges who excused Stanford are no better than he is — and this is saying a great deal. 132 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics A BLOW FOR THE LOBBY. New York World, Jan. 16, 1887. (Special to the World.) Washington, Jan. 15. — The exposure of the interior work- ings of the Central Pacific Railroad ring in today's World has attracted great attention at the capital. For many years the Pacific railroads have been before Congress and then al- ways with a train of scandals behind them. The Credit Mobil- ier episode showed the interior workings of the Union Pacific. Now the World points a similar picture of the Central Pacific. The revelation of the disbursement of $2,000,000 during the period described by ex-Commissioner French gives point to the stories concerning the influence brought to bear to compass further legislation for these roads. If money was poured out like water in 1878 to defeat the Thurman act, why, it is asked, should it not be poured out freely in 1887 to secure the passage of a bill which would practically free the Pacific railroads from their most binding obligations towards the government. The itemized account of these roads is not questioned since Mr. Norwood has been in his place and acknowledged that the items, so far as they related to him, are correct, and it is assumed that if true in his case, they must be true in all others. Mr. Norwood made the point afterwards that the charge against him should not have appeared in the accounts of the Central Pacific Company, since he had worked for the South- ern Pacific Company. That point in itself was suggestive to members, for if the expenses of the unsubsidized roads were to be charged to the subsidized roads, then the net expenditure report of the subsidized portions were fraudulent and prepared with intent to swindle the government. The Committee Changes Front. The World's revelations have come with the shock of a. great surprise. They have checked the consideration of the Funding bill and made the friends of that measure ask for an investigation of the accounts of the Pacific railroads. Such a storm of feeling was aroused in the House today that Mr. Crisp turned quickly in the direction of an investigation. Last winter when the Pacific Railroad Committee reported the Funding bill it reported also a resolution of investigation, but it put the resolution of investigation behind the Funding bill. It said: "Let us pass the bill first, and then you can have your investigation." This, of course, was an absurd position to take, because after the debt was once extended there would have been no object in having an investigation, but the com- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 133 raittee by changing front and asking for an investigation has furnished a knock-down argument against any further con- sideration of the Funding bill this session. When Speaker Carlisle left the chair this morning, after the House went into a Committee of the Whole, he placed Mr. Blount, of Georgia, in his seat and retired to his room to take up some private correspondence, thinking, as a matter of course, that the Funding bill was to be considered. Mr. Crisp had hoped to get a vote. The first intimation of a change of front was made to Mr. Springer, who had prepared himself for an elaborate speech upon the subject of the Pacific rail- roads, and had collected an overwhelming array of facts and figures to show the true character of the Funding bill — how completely it was in the interests of the railroads and how thoroughly the government interests were injured. But Mr. Crisp informed him that the Funding bill was not to be brought up; that instead the committee had decided to press its reso- lution of investigation. This sudden surrender was for a time a subject for suspicion. It was believed that there was some sharp practice underlying it. Soon, however, the World's startling story was in the hands of the members and the change of front was explained. Even the friends of this funding scheme saw that it would be idle to stand up and say that these railroad accounts should not be examined. Mr. Norwood's Personal Explanation. A short time afterwards T. M. Norwood, of Georgia, got the floor for the purpose of making a personal explanation of the brief declaration made by him in this morning's World con- cerning the appearance of his name in the list of rejected ac- counts. He said: "Mr. Speaker, I ask the indulgence of the House for a few minutes to make a personal explanation." The Speaker asked: "Is there objection?" There was none. Mr. Norwood therefore continued: "An article appears in the New York World of today, in which my name is used in connection with the accounts of the Central Pacific Railway, and I desire to submit a few remarks on the connection of that name with those accounts. I do so principally for this reason : Last evening Mr. Durham, representative of the New York World, called upon me and asked if I had ever repre- sented a claim against the Central Pacific or Union Pacific Railway. I told him I never had. He said in the accounts in the Treasury Department certain items which had been claimed by one T. M. Norwood had been rejected by the gov- ernment in its accounts with the Central or Union Pacific Rail- way, he was not certain which. I told him that if any claims had ever been presented against either one of these companies 134 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics by one T. M. Norwood, I was not the person and in consequence of that interview this paragraph appears in the World: "Con- gressman T. M. Norwood, of Georgia, said this evening that the T. M. Norwood mentioned in the list of rejected accounts must be that of some other Norwood. He said he never had any connection in any way with the Central Pacific Railway and never received any fee from that company of any kind. He says that there are many Norwoods in the West, and that an examination will show that it must be some of the Western Norwoods." That statement was made in consequence of his asking me if I ever had any claim against the Central Pacific or the Union Pacific. Nothing was said by him in reference to the Southern Pacific Railway. He Was the Norwood Referred to. And now I come to the explanation of the account as it ap- pears in the World in connection with my name. I presume I am the Norwood mentioned in the account. In 1878, some- thing over a year after my term expired in the Senate, I was engaged by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company as counsel in the contest that was then going on between that company and the Texas Pacific Railroad Company, represented by Tom Scott. The contest was as to a certain line of road. Mr. Scott was asking from Congress a large subsidy. The Southern Pacific Railroad proposed to build a southern line without subsidy, and I, opposing subsidies in the main and believing the Southern Pacific Railway Company intended to build a line which would be a true southern line, engaged on that side of the issue. I engaged upon a regular salary of $10,000 a year and all traveling expenses to be paid. That contest went on for some two years, when finally Mr. Scott abandoned the field and the Southern Pacific built its road. My services were ended publicly, and I engaged in public discussion many times when I was so employed. I had a discussion with ex- Gov. Watts, of Alabama, before the legislature of that State. I had another discussion with ex-Gov. John C. Brown, of Tennessee, at Charleston, S. C, before the Chamber of Com- merce. The items entered here I presume to be for fees that were paid to me from time to time by the Southern Pacific Railway Company on account of my regular salary. This is my connection with the case. That is all I ever received from them and that was received as my salary as counsel in that contest. How these items got into the account of the Central Pacific Company with the United States I do not know, but my agreement was with the Southern Pacific Railway corpo- ration, and in writing, for a specified sum and my expenses paid. This is all the connection that I ever have had with My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 135 any of those railroads and the only amount that I ever have received. And I reiterate that I never had in any shape any connection whatever with the Central Pacific Railroad Com- pany. I thank the House for its indulgence." The Rejected Accounts Must Be Explained. The majority of public men seen today by representatives of the World were disinclined to discuss the Pacific railroads question in anything like detail on account of their unfamiliar- ity with the subject. Few of them had had time to read clear through the exposures in the World and had put the paper away for study between now and Monday morning. Some of the most prominent said that they would be able to give more careful opinions tomorrow. All agreed, however, that the rejected accounts should be explained, and that there should be an official investigation as to where this money went. Others suggested that if so much money was found to have gone astray when there was a real expert accountant at the head of the Pacific Railroad bureau, it was probably that there had been much larger sums disbursed since that period, or there has been no one in the office since who has the slightest knowledge of accounts, or who has apparently the slightest desire to hold these subsidized roads up to a fulfillment of their obligations. A Seeming Swindle of the Government. The Speaker of the House, Mr. Carlisle, said this evening that he had been able only to give the subject a slight examina- tion. He intended to read the World's article through this evening. He had no hesitation, however, in saying that the rejected accounts should be investigated. He thought that a very strange feature of these accounts was brought out in Mr. Norwood's explanation. Here was the account of a man who had been retained by one of the unsubsidized roads, and yet the charge for the same was in the Central Pacific's ac- counts, and, therefore, a charge against the government. By putting such an account into its own accounts the Central Pacific would succeed in making the government bear 25 per cent, of the disbursement. Mr. Carlisle said that if this 25 per cent, of the rejected accounts had not already been recovered, steps should be taken to have it recovered. The President has had two or three consultations with Mr. Springer within the last week or ten days upon the subject of the Pacific roads. Mr. Springer spent an evening with the President during the week, going over the points which he would have presented to the House today if he had had an opportunity. The President has plainly indicated to Mr. 136 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Springer that he is willing to do all he can to help protect the interests of the government. He will have an opportunity to tt'ive a practical illustration of his sincerity in this respect i"fler his Attorney General has been instructed by Congress, as he will be witliin the next three or four days, to begin pro- ceedings against these roads. Grateful to "The World." The .'Vnderson amendment is one of the most important amendments offered in the House and attacks directly one of the most flagrant violations of the laws governing the subsi- dized roads. Mr. Cobb, of Indiana, Chairman of the Public Lands Committee, said that he had no doubt as to the truth- fulness of the statements of accounts printed in today's World. He had always understood that great amounts had been spent in and about Congress by the lobby representing the Pacific railroads. Mr. Cobb was particularly happy that the World had begun the fight against the corrupt corporations, and he thought it would be proper that Congress take some notice of the exposure which will lead to an investigation. Mr. Burnes, of Missouri, thought that the World had showed conclusively how corrupt the managers of the roads had been. He thought the best evidence of the way in which Huntington and Stanford had manipulated the business at the expense of the government was to be found in the case of the account of Mr. Norwood, who was the attorney for the Southern Pacific, and had no connection with either the Central or Union. Yet the money paid him for services rendered the Southern were charged against the roads having connection with the govern- ment. Mr. Burnes cited this as but one instance of what no doubt had been carried on to a great extent. If they had charged the account of one man to the cost of operating the government roads when it should have been paid out of the private fund of the Southern Pacific, there was no telling to what extent the government had been swindled by these opera- tions Senators are curious about the probable action of Senator Stanford. Some of his friends think that he may rise in the Senate and make a personal explanation, but those Avho know him best say that he will maintain a policy of silence. Mr. Huntington's frank admission of the correctness of the item in the French list, and his attempt to treat the whole matter as an unimportant one, has made a great impression upon public men. If Mr. Huntington is willing to admit that he has expended $2,000,000 improperly which belonged in part to the government and in part to the stockholders of the road, it is argued, he must be confident that the Central Pa- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 137 cific is already beyond the reach of the law. His attempt to treat the matter lightly has seriously damaged his case. If Mr. Huntington calls $2,000,000 pitched away in this lavish fashion a "mere bagatelle," he will undoubtedly take great pleasure in telling an investigating commission just how large a sum he would consider important if taken from the treasury of his company for improper and illegal purposes. How the Government Has Been Fooled. Some of the members of Congress who have not given this Pacific Railroad question up to the present time a thought do not yet seem to understand the exact nature of the re.iected accounts. Under the Thurman act the government is entitled to 25 per cent, of the net earnings of the subsidized roads. These net earnings are found by deducting from the gross expendi- tures the legitimate and proper disbursements. It is for the government auditor to decide what is a proper expenditure. An improper expenditure belongs to the net earnings. In the case of the $2,000,000 disbursed $500,000, or 25 per cent., be- longed to the government, and the three-quarters belonged to the stockholders or the companies. It is highly important to have these disbursements explained. It is believed that this class of disbursements has extended all through the years ever since 1881, and that Mr. French's estimate that these disburse- ments must have reached by this time $5,000,000 is not an exag- gerated one. It is further believed that out of this great sura portions have been taken for political purposes. ]\Ir. Thurman was probably defeated in Ohio through the manipulation of that State by the agents of the Pacific railroads. They also defeated Judge Lawrence, from Ohio, after he made a fight upon them. Mr. Huntington has made no point in showing that Mr. French first offered this information to him. No one cares anything about the motives of Mr. French. The question is whether his story is true. All of the persons interested have admitted the correctness of his story. Mr. Huntington admits its correctness. Mr. Stanford concedes it by his silence. Mr. Norwood, of Georgia, says that the items in the account, so far as they relate to him, are true, only that they have been wrong- fully placed in the accounts of the Central Pacific Company. Senator James F. Wilson, in an interview this evening, also admits that the fee charged to him in the list was paid to him. There has not been a single denial thus far of any one of the items given in Mr. French's remarkable story. What Senator Beck Says. Interviews had by a representative of the "World this evening with various prominent men indicate a depth of sentiment on 138 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics this subject that was not so plainly apparent yesterday. Sen- ator Beck, of Kentucky, the noted foe of corporations, said : "I have had my suspicion that something was wrong in regard to this Pacific Railroad business and I am heartily glad that we are to have an investigation. No one will greet it more gladly than I do. To think that honest men should be put under suspicion is to me a very unpleasant thought. For the last week we have had a heavy lobby endeavoring to in- fluence action upon the Interstate Commerce bill. What are we to do? These lobbyists are gentlemen and represent vast interests. One can not insult them, and yet here they are traveling from the residence of one Senator to that of another, endeavoring to force the interests of the roads. So and so says : ' See that fellow. He is a lobbyist for such and such a road, just coming out of Beck's house, going into Allison's, Edmunds, etc. He tips his friends a wink and says 'that's legis- lation.' These lobbyists often take politeness for acquiescence. I stand by my speech made upon the Thurman bill. I read it over a few weeks ago, and, while it may not be as able as some of the others, it expresses what I think very clearly. It is just in this very line that the World is now tending that I have introduced the bill to prevent men representing corpora- tions from becoming Senators of the United States. I want to see men in the Senate who will look at these matters fairly and squarely and echo the wishes of the people and not the corporations. I would rather see the government lose all the money it has advanced to these Pacific railroads than to go ahead and let them have more money simply because some one says: 'Well, if you don't help them out all the money the government has invested is gone.' Give me a man who be- longs to himself. A Good Word for Roscoe Conkling. "I tell you candidly and honestly that now, with your great senatorial fight on your hands in New York, I would rather see Roscoe Conkling come from that State than any other man in it. Morton and Miller have corporation interests. Conkling has none. He can be counted on for an honest vote upon all questions, whether relating to railroads or anything else, and his powerful voice would be heard in the most telling manner against all corruption. I may say too much, for I recognize the fact that he can harm the Democracy more than any one in the Senate. Yet he is a man after my own heart — a man who belongs to himself. "So far as Charley Sherrill is concerned, I knew little of him. I used to see him in the pool rooms and at the races in common with the rest of Kentucky men. I like a horse, and — " My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 139 Here the World representative called Senator Beck's atten- tion to Mr. Huntington's card, published the other day, in which he said that Mr. Sherrill never would bet and never visited horse races. Senator Beck laughed heartily at this and said : "Oh, pshaw! That's nonsense; he did visit the pool-rooms and bet too, for, as I said, I have met him there many times. He may have paid money out at the capitol, but I know nothing about it, and I only know that the presence of lobbyists does more to make me afraid of a measure than to make me friendly to it. I am glad that The World has started this matter at the present time and shall be most happy to vote for an in- vestigation of the subject." Sherman on Stanford's Duty. Senator John Sherman, the president of the senate, said to- night, after reading The World article, that it will be hard for Senator Stanford to avoid asking for an investigation. "I must say," he continued, "that this matter places Senator Stanford in a very awkward position, and can't for the life of me see how they managed to dispose of such enormous sums of money. Don't believe they did. I believe the accounts were made to show it, and I believe the investigation will show that the accounts were fixed up so as to get the benefit of the government's 25 per cent, allowance, and I think that when either a senator or member is met by charges like these he should demand an investigation, and my wonder was great that Senator Payne did not demand an investigation in his case. I never believed that he was guilty of bribery, but for his friends I can't say so much. Anything that savors of bribery or corruption I heartily detest, and I don't care who the man is, he should clean his skirts of it." Holman Commends "The World's" Work. Judge Holman said that he regarded the exposure made by The World of the corruption by the Pacific Railroad managers as fatal to any future intrigues and negotiations with the government. "It has been known," he said, "that there was any quantity of corruption by the Pacific Railroad people, but never before was it so forcibly proven. It, I think, completely kills the pos- sibility of the passage of the funding bill. It is one of the best pieces of newspaper exposure that has ever been made in the national capital. It seals forever the fate of the Pacific lobby, and places a number of very prominent men in any- thing but a pleasant attitude. Speaker Carlisle must know that in the next congress he must appoint a railroad commit- 140 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics tee that will do something in accordance with the spirit of the government when the road was constructed. I am op- posed to the passage of any bill that will extend additional time to the company. What the government wants is at the maturity of the debt to sell the road outright, no matter if at a sacrifice. It is contrary to the policy of the government to have any association with corporations. The road was con- structed for purely political reasons, which at the time ap- peared patriotic. It was considered as the best thing that could be done to bind the Pacific states to the union, which at that time, it was feared, might go off with the Confederacy. The purpose for which the road was built has long since been successfully accomplished, and now the next thing to be done is for the government to go out of the railroad business." Investigation Favored Everywhere. General Wheeler, of Alabama, said: "The employment of a lobby to force the Pacific Railroad matters through was well known, and I, in common with hundreds of others, thought it outrageous. The Pacific railroads I look upon as being mis- managed. If it was necessary for them to pay out such large amounts to lobbyists in order to have requisite legislation, I, for one, am in favor of investigation. Norwood, I think, has been very open in his connection with the roads, and went hither and yon to state legislatures to press their claims and to down the Texas Pacific. This, I think, was done when he was not a member of the house." Senator Payne, of Ohio, said: "I have not given the matter sufficient attention because of lack of opportunity to read The World's story properly, and can express no opinion, but I have great faith in Senator McPherson and anything he may bring before the senate in relation to this subject will have my earnest attention." Senator Call said: "The idea of so much money being paid out for lobbying is outrageous. These things all occurred be- fore I had a voice in the senate of the United States. I think $2,000,000 is a large sum of money and it well merits atten- tion. After The World gets through with this matter, how- ever, I hope it will take in hand the paying out of $300,000,000 by the people of the United States in taxes upon what we eat and what we wear. The World's Pacific Railroad matter is a big thing, but the taxation of the people of the United States is also worthy of its most earnest attention." Mr. Hale's Word for the Stockholders. Senator Hale said: "I must say I was annoyed while read- ing The World article in relation to the Pacific Railroad and My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 141 wondered if the time would ever come when great corpora- tions would be able to see what a mistake they make in pay- ing out large sums of money to attorneys, lobbyists and others to press their interest and force attention. Why, in my own case, I have more than once had my suspicions aroused by the continuous importuning of men pressing measures before me. There may be men in congress who could be reached by money, but I am very sure their number is small and their voice in favor of a measure would go more to hurt than to help it. So far as the paying of large amounts of money out of the treasury of the Central Pacific is concerned, without render- ing account, by the managers of these Pacific roads, I would say it is a great injustice to the stockholders of the railroad and they have a right to demand a knowledge of what has be- come of the money not paid to the government. The govern- ment was most liberal with its money in assisting to build these roads, and I am exceedingl}^ annoyed to think that such enormous sums of money went to lobbyists and middlemen. If I could by any words of mine impress upon these railroad companies that the use of money in this way did more to hurt than to help them, I would be happy." Senator Edmunds said: "I do not desire to give any opinion regarding the subject. Both Senator Thurman and myself thought at the time that a powerful lobby was working against us, but we failed to show it. It is all over and I have no more to say." Senator Gorman said: "If The World is sure of its figures and statements it is the most important discovery since the Credit Mobilier matter. The business will be investigated and if The World is right (and it generally is) it has done the country a great service." What Receiver Brown Thinks. Ex-Gov. John C. Brown, of Tennessee, now receiver of the Texas Pacific road, and who, at the time of the construction of the Texas Pacific was the able lieutenant of Col. Thomas A. Scott, said that he had read with great care the exposure in The World of Saturday, and the facts there developed were quite conclusive to his mind that the construction of the Southern Pacific at the time was wholly in the interest of the Central and Union Pacific. "It was always our opinion," con- tinued the governor, "and we so stated before the committees of congress at the time, that the proposed construction of the Southern Pacific was for the purpose of defeating the plan to build the Texas Pacific, fearing it would seriously interfere with the business of the Union Pacific, and in this way they 142 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics prevented the construction of a rival line. The statement made by Mr. Norwood in the house yesterday shows what we claimed at the time, that most of the expenses for the building of the Southern Pacific might be charged to the operating ex- penses of the other lines. After we were defeated in the Texas Pacific enterprise, which it was proposed to build on from El Paso to California, Mr. Huntington and Mr. Stanford built the Southern Pacific, in many cases on the exact line of our revised survey. Mr. Scott and myself often talked the mat- ter over and we felt positive that great sums of money were being used to defeat us. The World now proves that this was the case, and I think that the matter should be quite thor- oughly investigated, which I have no doubt will be done." Mr, Springer's Scathing Analysis. Mr. Springer, of Illinois, who has given more study to the subject of the Pacific railroads than any member, said that the funding bill was dead. The committee had given up its position in the house in favor of this measure by asking for an investigation. In their asking for this investigation they had admitted that they had no correct knowledge of the assets of the roads and no information concerning the exact amount of the debt due. Mr. Springer said that he felt con- fident that he could have defeated the measure in the half hour which he was to have had. He said that the pending funding measure, to use plain Anglo-Saxon, was simply a proposition to gut the Thurman act. The pending measure was a paraphrase of the Thurman act, with all of the penalties for its violation left out. Under the Thurman act the directors are held responsible individually for declaring a dividend when their dues to the government are not paid. More than this, they are liable to imprisonment. The funding bill, while it made the prohibition even more severe than the language of the Thurman act, yet omitted the punishment clause and so, therefore, the prohibition would have been inoperative and ineffective. Mr. Springer said that he would have been able also to show that it lessened the security of the government. The Thurman act gives the government all the security pos- sible for law to provide. The funding bill set up as new security certain stocks and bonds which were already hypothe- cated. Of the $32,000,000 enumerated among the additional assets it could be shown that only $16,000,000 had any value whatever and that these $16,000,000 were hypothecated today in the Boston banks to the full extent of their value. The investigation should be full, free, wide and open, Mr. Springer said. Mr. Stanford and Mr. Huntington should be My Memoirs of Georgia Politics H3 made to tell what they had done with the money of the gov- ernment and of the stockholders. The large sums used by them in elections had done more to corrupt politics than any other one element. It was a most important matter to have the government close out as soon as possible its partnership with these roads. It had been a corrupting element from the start. "The administration," he said, "should hold these roads up to a strict accountability. They should be made to comply with the requirements of the Thurman act, and when the debt finally falls due, if they cannot pay, the government should take the lines and sell to the highest bidder." How the Government Can Recover. Mr. Springer then outlined in a clear, business-like way how the government could recover the full amount of its debt. Said he: "The amount of stock of this road and the bonds which are subordinate to the government mortgage amount, judged by the market quotations, to about $114,000,000. The stock alone, judged by the market quotation, is valued at nearly $64,000,000. The stock and the bonds I have just described are subordinate to the government's lien. These facts should be borne in mind when the agents of these roads talk about their bankrupt condition. Now, if these roads were to be put under the hammer tomorrow either the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy road, the Chicago and Rock Island or the Chicago and Northwestern would be glad to pay off the first mortgage and assume the government debt. Each one of these roads is reaching out to the Pacific Coast for con- nections. Their credit is first class. Whenever they put out a loan there are four subscribers to one than can be accom- modated. Any one of these roads could afford to pay off the first mortgage and issue a loan to obtain money to pay the government debt. Of course, they would wipe out the $114,- 000,000 of securties which are now subordinate to the govern- ment's interest. But that is nothing with which the govern- ment has to do. The government stands exactly in the position of any other creditor. It has the clear means of securing its own debt and it has no business to think or care about the interests which are subordinate to it. The people who have purchased these securities have bought them with their eyes open. If they have been misled by misrepresentation, that is their fault." My First Connection With Georgia Politics The times which followed the war and reconstruction were full of excitement. The same men who were prominent in Governor Bullock's time were to the forefront in legislation in the early '70 's. Calling themselves Democrats, they ran with the hare and held with the hounds in those stormy days when "carpet-bagism" prevailed in the South, An objectionable nominee in the Seventh congressional dis- trict induced a great many citizens to look around them for some one to lead a revolt against the tyranny of party turned into the hands of unscrupulous politicians. These conditions were forced upon Dr. Felton's attention, and their entreaties prevailed when he finally consented to lead the Independents in the race for congress, during the year 1874. He was a farmer and a local Methodist preacher — had only served one term in the state legislature, 1851-52. Accustomed to public speaking, he was well known in several counties outside of his own, Bartow, and he was deluged with letters, imploring him to announce his candidacy as soon as the people were con- vinced that "Ring Rule" would prevail in the nominations of that year in the Seventh district. The newspapers of Georgia were dependent on the office- holding element in the matter of advertising, etc., so they raised a howl against Independentism all along the line. The fire of the ring organs was concentrated on Dr. Felton and they were frantic with their abuse on one hand, and imploring entreaty to hold the Democratic organization intact, on the other hand. As there was no Republican organization, oxcept enough to hold the offices of a Republican administration in its grasp, and as these double-faced Democratic politicians had run Governor Bullock out of the state and covered Radi- calism with obloquy, it was easy enough for these self-seeking, so-called Democratic politicians to open fire on an Independent My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 145 Democrat who was about to contest their right to all the offices and the control of all the legislation in the state of Georgia. From June, 1874, to election day — November 2nd — this fire on Dr. Felton never abated. Atlanta was the headquarters of the ring masters, but every newspaper in the Seventh district except two little weekly sheets — one in Cartersville, the other in Cedartown — began to yelp as soon as i^eneral orders to howl and defame were issued from the capital city. The "Western and Atlantic Railroad, which traverses the district, passed these shifty politicians free, and it was no more trouble for them to caucus weekly in Atlanta than it was to go to the post office for their letters and papers. They liked to go there, for later legislative investigations demon- strated not only their lively interest in political affairs, but their pernicious activity in official greed and graft. I was dreadfully anxious for Dr. Felton and his reputation under this concentrated fire, and as he was only a farmer, with no income except his farm returns, I suffered untold ap- prehension in this stormy period of my life. He had no free pass on the only railroad that traversed the district. He had no favors from venal newspapers, he paid full rates at hotels everywhere and he traveled over fourteen large counties in a buggy — except where he might reach his appointments by the State railroad — and it was spot cash at every turn. From a quiet country life in a plain farm house, with only farm worries and expenses to contend with, I was hurled into a vortex of excitement, abuse, expense and anxiety that no words can describe or pen portray. There were no typewriters or telephones, and I had but little money to spare for telegraphing, so I was thrown back on my pen and the post office to meet the daily exigencies of that terrible ordeal, which continued for six months, night and day — Sunday as well as Monday. Dr. Felton had all he could possibly do to cover his speaking appointments in four- teen counties. He was exhausted with fatigue very often and I felt obliged to hold up a brave face when he came home, 146 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics after a tour of days and sometimes weeks, for the physical strain was quite as severe as the mental. My unaided pen had to do the work of answering all his letters, of fixing all his appointments, and last but not least, of writing many newspaper replies to the abuse and misrepre- sentation of his enemies. I am still amazed that I lived through it. Once my poor, overworked frame gave down, and I was obliged to go to a sick bed, but will-power gained the victory. I was propped up in bed and wrote letters like the furies were pursuing me (and it was literally true). .1 could not walk across the floor. I was even too weak to stand on my feet — still I wrote and explained. Towards the close of the campaign — then six weeks or a month off — I kept a hired man in waiting at the gate with a saddled horse to meet trains and carry letters to the post office. We lived three miles away and there were four mail trains to meet, and between times I opened and answered the letters of each day promptly. I had also to contract for print- ing tickets and circulars, and distribute them where they were to go. While the Democratic organization paid for all this work, I paid extravagant printing bills and enormous express charges out of a scanty pocket book. We borrowed seven hun- dred dollars, and I would have placed my bottom dollar in the effort rather than fail in that crisis of abuse and strenu- osity. The wear and tear on my system was heavy. I grew as lean as flesh and blood ever get to be, to walk about and live, before the race was over. I had no time to "set a stitch" for myself and my dresses hung on my bones like a sheet wrapped on a fence rail. Sometimes I couldn't sleep — then to rest myself, I would get up and write. Dr. Felton's clothing was no light care. He perspired tremendously and I often heard him say that he could feel the perspiration racing down his limbs during a long speech in a crowded house, until it would slop about in the heels of his boots. After every speech — for he was scrupulously neat — he was obliged to shuck off those soaked undergarments. His perfect health and absolutely clean life saved him. When My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 147 he reached home the clothes line was strung with wet clothes until the washerwoman might come for them. He carried a huge leather grip, filled with shirts and underwear, and I had to be ready with a supply of fresh ones whenever he started away — early or late*. He was rarely at home, and buggy travel was slow and arduous between speaking places. I had also to write to him every day. His anxiety for us at home was so great that this daily letter became a necessity. I bought stamps, many dollars worth at a time, and what- ever else was neglected or went undone, I strove to keep his mind as easy as I could make it, so that he could feel that all was well in the home that he loved as he loved his life. I knew he was honest and sincere in this call of duty, and I knew also that he leaned on the wife at home, like she was a comrade-in-arms, and worthy of the trust confided in her. It was a wonderful exposition of what confidence, poverty and honesty could do to make two untrained persons march through such a campaign and keep step together until the battle ended. But there came a time when my whole soul was engulfed in anxiety. Colonel Trammell, the nominee, was to meet Dr. Felton at Sonora, Gordon county, on an ap- pointed day for a public debate. A day or two previously, at Summerville, Chattooga county, Dr. Felton had spoken and during the speech he laid on the table in front of him the official copy of the "Suppressed Frost Testimony," which connected Mr. Trammell 's name with the Brunswick and Albany Railroad bonds. This testimony had been suppressed by a Democratic committee of the Georgia legislature, which had assembled in New York City to take testimony from various witnesses out of the State. But a copy of the same had been saved by a proper person in the state capitol, and this copy was placed in Dr. Felton 's hands by a party (whose name I cannot give here), with the imprint of the seal of the state of Georgia stamped thereon. As this matter will be fully explained in another place, I proceed to say that I was notified from Dalton that the Sonora meeting would be attended by fifty of Colonel Trammell's partisans from that town and they had boasted that "Old Fel- 148 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ton" would "eat dirt" on that occasion, or "bite the dust." As I could not notify Dr. Felton, I telegraphed the night be- fore to Calhoun, to a friend, begging that our friends should be notified in Gordon county, because there would be no eating of dirt if there should be violence and maybe death. I spent a wretched day. There was no way to communicate with Sonora, and I must wait until night to hear from Cal- houn. But the expected letter came by the night train, and while Colonel Trammell denied the charge in regard to the railroad bonds, he admitted receiving about $7,500 from the railroad man who secured lawyers to oppose unfriendly legislation to those bonds. That admission cleared away all difficulty, and the official copy of suppressed testimony has been in my possession ever since. So there was only a bluff intended and the bluff failed to work, but it gave one poor woman a "bad quarter of an hour" in apprehension and anxiety. The story of the sup- pressed testimony was published throughout Georgia for the first time, and some of the ringsters began to rush to cover — deserting Colonel Trammell immediately, as rats leave a burn- ing barn, or from a sinking ship in raid-ocean. Some days later I was in Cartersville to pay some bills, leav- ing Dr. Felton at home seeking a needed rest. As soon as 1 reached the town a dozen friends rushed to my buggy telling me of a secret meeting of the Democratic Executive Committee in the court house, and they told me also that a hack full of the ringsters had gone out to find Dr. Felton with some sort of a proposition, etc. They distrusted this movement. I did not meet the hack and could hardly believe they Vvere on the way, but I never alighted from my buggy, turned about and rushed towards home. The idea of their presence in our house and Dr. Felton without a witness to what was said or done became exasperating to my mind, because these ringsters had condoned the unrighteous abuse heaped upon us by their public speakers until I detested their very names and occu- pation. As I drove up to our house I left the buggy ; my old gray mare made her way around to the barn, and I saw the mem- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 149 bers of the executive committee coming out from the house with Dr. Felton, towards the gate. There I halted until they reached me and we were introduced, etc. Not a word was uttered as to their business and two of them stepped into the hack before I questioned them. Then I saw they were going away hastily in spite of my hard ride and anxiety so I said something like the following: "I ■;^as told in Cartersville of this unexpected visit. I came home to do the honors of our home and to discover what this change of front means on this occasion. Your committee has been in secret session, I am told, in the court house today. I have not the least idea as to the purpose of this call. I haven't heard a word from Dr. Felton, as you know, but I have only one question to ask to which I must have an answer. What do you propose to write or say or telegraph to the newspapers as to this unexplained visit? You expect to do something, you came here to do something, but I ask you as honorable men to state the facts and the truth as to the results of your call upon Dr. Felton." They winked at each other. Some grew anxious for a smoke. All but one decided to get in the hack. Col. Nathan Bass, of Rome (long since dead), was told to reply. He then said the committee desired that both Felton and Trammell should come down and allow a new nomination to be made, but Dr. Felton had declined the proposition. "All right, gentlemen," I rejoined. ''That was the proper thing for him to say and do. You didn't put him up and are not the people to control his actions. You can do as you like with your nominee and I tell you frankly that you have only made another mistake in coming here to ask compliance with your wishes after the abuse that your understrappers have been throwing out for four or five consecutive months." The white driver of the hack told it in Cartersville after they left him that they had a hearty laugh at the clever way in which one little woman had disgruntled the plans of a hack- ful of first-class politicians. They said they "admired my pluck if not my politics." These men brought down Col. Trammell and as soon as they could muster up recruits and lay new plans they called a con- gressional convention to make a new nomination. Col. W. H. 150 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Dabney was therefore made their standard bearer with a two- weeks' campaign ahead of him. Every whipper-snapper that had howled and yelped before, snarled, howled, yelped and slandered us right and left during that fortnight of strenuous endeavor. But the new nominee had a heavy pull on a steep rough road, because the Trammell surrender was strapped on his back and he had to carry it nolens volens. The entire State now kept its eyes on the unequal race in the seventh. Immediately a flaming proclamation was issued that Hon. B. H. Hill, Hon. John B. Gordon, Hon. H. V. M. Miller would come to a mass meeting and stump the district for Col. Dab- ney, naming days and places. I addressed a personal letter to each of these gentlemen in- quiring if they so intended and giving as a reason for the inquiry my desire to have some one there to reply. Dr. Miller wrote me with an emphatic "No." He also wrote a personal card to the Atlanta newspapers, in which he said he never had the slightest intention of going and had been misrepre- sented as to speaking in Col. Dabney 's interest. Senator Hill wrote promptly, but a private letter in which occurs the fol- lowing strong statement: "Atlanta, Oct. 23, 1874. "Mrs. W. H. Felton — Dear Madam: "I have just received your letter of the 21st. I have never had the slightest idea of doing one act or of saying one word against your good husband and my old friend. I have been greatly pressed to go into his district, but I have never agreed to do so and I shall not do so. How could I do such a thing as to oppose Dr. Felton? My feelings are all with him, and I have said on several occasions that if he should be elected he will be the best man in the Georgia delegation. Senate or House. (Signed) ' ' BEN J. H. HILL. ' ' Mr. Hill was in private life then, but was soon after elected to fill the place of Congressman Garnett, H. McMillan, deceased. I wrote the same inquiry to Senator Gordon on the 2d. I had no reply for a week, because his reply was mailed on the 26th and reached me on the 28th of October. Because I then and there got an insight into Senator Gordon's methods My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 151 in insurance and politics, I shall copy it in full just here: "Atlanta Department of Southern Life Insurance Co. An- nual income over $1,500,000. John B. Gordon, president; J. A. Morris, secretary; A. H. Colquitt, vice-president; W. C. Morris, auditor and supervisor. "Atlanta, Ga., Oct. 24, 1874. "Mrs. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga., "Dear Madam: I have yours asking if it is my purpose to make speeches at the mass meeting in the seventh district. In reply I have to say that I have appointments of long standing in the second district, and I am now preparing to leave for Southern Georgia to meet them. It is impossible now to say when I will return. I am Madam, very respectfully, your obt. servant, "J. B. GORDON." The congressional election was held on November 2d, and this letter was written on the 24th, but held from the mail until the 26th. There were only seven days left to the election, including one Sunday. Senator Gordon was on his way to the seventh district the succeeding week, and spoke in Rome on October 30th, four days after he sent that letter to me. Col. Tom Hardeman was pressed into service at Marietta on October 28th, and was booked for Cartersville on Friday, 29th, but he only peeped through the car window as he passed through on his way to Rome to assist General Gordon, who spoke to a good crowd of ladies and gentlemen, as the ring organ printed it. Only Governor J. M. Smith came into the seventh when Mr. Trammell was running, an episode which Hon. A. R. Wright, of Rome, transfixed with ridicule as a "masked battery rolled out from the executive mansion to cower a free people in their exercise of a freeman's right of choice at the ballot box." On October 27th, the Republican candidate, Harbin, came down because his fellow Republicans declared they would not vote for any man who was only running to throw the election to the Democrats and who had no earthly chance for election himself. Immediately the wires were put to work and it was published far and wide that Felton had "outbid" him for the vote of his own party. 152 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics While these outside politicians were hurling threats of de- fiance at Felton and a venal press was scattering an untold number of lies abroad and every lick-spittle follower of the State administration and every influence that the Western and Atlantic Railroad could bring to bear on its employes was used to the limit, Dr. Felton continued to meet his many appointments and did the best he could to fend off this horde of antagonists, who were selected because they were all cut from the same piece of cloth and made by the same shop of political tailors in Georgia politics. Senator Gordon and Gov. J. M. Smith were the prominent headlights in that battle of 1874 and to the day of their deaths they held on to the vindictive hatred they had always felt for Dr. Felton. Having injured him, or so endeavored, they were naturally disposed to hate him. It would be pathetic to tell what I endured under this op- position, if it was not so consoling to know how one weary country woman on a North Georgia farm stood up and jubi- lated in a quiet way when the returns came in after the elec- tion was over and our side had won the race. On Friday, before the election, Dr. Felton made a speech at Spring Place, Murray county, where Col. J. W. Johnson and Col. Trammell, of Dalton, and Gen. P. M. B. Young, then Congressman from the seventh district, all appeared in Col. Dabney's interest and asked for a division of time to which Dr. Felton answered: "Yes, of course, I'll divide. Any one of you can occupy the first hour, then I'll take an hour and a half and the rest of you can do as you please all day for I have to reach Gordon county tonight and speak therein twice to- morrow. Will that be agreeable?" Col. Trammell didn't say much and Gen. Young expatiated on his services in Congress and then Dr. Felton followed. He condoled with Col. Trammell that he had fared so hardly in the house of his friends and then took care of the Congress- man, his neighbor, who had been pulled into the campaign nilly willy. The general had voted for the salary grab, and professed great friendship for Gen. Bingham, of Ohio. Among other things there spoken by the general (to fill up time) he told of the hanging of Mrs. Surratt in the city of Washington My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 153 and this tragic assassination had as little to do with the cam- paign then on in the seventh district, as last year's shower, with this year's corn crop, but he made the tears come to the eyes of the faithful when he told how he spent an occasional holiday visiting and weeping over Mrs. Surratt's lonely grave in its neglected and ignoble locality. An eye witness told me of the wonderful scene that took place when Dr. Felton reached the Surratt case and the salary grab in his reply and the weeping Congressman and his friend, Gen. Bingham, who happened to be one of the court that sen- tenced Mrs. Surratt to death, and was finally expelled in Oakes Ames Credit Mobilier affair later on from Congress as a bribe taker. Dr. Felton remembered enough of it to tell me also that Col. Trammell was as delighted a listener as the rest of his friends who whooped and shouted until the town echoed with the noise at the speaking place when Dr. Felton had finished. After he had concluded his speech. Dr. Felton picked up his bundle of papers and politely informed the gentlemen pres- ent that he felt obliged to go, but he was happy to know they had time to talk over the situation among themselves now that "Peace reigned in Warsaw," and that both Gen. Young and Col. Trammell were present to eulogize Col. Dabney, because they loved each other so well and were so loyal to the party that had rejected both of them ! Gen. Young left for Dalton immediately, reached home that night and a good friend of ours found him at the train, where that frank, clever gentleman gave a graphic description of the hallelujah parson at Spring Place, who had preached his (Young's) funeral that day, wrapped him in a winding sheet and carefully interred him. A messenger was sent out to me to tell me all about it that night, and give me good cheer in those waiting, toiling, suffer- ing and exhausting labors of the strenuous time. I had my hands full in getting out tickets, sending circulars and posting the people of our own county as to election day with other preliminaries. So I had hardly time to think of anything but the uncertainties of a Georgia election, although the very woods seemed to be alive with the hot political excitement that 154 M.V Memoirs of Georgia Politics prevailed. When the tired old doctor reached home that Saturday night and I had given him his supper and saw hira resting in his big arm chair I asked: "Now, how does it look to you?" He waited a minute before he answered my question. "It's very uncertain. The upper counties are controlled by the ring organization. They are sending men up and down the State railroad with base circulars and I expect any amount of bogus tickets will be placed at the polls, and Harbin will carry a considerable vote in the eastern part of the district." I saw he was gloomy and worn down, for the muscles of his throat had relaxed until his throat rattled every time he spoke a word. He was gaunt as a greyhound, and nothing but skin and bones. There was still one day to work and I dreaded to see him collapse after all that hard struggle of months, so I told him only cheerful things. Harbin was down and out, and I had sent a thousand circulars making that fact known and that it looked good to me for I had heard from all over the district and everything was cheering and his own county was standing by him like Roman soldiers in line of battle waiting to vote on Tuesday. He slept well in all these trying times so he was up and ready on Monday morning for the last day of the campaign. He did not get home until midnight — spoke at Marietta in the forenoon and at Emerson after night. Tuesday was a cold, raw November day. I saw him leave home to vote wrapped in a heavy overcoat and neckwear, but I was afraid he would come back with pneumonia, because he was a worn old pilgrim and liable to be prostrated from fatigue no matter how the election went. I stayed at home very quietly and spent my time in culling the campaign newspapers that I had put aside for safe keeping. I begun my first scrapbook on that fateful November day when every fiber of my worn-down frame was tingling with anxiety. (I have great heaps of these books now and enough printed matter to make as many more). I found that I had been harnessed up so tight and been going at such a pace for so long that I must ease down very gradually or fare worse when the excitement subsided. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 155 About 10 o'clock at night Dr. Felton came in. I had re- ceived some meager tidings during the day from the polls, but nothing definite. When he laid himself down that night to rest he remarked: "I can now go to defeat with such a vote as this county has given me. Bartow has given me 1,782 votes and Col. Dabney 340, a majority of 1,442. Cobb had also given me between five and six hundred majority. Any man could stand erect with such a victory at his own home. We will hear tomorrow, and I want you to be satisfied as I am satisfied that we have done brave, faithful work and have nothing to regret or reproach ourselves for." Wednesday proved to be an anxious day. We had heard only from Bartow, Cobb and Polk definitely. The Atlanta newspapers declared Dabney elected by a small majority. The vote in the upper counties was extremely heavy, if it was correct and officially reported, but it was not officially declared. By nightfall we had some sort of a return from every county in the district except Haralson, but only unofficial returns. By Thursday morning our anxiety became intense, but Dr. Felton now lay on the bed exhausted and convinced that the delay meant a counting out for him in the upper counties. When the Atlanta newspapers were brought in about noon, I ran over the election returns with a rapid eye. I saw there was great discrepancy in the figures sent out on Wednesday and those I was then reading over and I called out to him as he lay on the bed that a great change had taken place in the count. He straightened up, as I read over the figures of the vote in various counties, and then he asked "could I have din- ner on the table very soon?" He ate quickly and started for Cartersville. I heard his step on the piazza about nightfall, and I was even then too anxious to turn or look at him, but he walked around in front of me and called my name as he remarked: "All the counties but Haralson heard from and I am sixty- odd votes ahead. It all rests now with the unknown vote of Haralson county." Some time after dark, while we were quietly sitting by a glowing wood fire too tired to talk or read, we heard a great noise out towards Cartersville. We could hear shouting — 156 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics we saw lights that were unusual and unearthly noises were heard also. As we rushed to the door to listen better we heard rapid riding, horse hoofs pounding the highway. As the rider and horse rose on the top of a high hill a mile distant we also heard a war-whoop and we then knew the rider to be an old friend who was born in Indian times and who had ridden horse races in the long ago and who was a Felton man to the core and was bringing news. Before I could reach the front gate, candle in hand, he bore down upon us, his horse drenched with sweat and foam drop- ping from its mouth. The rider was too excited to talk, but he brought a telegram that gave the facts in regard to Haralson county. Col. Acton, the traveling agent for the Atlanta Con- stitution, was in Buchanan that day and heard the vote de- clared and Felton had 125 majority in that county. On the same Thursday night Col. Dabney's friends were jubilating in Rome. They had brass bands and banners, transparencies, etc. They had one of the latter where Felton was down and a negro pounding his head with a brick bat because the negro vote had been wasted on the "Old Radical." An eye witness in Rome thus wrote us: "I fought hard and long against great odds. Even my partner in business opposed me. During that long two days of suspense and vote fluctuations not less than 200 men have been jeering me and said I was on Salt River and Felton with me. To this I would reply 'there isn't enough in Georgia to change me.' Some admired my spunk, but generally they ridiculed me. This afternoon things looked gloomy. Felton men were cast down. Dabney men were all smiles, their houses illuminated. Grand preparations were going on all day for a great torch-light procession, bon fires and fireworks. 'Twas a bitter thought to remember how hard I had worked and failed. After tea I walked down town and watched these men throw their hearts and souls into the joy I so coveted. Down Broad street, so far as the eye could reach, men were hurry- ing here and there as if crazed by their success. Three bon fires were blazing in front, Roman candles shooting through the air, the band beginning to play and the procession moved along lightly up Broad down South avenue, across King to my My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 157 corner, then up Howard and back to Broad when a great cheer arose in the ranks as they marched to Choice's Hotel, where Judge Underwood, Col. Joel Branham and Col. Dabney stood and then and there the truth found them drunk with supposed success until they "madly threw a world away." In the midst of their wild carousal Judge Underwood came to the front and said: "Felton is elected!" The crowd dis- appeared in a trice, the bon fires were put out, the trans- parencies disappeared and the exulting ones retired to chew the cud of bitter fancies in defeat. One of these speakers, not Col. Dabney, had said: "Felton men, their wives and children, ought to be ostracized and cut off from decent society," but there was a general stampede from the hotel that night and the three days' agony was over! Some years later a young telegrapher at Kingston, Ga., told his minister in confidence that he was distressed and mortified because he heard continually various messages passed along over the wires as **How many have you counted off?" "Take down the figures — Dabney must have it." In Haralson the official vote that was heard and counted and declared two days after the election to be 125 majority for Felton was trimmed of the 5 and only 12 returned as Fel- ton's majority in Haralson. This is history — Georgia history — but a "miss is as good as a mile," when a race is thus hap- pily decided. With all the cheating, swindling, abuse and trickery the majority was recorded at 82, but there can be no question that the grossest frauds prevailed in certain locali- ties. Dr. Felton was credited with only four votes in Dade county when at least a hundred men declared they had cast a vote for him at that time. I received a letter from Col. Dab- ney, which I here copy: "Rome, Ga., Nov. 9, 1874. ' ' Mrs. Rebecca A. Felton : "Your note is at hand, and I thank you for the kind spirit in which it is written. The fact that I have been engaged in political opposition to your husband does not disturb my friendship towards you, I have long numbered you and your father and mother among my very best friends and am glad 158 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics to receive this assurance of your continued friendship, "Respectfully, "W. H. DABNEY." Not even when the vote was declared officially did the ring- sters cease their machinations. On November 30th a protest went to Gov. Smith stating that some of the tally sheets were not properly signed in Gor- don county and a gentleman Avho was not long after appointed as a superior court judge insisted that Dabney should be seated instead of Felton. He said "the friends of Democracy all over this district request me to send this proof." But the certificate of election had been already issued and they were too late. In Haralson county the election returns were un- lawfully locked up in Buchanan and nearly three weeks elapsed before the friends of Dr. Felton felt obliged to break in the door and take them out. The rampageous official ex- cused his conduct by saying "No such d n radical returns ought to go to Atlanta." But his party affiliations protected him, and nobody called him to account for the breach of duty. Henry Grady, then editing the Atlanta Herald, said "It was a royal fight," and he visited Cartersville when the town turned itself loose after Felton 's election. "With naked eyes and bleeding heart we gazed upon the bald and impious spot where the sacred remains of Joseph E. Brown were consigned to the sarcastic flames," said this spicy writer of sensational politics. The people had heard that the ex-governor was hauling some pine on his cars to celebrate the great Democratic vic- tories of the year 1874, and they requested him to turn off some of the pine to celebrate in Cartersville. The ex-governor whose judgment has been so often quoted, made a reply which demonstrated his chagrin at the defeat of his friend. He said he might spare a few sticks to celebrate the "only radical vic- tory" in Georgia while the country was ablaze with the suc- cessful congressional elections throughout the Union! There- fore the Cartersvillians promptly burned him in effigy an*' then reviewed his own radical record as a reward for his sneer at the good men in the seventh district who reserved to themselves the right of choice in a congressional representa- tion. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 159 It came with poor grace from Gov. Brown, who had very little claim to the name of Democrat and it was generally understood that he had never lost his grip on the Republicans in Georgia up to that time and later. There was a big demonstration in Cartersville as soon as the victory was officially announced, but I was too feeble and inert to share in it. It seemed so good to be able to let my mind wander on other things, to go to bed and find quiet sleep that was unmixed with torturing anxiety that I was content to say my prayers and thank God for preserving mercies! ! knew then that people could die of mental strain and that six months of unremitting struggle was enough to kill strong men, not to speak of a delicate woman, who did yeoman's work every waking hour of that time. I had a sick boy to nurse, a house to keep, farm matters to manage and unlimited writing and correspondence. "We had company, I was ap- pealed to from all quarters, and still was able to keep a smiling face for the sake of the cause. But that seemed a small part of it compared to the brave soldier who made his way, round after round over 14 counties, speaking often three times a day, occasionally five times, and such speeches as the listeners al- ways remembered and the very woods echoed with their shouts. On election day, the people came by our home in continuous stream and they shouted for us both as they drove by the house. It was an experience that was something to treasure in memory, but it was something else, too, or«^ time was superlatively good, but one time was enough. A few weeks later. Dr. Felton made a speech by invitation in Atlanta in the capitol. We had so many friends, advocates, admirers, etc., that I wondered where they kept themselves when we stood before the terrible toughs that made life a terror in the seventh district while they battled against us be- fore the election. But such is life ! THE 44TH CONGRESS AND CAMPAIGN OF 1876. In closing my former article, I discover that I should have said more of what my husband did and less of my own toils and tribulations. Perhaps this is the best place to amend, and I will copy here a personal letter to Dr. Felton when the writer 160 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics felt sure that we were defeated during those long three days of suspense when the Bourbon Democrats held back the returns and were doing their utmost to count him out. It was an out- rage on civil government that those returns were held back from Tuesday (election day) until Thursday night after dark, and then they came from Atlanta, not from the seventh dis- trict. The returns from Buchanan, Haralson county, where the vote was consolidated for that county, were declared be- fore Wednesday noon — and 125 majority for Felton, but the returns were not allowed to be known, until Thursday eve- ning and then only 12 majority was declared. But Governor Smith was a strong partisan of Mr. Trammell and from what we knew of the executive later, we found he always "held while the other skinned." But here is the letter alluded to written by Hon. A. R. Wright, of Rome, a member of the Con- federate Congress, and father of Hon. Seaborn and Moses Wright, of the same city, who have both made political can- vasses in Georgia, and both have had the misfortune to be treated as my husband had been in the year 1874: "Rome, Ga., Nov. 5, 1874. "Dr. W. H. Felton: "Dear Sir: From the telegrams of today it appears you are defeated by two or three hundred majority in a vote prob- ably of twenty thousand. This, all things considered, is a splendid victory in defeat. It is evident you would have beaten Trammell from five to ten thousand votes. They ran against you at last, one among the very best men in the district. Except two papers of limited circulation they had the whole press of the district. Except the Atlanta News, every paper, I believe in the State from the Seaboard to the mountains. They not only had the orators of the district, but sent to lower Georgia for help. The gallant Gordon and the indefatigable Hardeman were improvised upon you. Gordon's speech car- ried Floyd against you. They had besides every political "dead beat" in the district, and State against you. No man made a speech for you. You warred single-handed and alone with the whole army of your adversaries. Leonidas died, but he was greater in death than any of his enemies. "You fought for the honor and integrity of the Democratic My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 161 party and your country's welfare. I send you the cheers of the "Felton democracy" of Floyd county. They followed no ignoble flag, and they are not ashamed of the result. Let those of our victors shout who can. With sentiments of profound respect and admiration for your noble qualities, very truly yours, ' ' AUGUSTUS R. WRIGHT. ' ' As before stated, the final news came to us after dark on Thursday night and Dr. Felton was allowed 82 majority by the ring masters who had the management of the election in their own hands in ten counties of the fourteen which made up the seventh congressional district of Georgia. I shall al- ways believe they had him counted out and would have so declared if Col. Dabney had been a "Bullock Democrat," a name won and worn by a horde of corrupt Georgia politicians who fattened under Gov. Bullock's administration and who held their sway under the leadership of Hon. Joseph E. Brown, who had been the most extreme Republican just after the war and who failed to secure the senatorship under Bullock's regime, although his excellency made him a Supreme Court judge very soon after he became governor. Col. Trammell was a Bullock Democrat and ex-Governor Brown's candidate in this good year 1874; but the expose of "Frost's suppressed testimony" was positive proof that Mr. Trammell was inti- mately connected with the legislation of that unhappy period in Georgia's political history and the proof was indisputable. Frost's suppressed testimony will appear in the later pages of this established report of Georgia politics nearly forty years ago. Col. Dabney was put in by the Bourbon Democrats as their candidate, after the Bullock Democrat Trammell was taken down and because of the general disgust of the people against Bullock's Democratic lobbyists. The Bourbon Demo- crats followed the Confederate war flag and Gen. Gordon came to their support after Governor Brown's Bullock Demo- crat was taken in out of the storm. General Gordon, in his sworn testimony before the Poland Investigating Congressional Committee, said he was himself the chief of the Klu Klux Klan in Georgia, if not in the South. It can be found in the printed volumes containing the report and sworn testimony of wit- nesses issued by Congress on affairs in the Southern States. 162 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and the committee had on its roll Senator Beck, of Kentucky, and before it Governor Brown testified also Hon. A. R. Wright, of Rome. Any interested person can find this congressional report and I refer them to its pages to find General Gordon's testimony and other facts herein stated. Gen. Gordon was idolized by the Confederate soldiers. He always claimed to be Gen. Lee's favorite in the Virginia army. Wherever he went he whooped up the Southern soldier so the U. S. Senator carried Floyd county against Felton. On November 11, 1874, Judge A. R. Wright wrote me the the following letter: "Mrs. Rebecca Felton, "My Dear Madam: Your letter full of kind and generous words was received on yesterday." (I wrote a reply to the letter of the 5th because my husband was nearly exhausted and overworked with his private business, which had been neglected for six months.) "The letter X had written to the doctor was written under the belief in Rome at the time that the 596 majority given Col. Dabney in Dade county had cer- tainly defeated the doctor. (In Dade county Gov. Brown's valuable coal mines were located where he worked 300 able- bodied long-term State convicts, and which were practically given to him and others for a small sum). "It was to show him that his friends regarded themselves as victors, although beaten in the race. But how much greater the victory when it turns out that he is really elected! Of course so prudent a lady from your reputation I know you to be, will go to Washington with the doctor to look after his health, to aid him in his duties, to moderate the pleasures of society and to preserve him generally from all evil. There is no anchor of safety like an affectionate and attentive wife. When you both get there I promise myself the pleasure of knowing my representatives more intimately and in person seeing how they bear themselves among the wise the beautiful and the happy of the land. Very truly and sincerely yours, "AUGUSTUS R. WRIGHT." "P. S. My respects to the Dr." Before I pass on it is well to say that the managers of the election in Dade county decided it would be safer to take off I My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 163 about 200 from Dade's vote, so they returned 404 as the offi- cial vote instead of 596 and gave Felton an allowance of 4 votes. How many convicts were voted in Dade, this deponent has no means of knowing. These Bourbon and Bullock Democrats were in the habit of voting poor-house inmates and it was proven that in a city election in Atlanta under the shadow of the dome of the State capitol a candidate voted the male prisoners of the stockade prison to the number of thirty a short time afterwards to re-elect himself to his city office. It is a published expose pasted in my scrapbook and beyond dispute. Knowing these seventh district politicians as I do know their trickery, their unscrupulous methods and their con- nection with legislative graft, I was amazed at their timidity when Dade county's vote was clipped of one-third of its pub- lished majority and nobody called to account for the dis- crepancy. They could as easily have counted in one thousand and clipped off nothing. There was nobody to call them to account with Smith, the governor, on their side, every judge on their side, and not a man's name allowed in the jury box who was not a superserviceable henchman of the "men in control. ' ' Governor Brown 's 300 able bodied convicts in Dade county with the keepers, etc., could make a stunning majority in the "State of Dade" whenever called upon; and so long as I remained in active politics Dade county was "solid" from stem to stern for its boss. The "State of Dade" was like the State of Georgia for when the State of Georgia received orders from Bourbon Democrats, those who followed the fife and drum and the "Bullock Democrats," who followed Bul- lock and creamed the rich pickings in around the State capitol, you had all the leaders that were allowed to manage the poli- tics of the State. Gen. Gordon, then United States Senator, led the soldiers and Klu Klux element and ex-Gov. Brown the Bullock contingent and it meant business. Every Congress- man, every judge, every solicitor, every legislator, every county official had to belong to one or the other gang to "get there Eli!" Dr. Felton 's election was a miracle in Georgia politics. They all hated him as the "D — 1 hates holy water." He was always in their way. And they finally beat him down with V 164 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics stuffed ballot boxes and bogus tickets, which I will explain in these pages as I go along. We were in Washington City when the 44th Congress met in December, 1875. The Democrats had seventy-odd majority in that body. It was a whirligig of changes that made the Republicans stand up and cry out : "Who hit Billy Patterson !" The Democrats, made crazy by success, were as wild as March hares in the early months of 1876, planning for the nomina- tion and election of a Democratic President, when they would have nothing to do but "carry grapes from Eschol" to the hungry crew at home the balance of their lives. Investigations were started that promised to cover the Grant administration with "eternal infamy." There were seven colored Congressmen in their seats when I sat in the mem- bers gallery for the first time and looked down on the ever- moving, struggling mass of men below me, and I was lately returned from the field of battle where I could testify as to what running for Congress stood for. I wondered in my soul how those negroes "made the trip" all from the Southern States. (Not a colored brother got anything in the North.) Although the educated negroes, after the war, traveled speed- ily to Washington and parts beyond, for obvious reasons, these black and mulatto men of the South were counted in and I knew how easily a decent white man could be counted out in Georgia! I soon reached the conclusion that there was pay and good pay somewhere or these darkies would never have reached their seats in the House of Representatives ? There was one colored Senator from Mississippi, Bruce, who occupied a seat next to his white colleagues in the Senate Cham-, ber, and so far as I know he never sold out to Jay Gould or Huntington, or the Real Estate Pool of Washington City, or the Whiskey Ring, or the Seneca Sandstone Co., or the Ship Sub- sidy, or any other scheme that was pushed through Congress by the "infernal force of gold!" He was decent in his beliavior, behaved himself as if in extra good company and served out his time and retired in credit. But he was the only negro whoever occupied a seat in the Senate of the United States and he went out nearly forty years ago ! There is food for re flection just here for such is the real history of our national My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 165 politics since the war, and this is the exhibit of the colored man as a legislator in the Congress of the United States ! I heard the Amnesty Debate, where Mr. Blaine and Mr. Hill, of Georgia, made immense reputation as rival politicians of rival political parties. Mr. Hill was being voted on in Georgia for United States Senator to succeed Hon. T. M. Norwood and made great capital out of the fact that his opponent was down in Georgia trying to secure re-election to the Senate, while he (Hill), stood at his post in Washington City fighting the bat- tles of Union and Confederate over again. All this hullaballoo sounds like hollow gongs and "tinkling cymbals" to me now. Messrs. Blaine and Hill went their appointed ways to the al- ways ready and ever waiting tomb and yet they were only working the game of politics and both of them were discovered to be in the active service of the Pacific railroads after both were moved up higher into senatorial positions. But for the "Mulligan guards" I am satisfied Senator Blaine would have been nominated and elected over R. B. Hayes and it is more than likely he would have tried to win over the "Solid South" by giving his Georgia friend a seat in his cabinet. I remember when poor Col. Fitzhugh, doorkeeper of the house, was "lifted out of his boots," because he wrote a friend "he was a big-ger man than Grant," with his new boots on. That was the ostensible reason, but he couldn 't give every one of the Southern Congressmen a place for a henchman, under the doorkeeper, so they failed to help the poor fellow. I remember the scramble with Payne and Duffy — when Doorkeeper Polk went out the same way at the same back door. I kept close tab on that fracas, because Mr. Payne came from Georgia and was put in by Senators Gordon and Lamar, who promised to pay Duffy some extra money every month if he would subside into silence after Mr. Payne got the place, over the protests of certain Georgia members of Congress. Mr. Duffy had one extra month's pay from these senators, and then they quit paying, so Mr. Duffy "raised Cain" and Doorkeeper Polk went home in sorrowful disgust, mixed with life-time dis- appointment. The investigation of Doorkeeper Polk was racy reading. I obtained a volume of the testimony. I have it now, and any 166 IMy Memoirs of Georgia Politics of you can get it from the Congressional or House library in Washington City. It was a chapter in congressional history that was repeated, more or less, at every session of congress that I was acquainted with as to the inside, and I believe just such rackets are the ever-present bane of a congressman or senator's life. There is no fury comparable to the rage of a man who has been promised a position and afterwards lost or failed to get it from his immediate representative from home, while some of these employees, including clerks, are not only the superiors of some of these congressmen in manners and intelligence, there can be no doubt that the mob which rushes to the front as soon as political patronage looms up, is composed largely of men who are "on the make," and are not particular as to how it is made. With three-quarters of a century behind me, I should greatly prefer, for personal reasons, if I was a con- gressman, to be in the minority, where I had nothing to give and thus allow the majority to fend off the importunate and oftentimes the unworthy. A public man is much more em- barrassed by his friends, so-called, than by his enemies. In the forty-fourth congress, Senator Gordon whip-sawed the Georgia patronage business. If he had confined himself to the senate it would have been more tolerable, but he was in evidence everywhere — house, senate and departments. Every time he took a ride or went to the White House, or to New York, etc., his obedient little men appointed from Georgia pub- lished it until even ex-Governor Brown felt obliged to come out and tell the public it had become absolutely "nauseous." He put in these people to get to be puffed, as a consideration of appointment, and they were unstinted as a puffing brigade and never failed to be on time, in or out of season. The long hot summer of 1876 wore along before Mr. Tilden's people "Cleared the docket" and fixed it up for him. Hon. S. S. Cox lost the speakership on the death of Speaker Kerr, be- cause he was politically compelled by Tammany to go to the National Democratic convention to do something for that wigwam warrior, and the Randall faction got ahead oP him. I liked both of these gentlemen very much. I was acquainted with both their good wives and wished them both well, but My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 167 the struggle ended with the election of Hon. S. J. Randall, of Philadelphia. Speaker Kerr, who was slowly passing away with what was reported to rae as tuberculosis, was highly respected by mem- bers of congress. He placed my husband on the committee of commerce, which at that time had charge of the river and harbor work of congress. Dr. Felton begun the opening of the Coosa River, and was exceedingly helpful to Savannah harbor, as well as Brunswick. His record is written in the official records of the forty-fourth congress, for he never lost a day in service and gained the respect of the best men of that time, including Mr. Hewitt, of New York, Democrat, and Wm. D. Kelly, of Philadelphia, Republican — both of whom were his attached friends until death. Time and space fail me to tell of his friends in both parties, or of the letters of con- gratulation they sent him when he was twice re-elected, etc. "With the senators of the commerce committee of the senate he was recognized as their very efficient and honorable help when the appropriation bills came up in both houses for final settlement, because he was always diligent, always willing and always at hand. Perhaps Dr. Felton 's speech against "re- sumption" legislation in the forty-fourth and forty-fifth con- gresses gave him then his greatest opportunity to display some of his wonderful gifts of oratory. The discussion of the re- sumption bill was set, as I remember, to November 14, 1877, and I, accompanied by my small son, took a seat in the mem- ber's gallery. While we were waiting, two of our Georgia members came to the gallery to make me a little visit. Hon. Milt. Candler, of the Atlanta district, remarked: "You are going to have a dull time, Mrs. Felton, today. This old money question has been threshed over until everybody is tired." I knew he stood for the other side, so I replied: "I came to hear Mr. Bell and Dr. Felton. It is not often two Georgians hold forth at the same time." My visitors sat with me until Mr. Bell finished his speech on the repeal of the resumption act, and Dr. Felton was just beginning. I saw the seats begin to fill, coming from cloak-rooms and corridors, and the gal- leries also. I knew in a few minutes that Dr. Felton had "liberty," as our old preachers used to designate freedom of 168 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics speech and of thought, and directly I saw the old campaign oratory in full blast. But I will give way to the Atlanta Constitution's report, promising, as an introduction, that this paper was Governor Brown's and Senator Gordon's most active newspaper. It is headed "A Field Day for Georgia. The speeches of Messrs. Felton and Bell 5n the house on Wed- nesday seem to have created a genuinf^sensation in Washing- ton — such a sensation as to elicit warmest praise from Mr. Stephens." A vague idea that something unusual had hap- pened appears to have impressed itself upon the reporter of the Associated Press — and he found time to embodj'- a very neat paragraph for the Southern press. "Heretofore Mr. Felton has never had occasion to display his remarkable readiness and aptness as a debater, and Ave doubt most completely whether on Wednesday he found op- portunity to give full freedom to those fresh, vigorous and strikingly original qualities of eloquence which render him almost invincible as an orator. But it is enough to know that coming to the very front of the debate, his words created a storm of applause which swept through the galleries, found its way to the floor of the house, carrying the most decorous members off their feet. His speech is characterized by Mr. Stephens as the best of the season." The Associated Press described it as being "masterly and eloquent beyond all ex- pectation." In another place it was described "as the grandest display of statesman-like prowess, frequently inter- rupted by applause. At one time the applause was so loud and spontaneous, from both floor and galleries, the speaker could not suppress it." A correspondent of a northern paper said: "There was quite a scene when Mr. Felton, of Georgia, de- scribed the financial condition of the country as a storm and hurricane at sea, on which ships were going down by the hundreds and precious lives were being engulfed by thousands while the wreckers, headed by the gentleman of New York (Chittenden) were standing on the shore, waiting to gather up the spoils and asserting that 'things would right themselves.' Mr. Chittenden, who is somewhat deaf, came over to the Democratic side to hear more distinctly, made several fruitless efforts to interrupt, but when he was laughed down, Douglas, My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 169 of Virginia, shouted 'the wrecker couldn't have half a minute.' " It was ever known as the wrecker speech. I found myself leaning over the seat in front of me, the great glad tears coursing down my cheeks, and my little boy clinging to me, crying "What is it, mother?" When it was all over, the house members crowded around my husband so closely that he couldn't see me — so I started for thvj hotel and had just entered the long corridor leading to Mr. Stephens' room, when I met the old gentleman, excited and full of ap- plause over the speech. He said it reminded him of the days of Webster and Clay, and that he had heard nothing since the war to equal it in the house. When we were at supper, a card came from Mr. Webb Hayes, at the White House, ask- ing for a copy of the speech as soon as printed. It was reprinted as far out as Kansas City and Georgians all over the United States sent congratulatory greetings. It is not my purpose to fill these pages with my husband's speeches in congress, or on political subjects. A later volume will contain them, I trust, but I am here only intent to trace the difficulties, the dangers, the persecutions, the unreasoning partisanship of those who made fortunes out of their politics in Georgia — and especially of the prejudice and cowardice of the Democrats who followed the fife and drum to their own material disadvantage, and against the prosperity of our com- mon country. For forty years the South has been crippled by the Civil War issues, and the politicians on both sides have worked these war issues, ad infinitum, to keep the offices of the coun- try in their own grasp. They could rise up in their various canvasses and hurl epithets at "Yanks" or "Rebs," as the case might be, and then, as soon as they met in Washington or even at home, the politicians would get together on the back stairs and enjoy the situation immensely. A political brawler in my own town once shook hands with ex-Attorney General Akerman, who served with President Grant, and went aside to say his "hands felt lousy" — but when the ex-attorney general contributed handsomely to town enterprises or church, nobody was more willing to accept and return thanks. 170 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics And the poor farmers, especially those who served in the army, were continually used as did old Jack Goolsby, who wanted to hire a young man — "to set him in the kitchen corner, for the women to break bark over his head." The Wrecker Speech. Col. Frank Fontaine, of Columbus, and Bartow county, was our neighbor, and happened to be in Washington City the day of the speaking. He came to the members' gallery as soon as Dr. Felton closed. He thus wrote to our home paper next day, November 15, 1877: "Bartow county, the Seventh district and Georgia were all honored yesterday by the great speech of your distinguished representative." Mr. Stephens says: "It was a field day for Georgia. Dr. Felton 's speech electrified the house." Hon. Mr. Atkins (Tennessee) said: "It was the best speech I've heard for twenty years." Judge Douglas (Virginia) crossed over from his seat to call to him : "Felton, I've come over here to tell you to go ahead — keep right on — give 'em hell." The speaker rapped with his gavel at the end of fifteen minutes, the time having expired, but House, of Tennessee, waving his hand to the speaker, with a ringing voice, cried out : "I move to extend his time !" Others cried out, "Let him have all the time he wants!" To use a Bartow phrase, the "Doctor let himself out." Members left their seats and came close to hear him and Mr. Chittenden, of New York, crossed the Rubicon. The Doctor said "he was opposed to strikes of laboring men. Labor had no right to make war on capital, because capital was as necessary as labor — and strikes were unwise and destructive to the best interests of both. "When strike combinations resorted to violence, they deserved the condemnation of our best citizens. It was equally wrong to combine against labor. The financial policy of the country since 1870 has been the result of a deliberate conspiracy of the creditor class to ruin the debtor class. The demonetization of silver was as unjust and as wicked as the famous strikes which have alarmed the country. It was the most deliberate and inexcusable attack on labor known to our legislative history. But even that did not make New York and New England the owners of the cotton fields My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 171 of the South. Therefore, a black scheme of contraction was inaugurated, just as the wild delirium of war was subsid- ing into reason, and financial ruin ensued. During the war those antiquated Shylocks had spent every dollar not ex- pended in buying substitutes in buying United States bonds — naturally they became clamorous for contraction. They cared not for the resumption of specie payments ; that was only a pretense. They triumphed, and contraction, with agitation, sent down the price of labor to starvation wages. The gentleman from New York (Chittenden) said yesterday, from his perch at the clerk's desk, that gamblers and loafers and bankrupts demand the repeal of this resumption act. The gentleman from New York may have kept a ledger, on one side of which poor men were put and the men who owned government securities on the other side — the side which is now grinding down the masses of these United States." It was just here that Mr. Chittenden crossed over just in front of Dr. Felton, in the aisle on the Democratic side. Resumed the Doctor: "And yet you undertake to comfort the country by telling them that all these things will right themselves. Yes, t know these things will right themselves — when they have touched the bottomless pit of despair and poverty. Look yonder at the storm-driven ocean ! Hurricane and darkness are on the face of the deep. Signal guns are firing every minute. Ships are going down by the hundreds — thousands of precious lives are being engulfed, and in the midst of all this ruin there (pointing to JMr. Chittenden) stands the wrecker, waiting for the ships and assuring those in peril of destruction, that all things will right themselves." The applause was deafening. This speech recalled a re- mark made by Hon. Mark A. Cooper (Major Cooper was con- gressman before the war) : "Felton don't look like Henry Clay for nothing." The ovation paid Dr. Felton exceeded everything I ever saw in a legislative body. Democrats and Republicans crowded to him with congratulations, and he at one bound became the leader of the majority on this question. His entire speech abounded with bold, invective, persuasive oratory, striking earnestness and logical reasoning. Northern, Eastern and Western Democrats are nearly all in favor of 172 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics resumption. Northern Republicans are a unit for resumption. The New York Tribune today calls the Democratic party "nothing if not idiotic." "Mr. Felton, of Georgia, must have been eclipsed unfairly, in the last congress. He emerged into full view yesterday as the blue-ribbon idiot of the present house and an astonished people are now asking why Felton has not been famous before?" The idiot Kelly, of Pennsylvania, the idiot Ewing, of Ohio, the idiot Tucker, of Virginia, congratu- lated Dr. Felton on this able effort. The following came today from ex-Chief Justice Lochrane : "Baltimore, Wednesday, Nov. 15. — Hon. W. H. Felton: Ac- cept my thanks for your speech on resumption. If not re- pealed, the country will be irretrievably ruined. The abuse of the opposition is an honor. No honest man desires the odium of their good opinions. 0. A. Lochrane." "Sixteen thousand copies were immediately ordered by Southern and Western Democrats. Dr. Felton is well and favorably known throughout the country. I don't say this to help him. I won't try to help a congressman who needs help. He don't need it. When the proper time for resumption arrives, it will come by the laws of trade. Any other law will bring about spoliation. F. Fontaine." This speech was made after Dr. Felton had been twice elected to congress, over the most bitter, unscrupulous and blatant persecution — after every politician of any significance in the state had been appealed to, to come into the Seventh district to beat him down among his own neighbors and friends. Senator Gordon was always to the forefront in these attacks, and this noteworthy speech was passed over by the partizan newspapers in Georgia with insignificant mention, except in one instance. While members of congress in many of the Southern states were loud in praise of Dr. Felton 's capacity and usefulness — the hidebound politicians in Georgia were whooping and yelling, "Down with old Felton — the Radical, the destroyer of the Democratic party ! ' ' Can any- one wonder that I — his wife, his companion for nearly sixty years, and one who knows his honesty, his ability, his pa- triotism and his clean political life, should now undertake to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 173 show to the people of Georgia and to the country the quality of men who fought him? The campaign of 1876 differed considerably from the one of 1874. There was quite as much excitement, but nothing like the violent abuse of that first onset between Dabney and Felton — though they were the standard-bearers again, two years later. Dr. Felton 's service in congress had silenced many foul tongues, and raised up many courageous friends and advo- cates. It was the time of the famous Tilden and Hayes cam- paign throughout the union, and our noisy, brawling op- ponents had an "eye to the windward" and a hope of rich pickings if Tilden should be elected. Then again, Hon. B. H. Hill had broken through the har- ness, and was elected as an Independent Democrat in the Ninth district, and the people of the state begun to have a clearer vision as to conditions in the "bloody Seventh." That year I traveled with Dr. Felton over every one of the fourteen counties but Dade and Haralson. We had a roomy buggy, made to order, in which we could stow away some baggage and find room for a little boy of six — whose delicate health was much benefited by change of water, etc. "We made hundreds of friends as we visited them in their homes and I became strong and vigorous in health when I was out and going. I had learned some things that made political life easier, and I saw that political life was not so intolerable as it had appeared to me in 1874, when I begun to conclude that a rabid Democratic politician had lost the instincts of a gen- tleman and become a primitive ruffian. As we came on home from Washington in the summer of 1876, crowds met the train all the way from Dalton down- ward, and I make free to copy a little newspaper slip, taken from the Atlanta Constitution, headed "Mrs. Congressman Felton:" "A lady who came down on the Thursday night train from Dalton reports that when the train reached Cartersville, the crowd on the debarkment of the congressman, gave an ova- tion as they swarmed about the car. Everybody felt interested in shaking hands with the estimable wife of the M. C. 174 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics "It was amusing to hear the stalwart, gallant men of Bar- tow pledging her their support. 'We all are for you.' 'You have no lack of support here.' 'We are going to send you back,' etc., etc., were the enthusiastic utterances which they poured into the ears of the astonished lady. She replied to their pledges in the happiest of humors and many good wishes. ' ' A new governor was to be elected that year, and every other state official, great or small, except some hold-over state sen- ators. With so much on their hands, the race for congress was not as bitter as in 1874, because there were scores of candidates and a swarming track. These candidates were looking out for No. 1, and wanted all the help they could get. The campaign was also not so protracted — although Dr. Felton was on the stump for more than three months — it had been a six months' heat in 1874 — and a hand-to-hand en- counter all the time. Colonel Dabney was heir-presumptive as well as heir-ap- parent to the organized nomination, but down in the bottom of their hearts there was no enthusiasm among his partizans for his election. Colonel Trammell openly declared that he had been maltreated in the house of his friends. He believed that his enemies in the party were knowing to the transfer of Frost's suppressed testimony into Dr. Felton 's hands, to secure his defeat, and there was no movement in State railroad rings to help Dabney, as had been shown to Trammell. But there were some persons in every county who were still writhing over the result in 1874. They couldn't hold still — "their speech betrayed them." When Dr. Felton and Gen. W. T. Wofford spoke in Rome, at the opening of the cam- paign, a number of ladies went to the City Hall to hear the speeches. Next day an insulting article appeared in a leading local paper — aimed at myself — which raised public indigna- tion to torrid heat. It called forth one of the finest articles, in my defense, that I have ever read. Here it is : "For more than thirty years in the history of our politics in Georgia there has been interest manifested by the ladies of the state, in the great questions to be decided by the ballot. Their presence at the hustings when the champions sought My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 175 to rise to the 'height of the great argument,' was the crown- ing poetical feature of the intellectual feast. "They came by two, by tens, or by thousands, at their pleasure. They had always assigned them the most 1 onored place. They were the guarantee of order, peace and decorum, and the choicest flavors of rhetoric were culled, garlanded and strewn at their feet. "It is their prescriptive right to attend in any numbers, and no gentleman ever questioned the propriety of the custom. The visit of the infamous Haynau, the Austrian woman whip- per, to Barclay's Brewery in London, did not cause more sur- prise and indignation, than did the vulgar and insulting re- proof in one of the Rome papers, of the ladies who attended a political meeting at that place a few days ago. "It speaks loudly for the love of quiet of the Romans, and but little for their chivalry that the writer did not meet with Haynau 's fate. It did not require Marat's talent, but cer- tainly all his filth and mental and personal deformity, to con- ceive, write and publish such an article. Desperate indeed must be the cause which demands for its support the beastly insult of some of the purest and noblest women in that city, and hundreds of others who have attended like gatherings in the past. "Dastardly beyond expression is the personal attack on a lady visitor, and invited guest, and whose only offense was her presence, and her quiet, unobtrusive demeanor. "The episode in the great drama of French history, which arouses more of the virtuous sympathy and calls forth more copious and tearful sympathy in memory of the noblest pa- triotism, is the Minister Roland and his marvelously talented and beautiful wife. Was it a crime in Madame Roland that she was devoted to her husband, upheld and aided him? "Was it a crime in Madame Roland, to stand by her hus- band everywhere — in the tribune, in the Chamber of Deputies, in the face of the howling mob of unwashed 'Saus Culottes,* who sought to drive him to the guillotine? "Is it to her discredit that she had the capacity to under- stand the great questions that occupied his mind and the courage to follow her convictions of duty to a bloody death? 176 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics "Is it to her husband's disparagement, that he was happy always to have her as his counsellor, coadjutor and friend, and sought no higher praise than her approval and that of his own conscience? Can the renewed exhibition of like vir- tues have become so uncommon or distasteful as to excuse or justify the cowardly attack above mentioned? "As a near relative of one of the ladies so inexcusably denounced in the public prints, the writer offers no apology for the severity of the language herein employed, and con- fidentially appeals to the manhood and womanhood of the country to rebuke so gross an outrage." As the campaign wore on, a Republican candidate was put out by the Democrats, but we were quickly apprised of the plan — with names given and places named where he was to be used, and it was exposed by an accident. A gentleman who had been acquainted with Dr. Felton during the war, over- heard the conversation of these parties, who combined for this purpose, on a railroad train as he rode with them to Atlanta. Being a stranger in the state and unknown to any of them, he had full benefit of their conversation sitting in a seat be- hind the conspirators. Dr. Felton 's friends, being loyal to the National Democratic party, proposed to Colonel Dabney's friends that a primary election should be held at the governor's election, on the first "Wednesday in October — the name of the proposed con- gressional candidate to be endorsed on the back of the ticket for governor and state house officers. Colonel Dabney's friends refused. They were unwilling to risk such an ex- pression at the ballot box, and the fight went on hot and heavy to the ides of November. Until I was obliged to stay at home, to keep up the correspondence, arrange the appoint- ments for speaking, print and circulate tickets, I traveled with Dr. Felton from place to place. When he was worn down with speaking and sought a little rest and quiet, I met his friends in hotel parlors or piazzas, and between us we managed to see as many voters as was possible in these frequent trips. It was fatiguing, arduous work — there was no let-up, day in or day out — Sunday or Monday — but it was far from unpleasant. I made friends by My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 177 the scores and hundreds, and those friendships have lasted to the end, long after the hot campaign cries and halloos were gone and forgotten. When the smoke of battle had lifted Dr. Felton had won by nearly 2,500 majority. His own county gave him nearly 2,500 votes, as against 695 for Colonel Dabney. Cherokee gave him nearly 1,200 majority, and Polk nearly 500. Tilden and Hendricks had their largest vote in the Seventh district of Georgia, and perhaps their largest majority in any con- gressional district in the union was counted here. Colonel Dabney was a clever citizen, a good lawyer, but he was never recognized as a tool of the ringsters. He was not mixed up with the hybrid politicians of Bullock's time. They did not struggle for him — as they did for some others — and it was unfortunate that he was loaded down with the debris of the campaign of 1874 — its discredit and unpopularity and exposures of graft. The winter of 1876-77 was as exciting in "Washington as a Georgia campaign, because the struggle for the presidency was on and it continued until the 4th of March, when the forty-fourth congress expired by limitation. We were in Washington City from the last of November to the close, and I was eye-witness to many things that were inexplicable as well as noteworthy. In the womb of the future there may be some exposures of combinations that will explain these inexplicable happenings and give us the necessary facts of history. That there was a trade between certain politicians of both parties to secure to Mr. Hayes the necessary votes and to rob Mr. Tilden of the one vote that would have made him president of the United States, I have not a shadow of a doubt ; nor do I question the allegation that these combinations had a vital effect upon the nomination of General Garfield in 1880. I did not then know — in 1876-77 — that C. P. Huntington was mov- ing with his immense railroad schemes in the senate of the United States, through the greed of certain senators, but after his private letters were published to the world, as ex- posed in the courts of California some years afterwards, I became satisfied myself that his financial and political schemes 178 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics entered into many states and elected and defeated \arious candidates, through the use of his corrupt money in political campaigns. I had a friend who gave me the inside facts in regard to South Carolina — for he enjoyed an inside view of some of the telegrams and letters that passed and repassed during the winter of 1876-77 — which possibly gave me a clearer insight than others enjoyed. He had no official connection with either federal or state politics, so his judgment was not warped by desire for office, and while he lived in another state, he chanced to be in South Carolina when the vote for Tilden was traded and he got his facts at first-hand and from other men than Democrats, in confidence. If you will recollect, Smith Weed, of New York, went to Columbia, S. C, as soon as it appeared that the electoral vote of that state could be traded. He thought he might buy it for $30,000, but to mak^ sure, he telegraphed to Henry Have- mj^er, who was Mr. Tilden 's agent in New York City: "Shall I increase to $50,000, if required?" The answer came: "Go to fifty thousand if necessary." There were so many grasping politicians around that Weed again telegraphed: "Majority of board secured. Cost is $80,000." Again he wired: "Must have the money at Barnum's, in Baltimore, early Monday morning. I go at 10 tonight." Mr. Pelton, Mr. Tilden 's nephew, went to Baltimore, but the money failed to materialize, and my friend wrote me, con- cerning the men who were dickering and trading with Pelton, from Columbia, S. C, until the whole thing collapsed and Mr. Tilden lost the vote in South Carolina as a Democratic presi- dent, although Gen. Wade Hampton went in as a friend to Hayes, and also as a Democratic governor. Ex-Governor Til- den was sworn before an investigating committee and ad- mitted he had telegraphed to his nephew, Pelton, to come back from Baltimore. Between Columbia and Baltimore there was evidently a dirty trade on hand, but the South Carolina end of it, which was only clamoring for money, evidently made better terms with the Hayes managers and so the state was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 179 lost to Mr. Tilden, who lacked but one vote to make him chief executive of the nation. I shall always believe that Smith Weed and the tricksters in South Carolina so disgusted the country that Mr. Tilden 's New York friends became also dis- gusted and left them to make any combination they pleased — because they saw that Mr. Tilden 's surroundings were not favorable for an upright administration. My friend was thoroughly satisfied in his mind that the South Carolina vote was hawked and sold to the highest bidder — for money — and there were in Washington City more scrambling politicians than these United States ever saw gathered before, and it was a mercy that the country was not plunged into civil war. I heard many angry debates on the floor of the house of representatives, I saw the scenes of confusion that prevailed, and I shall always believe that Mr, Tilden was elected by the people, but he fell by the wayside because he did not come out like a man and stand for his rights, and because the politicians who wanted money and office in South Carolina received more money and promises from the Hayes faction than from the other side. In that sort of Democracy a great many Southern Democrats took no stock, so they voted to accept the verdict of the electoral commission as the best and easiest and safest way out of a very ominous difficulty. The same conditions prevailed as to Louisiana, and we were confronted with the anomalous situation of seating Kellogg, as Republican United States senator, and seating Nicholls, a Democratic governor, both elected at the same time. It was confidently asserted that these manipulators agreed to seat M, C, Butler, of South Carolina, along with Kellogg — a muddle that carried fraud and chicanery on its very face. In May, 1878, an effort was made to overhaul these fraud- ulent proceedings, and a large number of Southern Demo- crats so voted, but the country was tired of the whole busi- ness, as well as of the conspirators — headed by Stanley Mat- thews and Charles Foster, both of Ohio. Each had influence sufficient with the Republican party to shelter the con- gressmen and senators who were capable of trying to extort money from Mr, Tilden to buy the returning board in the 180 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics state of South Carolina, when Mr. Tilden was not courageous enough to defend his own title. I had a full view of what politicians could do in high office, and my disgust has continued through life. As I said before, the story will come some day — perhaps when my body has turned to dust — and I now verily believe that the Democratic party has been traded fore and aft, by unworthy men in high office who were impelled by the "in- fernal force of gold," until the country is absolutely unwilling to trust its pledges or lean upon its public men. It is conceded that Hon. Allen G. Thurman, who was a national Democrat of high repute — a man universally respected by friend and foe, was not only defeated for the presidential nomination when General Hancock was selected, but Hon. Ben Butler, in an open letter some years later, charged it up to the control of the Democratic party by monopolies. Said he: "Witness the fate of Mr. Thurman, the most accomplished Democratic statesman of them all, in a convention calling itself Democratic in Chicago, at the instigation of monopo- lists." Hon. Allen G. Thurman also attributed his defeat for re- election to the senate to his advocacy of the Thurman funding bill, which Jay Gould and Huntington fought with lobby money in Washington City. Senator Edmunds, who also de- fended the funding bill, was retired by the monopolists, although he was the ablest statesman in the party calling itself Republican — and General Garfield (who was the choice of the monopolists, led by Jas. G. Blaine) was nominated in his stead for president. I predict a sharp revulsion of feeling in Southern men when the secret history of the Hayes-Tilden campaign is turned in- side out. I also predict that the inside history of the Han- cock-Garfield campaign will uncover the same old gang — Democrats and Republicans, who will be found doing business at the same old stand — and that Huntington's money was the motive power in both, especially with greedy Southern men in high offices. Public office with private gain were harnessed together and ran in couples — and I also surmise that there is a lurid chapter in Georgia history yet to be written — covering My Memoirs of Georgia Politics l8l some extraordinary political events which occurred in the year 1880, and if I am not mistaken it will be seen that monopolistic money was used freely to unseat some of Geor- gia's ablest men in public life — because they were inimical to the corruption then prevailing in Washington City. I have written so much on this line at this time because 1 desire to clear away any doubt that may have been lodged in the minds of Georgia people as to the why and wherefore of the campaign of 1878, when certain Georgia politicians moved heaven and earth to defeat Dr. Felton for congress, and fortunately failed. My disgust and distrust of those who joined with Stanley Mathews to defraud the Democratic party of the presidency could not be concealed. I was privately informed that a big newspaper in Atlanta had forsaken the Texas Pacific railroad plan and had gone in, tooth and toe-nail, for Huntington's plan, and I was also told to watch its columns for certain signatures to newspaper articles, and there I would find the voice of Huntington's money, and that I would find after awhile that Huntington's chief man in the south was going on the stump, etc. This information was gathered in Wash- ington City, and I was pledged to keep my informant's name in confidence, although it came through a Georgian who held no official position whatever, but he could only put me on notice of this conspiracy — and " forewarned-f orearmed, ' ' etc., etc. The Thurman funding bill became a law in May, 1878, and the campaign in the Seventh district opened that summer. I gathered enough information before we left Washington City to verify my Georgia friend's prognostications. I saw a prominent senator coming out of Ben Holliday's fine mansion, about nightfall, wrapped in a military cloak in June weather. Ben Holliday was the grand cy clops, in Pacific Railroad lobby work and he was so well ticketed in national legislation that he was not considered companionable on the public streets. My husband and myself were together when we discovered the personality of the aforesaid visitor. We later saw how the wind lay in that neck of the woods. Judge Lester — The Campaign of 1878 It opened red-hot and, as Henry Grady expressed it, "it promised to be the most heated and fiery in Georgia since the war." Why? Because the Bullock Democrats, those who had grown fat on the pickings of the Bullock regime, determined to make it so. No stone was left unturned, no scheme untried and no falsehood rejected, if it served a purpose or could deceive a voter. When the first meeting between Judge Geo. N. Lester (who was at that time superior court judge in upper Georgia) was arranged for, in Cartersville, on Thursday, July 11, Dr. Felton was asked to postpone his speaking appointment at Dalton and meet the Judge. This request was made by Judge Lester's friends and then urged by Dr. Felton 's supporters. So when Henry Grady charged that the Feltonites "set a trap for Judge Lester," the people were justly indignant and re- buked the falsehood promptly in the public prints. The speaking place was arranged for in a lovely grove of small oaks, in the rear of the town, with a hastily erected rostrum for the speakers. When we drove out there in a buggy from our home, we found several hundred people already assembled. Before we started that morning 1 told Dr. Felton it would be well enough to take along my scrap- book, which contained the testimony of Governor Joseph E, Brown, when the State Road lease and its ratification in 1872, was investigated during the year 1876 by the legislature. He asked me also to carry certain affidavits from citizens of Cobb county, concerning Judge Lester's advocacy of the Republi- can nominee for congress when Gen. P. M. B. Young was the Democratic nominee for congress, several years previously. I tucked both away carefully and we jogged along quietly, despite the fact that the Atlanta newspapers were foretelling many and divers overthrows that lay in wait for Dr. Felton on that eventful day. As it was Judge Lester's meeting, he had the opening speech ; time, two hours. Felton was to follow with two hours. My Memoirs of Georgli Politics 183 Lester to rejoin in fifteen minutes. Felton to close in ten minutes. The crowd gathered quickly after the speakers left town and when the time arrived to begin, Dr. Felton got out of our buggy and pleasantly spoke to Judge Lester, saying: ''It is already five minutes past your time to begin, Judge." I did not at any time leave the buggy, but I was near enough to hear every word. Judge Lester disappointed me in his effort. He seemed to be fighting around loose. He threw in a lot of anecdotes — but Avhen he settled down to work he begun to defend himself from a rumor that he had advocated the Re- publican nominee. Cole, as against the Democratic nominee, Pierce Young. He raised his hand to Heaven as he said: **I declare here in this open sunshine, by the God who hears me and will judge me, I never made any speeches for Cole in that canvass. ' ' Just here I felt in my pocket to be sure I had the affidavits testifying that he did speak for Cole at Spring Place, Murray county, and was an advocate of Cole because he said Cole was in favor of General Gordon for the senate. He described the hardships of soldier life and, to quote Henry Grady, "the stump of his arm kept flying up, which jerked his empty sleeve forward." Dr. Felton had a seat at the foot of a tree, some yards distant, and occasionally he would give me a side glance as something was said that he thought I might notice. Judge Lester would jeer at him and throw out his empty sleeve, and when the speaker alluded to another rumor, about a ten thousand dollar fee that it was charged Governor Brown had paid him to lobby for the State Road lease, he grew quite facetious, and denied it in toto, save that Governor Brown had paid him a retainer of $1,000 for legal services, and no legal services were ever needed," etc. I glanced down at my scrap book very composedly and con- cluded there was something more than fun ahead in that meeting. He derided Felton, because he did not come forward in reconstruction days and help the State ''when Georgia needed help," and I glanced down at the volume which a good Atlanta lawyer had secured for Dr. Felton at the state capitol, where a full account was given of Judge Lester's 184 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics foreign immigration scheme — an official report — where $10,000 was appropriated in Bullock's time and the Judge used up the ten thousand and afterwards confessed that no foreigners would come. This humiliating result he made known to Gov- ernor Bullock, and his failure was contained in this very- precious volume, then securely wrapped and resting under my two restless feet, just that very minute. When I was pasting down, in 1876, every day's proceedings of the State Railroad lease investigation, I little thought my scrap-book would prove a Mauser rifle in a political cam- paign only two years later, for every single copy had disap- peared from the State House. At last the Judge took his seat, and in a few minutes Dr. Felton was notified that his time had come. He rose from his seat at the foot of the tree and came directly to me and said: "I am sorry that man has forced me to allude to his record. He is a Judge, and I would like to respect him in his calling, but I want those affidavits and your scrap-book." In the presence of that excited multitude I fished up the affi- davits from my dress pocket, and unwrapped the scrap-book and as I saw my gray-headed husband mount that improvised rostrum, I had more than one thought as to the hidden dangers that might assail him ere the campaign was over. I had good reason to expect and fear violence. "With a graciousness that was charming, he thanked his friends for their loyalty to him, and spoke modestly of his work in congress during two whole terms of faithful service, and declared with emphasis, "I have done my duty. I have nothing to regret, and not one vote to apologize for!" Turning to Judge Lester, he said he must say things there and then that he was reluctant to say — but he had been challenged to meet statements that he was in duty bound to meet, and he would do it and leave the result to the listeners on that occasion. He accepted the Lester challenge. He charged Judge Lester with dragging the judicial ermine in the slime of polities — that he had left the bench only the day before in Rome to come to Cartersville to browbeat a faithful representative and intimidate the men who had cases before him in various counties of the Seventh district. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 185 He asked the Judge this question: "Do you carry your empty sleeve before this people to ask them for another office, before you have resigned from the high and lofty one of Judge — and, must I say it? — in a manner speculating on your wound, and asking that you be paid a price for it?" Then he took up the Judge's political record and showed how he had participated in a Democratic congressional con- vention in the Seventh district, which nominated Pierce Young at Kingston (and which did not nominate George Lester) and then went home to stump the district for Young's opponent, a Republican nominee. "There are men in this audience, your own neighbors in Cobb county," said Dr. Felton, "who have given me affidavits, voluntarily, concerning your support of Mr. Cole. Here are these gentlemen present — and here are their sworn statements. Will you deny it? Dare you say it is untrue? Yet you have appeared, in this presence to charge me with an alliance with Radicalism, and opposition to Democ- racy, when you know the statement is not true and that my service in Washington makes it plain that you speak falsely here for a purpose ! ' ' Then he took up the immigration scheme — when ten thous- and dollars of our tax money was handed over to Judge Les- ter and Mr. Weil, under Bullock's regime, and which proved to be only a present to these favorites who flourished at that time, when Bullock's gang flourished "and from all accounts," said Dr. Felton, "one handsome German girl adventured to come, and she married the Judge 's co-partner in this enterprise that cost poor old Georgia ten thousand dollars — and with no other result than the inexplicable and unexplained favoritism shown to Governor Bullock's attached friend and supporter, Judge George N. Lester!" "Do you care to revile me any more, Judge Lester, and tell this people I did not aid Georgia in the days of reconstruction, as you aided this great old state when hordes of thieves and carpet-baggers were feeding on her very vitals? I have causes for special gratitude and I will place among them my freedom from all such schemes as you carried on in Bullock's time, which resulted in nothing and worse than nothing to a war-desolated state that was bound hand and foot, until 186 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Southern men like yourself could pick her very bones bare of her tax money. Now, when you tell me you thus aided the state, I tell you I am thankful I was not one of those who raided it in this way — to the everlasting discredit of the raiders. ' ' Then he took up my scrap-book and read from the testimony of Governor Brown where he swore he paid certain attorneys to talk up the lease. He read Lester's receipt for this fee of $1,000, and then he made the welkin ring with what the state had suffered in loss of revenues by this lease, and the appear- ance of Judge Lester in this campaign represented to his mind further schemes of this sort, and perhaps many more receipts for fees of like magnitude to be hereafter brought to light by future legislative investigations. The constitutional convention had already met and denounced lobbying to be a crime — and the Judge had confessed that he had never ap- peared in a court house to defend Governor Brown's lease. ''Now, what induced you to take Governor Brown's money, Judge Lester, under such suspicious circumstances?" the speaker shouted, and the crowd shouted in reply. Mr. Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution news- paper, was sitting where I could see him. He dug his um- brella staff in the dirt, ever and occasionally. "When Dr. Felton asked that awful, searching question, Mr. Grady spoke in muttered tones : ' ' My God ! he has killed him too dead to skin!" A gentleman of highest standing in Cartersville declared that Grady said it, although the editor rushed to Atlanta that night and wrote up the day's doings as a clean-cut victory for Lester for next day's Constitution. Judge Lester became very angry. As Dr. Felton closed Lester sprang to the platform and cried out: "My fellow- citizens, I want to say something — and Dr. Felton must hear it : If you, Sir, assert or insinuate that one dollar ever en- tered my pocket illegitimately and dishonestly, I denounce you here to your face — preacher, as you are — an unmitigated liar!" He then went on in furious denunciation, charging Dr. Felton with wearing God's livery to carry on politics, and made every sort of denial that an innocent man might make My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 187 had lie been unjustly charged. He roared and yelled until he was purple in the face and trembling with rage. When he closed and Dr. Felton again stepped on the speaker's stand, it did my heart good to see how the Felton men crowded up to him and cheered him to the echo. I shall never forget his words : ' ' My friends, I was never in a better humor in my life. You will all bear witness that Judge Lester made me a challenge in regard to his record. He opened the debate. He made positive assertions — and I should have been forever estopped in criticism of his record, had I been silent today. "I call you to witness that I have not failed to furnish the proof, and brought it to his attention, face to face. The de- rogatory words he has uttered in this day of confusion and defeat against myself, I shall not notice. He knows I have spoken the truth and produced my authorities and the absolute and convincing proof has made him angry and I call your attention also to the fact that I told you and him, in the beginning, that I was sorry to be thus compelled to speak to a Judge — a man in authority, who has debased that lofty calling in the many ways herein exposed — but he led the de- bate and I only followed his lead." As we drove home in the quiet of the afternoon, we summed up the day's proceedings in a thankful spirit, but with a full understanding of what was in the forefront of the campaign — which had nearly four months to run, until elec- tion day in November. First, every Bullock Democrat would try to defend his own reputation by defending Judge Lester and by abusing Dr. Felton. Colonel Dabney's two races were not of a kind to make them fight for their political lives and reputations. To a man, you could spot those Bullock sup- porters and sympathizers. Behind them, was the money and influence of every man who had been besmirched in the Bul- lock regime. Second. The State Railroad men sailed in — every mother's son — and they were in, from snout to tail. Governor Brown, the president, spared nothing to win, the railroad became a willing servant to tote and carry, to control the election for Judge Lester. Every man on the road, from the top to the 188 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics bottom grade, understood they were to work and vote for Judge Lester on election day. Lastly, as I expected, we were to find Gen. Gordon on the stump — in many and various places, and he came into our own county to browbeat Dr. Felton's friends and supporters. I expected to discover tracks leading up to Huntington's money, and I was forewarned that it was at work. I wrote an editorial for the Free Press, the Felton newspaper in Carters- ville, charging the same and pointed out signed articles in an Atlanta newspaper that I had been reliably informed were paid for by the money of the great monopolist. I also did so, in Columbus Enquirer-Sun. A demand was made for proof or retraction, and Dr. Felton was approached by Col. Pike Hill, who bore a belligerant message from the indignant editor. When I read over those duel papers, only a few days ago, I laughed heartily at the sequel. Instead of a duel, there was a very quiet letter that ended the strife and this was my first and last connection with a proposed duel — a demand presented by a second, etc., etc. The proof was there ! It was common report that every possible scheme would be worked in the Seventh district before Judge Lester was nom- inated. Hon. B. H. Hill, on July 2nd, gave an open letter to the public press in which he said he made it convenient to visit Cartersville, late in June, and there he saw members of the Democratic executive committee. He had been informed by Dr. Felton that the only purpose of some who had control of the party machinery was to humiliate and defeat him in a spirit of revenge. He asked the executive committeemen if Dr. Felton would have a fair chance if he submitted his name to the convention? "None in the world," was the reply. "It is no use talking, we are going to have a convention, expressly to beat him, and we intend to crush him out by 5,000 majority." Anonymous writers filled the columns of the Atlanta Con- stitution, and I had the names of "Cato" and "Citizen" furnished me. One was a Bullockite and the other an as- pirant for office in the Seventh district, who had tried to go My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 189 to the legislature and couldn't get elected in the voting pre- cinct he lived in. It was a battle-dore and shuttle-cock busi- ness with them. They jeered, questioned, and slandered by- indirection. At last I decided to draw their fire and wrote the following communication: A Reply to "Citizen." Cartersville, Sept. 11, 1878. Editors Constitution: "Citizen" writes an open letter to Dr. Felton and demands a reply through the Atlanta Consti- tution. He claims this reply as a constituent. Dr. Felton is absent and has left his correspondence in my care as his regu- lar secretary. Whether this work is well done or otherwise, I have never failed to satisfy him with my willing and volun- tary service. He will endorse this communication. As "Citizen" is imperious in his demand for a reply, I have not delayed an hour since his open letter reached me. The charges, as I understand them, are these: "Dr. Felton called Judge Lester pure in 1874; and calls him corrupt in 1878." "Dr. Felton charges that Judge Lester was made commis- sioner of immigration by a Radical legislature and received his commission from Governor Bullock." To the first charge, I will say, four years can make con- siderable difference in the standing of a public man. It may increase friendship or lower esteem. If he proves himself worthy of continued confidence, he will generally receive it. This is the rule, allowing for occasional exceptions. In 1874, the investigation of the State Road lease had not taken place. Neither Dr. Felton nor the public had any official evidence of the "retainer" taken by Judge Lester. Governor Brown hesi- tated about showing the receipt — he gave it up under protest. While people may differ about the moral quality of the trans- action, it is very certain that the distinguished minds who framed our state constitution were very decided in their opinions. They pronounced lobbying to be a penal offense. Dr. Felton thinks as they did. Hence he cannot accord to Judge Lester very exalted purity in that particular transac- tion. In justice to Judge Lester, Dr. Felton is willing to grant 190 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics that he believes the Judge ''sees no harm" in taking such fees. He is the person most interested and he is to be the judge of the right and wrong in his own case. Judge Lester's political and official record is the subject of legitimate criticism. Dr. Felton invites investigation into his own official conduct. If Judge Lester has any proof that Dr. Felton was not true to his constituents — if he gave a vote or performed an act for money outside his legitimate salary, Judge Lester has a perfect right to question his motives and make the matter plain to the people of his district. Every patriot owes it to his country to expose corruption in official conduct. Thus alone can a free government protect itself. Dr. Felton was not so well acquainted with Judge Lester's official record in in 1874, as in 1876 and 1878. He understood him better in these later days. The next charge is altogether a different matter, and "Citizen" is laboring under a mistake. Dr. Felton does not charge that Judge Lester was appointed by Governor Bullock. He knows he was elected by the legislature that assembled the Fourth of July, 1868, which instituted the commission of foreign and domestic immigration on March 13, 1869. He does say that Judge Lester resigned the commission to Gov- ernor Bullock after he had filled the office fourteen months. The Journals of the House show this to be correct. Judge Lester also expressed "his grateful appreciation of the kind- ness and courtesy which had at all times marked his ex- cellency's deportment and official intercourse." "Citizen" takes considerable pains to prove that legisla- ture Democratic. That it might have been, but the acts of that special season are conceded to be anything rather than Democratic in a literal sense. In September, 1868, and March, 1869, were passed various acts, authorizing bonds for the Macon and Brunswick, Chero- kee and Van "Wert, and Alabama and Chattanooga, and other schemes of similar character. On March 8, 1869, five days after the commission of foreign and domestic immigration became a law, the act authorizing the Brunswick and Albany railroad bonds was passed. If one My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 191 was Democratic, the other was also. You cannot claim one and reject the other. The bond committee, in commenting on these acts, said : ' ' They were pushed through a bastard legis- lature by the infernal force of gold." Their "means and appliances" Avere limited to the sum of $10,000, appropriated by the act aforesaid and which in no event were to be increased. Of this sum, $7,000 was set apart as compensation for the commissioners, leaving $3,000 and no more to be employed in printing, preparing and circulating such publications. "Citizen" does not tell us why Col. Sam Weil applied to the legislature, in November, 1871, for "compensation for his own losses." I refer you to the Journal of that date. "Citizen" inquires, "Was it morally wrong for Lester to accept the office? We reply with another question, "Was it right to take the hard-earned money of the tax-payers to do nothing ? ' ' Judge Lester tells the people in Upper Georgia that Dr. Felton did nothing in congress. Fortunately the Congressional Record tells another story. The commissioner of immigration fails to show the whereabouts of a single immigrant, although rumor credits the enterprise with one intelligent and highly respectable German lady, "Citizen" gets much excited over a speech made by a colored voter in Cartersville. Dr. Felton had as much to do with that speech as had Judge Lester with a speech made in Rome, by one Jim Black, colored, who stated he was for Lester, because Lester had helped Bullock and Felton did not. It will not do to charge every public man with all that is said by strong partizans and friends — the platform would not be reliable with such a policy. The Constitution has presented the questions of "Citizen," Judge Lester's friend. Will it allow the reply of Dr. Felton 's private secretary? MRS. W. H. FELTON. This was written nearly thirty-two years ago (February, 1911) and it stands today as it stood, on its merits, at the time of writing. I know I can confidently appeal to the young men of Georgia who may chance to read my words — that there was nothing ignoble, unwomanly or indecent in this reply to a [ 192 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics newspaper article filled with a tissue of lies and misrepresen- tations, when the author was afraid to uncover and show his head in the open, lest his own skull would be cracked. Immediately "Citizen" fired a fusilade against both Dr. Fel- ton and myself. Hear the concealed caluminator — when he replied in the Atlanta Constiution in the following words: "You, Dr. Felton, march down into the mire and filth of r\^ the political arena, thrusting before you into its besmiiching ^ foulness — a woman, your wife. "A strange sight to Georgia men — stranger yet, thank God, to her women. I sympathize with her, and pity the necessity which forces her from the privacy she adorns, into the public stare to shield you with a woman's name and the robes of a woman's immunity. * * * "Stand aside, Madam — I have naught to do with you! Uncover the Doctor and retire to the privacy of your heart- stone" — followed by two columns of abuse, villification, false- hood and insolence. The Constitution threatened me, editorially. Said the editor: "Dr. Felton will be sorry before this thing is done with, that he did not have the hardihood to place his own sign manual to the defense made by his private secretary. It has come to a pretty pass when the champion of Independ- entism is afraid (?) to meet his opponent, and lacks the nerve \ to sign his own name to an article in his own defense." Time has mellowed my feelings, but I am willing to say it took a good deal of God's grace to be friendly with such people in later life. A miserable negro made a remark about some disreputable white woman in Rome, and that was charged up to Dr. Felton, and my patience was completely exhausted the following winter when a Georgia congressman's wife delib- erately asked me, "If Dr. Felton assailed the virtue of Con- federate soldiers' wives and daughters?" I looked her squarely in the face and asked her to give her reasons for asking so despicable a question, and then I would give her the proper reply. From that day to this, my indignation has been forced to struggle with my respect for her — whenever I see her name in print. It is an established fact, that men of fair reputation made a business of hawking such miserable My Memoirs of Georgia Politics; 193 lies from neighborhood to neighborhood, and were in some- body's pay, and I shall believe to my dying day that it was Huntington's money employed in Georgia to defeat honest men and put his super-serviceable tools in the congress of the United States. Dr. Miller, Judge Wright, of Rome, Hon. A. H. Stephens and General Toombs advised young men to vote for Dr. Felton, and the entire district simmered with indignation that such a campaign of abuse was to be encountered in our congres- sional district. In Judge Lester's behalf General Gordon led the outside forces, and he lent aid and countenance to local desperadoes, who spared neither the cradle or the grave, in their dislike of me and hatred of Dr. Felton. Editorial after editorial ap- peared in the Constitution with headings of "Mrs. F's H." (Mrs. Felton 's husband), "The Private Secretary's Hus- band," etc., but I am satisfied that every time they acted the ruffian — they lost caste among gentlemen, and lost votes for their candidate. It had lasting effect in Bartow county, which gave Dr. Felton a majority of 1,657 on election day, and Cobb county (the home of Judge Lester) also gave Felton a hand- some majority. On Sunday morning (before election day on Tuesday) I was informed that ex-Go v. Joseph E. Brown had given orders to start a free excursion train from Atlanta to Chattanooga on Monday morning. Everybody could ride free — round trip to Chattanooga and return. I went at once to writing letters — notifying the voters that it was known to be a trick to get them into Tennessee and keep the excursion train there until the election was over in the Seventh district. (It did not return until Wednesday). That afternoon I wrote out telegrams to friends in every railroad town on the State Road, which as you know, traverses the district, except from Atlanta to Bolton, on the Chattahoochee, six miles out of Atlanta. I stood by the operator until every telegram went off, paid the bill, and went home to ruminate on the uses to which the state's railroad property might be applied to influence the politics of the state in behalf of cor- rupt politicians. The engineer who had charge of that Monday train now 194 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics lives in Cartersville, and he said he reached Dalton with no passengers except one old lady and two little children. He laughs now over that mishap. When the train pulled into Cartersville the road was lined with Feltonites, who made merry with the train-masters and jollied them over the defeat of the plan. Those who examined the train reported a barrel of whiskey and two tin cups — sheltered in an alcove. Also a free contribution for campaign purposes, I suppose. One of the substantial fruits of the cam- paign was a letter from Chas. L. Frost, who became interested in this campaign because of the abuse of himself by Bullock Democrats. He said his connection wixh the Brunswick and Albany railroad brought him in contact with men of high and low degree, who displayed a greediness for money to which he had seen no parallel in a long life with experience. He also said: "H. I. Kimball, who secured Democratic votes in the legislature for aid to Brunswick and Albany railroad bonds in the shape of exchanging the road's second mortgage, for gold bonds of the state, appears to have a very defective memory in attempting to whitewash them. * * * Does that gentle- man forget that he told me at his office that he had made a full settlement with Trammell, and I could now leave the state alive?" He told me that Trammell divided the funds with eight of his comrades, and that "Peace now reigned in War- saw." It may transpire that some future investigation will give us the full roster of the eight — just as Huntington's letters to his partner, Colton, in San Francisco, uncovered many of the men in congressional circles who took his money and worked and voted for his schemes. Dr. Felton's official majority in the district in 1878 was 1,350. Judge Lester's vote in Cobb was a settler — and I expect he would have fared bettet if he had stifled some of the villianous methods used in his behalf with- out let or hindrance. A POLITICAL EPISODE THAT CONCERNED ME IN- DIVIDUALLY. During the year 1876 there was a friendly newspaper in Canton, Cherokee county, Georgia, edited by Rev. P. H. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 195 Brewster, the same man whose printing outfit was seized and destroyed in Cartersville when Dr. Felton and Colonel Tram- mell were opposing candidates in 1874. Mr. Brewster had a partner during a part of the time, but as Mr. Brewster fav- ored Felton, and Mr. Jas. 0. Dowda favored the ring Demo- crats, they divided on the 13th of September, 1876, Mr. Brewster purchasing Mr. Dowda 's interest. Then Mr. Brewster requested me to give him any political happenings that might come to my knowledge to put in his paper, for Mr. Dowda was out. His valedictory was placed in the issue of September 13th and he (Mr. B.) was in control of his own newspaper. We were just starting to Lafayette and Catoosa county and places adjacent when his letter came to me. While I was resting at a friend's house, eight miles from Ringgold, about September 20th, I wrote the article, here copied, and Editor Brewster made the headline : A Voice From Catoosa. Editor Greorgian: I write to tell you the cheering news in the upper counties. Dr. Felton 's vote will be largely increased. At Trion he had a large crowd, evidently in strong sympathy. At Dalton he has fine encouragement, as I understand. (I did not go to Dalton at that time). It is thought that his vote in Whitfield will equal, if not exceed Dabney's vote. The op- position started their tricks too soon. They published the names of persons at the Dalton (congressional) convention who were not there, but whose votes and influence were pledged to Felton. Colonel Dabney is making charges against Dr. Felton in his speeches, connecting him with Radicalism, which would be amusing if it did not betray the weakness of Dabney's cause. Crowds follow Dr. Felton 's appointments in this county. The people are awake. It only needs a few tell- ing licks to show the people they are earnest and truthful in the cause of right and honesty. (Signed) A WOOL HAT. This article was published in the Georgian on September 27, 1876. Under date of September 13th, in same paper, this can be found: "My connection with the Cherokee Georgian ceases with 196 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics this issue, although my relations with the associate proprietor has been agreeable, etc. (Signed) Jas. 0. Dowda." During the campaign in 1878, a public speaker in Rome denounced me as a ''Catoosa farmer," and read a letter from certain parties in Cherokee county, one of them Jas. 0. Dowda, which ridiculed me as a fraud, etc. An investigation was obliged to follow this tirade. Mr. Dowda came out in a publication, in the Atlanta Constitution, and in it he used the following words : He said, ' ' about the first of September, 1876, a 'wool hat' communication came to the office in course of mail. I opened it and read it. Col. Jas. R. Brown was in the office at the time. I showed it to him. It struck me forcibly that it would be a fraud to publish it. I asked him his opinion of it, and showed him a note accom- panying the communication, which began 'Dear Brother Brewster,' and was signed 'R. A. Felton' (Mrs. Felton\ Col. Brown and I agreed in our views about it. I decided 1 would not publish it. "I kept it, however, and gave it to Mr. Brewster, because of the private note that came in the same envelope. He read it, I gave him my objections to it. I told him I would not publish it, for it was a fraud. He took it home with him — came back in a few days and bought me out." The campaign in 1876 closed and nobody revealed the "fraud." But this communication of mine was kept until the campaign of 1878, and then these two gentlemen, Dowda and Brown, furnished the "fraud" to a courageous speaker in the city of Rome, who stood before a Lester audience and gave me Hail Columbia ! The Lesterites pranced and cavorted, and the Constitution found a veritable mare's nest in "Dear Bro. Brewster." As the Georgian editor was a local Methodist preacher, a good friend, and we always addressed him as "brother," it was entirely natural that I should thus address him, even in a private letter, written to him as a newspaper editor. These gentlemen were only visitors in Mr. Brewster's newspaper office — had no more right to open his letters than I to open yours, dear reader, but Mr. Dowda not only opened my private My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 197 letter to Mr. Brewster, but exhibited it to Hon. Jas. R. Brown, and together they pronounced judgment on it as a "fraud." As a matter of fact, Dr. Felton did not speak at Trion until the 14th of September. He did not speak at Dalton until the 16th. He did not speak at Ringgold until the 20th, and we did not get home until September 23rd. I have here written every word of this "Wool Hat" communication, and I should not have sent a line to the Georgian if I had not been informed that Mr. Dowda was out and disconnected with the paper. "While he may have been upright in his private dealings, I was convinced he was a veritable trickster and a rabid and perfectly unscrupulous man in politics, and the facts here shown go to prove it. Of course Mr. Brewster was enraged that his private letters had thus been manipulated by men who occupied seats in his newspaper office, as callers, while he was out. What he said to Mr. Dowda about opening other people's letters I leave you to imagine, as Mr. Dowda forwarded to me the following cer- tificate, signed before a notary: "Mrs. R. A. Felton.— Madam : At the request of Rev P. H. Brewster, the undersigned makes the following certificate, namely : There came to the office of the Cherokee Georgian a communication, signed 'Wool Hat,' about the 1st of Septem- ber, 1876. Enclosed was a small slip containing a very polite apology by you for being the author of it — justifying it by plea of common usage, and request to publish the same. That this was the sum total in substance of the slip referred to above. (Signed) Jas. O. Dowda. September 3, 1878." The "Wool Hat" article was not only true in all respects, but a most modest statement of facts in 1876. Mr. Dowda was afterward anxious to impress upon the public the idea that he and Hon. J. R. Brown were responsible for inspiring Mr. Linton Dean, in Rome, to use this "Wool Hat" matter to in- jure Dr. Felton 's candidacy, for, said he, "No fair-minded man holds Judge Lester responsible for acts he does not in some way endorse," and that he became anxious to save himself from the penalty of opening other people 's letters is seen when 198 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics he furnished me the "certificate." Mr. "Walsh, editor of the Augusta Chronicle, said: ''The Democratic papers that have dragged Mrs. Felton's name into the contest have shown very bad taste, if nothing more. Mrs. Felton is a noble woman — a devoted wife and mother, and has won the respect and ad- miration of all who know her. The papers have a right to oppose Dr. Felton as fiercely as they please, but they have no right to drag his wife's name into the campaign." The Columbus Enquirer-Sun said: "Some of the papers sneer at Mrs. Felton, in the Seventh district. Every time they do so they add to Felton's strength and diminish Lester's. We have never had the pleasure of meeting the lady — but we know numbers in Columbus, who are among the first gentle- men of this or any other land, who pronounce her among the most gifted and accomplished women - of our country. She writes letters to papers and is doing all she can to elect her husband, and we honor her for it. Answer the arguments, gentlemen — if you can." Said The Madisonian : "We regard Mrs. Dr. Felton as one of the most amiable and accomplished ladies that ever added attraction to Washington City society. Her successor will have a hard time to fill, if anybody attempts to imitate her. God bless Mrs. Felton, say we. "Although opposed to the election of her husband, and only because he antagonized Democracy, we regard her and him as among the best that ever represented Georgia at Washington — morally and politically. We hope our tongue will cleave to the roof of our mouth ere we write a word in disparagement of Mrs. Dr. Felton, whom we regard as one of Georgia's best women." Said the DeKalb News: "Has Georgia Democracy gone mad? Have Georgia editors forgot the respect due to a 'woman,' that they so mercilessly abuse Mrs. Felton for what she has written in her husband's cause? Far be it from us to approve of Georgia ladies entering the political arena, but we must enter a protest against such wholesale abuse of what our brother editors are pleased to call a 'woman;' we will thank kind heaven for more 'women' who are willing to help their husbands to bear the burdens of life, whatever circum- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 199 stances surround them. Gentlemen, it is a shame, and we feel like saying : Confound the editors — confound the papers, and confound everything that will not step aside and bow to any Georgia lady who loves her husband more than she fears the barbed arrows of Georgia editors." When Dr. Felton spoke at Spring Place, Murray county, some days after the attack on me, in Rome, in regard to "Wool Hat," a Mr. Thrailkill, of that county, handed the speaker a letter to read aloud to the audience. The letter was unsigned, but was intended to be sent to some newspaper for publication and Mr. Thrailkill stated that Hon. J. R. Brown, of Cherokee county, had sent him the letter and asked him to to sign his name to the same and print it, and the communica- tion stated that Dr. Felton was seeking to injure the State road and he could not therefore support Felton ! ! When Dr. Felton read aloud the letter to the audience in the presence of Mr. Thrailkill, and told how the Canton politicians had sought to make capital of my "Wool Hat" communication, it created a sensation. Mr. Thrailkill said Col. Brown had sent him the letter to sign and claim as his (Thrailkill 's) own, and there was a blank spot left for the signature. Mr. Thrailkill gave the letter to Dr. Felton as a memento of the campaign and I kept it because of the memories of that terrible era, when our opponents were merciless and mendacious in their attacks on me. On Friday night before the election (on Tuesday) Dr. Felton had driven in from Roswell, Cobb county, to Marietta (Judge Lester's home) to board the W. & A. Railroad train, to reach Cartersville. After he had taken his seat in the cars a Lester crowd gathered about the train, where they begun to howl and yell like wild savages. Some of them entered the car and used all sorts of insulting language to Dr. Felton, such as "damned old hospital rat," "Wool Hat," "Jeans Britches" — and as many epithets as they could find in a vocabulary of vulgarity and profanity. As he sat near a win- dow a friend came in and asked him to get out in the middle of the car, as the ruffians were none to good to hurl a stone at his head. Not a man belonging to that train crew attempted to rebuke this ruffianism — and although he had paid his fare 200 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics for a seat, he was left to the mercy of those ruffians until the train pulled out. A telegram came next day asking me to go to Marietta on Monday, where Dr. Felton was to speak. We were met at the depot by an immense crowd, a carriage drawn by four white horses, and they drove us all around, even in front of Judge Lester's office, as a stinging rebuke to the dastardly persons who met the train on the previous Friday night. The court house was packed to the utmost ; the outside was crowded with angry men, who resented the attack made on Dr. Felton by men of no character, and who thus befouled the good name of the town and county, and I was able to measure up the situation with some degree of accuracy. On the night of the election day, when Dr. Felton came home about ten o'clock and reported his remarkable victory in Cobb county, I became satisfied that ruffianism is a poor weapon in politics. His friends had one room in the Car- tersville depot. Judge Lester's friends another, and the tele- graph office was in reach and in hearing of both parties for reading out telegrams. Among the first returns (after Bartow had been heard from) came from Marietta. It was announced that Felton had carried nearly every precinct in Cobb county, and, although there was a deal of ruffianism at the polls in Marietta, Judge Lester was beaten by nearly three hundred majority — while Felton 's majority in Bartow was nearly 1,700. (The official majority in Cobb was 271). One of Dr. Felton 's bitterest foes exclaimed, "D — n a candidate that can't carry his own county," and he departed. To remember that he had spent money, lost friends, made enemies in his own town and to no purpose, was doubtless exasperating. I watched for Cherokee's vote, where "Wool Hat" had cut no inconsiderable figure. Felton 's official vote was 1,530, and Lester's 792 — in Judge Brown's county and where Jas. 0. Dowda was a voter. Where we were so well advertised as "frauds" and "Radicals," it was astonishing that the vote should speak in thunder tones against such plans and practices as had been used to defeat us; and I say it, solemnly, to destroy us. I must not forget to mention the great barbecues thet were My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 201 given by the Lesterites and Feltonites in the town of Carters- ville just before the canvass closed. The Lester barbecue was spread in a grove, opposite the home of Col. L. N. Trammell's brother, and General Gordon was the star performer on that day. The disorder was tremendous. One Lesterite family had, with scores of others, prepared a magnificent basket of dainties — iced cake, etc., etc. "When she found she could not save it from the vandals in a better way, she sat down in it. General Gordon heaped upon Dr. Felton the most violent vituperation and as he was serving in the senate, his denunciation v/as ac- cepted as truthful by Felton 's foes. All over Bartow county did he travel and declaim to break down Dr. Felton among his neighbors and church members. Fresh from "Washington City, where he had lately voted against the Thurman funding bill, and where he was known as Huntington's "man" and as you will later see, claimed as ''his man" by Huntington, he traversed the Seventh district to defeat an honest repre- sentative who had voted against Huntington, and whom Hunt- ington desired should be displaced. At the Felton barbecue the best of order prevailed. A pro- cession of fifty of the truest citizens of the district marched through town wearing white "Wool Hats," and labeled "Mrs. Felton 's "Wool Hat Boys." The face of the earth was working with men from all over the district. Crowds came on trains, thousands in vehicles — camping over night. A friend in At- lanta sent me a large goods box full of stick candy. I selected a shaded place, took a seat and handed out candy, as long as a package was left in the box. I got up at daylight to feed the people in our house, packed my barbecue baskets, went to the barbecue grounds — on the east side of town — stayed there until everything was complete and over with, drove home at sundown with a splitting headache, but all the same satisfied that politics is an exciting game — well worked. Judge Simmons and the Holtzclaw candidacy will be ex- plained later. 202 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics THE FRAUDULENT BONDS OF GEORGIA. It was in the summer of 1885, that the question of paying the discredited bonds was agitated in the newspapers of New York and Georgia. There has never been any cessation of the determination of interested persons — lawyers and others — to force payment, whenever a legislature can be used or con- trolled into opening the question, or when a governor can be elected who will do what Governor Matthews did in the time of the "Yazoo Fraud," namely, throw all his influence to- wards the nefarious scheme. We owned and edited the Car- tersville Courant (1885) and I made the agitation a subject of editorial comment. I mentioned the name of Judge John I. Hall, of Griffin, and sent him a marked copy of the paper — July 2, 1885. Here is his reply: "Griffin, Ga., July 4, 1885. "Dr. and Mrs. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga. "Dear Sir and Madam: I received last night a marked copy of your paper of July 2, 1885, containing on extract from the New York World, which contains statements credited to Mr. Kneeland and Mr. Clews, touching the conduct of the bond committee while in New York and your comments thereon, for which I thank you. I never saw the statement of Clews and Kneeland until I read your paper last night. I see from the newspapers that Clews, Bullock and Judge Lochrane have made a great many mis-statements about the conduct of the state in ignoring the fraudulent bonds, and I concluded to call attention to some of their gross mis-statements, especially to Clews' statement that he was an innocent purchaser of some of these bonds, and to the statement of Bullock that the bonds were regularly and legally issued and no fraud was practiced on the state, but my professional engagements have prevented me from giving the matter any attention up to this time. I agree with you, that the time has arrived for the surviving members of the 'bond committee' to speak. I shall confer with Judge Simmons and we will be heard from. The state- ment made by Kneeland is absolutely false. "The statement made by Clews that we reported the testi- raoney of himself and Frost unlike it was given to us, is utterly untrue. In due time it will be stated just how the examina- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 203 tion of Mr. Clews was made, how he tried subsequently to alter his testimony, how he was not permitted to do so — but was permitted to make any additional or explanatory state- ment he desired. Every line of the testimony was taken down just as the witness gave it, and all the testimony was reported by the committee and is now on file in the office of the secre- tary of state. "When the committee made the report and con- sidered the matter of printing, it was found that a volume of several hundred pages would be required to cover all the evidence taken, and as a greater portion of the evidence did not bear upon the issue involved, we printed only so much of the evidence as was pertinent to that issue. But the entire evidence was made a part of the report, it is so stated in the printed report and is now in the office of the secretary of state. Every word of the testimony that is in any wise re- ferred to the issue involved — the fraudulent issue of the bonds of the state — was embodied in the printed report. Please send me your paper for one year. I am, Yours truly, "JOHN I. HALL." In the spring of 1886, the Macon Telegraph published the following editorial — during the Bacon-Gordon campaign. I will state also, by way of parenthesis, that I never saw the forthcoming article mentioned by Judge Hall, and which he and Judge Simmons were to sign, as the surviving members of the bond committee. I knew nothing absolutely of Judge Hall, but I did know that Judge Simmons had defended Colonel Trammell in the Cartersville newspapers. New Light On the Campaign. Macon Telegraph, Friday Morning, June 4, 1886. The Telegraph is in receipt of the following letter. It should be read by every .citizen of the state, as having a direct bear- ing upon the probable object of the present campaign. The author and the gentleman he quotes are responsible and fear- less men : "Americus, June 2, 1886. "Editors Telegraph: A prominent and reliable citizen was at the election in Dooly county yesterday in the interest of Hon. C. F. Crisp. From him I learn the following facts in regard to said election, some of which may be of interest to you: 204 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics "Rev. Mr. Harrison, of Snow, Dooly county, was on the grounds all day actively canvassing for Gordon and won him many votes. He showed a letter to many there, signed by H. W. Grady, of Atlanta, ordering him to have all carriages necessary to carry voters to the polls and to send bill to him for payment. The gentlemen I refer to, read this letter. Mr. Harrison also exhibited two wall hooks which he told the crowd were to be used to hang Bacon on. * * * The gen- tleman also heard from the following prominent citizens that when Gordon visited Dooly on May 11th, he made the follow- ing statement openly there, to-wit: 'That when Georgia re- pudiated the Bullock bonds, he didn't feel satisfied that the state had done right, and had seen no reason since to change his mind. Also that holders of these bonds approached him and offered to sign a check for any amount that he (Gordon) might name if he would lobby the legislature in the interest of their bonds.' The gentlemen, my informant says, heard Gor- don make this statement were Dr. S. B. Stovall, Dr. C. T. Stovall, Col. John Holmes McDonald, Heard, Hamilton and others." "We ask the citizens of Georgia to read this letter and ponder upon it. Gordon says that when Georgia repudiated the Bul- lock bonds, he didn't feel satisfied that the state had done right, and had seen no reason since to change his mind. The question naturally arises, would General Gordon as governor stand between the people and corrupt politicians when Clew's crowd of bondholders make their final effort to override the state? Some day not far distant a new constitutional conven- tion will be called in Georgia. Under the manipulation of just such men as Gordon there is going on now an intermingling of parties and elements that will change the complexion of our assemblies in the near future. There are many millions locked up in those bonds, and many millions more in the hands of the holders to back an effort to force payment upon them. That money is being used now. Georgia's good name is con- stantly assailed in the north by a subsidized press, and her credit in the money markets by agents of Clews & Co. Re- cently the courts of New York were invoked to this end. Have Clews & Co. invested money in this Georgia campaign? Whence comes the funds to hire all the horses and carriages in close counties to carry voters to the polls? Does anybody believe that the Atlanta Constitution is footing these bills? Is General Gordon acting in behalf of Clews & Co.? These are questions that will be asked in all sections today. The friends of General Gordon are estopped from declaring that he could nut be approached upon such a subject, by his own admissions. He is charged with saying, that "holders of My Memoirs of Georgla. Politics 205 these bonds approached him and offered to sign a check for any amount that he might name if he would only lobby the legislature in the interest of the bonds." It is not on record that General Gordon knocked down the man who made this proposition. He does not appear to be indignant over it. Has General Gordon reconsidered his refusal? It was declared time and again that Hon. A. H. Stephens was pressed by ex-Governor Bullock and the bondholders, after he had snubbed the Independents and went over, bag and baggage, to Senators Brown and Colquitt. If he had lived to control a legislature, it is more than probable that we should have heard more about the bonds. General Gordon's advent made it plain that somebody was flinging out a bag of money, and suspicion turned towards the fraudulent bonds. I attributed the influx of money to Mr, C. P. Huntington, but others connected Clews & Company with a part of it. The statement made by the Telegraph (and so far as I know, never denied or questioned) indicates enough to warrant a reasonable suspicion. I was anxious to hear from Judge Hall and Judge Simmons, and I wish I could have seen their defense of themselves in print. On June 5, 1887, I furnished to the Macon Telegraph an article on these repudiated bonds. In the same issue the editor thus speaks of it: "Shall Georgia Pay Those Repudiated Bonds?" Under the above caption we publish an article today from one of the most gifted writers and purest patriots in Georgia. Its appearance is timely. There are indications that an effort will be made before the legislature at the coming session to re-open the question of paying the repudiated bonds. This question was settled by the legislature after thorough investigation, upon the sworn testimony of witnesses as yet unimpeached. That question, as outlined by "Tax-Payer," shows that for downright, unblushing villainy, the transac- tions through which these bonds were put afloat stand without a parallel in the history of the state. The lapse of time has softened the feelings of hate and bitterness with which the people of Georgia once regarded the principal actors in this great crime. It is with regret that we recur again to those days, when she was bound hand and foot, and when aliens and adventurers, assisted by some of her traitorous sons, were in league with each other for the 206 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics purpose of robbing her of her credit after they had bank- rupted her treasury. If any of them have since repented of the crimes they then committed against her and are desirous of her prosperity and concerned for her welfare and honor, they should have taken care that the effort to perpetrate a steal, which was defeated fifteen years ago, should not have been renewed at this time. As they have mistaken the patience of a people who have been mocked by the immunity from justice which has some- how been vouchsafed to them, they need not expect, in view of renewed effort to rob the treasury, that any quarter will be shown them. "Tax-Payer" cites a condition of things, developed by the sworn testimony of respectable witnesses, that should have sent to the penitentiary the men who were engaged in pro- moting a great crime. They have the unblushing effrontery now to bring forward a scheme through which the stale is to be asked to sanction an effort to rob her. We do not believe that a single member of the legislature will be found to offer resolution or bill for this purpose. If such should be the case, the contempt and indignation of a patient and long-suifering people should be exhausted to make the name of such an one odious forever. And may we not address a word to the legal profession? How many lawyers of character would be found in this state to carry before the people, as a matter of right and without fee or reward, the proposition to pay these bonds? Does the honorable profession of law justify the advocacy of a cause as an attorney which the private citizen would scorn to favor? Has the profession degenerated to such an extent that its members feel themselves absolved from the obligations every honorable man in all other professions and vocations ac- knowledges as due to his state? The people of Georgia should hold to just accountability all men in public or private station who lend themselves to this infamous scheme. The constitution forbids it. Should Georgia Pay Those Repudiated Bonds? — What the Present Agitation Means. Macon Telegraph, June 5, 1887. Editor Telegraph: From the signs and symptoms that mark the present situation, it is very clear that the time has now come, in the opinion of those who are interested, to force the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ' 207 payment of those Bullock bonds which were repudiated after Governor Bullock fled the state with the serious apprehen- sion in his mind that an outraged public was at that time ready and willing to bring his acts as governor into judgment and punish him. Many years have elapsed since Thos. J. Sim- mons, John I. Hall and Garnett McMillan published to the world the methods by which those bonds were endeavored to be pushed on the state of Georgia and to deplete the state treasury, merely to enrich certain persons who fattened f.n the "rich drippings" and official stealage just after the war — under legislative chicanery and corruption. It would jippear also that public opinion has been so often set at naught lately, and desperate schemes and schemers have so often carried out their plans over public protest and public honesty, that these schemers have settled upon the present time to force the pay- ment of a so-called debt which the constitution of Georgia, ten years afterwards, denounced as fraudulent and unlawful. It is a sad commentary on our condition as a state when such schemes tear away the mask and assault the taxpayers boldly like highwaymen or the foot-pads of earlier periods, de- termined to get this money by fair means or foul, sooner or later. There are pamphlets being distributed to members of the legislature at this writing which show both the audacity and the animus of the scheme. Now, let us get certain facts before the public which will clear away some of the debris which is being piled about the subject (merely to obstruct and confuse) by these paid agents of the enemies of Georgia, who contemplate this speedy raid on the treasury. In the year 1871, on December 9, the house of representa- tives and the senate passed an act over the governor's veto, authorizing a full investigation on the subject before us. Twenty-five senators against ten repudiated his excellency, and the vote in the house stood 117 to 20, much more than the necessary two-thirds. Thomas J. Simmons, John I. Hull and Garnett McMillan were appointed the committee, and they met in the room of the speaker of the house of representatives on March 1, 1872, and they uncovered a sink-hole of corruption. They found one hundred and ninety-four bonds of the Alabama and Chattanooga railroad of one thousand dollars each, num- bered from 1,007 to 1,200, inclusive. J. F. Clapp, who owned No. 1,007, swore that this bond bore the signature of Bullock, governor, and Eugene Davis, secretary of the executive de- partment, but neither the seal of the state nor the signature of the secretary of state. Jacob Skillman held bond No. 1,008, indorsed the same way. Theodore Salters held No. 1,009, in- 208 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics dorsed the same way. H. A. Johnson owned one hundred and sixty-four of them which were hypothecated to the New York Warehouse and Security Company, in aid of the Alabama and Chattanooga railroad, all without lawful signatures. J. S. Peterson swore that he was in the office of H. I. Kimball & Co., in New York, and saw Governor Bullock indorse two hun- dred and forty thousand dollars of bonds of the Bainbridge, Cuthbert and Columbus railroad, assisted in putting on the seal of the company, afterwards delivered to E. N. Kimball. Bullock was a habitue of Kimball 's New Y^ork office and mani- fested great interest in Kimball's negotiations. Frink, on ac- countant of Kimball's, says Kimball sent to New York a large amount of bonds in August, 1871, when the road was only graded fifty miles and no iron laid. William M. Tumlin, a contractor for the Bainbridge, Cuth- bert and Columbus road, swore that he was satisfied that the board of directors never authorized Kimball to issue any such bonds. Kimball borrowed money from Pierce, Kidd & Co., of New York, and deposited these bonds as collateral. These bonds were signed by Bullock, but lacked the seal of the state and the signature of the secretary of state, and these bonds were never signed by the secretary of state. Bullock was then making ready to go on a big jamboree to California, and no doubt needed money to make it. The Brunswick and Albany railroad had some noted lobbyists to push it along, and Bullock put out $3,300,000 gold bonds on this scheme, numbers 1 to 1,880, inclusive. The railroad had already sixty-five miles completed before the war, and on the first of May, 1871, less than one hundred miles had been built. Kimball was president, his father-in- law chief manager of construction, and his nephew was super- intendent. Cook & Kimball declared their intention to cheapen the work to increase their profits, and they did it. lu May, 1871, there were no station houses or depots on the line. Col. John Screven, of Savannah, testified that he believed $20,000 per mile to be ample to construct it. He was receiver of the road, and found three millions of debts against it. Now, where did all the money go? Foster Blodgett's son swore that his father lobbied it, and Kimball's office Avas on the floor of the house, and that Kimball was there bossing the job. Foster Blodgett received $15,000 of the bonds from Kimball as lobby pay. Who will dare say that such money should be paid again? Roland B. Hall, a member of the legislature from Glynn, swore that he held $6,000 of the Brunswick and Albany rail- road stock, presented to him by one of the contractors. An- other witness swore he got seven. Oliver T. Lyon, one of the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 209 contractors, swore that his company worked from Warcsboro to Albany, the work amounting to $140,000, of which they got in money fifty or sixty thousand dollars, and as much in supplies, and the company then owed them $30,000. When they got to the nineteenth mile post, Henry Clews had in his possession bonds to pay for 110 miles. A witness swore that he threatened to expose the fraud, when the chief en- gineer told him it "would break things up." Bullock sent the following to Clews in New York, June 6, 1871, when only 140 miles of track were laid, according to sworn testimony of contractors : "Henry Clews & Co., 32 Wall street, New York: State engineer on Brunswick and Albany railroad reports 213 miles graded, 183 ironed, a force of 3,000 men at work, and says the road will be completed to Eufaula early in October. Revenue of state last year, $1,635,765 ; increase of taxable property over last year of $20,000,000 ; increase revenue from Western and Atlantic Railroad, $235,000. (Signed) "RUFUS B. BULLOCK." The state engineer swore he made no such report, or any other report at the time mentioned. Witness showed this telegram to Lochrane, Clew's attorney, proving it to be un- true. Lochrane said: "Let it alone; make no fuss. Bullock is gone and it would make no difference now ! " The civil engineer employed by the road swore that only one hundred and forty miles were completed on June 16, 1871, ten days after Bullock's deceitful telegram (?) to Clews. R. A. Crawford, one of the accredited attorneys now pushing the bonds on the legislature, swore that W. L. Avery, a contractor, told him Bullock was paid one hundred thousand dollars for indorsing the bonds of the company. Avery told him he was on the train passing out of Atlanta, when Pond, Bullock's secretary, delivered the bonds, and Bullock was standing on the veranda of the National Hotel, to watch Pond and see the delivery of the bonds. Finney, who drew the money in New York to pay out to contractors in Brunswick, warned Clews that he was in danger and to be careful in dealing witli these parties — that they were irresponsible. Clews said he would take care of himself. Witness saw a dispatch to Kimball, stating the road had been finished to a certain mile post, when it lacked seven miles of it. Now Clews is asking care from the state. James T. Blain, director of the Brunswick and Albany rail- road, swore that no money was paid in by stockholders as investment — just speculation. B. Y. Sage, chief engiueer of the Air Line Railroad, swore thusly: "After the passage of the bill granting aid to this road, and pending and before the 210 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics signing of it, Bullock said to witness 'if there is anything to be made out of it that he (witness) might count upon Bullock being in, and he (Bullock) was on the make, that he thought if there was anything to be made out of it, it should be divided among friends.' " Now, Mr. Editor, I wish you to weigh these words well for the benefit of your readers, and tell us what duty does the State of Georgia owe to such a scheme as this, except to scorn it, to spit upon it, and to repudiate it forever? Haven't Bul- lock's friends enjoyed enough of our money? Clias. L. Frost, an honorable gentleman, who is upon record as to the char- acter of the men Avho entrapped Georgia into this gigantic swindle for pay, swore that Bullock was quite willing to deliver eight hundred thousand dollars of gold bonds v/ithout regard to number, but he refused to take them exceDt in a legal way, and as the work called for them. But Kimball pro- cured the bonds in this illegal way, and far in advance of the work, Kimball still holding the second mortgage bonds, and innocent purchasers who should have been granted an ex- change of these gold bonds were denied them. Kimball re- fused to settle with Frost, and Frost held back certain bonds issued by the railroad, whereupon Kimball issued duplicates ; which were not signed or indorsed, fortunately — Kimball hav- ing to fly before the scheme was set up and perfected owing to his speedy flight from avenging justice. Time would fail me, and space would fail you, to rehearse more of the testimony at this writing, but I ask space to copy a few lines from the report signed by Messrs. Simmons, Hall and McMillan: "If these roads are good paying roads and of amazing benefit to the state, that is claimed by the bondholders, every one of them will get his pay from the company, independent of the state's guaranty. If this talk about paying roads and developing our resources be true, the bonds are perfectly good without the help of the state, so there is no room for complaint. But how is it if, on the con- trary, they are not paying roads, are of no account, built only for speculation and plunder, if resources simply mean money, and develop to steal, if the indorsement overthrew both the constitutional and statutory safeguards of the state's credit? '-'We submit to the world's impartial judgment the bond- holder's complaint, that the state refuses to be bound by an unlawful guaranty, the bond being good without the guaranty, and the road, both liable and able to pay it, is not half so well grounded as would be the state's complaint, and the complaint of its citizens, if forced to bear a burden imposed in violation of the positive prohibiting of the law," etc. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 211 *'I entered not into this covenant," is the language of the State. "It is not my deed," is her complete defense. There is no latitude or choice ; we act under an imperious necessity — the necessity of an oath. ' Some are in this matter in whom is found no guile. Their 's is misfortune Avithout blame. The rest are not so. When politically prostrate, wrecked in fortune and citizenship, the wretched remnant of our substance devoured by greedy beasts and birds flung in upon us in the wake of war, under color of the laws of the land to make complete our disaster and deso- lation, cheated of a voice in selecting our law-givers, dis- honest partisan registrars — men, nine hundred miles away, met in unholy conclave, were drafting laws to load us and our children with debt, and pushing them through a bastard legis- lature by the infernal force of gold. Thus bound hand and foot we were stoned by the money changers, whilst these gamblers in the stock market who call themselves innocent purchasers, stood by and held the raiment of them that slew us. He, who in an evil hour ordains an ungodly chalice for his fellow, must not murmur if to his own lips the bitter cup be pressed by the avenging fate of a better day." It would take about eight millions to satisfy this stoning crowd and the money changers of New York who have turned a swarm of their agents loose on us, whose pay is contingent on the recovering of this money. The State has to be run down by a pirate crew who are to loot the treasury for their pay. The poor South, standing at the door of Congress, willing to accept the Blair bill with its marked humiliations to us, and our confession of our ignorance, yet these men are be- leaguering the Legislature already with documents and paid- for arguments that will draw eight millions of dollars from the labor of this country without the least return for the loss if they succeed. "Honesty" is the battle cry of these men. They, like Uriah Heep, are painfully honest, if not humble — but like whited sepulchers, their inside intentions are "full of rottenness and dead men's bones." Oh, ye hypocrite?! By the grace of God, who is long-suffering and the incapacity and timidity of our people generally, these men now vegetate out- side prison limits, but woe ! to the man — the Georgian — who dares to rise in the next Georgia legislature and ask the setting aside of the verdict of an outraged people, who forever de- clared these repudiated bonds of Bullock and Kimball to be illegal and fraudulent in the highest constitutional law. These bonds were conceived in corruption of the deepest dye. They debauched some of the chosen sons of a noble old state, who betrayed Georgia for thirty pieces of silver, and it seems that the slime of the serpent attaches to every poor creature who 212 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics allows the tempter to approach him. Banish the whole thing, whenever it crawls into the state capital by a decisive vote. Settle the matter by forbidding its discussion, and pray God, when the legislature is able to get away from Kimball's old opera house into a building untainted with his and Bullock's devious methods, that the new building may never know of either, by sight or by sound. TAX PA^^ER. It was lobby work, done for the Brunswick and Albany Railroad bonds, around which the campaign in 1874 in the Seventh district centered. It was a subject about which I thought I knew something — and what I did not know of per- sonally, the report of the bond committee could tell me. I have the old report now, which verifies every statement made. Some years later, I was waked up out at our country home about midnight by a knock at the front door. We were in- stantly aroused and alarmed, expecting perhaps serious tid- ings. M}^ mother was away, and in her eighties, and my mind turned to her. The Atlanta Journal had sent its reporter to get some facts from my scrap-book. Mention had been made of Frost's suppressed testimony in the day before 's paper, and Colonel Trammell demanded retraction. A search at the capitol failed to find the printed report of the bond committee — so the reporter came to our house to find the story and its connection with what was said or reported. I threw on a wrapper, put on my slippers and we hauled out the scrap-books from their usual place of storage. The reporter wrote while I read aloud to him. Before the day dawn he was gone to catch the 5 o'clock train at Cartcrsville. The full text was printed that afternoon. My scrap-book of 1874 related what Colonel Trammell said at Rome, in a public speech; the scrap-book of 1878 furnished a letter from Frost, which I will append in this article. The Journal had its bout with Mr. Trammell, as before related. I took it up in the Macon Telegraph during 1887, when Judge Simmons' name was offered as supreme court judge, before whom the question of the fraudulent bonds would go if he secured the election. It seemed to me that we wore not only providing ourselves with a governor who informed the public he was approached and offered a blank check, which he might fill up to his own desire if he would lobby thf* legis- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 213 lature in the interest of these bonds, but we were placing a judge on the bench who apologized for omitting the part taken by Colonel Trammell before the legislature in Bullock's time, although Frost says the committee, of which Judge Simmons was chairman, took down that part of the testimony and not only omitted it, but the chairman was decidedly opposed to receiving it when Frost gave it. Frost's testimony, as told by Frost in his open letter, printed in 1878, exposed Simmons as a political partizan beyond the shadow of a doubt. If the majority of the committee had been like Simmons, the bond- holders might have laughed poor old tax-ridden Georgia to scorn. The situation was growing tense. If a majority of the supreme court and also the governor were on the bondholders' side, our defeat would be inevitable and irretrievable. So I went into the Macon Telegraph again over the non-de- plume of Veritas. I had all the data, all the reports — and our judiciary was known to be not above political considerations. Our railroad commissioners were also appointed by our gov- ernors. The appointment of Colonel Trammell was harshly criticised not only in Georgia but in outside newspapers to the office of railroad commissioner, because of his confess'^d rela- tions with the Brunswick and Albany Railroad. It seemed that Georgia was poor as to official timber when we were compelled to take as officials persons who were compelled to defend themselves before the newspapers, if not before the people. It was understood all over Georgia, early in 1886, that Judge Simmons was the candidate selected to oppose Major Bacon, for the office of governor. Political judges, to most people, were as obnoxious as political railroad commissioners. It seemed a marvelous coincidence that the candidate who was recognized as the gubernatorial choice of the triumvirate should, for a time, hold on to his superior court judgeship, neglecting his duty while he carried on electioneering tours for governor — and still occupy the bench while doing so, but that was nothing compared to our disgust after his sudden subsidance as gubernatorial candidate created, and ho made his mad rush for the supreme bench. When the judicial ermine emerges from the slime of such 214 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics politics, it is obliged to show stain ; and when people lose con- fidence in their judges and are made to suffer from partizan politics in trials of their court cases, civil liberty has about retired and monopolistic tyranny has usurped its pedestal. I was only a woman, but I determined to do my best to wake up the people to their danger. Nancy Hart could pull a trig- ger and defend her people against Tories — and I obtained my husband's consent and his backing for the venture. So I sailed in and wrote the following — and it reads like I expected and intended it should read, and it is true as well as good today : Shall the Judicial Ermine be Draggled In the Slough of Politics? Editor Telegraph: "Since the memory of man runneth not" to the contrary, the bench has been regarded as the seat of justice, and the ermine and emblem of purity of character. A judge is yet but a man, and to fill this high and responsible office, when elevated to the bench, he should be removed, and should remove himself from even necessary participation in affairs or questions before the people, which tend to heated discussions, rivalries, envyings, hatreds and combinations to raise up one and put down another; and when a judge uses his ofBce to obtain other and more remunerative positions for himself, it goes without saying, he disgraces his calling. To make a man a judge of the supreme court of Georgia is a serious and responsible task. The legislature should look into the fitness, character and antecedents of the applicants. This your correspondent proposes to assist, with certain of- ficial facts within reach, which pertain to the claims and character of one of the avowed candidates, namely, Hon. T. J. Simmons, of Macon, Georgia. Before beginning this task it is well to keep in mind that the constitution of the state of Georgia makes lobbying a penal offense. The legislators who formed the constitutional con- vention of 1877 and formulated our highest code of laws were forced to do this because the State of Georgia had been out- rageously debauched ever since the war by such hirelings, who took pay to press claims through the legislature to the state's injury. The law may be a virtual dead letter, because of the low standard of public opinion, but it stands in full force unrepealed in our state constitution. A judge who blinks and winks at lobbying, is not a judge to be relied upon. A man who, as a sworn committeeman, used his official an- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 215 thority to manipulate or suppress testimony to shield others, which testimony was sworn to by witnesses and paid for by the state, is too unreliable for the supreme bench of Georgia. This was done by Hon. T. J. Simmons in the year 1872. He v/as appointed in the year 1871 as chairman of a committee to investigate the fraudulent bonds of Georgia. For 115 days he drew pay from the state treasury, at $10 per day, to do this work, amounting to a total of $1,150. There was also paid $10 per diem to John I. Hall and Garnett McMillan. T. J. Simmons remained ten days longer in New York than the other members of the committee, and received additional pay. His expenses to and fro were $168. Alton Angier, clerk, was paid $953 and Chess B. Howard received $1,000 as messenger. There was, th'^refore, no hindrance as to full investigation. Col. Thomas L. Snead, a commissioner for Georgia, heard cer- tain New York witnesses who swore to their testimony before him. Among them was the president of the Brunswick and Albany railroad, who handled the gold bonds of the state in making the exchange, ordered by the law, authorizing the issue of such gold bonds. Charles L. Frost was president, and Henry Clews vice president, and both were sworn by the com- mittee as witnesses. This testimony was brought to Georgia, and when it was sent to John W. Burke & Co., state printers, a paragraph in Frost's testimony was marked around and the following, reported to be written by Simmons, was marked on the original "in pencil": "Take this out in copying." "Take this out." The words in the omitted paragraph are these (there is in writer's possession an official copy, impressed with the seal of the state of Georgia) : "When I was in Georgia making this exchange four gentlemen called at my room, two of them I understood were Mr. Trammells. They notified me that they had a claim on Kimball for forty-six thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars for services rendered in getting through the legislature the act of 17th of October, 1870, and that I should not leave the state with these gold bonds until I settled their claim. I replied, I had nothing to do with them — never having employed them, and I would have nothing to do with it. I told them at the time if they could satisfy me that they had a claim on the company for their services I would have it settled. Before I left I turned over to H. I. Kimball, as one of the contractors, sixty-five second mortgage bonds, numbers from 1001 to 1065, inclusive, which he used to pay these men either by hypothecation, exchange or otherwise." This was found in the secretary of state's office, and was copied by D. G. Cotting and the seal of the state put on it. Kimball testifies he paid to W. T. Trammell, of Griffin, the 216 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics value of sixty-five one-thousand second mortgage bonds, "ex- changed the bonds and settled the claims held by Mr. Tram- mell." He furnished such statement in an open letter written to J. W. Wofford, Joel C. Fain and J. E. Shumate, bearing date October 2, 1874. To clinch it, he swore to the statement before John Milledge, Jr., N. P., Fulton county, Georgia. He distinctly states in this published letter, now before me, that Frost was shown a list of the drafts held by Trammel! and "expressed himself fully satisfied that these claims were just and legitimate and ordered their payment." Now, the question arises, why did T. J. Simmons suppress it? What was his motive? I can give you his version and his reasons, and I can then give you Frost's version and Frost's conclusions, and the public may decide. The letter signed by Hon. T. J. Simmons was given to the public in the fall of 1878, and was written from Macon, Ga., December 21, 1877, to B. E. Green, of Dalton, Georgia. "Dear Sir: You ask 'why Frost's testimony was suppressed in the published report?' We did not publish it for several reasons. First, it was not taken before the committee. It was a voluntary statement made and written by Frost in his office and handed to a member of the committee. Second, we did not believe it true when he handed it to us. Third, wlien the matter was brought to Colonel Trammell's attention by the committee he showed us the written contract, which proved Frost to be a liar, as I believed he was at first. Fourth, his testimony had no bearing at all upon the question we were investigating. * * * (Signed) "T. J. SIMMONS." Every word that Frost swore to before Thos. L. Snead, com- missioner of Georgia, on April 26, 1872, was printed in the report but this omitted paragraph. Why did Simmons leave out this particular paragraph and print the rest? "False in one, false in all." No matter what the individual belief might have been, they received his testimony and there was a legal and proper way to prove its falsity if it could be proven by Colonel Trammell or others. Next, Colonel Trammell seemed to be making up the report instead of the committee, and in the face of Frost's testimony and Kimball's affidavit, pray where does Mr. Sim- mons stand? But, said the partisan committee who after- ward investigated the "suppression" — this paragraph "did not illustrate the issue and was needless expense to the state." Count up for yourself the cost of putting those few lines in type. Why did it not illustrate these fraudulent bonds? But My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 217 it may be said W. T. Trammell is not L. N. Trammell. Grant the fact — nobody claimed he was, and it was not W. T. Trammell who denied receiving the $47,500 — for which the 65 gold bonds were hypothecated to raise that amount for H. I. Kimball. Col. L. N. Trammell made a speech in Rome on September 10, 1874, which was reported in the Rome Com- mercial of September 11, 1874, in which he said: "I took a fee and would do it again. The contract was made with Colonel Avery, (another contractor). The contract is dated November 9, 1869, and I became a legislator first Wednesday in November, 1871. I received as fee $2,500 in cash — $2,500 in paid-up stock as first payment, and $2,500 cash as second payment." Avery settled his contract with L. N. Trammell, it seems, and Frost swears he turned over to Kimball "sixty-five one thousand dollar gold bonds to pay two Mr. Trammells and two others." Kimball swears he paid it to W. T. Trammell, of Griffin. The bond report shows that Frost exchanged these gold bonds after October 17, 1870, the time the bill which authorized the issue of these bonds became a law. Comment is needless! Were there two contracts? The Trammells' con- nection with the matter in question has the effect of illustrat- ing Frost's letter, which follows, and if Frost correctly diagnosed the situation, it will appear that Simmons had more interest in the matter than appeared on the surface, when he interposed his friendly aid to screen his friend. Governor Bullock, in a late published letter, intimates that Judge Sim- mons would give a different verdict, if he had now to in- vestigate fraudulent bonds. Doubtless he would. The public will discover for itself, if he becomes the party before whom such legal trial is ever had. Is the state of Georgia so poor in legal talent that she has no candidate who is popular enough to defeat this man? Keep the judiciary pure. Mark his ad- herents when the vote is recorded ! VERITAS. THE GOLD RING. A Letter From Charles L. Frost, Giving What He Knows About It. New York, September 20, 1878. — To the Free Press: Your paper, sent to me by a friend, contains a letter from Mr. T. J. Simmons, dated December 21, 1877, in which I am villitied for my testimony before the bond committee of the Georgia legis- lature in 1872. Simmons was a member of that committee. I gave my testimony at the request of its members, supposing that they 218 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics were gentlemen, and not suspecting that either of them, under the mask of civility, was seeking the occasion to wrong me, and I stated the facts truly, as bound to do in honor and conscience. In conversation with one of them I mentioned the appro- priation of certain bonds for the benefit of Mr. Trammell and others. He said that the information was important, and de- sired me to incorporate it in my testimony, which I did. When the testimony was printed for the use of the legislature, that part of it was mysteriously left out. Simmons now says that the omission was in part caused by communication betv/een Trammell and the committee. If Simmons tells the truth, the committee, after taking my testimony on that subject, brought the matter to the attention of Trammell, and took some sort of a counter statement from him. And yet he goes on to say that the testimony has no bearing on the question under in- vestigation. Then why did the committee ask for my testi- mony? Why did the committee call on Mr. Trammell? The act of the legislature of the 9th of December instructed the committee to ascertain: "For what purpose the bonds were negotiated and all other facts connected with the history of said bonds, and to report the same to the general assembly at the next session." The member from Macon most assuredly did his duty under the act when he desired me to give particulars of Trammell 's connection with the issue of said bonds. Mr. Simmons was decidedly opposed to my evidence in the matter, but be was overruled by the majority of the committee, one of whom appeared to be acting under the advice of Mr. Toombs, the attorney of the committee. I thought the committee knew their own business and would not call on me or anyone else for information not pertinent to their commission. It did not occur to me that the great state of Georgia would have en- trusted any of its concerns to such blockheads as Simmons now represents himself and his colleagues to have been. I might answer Simmons' scurrilous imputations on my veracity by retorting on him in similar vile language. But to abuse a man behind my back and a safe distance from him is not my style. That mode of attack I will leave to Simmons. He had enough opportunity in 1872 to abuse me to my face, or rather to attempt it. But he showed no disposition to treat me with disrespect then. What motives, personal or political, have since debased his manners, I will not now undertake to say. I was identified with the Brunswick and Albany railroad, having been led by citizens of Georgia to believe that the en- terprise would be beneficial to the state and profitable to in- My IMemoirs of Georgia Politics 219 vestors. The latter expectation has not been realized. I hope that the former has. I cannot believe the prominent men of the state approve of the policy of obtaining other men's money for public improvements and then refusing to comply with contracts made under the broad seal of the state and then calumniating them for telling the truth when inter- rogated. I do not concern myself in the feuds of Georgia politicians. My connection with the Brunswick and Albany railroad brought me into contact with many of them. Some of them seemed to be actuated by an honest regard for the public welfare. Others of them, both high and low degree, displayed a greediness for money to which I have seen no parallel in a somewhat long life and varied experience. If I were to make public all that I know and all that I have learned from credit- able sources, it would add a striking chapter to the history of human covetousness. But I do not know that this information would do the world any good, and it might increase the heat of your political brawls, which are already hot enough, and I forbear. Mr. H. I. Kimball, the contractor, who secured Trammell's and others' services to secure the Democratic votes to carry the bill in the legislature for additional aid to the Brunswick and Albany road in the shape of exchanging the road's second mortgages for gold bonds of the state, appears to have a very defective memory in attempts to "whitewash" them. I am surprised that so good a Christian as Brother Kimball should make the attempt to "whip the devil around the stump." Does that gentleman forget that he told me at his office that he had made a full settlement with Trammell, and that "I could now leave the state alive." And that he told me of Mr. Trammell having made a divide of the funds with eight of his comrades and that "Peace now reigned in Warsaw?" If it should leak out that Simmons was one of the, eight, would it not reasonably account for Mr. Simmons' conduct in having my testimony suppressed as "immaterial" before the legislature and for his vile abuse of me? Echo answers, "Who knows?" Your obedient servant, CHARLES L. FROST. When the bond report was laid before the Georgia legisla- ture this suppression was concealed, but these were some hints, innuendoes, etc. They became noisy enough to compel an in- vestigation before the legislature of 1872, and a committee was appointed, consisting of W. D. Anderson, William J. Head, and Henry J. Lang. I had no personal acquaintance with 220 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics Messrs. Head or Lang, but Mr. Anderson was one of the party of politicians who came out to our home in 1874, endeavoring to persuade Dr. Felton to come down and allow a new man to run the race for congress, with he and Mr. Tramm- 246 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics absolutely thirty millions of money — to be paid by the State. The Western and Atlantic rialroad, which had been run economically with $360,000 profit to the State, per annum, paid in only $45,000, with an accumulated debt of $700,000 in one year. After that year I understand the whole profit was absorbed. These are the bonds that R. B. Bullock professes to have paid by the tax-payers of Georgia — and as he had but one method, as governor, according to B. Y. Sage, I am au- thorized to say he is again "on the make," with less re- sponsibility. A word more on the Opera House affair, that Governor Gordon explained so clearly in his testimony — a business in which both Bullock and Kimball could be seen at the same time. I understand Mr. Bullock was arrested in New York State and brought to Atlanta to stand a trial, as to the dis- appearance of a certain certificate connected with the pur- chase of the Opera House by the State. He kept an indefinite supply of bonds printed (it is reported some sixteen hundred thousand went into the hands of Clews & Co.) a cart-load of blanks went into the court house, when Treasurer John Jones' case was being tried — so the manipulation of a certificate was a small affair to him, but the State made a test case of it and, if I am correctly informed, he was indicted for the theft of such a certificate, committed by himself or some one au- thorized by him, as a partner. The very character of the alleged theft made it impossible to convict, which result ap- peared to be as gratifying to the ex-governor's partners in the nefarious business as to himself. When a certain national investigation was before the forty- fourth congress and certain well-known men were kept In durance vile, because they had refused to answer questions — the Democratic investigating committee made a report in theise words: "Knavery and corruption abound, but when we un- cover one rotten Republican we find two rotten Democrats under him." Just so in that Bullock trial, and to save their scalps, the court couldn't prove a single thing by any of the ' ' gang ' ' and no other sort of people were ' ' behind the scenes. ' ' But the testimony still remains, although Rufus B. Bullock, away in Rhode Island, shakes his fist at the tax-payers of Georgia and boasts of a trial which was both a farce and a tragedy to the people who had been robbed without mercy- - and afterwards taunted in the words of Boss Tweed, "What are you going to do about it?" When Kimball sold the Opera House it was covered with a mortgage of sixty thousand dollars, with interest. Kimball proposed to protect the State in that matter. He deposited My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 247 with Governor Bullock a certificate given by the city council of Atlanta, showing that the State was entitled to bonds of the city to the amount of one hundred and thirty housand dollars. The certificate and the bonds were to be held by the gov- ernor until said mortgage was paid — nor was the certificate or the bonds to be delivered to Kimball until the mortgage was removed. Kimball gave the following receipt, which was re- turned to the committee from the executive office. Office H. I. KIMBALL. "Atlanta, Ga., August 25, 1870. "Received of City Council of Atlanta, thirty thousand dol- lars of bonds, which they have contracted to give the State in part payment for the capitol building. (Signed) "H. L KIMBALL." (Copy of the certificate issued by City Council to the State of Georgia.) STATE OF GEORGIA— City of Atlanta. To all Whom it May Concern : The mayor and council of the city of Atlanta hereby certify that there is due from said mayor and council to the State of Georgia the seven per cent, twenty-year bonds of said city to the amount of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, which said bonds, said mayor and council propose to contribute to- wards the purchase, by the State of Kimball's Opera House property — which said proposition has been accepted and the purchase made — said bonds to be delivered to the holder of this certificate upon the return thereof. This is done in obedience to an ordinance of the city council, this 23rd Au- gust, 1870. WM. EZZARD, Mayor. S. B. LOVE, Clerk. Anthony Murphy swears he was member of city council; was present at meeting in Bullock's office. The city was to pay $130,000. Kimball was to return to the city nineteen thousand dollars in bonds, which had been issued for rent. Volny Dunning testified the same way. Perino Brown sworn : E. N. Kimball went to Brown, in December, 1870, and asked for the one hundred thousand dollars in bonds which had been prepared. Witness paid $75,000 in bonds, which Kimball took and left the certificate, which had been given to the State. Witness delivered the remaining $25,000 to E. N. Kimball. A. L. Harris, S. A. Darnell, J. R. Parrott, G. P. Burnett, all testified that Bullock was exceedingly active in getting the Opera House sold to the State. When the bonds came to light, they were in Henry Clews' hands — Kimball sold them later through Clews. The committee who investigated the whole 248 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics affair express the opinion that Bullock was a party to the fraud. He was known to be the author of the instrument signed by Kimball. This certificate belonged to the State — Bullock received it as the State's representative. The city made a private agreement with Kimball — and Bullock par- ticipated in it, to be able to deceive the legislature and defraud the city. After he took the certificate he passed it into the hands of Kimball. All the bonds passed to Kimball, and as well as the security held by the State. Bullock joined hands with Kimball to plunder and defraud. The committee further says : ' ' This is but a step in the monstrous fraud. Under the contract of purchase, Kimball was to return to the city $54,500 of currency, which had been drawn from the treasury without authority of law, and the governor was ordered to hold bonds to secure the State this amount of money." Instead of doing this he delivered the whole amount to Kimball, leaving the $54,500 due to the State unpaid. The State has been robbed in the transaction of $125,000." They regard Governor Bullock's conduct in this transaction as that of "thief and robber," who as if by "force and stealth," has taken from the vaults of the public treasury that amount of money. Honest men showed where the money went, but dishonest men would not swear to Bullock's injury — and the trial fell through by reason of treason and dishonesty. Perhaps the same crowd are interested in the fraudulent bonds. Who knows? In conclusion, I desire to sound a warning note to patriotic Georgians. It has been seen that Rufus B. Bullock has neither sense of shame, or patriotism. He appears to be utterly im- pervious to the instincts of a man of honor. I am told ho was an early applicant for position under President Harrison — while he was enough of a Democrat to illuminate for President Cleveland in Atlanta. I have no idea of affecting his mind or heart by this recital of the wrongs Georgia has received at his hands. He is moving heaven and earth to get those fraudulent bonds paid — and he will do as he did in the Opera House swindle, betray the State, if it is necessary to accomplish that end. To talk of trying such cases before the courts would be like laying down the fence to let the herd ravage your fields. Bullock was tried by the courts, and he had "pals" enough to shield him from the chaingang, although there can be no earthly doubt that he delivered over that certificate to betray the State. Beginning with the bonds and going down to the end or his dynasty, there can be no question that more villainy was crowded into those three years than was possible under a less My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 249 adroit trickster. He is welcome to flourish in society, if society can stomach his record, but I trust the State of Georgia will keep his nimble fingers out of her treasury, after such a dear-bought experience. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. General Robert Toombs There can be no question as to who was the greatest man in Georgia before the war. When he was United States senator no man in the Union was his superior in ability or intellect — if he had an equal. Knowing Hon. A. H. Stephens' familiarity with dis- tinguished men before the war, as well as later, I at one time asked him to tell me who was, in his opinion, the ablest man in the United States — the best equipped man in national politics? His answer I shall never forget: "Taking him all in all, his wonderful mind, his magnificent appearance, his acquaintance with public questions, his masterful oratory and his courage, not omitting his dignity, I will say to you that I believe the greatest man I ever knew in these United States was Hon. Robert Toombs — a son of Georgia." He then proceeded to tell me of General Toombs in his prime — how he looked in the senate when the abolition movt^ ment pitted its greatest orators and legislators against him — his independence and massive statesmanship. He had much to say of his wonderful face in the heat of debate — a very giant in controversy. I was not acquainted personally with General Toombs until he was aged, infirm, and declining to the end. His last public work was in framing the Constitution of 1877. He was the guiding spirit of the convention. When it was finished some- body congratulated him on his work. It is reported that he said: "I've locked the treasury door, and flung the key away." I have some personal memoirs of General Toombs that may appear in another volume, but his last letter or pub- lished article that I preserved in my scrap-book was written to some of Dr. Felton's supporters in the campaign with Judge Lester, in 1878. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 251 The Rome Tribune. Regnant Populi. Rome, Ga., October 2, 1878. B, F. Sawyer, J. Lindsay Johnson, Editors. For Congress, Hon. Wm. H. Felton, Of Bartow County. GEN. ROBERT TOOMBS. His Letter to the Democratic Rally at Adairsville — a Patriotic Letter from the Grand Old Georgian. Washington, Ga., Sept. 20, 1878. Messrs. J. M. Veach, A. C. Trimble and John E. Morgan, Com- mittee : I duly received your very kind invitation to address a public meeting of the people of Adairsville tomorrow, and I intended to have done so, but I am compelled to forego that duty from providential cause. It is time that the people should inquire into the causes of the widespread poverty, demoralization, crime and misery which now cover the whole land; it is the duty of every good citizen to aid in this investigation, and in the discovery and application of the proper remedy for these calamities. In my opinion these evils are mainly, and in many cases exclusively the results of bad government, to corrupt rulers using its vast powers, legitimate and usurped, for the benefit of the few and to the ruin of the many. The collective body of the people, and they alone, can apply the remedy. All the powers of government belong to them. Legitimate govern- ment ought to be, and is nothing but the organization of the public force for the benefit of all, ''that rights may be re- spected and justice may be done." All the blood and all the treasure of each and of all the members of every State are dedi- cated, yea, consecrated by the social contract to these purposes, and to no other whatsoever. Hence the necessary powers of government are but few, co-extensive with these duties, no more. To protect society from foreign invasion and internal violence, to administer justice between man and man, to pre- vent one citizen from injuring another in any manner what- ever, and then to protect each and all in the full and complete enjoyment of all their natural rights, are legitimate objects of good government. To these ends all the public force and all proDerty of the people necessary to these ends may be legitimately applied. Within this great dividing line between 253 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics individual rights and public authority, governments may safely travel, beyond that is disputed ground, doubtful, dangerous, "where fools madly rush but wisdom fears to tread." These principles have been the political landmarks of the friends of liberty in all the historic ages, and especially of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, and notably of the fathers of the grand old Republican, now called the Democratic party. The old Federal, now called the Republican party, always op- posed these just and beneficent principles. In order to get rid of them, it incorporated in its organization all those who wished to use the government treasury and the labor of all the people for their own private interest, and to promote their private pursuits by means of protection, tariffs, navigation laws, in- ternal improvements, subsidies of public money, grants of pub- lic lands, free mails, money corporations, monopolies of all sorts, and all those who had belonged to dead and dispersed political organizations, of every name and purpose, and by the aid of all these together with additional aid and comfort in the shape of men and money from European despotisms, made war upon the defenders of sound principles of government, overthrew the Constitution of the United States and of the several States, and substituted force and fraud for the will of the people and the organic law. This party must be de- stroyed. It is the first greatest work to be done by the Demo- cratic party. The next is to purge itself of those who now in the waning fortunes of the Radical party claim to be Demo- crats, yet who participated in the crimes of the Radicals and shared with them in the public plunder. To do this the Demo- cratic party must revert practices of their fathers, re-assert them, reproclaim them, yes organize to sustain and preserve them; make them the test and touchstone of the political soundness of all who seek fellowship with its organization; then the great work will have begun ; then it will be more than half finished. These great principles of the Democratic party have not been altered, amended or repealed by the result of the war. They are not to be found in the Greeley-Baltimore plat- form; not to be found in the St. Louis-Tilden platform; not usually to be found in the national. State, district or county convention platform. Since the Democratic party was be- trayed to Greeley and his co-workers in iniquity at Baltimore in 1872, by those hungry camp followers of the party who had despaired of any other way to reach the national treasury than by a coalition with their enemies and the abandonment of their principles, not to be found among the supporters of national banks; not to be found among the supporters or pro- tectors of that most gigantic fraud that ever disgraced the annals of any age or country, Huntington's Pacific Railroad; My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 253 nor are they to be found among the supporters of any mo- nopoly whatever, anywhere or for any purpose. Next to the radical party, the railroad corporations of the United States, and corporations generally, are the greatest of all enemies of liberty and justice, and of the people ; the most inexorable op- pressors of labor and spoiliators of the industries of the coun- try. Democratic principles demand that they shall bear all public burthens equally with the people ; that their tolls and tariffs shall be regulated by law; that they shall be under the government of the law, or their franchises should be resumed by the State. I have said that the Democratic party should "organize" to effect these great purposes. I repeat it. Whenever men have common grievances or common principles co-operation is both easy, natural and necessary. Among the lawful instru- mentalities which may be used to secure that co-operation or united action, may be included party conventions. In all cases of disagreement as to proper agents to represent those of "like faith and order" in a public office, it is always proper and most generally highly useful for the friends of different candi- dates to meet together formally or informally, consult together, compare information as to the qualifications availability and fitness of their respective friends and to recommend some can- didate to the support of the people. But such meetings, to avoid greater danger than party discord, must be simply ad~ visory. Whenever they seek to make their actions authorative, binding upon the party then they become usurpers, then they tend to destroy free elections, they seek to seize the ballot box with no legal securities against fraudulent votes, none against fraudulent elections, none against fraudulent returns. They, in effect, deprive the people of a free election, and this action is scarcely less reprehensible when it is sought to be accom- plished by party prescription, than if it were sought to be done by law. Such conventions are not only wrong, but hurt- ful to sound principles and honest candidates. It opens the door to all kinds of frauds and all other evil practices in the selection of delegates. But there remains one unanswerable objection to this class of party conventions. All experience teaches us that but a very small portion of the people attend them, and such as do attend them are not such as have any special claims to guide, direct or control, the non-attending electors. Therefore, remit these conventions back to their original status. Their recommendations are sufficiently powerful with the people, let their action be fairly open to the approval or rejection of the people at a legal election without any improper influence to control their free action. There is another impor- 254 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics tant point in this connection which should be considered by the people. No judge of the Superior Court of ths State should be elected to any political office while he occupies his seat on the bench. However honest such judge might be, his position necessarily impairs the freedom of elections. He has great power over the lives, liberty, property and happiness of large numbers of the people. This power will effect and is calculated to effect the action of many of them, and hereby tends to lessen, perhaps destroy the purity of the ballot box, the best safeguard of the people. In your present contest I am in favor of the election of Dr. William H. Felton. The evidence that he is the choice of the people of the dis- trict is stronger than that offered in favor of any other person. They have twice elected him, the last time by a largely in- creased majority, over an able, honest and popular citizen. In my opinion his election would strengthen the cause of popular rights, vindicate the integrity of the ballot box, and tend to the re-establishment of sound Democratic principles and prac- tices in the administration of the Federal government. His honesty, capacity and fidelity to the trusts confided to him by his constituents are not only unquestioned, but are above sus- picion. He is neither a lobbyist, a pap-sucker, nor an expert in the wicked artifices and contrivances of stifling and defeating the public will by means of skillfully contrived party tactics. His loyalty to his country and fidelity to the Democratic party does not seem to be questioned by that large and respectable body of party leaders who seem to have undertaken the task of relieving the people of the Seventh district of the onerous burthen of electing their own representative after the manner of their fathers. My greatest objection to him and his Demo- cratic colleagues has been and is that they have too closely followed the National Democratic party at the expense of Democratic principles. But this objection does not lie in the mouths of his opponents, who only seem to be seeking the nearest road to the national exchequer. The controlling objec- tion of these excellent gentlemen seems to be that Dr. Felton accepts a seat in Congerss from the people, carries out their supposed wishes, co-operates with the party in all of its meas- ures; "casts out devils" in their name, but "he don't follow us," and therefore "they forbid him" for this reason alone. "The head and front of his offending hath this extent and nothing more." Perhaps I do these gentlemen injustice by underating their fears of independent candidates. Whatever may be the dan- gers from this source in other localities, and under a different state of parties, they do not exist in the Seventh district. There their apprehensions and woes are but the "fears of the brave My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 255 and follies of the wise." Courage, my friends, there is real comfort and consolation in the arithmetic of the question. In the Tilden and Hayes election in 1876, the candidate of the Democratic party received in this district 19,402 votes, Hayes received but 5,157 votes, Tilden 's majority 14,245 votes, or more than enough votes to divide equally among these Demo- crats and giving each a sound majority over a Radical candi- date. Besides the accredited organs of the Ringgold convention stoutly assert with all the appearance of candor that Felton has been twice elected by Republican votes and that Republicans now have a respectable candidate of their own, who will unite the vote of his party. If this be true, Felton 's election is im- possible and his respectable opponents should dismiss their fears and woes and be happy, but alas ! they are not happy — Felton 'Svill not follow us." I am, very respectfully. Your obedient servant, ROBERT TOOMBS. GEN. TOOMBS' LETTER. We publish the one Gen. Toombs has written to the Demo- cratic voters of the seventh district. He declares himself for Felton. He explains with force and eloquence that no man that holds the position of judge in any court should run for an office. This fact explains the great weakness of Judge Les- ter. He does not believe he can be elected or else he would resign his circuit judgship. He wants an office and salary to fall back on when Felton beats him out of hearing. Judge Lester may be of the most honorable class ; yet he has been of "doubtful associations." We use Senator B. H. Hill's ex- pression. The papers opposed to Congressman Felton try to belittle his wife for the noble advocacy of her husband against oppression and wrong accusation. The souls of Georgians re- volt against such sneers against womankind, and are resolved to rebuke it, and they will do it by electing Felton. Gen. Toombs also has a number of observations which apply to this district. He regards conventions as only advisory. The appeal to the people is the last resort, and they will decide right. Men, because they are called leaders, have no right to dictate, and the voters will rebel against them. There has been too much of the attempted arbitrary dictation under the plea of conventional authority, and he shows how few en- gage in county meetings. He advocates Dr. Felton in the seventh district because the people have clearly shown they prefer him. It is equally manifest in this district where both, or a majority of the convention and people prefer Harris to 256 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics either of the gentlemen in the field. Harris, like Felton, re- fuses to obey the decision of the leaders; he won't follow them, and Gen. Toombs applauds any one who will not. His letter is worth reading. Succinctly he gives utterance to great constitutional principles. — Columbus Enquirer. TOOMBS ON CHRISTIANITY. Several months ago Mr. R. J. Loyal, of this city, who was then residing in Macon, addressed a letter to General Robert Toombs. Mr. Loyal 's letter related to religious matters, and diew From the general the following reply, which will be read witli interest : Washington, Ga., 12th December, 1884— Mr. R. J. Loyal, 101 Cherry street, Macon, Ga. — My dear Friend: I received yours of oOth of November last with great pleasure and intended to make an immediate reply, but I have not been well a day since its receipt. Independent of my loss of sight, almost total now, I am severely afflicted, and my nephew, who is writing this letter for me, is so indisposed that I am unable to write all I intended. I have had the settled conviction from youth that the Christian religion was true, and that it was the duty of every man to pray to God daily and to His Son, Jesus Christ, for forgive- ness of sins. I feel an absolute conviction that all of God's creatures who will truly repent of their sins and pray for for- giveness will be pardoned and secure eternal happiness. I think I have felt — I know I have felt this truth, especially in the last year. I have always had the greatest confidence in your integrity and in your friendship for me, and I intended to have gone farther in the interesting questions submitted by you, but my health will not permit this morning. As soon as my health will permit me to resume it, I will write you a fuller letter. You write me that you have been a long time engaged, which I knew, in retailing spiritous liquors, and you ask my opinion as to whether it is sinful. I do not think that of itself it is sinful, but I would advise you to get some other occupation as soon as you can find one to support your family. The Lord's prayer, which I have always considered the duty of every man to repeat daily, which has been enjoined upon the whole human race, requires us to pray to God continuously to "lead us not into temptation, but to deliver us from evil." I send you a little tract upon the subject of seeking religion. I send it by express this morning. It is the clearest exposition of the subject I have ever seen. Be sure to read the introduc- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 257 tion by the Rev. Edwin Payson Hammond. The book is en- titled ''The Blood of Christ," by the Rev. Wm. Reed, M. A. It removes all mysteries from the true road of regeneration and has given me more light and consolation than anything t have ever read — not even excepting the Bible itself. May God bless you, friend, and strengthen you to continue in your present course. Let me hear from you, especially if you have received my letter and pamphlet. I am very truly your friend, R. TOOMBS. Gov. Colquitt and the Kirkwood Ring The first time I ever shook hands with Governor Colquitt was in my own yard at home. He was canvassing for the governor's place in 1876, and was on his way to Pine Log, in Bartow county, where he expected to make a speech and his vehicle had had an accident and he was waiting for its return from Cartersville, which took place in half an hour, perhaps. He declined to come in doors, so I went out to the front gate and was introduced by Dr. Felton. He was very affable (can- didates are generally so), and as he was in Bartow county, where my husband had received nearly 1,500 majority in 1874, he jollied us with some flattering words about that remarkable campaign. Turning to me he said: ''How did you stand it, Mrs. Felton? I replied, "Just as you are standing it right now. I guess you are doing exactly what I did putting in all your soul, strength and money trying to get elected ! ' ' We were both Methodists — he preached and I didn't — but I had the kindest of feeling for Gov. Colquitt at that time. He had not appeared in the seventh district to beat us down un- mercifully as did Governor James Milton Smith and Gen. Gor- don. I thought he was a better man than General Gordon, who made a ferocious attack at Rome, Ga., against Dr. Felton in the presence of both ladies and gentlemen just before the election in 1874, and as Dr. Felton had no opportunity to reply Floyd county was lost under that hailstorm of vituperation led by the Confederate fife and drum. Of all the people promi- nent in Georgia-Bourbonism at that time, I had most respect for Alfred H. Colquitt. I believed him to be what he claimed to be, a perfectly honest politician, because he posed as an up- right Christian gentleman. Tens of thousands of Georgians felt just as I did. His Christian character was his bulwark. He was deemed incapable of political dishonesty. Dr. Felton voted for him for governor and also proposed to allow every voter to put the name of the candidate for Congress in that district on the back of Colquitt's tickets and he would abide the result and leave the race if Col. Dabney obtained the ma- My Memoirs op^ Georgia Politics 259 jority in this way. A fairer proposition was never offered anywhere and I am glad to know that it came from my hus- band in the heat and fury of a terribly hot political campaign and gives indisputable evidence of his loyalty to upright poli- tical principles and his fealty to Southern honor, as we then called it. Of course the proposition was declined. Although the or- ganized had absolute control in ten counties of the district made and managed the ballot boxes and so far as they dared to do so, they counted in or counted out in these elections, still they refused. I state these facts to show that Dr. Felton had no unfriendly feeling to Gov. Colquitt. The Southern Insur- ance Company burst and left a bad odor, but Governor Col- quitt was, as we believed, domineered over by Gen. Gordon in this swindle and as vice-presidents never count, we laid the blame where it apparently belonged on the president of the company. Gen. Gordon. We did not know at that time that the convict lease had one "silent partner," although it was un- derstood that his excellency Jim Smith was in it up to his eye- brows with his Brother-in-Law Brown, in front of him. Col. Bob Alston informed me definitely that Gov. Colquitt was with Gen. Gordon (like Bullock with Kimball), a sharer in what was carried on by convict leasing. When the Alston and Garlington fee got into the newspapers it was openly charged ''u various newspapers that these two politicians were security on some notes in the bank and that the money recovered from Congress and allowed to Alston, went that way. Somebody said that Col. Alston confessed he did not have a dollar the week afterwards. The newspaper controversy over that "Con- tested Fee" was the the first thing that was known as to the agility and unscrupulousness of the ' ' Kirkwood Ring. ' ' — so far as outsiders were informed concerning pecuniary affairs in and around the State capitol in Atlanta. There was a considerable rippet about a "Direct Trade" organization and I have some of the published literature on the subject, but the author of the published charges withdrew them and said he was misled and so far as he could do so, he vindicated the reputation of Governor Colquitt in this partic- 260 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics nlar matter. If they had been confirmed, the result would have been convincing as well as disastrous to the governor. We knew a good deal about the "Contested Fee," because Dr. Felton was a member of the Georgia delegation during the 44th Congress, and voted for the Georgia claim as did the others and I well recollect his stare of astonishment when he read of the result in Atlanta papers. I said to him: "Did Alston and Garlington lobby you?" "I never knew they had the slightest interest in the claim. This must be a fake pub- lication," was his reply. According to A. W. Reese, in the Macon Telegraph, "Bob Alston talked at the rate of a hundred words to the minute," but he did not talk the Georgia claim in our presence. He did appear at one time and asked Dr. Felton if he would be one of ten or one of twenty to contribute $200 each to relieve ' ' Gen. Gordon's financial strait;" at one period of his congressional life and when I heard of the request I could hardly hold myself down, but no mention of the claim of Messrs. Alston or Gar- lington was made known to us until it was published in At- lanta newspapers and then the money had been paid out to these lobbyists. It did not take me long to understand that somebody's friends were on the make in Georgia's State capitol. Various evidences were given that Gov. Smith had been easy with his partisans in the same way, although he made furious outcry over the signing of Northeastern Railway bonds when he testified before Gov. Colquitt's whitewashing committee on the subject. I have some newspaper defenses of Gov. Col- quitt in my scrapbook, one notable one which appeared in the Monroe Advertiser, in which it is boldly stated that '"The par- ties paying Mr, Murphy to assist in procuring their rights have done no more than hundreds of other people have done." It was, however, heretofore done in secret and being secretly done it escaped the attention of the plain common people, but it suddenly appeared that the easy way to procure prompt guber- natorial action was to employ some pimp or State house clerk or some lawyers without clients and the thing was done. The Atlanta Constitution boldly stated that Bullock was paid $5,000 by Grant and Alexander to secure a convict lease. Hugh Haralson said in my presence that "Renfro paid $2,000 for My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 261 > two State offices under Colquitt" and that he would have been provided for if he "had done what Colquitt wanted him to do." I published Haralson's complaint thirty-odd years ago, and nobody felt called upon to deny it. It appeared in the Cartersville Free Press where I had access to the columns. The Alston and Garlington fee, and the Murphy fee were iden- tically the same sort of things save in dramatis persona. From all that could be gathered in and out of Atlanta, it was a sys- tem organized and carried on for public plunder. Men of very common character made big fortunes. Shifty lawyers were paid large fees out of all proportion to the services rendered and some of the men who were notorious in various ways still had influence sufficient to be elevated into some of the best paying federal positions in Georgia. It speaks loudly for the cowardice of the honest men of that time that they did not unite and in mass meeting assembled relate these things and lead a revolt! For the sake of the young men of Georgia, who know but little of the history of their own State since the war, I will explain the "Big Claim," which was pushed through at the last hour of the final session of the forty-fourth congress. I get my facts from the Atlanta Constitution, which were printed immediately after the claim went through. Bullock employed Baugh and Garlington to prosecute the claim. After Gordon was elected to the senate. Governor Smith gave the weight of his administration to it and the bill Avas sent to Gordon. In the meantime Colonel Alston got in — as he usually did — with General Gordon, and the three attorneys pressed the claim upon General Burnside, the chairman of the claims committee. The claim consisted of two leading items^first, for $100,000 worth of old railroad iron, and, second, for certain rolling stock, locomotives, etc., claimed as belonging to Georgia's State railroad. Tennessee had settled in a similar way and the resolution asked that Georgia might get pay also. In all, the bill called for $200,000. Now I will allow Governor Brown, who knew all about the business, to give you the facts — and the governor's letter ap- peared in the Atlanta Constitution on April 15, 1877. He was 262 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics replying to an article signed "Truth," one of General Gor- don's superserviceable scribes. Said he: "Those who know Alston's standing cannot account for his positive control over Gordon. 'Truth' brings in the $200,000, which Gordon has about obtained from the United States for Georgia. A dispatch published in your paper says 'Alston, as a lobbyist, engineered that bill through in a day or two. It was put down as a remarkable feat, that he went on and took charge of it, in a few hours carried it through one house — carried it right over, passed it through the senate, sent it to the president, who signed it in a very brief period. Now tell us the truth, really. Who put it through congress? Was it Alston, or was it Gordon? You seem to give all the credit to Gordon. Is the feat due to him? Now, Mr. Truth, will you please tell us where Senator Norwood, Ben Hill, Candler, Dr. Felton and the other six Georgia representatives were ? What were they doing when Gordon put this measure through Con- gress ? "It is reported that Alston and other lobbyists and certain attorneys are to have 25 per cent, of that money. In other words, they are to 'relieve our tax-payers' of $50,000 of it, for their services in the matter. If Gordon did it, upon what ground can the governor be justified in paying over the peo- ple's money to certain parties be justified? If Gordon did it, the lobbyists didn't do it. Tell us the whole truth about it. What horn of the dilemma do you rest upon — the Alston horn or the Gordon horn? As Mr. Truth has thought proper to adopt his present line and to bring General Gordon before the country in the usual puffing style of his flatterers ; I may feel it my duty to have more regard to candor than to flattery." Immediately there appeared in the Constitution a letter asking the following questions: "From your valuable paper we learn that a fee of some $30,000 to $50,000 has been paid to some worthy citizens for recovering a claim for the State Road, amounting to $190,000. The street rumor is that this fee or the greater part has been paid — and not on a warrant. Why pay out $50,000 to parties to perform this duty if our con- gressional representatives are efficient?" The answer was: "We understand that Governor Colquitt has paid $30,000 in fees to Colonel Alston and General Gar- lington. It was paid on a contract on file in the executive office. If the fees were paid without a warrant, we presume it was paid because they were paid out of the original sum — and then the net amount was covered into the treasury. ' ' 1 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 263 That was the way the story went. It was also stated that Gov. Colquitt hurried to Washington to get t he check and he paid it before anybody but himself, Gordon and the lobbyists knew anything about it in Georgia. Then he turned over the remainder to Treasurer Renfro, who never saw the govern- ment 's check at all. It was not expected that the public should know anything of the particulars, but they came out by reason of Governor Brown's insistence. Governor Smith thereupon appeared in print— to justify himself in regard to his executive conduct in regard to the contract, and it also came out that Chief Justice Jackson had some chat with Governor Colquitt about giving part of the blame to his predecessor. Smith; and Jackson wrote an article in which he declared that he visited Colquitt in his office ''the very day the money was ordered to be paid." Colquitt was determined on his course, for he so told me in course of his conversation. I felt anxious that he should make no mistake, as his enemies would take advantage of it, etc. I then asked : "Are you sure you are well grounded in what you are doing, etc., and what does Governor Smith say about it?" (Signed) JAMES JACKSON. More of this affair will appear in connection with the sign- ing of the North Eastern Railroad bonds, but it is entirely proper for me to state in this connection that Governor Col- quitt then and there earned the title and wore it continually affixed to his name, namely, "Weak Governor Colquitt." It is patent that there would have been no paying of this claim money to these lobbyists if it had been supposed that a legislative review of the case would have ended in approval. It is also patent that Alston was as close to General Gordon as "Wes" Murphy to Colquitt. They were on the make, and knew how to make it. The Constitution probed into the mat- ter very thoroughly, and reported thusly: "Col. J. W. War- ren, the governor's private secretary, confirmed what the treasurer had said, namely, that Col. R. A. Alston and Gen. A. C. Garlington each received $15,000 — and still another person was to be paid the same amount and he will also receive $15,000, and Mr. Warren said: "The money was paid out of the check collected by the governor, which check had not been 264 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics turned over formally to the state. Col. Henry R. Jackson was interested likewise and Colonel Baugh had made some sort of a contract with Colonel Fain, of Gordon county." To travel through the dreary waste of oiScial jobbery in Georgia, any well-informed observer will be amazed to see how often the names of the same people do turn up in the managing politics of the so-called Kirkwood Ring. Governor Colquitt, while making his last race for governor, broke up the State Convention and concluded his can- didacy by running independent against ex-Senator Norwood. Although the negroes went for him solidly under the direction of hired negro preachers, still his friends were whooping and yelling against The Independent — Felton. The governor knew he was unwelcome to the genuine Democrats of the state, in that canvass, but he determined to get his pay, so to speak, for giving the senatorship to Gov. Joe Brown. Gen. A. R. Lawton, of Savannah, made a speech at Market Hill, in Augusta, in which he said : "There was one man and one man only during the conven- tion who by one word could have brought peace to that con- vention. That man was Alfred H. Colquitt. Did he do it? Not at all. If he had done so, the people would have said, 'Well, Mr. Colquitt may have done something wrong, but in- deed he has a patriotic heart, and let us cast the veil of oblivion over his mistakes. ' But did he do it ? No. Whatever he may . be in private life, and I make no charges, but A. H. Colquitt either wasn't a patriot at the time or he didn't have enougli intelligence to understand a patriot's duty. "In 1877 the Constitutional Convention declared that a man who had been governor four years should not be governor again until he has been out four years. The reason of that was that they might have the right to investigate all the acts of the administration. The people of Georgia had served a rule ni si upon A. H. Colquitt to show cause why he should again be elected. What was it that prevented the nomination of U. S. Grant, but the precedents against the third term? There was nothing in the Constitution to prevent it, but the precedents were against the third term. The rule had never been violated but once in Georgia, and that by a man now in Atlanta wield- ing a magician's wand in favor of A. H. Colquitt. "Some in the Constitutional Convention were in favor of making the term two years apply at that time to the then Gov- ernor Colquitt. Was it true that no scandals had arisen during My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 265 the administration of Colquitt? Is it true that no impeach- ment of officers were necessary? Was it true that his services were so valuable the people of Georgia couldn't do without them? Is it true, in order to defend himself, he had been ob- liged to make charges against that venerable man who had been chief justice, whose ermine was never smirched but who had protected the judiciary in the most troublous times? An ardent supporter of the governor in the capitol at Atlanta probably in the hearing of the governor, this orator said: 'Joseph E. Brown was the greatest man Georgia ever made,' and went on to praise him lavishly. He supposed this was acceptable to the governor, who, in a few days, transferred him from the stump to the supreme bench. The governor's organ said nineteen respectable lawyers had applied for the place. He wanted them to understand he was not one of them. He had never applied for any office under Colquitt or anybody else. The organ said it would have embarrassed the governor to have appointed any one of these, so he appointed Judge Hawkins. That appointment of Joe Brown that Hawkins gave him such credit for, was that a good one? Did he appoint a man so well known that the people of Georgia repudiated him?" What did General Gordon say — was Governor Colquitt's rea- son for appointing Gov. Brown. In the Atlanta Opera House, June 4th, 1880, he thus delivered himself: "What did Gov. Colquitt see to guide him to a conclusion which his enemies now seek to use to his detriment ? He saw the strongest Demo- cratic districts in the State lost to the Democratic party. He saw in a third the same fate seriously threatened. He saw in a fourth Hammond, able and eloquent, elected after a most laborious struggle. He saw the party upon whose supremacy seems to depend all that is valuable to us as a people appar- ently on the verge of dissolution. He saw the friends and life- long followers of Gov. Brown among the hardy yeomany of the mountains dissatisfied and ready to break with the organi- zation and he felt that he might thus recall them to their allegi- ance, etc." There are others still to speak in these pages, but if there was ever a greater mess of "rot" put forth to deceive the people of Georgia this scribe has never seen it. The people in the hills — the yeomany — were Republicans then, they are Republicans today. They followed Brown as a Republican — they forsook him as a Democrat. Hammond's election over Reuben Arnold was, as I was told, a clean cut count out, except 266 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics in Pulton county, where Arnold won with hands down in spite of the convict ring triumvirate. When Garfield was running for president the same year he sketched out a plan for his campaign dated August 30, 1880, in which he laid great stress on the necessity for making In- diana the battle ground. Dorsey furnished some extracts from the plan. Garfield said "All the plans require the employ- ment of men and much money. The work has been started and must be pushed to success." It was "much money" in Indiana and it was ' ' much money ' ' in Georgia. Gov. Brown had ' ' much money" and he was ready to "shell down the corn" to be elected to the Senate and "much money" will state the con- dition and explain the situation and nothing else will do it. For a great many years I have been satisfied that the Pacific railroads were after Southern Congressmen. There was no stint of Pacific lobby money, and I had a hint that Mr. Grady, who was as poor as a church mouse a few years previously was able to buy one-fourth interest in the Atlanta Constitution at one snap, about the time that the se9,t in the Senate was va- cated and filled between dark and daylight. He was publicly charged with getting the money out of Victor Newcomb, but he appeared over his own signature in a card relieving Mr. Newcomb of the onus. Mr. Cyrus Field was questioned and whimsically repudiated it, but Mr. Huntington, who bought legislatures and newspapers, elected Congressmen at home and placed Senators on his committees in the United States Senate with daring effrontery, had any amount of money to hand over for what he wanted to buy. I'll wager a good d^al if it was necessary to do so that Huntington's "man" and Huntington's money cut a wide swath in Georgia politics in 1880, and if Pacific railroad bribe money was powerful in Washington City, it was not weak or unstinted in ring-ridden Georgia! And in the fog of explanations and the multiplicity of reasons given by Gen. Gordon for handing over to Senator Brown the seat in the Senate there is no one reason, no one arrangement which will fit in and dovetail so cleverly as that unknown "friend on the Pacific" whose name was not given. I desire that Gov. James Milton Smith shall say a few words at this time. He "quit speaking" to both Colquitt and Gor My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 267 don when they failed to aid him in his race for the Senate in January, 1877, but he spoke out in public after Gov. Brown was planted in the coveted position in 1880. His speech was delivered in the Columbus Opera House, and he was introduced by Col. Blandford and the house was full and crowded. He said: ''The people of the South have looked to the Democratic party for honest government. With a divided party it is im- possible this high mission shall be performed. Who was to blame for the failure to nominate a candidate in the late con- vention? It is the duty of the people to discuss this question thoroughly and settle it fa:rly. Either Colquitt of the so- called majority, or Norwood of the minority is to blame. Those who are to blame should be unconditionally retired to private life by the action of the people. To answer this ques- tion, I must call your attention to some of the official acts of Governor Colquitt. The people of Georgia can not soon forget the startling effect produced upon the public by the announce- ment that General Gordon had resigned his seat in the United States Senate. All the circumstances attending this act were calculated to excite curiosity and provoke inquiry in the public mind as to the cause for it. It lacked but a few days of the expiration of Congress. * * * j^ should be borne in mind that the office which General Gordon held belonged to the people of Georgia. He was not a trustee therein for the benefit of his State and people. The same remarks apply with equal force to the conduct of Governor Colquitt. He is to exercise his powers as chief magistrate for the people, not for himself. How did General Gordon and Governor Colquitt meet the public inquiry in reference to the matter referred to ? Did General Gordon say in response to inquiries, simply and kindly to the people of Georgia, that his circumstances were such that he could no longer serve them in the high position of United States Senator? Did he inform them that it was after having sought a re-election to that high office and when his family expense was as great as at the time of his resignation, he suddenly found it necessary to retire from the position? The people had a right to know why it was he so suddenly resigned and clandestinely. It became the duty of Governor Colquitt to name his successor. Did he make a single inquiry of any human being, except General Gordon and Jiis appointee, as to whom he should elevate to the honor of a seat in the United States Senate? But Governor Colquitt asked no questions ; at once he fixed upon J. E. Brown to receive the appointment. It is the right of this people to know why Governor Colquitt 268 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics condoned the political sins and iniquities of J. E. Brown. It is their right to know why General Gordon, who had been denounced in the public prints by Joseph E. Brown as a traitor to his party and section, should resign to make room in the councils of the nation for his former enemy and traducer. It was the right of the people to know all these things and their servants had no right to object thereto. But how did these servants, especially Governor Colquitt and General Gordon conduct themselves? Immediately Gov- ernor Colquitt begun to make speeches to the people of the State, as he said, to vindicate himself. Commencing at the capitol, he went from county to county announcing himself as a victim of religious persecution, that he was a Christian, that he had preached to the colored people of the State, and for such religious acts he had been cast out as evil, that religion was assailed in his person. He asserted that he was being per- secuted for Christ's sake, and he called upon all religious people in the State to rally to the maintenance of pure religion against infidelity. He and his friend, General Gordon, rode forth like Castor and Pollux, animated by one purpose and aiming at one object. The governor was to be vindicated from the assaults of infidels and sceptics by re-election to office. In vain it was that the people who were amazed at the conduct of these gentlemen demanded to know who had condemned him because he was a Sunday-school man, or who denounced him because, in the eloquent diction of General Gordon: "He had floated the banner of the King of kings!" It is unneces- sary to say the questions were not answered. They professed to be deeply indignant that they should be questioned. "Why should Colquitt be questioned?" says Gordon. "Is he not the hero of Olustee ! Colquitt is persecuted because he floated the banner of the King of kings." Did you not know. Gen- eral Gordon, when you resigned that Brown was to b^ your successor? "I will answer no such questions," responds the general. "Governor Colquitt wants no support from people who ask such a question," and "Was I not at Appomattox" "Do I not say that Governor Colquitt should be re-elected, and does he not float the banner of the King of kings?" And thus they went over the State appealing to the people in thrilling terms to elect Governor Colquitt. * * * in truth it may be said that the crusade preached by Gordon and Col- quitt against the infidels met with no opposition whatever. * * * Today Governor Colquitt stands before the world as a disorganizer and a disrupter of the party, which four short years ago honored him for his present high position by a majority of 80,000 votes. I am- governed by no ill will to the governor. Most of the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 269 facts I will refer to are written and speak for themselves. His religion shall be as sacred to me as it is to him. I do him no dishonor concerning his Sabbath-schools. The facts I refer to shall be his official acts only. I shall refer first to the Alston fee case. Shortly after Governor Colquitt came into office the Garlington paper (the contract with Baugli & Garlington) was found in a heap of waste paper and Colonel Alston, in an affidavit on file in the executive office, swore that he himself filed it. I now state here before you that the indorsement on the Baugh letter of attorney and the unsigned and unread Garlington memorandum were the only evidence outside the statements of Messrs. Alston and Garlington themselves that any agreement had ever been made with them that the 12^2 per cent, agreed to be paid by Bullock could possibly be in- creased to 25 per cent. I here state positively that when I left the office of governor of the State I did not know that Alston or Garlington pretended they were to have as much as 25 per cent, of the amount of the claim collected. The case never went to the court of claims, and a statement made here in this house by an advocate of Colquitt that increased ex- penses were incurred in the court of claims is a mistake. Con- gress appropriated $198,000 on the claim referred to, Governor Colquitt considered the matter of sufficient importance to warrant the executive in leaving the capitol in Atlanta and traveling to Washington in person to secure the money. The amount was paid to him on a draft on the assistant treasurer in New York. The governor brought the draft to Atlanta and turned it over to John W. Renfroe, State Treasurer, who sent it to New York and through the Fourth National Bank of that city the then special agent of the State Treasury received the money, every dollar of which was, through that bank, paid out on the bonds and coupons of the State. I say now to you here, not one cent of the proceeds of that draft referred to ever went to the hands of Alston, Garlington or any other agent who collected, or pretended to collect, the claim. But you ask how that Alston-Garlington fee was paid? It was paid, fellow-citizens, with money taken by the governor, no cent of which formed any part of the proceeds of the draft referred to. Those proceeds were used in New York. Alston & Company were paid with money taken out of the treasury in Atlanta. But, you will ask, how the accounts in the treasury were made to balance? It was done by skilful bookkeeping, an art held by Governor Brown in former days to be highly reprehensible. Some time after the draft referred to -was sent to New York, the treasurer was charged upon the books of the comptroller general with the amount of the same, less the sum handed over to the governor for the fees. So you; 270 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics will perceive by this adroit process the treasurer is made chargeable with only $152,000, and odd hundred dollars, the proceeds of the draft, whereas in truth he had received $198,- 035 as such proceeds of such draft. If you will turn to the Constitution of 1868 (and the same provision is in our present Constitution), you will find that money can not be drawn from the treasury except by an appropriation by law. * * * (Governor Brown made a fauxpas when he was first elected governor before the war, when he ridiculed the banks for "balancing books.") It is not pretended that the amount of these fees had been appropriated by law. You will under- stand that the governor, in his official oath, swore in effect that he would abide by and perform the provisions of the Con- stitution. Did he observe the Constitution when he paid the amount of the Alston fee without an appropriation ? You remember the circumstances where General Toombs ad- vanced $25,000 to pay the expenses of the Constitutional Con- vention of 1877. It was published far and wide that the gov- ernor could not pay any money out of the treasury, except by appropriation of law. When the attention of the convention was called to it ("the governor's ultimatum") General Toombs rose in his place and said he would defray the expenses and trust the old Commonwealth of Georgia to refund the money. Nevertheless that bill was paid by the governor without any appropriation by law. About the 20th day of December, 1877, the governor put his hand in the treasury and drew out and paid over $21,000 of the bonds issued to meet the convention's expense. At that time the governor was under the necessity of borrowing over $150,000 to meet the wants of the govern- ment. He in effect borrowed the money, according to the records, to stop interest on the convention's bond. I will pass from this subject and this class of cases to remark that a gentleman in Atlanta informed me the other day that there was fully a half peck of such cases furnished from the comptroller's record. I now come to the signing of the North- eastern Railway bonds. Application was made to Governor Colquitt's predecessor (Smith himself) for this indorsement some time before the expiration of his term of office. He referred the question to Attorney-General Hammond, who said the company was not entitled under the law to such indorse- ment. The refusal to grant State aid was not recorded on the minutes, as the matter was turned over to Govenor Colquitt a few days before his (Smith's) term expired. For more than twelve months after Governor Colquitt came into office he failed and refused to indorse these bonds. The matter was referred to the finance commmittee of the legislature in 1877 and the newspapers said at the time that the committee My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 271 reported uninimously against the indorsement of the bonds. It was stated on the streets that Major Ely, Colquitt's own attorney general was opposed to the indorsement. Attorney- General Hammond's adverse opinion is now on file in the executive office. The fundamental law, which the governor was sworn to obey, took away from the governor and from every other official the power to pledge the credit of the State in all such cases. Nevertheless the governor, in the face of this provision of the Constitution, made this pledge. He swore to obey the Constitution, yet he made this pledge. The next matter to which I call attention is the wild land troubles which led to the impeachment and conviction of Comptroller General Goldsmith. I here state that the reports of Comptroller Gen- eral Goldsmith fully pointed out to the governor all the dif- ficulties which environed the subject of taxation of wild lands in the State of Georgia. No person can read the report of this unfortunate official, made to the governor in the early part of 1878, without feeling that it was his purpose to be honest. He not only pointed out the difficulties attending this wild land subject, but he took pains to explain these difficulties. The report placed the governor in possession of all the in- formation needed to enable him to secure justice to the tax- payers of the State. The facts therein developed show that it was impossible under the then existing laws to collect the taxes without doing great wrong to the honest people of Georgia. In this connection it is proper to state that the col- lection of such taxes had been suspended in the administration of Governor Bullock and the same had not been collected in the administration of Governor Colquitt's predecessor (Smith himself, who uttered these words). Governor Colquitt was specially requested to suspend the collection of these taxes, a request he declined to entertain. Now it is true that no man on this earth (Goldsmith or anybody else) could have ex- ecuted the wild land laws, without injury to the owners of such property. The governor was fully advised — he knew these facts. Did he have the power to interpose and prevent the wrong? If you will turn to Section 75 of the Code of Georgia you will find the governor is invested with the power to suspend collection of taxes or any portion of them until the next meeting of the general assembly. If Governor Col- quitt had exercised the power given by law and suspended the collection of taxation on wild lands until the meeting of the general assembly, would he not have saved the State of Georgia and his own administration from the terrible disgrace which fell upon them by the trial and conviction of poor Goldsmith? If the governor had done his duty, would Goldsmith have been convicted? (Cries of no all over the House). Why? Because 272 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Goldsmith would never have been tried and the people of Georgia would have been spared the blush of sharfie which tinges their cheeks wherever this case is mentioned." Gov- ernor Smith then attacks Governor Colquitt's management of the penitentiary system, and says : "If the governor had been as careful to make visitations to the different prison camps in Georgia as he has been to attend the Sunday-school interest in New York and elsewhere, how many a pang of suffering might have been spared to the poor convicts of this State, both white and colored. Fellow-citizens, we want men who will do their duty, who will do it because it is duty. He says himself he has preached to the colored people of the State, but did the governor ever think it worth while to preach to a camp of convicts in Georgia? Thousands of holy men have enlisted to teach Sunday-schools, but who has felt himself commissioned to visit the camps of these unfortunates or teach them the way of salvation? Has our governor ever done it? If so, when and where? If these have been abuses under the present system it has been his fault. The law gave him power to acquire any information he might desire. Have they been inhumanly treated, their moral condition neglected, suffered for medical attention, proper food and clothing? I charge here tonight that it is the fault of Governor Colquitt if these things are true. It was my purpose to refer to the Macon and Brunswick Railroad and his mistake in the sale, also his action in the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad, but the lateness of the hour forbids. In these and many other acts the governor has blundered profoundly. He has been very weak throughout his entire administration. The con- sequences, fellow-citizens, are the same to you, whether by corruption or incompetency. These should teach the same lesson to the people." Before I introduce Senator Hill, in his denunciation of Gov. Colquitt, it is well to say that Gov. Colquitt's administration put its hand under and over J. W. Renfro, who made confes- sion of his own guilt in using the money of the State illegally to obtain a percentage from the banks and thus used the State's money, and Gov. Brown's hand was over and under J. W. Nelms, the principal keeper of the penitentiary who misused his own authority over the State's convicts to provide better convicts to his bosses and to pinch the lesses he was not favor- able to, but poor Col. Goldsmith was condemned by the very same legislators who pronounced both Renfro and Nelms ' ' whiter than snow. ' ' It was a time of humiliation and public II My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 273 shame in Georgia and the condemnation of Goldsmith will ever remain a blur and disgrace upon the men who conducted the State's business under Colquitt's regime! While the canvass was on in 1880, J. W. Renfroe sent a challenge to Gen. W. Tatum "Wofford, who lived three or four miles from our house. Wofford, who had been a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1877, was reported as saying things in a speech delivered in LaGrange, Ga., in the following words: "He (Wofford) called Renfroe a rogue and said that he would refuse his hand on the street for it was covered with crime." Ex-Governor J. M. Smith carried Renfroe 's chal- lenge to Wofford. Wofford refused to accept it at the hands of James Milton Smith, so it was handed over to Capt. Henry- Jackson. Then Jos. E. Brown (running for Senator) and Lo- gan E. Bleckly (Gen. Gordon's brother-in-law) with Col. P. L. Mynatt, united to calm down the "raging sea." It will be clearly seen that a number of people had their hands over and under the treasurer who plead guilty and was acquitted by a set of men in the Senate who took orders and obeyed without question the great triumvirate — Brown, Gordon and Colquitt. In the year 1882, commenting on the Georgia election in 1880 when Gov. Colquitt was elected over Norwood, I found the following in the Washington Post: "There is no colored majority in Georgia. On the contrary, the white men have a majority of at least 20,000. As for their being Republican, it is known everywhere outside of New York that at the gubernatorial election of 1880, nine- tenths of the colored voters supported Governor Colquitt against Norwood." I was not surprised next day to see the National Republican, published in Washington City, say editorially : "It is known everywhere outside the editorial room of The Post that the colored voters supported Colquitt because they were made to believe they were voting to break up the Bour- hon Democracy. He was not the regular Democrat. The Democratic State Convention broke up without making any nomination. Colquitt and Norwood both announced as can- didates. Each wing had a committee. Each claimed to be Democratic and each could claim to be independent. Mr. Norwood's hostility to the negro had been most pronounced and public. By reason of this fact, Colquitt naturally became 274 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics more particularly the negro's candidate. In this he was as- sisted by that excellent man, Joseph Brown, who, having been a Radical at one time, understood the business. Nor- wood received the great majority of the Democratic vote, while the minority, acting with the negroes like good and true scalawags, carried the State for Colquitt. It was an anti- Bourbon triumph as far as appearances went. The speech of Joe Brown before his election to the senate could not have been excelled by its negroism, or the defiant tone of its seala- wagism. It was only when he opened his batteries on Mahone and the Virginia Independents for having made a campaign similar to that of Colquitt and himself, that the Georgia negroes found out they had been sold. We thank The Post for its candid admission that nine-tenths of the colored voters supported Colquitt as against Norwood. We hope that when next they give one man the executive chair of the State and another a seat in the United States senate, they will bestow them upon friends." It is an old saying: "Go from home to hear the news." It would be amusing, if not tragic, to repeat again in thJs connection Senator Ben Bill's tirades against Dr. Felton just before these two Washington city papers thus delivered them- selves after the senator was captured by Brown and Colquitt and coaxed along to attack the men in Georgia who had issued a declaration of purer political principles to save themselves from negro domination. But it would add nothing to the force of Governor Smith's denunciation or of General Lawton's calm and deliberate arraignment of Governor Colquitt's administration to show to the public that these leaders of negroes in Georgia were forcing into the arena a pur- blind man then almost dying with cancer to do something which neither undertook to do — namely, attack Dr. Felton in print. With a sagacity which was admirable for its judgment, neither one of these worthies ever set down in cold type what they talked so briskly on backstairs and in secret conclaves. I sometimes wish Dr. Felton had enjoyed the opportunity. In such an event this book would have had some interesting politi- cal data. Senator Hill talked freely about the signing of Northeastern Railroad bonds. Mr. William Goodnow, one of the directors of the Rolling Mill, who furnished unpaid-for iron to the rail- road, wrote to Mr. Hill directed to the United States Senate My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 275 a latter marked strictly private, in which he informed Mr. Hill that "they only procured the bonds by paying a large amount of money to parties so near the executive that I can not believe the negotiations were unknown to him (the gover- nor). Is it not mortifying to know that such things could be done, even while the trial of Bullock was pending? * * * But I can not put upon paper what I will tell you when we meet. By far more than we made on the iron it has cost us to get our pay, to say nothing of the serious loss we have incurred to our credit by withholding the signature until we were in the condition of drowning men ready for relief at almost any piece. Let not one word of this escape to anyone, until you see me. Respectfully, William Goodnow. " Mr. Hill made oath before a legislative comittee saying he did not "believe a word of it. ' ' But a letter written to him by the governor made him believe a good deal. As soon as Mr. Hill reached Atlanta he went directly to Mr. Goodnow 's house and "he told me Morrill was the chief negotiator. Goodnow sent for Morrill and as they lived in adjoining lots, Morrill soon got there. ' ' I said to him : ' ' Tell me the facts exactly as they occurred." He said that some time in the fall about the last of September or first of Ooctober, West Murphy, in the treas- urer's office, came to him and told him he could get the in dorsement on these bonds very quick — ^that nobody else could and that i:^ we would pay him $15,000 he would get the in- dorsement. Mr. Childs, of Athens, was communicated with and he refused to have anything to do with such a matter. Morrill declined, too. Then the matter dropped some time. He said Murphy kept coming and insisted he could get it and nobody else could. Finally Murphy dropped to $10,000. Finally Murphy put on so much pressure that Morrill said: "Meet me at my house at 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon." Mur- phy came as appointed. Morrill spoke of his reluctance and said it was "d — d hard" or a "hell of a case" that people couldn't get their rights without paying for them. He offered Murphy $5,000, but at last $8,000 was settled upon. Murphy says to him: "Morrill, I know just what you are thinking, that I have found out the governor is going to indorse these bonds and I will run up and get it. ' ' He also said : "It is not so. 276 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I know you will never get this indorsement until you pay this money, for the truth is there is an old man up yonder witi a big office and never expects to get it again. He is as poor as Job's turkey or a church mouse, and he is going to make all the money he can out of it." Then Morrill said to Murphy: "You get the bonds indorsed and I'll pay you the money." Murphy says: "Put it in writing." Morrill said: "Hell! Put such a thing as that in writing ? ' ' Murphy said there were several parties interested who must be satisfied. Something was said about Citizens Bank, etc. Murphy told Morrill the signing would take ten days, but the time was extended to twenty days. The agreement was made. It was the 10th day of January and he pledged the Citizens Bank that somebody will pay the $8,000. Morrill called this money ' ' swag. ' ' Mur- phy pressed for the money and said the "old man" was going off that night and couldn't wait. Morrill paid Murphy with a check on the Citizens Bank. Mr. Goodnow had warned Hill that some man in the executive office would give the indorse- ment for money. During the spring of 1878. Gov. Colquitt was in Washington. Hill had kept these matters secret, but he said to the governor: "Your failure to inform me or give me notice lost me my fee. ' ' "What did Colquitt answer ? ' ' The fact was they had so much money to pay somebody else, that they did not have it." I said: "I did not believe it, and Col- quitt said: "If he was in my place he would not say that." This testimony was given under oath and the indorsement had been paid for early in 1878, and the governor made this remark in the spring of 1878. After Mr. Hill went home in the summer of 1878 he took counsel with Judge Trippe and the latter said, "go and tell Alfred Colquitt what you know." On the 24th of August I went to see the governor and told him what Morrill said and that they had paid "West Murphy $8,000 and had to do so, or they could not get the bonds indorsed. Hill did not tell Colquitt what Morrill said happened in the treasury when he found Murphy and Colquitt in close con- versation and the governor looked confused and disconcerted, but he did remind Colquitt of what he himself had said in Washington City in the spring about their being unable to pay Hill. Hill suggested that he should see Murphy for the My j\Iemoirs op Georgia Politics 277 contract was in writing and the evidence that Murphy got the money is in writing, etc." Mr. Morrill showed Hill the writing and Hill examined it. "It was a pledge to Hoyt from the Citizens Bank to pay $8,000 in twenty days and in red ink in the corner it said: "Received $8,000 thirteen days after." Murphy gave the receipt for the money to the Citizens Bank. Judge Trippe went to Hill in great excitement and said : ' ' Milt Smith (Governor Smith) knows all about it." "How do you know?" Hill asked. "Why he told me all you told me about it." I went to see the governor on September 10, 1878. I asked: "Have you seen Murphy?" "Yes, and he says there is nothing in it." "He says he got the money, but my name was not mentioned. ' ' I said : ' ' Send for Murphy and Morrill and have us face to face, and bring out the facts." But he answered: "Do you see, Murphy." Hill told him about Gov. Smith knowing it and that Hugh Haralson was talking about it in Washington City and said Smith was going to bring it out. Hill said : ' ' This thing is between you and Murphy. He has committed a crime against you as governor and a crime against the people of Georgia and it is your duty to protect yourself and your office." What did Colquitt say to Hill? Listen : "It will do no good to have Murphy return this money to the company, it would be thought that it was a confession that it was wrong to receive the money." Then Hill said. "You shouldn't allow a subordinate in the executive office to take such fees, that wouldn't do" and Colquitt replied he "thought it did not matter." Remember this is the testimony of Senator Hill given under oath before a committee of the Georgia legislature and do not forget that this scandal had been secretly brewing nearly or quite a year and Hugh Haral- son, Gen. Gordon's brother-in-law, was telling of it all over Washington City and Gov. J. Milton Smith knew all about it and yet the governor was as innocent as a lamb that his in- fluence had been sold for $8,000 cash in his own office and under his own nose ! TpII it. to the marines! It will not do to try to reconcile the facts with the verdict of that committee of politicians ! I pre- served every word of the testimony — it is before me today — and granting that Morrill could tell two stories concerning 278 My ]\Iemoirs op Georgia Politics the same conversation "for a dog that will fetch a bone can carry a bone;" the conviction is irresistible that the gover- nor's office w^as a rare, fine place to make money in this dubious way! The scapegoat was poor, Mr. Goodnow! Just like Gold- smith was sacrificed to appease the thirst for gore, poor Good- now was scourged and pilloried for telling the truth! While this scrimmage was going on in Atlanta, Dr. Felton was having a hot and heavy canvass in the seventh district, which ended the first Tuesday in November and in which lobby fees played an important part ; and this committee of investiga- tion met in Atlanta on November 9, 1878. If Gen. Gordon re- signed the seat in the Senate to restore the strongholds of Democracy to the State of Georgia it was more than convincing that the Democratic party had a load to bear with Gov. Col- quitt's administration that was heavy, degrading and mal- oderous! The majority report could not find that the governor had anything to do with the J\Iurphy fee, although he said Murphy told him he was interested, etc., but the report closed with a direction to the legislature, preventing ''any officer of the State, or any person holding office by authority of the State from accepting a fee, or being employed before the gov- ernor in any matter or claim that the governor is required to pass upon," a significant statement when carefully analyzed because it would seem to imply that weak governors made themselves helpless before such men as Murphy. The minority report was a little more to the point, and said "the testimony in this case discloses one evil too great to be passed over with- out notice or condemnation at our hands. Nor can it be said that this abuse is not a proper subject for our animadversion since out of its evil operation the occasion for this inquiry arose." The minority also called upon the legislature to pro- tect weak governors from their own incapacity to carry on the business of the State. The Alston fee was also known to the governor and those attorneys did their w^ork before the governor (if they had in- fluence anywhere) who was in rapid haste to see them paid for their services. Mr. Hill's indictment had a serious flaw in it because he and Murphy were operating before the governor to secure the identical indorsement that Murphy had power My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 279 to easily accomplish. It chagrined Mr. Hill intensely to know that Gov. Colquitt considered West Murphy a better lawyer than himself. His address to the people of Georgia on this subject indicates great ability to state his own case, but the weak place, the link in the chain that made the whole thing useless, was his own desire and inclination to make the gover- nor do for him what West Murphy really could do — namely, controvert the law and override the inhibition which the Con- stitution of the State had made imperative in withholding State aid from Georgia railroads. The Senator prepared an elegant piece of writing. It reads well even today, but the fact remains he was after a fee, and was angry because the governor's little man got it! If Mr. Hill had been secured in his fee, after he had influenced Gov. Colquitt, we would have heard nothing from him further, and although the majority report with assinine subserviency de- clared Mr. Murphy "not guilty of any illegal conduct or cor- rupt practices," and the minority report only talked about Murphy's practice as an "evil" — I hazard nothing when I say that after thirty-two years have come and gone the whole thing is still notorious and everybody concerned is besmirched more or less from the biggest to the least of them. If Georgia had not been dominated by the convict lease, in which West Murphy was a dominant figure, we should have seen more sensi- ble and practical results from the investigation. It was a "nest of rotten eggs" and Murphy was one of the eggs and the lessees stood by each other in rule or ruin. Mr. Hill's clos- ing sentence in his notable address is good reading. "Murphy committed a fraud on the governor and I reported the fraud to the governor. Thereupon the governor treats Murphy as his friend and denounces me as his enemy! Murphy in- troduced into Democratic Georgia the first known instance of that form of corruption which in other States and in the fed- eral government has done and is doing more than all other forms of corruption to disgrace our politics, to impoverish hon- est people, to enrich official rogues and to threaten our popular institutions with ignominous shame, rottenness and ruin. Mur- phy boasts of his act and defends it, the governor excuses it, and I denounce it. On this issue the demand now is that IMur- 280 My ]\Iemoirs of Georgia Politics phy shall be justified, the governor shall be sanctified, and I shall be immolated. It is pleasant now, as it has often been pleasant through many trying ordeals to know that the people must render the verdict before the rings, politicians and sensational mendicants can execute the sentence." Signed Benj. H. Hill, Washington, D. C, Jan. 7, 1879." As an after clap, "Mr. A. H. Cox, of LaGrange, created quite a sensation in the House by offering a bill, making it a criminal offense for any clerk or secretary to repeat what Mr. IMurphy has done." As soon as I saw this notice I endeavored to find the bill because it was Mr. A. H. Cox, chairman of the House committee, who brought in the report, otherwise the majority report, in which we find these words, "And it is the opinion of this committee that Mr. Murphy was not guilty of any illegal conduct or corrupt practices in the matter of the indorsement of the bonds of the Northeastern Railroad Company." Did Mr. Cox put his ear to the ground and hear a rumbling down in Troup county? Mr. Murphy frankly told the governor that he was being paid to bring the matter before him. The evi- dence before the committee shows this and the governor didn't deny it, and he told Mr. Hill "it didn't matter." Why did not Mr. Cox call for a muzzle for the governor as he said Murphy had done nothing illegal or corrupt? If a woman's judgment is good for anything in this matter, it was the convict lease to which Gov. Brown belonged and to which Senator Gor- don belonged, and to which Mr. J. W. Murphy belonged, and to which Senator Hill did not belong, that made the wavering balance turn to that side and Murphy won. Some years ago a case was being considered before the North Georgia Confer- ence that the dignitaries were afraid to investigate. They sat over the case for a solid week and then ignored it, but wound up by saying: "The North Georgia Conference was never nearer to God ! ' ' The Democratic party then in authority was disgraced by various impeachments by the Murphy fee, the Alston fee, and the notorious peculations and lease profits m the hands of the "powers that were," but the Democratic party stuck its head in the sand and allowed its barrenness and un- worthiness to expose in its rear. But the ' ' Christian governor racket" was never nearer to success. The executive office and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 281 the other departments were long suspected of being "tolling places" for the exaction of unjust and unauthorized fees, and Mr. Hill spoke truly when he said "these guilty men are num- erous, revengeful, active and unscrupulous. They wax fat with public plunder and are able to subsidize papers, hire detractors and buy ealuminators to do their bidding. When tolerated by those in power they are more dangerous than hungry wolves and it is easier for public men to join them than to fight them. "Murphy is not the only man who has used his public office for private gain and grown rich on a small salary. I see in a report to the General Assembly that State and executive oflEicers of the State are also lessees of the State. ' ' Why did not Senator Hill make it known right there and then that Gen. Gordon, his colleague in the Senate, was a lessee of convicts and West Murphy, the despised clerk, another lessee of convicts and thus give point to his charges? They were after his scalp and they got it, for he would never have been re-elected senator as Gov. Colquitt was booked for the place and did take it as soon as Mr. Hill passed on. Mr. Hill's great and talented oratory did not keep him from blundering. He said it "was easier to join the plunderers" than to fight them. Dr. Felton decided it was more patriotic to fight them than to join them. It was a difficult task to fight them, but I often ask myself why such men as Henry G. Turner and Alexander Lawton and many others did not step out from the ranks and fight and perish in fighting if need be in the pres- ence of all the political tergiversation that confronted the honest yeomany of the State when the State House was a ' ' toll- ing place" where men were forced to buy their rights? It may be so still, but I do not hear the echoes as they once fell on my startled ears in days where I was more actively engaged. Hon. Milton A. Candler expressed himself on the vindication business in forcible terms. I will copy only an extract and I make no criticism on his declarations, except to say he had the ability and he should have made sufficient outcry to have his friends and supporters stand up to be counted. The bugler is needful, but the buglers should keep as near to the front as possible and lead the forces to the scene of combat. "Since January, 1877, the people have been the neglected 282 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics subject of this sort of administration (Colquitt went in at that time) coming into power upon the popular acclaim of "economy and reform," the people are now commanded to be satisfied with the inaugural promise and the frugality and reforms established by themselves in the convention of 1877 under complaints of the administration and in spite of its opposition. With unblushing brassiness, sound public credit and light- ened taxation are claimed as the fruits of its own patriotic efforts in face of the fact that the records of the State fail in evidence of an executive recommendation or act tending to this result, while everywhere in convention legislature and courts are the reproofs of the people for dereliction of duty and violation of law. Much of the legislation of 1878 and 1879 by the people's representatives was for the security of public money from the personal use of State officers, the pro- tection of the citizen from their extortion and the governor from the corrupting influences of his subordinates. To this unexampled history is added the extraordinary spectacle of the governor of the State everywhere, except in the place of official duty, haranguing the people in defense of his assailed administration and piteously begging vindication of an honest name and a good profession in the leadership of a political party and his retention for another gubernatorial term. Vindication is neither the duty nor the policy of political parties. To this work the organization has no right to put its members, the effort to do so tends to its disruption. No party is strong enough to carry an impeached administration, how- ever unjust the impeachment may be. In battle and in race, the wounded and the halt are left behind for the care of non- combatants and the protection of the hospital. Healing and strength is not for them found where truth and right struggle for supremacy, and honest government needs defenders. If the Democratic party in Georgia shall aim at nothing more than to give good government to the people, let charity do its perfect work in taking care of the weak and worn and put its standards in the hands of the strong, the brave and the honest, and it will deserve and receive the support of a virtuous people, will live to fight many more battles and rejoice in seeing justice established, prosperity protected and the happiness of the citizen secure. M. A. CANDLER. During the heat of Gov. Colquitt's campaign for vindica- tion. Gen. Gordon, who was canvassing the State after he slipped out after dark from the Senate, called a public meet- ing in Decatur, Ga., where Col. Candler lived and then and ]My jMemoirs op Georgia Politics 283 there made one of his peculiar harrangues, so graphically pic- tured by ex-Gov. J. M. Smith and became vociferous and arrogant in calling for vindication. Col. Candler rose in his place and remarked he "knew of no man who needed it more than Governor Colquitt." Not the least of the aggravations and trials which beset the honest people of Georgia at that time was the insistence of Gen. Gordon, who had played such a questionable part in bringing Democratic Georgia to its then unhappy condition. Judge Hiram Warner made an address to his home people in Greenville, Merriwether county, and among other things he said was this : ' ' The only authority the governor had to make a contract or employ lawyers at all is to be found in the 63d section of the code. The governor has no right to make an absolute contract; the law says such fees shall be conditional, which means to be reviewed by the General Assembly through their representatives to pass upon and adjudicate the amount of their fees and not the governor." Gov. Colquitt's organ immediately lectured the former chief justice and as good as told him he knew nothing of the subject and wound up by saying, "his strictures on Gov. Colquitt are unjust, untenable and unauthorized." It was a time when every fellow who "plead law" before the governor and got his pay out of the State Treasury, could be relied upon to show disrespect and impudence to such men as Judge Warner. Judge Warner, was courageous enough to say some things concerning Treasurer Renfro's office that should be chronicled right here. "He (Renfro) offered to pay back a large sum if they (the legislature) would not prosecute him, but the committee thought it was not proper that he should buy himself out in that way. If he had taken the public money, he should be prosecuted and made an example of to deter others from doing likewise, and they were right. But since his acquittal I have never heard of his paying that money back, and I don't think he has ever done it. He offered to pay it back to avoid prosecution, but when he was acquitted, he kept the money. There is one question I want to put to you today, and it is this : Did you approve of it at that time ? I presume you did. Did you think it was right then to investigate into the affairs of your trustees, the State House officers, and to expose fraud 284 ]My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and peculation ? I presume you did. And if it was right then, it is right now. You have no other protection but through your representatives and the investigation of these matters. You pay your taxes and that is the last you see of them." The State of Georgia was badly off with the disorders that were in evidence around the State capitol, but it was not suf- fering for the retention of Mr. Renfro in the office of treasurer. The old State was not panting also with anxiety to retain an executive who was not only too weak to understand his duties, but whose administration had been accompanied by the prac- tice of every political vice, while professing every political and religious virtue. Gov. Colquitt's strong card was in get- ting up federal legislation for his political friends. It would be an omission to overlook the "Tuggle Fee" in this connection I quote fram a reporter's interview with Hon. M. A. Candler, at that time member of Congress from the Atlanta district. He was asked about the "Tuggle Fee" and said the appro- priation of $72,000 was for expenses in the Indian wars of 1835-38. ''The matter was put into the hands of W. 0. Tuggle by Gov. Colquitt." It seems that Tuggle stumbled on this matter. He was looking up older claims when he came across the claim which has just been recognized. (We will not forget that ex-Gov. Smith, in his review of the Colquitt administration, told the Columbus people that a "half-peck" of such docu- ments were lying around in the executive office.) A commit- tee of the legislature to whom was referred the protest of James A. Green against the payment of the fee of W. 0. Tuggle for collection of the claim of the State at Washington City, reported that Green was appointed the agent in 1876 and his appointment was never revoked, that he was then the author- ized agent of the State, that Gov. Colquitt had no right to ap- point Tuggle or pay him without consulting Green. The re- port and accompanying resolutions were referred to the judici- ary committee. The records of the General Assembly show conclusively that James A. Green was appointed agent for this Trezavant claim and Col. Green was frequently in Wash- ington, visited our parlor in the National Hotel and talked freely of its difficulties and its prospects. He was assiduous in his attention to the claim. His son had married the daugh- ter of one of our strongest friends, and we were anxious for him j\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics 285 to get something out of it, but Gov. Colquitt forestalled him. Gen. Gordon was in favor of Mr. Tuggle and under date of April 22, 1879, wrote that he did not believe any member of Congress had ever heard of the claim before, and that settled it of course. I never knew whether Mr. Tuggle allowed Mr. Green anything or not. But Mr. Green had the nerve to re- fresh Gov. Colquitt's memory and he addressed the governor a letter on 27th February, 1879, in which he told of his efforts at home and in Washington City, and he protested against be- ing displaced after his appointment had been given him (Green) by the Georgia legislature. He asked Gov. Colquitt "by what right and by what authority Gen. Gordon moved the Senate, that the papers referring to the claim should be taken* from the files of the Senate and handed over to Tuggle?" He told the governor that no agent but himself had been duly ap- pointed since 1858, and the executive wrote him: "I was not aware at the time of Tuggle 's appointment of the resolution of 1876. (In which Green's appointment was renewed by the legislature). "I regret that I was not informed of the full ex- tent of your agency. Indeed success is hardly probable with any amount of work." Mr. Green then replied: "I have dis- tinct recollection of the conversation with you before I left Atlanta and if my recollection is not at fault, I called your at- tention to both resolutions, under which I was acting as agent for the State of Georgia. If you will only refer to the note I wrote you at that time, I submitted to you the memorial pre- sented to Congress in this Trezevant claim, and the report of the house committee on the bill to refund the amount to the State of Georgia. I spent the most of two sessions of Congress in Washington before the war, but at every session of Congress that I could trust since the war, I have pressed these claims and let me say to you, governor, I do not intend to surrender my agency unless the legislature takes it way from me, for 1 have spent a thouasnd dollars and more in money and the State has never paid me a cent. I do not propose to be slaughtered in the house of my friends." To this letter Mr. Green said the governor made no reply. The "warrior of Olustee" also "flaunted the banner of the King of kings," and Tuggle got the money! Mr. Murphy might have turned a nimble penny 286 My JMemoirs op Georgia Politics again as he did with the governor's signature to the North- eastern Railroad bonds. In September 1880, Mr. A. H. Stephens wrote to me these words : ' ' Colquitt was not fit for governor when he ran be- fore, and he is not fit now," and it is simply unnecessary to say more when a governor of the great State of Georgia was so indifferent or obtuse as to make Mr. Tuggle a claim agent without looking into the nature and status of the claim before doing so. He was either negligent or he was strictly unfit for the office of chief executive ! I do not hesitate to say also that if Dr. Felton, while a Congressman, had gone gandering all over the United States, preaching in Northern pulpits or negro churches or getting money from Chatauqua lectures the truly organized would have had "conniption fits." But the governor seemed to be only a figure head and unless he had enlisted ex-Go V. Brown's help in his 1880 race by giving him a position in the United States Senate, he would have dropped out of sight ! An influential Northern newspaper expressed its horror when Senator Gordon was shown to be a convict lessee and said: "I would not occupy that place for a million dollars," but according to Gen. Lawton's speech in Augusta, "Georgia had never before witnessed such a sight as the acting executive of a sovereign State running all over from county to county crying out "Elect me or I shall be ruined!" And as Senator Hill declared upon oath in regard to Murphy's abuse of his position before the executive in regard to signing the North- eastern bonds. Governor Colquitt said: "It didn't matter." Nothing of that sort mattered. And it didn't matter, so long as the State House was filled with officials absorbing the revenues of the State and with "tolling places" in the executive department "where claim- ants had to buy their rights." This matter of State agents was perhaps the most harmless of the many schemes of corrupt peculation because the federal government paid over money to be used for remuneration. According to wise Justice Hiram Warner, we paid our taxes, and that was the last we saw of them. The Southern Life Insurance Company — Editor Willingham, My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 287 in Cartersville Free Press, March 20, 1879, wrote thus : "In speaking of the Southern Life Insurance Company in his letter to Dr. Felton, Gen. Gordon states that the books of the Atlanta department over which he presided, showed that every death loss it had incurred had been paid and the trans- mission to the parent company at Memphis of near one and a quarter million of dollars. It should be borne in mind that when the Georgia depart- ment was established here it was with the understanding that all the money received by it was to be invested in the State of Georgia as security for the policyholders; but Gen. Gordon tells, us now that all was sent to IMemphis in yiolation of this understanding that it should be invested in Georgia. The very day on which the circulars giving notice of the application of the company for bankruptcy were distributed in Atlanta, a LaGrange policyholder was informed by Gov. Col- quitt that the institution was sound and that a large amount of money would be received the next day to be let out on good security. The said policyholder was told (by Gov. Colquitt) that he could get ten thousand dollars of that money. What was the surprise of that policyholder when he saw in ten min- utes after leaving Governor Colquitt the circular giving notice of application for bankrutcy on the part of the Southern Life Insurance Company?" This editorial was seen and read by Gov. Colquitt and Sena- tor Gordon at the time (1879) and neither of them cared enough for their personal reputation to deny or apologize or extenuate this crime of getting money under false pretenses. These gentlemen swallowed up the branch department in Au- gusta, Ga., as was openly charged by the "Barnwell, S. C, newspaper, and there was no denial. I knew little or nothing of Mr. Colquitt as a Senator. He had learned the art of getting into office and of holding on to office and if he did a single thing while he was United States Senator that was worthy of remembrance or applause such an exploit never im- pressed itself upon my mind long enough to be placed in my scrapbook. It was stated that he and Gov. Brown made a valiant fight and succeeded in placing Mr. J. W. Renfro in the position of 288 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics postmaster in Atlanta, the best paying federal office in the State. It is also recorded in the files of the Atlanta Constitution that Col. N. J. Hammond fought this appointment to the bitter «nd. Hearing that the two Senators had been boasting of their intention, Congressman Hammond telegraphed the President to hold up until he might reach the white house and explain, but when he rushed with furious haste into Mr. Cleveland's white house office the deed was done, the appointment was then on its way to the Senate for confirmation ! Congressmen were not in it ! Oh ! Mr. Murphy was a powerful advocate before Gov. Colquitt, but Mr. Renfro was even more stupen- dous before the two Senators from Georgia. Mr. Nelms was made United States marshal and "everything was lovely for the goose hung high ! ' ' It was a double-header engine that pulled this load in Geor- gia politics. The front locomotive had an engineer — the other one did not need an engineer — it was * ' me, too, ' ' and for all in- terests and purposes, Gov. J. E. Brown could have managed the whole business at home and in Washington by simply plac- ing a postage stamp on Senator Colquitt's seat, to show that the seat was accredited to the federal government with liberty to vote at roll call; but nobody questioned the real authority. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1880. In the year 1880 there was a general election from President down to constable. Everybody had to pass under the race- track pole, and politics was hot from start to finish. The im- peachments, during the session of 1879, when Goldsmith was made the scapegoat of Colquitt's administration and Renfro exonerated by the same legislature, had lasting effect on the politics of the State. While it was decreed and determined that Dr. Felton should never be elected to Congress any more, it was also demonstrated that ring rule in Georgia politics was more accentuated and demonstrable than at any time since Bullock retired. Dr. Felton 's re-election in 1878 was positive gall and wormwood to the Kirkwood ring, headed by Senator Gordon and the Bullock Democrats, under Gov. Brown. After My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 289 these two forces united in the early spring of 1880, it could be easily foretold that they were resolved to wipe off all political opposition and rule the State of Georgia. Governor Colquitt had been elected in 1876, but he was to be kept in the office for another extra term, while he and Gov. Brown traversed the State to control votes for themselves, one for governor and the other for United States Senator. The various impeachments, the exposures, the Alston fee, the Northeastern Railroad bonds, the Tuggle fee made a heavy burden for the executive, and the whole business was mani- festly unpopular and the people were tired ! Senator Hill's "Address to the People of Georgia" made racy reading and it was believed that Governor Colquitt 's day was over until we were startled one morning in Washington city by an associated press dispatch anonuncing the change from Gordon to Brown in the United States Senate. The seat had been given to Gov. Brown and the arrangement perfected before the reading public had any notice given of the resigna- tion; or of Gov. Colquitt's ready willingness to placate Gov. Brown. The evils under Bullock had been continued under Colquitt and Senator Hill's open denunciation of the Colquitt regime had much to do with precipitating the crisis. The impeach- ment trials were so plastered over with spite in one hand and favoritism in the other hand, that the common people were disgusted. The Constitutional Convention of 1877 had placed limits on the State offices. They were told they could do cer- tain things and they were not allowed to do certain other things. The words were plain, the declarations were emphatic. No governor could play with the strong box of the State of Georgia any more. No treasurer could be allowed to draw a percentage from the money of the State deposited in banks. It was positively declared that lobbying must be outlawed from the State capitol. It was declared to be a crime, to be punished as a crime. The duties of all the State officials were set down in terse, positive language. But a weak governor was easily pulled around by the same gang that had flourished under Bullock and likewise under the rule of James Milton Smith. "When Murphy secured $8,000 in cash from the Rolling Mill 290 IMy Memoirs of Georgia Politics people who had sold iron to the Northeastern Railroad and who were about to lose their money — then it was demonstrated that men had to ' ' buy their rights ' ' of clerks in the State capi- tol and this buying was the result of adroit management of Georgia's executive, A. H. Colquitt. On January 7, 1879, Sen- ator B. H. Hill wrote an open letter from Washington, D. C, that I desire the readers of this book to remember : ''In February last I was informed that the president of the Eolling Mill Company, without the knowledge or authority of the company, had paid to J. W. Murphy, a clerk in the treas- urer's office, the sum of $8,000 for his influence in procuring from the governor the indorsement by the State of the bonds of the Northeastern Railroad Company, in which indorsement the Rolling Mill had large interest. It thus became apparent that the great crime of using public office for private gain, which had grown to such proportions in the general govern- ment, and in some of the Northern States and from which our Southern States had suffered so much under carpetbag (Bullock) rule had taken root in the Democratic administra- tion in Georgia. But the governor did not take this view of the crime or of his duty in regard to it. The governor does not seem to think the clerk had committed an act of corrup- tion; he could not see that the clerk should not practice on the governor's official acts for gain, etc. Governor Colquitt is the first and only public man, so far as I can learn, who has failed to see that such use of a public office for private gain is corruption. The people called to testify were only the parties to the crime, just as such criminals have always denied from the foundation of the world, certainly since Cain and Abel. Murphy was employed as a clerk into the treasurer's office, and employed D. P. Hill to do any legal work and paid Hill $400 to do the legal work of this case. * * * And they say Murphy made an argument before the governor! Have we a governor who needs to be enlightened by his clerk? It is asked, is there any law forbidding a clerk to take money to influence a governor? I reply, is there any law forbiding' the governor to take money to influence the treasurer or tha attorney general? The pretext offered is that the parties (or Morrill) are satis- fied. Parties who pay money for corrupt object are generally satisfied. The post traders were satisfied to pay money to Mrs. Belknap to influence her husband in his official duties. Those who paid Credit Mobilier stock to the members of con- gress for their votes were satisfied. The chief priests and elders who paid money to Judas to betray his Lord were satisfied with the service. Judas was honest enough to repent, My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 291 return the money and then hang himself. * * * Guilt and corruption are ever ready to hide behind irrelevant and false issues. The thief in Lear boldly demanded to change places with the justice. In this case the man charged with corrup- tion and his abettor, equally brazen, have fought to put me on trial for reporting and denouncing the crime. It will soon be in order for criminals to arraign grand juries for daring to indict them. It is claimed that the governor had no con- trol over Murphy. This is not true. He has control over the executive department, and especially over the treasurer's office, and could suspend Murphy's immediate master, and the treasurer himself, if he adopted or tolerated the fraud of his clerk. If the good governor would expend on Murphy, for committing the crime, even half the epithets he has expended on me for reporting it, his attitude would be more satisfactory to all good men. The report of the majority of the committee is nothing but a proposition to make the crime of Murphy, the crime of the legislature, the crime of the Democratic party, the crime of the State. They cannot whitewash Murphy without black- washing in indelible strans the fair name of the State. The great Democratic part^ in New York has shown us how Tweed was dealt with, when it was at one time deemed sacrilege to question Tweed's good name. Under the lead of Tilden and 'Conner they arrested this bloated corrupter, with his mil- lions, and he died a prisoner — without money, without friends and without chpracter. Murphyism in Georgia is Tweedisui in its beginning. The crimes are precisely the same and there is much in the surroundings strikingly similar. Even now this evil in Atlanta is large, and will not readily die." (If Senator Hill had added that Governor Brown was a convict lesf.ee, that the treasurer's clerk was a convict lessee, that the r^-overnor was a silent partner in the convict lease with Senator Gordon, he might have given the cause of the Tweed-like evil, as well as the palpable corruption of these politicians). "The progress of this case shows beyond doubt that this is not the only crime, nor Murphy the only criminal, of this kind m the capitol and in the State. Does any sensible man supp(ise that Murphy, unaided and alone, could have ac- complished what we see was accomplished? Could any un- aided criminal have had papers defending him, friends flat- tering him, great and so-called good men helping him, and ;i comnittee of able and true men making a solemn report abscilving him from everything wrong in the fact of his undisputed and confessed corruption?" 292 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics (Ah, yes, Senator Hill! For upwards of twenty years, in Georgia, these convict lessees had millions of convict money, multitudes of friends, cliques of flatterers, many and truculent followers who would have kissed the D — I's toe to handle and use that convict lease money!) "Murphy is not the only man who had used public office for private gain, and who is growing rich on a small salary ! I see in a report to the general assembly that State house officials are actually parties to contracts with the State, and executive officers of the State are also lessees of the State. * * * I know, as few men can know, the dangers which a public man must encounter who dares at this day to make war on frauds and corruption in the public service. These guilty men are numerous, active, unscrupulous, and vengeful. They are fat with public plunder — and are able to subsidize papers, hire detractors, and buy caluminators to do their bidding. When tolerated by those in power, they are more dangerous than hungry wolves and it is easier for public men to join them, or let them alone, than to fight them. * * * (Heaven knows this United States senator spoke the truth — Dr. Felton had this pack of "hungry wolves" on his track for twenty long years. They completely dominated the politics of Georgia). "If we excuse or condone fraud in our State or government, and by our own party, we have no right to condemn fraud in the federal government and by the adversary party — to at- tempt it will subject us to mockery and ridicule. "Now, fellow-citizens, I close this address by expressing in a few brief words all the pith and marrow of the whole case ! Murphy committed a fraud on the office of governor. I re- ported that fraud to the governor. Thereupon the governor treats Murphy as his friend, and denounces me as his enemy ! Murphy introduced into Democratic Georgia the first known instance of that form of corruption, which in other states and all other forms of corruption to disgrace our politics, to im- poverish honest people, to enrich official rogues, and to threaten our popular institutions with ignonimous shame, rot- tenness and ruin. Murphy boasts of his act and defends it — the governor excuses it, and I denounce it ! On this issue the demand now is, that Murphy shall be justified — the gov- ernor shall be sanctified and I shall be immolated ! ] t is pleasant now to know, as it has often been pleasant through many trying ordeals in the past, that the people must render the verdict, before the rings, politicians and sensational mendi- cants can execute the sentence ! ! " (Signed) BEN J. H. HILL. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 293 And this was Democratic Georgia! Here was a Democratic governor and a Democratic United States senator at it, like hammer and tongs — and every word was true. It was a scathing denunciation! But what did it amount to? Simply nothing ! Why ? Because Senator Hill was seeking a fee him- self from the Rolling Mill Company, for which he was to cor- rupt the executive into doing a deed which the highest law in Georgia forbade in clearest tones, namely, to give State aid to railroads. Although Senator Hill was celebrated as a lawyer, and J. W. Murphy was known to be no lawyer, they were both practis- ing before the governor, and as the clerk was one of the governor's underlings, it was the natural sequence of events that he would be favored as against a rival politician. It was the irony of fate that the governor should step into Mr. Hill's place in the senate, on the death of Mr. Hill. In further ex- planation of this matter, do not forget that this law practice before Governor Colquitt was carried on in secret, behind closed doors. Mr. Hill admits it — his intimate friend, R. H. Trippe, swears to the secrecy. Ex-Governor Smith, however, got hold of it and it was because Governor Smith was writing about it, to other parties, especially because General Gordon's brother-in-law, Mr. Hugh Haralson, was airing it, that the mine exploded. Mr. Hill was interviewed in the Baltimore Gazette, December 23, 1878. His opinion of political affairs in Democratic Georgia is therein so much more authoritatively expressed, and what he said is so much in line with what my husband had been saying during five years, that I will here copy a part of it. Said Mr. Hill: ''In my opinion it is not too much to say that if the report of the majority shall be adopted by the legislature, the Demo- cratic organization in Georgia will be disgraced and broken down and the Independents will sweep everything before them. Yes, and they ought to do it. If the Democratic party shall undertake to carry Murphy and his corrupt ring, for he has a ring, the people of Georgia will not carry the Democratic organization, and ought not to carry it. Murphy has no moral character, his ring has no moral or political worth — no party can save them, or ought to try to save them. Governor Col- quitt has been made a victim of his own good(?) nature, by 294 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics unfortunate circumstances, and by a lot of very bad men around him who pretend to be his friends — who really care nothing for him — nothing for the Democratic party, and noth- ing for the people of Georgia except as they can use each and all for their own selfish ends." Reporter: "Why did he not separate from Murphy?" "He most assuredly, in some way, brought Colquitt under obligations to him. He first exacted $15,000. He fell to $8,000 only after his victim, the Rolling Mill, was about to give up all efforts for endorsement and Mr. Goodnow had gone north to make other arrangements. While Goodnow was gone, he traded with IMorrill, at a lower figure. The whole case shows that Murphy and the governor were making common cause. I do admit it was corruption and no instance of that class of corruption was ever more clearly proved or more distinctly marked or more feebly ex- cused. Colquitt admits that he knew Murphy was interested. * * * All the misrepresentation was gotten up by Murphy and his sympathizers. I have sought to keep Murphy and Colquitt apart to save Colquitt, but Murphy had the majority of the committee." (If Senator Hill had been candid in the matter, he would have said the convict lease was on .the side of Murphy and with the Governor, and that was the "fly in the oint- ment"). A minority report was made by two of the most respected men in Georgia. It said: "To guard against the evils adverted to, we respectfully recommend the enactment of such legislation as will prevent the contracting for, or receiv- ing directly or indirectly by any official or subordinate of any department of the State government, any fee or reward for influencing or attempting to influence the official of any other department. (Signed) "W. M. HAMMOND, "R. C. HUMBER." Among the majority members I find the name of Wm. J. Northen, who became governor a few years later. The im- pression in Georgia generally prevailed that the succession was always arranged for by this Omnipotent convict lease contingent. It was noted in the newspapers that Governor Colquitt made overtures to Judge Simmons, and Hon. A. H. Stephens is quoted as saying Governor Colquitt went to him for that purpose in Washington City — to secure his own suc- cessor. ]\Iy jNIemoirs of Georgia Politics 295 The Murphy fee was no whit worse than the Garlington- Alston fee, and it was a notorious coincidence that convi<>,t lease profits, and State Railroad lease profits and the fees nf Garlington and Alston and Murphy were all raked in by a close corporation of so-called Democratic politicians — lodged in the best paying offices of the State. I did sit back and enjoy this Rolling Mill scramble for money — for it reminded me of Mother Hubbard and her pig on the way to market. Big men, little men, senators, con- gressmen and railroad lobbyists all went before the governor to influence his opinion in regard to the signing of the North- Eastern bonds. Although the governor said he was ''satisfied" he ought to sign, etc., he turned a deaf ear for more than a year — until a clerk in the treasury knelt in his presence after Hon. Ben Hill had plead. Dr. Carlton entreated, and the Roll- ing Mill (that sold the railroad its iron) cried out in despair, then Mr. Murphy's siren voice won the case. Like Mother Hubbard's pig — when Mr. Murphy said "sign," the political machine began to move, the Rolling Mill people begun to smile, Mr. Renfro began to sign bonds — the Rolling Mill began to pay — the governor began to see his way clear, and Mr. Murphy began to get his money. Eight thousand dollars! Didn't it smack of Bullock's time when the greasy drip- pings of the State treasury made so many loud-mouthed Demo- cratic politicians both fat and "sassy?" But Mother Hub- bard's pig was led along by the military — and the old soldiers had the wool pulled over their eyes ! The scandal of the North-Eastern Railroad bonds had hardly been smothered down by the military parade, before the Alston report on the convict lease system of Georgia sprang up, and forced the smouldering excitement against thrifty politicians to fever heat in December, 1878. Calling themselves the Democratic party, they made the Democratic temple a hiding place for money changers, and the capitol in Atlanta was controlled by men who made private fortunes for themselves, and also political reputation abroad by keeping in their own grasp these opportunities for graft — and thus entrenched in power, they cracked the party lash over the heads of the people of Georgia. 296 ^Iy IMemoirs of Georgia Politics I could discern in the dim distance the probable defeat of Dr. Felton, because there was no limit to their intent to crush him out, and when I saw Murphy whitewashed, Governor Col- quitt whitewashed, Senator Gordon re-elected after he had worked for a bill that Huntington called his "own," and poor Bob Alston was assassinated in the State capitol of Atlanta because he ventured to write a report to the legislature con- cerning the horrors of the convict lease system, and also at- tempted to cover up Senator Gordon's connection with the lease at the same time, I nearly despaired of the future of my country. It was noticeable also, when the impeachments of Goldsmitli and Renfroe came on — the former was driven from office, while the latter, who divided out the interest collected from the State's money with his friends, contrary to law and justice, was saved from political disgrace. I shall always believe that it would have been different if Goldsmith had been a member of the convict lease system, which for twenty years was made highly profitable to the chief Democratic leaders in Georgia. As I recollected the ter- rible contests Dr. Felton had had to encounter in the Seventli district, it seemed that human flesh and strength would be obliged to give way with such forces to meet, day and night, year after year — and the old commonwealth powerless to throw off the greedy politicians in control of her revenues and her business. As I write these words, after a lapse of a third of a century, I would do no good man's memory any harm — and I think it proper to say that Mr. Renfroe gave a published statement in regard to the profit he and his friends made of the State's money. If the files of The Constitution are examined his statement can there be found. It is my authority, and lies before me. Said Treasurer Renfroe: "I had no difficulty in making my bond of $200,000, but when I was re-elected in 1877, a new law passed which required every security on the treasurer's bond to signify what he may be worth over all exemptions, debts and liabilities. The securities on my first bond showed up on the tax books at $400,000, but on this test couldn't sign for between $80,000 and $90,000. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 297 "I finally succeeded in getting certain gentlemen interested in banks to go on my bond. They designated certain banks to receive the State's money. The money was deposited in these banks. My securities came to me and said their banks would allow them a certain percentage, and they thought I ought to get some of it. They said I would receive one-third, and I did so, I presume." His associates acquitted him. The Constitution of the State of Georgia forbade this graft, and if the young men of the State will study the events of this era in Georgia history they will find that the convict lease ring defied the law — made swollen fortunes out of the illegal leasing of convicts and continued to occupy the highest offices in the gift of the State. In this fateful year, 1880, a supervisor of census was to be appointed by the president for the Seventh congressional district. Dr. Felton presented the name of a gentleman from his own town, a Democrat, and was given to understand by the president he would only appoint a Republican. So he offered the name of a gentleman from Tilton — who was warmly recommended by Hon. Dawson A. Walker, Mr. N. B. Harben, former Republican candidate for congress, and Hon. W. C. Richardson, former legislative member from Whitfield county. They said he was fully qualified for the place — of good moral habits, a local Methodist preacher, well connected, etc. Immediately Senator Gordon set about ruining the repu- tation of this man and for this purpose, abstracted or destroyed or made away with certain papers that belonged to the court of claims in Washington City — which he contrived into his own possession through the control he used over the file clerk, F. Finch, who afterwards produced an autograph letter signed **J B. Gordon," and of which letter Dr. Felton kept a copy. Four valuable documents disappeared and after the disap- pearance the senator made a ferocious attack on the character of Simmons, the census nominee, and despite the pleadings of Senator Hill and Hon. A. H. Stephens, who were outraged at the injustice heaped on the man — he was defeated. When the papers held by the file clerk (and which were connected with the character of Simmons) were called for, as I said before, they had disappeared. Finch had to clear up his part of it, 298 My ]\Iemoirs of Georgia Politics by revealing the name of the person who had been allowed to take them in defiance of the rigid law governing the custody of such valuable papers. Thus wrote Senator Gordon to Finch, under date of April 20, 1880 : "I am quite sure the papers I send you are not more than half those in the Isom King- case. My recollection is, the bundle was double the size of the one I return — but these are all I can gather up, etc. I make this written statement to protect you in the premises. Very respectfully, (Signed.) ''J. B. GORDON." Poor Mr. Simmons ! His brother died in the Confederate service as a soldier. His own father and grand-father were taken out by some lawless men, falsely calling themselves Con- federate scouts, and the elder man was tied and laid on the frozen ground, barefoot. He was there compelled to witness the hanging of Simmons' father — this aged man's son — until they thought him dead. But as time rolled on this Republican, Simmons, actually voted for General Gordon and thought well of the senator. In the committee rooKi General Gordon was insolent towards Mr. Stephens, who remarked to him that he (Stephens) had heard that the senator was advocating the claims of Major Smythe, of Atlanta, the most advanced Republican in the country at that time. I will allow Mr. Stephens to complete the story, written to "William H. Moore, editor Augusta Even- ing News, dated February 7, 1880 : "This was only as an offset to what he said he heard. It was then he arose and demanded the name of my informant. I replied, 'this is not the occasion or time to answer that question. ' General Gordon replied : 'No; it is best to settle it here.' I said, 'This is not the place to settle matters of this sort. You said you had heard about what I said of you in this matter, and I replied by saying what I had heard of you.' Then General Gordon said, under great excitement : ' I pronounce it an infernal, infamous state- ment, from whoever it may come, and I shall hold you per- sonally responsible for it. (Signed) "ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS." From a person who listened to the discussion, I also heard that General Gordon said "He intended to crush out Radicals My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 299 and Independents in the Seventh district, ' ' and ' ' Little Aleck ' ' remarked: "General, you did your best three times and Fel- ton has always been elected." But when I recollected the coalition that occurred between Charles Foster and Stanley Matthews, of the one part, in seat- ing President Hayes, and John Young Brown and John B. Gordon, of the second part, which coalition ex-Governor Brown excoriated in the newspapers with pungent emphasis — it could not and did not surprise anybody that these worthies were able to influence President Hayes to withdraw poor Simmons or any nomination to which Senator Gordon objected. Poor Simmons was falsely charged with seducing his own niece. The very man who made false charges against Sim- mons, in a church trial, wrote to Dr. Felton to say, ''Simmons stands as fair in this district as Bishop Pierce." His father and grand-father were Union men and, as before stated, his father was dragged out and hung by the neck until he was nearly dead. Simmons called this gang "corrupt secession traitors," and he unfortunately used that term in writing a private letter to the president, but it was Gordon's supreme authority and the Kellogg faction which carried the vote against him. Satisfied that Simmons' case was just, Mr. Stephens sent the following memorial to the senate: "My opinion is that the act of rejection of the nomination of Mr. Simmons, under the grave charges against his character, would be very cruel to- wards him and in view of the other objections to his confirma- tion, I think his rejection would be very unwise and injudic- ious, politically. (Signed) "ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS, "M. C. from Eighth Cong. District." Hon. Emory Speer wrote also: "A Democrat myself, repre- senting a Democratic district in Georgia with 15,000 majority and embracing thirteen counties of the First Census district, I fully endorse what has been said by Hon. Alex. H. Stephens with relation to the confirmation of Mr. Simmons. I did not recommend Simmons in the first instance, but recommended P. F. Lawshe, Georgia, formerly of Minnesota, a life-long 300 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics Democrat, who I understand was defeated by the bitter pro- test of General Gordon. (Signed) EMORY SPEER, "M. C, 9th Cong. District of Ga." Dr. Felton wrote thus: "We, the undersigned members of congress from Georgia, respectfully ask the senate of the United States to confirm the nomination of Thos. J. Simmons, to be supervisor of the First Census district of Georgia. Two of the undersigned represent in congress twenty-seven out of the thirty counties composing the First Census district : (Signed) A. H. Stephens, Emory Speer and Dr. Felton. General Gordon enlisted the Kellogg faction and finally President Hayes went back on his own appointment and the deed was done, after the papers in the care of File Clerk Finch were lost or destroyed by General Gordon, for he wrote to Finch that fully half the papers were missing. It was the "coalition" with R. B. Hayes that made him as clay in the hands of the potter, when Gordon commanded. When the Kellog case was about to be opened. Senators Hill, Beck, Bailey of Tennessee, Vest, Saulsbury, Vance and Jones of Louisiana led in the fight for Spofford against Kel logg. The Democratic caucus voted and said "Oust Kel- logg," but four men, Messrs. Gordon, Wade Hampton, Butler and Lamar bolted the caucus. It was surprising that L. Q. C Lamar should be so often controlled by Gordon, to his own detriment, but the other three were conspicuous when South Carolina's electoral vote for Tilden was sold. It will be discerned that three of them were parties to the settlement of the South Carolina question when the State was counted to Hayes, and Tilden was left high and dry. The vote to defeat Simmons was really a vote to keep Kel- logg in his seat. Senators Gordon, Butler and Kellogg could not afford to allow any Investigation of the frauds in South Carolina and Louisiana. The Republicans couldn't afford to expose the bargain and sale of the Tilden electoral vote in South Carolina and Louisiana. Votes were swapped to defeat Hill in his advocacy of Simmons, and protect Kellogg. The trade that defeated Tilden will come out some day, and it will be a dirty disclosure, involving the presidency itself. That My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 301 Kellogg was not ousted, was because it involved Senator But- ler. We owe it to the four bolting Southern senators, this con- tinued concealment of a scheme that was a disgrace to the principles of honest, free government — where a lawfully elected president was traded out of his seat by conspirators in his own party, who profited politically by his overthrow. Poor Mr. Simmons must be executed — a Republican in Geor- gia who was decent enough to have the favor of preachers and Democrats at home and abroad — and Mr. Hayes yielded to pressure applied by Senator Gordon, to really protect Kellogg and to save himself from political infamy. If Kellogg should be unseated, then Senator Butler could be unseated from South Carolina, for these conspirators could not deny their participation in the bargain or trade which gave them each a seat in the senate — when South Carolina and Louisiana were counted in for Mr. Hayes. We were in Washington City and I sat in the Senate gallery when Kellogg and Butler each took the oath of Senator in the senate chamber — the day that Mr. Hayes was inaugurated and it was boldly charged in many papers, and denied very mildly at that time, that Tilden's electors were withdrawn and Hayes" electors given the right of way in South Carolina in con- sideration of Hampton's and Butler's election to the respective offices of governor and senator. Senator Conkling, of New York, openly expressed his con- tempt for President Hayes, who lent himself to these dis- reputable schemes. In an interview published in the New York World, this New York senator thus said of Hayes : ' ' To the old leaders of the Republican party, he is smilingly cold or carelessly insulting. I have known men, who are hon- ored throughout the land for past services, to come away from the White House in a rage, because they had been kept cooling their heels in an ante-room, while Rebel brigadiers came and went at their pleasure. ' ' He was asked if the presi- dent was wholly in the hands of Southern Democrats? He answered: "I am sure of it. A Republican told me he had occasion to visit the White House and found the president polite but cold as an iceberg. While he was there Senator Gordon walked in without ceremony — the president threw his arm affectionately over his shoulder, drew him to the window, 302 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics where the two talked together in confidential whispers. The other guest took his leave in disgust." He was asked if he thought the true history of the Louisiana electoral business would ever be told in congress? Mr. Conkling said: "Yes, I think it will. I do not see how it can be kept down. No reasonable man can doubt there was some sort of a bargain between Nicholls and that man Hayes, or that Stanley Matthews and Sherman were privy to it. Yankee ingenuity will be sure to find some means of getting such information." "What will be the result?" "The result will be that the whole country will be appalled by the dishonor of this administration. People will not be- lieve it until the proof is shown them. In the entire history of the country there has never been known so much corrup- tion — bartering of offices, and bargain and sale of the electoral franchise as during the past year. "I cannot say when this revelation will come. It may come at any moment. It will come naturally, and it will not be forced." So the Kellogg investigation, which was intended to un- cover and expose the crookedness and duplicity in Louisiana, was defeated by Republican votes and the influence of the traders. About this time the papers were filled with reports about the reorganization of certain railroads entering Georgia from the north, and we were told that President Newcomb, of the Louisville and Nashville, had said "that contingencies might arise that would make an independent line into Atlanta a necessity." The L. & N. Railroad had bought the Georgia Western, looking to this "necessity." The Associated Press sent such a dispatch from Louisville, Ky., on March 26, 1880. The Atlanta Constitution, commenting on the same, reported the arrival in Atlanta of Captain Gloster, civil engineer of the L. & N., and he would be associated with Captain H. T. McDaniel, of Atlanta, in the survey of a new road, and "the first stake would be driven by Captain Gloster at the other end of the line." The next thing we saw was the notice of the resignation of Senator Gordon from the United States senate, and the appointment of Senator Joseph E. Brown in his stead, which struck Georgia like a "bolt from the blue," on May 19, 1880. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 303 The surprise in Washington was universal and astounding. The Athens Watchman, in an editorial, said that Mr. H. W. Grady, on the train, told twenty members of the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, on May 10, 1880, on their way to a contest in Rome, that ex-Governor Brown would succeed Gor- don in the senate and Gordon would get a position with Victor Newcomb, at $14,000 a year. Mr. Grady's versatility and careless handling of facts in newspaper circles was well known — so the statement carried no force with it until the fact itself occurred. Mr. D. G. Candler, of Gainesville, who had a conversation with Governor Colquitt, spoke openly in Barnesville, Ga., of the reason given by Governor Colquitt in these words: "If Governor Brown was appointed, an important railroad position could be secured for Senator Gordon; otherwise it could not." Governor Brown was in Nashville, Tenn., when his appoint- ment to the senate was made known to him, and common rumor said the first $7,000 that reached General Gordon passed through the Louisville & Nashville office in Louisville, Ky., but went from Atlanta. General E. P. Alexander, vice presi- dent, told Judge Wm. M. Reese, who told me, that General Gordon's name never appeared on the books of the L. & N. road, even for a dollar of salary. That an "independent railroad line" was contemplated we have full assurance — that President Newcomb also felt its necessity was conclusively stated. In an Associated Press dis- patch under date of March 20th, it was also given out "that the stockholders of the Louisville & Nashville unanimously en- dorsed Newcomb 's action in making the purchase of the Georgia Western Railroad, and they now have the power to take such steps to carry out the suggestions of President Newcomb as they deem necessary." It was supposed that the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, in organizing for an "independent railroad line" in Georgia — which would antagonize the Western and Atlantic (so far as Atlanta) would of necessity meet serious opposition in regard to the right of way, because the State Road had been seriously hampered by allowing the East Tennessee and Virginia Rail- 304 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics road to emasculate its legitimate and actual profits from pas- senger and freight traffic. An independent line parallelling the State Road would have inflicted immense damage, if it had been carried out, but it was a flash in the pan and when the smoke lifted, Senator Brown was seated in the senate and an active supporter of Governor Colquitt for re-election, and General Gordon was sloshing around in a score of enterprises — most of which failed to show up or materialize, to the surprise of the Georgia people who had given him a seat in the senate for an additional six years, and of which nearly five years yet remained. His reasons for resignation will be given at length in another place As a matter of fact General Gordon did nothing for Victor Newcomb in Georgia after he gave up the seat in the senate to Governor Brown (as many believe, because he was obliged to) unless he was "working on" the legislature to induce a sale of the Western and Atlantic railroad, or secure a re-leasc of the road at a low price, and thus continue the profits in the hands of those who had literally owned and controlled it for nearly twenty years. In 1882 he went to Europe with his entire family — and there were people who confidently believed and asserted that he had become, apparently, a lobbyist in Washington City and New York to further the claims of Jay Gould or Huntington be- fore congress. The independent line in Georgia, managed by President Victor Newcomb, of the L. & N. Railroad, vanished as soon as Senator Brown went to the senate, and Engineer Gloster and Engineer McDaniel, who were presented to the public as hold- ing their picks aloft, ready to begin work at the other end of the line, were quietly withdrawn and the raging waters subsided and the hurrah was over ! The fight over the re-leasing of the Western and Atlantic Railroad would indicate that General Gordon was really em- ployed to do something by Victor Newcomb, but we found that Major E. B. Stahlman, a director of the L. & N. Railroad, came to Georgia and "worked on" the Georgia legislature. He wormed himself into a queer sort of receivership, along My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 305 with Senator Joe Brown — when the real fight was on — but in the year 1880 we did not look behind the curtain, and we only saw a resignation from the senate that made Georgians ' ' sit up and take notice ! " It revived the repressed patriotism of the Democrats who had been either afraid or ashamed to antagonize these convict lessees ! General Gordon had been through some lively times in Washington City before he escaped by resignation. The Na- tional Republican, which had been a purveyor to his variegated politics in the senate and often threw a sop to Cerberus, by considerable "puffing" in the Kellogg case and which, along with The Capital, a newspaper published in Washington, had printed and made pictures with most extravagant descrip- tions of Senator Hill's derelictions — and lapses from moral law — to beat him down in this Kellogg case, yet the editorial of the National Republican, the day after Senator Gordon's resignation was known, was absolutely irreconcilable with its former pretensions to respect or remembrance of its puffing exploits before noted. After I returned from the capitol that day — where I saw the most of the Georgia members of congress standing around in groups, like they had just come from a funeral, and were too sad to get to work afterwards, I took up this National Republican newspaper and cut out what it said, and pasted it down for future reference. I wondered why the editor, Mr. Gorham, secretary of the senate, should be so flippantly dis- respectful, for it was this Mr. Gorham to whom Senator Gor- don went, to hunt up my letter to Senator Ferry, and from what Anderson Reese continued to write in the Macon Tele- graph — General Gordon had received some encouragement from Editor Gorham and Secretary of the Senate Gorham in their raid against my good name. But the secretary of the senate no longer made obeisance to General Gordon. He would save his smiles and agreeable- ness for the new senator from Georgia, Mr. Brown. Mr. Gor- ham claimed to be from California, the terminal of Collis P. Huntington's railroad system of Pacific railroads, and he knew many things and it was a very different state of affairs when 306 jMy INIemoirs of Georgia Politics the senator displaced his toga, and came down to lower levels in Washington City. Here's the editorial: "Senator Gordon's retirement from the United States senate is about the slyest thing that has occurred in some time. The way the thing was done would indicate that the senator re- garded himself as occupying a position under which reposed a dreadful torpedo, that was liable to explode and blow him to kingdom come at any moment. What that emergency is, may yet be revealed and then the people will understand why Sen- ator Gordon has beat a hasty retreat from the senate chamber Precipitate as the act has been,- a new and curious feature is added when it is known that his successor had been appointed and was on his way to take his seat, when this resignation transpired with the public. ' ' Whatever may have caused the resignation, it is plainly evident that Mr. Gorham, secretary of the senate, had parted with his respect for the retiring senator ! No tears there ! A few weeks previously there was a flouish of trumpets and the brass band begun to "toot" in the Savannah Morning News, in which it was stated that the gubernatorial campaign was about to open in Georgia, and Senator Gordon was in a hurry to dispose of the Simmons case because the senator aimed to take part in State political matters. "He will use all his influence to renominate Governor Col- quitt." The Albany Advertiser, on March 27, 1880, said: "The political situation in Georgia is on the eve of some great changes. Since Governor Colquitt's return from the Cincin- nati excursion his truest friends outside of Atlanta have had long conferences with him, and one made free to tell him he could not get the nomination of the Democratic party. Today it is freely asserted that Colquitt will run independent. The Independents say they will not support Colquitt, and in the event of his candidacy they will be forced back to the nomi- nee." An Atlanta dispatch of the same date, to the Augusta News, said: "It is generally thought today that since Governor Col- quitt returned from the Cincinnati excursion, he has found he cannot be nominated — hence Colquitt's friends now assert he My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 307 will run independent. Some of Colquitt's best friends out in the State held a long consultation with him as soon as he re- turned, and one of them told him he could not be nominated. Politics is on the eve of great changes." I kept these clip- pings because I was interested in the Independents and their movements. At that time General Gordon had no idea of resigning — he was "going, to help Governor Colquitt." Col- quitt did run independent and went in by the help of the negroes and Senator Brown. This is Georgia history and this was the recognized status of affairs in Georgia after Senator Brown came to the United States senate in May, 1880. "When Senator Gordon was shoved out from the rear, an article published in the New Orleans Times is significant, when the editor said: "It is suggested that the Kellogg- Spofford contest may have been the cause of the resignation, as his vote and advocacy of Kellogg would have ruined his political prospects in Greorgia and put the entire population against him. It is rumored that Victor Newcomb, president of the L. & N. Railroad, is at the back of the whole affair. He has managed to get Gordon out, to get Brown in, and thereby remove the thorn in the flesh, for with Governor Brown at the head of the W. & A. Railroad, the Cincinnati Southern Rail- road, a powerful adversary of the L. & N., is having the same facilities in putting freight through to Atlanta at such rates as will ruin the business of the Louisville and Nashville." This publication made it necessary for Mr. Grady to spealc out. "If General Gordon should become connected with the vast system of roads under control of the Louisville and Nash- ville, which is more than doubtful, it will not be as president of the W. & A. Railroad, nor will he have any connection with the W. & A. Railroad." And yet General Gordon said posi- tively he "would be general counsel for the L. & N. Railroad and all its branches, and he would preside in Newcomb 's place while the latter was in Europe." How one tale can collide with another tale, when such talkers are careless with facts, and are not drilled to tell the same tale ! Character seemed to have gone out of Georgia politics. There was nothing in sight except a sort of Puss in the corner game — where Governor Brown slid into the senate. General 308 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Gordon slid into a lot of money from somewhere — Grady slid into a fourth interest in the Atlanta Constitution, and left Governor Colquitt in the middle of the floor, crying ''Vindi- cate!" "Vindicate!!" I found in a Georgia newspaper the following : "Villa Rica, Ga., May 28, 1880. — As we are so far out in the backwoods here we never hear what is going on at the capitol until the thing is over with. We have received the sad news of General Gordon's resigning his seat, of the terrible news of Governor Colquitt's appointing J. Emerson Brown to step in. What our governor was thinking about we are at a loss to tell. The conclusion we have arrived at is that he is not a candidate for governor, as he was compelled to know he would spoil everything with such a man as Brown in. Norcross can beat him now! "We fear there is a dead Injun under the house !" Colquitt couldn't have appointed a more corrupt — a grander traitor than he has. Not one of the statesmen of '68 would equal him, is the expression of a majority of one of the strongest Democratic counties in Georgia. We are for Tom Hardeman. You can put in the enclosed as another county heard from, if you wish. Yours as ever, "S. C. CANDLER." I saved it because I threw up my bonnet to know that one plain, honest citizen had the nerve to tell the truth as he saw and felt it ! And that is the way the masses of the people looked at Governor Colquitt's action. And when General Gor- don made one of his fife-and-drum speeches in DeKalb county, where he lived, and made a great hurrah about the governor's Christian character and the necessity for re-electing him, for the sake of vindication, Hon. Milton A. Candler rose up to say, "The people of Georgia could not afford to re-elect Gov- ernor Colquitt, and in regard to vindication, he (Candler) was present to say he knew no man who stood in sorer need of vindication ! ' ' That was salty talk at one 's own door ! It took money to carry the vindication scheme. It was the use of Governor Brown's money in elections which General Gor- don brought forward as a reason for transferring the seat in the senate. There's many a truth spoken in jest. Governor My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 309 Colquitt was attacked by Gen. A. R. Lawton, who was making a speech in Market Hall, Augusta. "A strange sight had hap- pened in Georgia. Before the convention assembled, the chief executive of the state, leaving the business of the State, was going about lamenting he was a ruined man unless he was elected." If General Gordon had to leave the senate, because there was a torpedo under it for him, then these convict les- sees were figuring on holding to what was in sight, and Gov- ernor Colquitt was their main chance, so they could hold on to both the State Road lease money, the convict lease money, and the State House profits ! This was the condition in Georgia when the campaign opened for governor. It will not be necessary to do more than mention the chief events of the Norwood-Colquitt campaign, for it is doubtless well known that the people who were tired of Governor Colquitt, disgusted with Governor Brown, and amazed at General Gordon, met in Atlanta and determined to compel the State Democratic convention to have regard to existing conditions in the State. But they broke up in a row, and Governor Colquitt ran independent, as had been foretold. Before the split occurred three members of the opposition tele- graphed Dr. Felton to know if he would accept the nomina- tion and make the race against Colquitt. He was already in the race for congress, and decided to continue — so the two factions separated, each running its own candidate. I was out in the back yard when the messenger came with the dispatch — and we sat down on the back steps and discussed the tele- gram. I plead with him not to accept. I could foresee the struggle in my own mind — with all the money of the lessees turned loose, and maybe Huntington's money also — flooding the State. To go over Georgia and address the people, meant a vast deal of fatigue as well as expense to the opposing candidate. It meant a good deal more than fatigue and expense — for we had known what paid detractors and corrupt caluminators could do in a heated campaign. Perhaps he should have answered the call. Eternity alone can tell — because the triumverate did concentrate their fire on Ur Memoies op Geobgia Politics ^^^ , ;i it W always a question, t,e Seventh district afte-ards and^.tj ^ ^J^.^^,^ ^^^^_ ,,en an "VV^T^l^^Z .oJ^'^^ V^^^"-^' ^^'''^- whether one should siop Dr. Felton's Campaign With J. C. Clements The State of Georgia was in a perfect ferment over the events mentioned in the chapter headed "Campaign of 1880," when we returned from Washington in the summer of that year. There was not a man in Washington City, who was familiar with the facts who did not conclude that the "straw" that would "break the camel's back" had now been laid on the patient long-suffering beast, alias Georgia. There was not a man who spoke to us in Washington City about the situation who did not tell us that they believed that money had been freely used somewhere and by somebody to move Gov. Brown into the Senate. It was conceded that Gov. Brown was a more capable rep- resentative than Senator Gordon, but the onus, the reason why, the bargain, the trade, etc., were discussed at considerable length, always winding up with the question : ' ' How much did he pay for it?" Such was the status of affairs when we reached home after the adjournment of Congress in the summer of 1880. The in- dependent friends at home were anxious Dr. Felton should stay in Congress and he was more than willing to explain to them his work in that body, so his canvass came on naturally and with little or no excitement. This was very different from what we had expected, but we set it down to the fact that the gubernatorial canvass was on red hot and sulphurous. Gov. Brown was working might and main to seciire a majority vote for himself in the legislative races. Every precinct had its workers and money flowed like the creek was full and no sign of dry weather. In my review of Senator Hill's politics, I notice the pro- posal that he said he was authorized to make to Dr. Felton. If he (Felton) would not run any more they would withdraw all opposition and give him a walkover. He did not conclude that anybody held the names of Congressmen in his vest pocket 312 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics by divine right and that they could not run without permission from the bosses was preposterous and that was not his style anyhow, and so the negotiation ended. Dr. Felton then jogged along with his usual canvass until the gubernatorial conven- tion met and after a stormy session broke up in a row and two independents went out to run the race. We decided that it was a fight inside the party and to keep hands off. It was what Dr. Felton had longed to see, a straight up and down race, where the negro was not in evidence and where the white men of Georgia could unite on a principle and go to the ballot box with an assurance that the vote could be counted and justice win. With Senator Hill's denunciation of Gov. Colquitt and his administration, with the bargain and sale so called of a seat in the United States Senate, with the enormities of the convict lease exposed and poor Alston's assassination, he supposed the sane and sensible people in Democratic Georgia would embrace the opportunity and recall the State's business into capable hands and purify the political atmosphere in and around the State capitol in Atlanta. A congressional convention was held as usual and to the surprise of the regular organized, none of the battle-scarred warriors were selected and they ''dug up" a new man in Walker county and remanded the "faithful" to the anxious bench again. Mr. Clements was unknown to the people of a majority of the counties and he made very little stir in the campaign. As it was a presidential year ; after the October election was over with, the "powers that were" elated with victory decided to run a still hunt and "count out" where bogus Hancock and Garfield tickets could be used in the seventh district. We had no experience with such fraud before, but it was worked so skilfully that we were satisfied it was nothing new to those who thus defeated an honest vote and a fair count. The fraud was perpetrated mostly in Floyd and the upper counties of the district. When we returned to Washington after the elec- tion was over a reporter of the Cincinnati Commercial came to see Dr. Felton and I heard the interview and what I here copy is in the main correct : My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 313 DR. FELTON'S DEFEAT. How the Will of the People Was Violated at the Polls. Special to the Cincinnati Commercial. Washington, March 2. — Hon. Wm. H. Felton, the Georgia independent, has represented his district in Congress six years. At the last election he was defeated by systematic fraud. He has long been gathering evidences of this, and the result shows, in a striking manner, how elections in the South are conducted. In an extended interview with your correspondent, Mr. Felton gave the following account of the frauds by which he was de- feated and Georgia made "solid": The causes of my defeat were, first, the overconfidence of my friends. They had persuaded themselves that I would triumph easily over my opponent. Many remained at home engaged in their business matters ; many were not sufficiently I watchful, and the organized Democrats whom I have always, [ in my political campaigns, antagonized, were thoroughly drill- j ed — their last voter at the polls, and working with an energy ' which was inspired by a political hatred unequaled in our his- \ tory. I was defeated by fraud, intimidation and bogus tickets, f To give you some conception of the animus of the opposition 1 will state that in some of my speeches I expressed my sentiments about General Garfield and thereafter the most prominent Bourbon journal in the district (Rome Courier) kept at its head the following sentence taken from my speech: ''Garfield is a good man — a patriot and a gentleman." — W. H. Felton. **Do the people of the seventh district of Georgia believe that Dr. Felton is honest in that opinion ? If he is can they indorse him without violating the cardinal principles of Christian mor- als? Does he not hold himself out to the world as one ready to treat and bargain for the sale of his own vote and influence in Congress?" This paper was the guide to public Democratic opinion in the county of Floyd, where the greatest frauds were perpe- trated. In the speech at Marietta (Cobb county) I used these words: "I knew General Garfield personally — have been on the same committee with him. He is a gentleman of good morals, social, clever, and has a grand intellect. Intellectually he has no superior in the House. He is a good man, has a mind of in- exhaustible resources, and I have not a word to say to detract from his integrity." The Bourbon sheet (Marietta Journal, the county organ), commented on me in these words: "Dr. Felton can not find it in his heart to detract from the character of General Garfield, who stands branded by his own acts and his own party as a U-J CitrAiS i^ i^'kid "^ ^' 314 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics perjurer, suborner of perjury, a bribe-taker, and a back-salary grabber. Oh! Consistency, thou art a jewel!" They asserted that the salvation of the party which was to be the salvation of the country demanded my defeat, and every method, honest and dishonest, was resorted to for that pur- pose. "Are you not going to contest the seat of the elected mem- ber?" ' * No ; and for these several reasons : My experience in the last three Congresses convinces me that the contestant, how- ever just his claim, is compelled to dance attendance on the whims and party purposes of a committee, sometimes until the last three days of a Congress, before his case is reported to the House, as shown, among many others, in the case of Bisbee, who received the unanimous support of the Committee, but who was kept here in expectation, annoyance and expense to the end of this Congress, notwithstanding the official declara- tion of his title to the seat." "It appears to be the policy of Congress, doctor, to pay the salary to the seated member and the contestant also." "However that may be I can not consent to become a party to defrauding the government of a single cent. I am not going to seek the people's money by becoming a contestant for the office simply. I desire the ends of justice accomplished; and I propose to contest the frauds before the seventh congressional district of Georgia. I have always appealed to this consti- tuency and found them ready to rebuke corruption and willing to protect an honest ballot, until this well-devised system of fraudulent tickets was made all powerful by the machine- tricksters of the organized Democracy. There are many good people who vote the regular Democratic ticket in this district, who are in no way complicated in these frauds; who would scorn the making and attempted use of such villainous meth- ods. They cast honest ballots themselves, and are not respon- sible for the deception and trickery of these self-constituted manipulators at the polls. Prior to 1874 there was an organ- ized system in this district, of denunciation and political os- tracism which amounted to a total exclusion from any office, of every one who dared to question the right and supremacy of this organization. Democrat or Republican, who dared to differ with this corrupt oligarchy or to question its doubtful methods, was branded with every epithet known to political billingsgate — 'radical,' 'traitor,' ' disorganizer, ' 'Yankee ally,' 'negro affiliator,' etc. But the friends of a free ballot and an honest count in 1874, made a successful stand against this 'ring.' In 1876 and '78 the fight was renewed, with continued success for the independent voters. These campaigns are with- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 315 out a parallel in the history of the State for bitterness and vituperation on the part of these baflled tricksters, but this wholesale abuse only aroused the independents to increased energy and watchfulness. In 1880 the machine changed its tactics. Although trickery and continued efforts to deceive the ignorant and dependent voter had always marked its policy, the manipulators found themselves defeated whenever the peo- ple were aroused. They decided to inaugurate a * still hunt, ' to make the system of fraudulent tickets successful." "Do you know to what extent these fraudulent tickets were instrumental in defeating you?" "I have no means of knowing how often I was voted for as 'Elector' on the fraudulent tickets which I will show you. Many counties in the district were flooded with them I will also show you some affidavits which will throw considerable light upon the subject. Besides, I have an official statement from the comptroller general which will evidence the dis- crepancy in the vote for electors, showing the great falling off in the regular seventh district electors which can be explained in no other satisfactory way. Just here I will allow you a couple of tickets that were voted and thrown out and you will find it difficult at the first glance to discover the fraud." NATIONAL REPUBLICAN TICKET. For President, Jas. A. Garfield, of Ohio. For Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur, of New York, Electors — State at Large. James Atkins, George S. Thomas. District Electors, First District — A. N. "Wilson. Second District — H. B. Stewart. Third District— W. P. Pierce. Fourth District — I. N. Wimbish. Fifth District— E. Pinkney. Sixth District— Peter O'Neal. Eighth District— W. J. White. Ninth District— W. T. Crane. District Elector, — Seventh District of eGorgia, William H. Felton. "The above is a sample of a ticket voted and thrown out of the ballot box. The reader will discover the omission of the seventh district elector's name — and the average voter 316 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics would not be likely to discover the fraud unless he examined it closely. There was no congressional candidate counted with this ticket, although the Republican voters believed they were voting for ine, as Congressman, when they deposited that vote in the ballot box." NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC TICKET. For President, Winfield S. Hancock, of Pennsylvania. For Vice-President, "William H. English, of Indiana. Electors — State at Large, J. C. C. Black, Richard E. Kennon. District Electors, First District— S. D. Bradwell. Second District — Wm. Harrison. Third District— C. C. Smith. Fourth District — L. R. Ray. Fifth District— John I. Hall. Sixth District — Reuben R. Nesbit. Eighth District — Seaborn Reece. Ninth District — Wm. S. Simmons. For Elector of Seventh Congressional District, Wm. H. Felton. "This ticket was voted in Floyd county and thrown out of the ballot box without being counted for me, just as the Re- publican ticket was managed as before explained. There was no vote counted for me either as elector or Congressman where these tickets were used. The next fraudulent ticket that I give you, shows the intention of fraud and deception as fully as the two that precede it." NATIONAL REPUBLICAN TICKET. For President, James A. Garfield, of Ohio. For Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur, of New York. Electors — State at Large, James Atkins, George S. Thomas. District Electors, First District — A. N. Wilson. Second District — H. R. Stewart. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 317 Third District— W. P. Price. Fourth District — I. N. Wimbish. Fifth District— E. Pinkney. Sixth District— Peter O'Neal. Seventh District — C. D. Forsyth. Eighth District— W. J. White. Ninth District— W. T. Crane. For Representative in the XLVIIth Congress — Seventh District of Georgia, W. A. Brock, "In explanation of the above ticket, I will state that the Bepublicans of the district held a district convention and de- cided to make no nomination for Congress. Colonel Brock, a distinguished Republican, had always been my friend and sup- porter, but the organized Democracy, hoping that by the above cunningly devised ticket, they might divert some Republicans from my support, printed and circulated hundreds of these tickets. Col. Brock was indignant when he saw the fraud ; and gave a written certificate that it was without his approval, and he authorized my friends to denounce it as a fraud from one end of the district to the other. ' ' "Was Garfield's vote increased in those counties where so many Garfield tickets were employed?" Mr. Felton — No, sir; President Hayes received 1,206 votes in Floyd county in the campaign of 1876. Garfield only received 892 in 1880, a falling off of 314, in a county which has rapidly increased in population during the last four years. In the county of Cobb, where strenuous efforts were made to defeat me, and where intimidation was employed to frighten colored men from the polls, I find Mr. Garfield does not get the vote of Mr. Hayes. The Republican vote of Cobb county in 1876 was 753. In 1880, was only 559. In Polk county, adjoining to Floyd, Garfield only fell behind Hayes 21 votes, and the difference was small in Bartow county also. Had I decided to contest the seat of Mr. Clements I should have examined he vote of every county with careful scrutiny. I was furnished this evidence in regard to the frauds in Floyd, by the indignant citizens of that county. My opinion is de- cided that these tickets are a system in some localities; and where this wrong is condemned in the South, freedom is a myth, and elections are a farce. The whole vote in the district was smaller than in 1876, owing to the law that compelled all 318 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics voters to pay taxes before they were allowed that privilege. How that matter was manipulated, the affidavits and state- ments disclose. The following are sample affidavits of a few of the defrauded voters : "State of Georgia, County of Floyd: "This is to certify that I am a lawful voter of the county of Floyd, and State of Georgia ; that at the election of President and Congressmen held on the second day of November, I at- tempted to vote at the Etowah precinct, in said coutny; that I wanted and attempted to vote for Gen. Winfield Scott Han- cock for President and the Hon. William H. Felton for Repre- sentative in the Forty-seventh Congress; that I was willfully and maliciously deprived of that high privilege by designing men of the organized Democracy, who deceived me with a ticket, gotten up for that purpose, said ticket reading : 'For elector Forty-seventh Congress — Wm. H. Felton.' That my eyes being dimmed by age, and not having spec- tacles, and seeing the names of W. S. Hancock and Wm. H. Felton and Forty-seventh Congress on the ticket, thought it was genuine and voted it; that I know that the ticket that I voted was counted by the managers, and that fourteen other men voted the same ticket at the time and place, and that they were also not counted for Felton. "A. R. RUSSELL." Sworn to before Paul D. Wright, J. P., Floyd county. "I, being one of the fifteen men who voted the bogus tickets at Etowah precinct, subscribe to the above certificate of A. R. Russell as being entirely correct, and that the ticket I voted was given me by Thomas A. Oliver, one of the sworn managers of the election. "H. H. KERCE." Also sworn to by B. J. Reeves and C. Reeves. In the official statement furnished to me by the comptroller general, I find the elector for the seventh district, T. W. Akin, fell behind the other elector twenty-three votes. The vote for Hancock in Floyd was 2,252. Mr. Akin received only 2,229 votes. I discover the difference on the Garfield ticket to be much greater. The majority of the Garfield electors received 892 votes in the county of Floyd, while C. D. Forsyth, the elector for the seventh district, received only 281, making a difference of 611 votes in one county alone. Forsyth lived in Floyd county and was expected to find his strongest following just there. Whether my name as elector appeared on all these tickets I have no means of knowing, as no official return was made for me as elector. The people must judge for themselves. My friends knew nothing whatever of the frauds until the tickets were being thrown out. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 319 I will now furnish you a statement furnished to me by R. Toombs Wright, of Rome, son of Hon. A. R. Wright, a gentle- man whose legal reputation is national: "Rome, Floyd county, Georgia, Nov. 11, 1881. "As I was placed at the voting precinct in Rome by several Felton supporters to see if the election was conducted prop- erly, and each man had his rights, I feel that I can give a cor- rect statement of what occurred : "1. I noticed that a list of colored men who had paid their, and also a list of colored men who had not paid their taxes, were found in the hands of some men and boys who sat by the ballot box. These men and boys belonged to the opposite party — the organized Democracy — friends of Mr. Clements. When a voter came up to deposit his ballot, they would cry out: 'Hold to his vote before you deposit it, for I don't think his name is on our list. Glancing quickly over their list, and not seeing his name thereon, they would say : ' Give him back his vote.' These voters had been challenged, remember, and had taken the oath that their taxes were paid. They had to leave the polls without voting. There were only about 200 colored men in the county who had not paid their taxes, and about 300 to 350 white men who had not paid. The majority of the colored men desired to vote for Dr. Felton, and the majority of the white defaulters were Clements men. This accounts for the list of colored men being furnished and the list of white men omitted at this precinct, in my opinion. "2. I saw some men who wished to vote for Dr. Felton approach the polls. I saw them take the oath, and after that oath was taken and a ballot placed in a manager's hands (I can name him) a man would say to the manager: 'Hold.' Turning to the voter he said: 'If you let that vote go in that box I will have you arrested on the spot.' A voter asked me if this was right. I told these managers to let that vote go in. But the threats and intimidation were too great. They left without voting, the manager sitting by and encouraging this fraud. "3. I was sitting in the Central Hotel at 11 :30 o'clock p. m. on the day of the election, when a certain Mr, Wardlaw, a relative of Mr. Clements, walked in. I noticed under his arm one of the ballot boxes — one that they had failed to finish counting that night. This box had a very poor seal upon it. It could have been opened with ease, and closed the same way. The last I saw of that box, that night, it was in the hands of Wardlaw and J. R. Towfers, as they walked down the street at midnight. Both were supporters of Clements. There were 1,677 votes polled at this precinct. When the count stopped that night, out of 1,350 votes, Clements had only 74 320 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics majority. With the remaining 327 votes they gave him over 100 majority. Remember, this box carried around by Ward- lay and Towers, gave a majority of more than 100, while 1,350 votes in other boxes gave only 74. "4. On the morning of the election J. J. Black, tax col- lector, and a strong supporter of the Clements party, was pres- ent, and received the taxes of all who were willing to pay. As this was evidently aiding the Felton vote, he left the court house and did not return until the polls were closed. He was seen confering with Clements men before he left the house, among them Solicitor Clements, the brother of the candidate. "5. Bogus tickets were sent out by Clements men to Felton supporters, and voted freely, which tickets were all thrown out. R. TOOMBS WRIGHT." Georgia, Floyd county, Nov. 13, 1880.— This is to certify that I was present at the Rome polls, on the day of election held on the 2d day of November, 1880. Had gone there to vote for W. H. Felton for Congress and Winfield S. Hancock for President. I found it impossible for Felton voters to get into the voting room while voters for Clements were let in at the other door and that after they had promised to vote for Clem- ent. I am witness to the fact that many voters for Felton had to leave the polls on account of the organized keeping them out of the voting room. I told my friends, on that day, that Felton would be defeated in Floyd unless we could get the rights allowed voters at the polls. G. R. DUKE. Sworn and subscribed before me this, Nov. 13, 1880. PAUL D. WRIGHT, J. P. Georgia, Floyd County, November 12, 1880. — This is to certify that I was present at the Rome polls on the day of the election held on the 2d day of November, 1880. Had gone there to vote for Hon. W. H. Felton, for congress, and Win- field S. Hancock, for president. At the time the votes were being cast I found the door to the election room filled with voters for W. H. Felton, kept from entering the room, by one of the organized stationed at the door for that purpose. Find- ing it impossible to enter at this door to cast my vote, I went to a door opening into the upstairs of the court house. Here I was told I could not enter unless I was a Clements man. When I made myself known as a supporter of W. H. Felton I was denied the right of entering at this door, where Clements men My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 321 were going in after it was known that they were for J. C. Clements. his M. S. (X) SHUGART. mark. Sworn to and subscribed to before me, this Nov. 12, 1880. PAUL D. WRIGHT, J. P. of the 917th District, Floyd County, Georgia. "Did Weaver get many votes in your district?" "Yes, but my friends write me that they were largely thrown out in Murray county, on the plea that it was not a legal ticket. They all had my name on them, which will explain the throw- ing out, in my opinion. I give you a ticket that you may judge of the legality: NATIONAL GREENBACK TICKET. For President — Jas. B. Weaver, of Iowa. For Vice President — Benj. J. Chambers, of Texas. For Presidential Electors— W. F. Stark, J. W. Tucker, Chas. Davidson, D. B. Person, E. 0. Stafford, H. A. Wrench, C. H. Thomas, M. 0. Minter, M. T. Burty, Ira A. Brown, Dr. A. L. Nance. For Representative, 47th Congress — William H. Felton. "It will be seen from the foregoing that Mr. Clements, who claims to be my successor, will occupy a seat in Conrgess, which is branded with fraud, a seat which the "organized" ring of this district has obtained for him by cheating and de- ceiving the illiterate, by intimidating and bulldozing the poor and dependent. I appeal to the people of the district to avenge this wrong against the ballot-box and to rescue our govern- ment from the tyranny to which political villainy would con- sign it." After the returns were tabulated and the official vote de- clared, there were only 74 votes difference. There were four counties which were not counted as to Hancock or Garfield. In those counties the frauds were enormous, especially in Floyd. Weaver had a good vote in all the counties, especially in Catoosa, Gordon and Murray. The returns in Floyd would have disclosed the throwing out of the electoral vote — with Dr. Felton 's name substituted as "District elector." In Har- alson county also, where the Brock ticket was used. 522 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Printed Official Returns, from Atlanta Constitution. Hincocck Eirfltld Clatiienti Filon Bartow 1,918 828 752 1,973 Catoosa— Weaver, 69 488 65 441 190 Chattooga 1,166 206 1,010 409 Cherokee 1,813 125 775 1,192 Cobb— Weaver, 28 1,980 559 1,404 1,168 Dade 459 83 463 105 Floyd 1,803 1,360 Gordon— Weaver, 133 1,248 164 730 836 Haralson Murray— Weaver, 77 933 95 682 427 Paulding 653 611 Polk 1,066 508 657 956 Walker 1,194 341 1,070 559 Whitfield 810 708 Total 10,568 10,494 It was a carefully laid plan, and it shows that the count was covered up by all who handled those tickets. It will stand forever as a dirty scheme, manipulated by dirty politicians, and unworthy of the name of Georgians. This official return gave no notice to the country of the Hancock or Garfield vote in four counties. It was "doctored" for a purpose and an unworthy one. Dr. Felton should have contested this election. The vote and the frauds in Rome alone would have reversed the election. But the trouble was that men who would cheat and use bogus tickets would lie to cover up the frauds. And whenever they were uncovered, the Rebel yell sufficed to make the coun- try forget what was due to civil freedom. The State of Geor- gia was in absolute bondage to those who used the Rebel yell for such effect. By such efforts and the terror and intimidation of Solicitor Clements, brother of the candidate, the election of November, 1880, was counted in for Judson Clements. That is the way he "broke into congress." He is our interstate commissioner! An eye witness to the election scenes in Rome that day, told us that the same plan, commonly used in Savannah, was put in force in Rome on November 2, 1880. The front entrance to the polls in Savannah was thronged with men who stayed My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 323 there. Crowds of men were kept back, particularly poor men. They had but a short time to leave their work, and many were never allowed to reach the ballot-box at all. But there was a side entrance in Rome where Clements voters could hand over their ballots, and they were shoved in to reach the box, with not an objection or demur. That back way was kept open and the front way was kept crowded — packed by men put there to keep voters away. The county officials were the ring- masters! The county of Floyd was dominated by these men, who secured their own elections in the same manner. It would be legitimate to go into detail and tell of the dark cloud that lowered over the office of Tax-Collector Black. The story is in reach, but the fault, I might say the crime lay in the apathy and cowardice of Floyd county citizens who allowed such elec- tions to pass without invoking the State's authority to sup- press them. I am old now — with the snows of seventy-five winters rest- ing on my head. I lived through these perils — and we might have been assassinated — by these political desperadoes, and T say it here in the presence of my Maker, that Georgia has had experiences in politics that are equal to any now being exposed in Illinois or New York or Ohio — and some of our successful politicians in many instances could give Lorimer ten miles in the race and win in a canter. Dr. Felton did not know, when the election of 1880 was on, that United States Commissioner Raum, in Washington City, had set his Federal deputies in Georgia on Dr. Felton 's track to beat him down. His orders to "beat Felton" were ac- knowledged by himself, when such efforts were traced up to his chief subordinate in Georgia, Andrew Clark. Governor Brown, United States senator, later confessed in an interview that he had soirhe acquaintance if not intimacy with Raum. I saved what he said and what Raum said, and if necessary I'll say it for the public over again; but I submit there was no •earthly chance to win any election in Georgia against the Colquitt administration and Huntington's "man," and the money of the convict lease, and the money of the State Road lease, and every judge and solicitor in Georgia of one political party — and that party led by these powerful forces against all 324 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics who opposed them. In the Rome judicial district, Solicitor Clements was exceedingly active for his brother's success. It would have been perfect folly to try to bring these recreants to justice. Tax Collector Black and Sheriff Jake Moore could be relied upon to put down any complaints — and althoug]i ''Rome howled" under the tyranny, the people endured their own craven condition and these political trick-masters had free rein and they went on undisturbed. Hon. Judson Clements went into congress as the pet of these men of high and low degree. While I may do him some in- justice in my expressed opinion, I will say he could not have progressed to his present Federal position without their sup- port or consent, if not by their connivance. He accepted this position at the hands of President Benjamin Harrison, a Rad- ical of Radicals in the presidency — and I hazard nothing when I say that the commission will have to mend its gait if it desires to be considered more than "middle men" between the powerful railroads and a restless, dissatisfied and anxious people who have hoped for active protection from monopolistic forces — and have gotten next to nothing from a most ex- pensive, unwieldly bureau in "Washington City, principally used for the employment of sons or henchmen of politicians- who must have paying positions. This great Federal lumber- room seems to be the only place to store away useless furniture for purposes understood, if not explained to the public. Incompetency is as unsatisfactory as corruption is danger- ous ; and if there is anything in Washington City or out of it with more pretension and less service than the Interstate Com- l merce Commission, unless I might be allowed to say the De- partment of the Interior, I wish somebody would point it out to me. If you will run your eye over the list of names of those in the Blue Book who draw pay and are simply figure- heads, or pensioners on the bounty of the government, you can see what I saw and fully understand its purpose, as I see it. There was terrible opposition to the setting up of this high- priced, ornamental commission. I have the vote on the pas- sage of the bill creating it, and the necessity was urged that some breakwater against railroad magnates, such as Jay My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 325 Gould and Huntington, must be found, and there were brave ] and patriotic Southern men enlisted in its advocacy — but it ! is history, known of all men, that the progressive element in ' the Republican party felt obliged to step out of the ranks and call for effective legislation against these monopolists, and to i secure rates that were even tolerable, after this highly-varn- ' ished bureau had been in evidence for nearly twenty years — and seemed to be not only useless for its proposed purpose, but hollow on its inside ! In closing this review of political conditions in 1880, it will not be improper for me to say that I accepted 'Dr. Felton's defeat as the fortune of war. I urged him to save his strength and his scant pocket-book in the face of "coalitions" that were impregnable. The Colquitt-Norwood campaign was an evi- dence of the fact that money and Federal influence were en- listed, and when a committee of three distinguished members of that gubernatorial convention telegraphed Dr. Felton to accept strong support and become the minority's candidate for governor, against the Kirkwood Ring, reinforced by the Bul- lock Democrats led by Senator Brown, I begged him to spare himself and his family — the vituperation and billingsgate that ., would be heaped on us if he accepted the call. Where Hon. Alexander Lawton could make no headway for the United States senate, backed as he was by what was called the "unterrified Democracy" of Georgia, what hope was there for Dr. Felton, who was a plain farmer and local preacher at home, but who only, by reason of his intellectual force and magnificent oratory, had won a place on the first committee of the house, ways and means? This promotion exposed him to malignant envy and detraction at home. How could he hope to antagonize the leaders, who swapped seats in the senate and used the treasury of the State of Georgia like it was their own iron safe to pay pets and pimps for dirty political ser- vices? He yielded to my persuasions then, and when I recol- lect how the pets and the pimps howled along after him when he made a few speeches in the gubernatorial canvass of 1886, and when such men as ex-Governor Smith joined in the howl- ing pack and frothed at the mouth until rabies might be sus- pected, I thank my Heavenly Father that my counsels pre- 326 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics vailed, and that we had only an unfortunate experience with Seventh district tricksters in the campaign with Hon. Judson Clements. When it came to the notice of Northern journals that Sena- tor Gordon was a convict lessee in Georgia, their disgust was deep and concentrated. One said: "We would not belong to that miserable convict system — not for a seat in the United States senate." In view of what character means to man or woman, I would still say to Mr. Clements, I could not afford to be elected presi- dent as he was elected to office in the year 1880. His debut in this matter was perhaps similar to that of various con- gressmen I could name, even in Georgia, during those ring- ridden days, but fraud vitiates any contract and the fraud that obtained in 1880 and reached its acme of insolence and corruption in the year 1894, in the entire State of Georgia, will carry its black taint and its foul smell to the end, even in the higher positions later obtained. After Dr. Felton received the news that he was thus de- feated in 1880, and that his usefulness to the nation in the city of Washington, growing out of his high position on the leading committee of the house was over, we felt pained, of course, but it was "the fortune of war." We had only a few days left to get ready for our last winter at the National Capitol. We supposed there had been a glut of savage delight when the men who worked the defeat had gained their victory, but the election returns had hardly been sent in until one Gary W. Styles, an editor of some paper in Georgia — one of a class of politicians that fed and fattened on the "greasy drippings" around the State Capitol, jumped into a news- paper, flapped his wings, and crowed ! What did he say ? "There is one consolation for all Georgians. All the men feel better than Dr. Felton, and there is not a woman in the State who isn't happier at this moment than Mrs. Felton!" I read it aloud to Dr. Felton, for it was published by its author the same week of the election. His eyes flashed when he said, "the dirty dog"," and "he hopes to wound you!" I replied, "You possess your soul in patience! When I get done with him, the dirty dog, will be glad to tuck his tail and scurry My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 327 under the house!" Here is my reply — and, although it was written nearly thirty years ago, I can still enjoy the pleasure it gave Dr. Felton when I read it to him and heard him laugh out loud over what I had written and was then ready to send to the next mail that day : "Near Cartersville, Ga., November 10, 1880. "Editors Constitution: Col. Gary W. Styles publishes the fact 'there is one consolation for all Georgians — all the men feel better than Dr. Felton, and there is not a woman in the State who isn't happier at this moment than Mrs. Felton.' I will tell Colonel Styles that I have a proper appreciation of his interest in my unhappiness, but I prefer to interview Mrs. Styles (a lady in every sense of the word, as I understand), before it is decided who is the unhappiest woman in Georgia. "As Dr. Felton is acknowledged by Georgians to be the best representative the Seventh district ever had — as the severest scrutiny of four hot political campaigns has failed to discover a stain upon his record or a dishonest dollar in his pocket — as his private character is above reproach — as his county in which he lives and where he has lived over thirty years, never fails to indorse him by an overwhelming majority, I take it for granted that Colonel Styles only speaks for himself and not for Georgia, and the consolation is a personal affair with him and his particular set, who are also well known in the State. "Henry Clay was defeated, yet that defeat did not detract from his ability or integrity nor did it give an irresponsible Bohemian the warrant to drag his wife's name into the public press, as a consolation for the people in his State. Chivalric Kentucky would have mobbed him! "Last year Colonel Styles gave us his opinion on the State administration. He called it a 'nest of rotten eggs, although it was scarcely possible to find the bottom egg in that nest of corruption.' As Colonel Styles is now, and was during the late State canvass, a prominent advocate of the aforesaid 'nest,' I think we can now place that bottom egg without fur- ther difficulty. The odor is indisputable! "He further stated that the 'Democratic party reels with its load of obloquy.' If it would not be considered impertinent, 328 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I would suggest that he tender a little sympathy to the un- happy wives of these men who are anything but a ' consolation to Georgians' — and might not charity begin at home? If Mrs. Styles can lean upon the honor, integrity, ability and honesty of her husband, she will find that 'brave souls are a balsam to themselves.' Very respectfully, "MRS. W. H. FELTON." When we reached Washington City we found that "cold shoulders" were also turned to us by some of the Georgia delegation. Senator Hill's chilliness to Dr. Felton was in marked contrast to his fulsome affection for his old school-mate of the last season. The new senator, Governor Brown, com- pletely absorbed him, and while Dr. Felton understood "that thrift follows fawning," he became thoroughly convinced that Senator Hill had lost much of his influence in the United States senate after he advocated, before the supreme court, a defeat of the Thurman funding bill, which he had tried to defeat by his vote in the senate and failed. Those things "tell" on any man's reputation, and I became convinced in my own mind that the best things after all one can get from official station is the good you accomplish and the maintenance of one's own self-respect. I had, as I thought, one fast, unfailing friend, namely, Hon. A. H. Stephens. He was full of kindness, and as I had considerable sickness and a very delicate little boy to look after, I spent many happy hours in the old statesman's parlor that winter, occasionally reading to him^more often writing for him in the j^ush of his correspondence. I never shall forget the kind words that were spoken to us by many Democrats and Republicans of the house and senate — the regrets and the censure that was expressed concerning our political condition in Georgia, for the "bargain and sale" of the seat in the senate, the Colquitt-Norwood canvass, etc., had all been read and understood abroad. We had letters from many persons before we reached Washington to same effect. I picked up one yesterday, written by Senator Frye, of Maine, in which he wrote to Dr. Felton, "You were alto- gether too decent a man for their business, Doctor." My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 329 I was with some callers in our hotel parlor one evenin^^ when a Western congressman with his wife passed by me. We had been good friends for several years. He said: "I am going to tell Mrs. Felton what we were just talking about," and he went on to say that his little son had been around the Capitol a good deal, and only that day had said to him : "Papa, why don't you make money like these other men?" One of the boys said today: "I can tell you how to make money. My papa told me. He said there was a senator down in Georgia who traded off his seat in the Senate for lots of money," and I found out we could hear more news abroad than we were allowed to hear at home. When I read Senator Hill's letter to Mr. Chittenden about President-elect Garfield, his hopes and his plans — about a new party, because, as Mr. Hill said, "the Republican party was hated at the South and ought to be disbanded — and the Demo- cratic party was hated at the North and ought to be dis- banded," etc., my mind went back to the late campaign, when Georgia newspapers howled themselves hoarse against Dr. Felton because he had some kind words to say of Mr. Garfield personally when he was a candidate for congress. Of all the inexplicable things in my entire political experi- ence, it was the insensate fury of the Georgia people against Republicanism in the abstract, and their assienine and actual adoption and support of the former ring-leaders of Radicalism in Georgia! Of course there was no sort of chance to purify politics under such conditions, and the State was ruled from Atlanta, with both United States senators from the same town, and the so-called "unterrified Democrats" had no more authority in the State's political business than a lot of buck rabbits when a bull-pup ran through the bushes ! The ' ' fetich ' ' about the claims of the party was the veriest clap-trap, and displayed nothing else so much as general incapacity and ig- norance, when Senator Brown friends absolutely owned the State's revenues from convicts and the State's Railroad and only allowed the impotent gang to call itself the Democratic party ! 330 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics CAMPAIGN OF 1880. Dr. Felton's Effort to Remove Tariff on Quinine. After Dr. Felton was made a member of the committee on ways and means in the forty-sixth congress, his efforts were unremitting to reduce the tariff on quinine. Being in the minority, although the house was Democratic, he was unable to get a majority report to the house. Democrats from the North failed to support his effort. Finally, they aided the Republicans and the matter was indefinitely postponed in committee. As a committeeman he could not introduce the bill himself, but Hon. Mr. McKenzie, of Kentucky, was deputed to bring the matter before the house, where it passed with a large majority. The Atlanta Constitution thus talks of it, on February 6, 1909 : "The Father of Free Quinine," An interesting controversy, or rather a revival of an ancient one, over credit for the removal of the import duty on quinine in this country is now to the fore. Since the men instrumental in this direction laid under obligations millions of men and women and children of past and present generations, the im- portance of authenticity may be well understood. With no desire to disparage the achievements of other gen- tlemen, it is to be hoped that the work of Dr. W. H. Felton, of Cartersville, in his vital achievement shall not be forgotten by the people of America. He was a member of the ways and means committee, charged Avith all tariff questions, in the forty-sixth congress. He in- troduced a bill providing for reduction of the import duty on quinine, pressed it before the members of his committee, com- batted it on the floor of the house and gained the consent of his fellow committeemen to report the measure favorably. The day before the report of the committee was to be re- turned to the house, another member, following a custom then prevalent, pressed to passage without committee recommenda- tion a bill of similar significance. By the merest technicality this great Georgian was deprived of national credit for father- ing the movement that gave free quinine to the medical pro- fession and its multitudinous activities in America. The man whose persistent and intelligent agitation was principally responsible for bringing this salutary drug within My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 331 reach of the masses is now closing the peaceful years of a wonderful career in the little city of Cartersville. To the natural dignity of the patriarch, wise and seasoned and faith- ful in counsel, should be added the distinction of the humani- tarian, alert to the interests of afflicted humanity and tireless in good works for its relief, and to the world he is entitled to be known as "the father of free quinine." The chief quinine manufacturers were Powers & Weight- man, of Philadelphia. While the debate was on, the great millionaires did me the honor of calling to see me — at the National Hotel. I found them elegant gentlemen — polite and gracious, but we did not talk of quinine. The Cost of Quinine — Now and Then. Editor Constitution: In your editorial, "The Father of Free Quinine," keeping alive the honor that is justly due Dr. Fel- ton, one of the most important points is not mentioned : At that time quinine was selling at $4.00 an ounce, wholesale, in New York, and the manufacturers pleaded that it could not be produced for less, and when the law was changed, as re- ferred to, sold at wholesale in New York as low as 20 cents an ounce, showing that the people had not only shaken the chills and fever, but they had been unmercifully robbed "by^ the process of law," and, sad to relate, there are too many "due and legal processes of law" operative on the statute books of our country yet. LEONIDAS F. SCOTT. Conyers, Ga., February 8, 1909. THE CONSTITUTION. Office of the Editor, Clark Howell. Atlanta, Ga., October 24, 1906. Mrs. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga. Mr. Dear Mrs. Felton : I am enclosing you herewith edi- torial from yesterday's Constitution, which I hope will please you. Dr. Felton has no more earnest admirer in the State than I am, and I will ever be under obligations to him for his loyal support during the recent campaign. I only wish that there was some M^ay by which I could show him more than by words how much I appreciate his friendship. No man in Georgia is more entitled to the love of the people than Dr. Felton. He has rendered not only the State, but the nation, a magnificent public service and if he had never done anything else than make the present W. & A. lease, he would have, in that alone, a monument to himself greater than that 332 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics standing today to the credit of any other man now living in Georgia. I know all about the part he played in that lease measure, and in a humble way I did my best as a young and inex- perienced legislator to strengthen his arm in that fight. Dur- ing all my service in the legislature, covering off and on a period of about eighteen years, I never saw a member make such a magnificent fight for any measure as he did for that — and without him there is no doubt that the State's road would have been leased at a much smaller sum than it brought. God bless you and him, and that you may both be spared for many years is the hope of Your sincere friend, CLARK HOWELL. EDITORIAL Dr. Felton and the Weightman Millions. The suit over the Weightman millions in Philadelphia, to decide the disposition of the vast estate left by the millionaire manufacturing chemist of that city, recalls some interesting history in connection with this firm and the part played by a distinguished Georgia congressman in opposing the unfair tariff schedules that permitted the accumulation of this vast sum at the expense of the people of the country. When William H. Felton was a member of congress, from 1874 to 1880, he was, during his third term, appointed a mem- ber of the ways and means committee of the house by Speaker S. J. Randall. In this office and as chairman of the sub-committee on tariff investigation, he was responsible in a large measure for the reduction of tariff charges on many necessities of life. He also led the fight on the free entry for quinine, which up to that time had been manufactured almost exclusively by Weightman & Powers, of Philadelphia. The proposal to put quinine on the free list was vigorously contested by this firm and they employed every means at their command to defeat the amendment. Dr. Felton 's brilliant leadership of the relief measure, however, won a favorable report, which secured its passage in the house. Among the members of this prominent and important com- mittee were such men as Garfield, Kelly, Fernando Wood, Car- lisle and Tucker of Virginia, they being probably the most notable figures in congress. When Garfield was elected to the senate, from which he advanced to the White House, William McKinley, of Ohio, succeeded him on the committee. Dr. Felton has always been a firm believer in the doctrine My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 333 of a tariff for revenue only, to be raised from the luxuries of commerce, affording incidental protection to American in- dustries. The man whose monopoly of the quinine trade was thus destroyed, nevertheless died a couple of years ago, leaving an estate worth $60,000,000. Dr. Felton, the man who secured for the American people the vast benefit of a substantial re- reduction in the price of this medical necessity, has reaped no material reward from his distinguished public service. Despite this showing, will any one undertake to say that of the two lives his has been the greatest success? Will any one attempt to draw the contrast between these two men, who stand out from the crowd, and say the millionaire is worthier than the patriot and the humanitarian? Weightman lived and died, and when his lawyers came to wind up his affairs, they found he left an estate worth $60,- 000,000 for his heirs to squabble over. Dr. Felton still lives, in retirement, at his home in Carters- ville, Ga., loved and honored by all who know him. He saved millions in money and countless lives by breaking up the quinine trust in this country. He saved millions to the State in carrying through the act providing for the lease instead of the sale of the State Road, that in the twenty-nine years of its lease was pledged to pay into the State treasury $12,000,000, and then to be returned to its original owners plus the betterments and the natural enhancement in value. On the floor of the legislature his appeals were largely suc- cessful in securing the erection of the present magnificent State Capitol that cost less than the amount appropriated for its construction. He was one of the earliest and strongest workers in the State in behalf of reformatories for juvenile convicts. He was a constant champion of the movement to reform the convict system of the State. He was the friend and defender of the Georgia railroad commission, when its enemies threatened its annihilation. His public record has always been above suspicion and his private character beyond reproach. During Dr. Felton 's forty years' service in the ministry he never made one dollar, so high was his regard for the gospel and for the example set by the Master, who ''had no place to lay His head." There was no time between 1850 and 1900 that he could not have commanded the highest pulpit salary paid in Georgia, or directed the affairs of the most exclusive and fashionable church in the State, but he chose otherwise 334 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and the returns that come from what the world calls practical business sense were not for him. Who shall say that his reward and his choice were not the stronger, the purer, the more wholesome, than that of the man whose autocratic control he had opposed and whose last ac- count sheet in this life showed a balance of $60,000,000 ? Dr. Felton will probably not leave an estate so large as to invite heirs to contest, or for remote kinsmen to assail, but he will leave a record of public service that is honorable and im- perishable, and he will always be cherished as one of Georgia's noblest and most distinguished sons. The Markham House Conference Early in the winter of 1881-82, various gentlemen in Georgia corresponded with Dr. Felton, because of the unrest and dissatisfaction which prevailed all over Georgia, and they decided to meet in Atlanta and talk over the situation. They met at the Markham House, where Dr. Felton was stopping His hotel room was convenient, and therefore the meeting was afterwards called the Markham House conference. Hon. B. H. Hill had made his vicious attack upon Dr. Felton and none of these gentlemen were in sympathy with its purpose. It was unwarranted — the charge of "Africanizing the State." When they met to confer as to some remedy as to future con- ditions. Dr. Felton was surprised to find Judge Bigby in the company — always recognized as Governor Brown's right-hand man in close contingencies. Who invited him, nobody said — but he was there, and late in the summer he was appointed by President Arthur, through Senator Brown and Colquitt, to the place formely held by Colonel Farrow. Whatever was done or said was within Governor Brown's reach — as Mr. Bigby was not invited there by Dr. Felton and, so far as I know, by any of his friends. My memory is correct on this line, because we talked over his unbidden visit at the time. The Democratic press was instigated to ridicule the patriots who were tired of Bourbonism, and to make it appear that these people who were criticising the "men in control" were in alliance with President Arthur. This was the ruling influence which caused Mr. Hill to plunge into "committing the greatest indiscretion of his life," accord- ing to Hon. A; H. Stephens. As soon as Senator Brown reached the Senate, he became the most importunate stickler for Bourbon Democracy in Georgia. Col. K. D. Locke, form- erly postmaster at Columbus, Ga., was in Washington City when ex-Governor Bullock visited President Arthur, and after giving the president Senator Brown 's side of the question. Mr. Bullock wound up by saying: "Mr. President, no independent movement in Georgia can meet with success unless Senator 336 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Brown leads it." The president told him he could not do anything in the way of asking Brown to lead such a move- ment, as he believed Brown had developed into a Bourbon Democrat, for he (Arthur) was presiding officer in the senate when Brown and Hill made their Bourbon speeches. Bullock then pressed Senator Brown's liberal views on the president. To all of which Mr. Locke said the president turned a deaf ear, firmly and politely dismissed Governor Bullock and told him he need say nothing further to him about Senator Brown's active assistance in Georgia, as he would give it no considera- tion whatever." This interview with Mr. Locke was printed in the Chicago Tribune in January, 1882. Thereupon the independent movement in Georgia was to be slandered and ridiculed out of existence, and Governor Bullock, who made Governor Brown chief justice, was the messenger who failed to impress President Arthur, and the Democratic press was set to work to howl down this patriotic movement for cleaner politics. The people who were interested in holding on — were the powers behind the venal press and politicians. The swill-tub kept their folks full and active. Dr. Felton made a speech in Augusta in January, 1882, that I cannot copy here, but will place it in another volume with all his speeches, and it was masterly beyond all question. Judge Claiborne Snead told a reporter: "I heard every word of Felton 's speech. It was a good one. I can't say I ever heard a better. There is no use in talking. Hill will find it out if he ever tackles him on the stump. He can take care of him> self." Ex-Senator O'Neal, a strong organized Democrat, told the reporter: "I liked it very much. There is not a doubt that Felton 's objections to the organized Democracy are good. Hill made a mistake when he attacked Felton on the line of consistency. Mr. Hill is sadly wanting on that line." State Senator P. W. Meldrim, of Savannah, who had just read the speech in the morning paper, spoke in this manner: "I should not be surprised if this Independent movement be- came very formidable. I see that Albert Cox, of LaGrange, has come out for congress on the Independent line, endorsing Felton 's platform and says that he is going to make the issue. I am almost satisfied that Cox will win. I was in college with My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 337 him. He is not only a bright man, but a good speaker — has fine command of the English language. He has the happy faculty of forming his sentences in such a way that it would appear that no other words could have been found that would have expressed his ideas more thoroughly. With his, Felton's, Speer's and Stephens' districts, the entire northern part of the State is found to be Independent. I believe that mine, in the East, is Independent with a fair count. Black now represents the district, but either Rufe Lester or Pratt Adams could go to congress from it on the Independent line. ' ' At this juncture an Atlanta man sitting near spoke up: "Yes, and I believe the Fifth, now represented by Hammond, is an Independent district. I never will have any other opinion than that Reub Arnold beat Hammond four years ago. Ham- mond was the regular nominee and Arnold the Independent. When the returns all came in, with the exception of Crawford county, it was found that Arnold led by a big majority. Crawford came up with all its votes for Hammond and none for Arnold. I have heard it frequently stated that Hammond was given more votes than were in the entire county. The fact that Crawford's vote came in very late made it look sus- picious. ' ' Meldrim asked me if Hammond was strong enough to go back. I told him while he was considered a good lawyer, nevertheless he was so cold and indifferent in his manners that a good active candidate with a fair record could beat him. In my opinion, Arnold, Milt Candler or Harry Jackson could beat him — on account of his unpopularity with the masses." The story of Crawford county was also told to me by one who claimed to know. After Arnold carried Fulton county so handsomely over Hammond — it was recollected that there was a former precinct in Crawford county which was not used for several years — but it had a name on the books, etc. The ballot box stuffers proceeded to fix up a commodious ballot box with a majority to fit. Those who read Mr. Reuben Arnold's open letter (in another chapter) where he says Mr. Hammond was concerned in Bullock's salary-grabbing time, and intimates that Bullock's man Hammond "denied his lord and master," can see why the Bullock Democrats preferred Mr. Hammond. It was a standing rule in Georgia to make Bullock Democrats 338 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and Bullock Republicans pull together, because a "house divided against itself could not stand." Mr. Bullock and Mr. Brown were never far apart, and "when Bullock came back to the State after his hasty flight between two suns," says Mr. Steve Postell, the reporter, "Brown w^as the first man at his side to sign his bond. Prob- ably when Brown found he could not get the leadership of the Liberals, so far as the president's support and recognition were concerned, he then instructed Bullock to inform the presi- dent and the public that the Liberals could not win. This is the first time Bullock has appeared in political affairs of late, and while it was not publicly known that he left Atlanta and went to Washington at Brown's request, there is now reason for believing such is the case." (Signed) S. W. P. (Steve Postell.) Special to Chicago Tribune, February 14, 1882. President Arthur was, however, pressed until he placed Judge Bigby in Farrow's place, made Judge Underwood a member of the tariff commission, unseated Atkins and gave to Senator Brown's people the Georgia federal hog trough to themselves. Dr. Felton got nothing, refused to beg for anything, and declined the Atlanta postmastership in 1883, after President Arthur looked into matters for himself and fully understood how the federal appointments had been worked for Senator Brown's friends. I have made it plain, in another chapter, how Senator Brown and Governor Colquitt worked on Hon. A. H. Stephens until the aged man became a lump of clay in the hands of the potter. This aged statesman, under the influence of continual hypo dermics aided by stimulants which were constantly kept up, was led along until he actually forgot. what he had written to Judge Hook, to Dr. Felton, to his most intimate friends in Georgia, and to myself — his constant correspondent. There is no knowing what sort of tales were poured into his ears. It is something to remember, that those shrewd politicians not only controlled Mr. Stephens, but Senator Hill, who was being consumed even then with the deadly cancer — and in a condition to be preyed upon by undue excitement. I have been My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 339 informed that Mr. Hill was led to look upon Dr. Felton as a prominent candidate for his own place in the United States senate, and he was pushed forward by these gentlemen to do what none of them felt inclined to do, towit, attack Dr. Felton in the public prints. The fusilade of ridicule did a good deal to make timorous politicians afraid of the Markham House Conference, so-called, but the billingsgate of James Milton Smith, ex-governor, who was supposed to know more about "Honest Jack Jones' " deficit as treasurer than anybody else, made the cowards run to shelter and ex-Governor (then Senator) Brown took all of them in whom he considered worth using, and let the others wither up in their subservient cowardice, after they went back "to the vomit and the mire." All the gentlemen who signed the "Markham House" docu- ment are dead (so far as I know) save Hon. Albert Cox. He is living, active and able to speak out, and I can say with sin- cerity that the men I was acquainted with on that list were genuine, honest, true-hearted patriots. If they were consorted with Republicans to make any corrupt alliance, I never heard of it. Mr. Hulsey and I were school children together — I had known him all my life. The paper reads today as it did then — as a freeman's call to patriotic duty. It was the fortune of war that the movement did not succeed. The organized De- mocracy of Georgia was crammed with office-seekers and hungry for the "flesh-pots of Egypt." To the People of Georgia: Thoroughly imbued with the conviction that neither the Republican party nor the Demo- cratic party, as at present organized under its objectionable methods and policies, can subserve the vital interests of the people : convinced that under the old formations of political parties, sectionalism can never be driven from our Federal politics: convinced that under unwatched Democratic ring- rule corruption can not be checked in our State affairs, we announce the following principles as the corner stone of our political faith, and to their full vindication we ask the sup- port of all citizens of Georgia who indorse them and who wish a national and liberal, and not a sectional government; who wish a government by the people, for the whole people, and not the government of partisans for the benefit of favorites; who wish a vigilant watchfulness over the people's affairs, 340 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and not the complete and unchecked control of their affairs by one party, of methods, far removed from the many and manipulated only by the few. 1. The political "caucus" is only advisory in its character — should have no binding force upon the actions and con- sciences of free citizens of a free government ; but every ballot cast at an election should represent the convictions of the in- dividual voter. 2. We insist that it is essential to free government to have a free ballot and a fair count of all votes honestly cast at any State or national election ; and the machinery of managing and supervising elections should be guarded and protected by law so that fraud will be impossible. 3. Honorable payment of all honest debts — especially the payment of the national and State debts — as rapidly as our surplus revenues will authorize. 4. In financial matters, we recognize gold and silver as the money of the constitution ; and all paper issues — greenback or other paper currency — should be redeemable, at the will of the holder, in coin, at the treasury of the United States. 5. As soon as the reduction of the national debt will permit, we favor the repeal of all internal revenue laws, and believe that all the revenues of the Federal government should be raised by a tariff upon foreign articles imported into this country, and which tariff shall so discriminate in its provisions as to afford ample encouragement and incidental protection to all home industries. 6. We advocate a liberal system of internal improvements by the Federal government for works of a national character only — especially our water routes of transportation. 7. The national government is the supreme authority known to the people of this country, and its laws have the first claim to our obedience. Every citizen of the United States is en- titled to a full protection of his personal and political rights under those federal laws. 8. We believe that every child should have the opportunity of acquiring a common English education in schools forever made free by a liberal support from the State government. 9. Monopolies, by which a privileged class exercise a con- trolling power over the property and labor of a multitude of citizens, are opposed to the genius and spirit of our govern- ment ; and we will steadily resist every measure or system that tends to concentrate political power or undue business oppor- tunities in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. 10. The present system of leasing the State convicts must be wiped from our statutes as a foul blot upon our civilization and humanity. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 341 11. Party proscription and sectional prejudices have greatly retarded the material growth and development of our State — which material prosperity we earnestly desire and will dili- gently foster; and to this end we will use every moral and legal means to suppress proscription and to liberalize sectional prejudices — recognizing the unity of our common federal gov- ernment and equality of all men before the laws. We are imbued with the doctrine that this is a government by the people, and of the people, and for the people : that political parties are but agencies for a part of the people, and that, in any necessary comparison, the people's interests should be primary and party interest secondary. We believe that it is no longer patriotic to be partisan, but that as the two parties now powerful in the country are at issue on no governmental principles, it is wise for the people, who aspire to fraternal relations coexistent with the country, to bury sectional strife and to elevate politics to the considera- tion of those material questions in which the whole country is vitally interested, and to this end it is especial wisdom for our immediate people to select political agencies competent, by liberality of principle, to offer such a policy to the entire people. To this proposition we invite the attention of all patriots in all the States of the union. We therefore invite all the people of Georgia, who indorse the foregoing principles, and who would attempt to secure a liberal basis on which the people of the whole country can fraternize, to meet in mass meeting at Atlanta on the 1st day of June, 1882, to consider what is the best policy for the people to pursue in order to purge the State of personalism and cor- ruption, and in order to attain an agency through which our people may have a rightful participation in the affairs of their federal government. W. H. FELTON, A. H. COX, P. F. LAWSHE, THOS. M. BERRIEN, WM. H. HULSEY, SMITH CLAYTON, JAS. S. HOOK, Committee. I have taken the pains to print a notice of the declaration in my article on "Dr. Felton and Hon. A. H. Stephens," but it is so perfectly fair and just, as an exposition of what the people of Georgia needed at that time, that it is well that the young men of Georgia should ponder well its affirmations. The work fell 342 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics unfinished from lifeless hands. Dr. Felton has gone to his eternal reward, and the persecution, the vituperation, the at- tempted defamation of character, and the outrageous and brazen use of the legal revenues of the State by its leading politicians are things of the past. If I had to choose today, as I have often said, I would take the "good name" rather than the "riches" of his persecutors. Hon. Mr. Cox can speak out, if the "Markham House Conference" was an alliance of corrupt politicians to Africanize Georgia. He wrote several kind letters to Dr. Felton, all of which do credit to brain and heart. I know he was persecuted by the "political combine," and they will continue to taunt him according to their ac- customed habit of mind and unfairness of Georgia politics. I propose to be a witness for Mr. Cox, and so far as in me lies, put these defamers to the blush before I also go hence ! On January 28, 1882, Dr. Felton received the following : LaGrange, Ga. Hon. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga., My Dear Sir : Your valued favor of yesterday has just been received, and received with great pleasure. As a Georgian and a freeman, I could no longer submit to methods subversive of all the power of the people over their own affairs. I sincerely hope that by united counsels, and wise plans of battle, we may be enabled to make our first pitched battle for liberalism in the entire State, successful this fall. I leave for Columbus in au hour. IMy energies are in this work. Some one of our new workers will write to you or see you soon from Atlanta. Hoping to meet you personally at an early date and wishing you abundant success in all your efforts. Truly yours, Signed A. H. COX. "LaGrange, Ga., February 9, 1882. "My Dear Sir: I had hoped to answer your courteous in- vitation in person this week, but owing to professional business find it impossible. If possible will come up on Monday. "Our courts open on Monday week and unless I can get off next week, I will be some weeks before I can. "The prospects here are good if we can get control of the old Whig element. This can only be done with something My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 343 new. Of course you understand I favor a distinct new party. ''Yours truly, A. H. COX." "LaGrange, Ga., April 16, 1882. "Hon. "W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga., ' ' My Dear Sir : Your valued favors have been duly handed me. Thanks ! Our superior court meets tomorrow — holds two weeks. I am greatly crowded so excuse evident haste. I've leave for absence only till Wednesday, so must travel Tuesday night to Cassville. I've accepted to speak at Cassville and at Cartersville and like the conjunction ; will try to speak clearly at Cartersville. (He was invited for Memorial day exercises at Cassville, and the citizens of Cartersville invited him to make an address while he was in the county.) "I must leave Cartersville on the midnight train you men- tion, so as to reach home Thursday morning. Let me see you before the speaking. With good cheer and best wishes, ' ' Truly your friend, A. H. COX. ' ' "LaGrange, Ga., May 9, 1882. "Hon. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga., "My Dear Sir: Your esteemed favor of yesterday just re- ceived. It will afford me great pleasure to meet the gentle- man mentioned at the time and place specified. "Yours truly (in great haste), " A. H. COX." I did not ask Mr. Cox's permission to print these letters, because I desired that I should be able to furnish convincing proof of the honorable intentions of both gentlemen without his knowledge and I am sure the publication will not only speak for his unsullied patriotism but put to shame the ab- ominable insinuations and accusations which paid agents of the convict lease system put out in the papers to injure both Dr. Felton and Hon. ]\Ir. Cox. The letter of May 9th advised Dr. Felton that he would at- tend a meeting in Atlanta, where the published declarations of political principles would be enunciated and announced, and it so resulted. Mr. Stephens, according to agreement, was recommended for governor and I here declare that Mr. Steph- ens was acquainted fully as to the plans of the independents. 344 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics His letters establish the fact that he was informed and con- senting. His defection ^nd his consequent surrender to Senator Brown and Gov. Colquitt are also perfectly estab- lished. The gentlemen who met at the Markham House were patriots. They only desired the good of Georgia and the suc- cess of clean political methods. This story of the Markham House conference will live as an era in Georgia when the ruling politicians of the State were either in bondage to their masters and paid just like their services had been contracted for or we were beset with the greatest set of political cowards that ever cursed a supposed free country ! "Democracy" was only a catchword and there was noth- ing in evidence to prove a government by the people or for the people save the name and a wild insensate cry of loyalty to the "Solid South." The "bosses" worked both in their greed of money. Hon. A. H. Stephens' Campaign for Governor The year 1880 witnessed, the most perfect whirligig in Geor- gia politics known to the State from its earliest history. Senator Gordon astonished the people of Georgia by slipping out of the senate and, together with Governor Colquitt, so managing the business that Hon. J.. E. Brown was appointed before anybody but the few intimately concerned knew about the exchange. It was done between dark and daylight, and the cyclone was on us. It is not known whether Senator Hill knew of it, in advance, but it will be remembered he had but little to say. He exploded when Governor Colquitt signed the North Eastern Railroad bonds, and denounced the governor at home and in Washington. Whether all his vim was ex- pended on that notable "Address to the People of Georgia," I never knew, but it was patent to everybody that he was as dumb as an oyster during the excitement of 1880. I am impressed that there was some alliance between himself and Governor Brown, in those later years, that has not been ex- plained. He was evidently pleased when the new senator by appointment came in. He appeared to be intensely in- different when Governor Colquitt ran against ex-Senator Nor- wood for governor. He did, all at once, conclude to be very friendly with Mr. Stephens, and that intimacy grew apace. It was Mr. Stephens' habit to send me either a postal card or a letter nearly every day when we were not in Washington. He was an extraordinary correspondent. I could tell by those letters when Mr. Hill was his visitor, and I discovered also that Mr. Stephens was visited by a good many people who were not friendly to him in other days. Mr. Stephens' health was always precarious after I became acquainted with him. He did not at- tend the first session of the forty-fourth congress. He was des- perately ill after he went to Washington City, in the winter of 1876-77. His death was published at one time. He was obliged to diet himself all the time. He constantly stimulated himself 346 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics with whiskey. When he was sick or in pain, hypodermics were frequent. His colored servant, Alex Kent, was accustomed to wake up and use the hypodermic syringe and Mr. Stephens' physician, who was also our doctor, often mentioned this fact as a very risky thing to do. I mention this to prove that Mr. Stephens might have been unduly doped at times, when the size of the hypodermics were not known. This may ac- count for some singular lapses of memory that seem unex- plainable without laiowledge of this fact. Dr. Felton's term of congressional service expired on March 4, 1881. Mr. Stephens' letters to me were continuous until May 18, 1882. Why they stopped at that time, it is my pur- pose to show after awhile. Some time in December, 1881, Dr. Felton, Dr. Miller, Judge Hook, and others, had an informal meeting at the Markham House in Atlanta. Judge Hook was a close friend of the "Old Commoner," as he loved to be called. Living in the Eighth district, he was a valued con- stituent of Mr. Stephens. Judge Hook was foremost in in- viting Dr. Felton to speak in Augusta, early in January. I went with Dr. Felton to Augusta and we were elegantly en- tertained by Judge Hook's near relatives. Judge Hook was a frequent correspondent of Mr. Stephens. It was Judge Hook who seemed to be nearest to Mr. Stephens in all the discus- sions concerning what was called the Markham House con- ference. Whatever was done or said at that time was faith- fully reported to Mr. Stephens by two persons, Judge Hook and myself. I am thus particular, because of the flood of vituperation which was poured on Dr. Felton, per se, first by Senator Hill, and later by jMr. Stephens in his campaign speeches, made at Macon and Atlanta, in September, 1882. I preserved copies of both of the speeches, and I have always intended to bring out the bottom bed-rock of facts, when the time came to do it. It was Mr. Stephens' chronic habit to mark all his letters ' ' personal " or ' * confidential. ' ' Because this was the case, Dr. Felton was not willing for me to print some of these letters during that gubernatorial campaign. But there was a time when Mr. Stephens knew I so in- tended, and I certainly should have done so but for his own change of purpose. This I shall explain in the proper connec- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 347 tion. Dr. Miller was interviewed concerning the Markham House conference as soon as possible. He was asked about this conference. "I happened accidentally into the Markham House on Thursday last. The last name registered was that of Dr. Felton. I asked for his room and was shown in. Sev- eral gentlemen came in. I left even before my dinner hour, as I had several patients to see. If any political conference was held, it was after I left the room. So far as an organiza- tion is concerned, or Dr. Felton is concerned, I will support him if he is a candidate for governor. From his published declaration of principles, I do not see how he can shrink from it. He has stated his platform — it is the platform of the people. I do not see how he can refuse. They will make him their candidate." Democrat or Republican? "Dr. Felton is a Democrat and he has formulated carefully the platform on which he stands. It is a declaration acceptable to all Inde- pendent Democrats, and will receive the support of the best Republicans. There is not a paragraph of his platform that I cannot defend. The organized Democrats cannot assail them and the people will endorse them." Ex-Governor Bullock, Republican, was interviewed. Said he : " This talk about organizing a party of so-called Independents and Republicans is all bosh. The nearest approach to an active alliance be- tween the Republican and Democratic elements in this State occurred when a portion of the Democracy undertook to ov..-r- throw Colquitt, because he appointed Brown, who had been a Reconstructionist. The result, as you know, was a rally of all the Reconstructionists and an overwhelming defeat of tlie reactionary party. Under similar circumstances, the same thing would happen — but there is nothing in the present situa- tion to cause patriotic alarm." (Governor Colquitt could not depend on the Democrats, so he appointed Governor Brown to get the Reconstructionists, and he took in the negroes en masse). Not to be tedious, I will refer you to the declaration of the Independents and the names of the signers of the declaration : "It is printed, under the heading of Markham House Con- ference." There is nothing very bad in this, is there ? It was these 348 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ideas, more tersely expressed, that Dr. Felton wrote, by re- request of the Chicago Tribune. These were the ideas that prevailed in his Augusta and Savannah speeches. And it was just these propositions that turned B. H. Hill from an af- fectionate friend to a bitter, blatant persecutor! The milk in the cocoanut was the convict lease. Governor Brown (now Senator), had a quota of three hundred able bodied, long- term slaves guaranteed to him for a period of twenty years. Col. Bob Alston told me that Governor Colquitt was a silent partner with General Gordon. Renfro, Murphy, and others were in full feather in the State House and convict lessees also, and Nelms was the man who served the lessees, although em- ployed and paid by the State as principal keeper. Nobody can now forget the horror that later prevailed, when the State of Georgia felt obliged to rise up and squelch this leas- ing of convicts by private parties. It was atrocious and abominable to be forced to provide these men in high political offices with valuable slaves to do their bidding and fill their pockets. But when you recollect that Jay Gould had placed Stanley Matthews on the supreme bench of the United States, before which court of final resort all legal complaints were obliged to go at the finish — put there by a trade with General Gar- field before his election — and when you recollect that Hunt- ington bought and sold congressmen and senators with the bribe money of a Pacific Railroad lobby, this timid appeal of a few independents down in Atlanta, Georgia, sounds like a prayer in mid-ocean with everything in shipwreck! These men were jeered, ridiculed and denounced by the venal newspapers — some of which were recognized as the "kept organs" of the convict lease. Dr. Felton was urged to run for governor on this platform. He was deluged with letters begging him to run. Less than two years ago I went through the letters of that time and earlier and I destroyed seven thousand, after I had already, in previous years, culled and sorted and only kept twice that number. I have a good sized trunk full today, and affirm, in this presence, that he had every inducement to run, save the money — and he was not financially able to enter a State-wide My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 349 gubernatorial campaign, and I could not gain my consent to submit to the persecution and maybe martyrdom that might attend it before it could end. When the Colquitt and Norwood convention of 1880 broke into flinders, a telegram was sent to him to this effect : ^ Atlanta, Ga., August 10, 1880. ''Hon. "W. H. Felton: Probable disruption and recommenda- tion of Colquitt by his followers. Will you make the race against him ; assured of strong support ? Answer. (Signed) H. H. Carlton, J. L. Warren, Wm. Garrard." Dr. Felton thus answered : ' ' My friends wish me to continue in the race for congress. So I must decline the race for gov- ernor." W. H. FELTON." We understood that the "Reconstructionists," which meant the Bullock Democrats and Bullock Republicans, were Brown men and supporting Colquitt. We had felt the secret influence of the State Road lease in the Lester campaign. We knew that convict lease money was plentiful and would be turned loose ad infinitum, and we were both satisfied that Pacific lobby money had more to do with general Georgia politics than was understood at that time, but we could not prove its pressure except by its outside symptoms, or betray those who did not wish to be known. Until I am convinced to the contrary, I shall always believe that an alliance was made by Georgia Re- constructionists with Mr. Blaine to defeat General Grant, in 1880, and that alliance also took in Cyrus Field's brother, Stephen J., who was a California man, and the Pacific Railroads ruled California and also Mr. Blaine. Mr. Blaine had no following in Georgia until the spring of 1880, but he went to the National Republican Convention with as many delegates from Georgia as either Grant or Sherman. Stephen J. Field had no following in Georgia until the spring of 1880. S. J. Tilden was the heir-presumptive — but Stephen J. Field had an immense majority of the Georgia delegates to the National Democratic Convention. As soon as Mr. Blaine's man, Garfield, was nominated, the Field boom disappeared out of sight like mist on a frosty morning. I have the published proceedings of both of these Georgia conventions of 1880, and it is fully evident that Bullock Democrats and Bullock Repub- 350 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics licans "fought nobly!" Understanding, as we did, that there was a hidden force somewhere — and there would be no lack of money to carry the Colquitt election. Dr. Felton would have been something less than an idiot to have attempted the race for governor in 1880 without money, although he was promised strong support. And he declined to run for governor in 1882 for the same or similar reasons, and then the correpondence begun with Hon. A. H. Stephens, looking to his candidacy. He declined, as usual. Most positively he declared that he would never be a candidate for anything any more. I wrote him that his nephew, Mr. John Stephens, was talked about, and asked what he thought of that plan ? He cut it off so short that this one letter was all that was needed — to set aside his nephew, John — for governor. , Public opinion settled down at last that Mr. Alex Stephens would not be antagonized by Senator Brown in 1882 — that Governor Colquitt was keeping still, for Mr. Hill's seat would soon be vacant by death and Mr. Colquitt felt assured that he could make that trip, if he had the same backing as in 1880. Senator Brown had placed Mr. Renfro in a fat federal office — ditto Mr. Bigby — ditto ]\Ir. Nelms — ditto Judge Underwood — and a cow pen full of smaller dittoes. While he was pushing these well known Brown men into fat federal positions, there stood poor, suffering Senator Hill, absolutely frantic lest Dr. Felton might be given some federal patronage by President Arthur ! It beggars belief that such things as these could go on in broad daylight, and that Democrats, not Bullockites, could also go crazy in the hurrah led by Ex-Gov. J. M. Smith, who hooted at Senator Brown on one side of his mouth, but whistled softly on the other as soon as anybody criticized the convict lease of Georgia. He proceeded to fall in line and obey orders immediately whenever that war tocsin was sounded. His in- sensate ravings against Dr. Felton in the Bacon-Gordon cam- paign for governor in 1886 were something out of the common — and yet he was continually haranguing against Colquitt, Brown & Co. But this will come out in its own particular place. I repeat, there was never at any time in the history of Georgia politics more federal positions handed out than Senator Brown My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 351 obtained from President Arthur, yet Dr. Felton was set upon by the convict lease claquers from one end of the State to the other, (and he never had a single bit of patronage to bestow on anybody) as an "infamous coalitionist" with President Ar- thur to "Africanize the State." "Stop thief!" was always the thief's famous cry! Mr. Stephens' coy advances to the Independents, or rather his coy bashfulness when Dr. Felton and his friends advanced to him, is something that cannot be described, but may be im- agined — when it was known to be an established fact for thirty years that he always declined to run for office, and yet never failed to run, as soon as the coast was clear. The Augusta politicians never did and never could get ahead of that win- ning game of his. There was a crisis at one time, when a letter of Mr. Stephens was read in a Congressional Convention by a delegate, declining to run — but was checkmated by another letter also promptly by a delegate, that he could not refuse, etc. I have the report of that Congressional Convention pasted away for reference, and it is worth keeping. So he told the Colquitt faction, the Reconstructionists, etc., he would not run, and he told the Independents he would not run. The race was even that far. Then the Independents made another move They advertised a meeting for May 15, 1882, when a guber- natorial candidate would be "recommended." I remember well how it moved along — to the day and hour appointed. The Independents did their courting with letters. Judge Hook wrote. Dr. Felton wrote (when I did not write for him), and Mr. Stephens had a confidential outside friend who wrote, and then swapped letters with me. "Governor Colquitt and other prominent Georgia Democrats reached Washington and spent most of Sunday with him in his room at the National Hotel," said The National Republican, which noted these arrivals, and thus discoursed : ' ' The Re- publican realizes with pain that Mr. Alexander H. Stephens is flirting with Mr. Emory Speer, or that he was misunderstood by that gentleman. It was our wish to see the gubernatorial office bestowed on Mr. Stephens. We believed he would not, if elected, prove as ungrateful to the negroes as did Governor Colquitt, who took the governorship at their hands and then 352 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics flouted them. We feel sure that he would not be a suppliant to negroes and then be as oblivious of the obligations as Sena- tor Joe Brown has been." It was Mr. Stephens' manifest determination to secure the favor of the Independents. The Constitution (newspaper) im- mediately rasped him, and I had a letter in hand containing the following emphatic declarations to be governed by : National Hotel, Washington, D. C, My Dear Mrs. Felton: February 21, 1880. Yesterday I received a letter from in informing me that he had just had a very pleasant hour or two with you and Dr. Felton, who were on a short visit to that city. His letter was a very interesting one to me, having much in it that was entirely new, but a good deal that I could not credit. Among other things he said that you casually mentioned that you had not received a letter from me since the appearance of Mr. Hill's interview (Grady's interview of January 2, 1882, about 'Africanizing the State.") Now, that remark is what prompts this letter without delay. It is true, I have not written you since the publication of that interview, as was my custom before. I should perhaps have made an explanation before this time. I mean, should have informed you of why I abstained from writing on political topics before. Allow me now to say it was simply because when blood is getting up and a quarrel is likely to ensue between two friends, I always think it best for bystanders to keep silent and say nothing. I saw from the tone of Mr. Hill's interview that a deep, wide breach was likely to be made. My anticipations were fully realized. This I deeply regret. My mind was made up some time ago never to take any active part in politics again. Friendships with rae far outweigh any principle at present involved in parties and scrambles. Dr. Felton 's motive and patriotism I esteem as highly as I ever did, and so do thousands of others in Georgia, now being likely to be arrayed on opposing sides in a fierce political contest." (Remember, Dr. Felton had issued a declaration of "Markham House" principles — had spoken in Augusta in January and later in Savannah, nearly a month before this letter was written to me). ''They are all my friends and I do not intend to connect myself with one side My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 353 against the other in this contest. My mission in life will he filled when my present term of service in congress is closed, and I get the revision of the proofs of my forthcoming book, if I shall live to that period. After reading Mr. Hill's inter- view and Dr. Felton's reply, it would have been impossible for me to write in my usual vein and strain without becoming more or less a participant in the ill-blood growing up. My principle in politics has been never to change. I am a Jeffer- sonian Democrat of the old Republican school. I am for or- ganization to maintain any principle or to carry and measure, but bare party organization, I have always held and always shall hold subordinate to principles as well as measures, and in some cases to men. I never acknowledged, and never will acknowledge, allegiance to any political party organization of whatever name. No party nomination could induce me, or constrain me, to vote for one I believed to be dishonest or corrupt, but I would never go into a convention with party friends where there was a likelihood of the nomination of such a man. Ordinarily, I think nominating conventions are very proper in party organizations where there is a mutual agree- ment between the constituent elements of it, upon principles and measures and when men go into conventions for nomina- tions for the selection of candidates, I think they are in honor bound to abide by the result. If in a convention, however so- called, I should be a member, and should find it consisted of elements of a different character from what I expected to meet, and that a man I could not trust was likely to be nominated, I should not hesitate as soon as the discovery was made, to retire and sever all connection with the body and all respon- sibility for its action. But enough. I am talking to you as of yore and my time is nearly out for going to the house. My carriage will be at the door in a few minutes. ' ' Mr. Seidell is absent on a visit home for several weeks, and Mr. Ironsides, whom you know, is writing for me ; but I must add to this a few words more. I am, always was, always shall be, as independent of any one party organization as of any other. I could no more give my adhesion to a Republican organization than to a Democratic. The ring-masters in one are no more objectionable to me than an irresponsible junta in 354 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics the other. You will allow me, in all kindness, to say that one of the objections I should have to ever giving the "new move- ment," so-called, in Georgia my sanction is that it is based or founded, as I understand it, upon the condition or funda- mental principle that a few specified irresponsilile men, like Atkins and Wilson, shall have the absolute control of all the federal patronage in Georgia. This would be an insuperable objection, without my sanction or approval in any and every event. I should stand just as independent of it, as of the Kirk- wood or any other ring. In such cases, I should vote for just such men as I might think would make the best officers. But again, enough. I must stop. It is nothing but an old-time and fashioned talk with you, the Doctor and other friends. ' ' It was marked confidential, but there are still before the public irre- concilable statements, made by Dr. Felton on one side and Mr. Stephens on the other, and I am the sole survivor to present the evidence to settle the dispute. It is my duty to my dead hus- band to satisfactorily establish his statements, and Mr. Stephens' testimony is all I need to do it, effectually. Mr. Stephens wrote to Dr. Felton on January 13, 1882, more than a month before this denunciation of the "Kirkwood Ring" was written and it will explain the grievance he had against Dr. Felton, and Avill throw light on his dislike to Atkins and "Wilson : "National Hotel, Washington, D. C, Jan. 13, 1882. "Hon. Wm. H. Felton — Dear Doctor: I have just received a letter from Hon. W. F. Holden, of my town, who is a friend of mine as well as yours, and is an applicant for the post office in Augusta on the expiration of Major Prince's term, soon to occur. Major Prince, I am assured by ]\Ir. Holden, does not look for re-appointment and is in favor of him (Holden). The opposing applicants, I understand, or rather two of the most prominent of them, are Mr. Tweedy, whom you know" (which was a mistake; Dr. Felton did not know Mr. Tweedy), and Rev. W. J. White, a colored Baptist minister, who noAv edits the 'Georgia Baptist' newspaper, published in Augusta, and for a number of years was in the internal revenue service in that district. I had promised my influence to Mr. Holden be- fore I knew of the application of Tweedy or White. I wrote My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 355 White (I have not heard from Tweedy himself that he is an applicant, but I have so heard from others) that while I had nothing to say against his qualifications, yet I was previously committed to my friend Holden. Holden is a Republican and has been since the days of Reconstruction. I took it for granted that no Democrat would be appointed to the post office in Augusta. I most cheerfully endorsed his application. In his letter, now before me, he desires me to write you and ask for your endorsement of his application, or for your influence in securing his appointment. I have stated the whole case to you. It is for you to act — according to your own judgment You may perhaps know Mr. Holden personally. He was in the legislature several years — where he was quite distinguished as one of the Republican leaders. Yet notwithstanding he is and always has been a personal friend of mine. "I have read in the Constitution your letter in reply to Grady's report of what Mr. Hill said on the new movement, as it is called in Georgia, and particularly your connection with it. From this letter of yours, I take it we shall have a fierce canvass in the ensuing fall. You hit Mr. Hill some severe blows, but it was just as I expected. Grady's report of what he said represented him as uttering some very extrava- gant and indiscreet things in that interview. If published by his sanction Mr. Hill, I think, exhibited the greatest indis- cretion of his life. My health continues about the same. Dr. Walsh says the place on my face is quite well again. With kindest regards to Mrs. Felton and Howard. Yours truly, ''ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS." This letter was written before Mr. Hill rejoined and con- tinued his attack on Dr. Felton, and of course before Dr. Felton made the closing reply. But the charge, made by Mr. Hill, that Dr. Felton had united with Conkling, Arthur and Grant to control the federal offices in Georgia was in the Grady interview. Dr. Felton signed the letter which I penned to Mr. Stephens in regard to Mr. Holden and the postmaster's position in Augusta. He declined to recommend for the reason above stated — not that he had aught against Mr. Holden — but that it was not politic or prudent to seek an appointment of a Republican to the Augusta post office at that time for 356 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics obvious reasons. Mr. Hill announced that he had the evidence to prove an "infamous coalition" between Dr. Felton and the persons he named. Dr. Felton expected Mr. Hill to furnish something to the press to give color to such a transaction, if it could possibly be raked into public notice by the aid of the Kirkwood Ring, the Bullock Republicans or the "Reconstruc- tionists," who always took marching orders from Senator Brown. It would have been idiotic, if not imbecile madness, to play into Mr. Hill's hands and press a post office appoint- ment for Augusta, Ga. That refusal pained Mr. Stephens very much, and it will account for his unaccustomed silence until he wrote me on February 21, 1882, as is here shown. I have an earlier letter still to present, and I have thus placed them, so that one might explain the other, and save time and space : "National Hotel, Washington, D. C, Jan. 10, 1882. ' ' My Dear Mrs. Felton : Your last letter received was dated January 3. The long one of a day or two before came duly to hand. These letters, with an immensely accumulated pile, have been lying on my table for nearly two weeks. Mr. Seidell, my secretary, was on his Christmas visit home and did not get back until this morning. We are now clearing off the table as fast as possible. I was much entertained with the account you give me of your domestic troubles and incon- veniences from living in the country and away from markets. I was so much entertained with it I took the liberty of reading it over to Mrs. Wilson, who had just called and was making special inquiry after you. She was quite entertained herself. Mrs. Wilson is a very good friend of yours. By the by, she and her husband, Mr. Wilson, left last Sunday for Providence, R. I., not to return this winter. I really regretted parting with them. I had seen Dr. Felton 's interview, as published in The Constitution, before your letter in relation to it had come to hand. It produced some sensation here in 'Georgia circles,' as newspapers sa5^ My opinion was asked about it. Indeed, Mr. Hill came 'round visiting the same day the paper came. He expressed kind personal feelings towards the Doctor, but very deep regret at the course indicated by him. My reply to him, as to all others, was when speaking of the probable result, My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 357 that it would create a farce or a tornado, and this would depend on the way it was treated. When Mr. Hill's interview came out in The Constitution, I felt that he had done a great deal towards strengthening the movement. I thought his characterization of it as an attempt to 'Africanize the State' was not only exceedingly impolitic and indiscreet, but emin- enly unjust. I thought and said to a number of friends, that when Dr. Felton was heard from on that point and that charge in Augusta on the 31st instant, he would use that charge with telling effect in his own behalf and of his associates. But I am now out of politics. I do not expect to be a candidate for office ever again. I am getting too old and feeble and, to tell the truth, too much disgusted with the manner in which public affairs are administered, I am too far advanced in life to be- come a reformer, or to attempt it. The present generation — I mean the active, undefiled men of this day and the younger class in our State as well as in all the States, must shape and direct our future fortunes and destinies. I trust that in no effort to reform will those who lead in this movement ever permit themselves to lose sight of the fundamental, organic principles upon which alone our free institutions were founded and upon which they can alone be perpetuated. These prin- ciples, in my judgment, are wholly inconsistent with the policies and objects of the Radical party — with the party of the Stalwarts, as they are now called. There are two mat- ters in the Doctor's interview, as I am now speaking freely and candidly to you, which I regretted — the one was the repeal of the dollar poll tax for school purposes (Another mistake, of Mr, Stephens), and the other was his quasi endorsement of the present administration. But it is true, I have seen nothing in the administration so far which I think would justify severe arraignment or denunciation, and yet there are evident indica- tions in the message of policies I could not approve. The recommendation to cease the coinage of silver dollars and the further issuance of silver certificates, of course, is one of these policies I could not approve. But I haven't time to say any more. My health is about as usual. Dr. Walsh pronounces the place on my face well. With kindest regards to Dr. Felton 358 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and Howard and best wishes for you all, I remain as ever, ''A. H. STEPHENS." "P. S. — I expect Colonel Johnston (Richard Malcolm) to take dinner with me next Sunday, when I will deliver your message about Old Robin. I do trust he was not in extremis, as he was supposed to be when your letter was written. Alex Kent desires to be kindly remembered to you, the Doctor and Howard." (Robin was one of the Johnston slaves before the war). These letters will indicate Mr, Stephens' attitude to wards Dr. Felton and myself at the time of Senator Hill's at- tack on him — and there was no change, no alteration, no evidence of any change of any kind until after May 18. I will add only one more letter in this connection : "National Hotel, Washington, D. C, 28 March, '82. "Dear Mrs. Felton: Your letter of the 25th instant received this morning. I am truly sorry to hear of your neuralgic af- fection. I have suffered a good deal from that or some kindred disorder lately. I call it rheumatism. With me it is located in the ankles, knees and left hip. "I fear Mr. Hill is not doing well. Dr. Garnett advised him to return to Dr. Gross. Garnett did not assume the re- sponsibility of opening an accumulation of pus, which had formed in the wound made by the last operation by Gross. Hill suffered greatly from this. On his return to Philadelphia Gross opened this sac of pus and said it was healthy in its character, and as soon as the wound healed, as it was no\v doing, he would be entirely restored. Hill intends to stay now at the hospital until the wound is pronounced well by Gross. I hope it will turn out as Gross is said to have ex- pressed his belief that it will. In relation to the Garfield monument, en passant, I will barely say that I think any con- tribution of funds in Georgia will be small and much smaller than would have been five weeks ago. I know of no public man in the annals of history who ever lost so much character as Garfield has in so short a time — I mean since Blaine's eulogy. His attacks upon Rosecranz and Humphrey Marshall, uncalled for as they were on that occasion, has caused the explosion of a 'mine which has about exploded all the reputa- tion Garfield ever had. It has entirely changed my opinion My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 359 of the man. I looked upon him as an honest, upright man, without the elements of a real statesman, but still deserving in eulogy, what Dr. Felton so well said of him in his speech in Cartersville. But the Chase letter and his speech in the house, on offering a vote of thanks to Rosecranz and his private letter to Rosecranz subsequent on the same subject, all published in full in the National Republican of this city last Saturday was two weeks ago, I believe it was, taking all three together, show that Garfield was hypocritical, treacher- ous and base ! I can say no more now. I have a new secretary, as you see. Mr. Ironsides has been writing for me in off-hours between his law studies and lectures since Mr. Seidell's ab- sence. Seidell was greatly disappointed in not receiving the office he was promised and wrote me that his business would not allow him to be absent more than two months, so I got Mr. H. W. Baldwin, of Madison, Ga., to come and take his place and remain with me at least during the present session of congress. It is a great inconvenience to me, having such frequent changes of those who are in charge of my corres- pondence, sending off documents and attending to my busi- ness personally. I am truly sorry for Mr. Seidell in his dis- appointment. There was very bad faith somewhere, and it was not in either General Longstreet or Colonel Farrow. My opinion is, that the head centre of it was Mr. Speer. But enough of this. I will remember your message to Col. Dick Johnston when I write to him. Kind regards to Dr. Felton and Howard. Aleck Kent requests to be kindly remembered to all of you. Kate Glennan was 'round to see me this morn- ing and requested to be remembered to you. Mrs. Cannon, of Illinois, inquired specially about you the other evening when she called with several ladies, as did Mrs. Ross, whom I met in the corridor as I was going to the house yesterday. Mr. Little inquires about you daily at our game of whist in the evening. Yours very truly, A. H. S." Long before this date the New York Journals begun to notice the Independent movement down in Georgia. The New York Times spoke of it editorially: The anti-Bourbon movement in Georgia seems to be gaining ground steadily and surely. Its leaders do not make much 360 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics noise, but they keep quietly at work and succeed in attracting the attention of the people. Their principal spokesman, ex- Congressman Felton, is making speeches in different parts of the State, and is greeted everywhere with large and thought- ful audiences. He spoke recently in Savannah before a very large assemblage, and while the Bourbon editors were able to ridicule his speech to the length of a column, they were prudent enough not to print a word of the speech itself. A careful perusal of the speech convinces us of the wisdom of this course. It was one of those speeches which make votes — thoughtful, filled with striking demonstrations of the evils of Bourbon rule, and impressive appeals for the advancement of Georgia to a level with the civilization of today. One of the Bourbon editors remarks that the speech was received with great solemnity and with few demonstrations of pleasure. "We should be surprised to hear that it had been received in any other way. If there is anything which is calculated to cast a gloom over an intelligent audience, it is a correct description of Bourbonism in Georgia, or any other Southern State, as it exists today. If Georgians themselves begin to realize the melancholy aspects of the situation, the day for regeneration is not far off. A large part of Mr. Felton 's speech was devoted to State questions, but the most interesting portion of it to people out- side Georgia was its references to national questions. On these he was as sound as he was fearless and unequivocal. "What objection," he asked, "can any Georgian have to the doctrine that every ballot cast at an election should represent the individual convictions of the voter, rather than the com- mand of a supreme caucus? "What objection can any man have to that grand essential of a free government, a free ballot and a fair count of all votes honestly cast at a State or National election?" Nobody except Bourbons ever objected to that doctrine, and they object because on a fair count they will be put out of power. ""What party," continued Mr. Felton, "objects to the payment of honest debts? "Who objects to a tariff for revenue with ample encouragement and incidental protection to all home industries? Who in Georgia will insist that the national government is not the supreme authority, and has the first claim to our obedience? What Georgian will object to a plain English education for every child in the State, both white and colored?" No true Georgian, or true American anywhere, can find aught to disapprove in these principles. They are the very foundation of our greatness and prosperity; they have built up the North, and they will build up the South just as soon as her people adopt and live up to them. There is no other ;1My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 361 way for Georgia or any Southern State to prosper, or to catch up with the North. So long as political proscription and false counting are practiced in the South, just so long will the Southern States be shunned by both men and capital. The evil must be rooted out at home, and by such movements as this which Mr. Felton is leading in Georgia. The Bourbons, with their intolerance, tissue ballots, rifle clubs and red shirts, must be overthrown, and a firm stand taken by the State on the side of old-fashioned honesty in all things. Then a new day will dawn upon the South. I have already said that the Independents did their work with Mr. Stephens by letter, but the Bourbon Democrats took the train and went in person. The following explains itself: (Augusta Chronicle.) Washington, D. C, March 8, 1882. — In reference to the pub- lished interview and cards of Colonel Farrow, in The Consti- tution, stating substantially that Governor Colquitt, when here, had tendered to Mr. Stephens the nomination of the organized Democracy for governor of Georgia, I called on Mr. Stephens today and asked him what there was in it? He very frankly said : ' ' There is this in it : When Governor Col- quitt was here he paid me a friendly call, as has always been his custom when in the city, and among other things expressed the wish that I would consent to allow my name to be run for governor, at the next election; assuring me that if I gave my consent, there would be, in his opinion, no opposition in the State." Mr. Stephens further said he returned his thanks and gratification for this manifestation of confidence and regard, but said his mind had been made up since his last candidacy for congress never to assume another political trust again. With his present congressional term his connection with public office would end. This he had repeatedly said to numerous friends and to several others, both on the side of the organized and independent democracy, who had mentioned to him the subject of the next governorship of the State. Governor Colquitt was looking out for his own successor because he was "laying pipe" for Senator Hill's place, who might live a considerable time, or he might die sooner. It was necessary also to name a governor who would pardon Edward Cox, sentenced for life to Senator Brown's coal mines in Dade county, Georgia. Cox had killed Col. Bob Alston in a difficulty which grew out of the leasing of Senator Gordon's convicts, who worked large numbers of these slaves on his 362 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Taylor county plantation. Cox knew a great deal about the inside workings of the convict lease. He could tell a great deal if he chose to do so. It was more than Governor Colquitt could afford or dare to do to pardon the prisoner so soon; and although Cox was only a prisoner in name, and was known to jump on a horse and pursue another convict for hours, may- be days, still he was a prisoner, and very restless. It will be seen that Congressman Stephens was still- declin- ing to run another race, from this interview, and the inter- viewer lived in his own district and most likely wrote the in- terview at Mr. Stephens' dictation. I had written Mr. Stephens that the Colquitt crowd (the old Kirkwood Ring) were not sincere in their support of him. He had written me that Governor Colquitt was not a capable governor, for in a letter dated September 1, 1880, he said he didn't know that he could vote for him again, as he "didn't think he was fit when he first ran for the office, and didn't think was fit then" (1880) and I hardly supposed that he could afford to take the office of Governor from the hands of the "unfit" Governor Colquitt — no matter if he did go to "Washington City to urge the proposal. So I was not surprised to receive the following letter, dated May 7, 1882 : "Dear Mrs. Felton: Your letter of Friday was received this morning. I noticed the article in The Constitution to which you refer, and understood its import just as you did. Mr. Richardson called on me for an interview in relation to the matter discussed in it. The report of that interview, I suppose, will be in this morning's Constitution. I was very busy when he called, but I have simply given my consent to serve the people of Georgia as governor, if they shall show me by unmistakable demonstrations that it is their desire for me to do so. I have no aspirations for the office ( ?) and would greatly prefer to spend the remainder of my days quietly at home and it was alone from the desire to produce harmony in the State and to save us from the horrible effects of division that I gave the consent I did. You will please accept my .-in cere thanks for the tone, tenor and sentiments of vour letter, etc. A. H. STEPHENS." My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ' 363 I have also stated that Mr. Stephens had an intimate friend who swapped Mr. Stephens' letters with me. I suspieioned a trick somewhere, but was not able to locate it. This last letter of ]\Ir. Stephens was dated May 7. My next communication came from the intimate friend and was dated May 10, 1882. Now Listen! "Your kind favor received this morning (and it carried Mr. Stephens' letter of May 7th). I thank you for it and am gratified by its contents, more than I can express. If the course you indicate is pursued, the corrupt ringsters and tricksters must take him nolens volens, and their overthrow and ultimate destruction is assured. When The Constitution sounded its first blast against Mr. Stephens' candidacy, about which I wrote Dr. Felton, I also wrote Mr. Stephens a long letter upon the subject, and the impudence of those hirelings' demands upon him (Stephens). Yesterday I received an ac- knowledgement of my letter of the 5th to him. The Constitu- tion's blast was, if you remember, followed by two others oil the same line, the last appearing with Richardson's telegram of the 6th, in the paper of the 7th. Yesterday, however, a change came over the spirit of their dream, based upon pre- tended information received. They possessed from Mr. Stephens no other or further information when their article in yesterday's paper was penned, than they had the day be- fore, when they got Richardson's telegram of the 6th instant. Their change of front was caused by orders from their Boss, who doubtless perceived his hirelings were overdoing their job. Their hostility to Mr. Stephens is no less now than be- fore, and they will keep him off the track if they can. These fellows needed or wanted no information as to Mr. Stephens' devotion to true Democratic principles and true Democracy. It is the knowledge that he does not belong to their corrupt gang, and cannot be used by them and manipulated by them, as Smith and Colquitt have been, which is the cause of their hostility to him. Last night I wrote Mr. Stephens another long letter about their abandoning their impudent demands on him. I have not posted it and will take the liberty of sending yours in it, written to me, feeling assured you will have no objec- tion. My hope in electing Mr. Stephens governor, belonging as he does to neither faction, unconnected and unconneetable 364 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics with any of the corrupt rings disgracing the Democratic party in Georgia, is that we will stand a good chance, (the best I can see), to destroy the rotten rings of demagogues and break their power. I wrote to Mr. Stephens these words : "I under- stand your position perfectly. I know you too well to mis- take it or to misjudge you. You are a candidate for nothing, but if the people desire your services you will yield your wishes, as to retirement, and serve them. I understand, too, as stated in my previous letter, that you will not refuse, much less insult, as has been demanded of you, the support of any one if you run for governor or anything else, who desires your services and is willing to support you upon your character and your record, whether he calls himself Independent or Repub- lican or is even an ex-member of the Bullock gang. For myself, I am a Jeffersonian Democrat, without any such prefix as "organized." What that is, you understand well. If it means anything, it means that a man must yield his own judgment of what is true Democracy and who are true Demo- crats, which I shall never do, to any man or set of men, call themselves what they may." In my previous letter I paid my respects to our present senator and Bullock's ex-judge. He was in Atlanta the dax"- one of those Constitution editorials appeared, but left that evening for some place on the State Road. He came back next day and left for "Washington afterwards. I feel sure he in- spired those articles, etc., etc." That Governor Colquitt found imperative business in the National Capitol was common talk in Georgia, and an op- position newspaper had the following : ' ' Think of a lean, lank, •cadaverous cavalryman, like Governor Colquitt (he weighed at least 200 pounds) pursuing a wild, muscular buffalo like Alex Stephens (who weighed something less than a hundred) with a lasso, trying to rope him into the Bourbon bull-pen and put him in training for the gubernatorial race. Since His Ex- cellency saved Governor Brown, by raising him out of the Republican pit and placing him firmly in his warm place in the United States senate, it seems that he cannot be satisfied unless he is tugging at some old Philistine, that he considers My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 365 to be browsing too freely in opposition pastures. That's a gaudy way to get recruits, Gov. ! ' ' What did The Constitution say of Mr. Stephens' position at that time? "Our Washington correspondent makes an im- portant announcement today. Some time ago, on Mr. Stephens' authority, we made the announcement that he had determined to retire from politics, but he has now yielded to pressure and after deliberation he says he will enter the gubernatorial race, if the wish is general for him to do so. In other words, Mr. Stephens is in the race for governor." The last communication sent me by the "intimate friend" was dated May 10th, and he knew positively, as you will dis- cover, that Mr. Stephens would be a liberal candidate and was only willing to serve if all the people wanted him. Now the kernel in the nut is about to be exposed, and as the In- dependents' meeting in Atlanta had been advertised to come off on May 15th Dr. Felton and his friends were perfectly satisfied that Mr. Stephens would accept their recommenda- tion, and then the Kirkwood Ring (Colquitt, Gordon & Co.) would be obliged to take him, and Senator Brown's "Recon- structionists, " composed of Republicans, Bullock Democrats and colored voters, would come in, of course. On the 12th day of May, a good Independent, also a Pres- byterian minister, Rev. T. E. Smith, took dinner with us at our home. Dr. Felton was sanguine as to Mr. Stephens' fealty to the men who were to meet in Atlanta on the 15th. He read aloud to Mr. Smith some of the letters herein copied. The good old pastor said: "I wish you were positively certain of Mr. Stephens. Has he ever declared, in black and white, that he will accept your platform and run as your Independent candidate ? ' ' Then and there we resolved to have a definite answer. So I took pen in hand, and wrote something like the following: "Dr. Felton and the Independents will recommend you next Monday (15th) if you desire the recommendation. If you do desire it, telegraph Dr. Felton, care Markham House, Atlanta, so that he may find it there on Monday, and then he will be in position to make your recommendation not only positive but unanimous. If for any reason whatever you do not desire 366 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics them to name you as their candidate, you have only to say so. There is no intention to compel your candidacy — and the In- dependents do not threaten you as the Kirkwood Ring have been doing through their organs. Dr. Felton and Rev. Mr. Smith, who are in the room and directing me in this letter, request me to say to you that you shall not be embarrassed by the Independents, but they will endeavor to carry out your wishes. ' ' I knew all about the delivery of Southern mail to congress- men in Washington City. I had six years of experience. So I added the following: ''My letter, this one I am sending you today, will be mailed in Cartersville this afternoon. It will be delivered into your room on Sunday morning (14th). You will have a quiet Sunday to think it over, and you will have time to make a decision and express your wishes in the telegram to be sent to Atlanta to the Independents, care of Dr. Felton at the Markham House. They are all your friends. They seek to do the best thing that is possible for the State as well as for yourself. You have so often declared your in- dependence of party proscription and of tricksters, and of ring rule in Georgia, that we know where you stand, but this telegram which you will send to Atlanta, is for those who do not know you so well," etc. "All we want from you is "yes" or "no," according to your own wishes. Send the telegram to the care of Markham House, by 10 a. m., Monday, May 15th." Rev. Mr, Smith delivered the letter to the post office in Cartersville and the post office authorities delivered it promptly on Sunday morning. Mr. Stephens acknowledged the recep- tion of it that day, and also said that he read it when received. It was a balmy Sunday afternoon and we (Dr. Felton and myself) were on the front piazza when a messenger boy brought a telegram — and it read thus : Washington, D. C, May 14, 1882. "Hon. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga. "Have sent you an important telegram to Markham House. It was submitted to Mr. Stephens. (Signed) "EMORY SPEER." We had had no correspondence on the subject with Mr. Speer. We knew that Mr. Stephens had complained of Mr. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 367 Speer in the matter of Mr. Seidell's appointment. How Mr. Speer stood at this time, we did not know. He was Mr. Hill's friend and naturally we did not expect him to come into that controversy — so we had no disposition to inquire into his pre- ferences, etc. Therefore it was a genuine surprise that Mr. Speer was commissioned to send such an important telegram, when Mr. Stephens could so easily have done it for himself, as was his constant habit to do for himself. When Dr. Felton reached the Markham House in Atlanta the clerk in the office handed him the expected telegram. It read thus : ''Washington, May 15, 1882. "To Hon. W. H. Felton, Atlanta, Ga. "I hope the committee of Independent Democrats, who meet today, will recommend ]\Ir. Stephens as the people's candi- date for governor. I know positively that he will not reject such recommendation and that if elected, that he will be governor of all the people, without regard to party. He will be controlled by no ring. (Signed) ''EMORY SPEER." Dr. Felton sent the following telegram from Cartersville, Ga.: "May 16, 1882. "Hon. Emory Speer, House of Representatives: The com- mittee of Independents have endorsed Mr. Stephens unani- mously and enthusiastically. He will sweep the State. "W. H. FELTON." They issued the following call and address to the people of the State : We are happy to announce to the Independents of Georgia that one of the desired results of that proposed mass-meeting has been attained much earlier than was contemplated when the call was made. We desired harmony and concert of action among the Independents of the State, especially in regard to the governorship of Georgia. We believed that representative men of the Independent party, coming from all sections of the State, would be able to express the preference of their sev- eral localities so clearly that they could unite with perfect unanimity upon some distinguished Georgian as a suitable candidate for this high and responsible position without the intervention of machine politics or the tricks of packed con- ventions. The Independents have no organization to defend,. 368 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics or personal schemes to promote in this matter, and only desire to present as a candidate for this high office one whose record for ability, patriotism, life-long devotion to the best interest of Georgia and of the whole union and one especially whose incorruptible political and personal honesty should commend his candidacy to all the people of the State, independent of factions, rings, cliques or former party alliances. The Independents would have presented no name for this office, whose well known character for truth and justice was not a sufficient guaranty against party proscription and sec- tional strife. We only seek to give good government to the people — to all the people of every class, calling and station in life, and we will gladly support for the high office of gov- ernor any man whose character and qualifications, as above indicated, establish his peculiar fitness for the place. Further- more, we do not require the proposed candidate to pronounce, or accept, any party shibboleth. We do not threaten him with a refusal of our support if he should accept the indorsement and aid of other parties. We simply enunciate the expressed will of the people, and in this manner we believe we reflect the sentiment of the Independents of Georgia. In our opinion the Hon. Alex. H. Stephens is practically in the field as a candidate for governor by the spontaneous voice of the people of Georgia, he having expressed a willingness to serve the people of the State in that capacity, if they gave him unmistakable demonstration that it is their desire for him to do so. Also, in our opinion, the Independents all over the State have received this announcement with unmixed gratifica- tion and respect, and are well satisfied that the business of the State could not be entrusted to more efficient and patriotic hands. We believe that all true lovers of the State will cor- dially unite in honoring this noble and illustrious son of old Georgia. We, as Independents, return to him our grateful thanks for his patriotic proposal, and enthusiastically accept and present him as the candidate of the people for the high office. Therefore, as the mass meeting, which was to assemble in Atlanta on the first of next June, will not be held in accord- ance with the published announcement, we respectfully recom- mend to the Independents of the State a unanimous support of this incorruptible statesman, Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, for the next governor of Georgia. W. H. FELTON, JAS. S. HOOK. ALBERT HOWELL, JAS. B. PARK, P. F. LAWSHE, T. M. BERRIEN, W. M. BRAY, H. V. M. MILLER, M. VAN ESTES. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 369 The telegram sent by Mr. Speer to the Independents, on the 15th, was also sent by the Associated Press all over the United States. It was published in Washington City papers and in Georgia papers — these latter papers were also in Mr. Stephens' room, not later than Wednesday morning, the 17th. He did see them — he did read them, and on the 18th of May he ad- dressed the following letter, which is before me now, old and yellow with age, and the very last letter that ever came to Dr. Felton or myself, or which Mr. Stephens ever addressed to either of us, because we were so disgusted, so completely disheartened with Mr. Stephens' methods, that we never an- swered it or reported its reception to the distinguished writer : ''House of Representatives, "Washington, May 18, 1882. "Dear Doctor: I dictated a letter to Mrs. Felton this morning (which did not come to hand) in which I told her to tell you I would write to you today or soon. Your letter was received last Sunday (14th) and ought to have been responded to, if I had been able, forthwith, and the truth was, I was not able. I am suffering extremely from the sprain in my ankle and was utterly unfit to dictate or do anything else. Allow me now to thank you for it, and to say that I think you man- aged matters admirably at Atlanta last Monday, looking, as I conceived, to the best interests of the State. How the matter of the governorship will end, of course no one can now tell or even form a rational conjecture. My position toward it has been very distinctly stated. My future course, with reference to it, will depend upon the voice of the people. The greatest objection that some people have to my being governor seems to be that certain other people are willing to vote for me — such is the weakness and frailty of poor human nature. The affected assumption that I may not be a Democrat, or might not be true to Democratic principles, is to me, utterly pre- posterous. But enough. I can say no more at present, except to extend my kind wishes and kind regards to you, Howard and Mrs. Felton. Yours truly, A. H. S." When that letter was received there was also printed the following, all over Georgia and all over the Union: "I have seen a telegram dated the 15th instant, from Atlanta, Ga., to 370 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics the Chicago Tribune, published in the Augusta Chronicle and Constitutionalist of the 20th instant, stating that I had tele- graphed to the Atlanta Convention of Independents, that I would accept their nomination for governor. It is utterly un- true that I ever sent any such telegram or authorized its being sent by anybody. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS." With this letter of the 18th in hand just received, we were confronted with this knock-down dispatch and we were dumb- founded with surprise ! Mr. Speer had sent the telegram, but he expressly said it was sent by Mr. Stephens' authority. On the 27th Mr. Speer wrote the following : ''Dear Dr. Felton: I thank you with all my heart for your letter to the Constitution" (in which our connection with the correspondence was fully stated). It was admirable, but they printed it so it took me a long time to tind it. It is every word true, and today (27th), Mr. Stephens, in conversation with me and with Mr. Baldwin, of Madison, Ga., a Mr. Heller and others, expressed himself as annoyed at the attempt to get up an issue between him and me. His denial did not refer to my telegram to you, but to the alleged telegram from him- • self — that he would accept the nomination of the Independents, etc. See his letter." (It is printed above). "My telegram to you was written in Mr. Stephens' room on blanks given me by his secretary. I read it to him; made two alterations at his suggestion, and sent it with his full knowledge. He now says it was true. He did not reject the recommendation of the Independent Democrats, but really spoke gratefully of their endorsement in his letter to Smith." etc., etc. With kind regards to Mrs. Felton. I am sincerely yours, "EMORY SPEER." This was my first experiment at governor making, and I had all I wanted of that sort of business and more than I had bargained for. Dr. Felton took it better than I did. He awoke to the con- clusion that Mr. Stephens had been doped with hypodermics and fed on whiskey until he was at times mentally irrespon- sible. I had a woman's intuition, and less judgment perhaps, but I said "it is more than that. He has gone over, bag and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 371 "baggage to the Kirkwood ring and Senator Brown's recon- structionists. In his old age, it is his ambition to be governor of Georgia, and you will see if I have not read the situation aright. He got you Independents safely tied, and he has gone after the others." Directly he showed his hand and was given so in- fatuated or so fully transformed that he told the editor of the Atlanta Constitution: "I am in your hands." ''I'll do as you say." General Toombs, who was his strongest political friend in the State, was disgusted as the following statement will show: TOOMBS VS. STEPHENS. Gen. Toombs Declares No Democrat Ought to Vote for Stephens. Atlanta Sunday Herald. A representative of the Herald met General Toombs yes- terday morning at the Kimball house, and after a desultory conversation about matters in general, the subject of the guber- national question was touched upon with the following result: "General what is your opinion about Mr. Stephens?" "To tell you the truth Mr. Stephens must be in his dotage. As is well known to the people. Mr. Stephens and myself have been life long friends, and I regret exceedingly the posi- tion he has placed himself in. He is either the veriest dem- agogue in the country, or he in his old age has lost his grip. I do not see how any Democrat can support him for governor. He at one time said he would support Lawton for the United States Senate, and afterwards said he did not want to an- tagonize Joe Brown. In the recent affair he denied what Felton said about his willingness to go in with the coalition, but since Felton 's speech he has been silent. The truth is he can not disapprove what Felton has said and written. The Democracy of Georgia ought to rebuke such conduct. I ques- tion whether they will do it, however. They have stood it for several years and may stand it now, and unless they rebel in this instance, they will have to stand it two years hence." "Well, general, what ought the people to do?" Rebuke this abortion to control the party at the polls. You ask me how? Well, by not voting and thus teaching the "bosses" a lesson. Why, sir, in my county and in other parts of the State I have visited, Gartrell is the choice over Stephens, but if such a young Democrat as Albert Cox had taken the field he would have received the governorship from the people just as easy as picking it up in the road. As it is, I think 372 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Gartrell will beat him, and ought to beat him. Gartrell is as good a Democrat as Stephens, and as the Irishman said, a d — n sight better!" "What are you going to do in the matter?" "Nothing. I don't care a fig who is elected. In my section some Democrats think as I do, and others think they will vote for Gartrell." A Republican, understood at the time to be Gov. Bullock, furnished a very significant letter to the Macon Telegraph concerning the eagerness of Colquitt and Brown to make Mr. Stephens governor. He said the Republicans took exceeding interest in Gov. Brown and that the reconstructionists — Brown's following — Bullock Democrats and Bullock Republi- cans, were anxious for the election of Stephens because the "fraudulent bond" issue was interesting to them and they knew that Mr. Stephens had never favored their repudiation. The words were these: "With Mr. Stephens in the executive chair, there will be good promise of justice to the holders of Bullock's bonds!" "I do not hesitate to tell you, Mr. Editor, that it was our purpose to have run Stephens as an Independent with the help of Federal patronage, but as the same elements that helped us to elect Brown, have again united with us to elect Stephens, we are now confident of success." We were deceived not only in Mr. Stephens' supposed friendship, and in regard to his attitude towards the Kirkwood ring (Gordon, Colquitt & Co.), but in his attitude towards the fraudulent bonds of Georgia, which will be explained in another place ; but we were intensely chagrined that we had been ignorantly urging a person for the high office of gover- nor who had outlived himself and who gave every evidence that his mental condition unfitted him for the position. Hu- man memory, at its best, is uncertain, but we had in Mr. Stephens indisputable evidence that he could not fill an ad- ministrative office with any credit to himself or without dan- ger to the State. He proved to be nothing but a tool in the hands of his captors. He was elected governor in October, and Edward Cox was pardoned out in less than two months afterward. Mr. Robt. Alston, son of the murdered man, ap- pealed to the governor to allow justice to have its reasonable i\lY Memoirs of Georgia Politics 373 course, but the aged executive was in the hands of those who were using him and Cox was set free. The convict lease won its fight and had enough control of a senile executive to prevent any investigation during his term of its horrors and injustice. It was a thousand pities for Mr. Stephens that he yielded to his ambitions on this line. Perhaps he might have lived many years in congressional life. My husband was in the race for Congress in the seventh district, and the newspapers were crammed with the attacks that were inspired by ]\Ir. Stephens' managers. It was one of the most extraordinary evidences of what was possible, when this aged statesman lent himself to the political over- throw of his personal friend, and made a sacrifice of every political principle of which he had formerly boasted. He got up before large audiences in Macon and Atlanta and declared he had but little acquaintance with Dr. Felton, hadn't had a letter but one from him in over a year, and had never endorsed a single one of his Independent propositions — that he was and always had been a Democrat of the strictest sort, and knew but little of Felton and did nothing but once to help or encourage him. Said this aged politician: "In De- cember last I think the Markham house conference was held. His (Felton 's) interview, published shortly before, was openly and avowedly the expression of his purpose to destroy the Democratic party of Georgia, to destroy the Democratic party of the Union, to destroy the organization State and federal, on which the hopes of the State and the continent rest. His avowed purpose now (running for Congress), is to destroy the grand old party throughout the entire Union. Never shall I knowingly countenance anybody whose object and purpose is to destroy and not build up this grand old party. ' ' This tirade was repeated in Atlanta and then I sat down and wrote a short note to his secretary, in which I told him to tell Mr. Stephens that I had seen it published that he (Mr. Steph- ens) would appear in Dalton (in seventh district) on Friday before the State election, to denounce Dr. Felton before his con- stituents of the seventh district. In the event he did appear, I 374 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics should at once proceed to publish his private letters to me, in which he not only declared his own independence of any party, but which denounced Gov. Colquitt as unfit for governor, and John B. Gordon, hollow-headed, hypocritical, unreliable and otherwise unworthy, etc., and his absolute abhorrence of the people who were bringing reproach on the good name of the DHinoeratic party in the State. This manifesto was issued without saying anything to my husband, who was absent on a campaign tour, but I was not surprised to be visited by a messenger from Mr. Stephens, who was sent by him to ask for copies of these letters, a few of which have been inserted in this review of Mr. Stephens' campaign for governor of Georgia. I replied, "No," this is my ammunition. You can go back as you came. If he opens his mouth in this district I will print and circulate the last one of them. He is devoted to the Democratic party in Georgia now. We will see if they will afterwards be devoted to him." As the messenger returned to Cartersville, he met Dr. Felton coming home and told of his fruitless mission. Dr. Felton said: "Come back with me. My wife is angry and has reason to be, but I will persuade her to allow you to copy them, because I believe Mr. Stephens is not exactly himself and his memory deserves to be refreshed." I allowed the copies to be taken and the messenger returned to Atlanta. I had a friend who gave me information and Mr. Stephens was surrounded by seventh district politicians urging him to go to Dalton with brass bands, etc., and coaching him as to what he could say, that would "floor Felton." The old man was in high spirits; he enjoyed the campaign. With the garrulity of age, he was letting himself loose on what he intended to say of the "vile destroyer" of his dear Democratic party." All at once his eyes fell on his messenger, who had occupied two entire days copying letters at our house. Rolling himself across the room in his chair, he said: "Gentlemen, I must have my lunch and rest, "I'll see you later." Beckoning his messenger, he whispered: "Did you get them?" Yes, sir, and Mr. Stephens I am sure you are not going to be well enough to go to Dalton on Friday." The Dalton mass meeting My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 375 did not come off — "the candidate for governor was too unwell to speak." As soon as the Macon speech was delivered, I printed the following, and it was read to Mr. Stephens a few days before the campaign ended, and as the story came to me, he was con- fused at the situation: "To Editors Macon Telegraph and Messenger: "The writer appeals to you for sufficient space to correct some statements which appear in Mr. Stephens' late Macon speech. In beginning this correction, let me ask you a question in a spirit of candid inquiry, and I think your reply will meet with a hearty welcome all over the State if you can solve the problem which is now disturbing the public mind. I would respectfully inquire if it is the policy of the Democracy of Georgia to endorse Mr. Stephens at one time as an organized Democrat, and at another time as an Independent ! Can he antagonize the organization in 1878, and be 'put in nomination by both political parties,' receiving every Republican vote that went to the polls and yet become the standard bearer of a party four years later on a platform which denounces Inde- pendentism, as Radicalism? Is the Democratic party to be illustrated by its principles or by its candidates! If you will examine the Congressional Record of June 10, 1879, a little over two years ago, you will find a speech of Mr. Stephens or more properly an explanation in which he says: *I was put in nomination by both the Democratic and Republican parties of the eighth district, and received every Republican vote that went to the polls, and the fifty-eight who voted against me were scattering Democrats." If such a nomination was agreeable to the Democracy in 1878, how can you object to the nomination of Gen. Gartrell by the Republican party?' "The most important question I ask and the one that is principally confusing the public mind, and to which your at- tention is called most particularly is this: 'If Gov. Bullock or any other Republican should secure a nomination by either his money or by the efforts of his friends in a packed con- cention or caucus and should say he was a Democratic nomi- nee, would that make him an acceptable candidate to the Democratic party? Does a mere profession constitute De- 376 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics mocracy? Have you no measure for a man's principles but the bare profession? Does a man's public record count for nothing, beside such political changes as these, and is it only necessary to call yourself a Democrat, in a particular election to find the open door to Democratic promotion? A full expla- nation of this question will meet general approval with all fair-minded people in Georgia. For is it not a fact that Gov. (now Senator) Brown exceeded any man in the State at any time since the war in open denunciation of the Democratic organization, and is he not enjoying the highest honors of the party? If the race issue is so terrible, and the Democratic executive committee calls on the white people to protect them- selves against the negro, how did it condone the election of Gov. Colquitt two years ago? This same gentleman is upon record as endorsing Pledger, colored, for a high federal posi- tion at this time, and it can be proven that the federal officials of 1880, used every agency in their respective offices to elect Colquitt — going so far as to receive orders from the commit- tee of internal revenue at Washington to defeat Felton 'be- cause he was too much of a Democrat.' Skowhegan Bryant was once the nominee for speaker, run by the minority Demo- crats in a Georgia legislature and that occurred at a time when the negroes of Georgia were led by Bullock's and Blod- gett's gang. Please explain the policy of your party, so that we can understand its professions. With INIr. Stephens as a candidate, some explanation is necessary. For the first time since the war, we find him antagonizing the Republicans in his district. They have always supported him. His own declaration on June 10, 1878, declares it. He did not lose a single Republican vote, but scattering Democrats voted against him. This is history — his OAvn story of himself in 1878. Yet Mr. Stephens told you, here in Macon, a few night ago, that he always adhered to the Democratic organi- zation, except in the Greely campaign. Gen. Gartrell is now sustaining the same Democratic organization with equal zeal and superior loyalty. Mr. Stephens makes the broad unquali- fied assertion that he never sustained Dr. Felton but once, and he only counseled obedience to the majority, because he had 2,500 majority in his district. If that was really his motive My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 377 he is easily pleased in every candidate who secures a majority. If Dr. Felton had been defeated, Mr. Stephens could see no merit in him. Upon this principle, I suppose he supported Gen. Grant. Just see where such an argument will close up and where your candidate will stand! But he is not correct in that statement. In 1879, Dr. Felton was interviewed by a New York Times reporter, which interview created consider- able excitement in Georgia circles. He said: "You ask me ho what extent the Independent movement is spreading in this State ? " I answer : "It promises to sweep the State from the mountains to the Seaboard next year. I believe our next governor, a majority of our next Congress and our State legis- lature, will be elected as Independents. The honest and in- telligent citizens of the State are determined t ooverthrow Bour- bonism, which has well-nigh destroyed the very bulwarks of genuine Democracy; "it never learns and never forgets;" it stands as a barrier to our material progress, narrow, selfish and illiberal ; it 's only bond of union a struggle for spoils ; it's only hope of success, the tricks of the caucus, and the lash of the party. Its fruit has turned to ashes in the hands of our countrymen, and Georgia Democratis have determined to rescue the Democratic party from its destructive grasp. In- dependentism does not rely upon party machinery, but con- fides in principle and trusts the people rather than party lead- ers. " Mr. Stephens read this interview in Washington and was reported by a correspondent of the Savannah News as deserting Felton. To correct this impression, Mr. Stephens goes into print and in the Evening- Star of that city publishes a card in which these words appear: "I have never denied in my letter that I was in sympathy with Congressman Felton. On the contrary I have alv/ays said I saw nothing objection- able in that letter. ' ' Compare this statement with that speech made in your city and I will leave the subject with you. This may be a case of uncertain memory, equal to his forgetfulness in regard to the Speer telegrams, but you can find it in the Washington Star of November 27, 1879. Mr. Stephens arraigns Dr. Felton before a Macon audience for opposing him on the Potter resolution. It seems to me to he a poor argument to lie in the mouth of such a zealot for 378 My INIemoirs op Georgia Politics organization when every Democrat North and South voted with Dr. Felton. Ask Gen. Cook, Mr. Blount, or anybody else who voted on the question, if any man claiming to be a Demo- crat or Independent could refuse to examine into the testimony which made another man President when Mr. Tilden had every vote but one to make him a Democratic President. If there ever was need for organization, that was the time, and it should work no discredit to Dr. Felton, even if he is now assailed by the standard bearer, as a " destroyer of the party. ' ' There must be some explanation from Mr. Stephens himself in regard to the Speer telegrams, for if Dr. Felton did wrong and was destroying the Democratic party last December, and Stephens cut off the light of his countenance, why was it last May, Stephens altered the telegram in two particulars, which informed the Independents that he could be recommended? It was impossible that Mr. Speer should know that Dr. Felton was expecting a decisive telegram from Mr. Stephens, unless Dr. Felton 's letter was shown to him, in Mr. Stephens' room. Mr. Speer had no intimation from Dr. Felton. The designated places and telegrams were confined to Felton and Stephens. But the dispatches came on time, were taken up by the asso- ciated press and published in Washington before received in Atlanta. Mr. Stephens had full opportunity to correct or dis- avow; and I assert he connived and contrived in the sending of the telegrams. It is therefore incomprehensible that he should now proclaim his hostility to Felton 's political man- agement which Stephens, in a letter, pronounced to be "ad- mirable" three days later "looking to the best interests of the State." Governor Bullock says: "Stephens is a good enough Re- publican for him," and Felton said, Stephens was a good enough Independent for him, now why not denounce Bullock as a destroyer of the party, but instead this aged man held Dr. Felton up before a Macon in defiance of truth and justice, when the people looked for safe and unbiased counsel from this venerable statesman! If Bartow county had given a majority for Garfield, as was given in Mr. Stephens' county, there might have been some force in this late frantic appeal for organization, but Mr. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 379 Stephens' bosses his county, and Taliaferro deserts the Demo- cratic organization less than two years ago, under his personal supervision. As a nominee of "both political parties," he simply "toted his own skillet," and left Gen. Hancock to do his own toting. Under these conditions it is decidedly strange that the Demo- crats should risk political leadership after this fashion. There may be a grim sarcasm in Mr. Stephens' statement that Felton is destroying the party in helping to bring out A. H. Stephens, who carried Taliaferro county for Garfield. To show the utter fallacy and unfairness of Stephens' assault on Dr. Fel- ton, compare the latter 's record with that of Senator Brown, who holds the highest office in the gift of the organized De- mocracy of Georgia. Dr. Felton was never a Radical supreme judge appointed by Bullock, He never ran for the United States Senate by the power of negro votes. He never took a $5,000 fee from Gen. Meade to insult the helpless women of Columbus, who had to go on the witness stand while this virulent prosecutor pressed his assaults upon their sons and husbands. He never seconded the resolution of G. W. Paschal, of Texas, in a National Republican convention to force negro suffrage on the South, and the resolution was too rabid for the support of such men as Thad Stevens and Giddings. He never traded for a seat in Congress for money, nor did he ever force himself on an unwilling people by his control of a weak Senator and a still weaker- executive. Felton has done none of these things. Yet Mr. Stephens left his place in Congress chaperoned by just such a man, who was managing for him a convention, Democratic so-called, that the interests of the boss might not be disturbed in the State road lease and the con- vict lease! Felton never "pointed a torch" to the dwellings of the white people of Georgia or stirred up incendiary hate under ignorance or fanaticism. I submit therefore, if Senator Brown could receive the senatorship, and such things be con- doned by Democrats, because as ex-Senator Gordon explained, the Democrats "Enjoyed the use of his money in elections," it would seem to be eminently unjust to ostracize a man like Felton, who served the people of Georgia six years in Congress most zealously and effectively, as friend and foe will attest, and 380 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics retired to his home at the close without a taint on his political character, or a dishonest dollar in his pocket. In what has Dr. Pelton's position become so obnoxious to Mr. Stephens since the 18th of May of the present year. Ac- cording to his own ' ' hand write, ' ' Felton ' ' managed admirably, looking to the best interests of the State." There is something wrong just here, and the wrong does not rest with this much- abused man. He has known what it is to have the purest mo- tives and the most incessant labors, assailed and misrepre- sented; he knows what the moral and political whipping post means in Georgia, and yet this representative has withstood a steady and unceasing fire for six long years and never failed Georgia in a test of courage or principle. He has come out of the fire, unscathed, actually declining to run for the office, which he so generously and unselfishly offered to the nominee of your party. His selection for governor your party con- firmed Mr. Stephens by an almost unanimous vote. You might take this case to a dozen juries and the verdict will be in Dr. Felton 's favor. It will not become Mr. Stephens to treat this matter with rudeness or contempt. One of these days it will recoil on somebody's head. Mr. Stephens is as devoted to Jeffersonian Democracy as to the little bottle of whiskey, which he pet-names as Jeffersonian Democracy, but his record so bristles with Independent votes and speeches that he must shut up or explain. Hosea Ballon once said : ' ' There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie. Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtfully, but equivocation is "malice prepense." If Dr. Felton acted "for the best in- terests of the State," and managed his matters admirably, which "matters" turned out to be the indorsement of the present candidate of the Democratic organization, there is no discount on either his devotion to the people of Georgia or his adherence to principle and duty. "When he asked for a sign from the present nominee, and the signal was hoisted accord- ing to agreement, it ill becomes the beneficiary to turn State's evidence to convict the man who worked in his interest. I do not attempt to tell you what evil results will, in my opinion, flow from this crusade against the colored race, and the honest Republicans in Georgia. We need not be surprised to see our Dr. Felton's Last Picture. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 381 material progress checked or to find capital already invested in the State, taking itself off to more conservative climes. When the power of a ''solid South" is sufficient to make this aged man, this fulsome admirer of Gen. Grant, this apologist of the Louisiana Durell, this quasi Republican candidate of the Republican party in the eighth district of Georgia, this "well-known conservative representative in Congress, when he is made by his bosses to take upon himself a crusade against the colored race, the disappointment will affect our conserva- tive Northern friends in a fatal way, retarding our material interests. It is most unfortunate that we have now proven the vicious strength of sectionalism in the South. The con- servative record of Alexander H. Stephens has been bartered off to make him a Bourbon governor of Georgia under the control of the bosses. This is a year of peace and plenty. The negro is doing well. He has done nothing this year to excite animosity or promote race troubles. Because of these conditions, Mr. Stephens was selected by the Independents to harmonize all parties, but he has not only kicked over his own bucket of milk, but he has lost his grip on the majority of Georgians who are sur- prised and astounded that his ambition has led him along to this result. He is too old to regain the lost ground. His beau- tiful statue of conservatism and equity, is forever stained and marred before the very people who have honored him for so long. When Joseph E. Brown can step out to denounce Radi- calism, and Alexander H. Stephens can be made to denounce Independentism, the evil one may smile and say: "Well done." This defense was written in September, 1882, nearly thirty years ago by myself and printed in one of the best newspapers in the State of Georgia, and written at a time when my hus- band was beset by every "paid organ" in the State, when unscrupulous men near at home were hired with money to attack him, day by day in the newspapers. His race for Con- gress was carried on in this way over fourteen counties. The convict lessees — Brown, Gordon, Colquitt, et al., were beating him down to save their valuable convict lease and prevent an exposure of its horrors. There were about fifteen hundred of these slaves divided into three lease companies, and from the 382 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics year 1876 to the end of the lease of twenty years, it kept two Senators in the United States Senate and elected two governors besides A. H. Stephens to the executive chair. It was a cruel thing to use this aged man, over 70 years old, to do this work. I was about to say as cruel as murder. That he was under the influence of sedatives the most of the time there is no question. There is no true friend of Mr. Stephens, who in view of the record of this campaign, would not blot out the fact that he was deceived and cajoled by crafty and designing men for a purpose ; and he is a poor citizen of Geor- gia who does not look back with shame and mortification upon a desperate political game conceived in disgrace, and culminat- ing in disaster to the record of one of Georgia's most honored statesmen. There will always be regret that he did not die in Washington. He always served as a Congressman, except when he was Vice-President of the short-lived Confederacy. He was thoroughly comfortable in that position. It paid him enough to live on well, as he never had a family. But he be- came infatuated with an ambition to be governor, maybe to be Senator, after Mr. Hill passed off, as he was swiftly going. This frail old man was pushed into an exciting State canvass, where his own duplicity in the correspondence between Fel- ton and Speer demonstrates his desperate efforts. He did not live long enough to win back the confidence and affections of friends of a life time, whom he had thus estranged. There is an avenging Nemesis that will repay the base and treacherous, who with stolid selfishness and consummate greed of gain, shortened his later days. His last letter to Dr. Felton was dated May 18, 1882. I never passed another line to him. One of his intimate friends told me that Mr. Stephens said he was sorry, but he knew I would never be his friend any more. My little son went to see him in the executive mansion just before Christmas. The little boy was very fond of the feeble old gentleman, and he and Mr. Stephens usually passed Christ- mas reminders during the holiday season. Mr. Stephens al- ways wore silk gloves on his attenuated fingers in cold weather. He suffered intensely from cold for he was pale, sometimes cadaverous, always anemic. The boy asked to be allowed to carry a pair of silk gloves to his old-time friend and a party My Memoiks op Georgia Politics 383 who went with the little boy to the mansion, also looked into the coffin after his death and recognized the silk gloves on the dead man's hands. Mr. Stephens received the lad kindly, asked if his "mother was well," and the brief visit was over. When the lad come home and told me, I broke down; it was so sad, so pathetic, to know that my once dear old honored friend was going down to the grave and that cruel hands and cruel hearts had not only broken up a friendship of eight long years, but that no explanation or relief could come to either of us this side of eternity. He was literally hastened to the grave by the unusual worries of a new and untried position. He was always stimulated with whiskey, and the hypodermics were his ready resort in all seasons of pain. I was satisfied, as soon as he denied the Speer telegrams, that he was not him- self. The drug had done its work in mental failure. He was past seventy and beset with the usual infirmities of old age. He died early in March, 1883. A trip to Savannah was forced upon him in the latter days of February and he yielded to pressure, took cold, became ill and died near about the time that his term in the 47th Congress would have expired, if he had not been foolish enough to resign his congressional com- mission to be made governor and was used also to hold the convict lessees in their usual control of the revenues of the State from its convicts. There will be disappointment ever- more, that he did not pass away at "Liberty Hall," surrounded by his peaceful household and mourned by those who loved and honored him from a slender, poverty-stricken youth to the successes of his long lifetime for half a century. Senator Hill died in the summer of 1882, and Gov. Colquitt stepped into the Senate, as had been planned. The six Repub- lican members of the legislature gave Gen. Longstreet a com- plimentary vote and then voted solidly for Colquitt. It was then evident that Colquitt, Brown and company were in ac- tive alliance with Republicans in Georgia, and had filled all the federal offices in the State with their own henchmen, and the actual coalition of Democrats and Republicans over which poor Senator Hill had grown frantic against Dr. Felton, had been engineered by the Senator's own party friends in Georgia. Of course Dr. Felton was defeated for Congress. Nothing 384 My jMemoirs op Georgia Politics hmnan, or mortal could have won against that combination. He had a farm, which supported us in a plain way, but he had no money to spare. His previous elections were a miracle, and I can not yet understand how he got in the first time, or for three times because the triumvirate of Brown, Gordon and Colquitt were in full authority, and were able to flood Geor- gia with unlimited campaign money and General Gordon took the stump in every campaign, but one to defeat my hus- band and I suppose he would have been at the same old busi- ness in the year 1882, but his wealth became so great after Senator Brown succeeded him in the Senate that he could li<^ back on his cash in bank and take a trip to Europe. President Arthur was not asleep ; he understood what was going on down in Georgia with Stephens in the race for gov- ernor and every one of the "bosses," hurling threats at Dr. Felton, charging him with "coalition with Grant, Arthur and Conkling to control the patronage of Georgia." When these bosses were sending their claquers into every county in the seventh district, when the W. & A. Railroad under President, also Senator Brown, was laying itself out to defeat Dr. Felton and when we felt that the Louisville and Nashville influence was behind its "legal counsel." John B. Gordon, late United States Senator, for the same purpose, and when we were satis- fied that Huntington's money was flush, as it had been in 1880, with newspapers and active politicians to keep Dr. Fel- ton out of Congress, and although Huntington's tell-tale let- ters had not been exposed, we were satisfied Senator Gordon was "his man," as he afterwards was called when we did see the Huntington letters — President Arthur begun to have sympathy for the heroic warrior who went to defeat, but who was still fighting day by day with the pestiferous convict lease gang ready to assassinate my husband politically as Alston has been assassinated bodily, in the State capitol, over a dis- pute concerning Senator Gordon's convicts. He sent a friend to Dr. Felton in September, 1883, to know if he would accept the Atlanta post office, and thus find a good living for himself and family and rest himself from the strenu- ous fight that he had made for eight long years to rid the State My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 385 of graft and political injustice. It was a strong temptation. We were in very moderate circumstances. It would give me relief from farm life annoyances, and I knew I could help and keep a close eye on the business of the post office. I was so tired of the incessant persecution. Mr. Stephens' defection pained me so greatly that I was generally disgusted. I saw nothing ahead of us but political persecution, and I was satis- fied that we could keep the office in fine condition. The social life in Atlanta would be so much more congenial to my literary tastes, and the money could do so many things for me and the family in the way of easy living. After we were alone Dr. Felton looked at me, with an earnest gaze. "How does it look to you Ma?" I then went over the agreeable side of the proposition, as I have here detailed it, and we then discussed all the sides — good, bad and in- different. The letter that went to President Arthur, written for him to see (but not to him), is here copied. The paper on which I copied it then is almost tan color now, for it was w^ritten September 6, 1883, over twenty-nine years ago, and I have kept it all this time — even when the whirling, howling political dervishes, that were paid by convict lease money to perform in the State legislature and in Bourbon newspapers, repeating in speech and print the defamatory words about "Africanizing the State," and Mr. Stephens speeches, where Dr. Felton was charged with seeking official recognition of the Republican president to fill his own pocket and betray the Democratic party in Georgia and the Union. I have often been tempted to print it and throw confusion on his opponents, but he always said "The honest people of Georgia believe in me. I want to stand before them as I am, and 'good wine needs no bush!' " But my time has come to print it, because my time is obliged to be short, with the snows of seventy-five winters resting on my head, and I am going to show the people of Georgia what the truest patriot I ever knew could do, at a time when he loved their respect and esteem far more than the "flesh pots of Egypt!" "I have given the subject of the Atlanta post office much thought. After mature consideration I have decided that it would not be best for me to accept. 386 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics The political work to which I have already devoted the best years of my life is dearer to me than any office in either the State or Federal administration. I would do nothing that would hamper or impede that work. I have never allowed my opponents to impeach my record in a single particular. They have never been able to say I made my public office a source of pecuniary gain. I intend to continue in this patri- otic work, God helping me, until the State of Georgia is freed from the incubus which has so long rested on her material and national progress. To do this work, I must be independent in every thought and action. "I am comparatively a poor man, and the office is tempting to me as I have the natural desire to provide comfort and luxury for those dear to me, but money is of small value to them and to myself when they exult with me in the knowledge that Georgians will never blush for me and can never charge dishonesty or corruption on my personal record. If by self- sacrifice and self-abnegation I can convince the people of Georgia (and the State must rise up and throw off the present ring rule which has so long disgraced her politics), I shall be well repaid and when I can go before them with clean hand:? and an honest heart, without even the semblance of political affiliation or complication, I believe they will hear my message and assert their rights and punish the corrupt tricksters who have fattened on the State since the war. "I am truly grateful to you and to the president for this recognition of myself as an Independent Democrat. Your at- tention is in marked contrast to the partisan spite of Governor McDaniel and his advisers. The good men of the Seventh dis- trict have championed my cause for nearly ten years. They have 'stood security' for the honesty and purity of my po litical motives. In the face of slander and abuse my friends have remained unshaken in their support and confidence. This confidence is dearer to me than any political honor or emolument. I owe it to them to protect my political reputa- tion from any doubt, suspicion or secret complication. God helping me, that confidence will remain intact. Your personal kindness and the president's recognition of my patriotism, I greatly prize. It is due to both of you to say this attention My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 387 has been as disinterested as sincere. Unlike the so-called Democratic party in Georgia, you have been too upright to intimate any control in this polite and generous attention to myself. I would be glad you would transmit a copy of this letter to the president, that he may see and know how grate- ful I feel for his courtesy and kindness. I shall ever remain his personal friend, for he has ever proved himself a worthy successor of Jefferson and Fillmore. ''Coming as he did to the position of chief magistrate under the most trying circumstances, he has extorted praise from bitter opponents, and has shown himself to be a president for the whole country. Yours truly, "W. H. FELTON. "Cartersville, September 6, 1883." There was a Providence in all these things ; for in the year 1884, Dr. Felton was chosen for the State legislature, where he championed the new lease of the W. & A. Railroad, exposed ,the dreadful convict lease system, strengthened the Georgia Railroad Commission, saved the University of Georgia from complete emasculation, and thus gave six years of his later life to the service of his native State. If he had continued in congress he might have had a wider field, but never one of more practical usefulness to the State of Gorgia. If he had accepted the largest Federal position in the State, he would have been hampered, but he won every thing that he did win in State or national politics, by clean-cut patriotism and political integrity. He made mistakes of judgment, he was often deceived in men, and failed sometimes when he strove the hardest, but he was a man in every sense of that much-abused word. He was no man's obedient servant. He took no bribe money — he went to his grave clean in hand and clean in pocket. A leading New York journal made the following review of Mr. Stephens' political career during the forty -fifth congress, which impressed me at the time as worthy of preservation, ft was headed Democratic Dust-Throwing. It reads thus: "Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the late Southern Confederacy, assumes the leadership of the Democratic party and submits a platform, with a special proviso, that it is to be 388 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics considered at some future day. In other words, Mr. Stephens submits a declaration of intentions, with the intimation that the intentions are never to be carried out. As this is so, the substance of the resolution is a matter of little importancB. Mr. Stephens might as well have recited the Ten Command- ments, or the last national platform of the Republican party in his resolution, as it was not intended for action. "But conceding that Mr. Stephens is honest in offering the resolution, and that he believes in the sentiments expressed, neither the fact nor his action is an indication of what he or the Democratic party will do in the future. Mr. Stephens' impulses are often right, but in the great crises of his lifo he has not followed them. He was a Union man in 1860, and did more than any man to quiet the apprehensions of the people in the North, who feared secession, and who distrusted the Southern leaders. Because he quieted this apprehension and insisted that the people of the South were true to the Union, he gave the secessionists most valuable aid. While he stood to the front declaiming against secession and forming lines to resist, the Bourbons formed in the rear for action, and when ready swept forward to carry Mr. Stephens and his friends with them. By conviction and impulse he was a Union man. When it came to action he was a secessionist. Theo- retically, he condemned all disunion schemes, as treasonable , practically, he espoused disunion schemes as patriotic and be- came the vice president of the New Confederacy. Mr. Stephens was honest in the expression of his Union sentiments, but he was deceived by the men about him. He not only failed to understand their purposes, but allowed them to influence him against his avowed convictions and to use him as a figure-head to quiet the apprehensions of the conserva- tives in the South and to give respectability to the very cause he had condemned. There has always been to the people of the North something pathetic in the position of Mr. Stephens during the war. As vice president he had really little or no influence. From the very first Jeff Davis and the extremists controlled the affairs of the so-called Confederacy. Recognized as a moderate, he was kept to the front, simply that the extremists might have My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 389 less difficulty in overcoming the scruples of the moderates in Georgia and Tennessee. It was his misfortune to be used to encourage and intensify action, which he had pledged himself to oppose. As the secessionists used him just previous to and during the war, the Democrats are using him now. Frightened by the results of elections in Ohio, Michigan and Rhode Island, the Bourbons seek a mask, that will direct attention from and conceal their real purposes. Realizing that Mr. Stephens' con- dition and his conservative course since he has been in Con- gress, have given him the sympathy if not the confidence of the people — they put the brave, bold, weak old man forward to kick up a dust, behind which they may form their lines for aggressive warfare. The spectacle, in truth, is a touching one. An old man, nearly seventy years of age, the friend of Clay, the supporter of Douglas, the advocate of compromise in 1850, the champion of the Union in 1860, the vice president of the Confederacy in 1861, a Peace Commissioner in 1864, an Independent Demo- crat in 1876-78 — is now put forward to say that the Demo- cratic party is against slavery, and a supporter of the Con- stitution as amended, and this is done entirely on his own responsibility. The Democratic party does not say this, but Mr. Stephens, who has so often meant right and gone wrong — who has so often been deceived and taken advantage of — states what ho believes are the honorable intentions of the party. As though he had learned wisdom with age, or as though he feared the prompt repudiation of his sentiments, he does not ask the adoption or approval of his resolution. He sends it out as a certificate of character, and asks the people to believe what he declares to be the embodiment of the party's purpose. In the meantime the Bourbons, while ignoring the resolution, will skulk behind it and perfect their schemes to capture the government. And when their plans are perfected and the blow struck, Mr. Stephens will be with them. It has always been his fate to lead in suggestion and discussion, but to follow in the hour of decision. His resolution, considered as a suggestion, is a good one, but 390 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics at. best it is only a suggestion and as such does not weigh against the speeches of Thurman and other Democratic leaders in congress. These have met with the approval of the party, and have called out the endorsement of the party papers. Evidences multiply to show that the Bourbon pro- gramme has been agreed upon and conservative Democrats have been whipped into an agreement to support it." It was the Democratic effort to put riders on military appropriation bills, which produced the inert resolution and the criticism that I have copied. About the same time, another leading Northern journal thus wrote of Dr. Felton: "A very Inde- pendent Democrat is Dr. Felton, of Georgia, whose language is the language of a patriot and whose advice, if acted upon, would strengthen the Democratic party greatly. The Doctor's views will be found at length in our "Washington letter. Here is a witness who proves that a man may endorse Democratic doctrines, without endorsing the methods resorted to by the majority in congress. Dr. Felton declares (what we all know', that the extra session of the forty-fifth congress has not benefitted the party or the country. The ability displayed in the debate has been wasted. It is impossible to force legisla- tion in this country, and he thinks that laws, however vicious, must be repealed "by constitutional methods," and not by arbitrary or "dictatorial acts." He regards the suggestion that congress should adjourn without making the necessary appropriations as sheer madness ! Doctor Felton knows precisely what the people think of their representatives. In defining the duties of a representa- tive, he administers a severe rebuke to demagogues and par- tisans who pursue their own objects to the neglect of the country, and in violation of their oaths. He declares repre- sentatives are not sent to Washington to manufacture political capital for presidential aspirants, but to represent the section that honors them with their confidence, with prudence and wisdom. He sees that this "high-pressure" excitement of this session has impressed the public with "its artificial and factitious character." "The South as a section can not afford to go on record as a revolutionary element in this government. Nor should the Northern fanatics of either party force this My Memoir^ of Georgia Politics 391 exigency upon us." The Republican leaders can put a pin there. Not one of them, thus far, have uttered as sound senti- ments as Dr. Felton. Their speeches and open letters have all been more or less tinged with a bitterness from which these published views of Dr. Felton have been wholly free." Here are the parallels — the story of the two men I have discussed in these pages — as seen by Northern editors, far-famed for their ability and capacity for dealing with public questions. Dr. Felton and Mr. Stephens were both conservatives — not Bourbon Democrats, and here is the dictum of their able and impartial critics — while both represented Georgia in the forty- fifth congress — one from the Seventh and the other from the Eighth district. I am only a woman, confess my failures as a politician, but I am sure I speak the truth when I say that future historians will sustain the verdict, thus rendered by the Philadelphia Times and other fair-minded journalists of the period that 'made the Democratic party so unpopular in the North as to fatally destroy its seventy majority in congress. Perhaps I may be criticized in this connection for bringing in a paragraph which was clipped from the St. Louis Globe- Democrat the same day that I pasted down the two contrast- ing newspaper articles just copied, but as it brought to mind the memory of the most beautiful entertainment I ever at- tended in Washington City, I will risk the publication among my political recollections. After describing at length the brilliant entertainment of the British minister. Sir Edward Thornton — its lavish refreshments and the gorgeous gowns and jewels of millionaire belles from all the large Northern cities, these lines are found, among many other mentions : *'A very lovely woman is Mrs. Felton, of Georgia; a sweet- voiced lady with soft black eyes, gray hair and a complexion as fine and pure as a rose-leaf. Dr. Felton is a tall, white- haired gentleman of distinguished presence — ^the ideal South- erner of the old school and a most worthy representative, now talked of for Georgia's next governor. Against the crimson silk hangings of the drawing room, Mrs. Felton 's face was a picture in itself." It is with pardonable pride that I recur to the time where 392 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics a modest representative from Georgia acquitted himself so well that he always deserved the respect and good will of his associates, and despite the fury of the opposition in Georgia, rose to the committee of Ways and Means by pure merit, and where his heart was made glad to see his brave wife among those whose standing in Washington City was socially of the very best, even to the friendship of Mrs. President Hayes her- self. Dr. Felton paid his debts, supported his family, dressed plainly but well, I did his clerical work and kept up his cor- respondence. To close this final chapter on Stephens and Fel- ton, I will copy here a letter from Hon. Mr. Stephens that gave me great satisfaction, because he was so well acquainted with us that he could speak by authority : "Liberty Hall, September 1, 1880. ' ' My Dear Mrs. Felton : Your letter of Sunday — three days ago — came to hand yesterday. I was truly glad to get it and see the heroic spirit you maintain under the heavy labors you perform. I don't know anybody who does half the work you do, considering your strength and health. No, I withdraw the qualification; I don't know anybody, however vigorous and strong, who does half the work you do. Thirty years ago, when I could use the pen at will, I think I came as near to what you now do as anyone else within my knowledge : and I don't believe I ever did half as much as you do. IMay your health, strength and fortitude continue to sustain you ! I am taking no part whatever in the gubernatorial election. I have not made up my mind yet as to whether I shall vote for Col- quitt or Norwood. It will depend upon subsequent develop- ments. I should have voted for Colquitt, if he had been nomin- ated, as I did before. I didn't then think he was fit and don't think he is fit now, but in such cases the question as to who shall hold any particular office becomes a small matter when compared with other and surrounding conditions. /'Norwood I consider no fitter for the office than Colquitt. The fee — d lobbyist of Huntington is not such a man as I tliink should be governor of Georgia. The question as to how I shall vote is open with me yet. It will be some time before you receive this letter, as you are doubtless now on your way to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 393 Walker, Dade, etc. With kind regards to the Doctor and Howard. Yours truly, "ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS." I also did considerable writing for Mr. Stephens when his regular secretaries failed him. I made him three visits each day in Washington City, when congress was in session and we were all living at the National Hotel. As I went from break- fast, I called at his room to hear how he had restedl — then he would ask for my help if his scribe had failed to turn up — to answer telegrams or pressing letters. He returned from the house about 2 p. m. for his dinner. I ate 2 o'clock dinner, because I was obliged to eat light food in the late afternoon or at tea. I would go by his rooms after dinner and he would tell me all that the house of representatives was doing that day. In the evening Dr. Felton and myself went by from the tea table, to find him in a game of whist, and he dearly loved the game, and thought I was over-righteous because I always refused to play whist with his party. After I had given him some extra writing one day and Dr. P'elton came by to give me the room key, on his way to the capitol, the old gentleman said to him: "Doctor, you never can know what a treasure you have got in your wife, because you never have been obliged to get anybody else to do your writing. Without any doubt, she is invaluable as a secretary, as she is to you all the time a most invaluable assistant." From Rome Tribune. HON. A. H. STEPHENS. A few days ago the Courier offered a few suggestions to young men, advising them how to vote. We protested at that time against the Courier's capacity to advise. We now present the advice of a statesman of world-wide fame, and a man whom all Georgians delight to honor. We urge our young friends to read it : Cartersville, Ga., September 3, 1878. Hon. A. H. Stephens — Dear Sir: You have doubtless been consulted concerning the political divisions and excitement in this, the Seventh district, and as no one doubts either your patriotism or forethought, a great many who desire to do right would be glad to have the benefit of your counsel in this congressional race. Who would you support were you in this district? Why would you support him? Was there an 394 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics expression of the desire of the people when Judge Lester was nominated by acclamation? Why is it that Bartow county will give Felton a majority of 1,800 votes, and her delegates to a nominating convention will not support him on the first ballot? Is Dr. Felton 's candidacy calculated to disrupt and destroy the Democratic party? Is it likely, in view of all the facts, that anything bad will result from the Independent movement in this district? You may have written letters to private parties, giving your views in this campaign, but the public has never had the benefit of them. If you condescend to answer my letter, will you give me permission to publish your reply if I so desire? As I have ever admired your statesmanship and endorsed your career, I hope now to act from your advice. Very respectfully, J. A. BAKER. Liberty Hall, Crawfordville, Ga., September 5, 1878. Mr. J. A. Baker, Attorney-at-Law, Cartersville, Ga. My Dear Sir: Your letter of the 3rd instant was received yesterday. You desire to learn my opinion concerning the political division and excitement now existing in the Seventh district, and are pleased to say that a great many who desire to do right would be glad to have the benefit of my counsel in this congressional race. Now, while I have no inclination to obtrude my opinions upon the people at any time, or on any matter, yet I have no hesitancy in giving them, when sought, upon all questions of public policy or general interest. You ask me several direct and specific questions, which I shall proceed to answer briefly in the order in which you put them. 1. "Who would you support for congress were you in this district?" To this I reply, I would unhesitatingly support Dr. Felton. Your second question is in these words : "Why would you support him?" To this I say, because of his admitted ability, his unquestioned integrity, high moral character and distinguished stand he has taken in the con- gress of the United States. His past experience greatly in- creases his capacity for future usefulness in serving his con- stituents. No new member, however able or brilliant, can serve his constituents with as much efficiency as one who has experience in the service. Again, you ask, "Is Dr. Felton 's candidacy calculated to destroy and disrupt the Democratic party?" To this, I have My Memoies of Georgia Politics 395 only to say that I cannot see that it can have any such ten- dency or result. The canvass in the Seventh seems to be more of a personal than a party character. Dr. Felton has been twice elected to congress by the people of his district. At the last election his majority was 2,462. This shows he then had the confidence of his constituents by a large majority. Has he done anything since to forfeit it? If so, I am not at all aware of it. His acts and speeches in the present congress have but added additional lustre to his fame as an orator and a statesman. His speeches upon the financial and quarantine questions were amongst the best delivered in congress. His fidelity and devotion to the great principles of constitutional liberty, which constitute the Democratic creed as set forth by Mr. Jefferson, has never been questioned so far as I am aware. In his congressional career he has illustrated and defended these principles, as well as the rights and interests of his constituents, by an energy, industry, and laborious discharge of duty with an ability and eloquence unsurpassed, in my opinion, by any previous representative of the district, not excepting Lumpkin, Underwood, Wright, nor Young. Why then should he be displaced for any other Democrat in the district? Party organization, I believe in. It is always proper and necessary when unity of action is essential for the success of principles. But in this case no such state of things exists, as I under- stand it. Men and parties are known by their principles, and not by the machinery which controls nominations. In my opinion, nominations by party organizations should always be controlled by views looking to the ablest and truest men representing the principles of the party, and to the favorites of the people. In this view I think the Ringgold convention, if it had looked solely to the peace and harmony of the parties and the good of the country, would have either nominated Dr. Felton or offered no opposition to his re-election. Their action was the cause of all this strife and excitement, and from which it seems to me, no good can result either to the Democracy or the country. In politics, as in everything else, in my opinion, as a general rule, the safest course is to let well enough alone. Yours truly, A. H. STEPHENS. The following, from Hon. A. H. Stephens, is characteristic of that great and good man's patriotism. It is the voice of a statesman whom all delight to honor: "Liberty Hall, Crawfordville, Ga., October 23. To Messrs. Thomas H. Baker, J. J. Howard and Jas. M, Con- yers, Committee, Cartersville, Ga. 396 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics "My Dear Sirs: Your letter of the 19th instant, inviting me to be at a barbecue to be given in your place by the friends of Dr. Felton on the 2nd of November next, and to address the people on that occasion, is before me. "In reply, I have only to say I deeply regret it will be out of my power to comply with the request. Recent hemorrhages, occasioned, as supposed by my physicians, by public speaking in the open air, have caused me, under their advice, to desist from any further canvass of my own district. It is true I have had no hemorrhages now for over a month — none since I quit public speaking; and with prudence in this particular, I am hopeful there will be no return. "Be assured my sympathies are with the friends of Dr. Felton in the fierce contest now going on in the Seventh dis- trict. It seems to me, if you will allow me to say, that it is more of a personal than of a political character, in this view of the case it is not my purpose to take any part further than to say that Dr. Felton has, in my judgment, represented the people in his district with a fidelity, ability and eloquence unsurpassed in the history of the district ; and for the faithful and eminent services rendered by him in the discharge of his highest trust to his constituents should again receive their plaudits, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' "Very truly, ALEXANDER STEPHENS." The foes of Dr. Felton wrote to Mr. Stephens for advice in 1878. The advice was unpalatable. Mr. Akin secreted Mr. Stephens' reply. In 1883, being disgusted with Mr. Stephens' enmity to Dr. Felton, he wrote the following note : Office of AKIN & AKIN, f ; Attorneys at Law. Cartersville, Ga., September 7, 1883. Dear Sir: I now enclose you Mr. Stephens' letter. In its light the remarkable inconsistency of this last campaign grows stronger. Is it any wonder that he could not be induced to face the consistent independent and organized Democrats of the Seventh district? When celebrity can sanction inconsistency, and a great name sanctify ingratitude, then will Mr. Stephens' example in that campaign be worthy the emulation of succeeding gen- •erations. For the sake of those who are yet to follow, it is to be hoped that Mr. Stephens' biographers will not forget to head this chapter of his life, "Faithful to His Friends." Very truly, THOS. WARREN AKIN. Hon. Wm. H. Felton, Cartersville, G« My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 397 Liberty Hall, ' Crawfordville, Ga., 24th August, 1878. T. Warren Akin, Esq., Cartersville, Ga. Dear Sir: Your very kind letter of the 21st instant was received yesterday. I reply in the same spirit of frankness and candor in which you have been pleased to express your- self. I have no hesitancy in saying that if I were in the Seventh district I would support Dr. Felton in the present contest. This I should do because of his acknowledged ability, unquestioned integrity, and spotless character, with that ex- perience in public affairs at Washington which enables him to render more effective service to his constituents than any new man possibly could do, however eminent his virtues and ability might be. No man who knows Dr. Felton can question his fidelity and devotion to those great principles of consti- tutional liberty which underlie and upon which rests the whole fabric of our free institutions, and which constitute the essence and elements of Jeffersonian Democracy. As far as I am aware, there is no essential difference between the political principls of Dr. Felton and Judge Lester. I do not consider Dr. Felton as running against a regular party nomin- ation so much as a claimed organized nomination running against him. Party organization, founded upon principles, is essential where unity of action on the part of those who agree upon the principles involved is necessary for success. Inde- pendentism, so-called, becomes mischievous and dangerous when its object or effect is, by holding the balance of power, to defeat the success of sound principles in cases where the contest is close. No such state of things exist at present, as I understand the facts to be, in the Seventh district. Dr. Fel- ton has been twice returned by the people of the Seventh. This shows he is a popular favorite. Organization, as I have said, is always proper, and often essential for the success of sound principles, but its machinery becomes not only demor- alizing but mischievous when it is controlled with the view to defeat rather than carry out the popular choice. You will allow me to say — I may be wrong — but it seems to me that the leading object of the Dalton convention was not to ad- vance, to strengthen or to secure the success of Democratic principles so much as it was, from prejudice or spite, or other bad passion, to strike down one of the ablest representatives of these principles now in the congress of the United States. Were I in your district, I say to you frankly, I should not per- mit myself to become allied with those whose object has no higher or worthier aim. Dr. Felton has certainly represented the district ably and faithfully, and my advice to his con- stituents, including the young men as well as old, who have no 398 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics object in politics but good government, would be to say to him at the polls, "Well done, good and faithful servant." This, you will allow me to say, I think the Dalton convention ought to have done, if their chief object had been peace, harmony, and the success of Democratic principles in their district. In politics, as well as in most other matters, it is always wise to let well enough alone. Yours truly, ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. Dr. Felton and Senator B. H. Hill For the reason that a son of Senator Hill has written a biography of his deceased father, and because he not only- failed to furnish to the reading public the published attacks made by his father on my now deceased husband, but pro- ceeded to defame Dr. Felton in his story of his father's life; I deem it my bounden duty, and my especial privilege to give the other side of the controversy for reasons so obvious that they do not require further explanation in these pages. As proof of this intended defamation, I will copy here a paragraph written by Ex-Senator Norwood in a scathing review he made of this "Life of Senator Hill," and of its manifest purpose. Ex-Senator Norwood's review appeared in the Atlanta Jour- nal Tuesday, November 3, 1891. Listen: "Mr. Hill's political life was stormy. His biographer says it was 'exceedingly stormy.' Notable among his bitter personal quarrels were the hostilities with Gov. Brown, Mr. Stephens, Dr. W. H. Felton and W. L. Yancey. All these are given prominence in this biography and Mr. Hill is crowned victor by his biographer in each instance. There were two bitter controversies between Mr. Stephens and Mr. Hill, the one before the war in 1856 is revived word for word, the entire correspondence spread out over eleven pages. "The Felton Controversy" is horrible, but the indecency grows into cruel injustice in the case of Dr. Felton. This book that is to be put on shelves in public and private libraries ends with the terrible invective in the letter of Mr. Hill in reply to Dr. Felton, while not one word by Dr. Felton is admitted to the pages to enable the reader to judge the justice of the case. Dr. Felton is pilloried and gagged by the son, while he is beaten with many stripes by the father. Before this savage act of cruelty is committed by the biogra- pher, he reveals the fact that when his father was in his terri- ble affliction that soon closed his earthly career, Dr. Felton, moved by Christian sympathy, wrote a letter to Mr. Hill "en- deavoring to renew the friendship," says the biographer. He puts it in cold type for this and coming generations to read 400 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and to reflect on and to draw conclusions from that his father made no response to this letter. If there are no words strong enough to characterize the wrong, the injustice and the cruelty done to Dr. Felton, how can we measure the injury thus done to Mr. Hill? Can anyone believe that he would have sanc- tioned such a wrong to even his worst and bitterest foe ? * * "This writer heeds no barrier. The grave has no sanctity, the dead no refuge. He stabs the dead and the living alike. Those who fought and quarreled in life, he insists, shall fight and quarrel in their graves. Was there no one to suggest to his dull pate, that even if the Christian desire and endeavor of Dr. Felton to bury all unkindness between himself and his friend of forty years had failed, the grave should be its end?" This book written by Mr. Hill's son and namesake was, as I am reliably informed, not only industriously canvassed in Georgia, but appeals were made to United States Senators and Congressmen to purchase, working on aforetime sympathy and personal association of these men in Washington City with Senator Hill, deceased. As Senator Norwood well expresses it "the wrong, the injustice and the cruelty done to Dr. Fel- ton" is immeasurable. Like the seeds of the thistle down, let loose in a gale of wind, there is no telling where this injury was repeated, or its injustice made to appear as solemn truth! Editor Willingham, editing the Cartersville Free Press, for a long time drove out to our home one day and reported a visit that he had made to Atlanta, perhaps to Mr. Hill's home. His account of Mr. Hill's sinking condition, consumed by virulent cancer, was a tragic narration. While we were all at dinner table, Dr. Felton remarked: "I am truly sorry for Mr. Hill. We were school-mates in Athens ; I knew his wife as a yoiuag lady in Athens. I respect her most highly. I would be glad to do something to show to her and him that I feel deep sym- pathy. A death-bed is a solemn place. I certainly feel no revengeful bitterness in my heart. God knows I would relieve his pains if I could ! ' ' Mr. Willingham jumped at the intima- tion and begged that Dr. Felton should write a few lines to that effect, etc. I wrote the letter in Dr. Felton 's name and he signed it, and in that letter I was careful to say that Dr. Felton was truly grieved at Mr. Hill's illness and in view of the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 401 nearness of death to us all, he (Dr. Felton) wished the afflicted man to know there was nothing but sympathy in his heart for his suffering condition and an earnest hope that he might yet recover. Dr. Felton was moved by a noble purpose to do this ; he made no overtures of renewed friendship; he understood that he was writing to a dying man, and one about to meet death, suffering from a terrible disease that made one shiver to think about. I was told some months afterward that the letter was not shown to Mr. Hill, and that one of his sons had been heard to say: "They didn't want him to hear anything about old Felton." Dr. Felton had no feeling on this subject afterwards, so far as I know. He had done a Christian's duty, forgave as he hoped to find forgiveness in heaven under the Master's com- mand, and I am here to say in this place that Dr. Felton 's death was the most beautiful going away that my eyes ever witnessed, calm, serene, conscious and at perfect peace with all mankind, and I ever thank God that he gave such beautiful evidences of a Christian's faith in leaving us. Dr. Felton and Mr. Hill were in Franklin College at the same time, but not in the same class. They were friends and had the usual intimacies of college friendship. After I was mar- ried, I had never passed a word with or written a line to Mr. Hill until Dr. Felton 's first race for Congress. When Mr. Trammell was taken down by his party friends about three weeks before the November election in 1874, a new convention was called and Hon.W. H. Dabney was put on the track with two weeks of campaigning in front of him. Immediately, it was given out that Dr. Miller, Mr. Hill, Senator Gordon, and one or two others, would take the stump against Dr. Felton. We consulted about it and by Dr. Felton 's request I addressed a brief note to the three here named, asking if they were coming, etc. Dr. Miller had a positive denial printed in Atlanta papers. Mr. Hill addressed a confidential letter that he couldn't do such a thing against his old college friend Felton, and Gen. Gordon wrote that he was then starting to South Georgia to fill engagements of long standing, and it was impossible for him to say when he 402 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics would return to Atlanta." (I have this letter and it was postmarked Monday and he was speaking in Rome, Ga., the following Saturday against Felton — the " disorganizer, " the "Radical" and "negro sympathizer.") I made a cross mark just there and formed an opinion, which never was changed thereafter during thirty years of political acquaintance with the writer. Hon. Garnett McMillan was elected in the ninth, but he died before the 44th Congress assembled. Mr. Hill's notable campaign as his successor is too well known to the public to fill these pages with the story. Suffice it to say that Mr. Hill was an Independent; his henchmen broke up the convention and he pulled for the coveted place with laboring oars. He lived in Atlanta, but he had lived in Athens, so he posed as a citizen of the ninth district. He greatly enjoyed his victory over the "ringster" and made merry in "Washington City over his "Independent cam- paign." After his election as Congressman, he made plans for the Senate, and was elected in January, 1877, but he was always posing as Dr. Felton 's friend, and they were desk- mates so long as he kept his place during the 44th Congress. Dr. Felton never had brother or sister; his heart leaned to his school-boy friend, and Mr. Hill often remarked that the "doctor watched proceedings so closely that he (Hill) al- ways voted right when Felton said so." So they sat side by side in the House of Representatives, and I have Dr. Felton 's word for it that Mr. Hill often asked his advice in various entanglements and difficulties that were forced on Mr. Hill's notice and where many things were threatened against him . and some of them filled Washington newspapers to the great annoyance of Mrs. Hill and others who were connected with him, because political fury was lurid and such pursuit con- tinuous for days and weeks at a time. Dr. Felton proved himself a friend when a great many oth- ers fell away and the memory of those days of friendly coun- sel and efficient assistance should have ever been lively enough to make Mr. Hill respectful in his conduct towards Dr. Felton. Among my scrapbooks I still hold the evidence that it surely needed strong friendship to apologize or give aid to Mr. Hill My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 403 when he was assailed in sensational Washington newspapers with various pictures printed and affidavits presented by those conspiring for Senator Hill's downfall, personal as well as political. Dr. Felton had the most chivalrous respect for Mrs. Senator Hill. He admired her as a young lady in Athens, and his regard for her was undiminished so long as their ac- quaintance continued. He would have been her unselfish friend under all sorts of trying circumstances, and such he proved himself to be on more than one occasion. The mail that brought a letter to Dr. Felton in January, 1882, from Senator Hill (which proved to be the forerunner of Hill's interview with Henry Grady, the noted story about ''Africanizing the State"), was crowded with pretensions of friendship, profession of affection and lofty counsel, as if from an elevation. The same mail brought also a sweet letter from Mrs. Hill to me, as we occasionally corresponded after I had left Wash- ington, and I was grieved, yes pained, to know that Mr. Hill's faithless desertion of Dr. Felton would sunder every tie with the wife except the remembrance of her goodness and gra- ciousness. Never another line was written by either of us after the Grady interview was printed in the Atlanta Constitution, and knowing as I do Mr. Hill's close relations to Dr. Felton in Washington City, and knowing also the unprovoked, un- warranted and utterly base persecution of Dr. Felton, which followed Mr. Hill's attack on his aforetime friend, I still hold the opinion that Mr. Hill was either affected in his mind, owing to the disease that killed him eight months later ; or he was compelled to the attack by forces in Washington, to whom he had allied himself as "legal counsel." Senator Hill's vote on the Thurman Funding Bill in 1878 was inexplicable at the time. He and Mr. Blaine were sud- denly in accord and Senator Thurman declares that Blaine, Dorsey and Stanley Matthews were the leaders of the opposi- tion to his bill in the Senate, and "the most frightful lobby that he had ever seen in Washington," was in their rear. "Legal counsel" is found frequently in the reports that the Pacific road furnished as a bill of expenses and yet these mag- 404 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics nates uniformly refused to name the men in the Senate who acted as "legal counsel." Senator Beck, in a speech before the Senate, said the out- rage had become insupportable, that men in the House and Senate could set there with perhaps $100,000 of the money of the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific or the Northern Pa- cific in their pockets and yet pose as disinterested men. He was advocating what was called the "Railroad Attorney Bill," which passed the Senate and it forbade any Senator or Rep- resentative from appearing as "legal counsel," where any mat- ters were considered on which they had voted previously or later expected to vote on. Senator Hill's name was bandied about the streets and cor- ridors and hotels in the city at the time the Thurman Funding bill became a law. "We were told by Judge Underwood and Col. D. C. Printup, of Rome, that the names of both the Geor- gia Senators were called in their presence at a hotel dinner table, the gravest charges were made against their reputation in connection with the Thurman bill, and the amounts they received were also stated in same conversation as being paid by the Pacific lobby. The biographer of Senator Hill tells of the money his father made in his law practice, including the years he was Representative and Senator and the conviction is imperative that floods of money must have been received as legal counsel to make the statement veracious, and everybody knows that Mr. Hill was too constantly occupied with his duties in Washington City to be in active practice in Atlanta. I repeat it here that some strange, and I believe malign in- fluence pressed B. H. Hill into the daring attack he made on Dr. Felton, when the latter was at home, a private citizen, and not antagonizing him at any point, personal or political, and on terms of friendship and amity both at home or abroad with all connected with either family. Dr. Felton 's defeat and removal from Congress was decided upon before the time Senator Gordon transferred (through Gov. Colquitt) his seat to Gov. Brown in the Senate of the United States. It will not be forgotten that Victor Newcomb, of the L. & N. Railroad, made it plain he was going to reverse things on the W. & A. Railroad, etc., etc. . My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 405 Never can I forget Mr. Grady's sudden arrival in Wash- ington City and his excited description of what was en tapis and a sensation in Georgia, he said was brewing that was never paralleled in Bullock's time. The State Road was to be the battleground and we would see earthquakes and cata- chysms political very soon that would throw everything else before known in the shade. But "Gov. Brown was not asleep, and was going to New York and do things that would make us all sit up." Senator Hill called on Dr. Felton the same day on his way to the capitol, and we inquired if he knew what was brewing, etc., according to Mr. Grady. He looked very wise and replied: "I only know I have a $10,000 retainer to keep the other side from getting me. ' ' Dr. Felton was a member of the ways and means committee, and placed there over the heads of various Georgia members by Speaker Randall and he was much in the way. Some time in the summer of 1880, a letter came asking Dr. Felton to meet Senator Hill in Atlanta on a certain day for the latter had a plan on foot to make an "easy time for you, doctor. You have had such fierce times in the seventh I think you deserve one easy time." When Dr. Felton came home and told me that Mr. Hill said he had conferred with Gov. Brown and perhaps others and if he (Felton) would agree to stop and run no more after 1880 all opposition would be now withdrawn, etc, I was not surprised that Dr. Felton said: "No, sir." He said to me: "I should despise myself to be taking orders from the gang that have fought me without mercy since 1874. I've whipped them before and I'll do it again." The history of that election and his defeat will appear in another place, but Mr. Hill gave every evidence afterwards that Dr. Felton was outside the scope of his friendship or at- tention, and if Dr. Felton was ever again in his lodging place in Washington city or Mr. Hill in our hotel parlor, I have no remembrance of either occurrence. Until the history of that fateful year 1880 is revealed and the men and motives are uncovered, which made it possible to trade senatorial seats and flood Georgia with money in a gubernatorial race unparal- 406 My Memoiks of Georgia Politics leled in her history to carry the elections of that period, 1 presume we never shall know the real truth. It is still astonishing to remember that Mr. Hill made no outcry when his old enemy Brown walked into the Senate. He expressed no indignation against Senator Gordon's kaleidoscope politics; he was one man in Georgia who was quiet if not satisfied and Senator Hill amused himself by writ- ing a letter for Garfield to read, in which he denounced both political parties and called for a new one, because both the old ones were despised and "ought to g"0." He grew so fond of his colleague in the Senate that he vouched for Senator Brown's Democracy from his very cradle and if it had not been understood in the Senate and elsewhere that Huntington's Pacific legislation was in Mr. Blaine's care, and that Garfield was ready to put Stanley Matthews on the supreme bench (according to contract before election with Huntington's gang), we wouldn't have a single headlight to show which way Mr. Hill was really going or whether he ever *' intended to be a Democrat any more." Dr. Felton left Congress in March, 1881, and Senator Hill spent his apparent strength in the Senate during 1881 abusing Mahone and trying to dethrone Kellogg, and Mr. Stephens wrote to me constantly and kept me posted on Senator Hill's erratic and illogical senatorial conduct with many criti- cisms on what the National Republican newspaper called the ^'Georgia bull in a china shop" — Hill, of Georgia. I will now proceed to copy here the salient points of the interview that Henry Grady sent from Washington as author- ized by Mr. Hill, in which he grossly insulted Dr. Felton, charg- ing him with seeking to "Africanize the State," etc. If the biographer of Mr. Hill had been fair enough to place that interview in its proper place in his book with Dr. Felton 's reply to it as it naturally deserved I should have allowed Mr Hill and his politics to keep to themselves, so far as this vol- ume is concerned, but Mr. Hill sought to inflict a deadly blow on an unsuspecting friend and his biographer was unjust enough to withhold Dr. Felton 's reply, so I shall proceed to My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 407 canonize the effort as it apparently deserves to be immortal- ized. "Washington, Jan. 2, 1882. *'I had a long talk with Senator Hill, who, by the way, it is thought is permanently recovered from his late trouble. Mr. Hill talked earnestly — I reproduce what he said with, of course, his understanding and consent. Mr. Hill said: "I understand the scheme perfectly; it is the second attempt to Africanize the South for the benefit of the Republican party. The first attempt was made with recon- struction as an excuse. The Republicans wanted to control the Southern States, and to create a constitution through which they could do so, so they enfranchised the negroes and dis- franchised many whites. As bad as that first attempt was, this is infamous. Where's the Difference? "In this, at the close of the war, there were many good men, especially in the North, who felt that the results of the war must be fixed by appropriate legislation and the negro pro- tected in his newly acquired rights. From this feeling the reconstruction measures came. But there is no such excuse now. For ten years the Democrats have been in control of the Southern States. Under their rule white and black have prospered, while under Republican rule both classes suffered. The negro has all his rights guaranteed him and the race issue, always a dangerous one, has been completely eliminated from our politics. The attempt to revive it now, and to Afri- canize the Southern States, when there is no excuse for such a thing except that spoils-men may be kept in place and pub- lic plunderers protected in their greed, is wicked and infa- mous beyond precedent in our history. Who is Managing This Movement? "The worst elements in the Republican party, the Grant, Arthur, Conkling wing of the party, the stalwarts who have no use for the South, except so far as they can use it. It was the scheme that was worked out in Virginia, and by which the honor of Virginia was stained and her good people overrun by the wicked and the ignorant. 408 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics You see, said Mr. Hill, the scheme is a plausible one. It will only take 25,000 or 30,000 disaffected Democrats to com- bine with the negroes and carry any State in the South. In Virginia, it was readjustment under Mahone, in it was fiat money under Jones in Texas; in North Carolina, it may be temperance ; in Georgia, it may be the convict question or the tariff. I know they have been hard put to it, for an issue in Georgia, and I know there are many in favor of opening the fraudulent bond question. After the issue is found and the candidates are up, the whole federal patronage will be put in the hands of the Independents for the purpose of buying Democrats. Such a prostitution of the appointing power has never been seen. * * * "I was pained and grieved," Mr. Hill said, "at reading the interview with Dr. Felton in the Chicago Tribune. It only proves what I have always feared, that Independent Democracy in the South, no matter how devious its ways or how long its path, must nevertheless lead to Republicanism. I confess I thought Dr. Felton was strong enough and patriotic enough to prove an exception to this rule. I am satisfied he was honest, when he first started out. He has told me repeatedly nothing could ever drive him from the Democratic party. Yet from this interview there is no ground for doubt that he has gone over to the Republicans. No Independent can get the Republican support in the South until he gives himself over, absolutely, definitely, and finally to that party." (Just here, by way of parenthesis, I believe no senator or congressman ever took Pacific lobby money to defeat and rob the tax-payers of these United States until he gave himself over, absolutely, definitely, and finally to that "gang of plunderers.") ' ' The Republican leaders in the South have orders, as I know- to put this ultimatum to every Independent candidate. What course will you take in this matter? "I shall give every energy of my body and soul— every hour of my time, and every influence I possess, to breaking down this infamous coalition and holding Georgia true to her faith and honor. I neyer was so much in earnest, in such fine physical and mental condition for doing the work that is in My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 409 me, ' ' said Senator Hill, and certainly his magnificent form, his ruddy face, and firm flesh and springing step indorsed his as- sertion. Said Mr. Grady in conclusion: "But if Dr. Felton is the only Independent who consents to lead the new party, it will still have capable leadership. He is a man in every sense of that much-abused word." (Please notice the "issue in Georgia," "convict lease or tariff," which Hill dreaded!) I leave it to the common sense of every reader of this volume to imagine what I felt when I read this hate-inspired tirade from B. H. Hill, against a man whose acknowledged integrity had long been established where he was known best and longest — whose Christian character was above reproach, and whose honesty in financial matters was absolutely without stain at home or abroad, and whose personal virtue was simply spotless. A comparison on all these lines with Mr. Hill was like comparing "Hyperion to Satyr." If Dr. Felton had been placed by the side of Benjamin Hill in Bartow county or Atlanta, both raised in the State of Georgia, and both well known to its people, I should never have been disturbed as to the verdict, and yet this man not only dared to falsify the issue that he was discussing, but to accuse this clean, upright man that he attacked as seeking to Africanize the State of Georgia ! Malice and poltroonery in full flower and springing from its debased soil ! Some years later, while Dr. Felton was a member of the Georgia legislature, an election for solicitor of the Fulton county circuit was set for a certain day. The new capitol was not built then, and I sat in the old gallery overlooking the swarming crowd below me in the house. Dr. Felton soon saw me from the floor (I went from home that day) and he was sitting by me, Avhen Hon. Henry R. Harris, of Meriwether county, joined us. The struggle lay between Mr. John Mil- ledge and Charlie Hill, son of the late B. H. Hill. Mr. Harris had been over to Mrs. Hill's home and had certain things to say as to his visit and her anxiety for her son — whose future would be made or unmade by the results of that impending election. Without going into particulars or repeating what 410 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Mr. Harris was authorized to say to Dr. Felton, I saw that faithful, upright, patriotic and Christian gentleman lay aside every particle of his righteous resentment and give the vote that the mother's heart yearned for— and the one vote that absolutely controlled the result. Henry Grady was on the floor, watching my face as the count went on, and I wondered if he could have forgotten this Africanizing interview and the deadly virus it was filled with, as Dr. Felton 's vote elected Mr. Hill's son. I advised against the vote. I told my husband he owed it to himself, if not to others, to steer clear of Mr. Hill's sons — that Mr. Hill had intended to destroy his reputation in Georgia and the city of Washington and inflict upon his good name all that "Africanizing" stood for in the minds of our people, etc., where he. Dr. Felton, was not known. He replied: "The people of Georgia know me, my friends believe in me, and I cannot reject this appeal that Mr. Harris brings to me. I shall explain to Captain Milledge, and I shall try to do what I think is my duty in this instance. Perhaps this office, if he is elected, may do for the younger Hill all that is needed to make him sober, useful and successful — his friends so declare." He turned to me and said with a smile: "Mil- ledge may get all the votes anyhow that he needs. ' ' I replied : "I hope so," and he left the gallery to cast his vote. The elec- tion turned on one vote, I trust I may always try to do justice to others — but my forgiveness has never reached a place where a stroke on one innocent cheek would incline me to turn the other innocent cheek to be spit upon in contempt, and I had the poor satisfac- tion of saying, "I told you so," when Ben Hill, the younger, added insult to injury in the book which he called his father's biography. After Dr. Felton had performed for his only brother an inestimable service — something that cannot yet be measured by figures or reckoned as to the exceeding value of the opportunity — it required a very small mind, both narrow and contemptible, to make such a display of spleen and malice in a book, which ex-Senator Norwood blistered and charred by well-expressed indignation, as soon as it was given to the public to sell. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 411 Now, I shall copy here the reply that Dr. Felton made to Senator Hill's attack, in which Mr. Stephens wrote me "Mr. Hill had made the gp^eatest indiscretion of his life." Near Cartersville, Ga., January 7, 1882. Editors Constitution : Today 's paper, containing an inter- view with Senator HiJl, has just been received and read care- fully. "H. W. G.," your staff correspondent, says it was sent with Mr. Hill's approbation and consent. ' The interview does not surprise me in any way. Anybody acquainted with Mr. Hill's past record need not be astonished at anything he may do in politics or friendship. Whenever he proposes to attack with malign purpose he always makes loud profession of friendship, and you can measure his malignity by his hypoc- risy. Mr. Hill was a college mate of mine. The friendship thus formed has been something stronger, with me, than political differences or party alliances. I have seen many things in his erratic public course that I was obliged to dis- approve, but while claiming to be his friend, I was enough of a gentleman to say it to his face and in private. But, as Burke said to Fox, our friendship is at an end. I propose to deal with him as I would with any public man, and judge him by his record, which I know to be as eccentric, as unwise, as unpatriotic and oftentimes as seemingly corrupt as that of any other politician whose evil counsels have assisted in blighting the interests of the State which gave him birth. The public will bear me witness that this controversy with Mr. Hill was not of my seeking. I am a free man and a plain citizen of Georgia — a man who is proud to know he has always paid his debts and endeavored to protect his public and private character from any imputation of corruption or dishonesty. I challenge records with Senator Hill, in any and every station in life, and shall be satisfied with the verdict on the "honesty" issue. His lofty assurance in stating to your reporter that I" "was honest" when I started out, only provokes a smile. I defy him or any other man in Georgia, or out of it, to prove dishonesty on either my public or private reputation. It strikes me he would be the last man to charge such an impu- tation as the one above quoted, if he could be made to see himself as others see him. Furthermore, if he or any other 412 My ]\Iemoirs of Georgia Politics man affirms that an "ultimatum" requiring me to join the Eepublican party was presented to me by President Arthur, or any other person whomsoever, or that I have accepted an ultimatum, I pronounce the assertion a most unqualified false- hood, originating in hate and malignancy. I am now what I have been for years, an independent in politics, and I am happy to know that no ring-master's caucus ever compelled any man to vote for me against his will, and when they refused to vote for me, went before the people to be elected by "Radicals" and Independent votes, as did Mr. Hill at Gainesville. He raised no hue and cry at that time about "Africanizing Georgia." He was glad to get every African's vote and now returns them railing and abuse for their mis- placed confidence in his honesty. , His record before the war, during the war, and after the close of the war, is too well known to the people of Georgia to recapitulate here. He was known to be all things to all men, always distinguished for violence and animosity. In the matter of Democracy, I can safely compare records with the gentleman, and if mine does not stand the test better than his own — neifher deserve a place in the Democratic party. At the famous Delano banquet he frankly stated, "if he was a Democrat, he never intended to be." (In this connection I (Mrs. Felton) wish to say that Hon. Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, told a friend of ours in Washington City, and reported to us, that INIr. Hill's Democ- racy did not amount to a "hill of beans" at the time the Delano banquet came off). "Mr. Hill's course since that time gives unmistakable evi- dence that he accidently spoke the truth. As late as the year 1877, he was the outspoken friend of Mr. Hayes, an out-and- out Republican president. In his famous 'Address to the People of Georgia,' he says: 'I was anxious to support the present federal administration.' He urged the citizens of Georgia to accept office from him, and no word of complaint was heard from him until the senator failed to prevail on the president to bestow patronage according to his dictation. "Then he became blatant and abusive, as he was to Gov- ernor Colquitt about the ' Murphy fee. ' Since that time he lias My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 413 rung all the changes upon the federal appointments in the Louisiana custom house, which might have been laudations instead if President Hayes had been willing to obey the behests of the Georgia senator. "His attack on Governor Colquitt is better understood now than when he issued that famous address. I have before me at this writing the equally famous interview in the Baltimore Gazette, in which he uses these words about the governor: *I do admit it was corruption and no instance of that class of corruption was ever more clearly proved, more distinctly marked or more feebly excused.' "The offense to the senator, as it turned out, did not lie in the fact that the governor signed the bonds — for this eloquent lawyer urged him to do so. Neither did it lie in the fact that the governor knew a fee was to be paid when he did sign the bonds — for Senator Hill produced a letter of his own in evi- dence, in which he reproached his excellency for not inform- ing him of the fact, according to request, but the crowning infamy, the proof of the corruption, existed in his own failure to get the $7,000 and the preference displayed by the governor for the legal ability of Mr. Murphy, rather than that of Mr. Hill. It will always be a question whether this exciting little episode would ever have occurred, if the fee had taken an agreeable direction. While these charges progressed, the senator was fairly smothering the governo-r with continuous protestations of warmest friendship — nor did he desist when his own son, for some unaccountable reason, produced in print a certificate of good character for the governor, which was as eulogistic as his father's furious accusation had been otherwise. With this charge and others hanging over the governor, the people refused to assent to his nomination again, and the clamor was loud for the appearance of Mr. Hill on the stump to explain this corruption so well set forth in the public prints. Did he do it? This honorable gentleman fled ingloriously from the State mendaciously asserting he had never brought a charge against the governor in his whole life! Such is the quality of his patriotism in state politics! Now that he announces himself 414 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics eager to charge upon the Independents, horse, foot and "dragons — it is believed he is controlled by the hope of retain- ing the influence of other politicians in the State for his own particular benefit. A friend suggests to me, as the cause of the present attack upon Georgia Independents, the appearance of an editorial squib in your columns, intimating "Some In- dependent would run for Hill's place." In my opinion, noth- ing could have been written that would have more exasperated him. "His vanity is equal to anything, and he is impressed that he has a divine right to the place. It is a question whether the State of Georgia is longer willing to be hampered in her material and industrial progress by sectional prejudice and the short-sighted policy of a senator, who plays Independent or regular, just as his own ambition or pecuniary profit sug- gests. He has lost all his influence with his own party, and being the laughing stock of his enemies, he is powerless to aid Georgia in any effort he may undertake. His advocacy seals it with defeat. His former friends will be grieved to see such a total lack of policy as they find in this crusade upon the good men of the State who have clung to him, through 'thick and thin,' because they believed he was playing a part in his desire to keep the favor of the organization, while at heart he was liberal and conservative. His enemies exult over his want of judgment and he will soon find himself where they have long desired to see him, without friends or a following. As to the rest of his tirade against myself, I snap my fingers in the face of it. Any specific charge against my char- acter I shall notice, but he may howl himself hoarse against the Independents and their party in Georgia. A Virginian, a Democrat, told me a few weeks ago that "Ben Hill's tom-foolery and mania to hear himself talk had lost that State to the Democratic party." I believe also than any party will thrive on his abuse. I hope he will do all he threatens to do, for many people are getting restive under his political assumacy and Bourbon buffoonery. When this prom- ising leader dares to charge me with trying to "Africanize the State," because I claim for every man, white and colored, the right to vote a free ticket and to have that vote counted — My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 415 because I claim the right of every child to a plain English education at the expense of the State and federal governments — because I claim protection for the poor wretched creatures who are by the multitude being pushed into the convict camps of the senator's political allies — the people will begin to under- stand the true inwardness of Bourbon supremacy in Georgia. I hope every poor man, white or colored — the mechanic, the day laborer, the men of sweat and toil, may hear this political autocrat as he cracks his lash over my back because I dared to become their humble friend and advocate ! I wish the senator to understand distinctly that with all my political faults, no man can charge me with appearing be- fore the American congress, in opposition to a measure which required an immense railroad corporation to pay its lawful dues to the government of the people, and when this opposition failed, as it should have failed, I was not found thereafter appealing to the supreme court in the interest of this defeated monopoly — leaving the world in doubt whether the fee had been contracted for before or after the favorable vote was given. Thank God! my Democracy is not smirched with such a crime as that. With all my defeats as a Democrat, I was never in consul- tation at Wormley's Hotel, or any other hotel, with the most prominent Republicans in the Union, bartering away the rights and hardly-earned triumphs of the Democratic party for and in consideration of a little federal patronage and a little praise from the Republican party. I have never by folly supreme, justly earned among my colleagues in congress the title of ''Destroyer of the Democratic party." I am sorry for Mr. Hill. Blessed with the most wonderful gifts of oratory, he has frittered away the grandest opportuni- ties a public man ever had. The embodiment of self-conceit, forever absorbed in contemplation of his imaginary greatness, he has actually done nothing for his State or country that will live in the memory of the good, the true and the patriotic. In conclusion, Mr. Editor, I am more than ever convinced that a man should be independent in politics, which I shall continue to be to the close of my life. If Mr. Hill is to be the leader of the opposition, and this outbreak of uncalled-for 416 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics fury and malice is to be received as the spirit of the party, I think I am safe in predicting there will be thousands of recruits to the Independent camp. Honest men of all parties will refuse to sacrifice their self-respect to perpetuate such leadership. Very respectfully, W. H. FELTON. Senator Hill waited until January 14 to pen a reply to the foregoing letter, and we confidently expected him to furnish the proof of a coalition between Dr. Felton and the Grant- Arthur-Conkling wing of the Republican party. We cer- tainly expected that he would either apologize or deny his attitude towards the Pacific railroads (for Colton's letters, written by C. P. Huntington, were not exposed until three years later). We certainly expected him to say why he dodged the Colquitt campaign and ran away from it, and it was his bounden duty to do those three things for the sake of his own reputation, but he dodged them all — only going over Dr. Felton 's former friendship to him and all the great things he had done and suffered to remain his friend and stick to the party, and he had the audacity to say that his (Felton 's) "flood of vituperation came from a man of whom I never, in all my life, spoke or wrote one unkind word." With this un- blushing falsehood as a starter he proceeds to cover three closely printed columns of the Atlanta Constitution, to show his former fondness for Felton and Felton 's ingratitude to his preserver and benefactor. What Mr. Hill avowed he could prove (and was dared to prove) he avoided altogether. What was counter-charged upon himself, .he calls "vituperation," etc., but he never dared to answer. At the very time that Senator Hill was cavorting against Felton, charging coalition with Grant, Arthur and Conkling, the Pacific lobby in Wash- ington City was pouring out floods of bribe money and calling it "legal counsel" money. During the year 1878, when the Thurman funding bill passed, nearly $500,000 was presented as expenses, and the auditor of the Pacific roads was unable to secure any statement as to where the money went, and the managers preferred to have the same disallowed rather than tell. It was a pertinent question on that line presented to Mr. Hill, and he failed to notice. I have this loB^-drawn out My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 417 rejoinder of Mr. Hill in my scrap-book, and his son has it in the aforementioned biography and what I have here written can be verified in either place, if necessary, as constituting Mr. Hill's rejoinder. Dr. Felton's second letter to Mr. Hill I shall copy here, be- cause I do not think I ever saw a finer piece of writing of its kind in all my experience except once — Hon. B. F. Butler's excoriation of Judge Ebenezer Hoar is the masterpiece of all such literature, as I remember it. Mr. Grady delighted in newspaper controversy, as a jockey likes horse racing. He found a dull time on his hands so he went to Washington and "stirred up the beasteses. " He found Mr. Hill off his guard and ready to talk freely in his own way, I have no doubt but Mr. Hill was unaware at the time of how much he said or the virulence of his attack on Dr. Felton. But Mr. Grady got what he went after — a sensation! Mr. Hill would have gladly furnished proof, but he did not have it and couldn't get it, ibecause it was not to be had and the senator was left without an answer. But this Felton letter will close the controversy and close all correspondence between himself and Mr. Hill. Near Cartersville, Ga., January 19, 1882. Editors Constitution : Your paper of today, containing Mr. Hill's long-delayed letter, is to hand. Allow me to thank you for your letter offering to admit my reply to this voluminous rejoinder in your columns. I hope I shall not be obliged to tax your generosity again. I shall only reply to attacks on my character. As I said before, Mr. Hill is entirely welcome to abuse the Independents — nobody objects, unless it might be the party of which he is the mouth-piece. Permit a word in justice to Mr. Grady. In publishing Mr. Hill's interview, he expressly stated it was done with "his (Hill's) understanding and consent. ' ' Mr. Hill did not deny it when he saw it in print, nor does he deny it now. What he may do hereafter, nobody can tell. I know I speak public sentiment when I say Mr. Grady would have much improved this letter of the 14th. The interview was good reading — sharp, spicy. The letter is not what was expected of Mr. Hill. It was a cruel thing you did, Messrs. Editors, in continually publishing a notice of its 418 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics expected appearance day by day. Every organized brother who could raise a nickel rushed to the cars every morning to get the paper in which Senator Hill was to prove **01d Fel- ton" a "Radical," in which he was to show the ultimatum that he affirmed he knew all about — in which he was to expose to the bottom the "foulest conspiracy" ever known in politics. "When they finally got home with the precious document, he not only failed to prove a single thing, but he declared I was the best Democrat in the State. The memory of those wasted nickels, those muddy rides, has brought down some very un- complimentary words upon your leader — who has failed again in his last effort to "save the State." With his usual luck he stands before your readers and the public as a deliberate falsifier of truth ! He gives you a long dissertation on hypoc- risy and shows great anxiety for my present and future life. To this I will only reply — when you find such a politician exposing so much religion in his shop windows, you may be sure the stock inside is very slim. Before I go further, allow a word about the wife of Senator Hill. As he drew the names of my present and former wife into his jumbled-up letter, for what reason I cannot divine, I desire to say to your readers: I knew Mrs. Hill's girlhood and maidenhood to be all that was lovely and attractive and her beautiful character as wife, mother and friend is eminently worthy of the highest respect. Her children can rise up and call her blessed ! Mr. Hill puts great stress upon the fact that he wrote me a letter about the coalition, to which I should have replied. Mr. Grady's interview was dated January 2, and Mr. Hill's letter January 3, mailed at 7 p. m. Less than two days after that letter was mailed to me your type-setters were busy on his interview. This letter, although full of his peculiar af- fection, was so dogmatic, so impertinent, so presuming and offensive that my wife remarked, "Look out for an atrocious attack on you. This is the avant courier of what is coming in print." He inclines to see the letter printed from what he says, but it is a synopsis of the interview itself, and while it is at your disposal at any time, it is uncalled for at this writ- ing. With this treacherous letter and the Grady intervicA^ My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 419 before me, I waited till Monday, after it appeared on Satur- day, before I mailed you my reply. F. H. R., in his corres- pondence, said Mr. Hill read the interview on Sunday, and I stood at the telegraph office up to the last moment before my letter left my hands, in the hope that Mr. Hill would send a line to say that he had erred in thus attacking me, a man who by his own confession, had never said an unkind word of him in public. No message came. It is too fresh in the minds of the public to forget he charged me with dishonesty, corruption, selling out to the Republican party, and "Africanizing the State" to need further notice here. Now, this puzzling demagogue has the audacity to affirm he made no attack on me whatever. Has the man become insane, that he should thus belie him- self? It will be a curiosity in literature or morals to see his definition of truth or friendship, as exemplified in his words or actions. As to what he did for me in four congressional campaigns, I shall not bore you with anything more than the facts, to show you the falsity of his charge that I was always on my knees before his majesty to entreat his good offices in my behalf. I shall only need his own testimony to do so. His own mouth shall speak for him and not another. I do not suppose his vanity or self-importance ever led him to think of the injury a self-appointed and self-commissioned ambassa- dor might do, between belligerents, who find their well-meant efforts very much in their way and of no particular benefit. "A man's phrases have a very musical and charming sound from the mouth of another, but they sound a little flat and untunable in his own," says Zenophen, and with all Mr. Hill's brilliancy, it is possible to become somewhat surfeited with so much self-praise and while I would be the last man to point out to him any kindness or favor done to himself, it would be a wholesome lesson to him to remember that help can become a very onerous thing when it is done to be able to give you a slap because of it. Now, let us see the record ! Mr. Hill need not sneer at a scrap-book — for you will need nothing more to floor him in any argument or statement of facts. He can permit himself to be contradicted by himself 420 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics with more equanimity than any man who ever lived. He actually rushes into print to convict himself of falsehood and deceit, yet he comes up to a fresh attack, smiling as ever. In 1874, he neither appeared in print or in person to aid me. (He is proposing to show he imperiled his own standing in his party to help me). His standing was so good at that time that he was published as one of Colonel Dabney's speakers against me. He told me afterwards he did not appear because he loved me so much, and I believed it. In 1876, he did a little more. That was the year the legislature was to be elected which was to make him senator. What he did you will find in your files, under date of July 2, 1878, headed ''Sense for the Seventh," and signed B. H. Hill. I furnish an extract: "In 1876 I greatly desired to see this breach reconciled. With- out explaining to him my purpose, I had conversation with him in Washington. I found him anxious to be in harmony with his party, but unable to see how he could make an advance to bring about harmony. He seemed to think the only purpose of some who controlled the party was to use the party machinery to beat him and humiliate him in a spirit of revenge. I came home and made it convenient to visit Cartersville on the day the executive committee met to call the convention. (Remember he was a candidate for the senate). I endeavored to ascertain if Dr. Felton's apprehensions were correct. I asked the chairman if Felton would stand any chance if he expressed a willingness to go before it? "None in the world ! We are going to have a convention expressly to beat him, and will crush him out with a majority of 5,000." Now, Messrs. Editors, I certainly did not send Mr. Hill, as he affirms he never explained his purpose to me, and I was found to be correct in saying the party machinery was used to defeat me. What sane man would send another on such a ridiculous errand? What he said to the committee, I do not know, but no man rose up to say I sought the nomination then or since. Now, gentlemen, what are we to infer from this man's wild assertions? So long trained to make "the worse to appear the better reason," he actually tells an untruth to slander me. I was anxious for harmony. I made a proposition myself, namely: If each voter would endorse on the back of his My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 421 gubernatorial ticket at the October election the name of the man they desired to make them a congressman, I would abide the decision. All I asked was the expressed will of the people, not the decision of party tricksters. When this proposition was presented did they receive it? They threw it back in disdain, declaring it an "insult to the party." This is a matter of record and represents the whole truth. Senator Hill so greatly "imperiled his standing in the party" that the party elected him to the senate next January. I could tell him of a friend he had at that time, but self- laudation is his special prerogative. In 1878, when this "Sense for the Seventh" appeared, he told the Ringgold convention to nominate me, but was fair enough to say this proposal "would astonish nobody more than Dr. Felton," which was true, emphatically. I had no idea of asking such a thing from a body of men organized "especially to beat me." Dr. Stephens, now de- ceased, and Col. Frank Gray, of Atlanta, then of this county, desired to know if I would permit my name voted on in that convention. I declined. If that meeting had endorsed and approved my course in congress, I should have been gratified, as I was likewise grateful to all men, all parties, all citizens, white or colored, for a similar endorsement at the polls. I should certainly, however, have felt no more gratitude to them than I would to the same number of intelligent men in the district. Messrs. Editors, it is clear I did not send Mr. Hill to make any such a proposition — nor can anybody picture me on my knees pleading with him to ask for what I so respectfully declined. Now we come down to 1880. I was jogging with my usual canvass, when a letter dated July 16, was received from Mr. Hill : "Dear Doctor: I want to see you. Some suggestions have been made touching the canvass in the Seventh, which I think worthy of your consideration. * * * I think an arrange- ment can be made to make an easy time for you in this race; but we can do nothing without first knowing your views and 422 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics feelings." (Signed) Benj. H. Hill. (I have the letter before me). Now, Messrs. Editors, it is my time to astound you. It is clear I did not ask anything, but he sent for me. The proposi- tion was this: I was to pledge myself not to run again, and no nomination would be made in the Seventh district. I declined. I had no authority to pledge the noble Inde- pendents who had honored me so long to any political trade. I could not refuse my services if they demanded them. This proposition is not understood by me to this day. What it meant or how far it reached, is a matter for the future to disclose. That refusal was, in my opinion, the beginning of a campaign in Georgia that knows no parallel in Georgia or out of it." (Par. Parenthesis: General Gordon had traded off his seat in the senate two months before and Senator Brown and Governor Colquitt were running respectively for the senate and governorship. State Road lease money and convict lease money was in reach, and it is now supposed Pacific Railroad lobby money, and we know L. & N. Railroad lobbyists were active in Georgia. We have indubitable evidence that such a campaign had no parallel in Georgia up to that time). ''It pleases the senator to expatiate on my soreness in defeat. I admit there was no apparent regret in his face or actions. If not a matter of rejoicing with him, he did not evidence any particular grief, and I am frank enough to say he was not troubled with me or my "ill nature" enough to speak au- thoritatively on the subject. In closing this part of my reply, and I admit it has been tedious, but I wish to state facts clearly and precisely. If he offered my name to any convention, he did it on his own authority and as I understood him, to benefit the organization without injuring himself. Any other theory places him in an odious light to both myself and the party he obeyed. Any other motive would do no credit to either head or heart. If he feels so aggrieved at my reply to his assault as to ask public sympathy and parade his mighty efforts in my behalf, I also feel sorry he does not dwell longer on the motive that im- pelled the Grady interview. Having relieved himself of my My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 423 presence in Washington, did it become necessary to strike me down among my neighbors and friends? Am I still in the way? Although he fights his friends instead of his enemies, and that from an elevation, it will do no harm to remind him "To brag of benefits one hath bestown, Doth make the best seem less, and the most seem none. So oftentimes the greatest courtesy — Is by the doer made an injury!" Senator Hill, when he goes out to battle, much mistakes the temper of the opposition if he supposes he is to fire away at sand-bags, and hear no sound in reply. "The way to procure insults is to submit to them," and I don't propose to take a single one from him. He made a charge. I made a counter-charge. He failed to support his charge with the proof — but I do not propose to omit my proof on this occasion. "When he threw a fire-brand, he ought to have been careful enough to wipe the tar from his own fingers, as it may burn and he has nobody to thank but himself for the scorching. Senator Hill charged I was "dishonest" in my attitude to the Democracy of Georgia. I charged he was dishonest in his representation of the people and the party in the State. Does he deny his Independent canvass in the Ninth? Does he deny his double-dealing, false friendship and greed of money in the Colquitt-Murphy embroglio? Does he deny his attitude to President Hayes, or his denunciation of that gentleman there- after? Why? He knows why and you know why, Messrs. Editors. Does he even publish or excuse, ever so feebly, the vote on the Pacific funding bill, and his advocacy of the same in the supreme court? Let me tell you something about that speech before the supreme court. The bill introduced by Senator Thurman and so ably advocated by Bayard and Edmunds, was a simple demand to secure the repayment of the money paid and to be paid by the government on its bonds, issued to aid the construction of the Pacific Railroads. Beside the grant of corporate powers, valuable franchises and public lands equal 424 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics in acres to the seven smaller States of the Union, the govern- ment issued and delivered to the Pacific Railroad companies bonds amounting to $64,000,000, upon which the tax-payers of this country must continue to pay for thirty years from their date — semi-annually interest exceeding three millions per an- num. The government has issued these bonds upon a second mortgage or lien upon the road, the road having issued private bonds on a first mortgage or lien, to the amount of bonds, afterwards issued by the government. Unless the Thurman bill had passed establishing a sinking fund of 25 per cent, of the net earnings of the road, the principal and interest amount- ing to about one hundred and sixty millions of dollars, would have been lost to the tax-payers at the end of thirty years, and which at that time would have swelled the unholy gains of the railroad monopoly. This Thurman bill, requiring the payment of those lawful dues to the government, is the bill opposed by Mr. Hill in the senate. A short time thereafter he appeared in the supreme court to show reason why the road should be protected and the people robbed. The people, through their representatives, declared the road should pay its dues and the whole bench of judges, with one solitary exception, declared their act lawful and constitutional. As I was sitting at my desk one day, some gentleman came to me and told me Mr. Hill was then speaking in the supreme court against the bill — for be it remembered there were only two members of the house of representatives who dared to vote against it in that body : namely, B. F. Butler, of Massa- chusetts, and W. F. Lynde, of Wisconsin, both reported to be attorneys of the road. I went to the court room to satisfy myself, and there I found my fears realized. A senator from Georgia working for a fee to prevent a monopoly from refunding the money paid as interest on their bonds by the hard-working men of Georgia and elsewhere. Thousands toil on these old red hills at fifty cents a day to raise that money, and I affirm boldly to Mr. Hill and this country, that he did not represent the people who sent him to the senate, and they ought to know it. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 425 I remember also some man approached Peter when his Master was on trial and said to him, ''Thou art a Galilean — thy speech betrayeth thee." Lest I should be asked, "Art thou also a Georgian?" I left in shame and disgust. Like Peter, I would have denied the ' ' soft impeachment. ' ' (Both Georgia senators voted the same way — with Blaine, Dorsey and Stanley Matthews, the men who led for the Pacific Roads — according to Senator Thurman, in a newspaper inter- view and backed by the most "frightful lobby" he (Thurman) had ever seen in Washington.) "My Democracy is based on equal and exact justice to all men, whether they be white men or Africans. Could anybody call that vote or speech Democratic? If so, deliver me from the name and the party!" Here follows a review of Hill's demand for a committee clerk, and then Dr. Felton discusses Mr. Hill's vote on arrearages of pensions in the following words : "I would like to know how he explains the vote, which your editorials have denounced so heartily? It saddled a new debt of five hundred millions of dollars on the taxpayers to the already heavy debt of this nation. But I now propose to give this statesman the fame he so richly merits, to embalm his memory in Bourbon politics, and to afiix a chaplet to the brow of this great leader of Democracy in Georgia and the Union. As he terms all the rest 'dirty scandals,' he will call this the 'alchemy of truth.' Some time ago, Mr. Garfield was elected president. About as soon as the mails could take a letter to him, he (Hill) unbosoms himself to Hon. S. B. Chittenden, of Brooklyn, and I propose to give you an extract from this charming missive, and he (Hill) gave Chittenden permission to print it. He will not dispute Mr. Chittenden's authority, whatever he may undertake with Mr. Grady.") Well, my friend, the most anxious event in our history has become a fact, a solid North against a solid South. No language can express to you my view of this event for evil. It will have no logic if continued, but disruption into several monarchies, or the absolute consolidation of all the States into one empire. In either event our constitutional system will fail in my opin- ion. The time has come for all real statesmen to consider, is 426 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics how speedily to break up this sectional solidity and organize parties on other issues. The Democratic party is hated at the North, therefore it ought to be disbanded. The Republican party is hated at the South, therefore it ought to be disbanded. Whether this hatred is just or unjust makes no difference. I would be glad to see a great national union party organized for I believe that the government formed by the Constitution is a nation. I really like Garfield — hope he will have a success- ful administration; he must keenly feel that the fact that he is elected solely by Northern votes, but he has a great op- portunity and can, if he will, easily and consistently destroy all sectional animosities and solidities and be chosen for a second term by a majority of the States North or South." (Garfield was Blaine's candidate after he could not make it, and it was Blaine, Dorsey and Garfield against Grant, Arthur and Conkling. The Pacific Roads were behind the Blaine crowd and Grant was defeated). But listen to Dr. Felton: "Now, Messrs. Editors, the 'logic' of this letter goes to prove that Mr. Hill can be relied upon to break the solidity of the party, or it must remain solid. When did I or any other Geor- gian say as much in disparagement of the Democratic party? If this man then wrote the truth, and the convictions of his heart, what can be said of his infamy in charging me with 'Africanizing the State.' If he deceived Mr. Chittenden then, are you certain he is not deceiving you now? Here is de- veloped an effort at 'coalition' that throws into shadow the Markham House Conference. That Mr. Hill was willing and ready to coalesce, there is no doubt whatever. As for that matter, in my opinion, he will do anything that opens a way to official spoils or that promises a good sized fee. Did this coalition with Mr. Chittenden and his party mean an "infamous conspiracy?" Did it mean "Africanizing the State?" or "reopening race issues?" or "combinations of the worst elements in society?" which will "result in such de- bauchey and jobbery as will shock the civilized world?" Did he thus conciliate Mr. Chittenden that he (Chittenden) should bring him an "ultimatum from the President?" And did he propose to honey-snuggle Mr. Garfield to get the means to "buy Southern Democrats?" My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 427 I am both "pained and grieved" that the member from Brooklyn did not held this political eel, who said: "Here, catch me!" How bland his approaches, how coy his attitude, how tenderly he leans over to this good Republican friend! Was he beguiling him into an "easy time?" When he gets down here next summer, we will ask him some questions and if "Barkis was willin' "! Did he desire the Democratic party disbanded? Can anybody tell? Why did he go to Mr. Chittenden? To get help in the effort, eh? Messrs. Editors if this was not proposing to sell out the Demo- cratic party, what do you call it ? Ah ! was he ever true to any friendship or any political faith? More than that, what man is there in Congress who knows where he stands on any measure affecting finance, the tariff or the revenue? His at- titude on silver demonitization was like he stood on all these things. Every influence was brought to bear for Wall street, but the vote was given to check the people's clamor at home that he might not imperil his standing in the party which means, retain his place in the Senate. His capacity, his genuis, his peculiar style finds an open field in fighting Kellogg, Riddleberger and the Georgia Indepen- dents ! Give him either of the three and he soars to the height of the argument ! Mr. Kellogg was planted firmly in his seat, because Mr. Hill opposed him. Riddleberger only aspired to be sergeant-at-arms, but Mr. Hill made him Senator. The Georgia Independents can see a brilliant future, if Mr. Hill does not run as he did from the Murphy fee ! Blessed be the party that encounters such acceptable opposition! Blessed be the man who is not made to suffer from Mr. Hill's friendship in politics!" W. H. FELTON. (In closing this chapter, do not forget that Mr. Blaine could and did make an alliance with Georgia Senators, all voting in Hunting- ton's behalf, and that he also named Garfield, who was in alliance with Dorsey and Matthews, Huntington's champions. That these worthies were ready to do in Georgia what B. H. Hill proposed to Chittenden goes without saying. It was only when Garfield passed off the stage of action and Gen. Arthur succeeded as President that the Georgia Senator (Hill) became infuriated with what he called The Grant-Arthur-Conkling wing of the party. Providence protected the old South from Blaine that time). Dr. Felton and Gov. J. Milton Smith Dr. Felton 's association with Gov, J. M. Smith was very limited. He did not perambulate around the State eapitol in Bullock's time, nor in Smith's time. In our plain country home, we were busy people trying to make an honest living. The war swept off a number of slaves for us; our buildings >vere badly abused, where they were not destroyed, and we had nothing to look to but the land and it was robbed of the fencing and otherwise dilapidated. We had to be very busy, very economical and thrifty to live in any sort of comfort. "We were too honest with the Confederate government to buy up greenbacks and the surrender caught us without a dollar. We had buried a lovely child from our refuge home in Sep- tember, 1864, nearly six years old — my precious Willie, and while he was slowly dying with typhoid dysentery, Sherman's troops were destroying Atlanta preparatory to the "March to the Sea." In June, 1865, my only living child at that time, dear Johnny, died with . congestion of the brain. He was in bed less than six hours, and was gone before I could realize he was seriously sick. He was my hope, my blessing, and my first born, eleven years old. We could not bear that old refuge home any longer. We started home to Northwest Georgia with a few dollars in pocket, the remainder that was left from the sale of our handsome paneled carriage that cost us just before the war over six hundred dollars in gold. We sold it at auction in the city of Macon for a little over one hundred paid in green- backs, then $2^ for one. We buried this dear boy with a part of this money and reached Cartersville with only enough cash to pay drayage on our stuff (that we brought on the train) out to the old dilapidated home that had not one pane of glass left in the entire building. Such were our beginning's after the war. This bit of personal history I deem it proper to refer to because Dr. Felton was denounced, reviled, slandered and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 429 villified "as false to his people in war and peace and grimed with a treasonable alliance with the enemies of our country." The first man of any prominence in Georgia to revile him as a "Radical disorganizer " because he was an Independent can- didate for Congress in 1874 (outside the seventh district) was Gov. James Milton Smith, chief executive for the State of Georgia ! In his attentions to Hon. L. N. Trammell, who was himself familiar with Bullock's and Smith's legislatures, the governor of the State of Georgia appeared as a public speaker in Marietta, Ga., to uphold Mr. Trammell 's claims to public office. As Judge A. R. Wright, of Rome, expressed it, "a masked battery was rolled out from the executive mansion" to violently deprive a free and independent people of their rights at the ballot box. I went to work after 1882 to in- vestigate the governor and his past life and I had letters from prominent people where he had lived before his removal to Columbus, giving many accounts of the governor's "slack poli- tics" in Bullock's time. Some writers went so far as to say that he was ripe and ready to go over and "jine the army," but the letters were confidential. Dr. Felton won the race in 1874. Smith's successor was elected in 1876, and Gov. J. M. Smith did not roll out "that masked battery from the executive mansion" the second time, and he went out of office at the end of the year 1876. I never saw Gov. J. M. Smith to know him in my life, but the next I heard of him was his abuse of Colquitt and Brown and Gordon in the year 1880. I have copied some of the torrid literature in reviewing Governor Colquitt's administration and everybody will agree that it was piquant and spicy. The next I heard was his rupture with Gov. McDaniel, who took away from him his high position as railroad commissioner. I was told that Gov. Colquitt gave him this appointment to smooth down his ruffled feathers, after he and Gen. Gordon conspired against him in the senatorial election of January, 1877, not to elect Mr. Hill, who succeeded, nor Senator Nor- wood, who was defeated ; but somebody who was tied out and unknown to outsiders. It might have been Hon. John W. Murphy, who was one of the chief men in the Convict Lease Company No. 3 and who practiced his profession of law in 430 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Gov. Colquitt's office so successfully. They did not help Sen- ator Norwood; they certainly did not help poor disappointed Gov. Smith, and Mr. Hill told Dr. Felton in my presence that Gen. Gordon wrote most damaging letters against his char- acter to defeat him, some of which he was allowed to see by those receiving them. It might have been even Gov. Brown, who was their united choice in a little over three years after wards; but this Gov. Brown was bold enough to call Gen. Gordon a "traitor" to Democracy in 1877, while everybody understood that Gov. Colquitt ''always held while the general skinned." Anyhow, Gov. Milt Smith went out of the executive offi'^e "unwept, unhonored and unsung." Dr. Felton was in the thick of the fight to hold on lo the railroad commission in the Georgia legislature and when the fight was over, Maj. Campbell "Wallace told him: "You, sir, have saved to the State its railroad commission." Tn October, 1885, Gov. McDaniel displaced Ex-Gov. Milt Smith and Dr. Felton was sorry for it, because Gov. Smith had acknoAvledged ability and was gifted in clearness of expression. It was ;in- derstood that Senator Brown was opposed to the commission and inimical to Smith, because of the free criticism of the lat ter Avhen Senator Brown was translated to the Semite by a "capital understanding" and an alliance with the Kirkwood ring. Anyhow, Dr. Felton, who bore less of malice to his persecutors than was necessary in my opinion, wrote a sym- pathizing letter to the displaced commissioner. Gov. J. M. Smith wrote the following in reply. There was no mark on it to show its confidential nature, and I feel, at this time, its republication is just and proper, as I will soon make plain. The letter was written on the commission's letter paper and the names of the commission were James M. Smith, chairman; Campbell Wallace and L. N. Trammell. Atlanta, Ga., October 14, 1885. Hon. W. H. Felton — My Dear Sir : Your kind favor of the .... instant, was not received by me until yesterday. I have been very busily engaged in winding up my connection with the railroad commission, and take the first leisure moment to answer. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 431 You are correct in saying my non-appointment was intended as a rebuke for what Governor McDaniel considered my un- wavering fidelity to the people in the war which is being waged upon their interests by the monopolists. He is weak, very weak and was not able to say "no" to the demands made for my supersedure by his masters. If occasion should ever arise for a full disclosure of his entire conduct in the premises (as it doubtless will), he will sink too low to be reached even by the contempt of a confiding people, whose interests he has betrayed in aligning himself unreservedly with the railroad corporations and their corrupt tools in the contest now going on. Again thanking you for your kind expressions toward me, I am, my Dear Sir, Truly yours, JAMES M. SMITH. This letter was written late in 1885, but it was early in February, 1882, that ex-Governor Smith made an unprovoked attack on Dr. Felton in the Atlanta Constitution — an inter- view obtained by Mr. Grady. The latter having created a sensation with Senator B. H. Hill — concluded to worm another sensation out of Governor Smith. The ex-governor responded to the smooth talk of the pencil-pusher, but why the ex-gov- ernor should have followed Mr. Hill's example is still un- explained to me. He was evidently "spilin' for a fight." He spread his opinions over a half page of the Atlanta Constitu- tion, and after the whole thing was sifted out, he made no greater discovery, or explanation, than resulted from Senator Hill's long tirade on "Africanizing the State," and in which Mr. Hill suffered untold loss to himself before he was effectually silenced, or failed to defend himself. I had a supply of letters, as before said, written from his old haunts, before he was made governor or had finally settled in Colum- bus, Ga. When Smith's interview reached Dr. Felton he was crowded with work otherwise than political, had just gotten through with public speeches in Augusta and Savannah, besides the controversy with Mr. Hill in the newspapers, had voluminous correspondence, besides his domestic affairs at home on the plantation. We read over the interview carefully and decided that as 432 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics Governor Smith had some reputation abroad, no matter how thin the quality at home, he must be answered. But it was a strenuous affair to turn from what really was important to bandy words with all the people who were ap- parently shoved in front when bidden to come forth and attack the Independents. After some consideration of the matter, and braced by what the correspondents had voluntarily furnished as to Governor Smith's record, I made the following proposition to Dr. Felton : "Go on about your business, and I'll write the reply — dismiss this hybrid politician from your mind. I've read over those letters sent me from Barnesville and Upson county and if I think they will serve your purpose, I'll send for the affi- davits that will convince the people how and why the Bullock Democrats were willing to make him the governor, after Bul- lock fled the State. He is hand in glove with 'Newt Tram- mel;' he was the only so-called Democrat who came at his call to speak against you. I've been keeping tab on this gen- tleman and while I do not think you will need anything more than his confession, that he was the author of the convict lease and is proud of it, I'll try my hand on him and then you can correct and revise." So I went to work and begun this way: Near Cartersville, Ga., Feb. 13, 1882. Editor Constitution : Since Gov. Smith has thought proper to go into print to denounce Georgia Independents, making some unfounded assertions along with some remarkable ad- missions, he deserves a little notice. As he singled me out for special attack, I will give you my opinion of the assault and at the same time review his official record in a few notable instances. When I last heard of him, he was quite an Inde- pendent. Some influence has inspired a change, and it will bring forth substantial fruit in its season. It is remarkable with what unanimity these old moss-back officeholders take alarm when they see any movement that might possibly re- mand them to private life! I am only a plain citizen, do not draw a dollar from either the State or federal government, yet I am not allowed to express an opinion on State affairs, My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 433 or point out what seems to me to be a better way without a storm of abuse from certain men who are growing fat on offi- cial spoils. For two months the State has resounded with the clash and turmoil growing out of their anxiety to retain their of^ces and the pay. Now we have "a masked battery rolled out from the railroad commission." The people of Georgia may well despair if some reform can not be had. She has a lot of official dead-beats to support, who have been warmed and fed from her bounty, and are ready to sting any party or any man who proposes to show them their duty and to curb their greed. Personal abuse of myself does not count so long as the opposition keeps within an authorized limit, or with anybody connected with me. There is an independence and a freedom in honest character that laughs all such vitupera- tion to scorn. Lay on McDuff! My politics have not made me rich, and I never stumped the State to denounce the men who gave me office. Gov. Smith traveled the State two years ago to hold up Gov. Colquitt to public ridicule as a living example of corruption and official failure. He had received a good paying office from Gov. Col- quitt, and yet he never relaxed his grip on the money while he made this itinerating tour. Gov. Colquitt believed he had bought him off, and Smith took the reward and failed to de- liver the goods. Norwood would have swept North Georgia if Gov. Smith had been kept at home. No man's opposition ever did a candidate as much good as did Smith's for Colquitt.' Gov. Smith had the appointing of fifteen hundred men to office during an executive term of four years. Like Bullock, he divided with his friends, but the State of Georgia and the ring-Bourbon Democracy did not give him a decent vote for the United States Senate as a retiring governor. The admin- istration so outgrew itself that the people had to call a con- stitutional convention to control the waste of public money and to throw restrictions around the executive. "When this ex- governor rises up to denounce "coalition," or any other species of political trickery, the argument is exhausted. As Gen. Toombs would say, ''it fatigues the indignation." He holds office now by appointment, not by election. I know of no coalition save an honest, uprising of indepen- 434 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics dent people, to remand the control of their own affairs into •the hands of the people, and to deliver the State from such administrations as the one imposed upon the State by James M. Smith for five long years. If Republicans v^^ill vote with us to help this honest expression of public will, we will be glad to get their votes. It is a free country and the need of the hour is the liberty to vote and to get that vote counted. If that is coalition, call it so. The ballot is not free, and the count is usually favorable to the party that manages the ballot box. When the time comes the proof will be at hand. Any citizen of Georgia who desires to relieve the State from the domination of corrupt tricksters, and to conduct the State house upon correct busi- ness principles, is at liberty to vote with the Independents and God helping the right, we will endeavor to get that vote counted. It is suggestive of a peculiar state of affairs that we find our two Democratic governors uniting with Ex-Gov. Bullock to preserve the Bourbon rule. Does it mean that nobody but the knowing ones can have entrance to the hidden secrets of the capitol? If there is another politician in the State more odorous in the Republican party than Gov. Bullock, it is J. E. Bryant. The latter is loud in his praise of the present re- gime and that "coalition" is so harmonious that both can be interviewed and praised in Bourbon journals. It is a matter of history that J. E. Bryant was once the Democratic caucus nominee in a Georgia legislature. In my opinion, the "coalition" is not dissolved at the present writ- ing. In the canvass of 1878, Mr. Bryant was a valuable co- worker, and did all that was expected of him. He told Col. Printup, of Rome, he intended to organize the Republicans in the interest of Judge Lester, and he induced a very clever gentleman to run the race through with a result of only two votes. He delivered the goods according to contract — the coalition was lively and active. Fortunately for the State, Mr. Bryant was not so well respected in the Republican party as he was with the Democratic party. Hence these tears ! Gov. Bullock confessed he "was on the make" and was forced to fly the State, but a Democratic judiciary, we believe My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 435 appointed by Gov. Smith, gave him a triumphant acquittal. It was whispered that it would not do to convict, because two rotten Democrats were exposed to view every time you uncovered one corrupt Republican. And I submit there is no more reason why the hundreds of good men in the Republican party should be condemned for Gov. Bullock's irregularities than that honest Democrats should be held for the irregulari- ties under later administrations. In justice to Gov. Bullock, we will say he reminds us of an expression often used among hunters "one holds and the other skins." So Bullock was selected to hold up the old battle- scarred carcass of Georgia in its poverty and desolation, while many of the present headlights of Bourbon Democracy did the "skinning." In my opinion the coalition continues until the present, and the skinning process has never been concluded among the coalitionists. Governor Conley was executive for a short time after Bul- lock ; nobody has charged any irregularity upon him, although he was a Republican. Why is it nobody has a kind word for him who walked so straight in those troublous times? Gov. Smith says it would be a great calamity for the Republican party to hold any offices in Georgia. As he and his successor Colquitt have failed to impress the people with their superla- tive fitness for the executive office ; there are multitudes of men in Georgia who consider a longer continuance of such men in office as a great calamity. In the gubernatorial canvass of 1880, the State never saw such a carnival of trickery — bribery and corruption. The "race issue" was the only issue, and Gov. Smith was as greedy for the colored vote as other politicians. He was open in his opinion that Colquitt 's re-election would be a " great calamity, ' ' What influence has wrought this change? To come nearer to this honorable gentleman, I have just re- read his open letter on the Garlington- Alston fee ! As Squeers would say, "Here's richness!" He arraigned Colquitt for pay- ing the money and Colquitt said it was Smith's contract. Gov. Smith says it was a private contract, and Colquitt paid out too much money. (Ah!) In my opinion the difficulty lay in the want of harmony about the "skinning.". If both executives 436 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics had been made to answer to a righteous impeachment, the true inwardness would have been developed. An Independent governor would have laid the claim and then the money before the legislature, the only authority in Georgia which can give money belonging to the people to any person whatever ! There has been a general looseness in throwing around the taxpayers' money. It is remarkable that it generally went to political pets and good workers in elections. Every dollar that could be manipulated was placed where it would do most good, a ad when a change in officials is proposed every mother's son of them squalls out like he was badly hurt, and like this dis- tinguished commissioner every single man proposes to stick to the party that feeds him until like Casabianea all the rest have fled. The State may bleed and suffer as it did in the celebrated Jones' case and get only $35,000 for about six times the amount in question, but the pap-suckers will continue vio- lent Democrats to the end. Call them what you will, and prove all you say, but don't impugn their Democracy! That's the only nerve that quivers ! Now I come to the cream of Gov. Smith's recent interview. Hear him : "I am the author of the convict lease system, and I am proud of it!" It has been said the inventor of the guillotine was one of the men beheaded by it. It really appears as if the ex-governor is disposed to feel the edge of his own instrument on his own neck ! It has not been a week, Messrs. Editors since you denounced the convict system as a relic of Republican misrule fastened on an unwilling people by a Republican legislature. I thought you were incorrect. Gov. Smith has settled the question. What have you now to say about the authorship? I have been arraigned for two weeks because I did not charge this convict lease upon the Republican party. Now, Messrs. Editors, give Satan his due, but be sure you give the ''author of the system" entire credit for his work. He says he is "proud" of it. He must resemble another official in history who chose to be in- famous, rather than not to be famous. When you insisted that Republicans were responsible for it, I thought you could find if you chose, that it was an in- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 437 vention designed to enrich certain politicians, who have al- ways been ready to coalesce upon any measure that filled their pockets at the expense of the State. Read over the names of the lessees aloud and then call to mind the "silent" part- ners, and I think you will agree with me. It will now be only just for the press of the State to wheel into line and make this ex-governor responsible for this self-confessed authorship and results. When Ex-Gov. Smith appeared in the Norwood canvass flourishing a "convict catechism," he was in his own estima- tion a much better statesman than the convict ring headed by Brown, Gordon and Colquitt. He did not think it an in- sult to the colored people to discuss the lease at that time, al- though it is a high crime for me to do so at the present. I am inclined to think the falling out of these worthies on the lease question was like the Alston fee, a family quarrel about who should do the holding and who the skinning. Gov. Smith, in a report to the legislature, says he found 432 in the penitentiary January, 1872. By July 4, same year, there were 475. He explains this rapid increase of 43 in seven months to "increased vigilance and rigid convictions by the judiciary." In 1875 they had increased to 723. In 1876, 923. By the year 1877 ,they numbered 1,441. In 1878, Mr. Nelms says there were 1,500. School Commissioner Orr says there were only 112 whites in the year 1880. The author of this system dares to tell me that I "insult the colored people" when I denounce this system as "un- worthy" of the great State of Georgia. The judiciary or some- body else must have been very "vigilant" to hustle so many convict slaves into the camps of their political friends ! Gov. Smith ceases to apologize for this rapid increase as will be noted. A colored girl was sentenced during last November in the city of Atlanta to five years in the penitentiary for stealing fifty cents from a colored child. I know nothing of the evi- dence and care nothing, for that verdict will bear no excuse. I found the statement in the Constitution, Messrs. Editors, on November 26, 1881. Is the author of the system pleased with such a verdict? 438 My ]\Iemoirs op Georgia Politics Was it humane, civilized or Christian, to turn that poor creature into the iniquities of the system without hope of re- spite or reform for five years? Who can forget poor Alston, who drew such a graphic picture of the horrors of the convict system and who can forget that the poor fellow lost his life because he dared to interfere with such a system so deeply im- bedded in Georgia politics? Is anybody's life safe who at- tacks it? When the day comes for righteous judgment on this atrocious system, it will need its distinguished author to defend it ! Is the author of the system proud of the convict Ratteree, who was mounted, fed and paid to pursue another convict ? In that pursuit maddened by liquor, he first insulted a lady in this congressional district and then shot her ! What was the penalty? Ten years in the coal mines belonging to Senator Brown ! The fifty cents criminal got five years and Ratteree got ten only. Is he proud of the convict boss, who pinned poor Matthews to the earth face downward with a pick, and literally beat out the poor tortured soul of the helpless victim, and sent it to its Maker under the brutal lash? Even the present legis- lature is afraid of this convict ring! Does the "author of the system" endorse the punishment of Alston's slayer at the Dade Coal Mines, permitted as he is to jump on a mule, and pursue a negro, an escaped convict for two or three days, and then return to the friendly shelter arranged for him ? Gov. Smith is welcome to the authorship of this system. One reflects proper credit upon the handiwork of the other! Doubtless he is proud of it, but the State of Georgia will bear the shame and degradation for years to come ! Gov. Smith does not deceive anybody in this matter. He is more than the author. By a trick unworthy of an executive, he fastened the present lessees upon the State three years in advance of the time allowed by law. The law granting the previous lease of convicts did not expire until the last day of March, 1879. It was expressly provided that no change sliould be made unless some lessee refused to accept convicts, then the governor could make some provision for the rejected ones. In 1876, the political ring masters got to itching for an earlier dividend upon tliis slave property. Nobody refused to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 439 accept any convicts ; all were greedy for more. Gen. Phillips, of Marietta, gave me the facts which I am about to relate, and certain friends of mine were present at the time. He (Phillips) was requested to return a few to the State. He refused. The lessees persisted. He finally agreed to return "nine" if a written guarantee was given him that he "should not be hurt." Gov. Smith's administration straight way gave this guarantee and quickly the new lease companies went into possession of their large inheritance and begun to draw dividends from this immense convict property. Is the author of this trick as proud of this feat as he is of the system. Sharp practice, eh ! Fraud is said to vitiate all contracts outside of Georgia. What will be done with the lease with these clouds hanging over it must be decided by the honest voters of the State. A distinguished gentleman in public life told me that fifty dol- lars per capita was offered, but a much lower bid was ac- cepted. (They were leased by Gov. Smith for about $11 per annum). "His name I withhold until it is needed, but it can be given. General Phillips told me this written guarantee was given him in 1876, and was shown to a legislative committee two or three years ago when a dispute arose over the contract with the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad. The members of the legislature to whom that investigation was confided can substantiate the statement." (Before I proceed with the remainder of Dr. Felton's reply to Smith, it is proper to say that the juggling really took place over four convicts in Fulton county jail that were never m Phillip's possession, and Gov. Smith was put on the stand as a witness in a court trial. Judge George Hillyer presiding, and he testified as to the juggle and that he conferred with Ex- Gov. Joe Brown and Senator John B. Gordon who "spoke for their respective companies." At the time of this court trial Smith was attorney for one of these lease companies.) Here was a specimen of Democratic juggling that throws Bullock in the shade. Only Democrats were in office when this thing was done! Democrats did the holding and the same coalitionists who did the skinning in Bullock's time were ready to take a hand in setting up the new lease. The ex-governor is ambitious to incur the odium that goes 440 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics with this business. Now he comes to the front to denounce better men than himself as attempting to "drag Georgia down." I tell him to explain his connection with these in- triques that did lower this grand old State into this pit of official trickery or forever hold his peace ! I do not excuse anything Gov. Bullock did that was wrong, nor will I excuse Gov. Smith for like offenses. I find both on the same side in politics and both quite willing to abuse better men who oppose them. Their coalition is not denied now. The old cry of "radical," "traitor," " disorganizer, " etc., won't do this time. It is worn out in this part of the country. Some of the loudest Democratic leaders were the most blatant in 1868 on the other side, and their present willingness to open up a smooth way to official spoils has condoned all former crimes. Unless there is some new salt injected into the body politic, the Democratic party has lost its savor, and the cry of coalition against the Independents is only a new name for "stop thief," that betrays the thief itself. The party policy has got beyond the help of the honest men in the party. The "coalitions" are too strong for innocence and honesty, and the men who clamor for reform in the or- ganization are the very men who cheated in the last deal, and are only waiting to get another chance to cheat again. When the thimble-riggers get through with one crafty job, they are already fixed for another. If you work faithfully, ask nothing for yourself and defend all their official "crook- edness," you may be considered a very clever fellow, but you must always take a back seat or you will meet a senatorial sneer, or a spike from a railroad boomerang. When a high office is traded off for money, don't ask any questions, accept it, defend it, or you will find your self- abnegation of no value, no matter how long you have waited on the party. This is a road that never gets out of a well-l)eaten track, and there is no abuse half hard enough for the man who chooses principle, rather than party tricksters. Don't allow yourselves, Messrs. Editors, to get discouraged by this fight on the young men of the State. It must be young blood and pure patriotism in our young men that is to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 441 redeem Georgia and push the banner of Independentism to victory. I myself am traveling down the shady side of life, but I shall ever hold out an open hand to the gallant spirits who refuse to bend the knee where "thrift may follow fawn- ing." There is a worthy ambition in entering public life, but the sweetest, richest rewards ever given to a public servant is the thought that his patriotism and honesty were as pure when he gave up the trust as when he accepted it. To the men who charge corruption on me, I point them to my record. It is legitimate for me to retaliate and show up their own official and political conduct. W. H. FELTON. Ex-Gov. Smith replied over his own name February 21, 1882. He admitted he had submitted to the interview, but he had "no malice" in doing so. He attacked the "Mark- ham House Conference" with unstinted fury, and said Dr. Felton did not tell what was done there — that was what Smith wanted to know, etc. He said the Democratic party did not go to Benedict Arnolds, neither did the British army. "The pretension that Felton sets up is an insult to the intelligence of all men of every color in the land and yet this is the only defense Felton has to offer." (As I reread his tirade today, I assure my readers that this man took nearly two closely printed newspaper columns, to say no more than this, but he got down at last to business). "I will show that he has in- tentionally maligned Judge Hillyer, one of the purest and most intelligent of men who ever wore the ermine in Georgia by willfully withholding the truth in regard to the girl con- victed and sentenced for simply taking as Felton alleges, fifty cents. He has suppressed the facts in the Ratteree case. Now, parson, step to the front! You who, like Chadband, are ever grinding oil out of your palms and prating about "treweth," confess the treachery of which you already stand convicied before the public ! Until you can perform this one act of honesty you can never put me upon explanation or induce me to defend myself from your charges. The doctor is a political pariah, an outcast from all decent party associations, and hence he is seeking refuge and companionship in the Repub- lican party. He calls attention to the fact that I hold an 442 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics office. Felton never held an office he did not seek. Governor Colquitt, at the instance and on the petition of large numbers of legislature, saw fit to tender me a position on the railroad commissioner. I certainly never applied to the governor for the place. All these facts Felton knows to be true. I have ever thought it an honor to hold office when the incumbent does his duty ; yet I have never desired it so much as to be- tray my own party and go into the radical ranks to get it. Can the doctor say as much for himself? For the present T have done with the doctor. I have only used a portion of the ammunition laid away for him. I have the material on hand and will be ready to use it. Doctor, au revoir! (Signed) JAMES M. SMITH. Of course Dr. Felton "came again." His rejoinder is dated February 25, 1882. "Near Cartersville, Ga., Feb. 25, 1882. "Editors Constitution: "When I read Gov. Smith's rejoinder in your columns, it excited my profound commiseration and sympathy for him. It must be humiliating to every citizen in the State to see a former executive and the chairman of the railroad commission unable and unwilling to defend his offi- cial integrity against charges that were well-defined, positive and unequivocal. If explanation had been possible, it was eminently due to the people of the State of Georgia that he should establish beyond dispute his reputation for justice, fairness and impartiality. "Having attacked me without provocation, he thereby chal- lenged me to investigate his own political and official record, and he has had abundant opportunity to establish his inno- cence or palliate his errors if it had been possible. Instead of refutation or explanation he evades every issue and by a most unnatural silence, he stands confessed to the world as guilty of every charge I brought against him. I respect- fully assert it would be unbecoming in me to bandy words with a man who holds his official integrity so cheap as to refuse to defend it. Certain offenses in law after convic- tion therefor, incapacitate the offender for citizenship. A man who deals only in abuse, and is unable to vindicate him- self, is not an opponent to be respected. Until Gov. Smith My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 443 can meet the open issue between us, I decline any further controversy with him on any subject. Whenever he can meet the issue and reinstate himself as a worthy opponent, I hold myself ready to answer anything and everything he can charge against my official or political record. "In sorrow for the tarnished honor of my State, more than in anger for this unprovoked attack upon my character, I decline to notice the abuse in his last reply. Thanking you for the space you have given me, I respectfully suspend this wordy controversy. WILLIAM H. FELTON." The Thomasville Enterprise rushed to the front to declare Dr. Felt on to be ''criminally ignorant of the law of his State, especially when we consider the offices he has filled and the prominence he has attained. No one can, under the law, be sent to the penitentiary for stealing fifty cents. We advise him to study the penal code a little more." Whereupon the ubiquitous Grady said in the Constitution: "This gives us an opportunity to make some corrections which we supposed would be made by Governor Smith in his reply to Dr. Felton's onslaught. The facts in the case are these : A little colored girl going along the street with money in her hand was set upon and robbed by one of the characters technically known as street walkers. The woman was indicted for highway rob- bery. The shortest time to which she could be sentenced was five years, and she was sentenced for five years accordingly." As usual, Mr. Grady was "embarrassed by the facts." In Dr. Felton's letter the fact was stated that a negro girl had been sentenced to five years in the penitentiary for stealing fifty cents, and I w^ill show further that the Constitution (newspaper) was trying to conceal also the disgraceful fact that such sentences were of frequent occurrence in Georgia. I proposed again to Dr. Felton to allow me to measure foils in this case, because I had the overwhelming proof before Dr. Felton's reply to Governor Smith left our house. So I wrote for him the following : "Near Cartersville, Ga., February 27. "Editors Constitution: There is an issue of veracity be- tween myself and the Thomasville Enterprise. The Consti- 444 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics tution commented on the same in yesterday's (Sunday) paper. I ask a hearing in your columns. The Enterprise makes the bold assertion that I am 'criminally ignorant' of the laws of my State when I said a person could be sentenced to the pen- itentiary for five years for stealing fifty cents or fifty dollars. I propose to deal with this statement in the plainest way and present the proof as I have it, without a single care as to who may feel maligned or insulted in the same. In The Atlanta Constitution of November 26, 1881, I found the following, which I copy here verbatim: 'During the recent criminal trials in the superior court one Adeline Maddox, a colored girl, was convicted of robbing a negro child of fifty cents, and was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. Her attorney now moves the court for a new trial. Willis McAfee, a notorious criminal, pardoned out of the penitentiary by Governor Col- quitt in the last days of February, after a service of ten years, was convicted of a burglary, committed May 25, and sen- tenced to four years. He also, through his attorney, moves for a new trial. There are more charges for him to answer should a new trial be granted.' 'Now, Messrs. Editors, I must confess to considerable as- tonishment to hear you say in your Sunday's paper, 'No negro girl has been sentenced in Atlanta or in Georgia to five years in the penitentiary for stealing fifty cents.' It is true you have attempted to explain the colored girl's offense as 'high- way robbery,' but I gave the facts to the public in your very words, and I respectfully insist that my statement is hardly 'criminal ignorance' Avhen derived from such well-informed authority. I trust the Thomasville Enterprise will copy this letter of mine as proof of the Parson's innocent truthfulness, Avhicli can hardly be called criminal ignorance. "Now, can you explain to me why Willis IMcAfee, 'The Notorious Criminal,' was only sentenced for four years, while the fifty cents high- way robber was sent up for five? There is something in a name, it seems. If you call it highway robbery, you can make as many 'able-bodied, long-term convicts' as the lessees may need; and if you call it something else, you can protect the My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 445 hardest criminal in the State and give him what might be called feather-bed punishment. To illustrate, I will take the case of Edward Cox, the slayer of Alston. In the first place, his trial was most remarkable in many respects. The defense sought to delay the trial at one time by the plea that General Gordon had not arrived, and he was the most im- portant witness for Mr. Cox. When he did arrive, the prisoner asked as a special favor that General Gordon and Governor Colquitt should not remain in the court room while he was being tried for his life, and the court granted this most singu- lar request. That was certainly a most singular proceeding. Poor Alston had been sent over the river of death, and it ap- pears he had no friend to insist that the whole truth should be known to the public. The negro girl is condemned as a highway robber, while Mr. Cox received the very lightest sentence of the court for the crime committed and was then handed over to the partiality and tenderness of his friends — the lessees. I have the Constitution's report of the trial and the real facts can be made to appear. When the supreme court refused a new trial and he had to start to the Dade Coal Mines, how did he go? I have the Elberton News of May 19, 1880, giving a full account of the departure, which that paper stated was taken from your paper. The Constitution. I will condense the voluminous account, but you shall have my copy of The News, if my veracity shall be questioned by the Thomasville Enterprise. " ^When Mr. Cox left Fulton county jail, he rode to the depot in a closed carriage, attended by a friend who there delivered him over to Captain Nelms, one of the men who saw Alston slain. A fine breakfast was provided at the restaurant and a seat furnished in one of the passenger coaches of the train. By instructions from Governor Brown ( ?), Cox was not ironed, and was allowed all the comforts of a regular pas- senger. Every comfort and sympathy was offered to him and he was assured that every effort would be made to procure executive clemency for him at the proper time. As Governor Brown gets the "long-term, able-bodied" men, Mr. Cox was sent to him, but he was to be provided with occupation in the 446 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics open air, as work in the mines would be injurious to his •health.' "Now, Messrs. Editors, I desire you to compare this pun- ishment with that of Adeline Maddox, who stole fifty cents from a negro child; the dangerous 'highway robber,' if that terms suits you better. The DeKalb News gave the facts in reference to Cox's pur- suit of an escaped convict, of how he jumped on a mule — was absent several days — nobody knew where he was, or was in the least uneasy about him — until he returned to his 'light employment' in the Dade Coal Mines, the friendly shelter ar- ranged for him. "It really appears, when you read of Adeline Maddox and Willis McAfee and Edward Cox, the lightest crimes get the heaviest punishment, while the big criminal is ensconced in 'soft places.' This is one of the glaring errors of the system. "It costs the State, I understand, about fifty dollars to con- vict a criminal — the average price. The courts of Bartow county (I speak of my own county because I can speak posi- tively) entail more and more expense on the tax-payers every year. We get no profit from these criminals whatever. Those who pay taxes are compelled to work the roads and build bridges without any help from the convicts, who drain the taxes of the county continually. We grow poorer while the men who control those criminals grow richer, and if anything is said against the system or its method of procurement, a storm of abuse is hurled upon the man who dares to criticize. If a legislative report is thorough enough to get down to the iniquities of the system, a rebuke is given that poor Bob Alston found, to his cost, was heavy enough to deter a similar experiment. Talk About Vested Rights! What do you say of vested wrongs? When the idea was afloat several years ago that the courts should be enjoined to require the keepers of the penitentiary to deal justly with the lessees, so far as to distribute convicts impartially, the courts decided the keeper should do as he pleased. In 1879, a "lessee" went into print to say the State should not and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 447' could not control a single convict to build her State Capitol, for the "lessees would take it to the courts and the courts would sustain the lessees," which I think was highly probable from the general appearance of their decisions. If we are in bondage to our political masters, the State should not become too helpless to protect the criminal from atrocities, abuses and unlawful imprisonment. I did not know who presided in the case of Adeline Maddox until I saw a pretended reply from a distinguished source, but I am still free enough to say that I don't care now, for the verdict would have been a hard one if King Solomon had made it. I am no lawyer, but no man in Georgia has higher esteem for legal ability and erudition and the hope of this republic lies in an honest, incorruptible judiciary — but I am much at fault, if there is a despotism under heaven that would sentence a colored girl to the iniquities of the present convict system in Georgia for five hopeless years for stealing the sum of fifty cents ! The Northern journals charge complicity between the judiciary and the lessees, and I am pained to know that this verdict is a sample of Georgia justice. If there is no "coali- tion" between the code and our judiciary, there seems to be a "capital understanding" that no criminal shall get off easily who steals fifty cents, though they are not so strict in larger cases. If the code is "cast iron," and the judge is obliged to sentence without any discretion, suppose we make the code the judge and save a considerable sum that is now absorbed by our staff of judges? We have paid out thousands of dollars since the war for new and revised copies of the code, and instead of making the law clearer, we seem to get more and more befogged. If no- body suffered but the poor men who are taxed to raise this money to pay for revised copies of the code, we might bear it for it seems pre-determined to tax us to the utmost to sup- port our political ring-masters and their pets, but when life, liberty and property are all jeopardized, there should be some- thing done and done quickly. I will say to the Thomasville Enterprise, the "parson" is always ready to be instructed, for he is not like a numerous class in Georgia "who never learn 448 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and never forget," but there is somebody else criminally ig- norant "in this matter of sentencing a colored girl to the pen- itentiary for stealing fifty cents. ' ' Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. I collected as many facts as possible in regard to the "col- ored girl," and I have said a dozen times, it would have been kinder to her and her future if they had taken her out and shot her! On the 8th of July, 1881, Adeline Maddox was arrested at the instance of Lou Amy, a colored woman, by Officer Norman, of the Atlanta police. Subsequent to her arrest, she was recognized by Mr. Emmel, superintendent of the city chain gang as Adeline Maddox, who had but a short time before escaped from the city chain gang. The day after her arrest she was taken before Judge Tanner and sent to jail to wait until the grand jury met. The grand jury re- turned a true bill on October 12th, and charged that the girl had taken fifty cents from Mary Ann Thompson. On the 29tli day of October, 1881, in the Fulton superior court, Judge Hillyer presiding, the case came for trial. There was but one witness for the defense, Ida Dupree, another col- ored girl, and she said she had been with the prisoner off and on all day ; but a ten-year-old child, Mary Ann Thompson, said she had carried home some Avashing and received fifty cents for it, and a colored girl, whose name she did not know, snatched the fifty cents from her hand and ran off with it. This ten-year-old girl afterwards pointed out Adeline Mad- dox, and her mother had the arrest made. Adeline Maddox denied leaving her mother's yard all day. She had never seen the child or her mother until they had her arrested. But the jury found her guilty, after the charge of Judge Hillyer, and the court sentenced her to the penitentiary for five years. She had remained in jail from July 8tli to October 29tli, which should be added to her five years term in the penitentiary. The notorious McAfee was arrested by Captain Bagby, of the Atlanta police force, who found a coat and fifty-dollar sleeve buttons, which were stolen from A. V. Brumby's house, 124 South Pryor street. Mr. Brumby failed to convince the jury of anything save McAfee's entrance to his house, although he was a desperate criminal and had been pardoned out by My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 449 Governor Colquitt, so the court sentenced Willis to four years in the penitentiary. Ex-Governor Smith jeered Dr. Felton, called him Chad- band; always talking about truth, and flaunted this case as a gross insult to Judge George Hillyer, but no man — judge, jury or railroad commissioner, ever rose up to deny the facts then under consideration. I felt then that I owed Commis- sioner J. M. Smith something. I am now settling the debt. He is dead and my husband is dead, but I am putting down the facts in a safe place, where future generations may draw their own comparisons and render their own verdicts. What happened, you will ask, after we made the proof so plain, as that he who ran could read? Railroad Commissioner Smith was obliged to say something. Grady went after him, and interviewed him, and asked "if he (Smith) intended to reply?" "Why, no," smiled Governor Smith. "Why should I? I am debarred by all rules of honorable practice. In my first in- terview I charged Felton with a dishonorable and treacherous act. He now stands as a criminal in the dock, definitely charged with a base, dishonorable action. Why then, should I, as an lionorable man, bandy Avords with a trembling crim- inal, who cannot even raise his eyes to the jury and enter a plea of 'not guilty?' The truth is, Felton shows the same irrelevance of defense exhibited by Guiteau, and has not the decency to plead insanity as an excuse for his injury. I shall not notice him until he denies my charge concerning the Mark- ham House conference. He cannot deny it. Farrow, who is a bold and truthful man, acknowledges all I charged in my former letter, and that there was a perfect coalition between Felton and the stalwart wing of the Republican party and that this coalition was established at the Markham House con- ference and Felton, instead of being independent, is a slave — because he is a slave to a bargain which is sinister in its char- acter and involves treachery to his own State and the be- trayal of the people who have honored him. With a shameless- ness beyond precedent in the political history of this or any other State, he rests his whole case upon an appeal to dead- beats and criminals. He deliberately assaults the judiciary of the State — assaults every juryman who sits in the jury 450 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics box — denounces the whole system of justice in the interests of a few criminals. Why, the very case of the colored girl that he alludes to, was a crime committed against a poor, defense- less negro. It is only those who sympathize with crime that Dr. Felton can count upon." These are very hard words, said Mr. Grady. "But they are deserved," said Smith. "His course since the Markham House conference could have but one effect, and that is to demoralize public sentiment, to dis- credit law and order, to blacken the name of the State and to encourage criminals. It is worse than for him to become a highway robber himself. His conduct is inexplicable only on the ground that he has been promised a Federal appoint- ment if he will work the base uses of his late purchasers. He has no hope of being elected. I do not consider the case of the Doctor as entirely hopeless ; still I look on him as the Uriah Heep of Georgia politics, full of humbleness. ' ' Before I comment on Governor Smith's wild assertions in his second interview with the Constitution, I will copy a few para- graphs from an open letter written immediately afterwards by Col. H. P. Farrow, who is called by Smith ' ' a truthful and hon- orable man." "I would thank Governor Smith when he wishes to quote from me, that he would quote correctly, so that I may be able to return compliments. When and where did I ever say there was a coalition established at the Mark- ham House conference? When and where did I ever say Hon. W. H. Felton is a slave to a bargain, which is sinister in character, that involves treachery to his own people, the stand- ing of his own State, and the betrayal of people who have hon- ored him? I have expressed no such ideas, literally or in substance. Nothing, absolutely nothing, occurred during that distinguished gentleman's presence in Atlanta in December last to justify such a charge. Several persons called on him; among them ex-Senator Miller, Judge Hook, Gen. Longstreet and Judge Bigby. I met him in the city and went with him to his room at the hotel, without any previous invitation. I told Dr. Felton that Mr. A. H. Wilson was in the city and I asked that I might go and find him and introduce him. I know that Dr. Felton did not know that Mr. Wilson was in the city. Ex-Senator Miller has explained his presence there, and this ]\Iy INIemoirs of Georgia Politics 451 explains mine, and I refer to any of these above named gentle- men as to the correctness of this statement. Hon. W. H. Felton has the right to come to Atlanta and stop at the Markham House and to receive his friends there. And he has the right to talk with them on politics and did so. But the charge that there was a ' ' coalition ' ' entered into, or a bargain made, is absolutely untrue, I care not by whom made. Gov- ernor Smith utters that which is totally untrue, and subjects himself to the suspicion of knowingly uttering that which he knew was untrue merely to accomplish a malicious purpose. It takes two at least to make a bargain ; now, will Governor Smith please give the names or name of any party to that bargain which he claims sinks Hon. W. H. Felton "beneath the notice of any honest man?" "Will he say that ex-Senator Miller or Judge Hook or General Longstreet or Judge Bigby or Mr. Wilson were parties to it and therefore with Dr. Felton, "beneath the notice of any honest man?" * * * j^ Gov- ernor Smith 's effort to get out of the way of that distinguished person, he must not run backwards over too many other per- sons. And who is Governor Smith, that he should declare to the world that Hon. W. H. Felton is beneath his notice? Who is he, that he should declare to the world, by necessary implication, that others are his superiors in every point of view, are beneath his notice? This prolific theme I will not enter upon now, but will return to the Markham House. Nothing was said or done in the nature of a coalition or bar- gain or that could be so construed. It is true, that each and all of us, as private citizens and mere individuals, urged Dr. Felton to run for governor as an Independent candidate, and it is true that he refused to entertain the idea. He stated that he thought the people of his district had the first claim upon him, and they desired he should run for congress, and it was his purpose to do so. Does that constitute a coalition or bar- gain? Had we no right, as individuals, to talk to him and had he no right to refuse our wishes? Does our solicitation and his refusal constitute coalition or bargain? I had 'lie pleasure of being a near neighbor to Hon. W. H. Felton, in Bartow county, for several years prior to the war. I am proud of having his personal friendship for over twenty-five years. 452 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I know him and the people of Georgia know him to be in- capable of making a coalition or bargain of a sinister char- acter, or involving treachery to the people who have honored him. "If Dr. Felton Avonld run for governor, the people would want no pledge from him. His past life is his surest guaranty. He has at all times during the unpleasant days of Reconstruc- tion, thrown the weight of his character against the wicked- ness of bourbon intolerance and proscription. When the results of the war were being realized and passion ruled this Southern land, he had the nerve and Christian fortitude to respect true worth and merit, whether in Democrat or Republican. At no period did he ever turn his back on a friend because of political differences. When Bourbons were proclaiming from every stump that wives should abandon hus- bands who were willing to accept in good faith the results of the war, and when assassination was used as the recognized mode of getting rid of Republicans, Hon. W. H. Felton frowned down this wicked, this inhuman brutality, and stood as a breakwater in its path. The Republicans of Georgia have seen him tried under heavy fire, and he always had the nerve to do right. Hence they required no pledge of him before aiding in sending him to congress. We have seen him in congress for six years withstanding all temptations, and retiring as poor as he entered, while others have used official station to acquire wealth. They have seen him triumphantly elected at three successful elections by the people of the Seventh Con- gressional district, and have seen him defeated by a "coali- tion" between the "organized Democracy" and the internal revenue officers in Georgia and Washington City. "Only a short time since, when it was charged that Andrew Clark, collector Second Internal Revenue district in Georgia, had abused the power of his office in using it to defeat Dr. Felton in the last election. General Green B. Raum, Commis- sioner of Internal Revenue at Washington (in an unguarded moment) declared that Mr. Clark was not responsible for that, as he did it by his (Raum's) direction. General Raum then declared that he directed Collector Clark to use the power of the federal government, through the machinery of the in- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 453 ternal revenue bureau, against Dr. Felton, which necessarily elected the nominee of the Bourbons. Georgians, whether In- dependents or Republicans, are unwilling for an internal rev- enue officer from the State of Illinois to issue his edict from his bureau in Washington to his subordinates in Georgia to strike down a man whom they love to honor — and will show in the coming election whether General Raum, of Illinois, by virtue of his being at the head of the internal revenue bureau at Washington, has the right to dictate by his order who shall represent them in congress. ''And if the people of this State are subjected, in their present impoverished condition, to the enormous expense of an extra session of the legislature simply to cut up congressional districts to enable the Bourbons to defeat W. H. Felton for congress, mark the prediction — it will make him governor of Georgia. HENRY P. FARROW." Atlanta, Ga., March 7, 1882. In Governor Smith's first interview, in a preceding letter, he averred that no "honest man could afford to answer Dr. Felton," but Mr. Grady inserted his newspaper gimlet into this bale of very yellow, frost-bitten politics and Governor Smith was made to appear as answering Dr. Felton. Was he, therefore, not an "honest man?" Accidently he appears to have stumbled upon a truth in a pack of falsehoods. Colonel Farrow told him he lied, in more modest terms, and it does not lie in the mouths of his defenders to say he ever dis- qualified his own "truthful and honorable" witness, Colonel Farrow. It was inquired, in my presence, "What is the matter with Governor Smith, anyhow?" And the answer came, "Too drunk to know what he was talking about!" Was that true? Dr. Felton, in a speech made before the forty-fourth con- gress, arraigned these internal revenue officials for their cruelty and inhumanity to the mountaineers in North Georgia. It was terrific, but it induced the federal government to dis- miss those tyrants in the revenue system, and did more to prevent injustice and cruelty to the people than any one speech by a Georgian ever made before congress. He won the 454 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics inveterate hostility of these dismissed employees. They fought Dr. Felton all the time, but it was not until Hon. Green B. Raum came out in an interview with Senator Brown, in the year 1880, when the latter reached the senate by appoint- ment of Governor Colquitt, did we see the finger that moved the machine in the Seventh district, and we saw Dr. Felton 's defeat compassed by the use of these internal revenue officials in "coalition" with Bullock Democrats and the organized Democracy — one led by Senator Brown, and the latter worked by the Kirkwood Ring — aided by J. INI. Smith, chairman of Georgia's railroad commission. Dr. Felton did not bandy more words with the discredited chairman, but he did write the following to The Constitution under date of March 6, 1882: "Editors Constitution: I propose to reply very soon to your allegation that I attacked the judiciary of the State .when I gave you and the Thomasville Enterprise the facts in reference to Adeline Maddox, McAfee and Cox. This charge against me is unjust, because I distinctly stated I had the highest opinion of an honest, incorruptible judiciary, and I was not aware of the name of the judge who sentenced that colored girl to the penitentiary for stealing fifty cents (from a negro child ten years old, the only witness against her). "You laid the blame on the code. I then said the code should be amended, which is a job to be readily undertaken, for, to use the words of the Sparta Ishmaelite, we hardly get a new one out before there is preparation for another one. I should indeed feel alarmed if I thought the whole judiciary was likely to sentence everybody to five years in the peniten- tiary for stealing fifty cents. I acquit them of the intention and the practice, but unless your judges claim infallibility, you need not rush to the front to defend such verdicts, for the people are getting very restive under the situation as developed every day. I am preparing a full account of the convict lease system and the methods used to fasten it upon the State, and until it is ready I call your attention to an- other law which, in my humble opinion, is an outrage upon every man, both white and black from the age of sixteen to fifty. The article is written by one of the most distinguished My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 455 men in Georgia, but I assume the responsibility of publishing the article. W. H. FELTON." The Road Laws. By the laws of Georgia in force at the close of the war, the public roads were cut out and usually worked by the white males between 16 and 45 years of age : and by male slaves and free negroes between 16 and 60. In the organization of most of the incorporated towns and cities authority has been given to lay in commutation of this duty, a street tax; and generally this tax is three dollars per head on each person liable to work the roads. This road duty in the country and this street tax are en- forceable by penal law. The road commissioner in the country may issue a warrant for the arrest of the delinquent and imprison him. This power did not exist in slavery times. The commissioners might fine, but could not imprison. The power to imprison came in first by the act of February 23, 1866 — acts of 1865 and '66 ; page 23, Code, 1873, paragraph 619. In the cities — suppose we take Atlanta, as a specimen — if one subject to road duty fails to pay his street tax, they "make a case against him before the recorder, and he is fined generally ten dollars. If he does not pay this and the tax and costs, in all fifteen dollars, he is put to work on the streets as a criminal, to work the whole out at fifty cents a day. This amounts to a penal servitude for thirty days for failing to pay a street tax of three dollars. I do not know how they enforce the law in all the cities and towns, but the law gives them the same power all over the State. One other thing to set forth the system more fully : A man or a boy may be forced in the country (on pain of imprison- ment, at the discretion of the road commissioner) to work on the roads as much as five days at one time, and as much as fifteen days each year, and beside time enough to meet any special emergency that may arise. Under the old slave system this programme for cutting out and working the roads was bearable, since the rich men owned the slaves, and the burden fell mainly on them. But in a State where all are free, these laws are most grossly outrageous and oppressive, especially as since the war all have become free, this terribly dangerous and oppressive dis- cretion has been given to the road commissioners to enforce them by imprisonment, at their discretion. In all the old free States the roads are made and worked by funds raised by taxation. Have the poor and the rich an 456 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics equal interest in the roads? Should a farm hand who gets ten dollars a month for his labor have the same liabilities cast upon him as the owner of a thousand acres of land? I see in a late paper a statement of the purchase of a plan- tation in Jefferson county — the "Oldtown" place — at $32,000. Under the law as it stands, the owner of that place has no more burden upon him in relation to the public roads than there is upon the poorest farm hand he hires to work on it. The poor laborer in the city of Atlanta, who gets seventy- five cents a day for his labor, pays the same street tax as the richest man in the city, and if the rich man be over fifty, the burden is not upon him at all. Such a system needs but to be stated to be condemned. It is an outrage upon every laboring man in the State. It is an outrage upon the boys between sixteen and twenty-one. It is an outrage upon the poor, white and black, from sixteen years to fifty. Now, who are the roads, in the main, worked for? Is it not true, emphatically, that public roads are for the use of the property owners? "PETE." (This is Georgia history that has no record in the State Capitol — or if it had been there, it could have "disappear- ances." When Dr. Felton sought the records, where the "suppressed testimony" of Chas. L. Frost was accounted for by so-called Democrats — not a sign or symptom of the paper could be located for a number of days. When I sought to find the testimony where Governor Brown made oath before an investigating committee that Judge Lester was paid a thous- and dollars to lobby for the State Road lease — every volume was out of place. I finally received a copy of the Journal through the courtesy of that honest gentleman and fine jurist. Judge Dennis Hammond, or the whole business would have been one of hearsay. I made application some months since for the printed testimony in regard to what was paid out to lobby for the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad Company, where Railroad Commissioner Trammell was given a thousand dollar bond by Eager, or his attorney, to work for the rail- road, and I have not found it yet. I have enough in hand to make a connected story, but I want to know why such official documents can disappear when- ever they are needed or called for? It explains the necessity for scrap-books — for Dr. Felton conducted his campaign My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 457 against Judge Lester largely from a scrap-book. I took the newspaper accounts of the investigation of the State Road lease, cut them out, as my daily business, pasted them down as soon as I clipped them, but it was the Journals of the house and senate that I sought for and they had "disappeared.") But I have saved, fortunately, a letter written by Senator Brown, dated September 6, 1880, in which he paid his respects to the belligerent chairman of the railroad commission, James Milton Smith. It is dated: "Atlanta, Ga., September 6, 1880. "Col. J. Branham, Rome, Ga. — Dear Sir: I have to ac- knowledge the receipt of your letter, and in reply have to state that I am very much astonished at the statements you say were made by Governor Smith in his speech at Rome. Vou say he stated that Colquitt took a fifty thousand dollar bond, with me as security from the Citizens' Bank on account of the State deposits which he placed there without interest and three per cent, interest from the Bank of the State of Georgia. You surely must be mistaken in the statement made by Governor Smith, as this statement is untrue. I am not security for the Citizens' Bank as State depository, or in any other way. I never gave a fifty thousand dollar bond (with me as security) in any matter of any character. "You state further that Governor Smith said I took fifty thousand dollars of the Citizens' Bank assets as collateral before I would sign the bond. There is not a word of truth in this. "Also that my son is a director and the bank's attorney. That is also untrue as to the directorship. My son is attorney for the Citizens' Bank, but he does not own a dollar of the stock, is not a director and never was. I own but $3,500 of the stock of the bank and it only pays me 6 per cent, per an- num dividend. I am not a director. As to the other point about the deposit with the Citizens' Bank, when the Bank of the State of Georgia offered to pay interest, I know nothing personally as I had nothing to do whatever with any of the transactions. It is said that solvent banks generally declined to do so, on the ground that the legislature had limited the rate of interest they could take at eight per cent., and that they could not afford to be limited to that and pay interest. I am also informed that no bank in Atlanta, except Mr. Coker's, proposed to pay interest, and that he did not make a proposition until after he was informed that the Citizens' Bank was to have the deposits. He then said he would pay three per cent, interest ; but on looking over the reports made 458 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics by his bank, the governor did not think well of it, and was unwilling to deposit with that bank on account of what he considered its weak condition. ''I am also informed that one bank in Augusta proposed to pay interest, but would offer no security except their own stock and that no other bank in Georgia did propose to pay interest.' As already stated above, I know nothing whatever of any of these transactions of my own knowledge. ''As to Governor Smith's statement that I am making $800 a day out of an iron mine, it is equally untrue. The Dade Coal Company, of which I am president, owns an interest in the Rising Fawn Iron Furnace, in Dade county, and it is making a reasonable income. Every one acquainted with the iron business is obliged to know no furnace is making a heavy in- come at the present price of iron. And you say, Governor Smith adds, 'and a large profit from the Dade Coal Mines with convict labor.' "We are making some profit at the Dade Coal Mines, and there we use convict labor, but we are not working a convict within fifteen miles of the iron furnace in which we have an interest. The Dade Coal Company has an interest in iron ore in Bartow county and has built three miles of rail- road out to their mines, which is nearly completed. We hope to make some money on that. Is it a crime for a citizen to put his money into the development of mineral interests, especially if he should succeed in making money by his energy and enterprise? We certainly want all the railroads that will develop the country. You are at liberty to use this as you think proper. Yours very truly, "JOSEPH E. BROWN." There seemed to be somebody in the Constitution office, regularly employed, to snarl at Dr. Felton's heels. The fol- lowing letter explains itself: "Near Cartersville, March 22, 1882. "Editors Constitution: The Constitution of today has reached me. In your editorials I find the following : "While caucusing at the Markham House, hunting for something to make a fuss about, why did not the "coalition colonels" have something to say about poor old Hicks, who was assassinated in Gwinnett county? If the assassins had not been their political allies, what a fuss they would have made. " I am led to suppose you really wish to hear something from the "coal- ition colonels," although you will understand I lay no claim My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 459 to the title of Colonel. The murder of Mr. Hicks is believed to be a most cold-blooded, brutal one. It was committed under the management of Collector Andrew Clark, of whom you were obliging enough to say some days ago: "He has devoted himself to the faithful discharge of the duties of his office. He whipped the fight and collected the revenue. Of course he made enemies — and they have succeeded in having him re- moved." After that indorsement, I think you will agree with me that the "coalition colonels" are not the men to be called on to defend Mr. Clark or to condemn Mr. Hicks. To go back a little further: In the year 1880, very soon after Senator Brown took possession of General Gordon's vacated seat, he called on Commissioner Raum. The National Republican gave the following account of the interview, which I copy here ver- batim : "Commissioner Raum is greatly pleased with an interview with Senator Brown in regard to illicit distilling in the South. The senator expressed himself as decidedly opposing in any way the men engaged in making whiskey without paying tax on it. He was in favor of rooting out the evil radically, and at as early date as possible. He thought too severe measures could not be adopted. Raum says Senator Brown is the first mem- ber of congress in the South who has offered him assistance in his war on moonshiners and he thinks the effect of this offer will go far towards accomplishing the desired results." Now Messrs. Editors, you have a little light thrown on a very cloudy place after reading this interview. This "offer" which was to go "far towards accomplishing desired results," will explain the "severe measures" used by Collector Clark. Perhaps your senator can give you more information about the killing of "old man Hicks" than any of the gentlemen who visited the Markham House on Monday. The first effect of Senator Brown's "offer" to Commissioner Raum was developed in Collector Clark's anxiety to defeat me in 1880. If I had been willing to murder "old man Hicks" or to advocate other severe measures, perhaps I would have been more acceptable to the revenue allies. Now, Messrs. Editors, I have given you the facts as they appear at this writing and I insist that you apply at the 460 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics proper place for the reasons that may be ^iven for the murder of old man Hicks. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. When these people were training their guns on Dr. Felton, I obtained his permission to "sharp shoot" the enemy. He had his hands full of business at home and outside, and it was a physical impossibility for him to draw a "bead on his gun" every day in the week, but I enjoyed the gunning and I kept my "powder dry" and together we enjoyed the sharp shooting immensely. After Mr. Stephens went over to Senator Brown, body and breeches, scant as both were obliged to be, I found the trium- virate had put a check on their venal newspaper scribes, and in the Seventh Congressional district they adopted "still hunting." Along with the revenue crowd, they laid their secret plans and carried them out. As these things appear in my review of Dr. Felton 's race with Hon. Judson Clements, I will now attend to Governor Smith a little while longer, and then leave the ex-governor and ex-railroad commissioner to your own consideration. Ex-Governor Smith did something in fixing up the twenty-year convict lease that placed him in the power of the principal lessees of that twenty-year com- pany — no matter how abhorrent Colquitt, Gordon and Brown were to him, he was obliged to step out on their side when- ever adverse criticism of the lease system was brought to public notice. I soon learned that they had this power over him, so I did not wait an hour after I saw the following paragraph in the Macon Telegraph, before I penned an article for that paper and signed it "Plain Talk," and if I ever had a "subject to dissect," as the doctors say, that was both interesting and suggestive, it was ex-Gov. Milton Smith. He had outraged decency in his abuse of Dr. Felton and from what I could gather he had wearied Governor McDaniel beyond the limit as railroad commissioner. He had exhausted his vocabulary in abusing the Kirkwood Ring and the senatorial sell-out to Brown, nevertheless, it was a question as to what the deposed commissioner would do when General Gordon made his cyclone canvass over all Georgia in the year 1886. General Gordon My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 461 made one of his happiest hits in Columbus, when he told the people that Governor Smith would tell a different tale now, etc. The paragraph I allude to was an editorial squib — and reads thus : ' ' This little bit is the only true account of the meeting in Sparta : Gordon said : "Do you know ex-Governor James M. Smith, who has been most able and bitter in his denunciation of the so-called Ring? Why, for months we did not speak, but he is on the stump for me now!" So there was a ring and Governor Smith denounced it and his denunciation was "able and bitter." "We can imagine that without being told. It appears that he and General Gordon did not speak for months on accout of this "able and bitter" denunciation. Why? If there was no ring, why should General Gordon refuse to speak to Governor Smith? Was General Gordon defending the Ring then as now ? It is a matter of little or no consequence why or how General Gordon and Governor Smith became reconciled. It must be accepted as a fact that there was a "ring," but Governor Smith denounced it in words "able and bitter." Gordon was on the stump at that time and replied to Governor Smith. It is to be presumed that he defended the Ring, especially as the Ring is supporting Gordon now." This statement, if it had been made to order, could not have fitted my frame of mind any better. I had lively remembrance of Chadband, Uriah Heep, traitor. Radical; Colonel Farrow's letter where he pronounced this Governor Smith a liar, and I certainly went into the newspapers and made it lively for him. It gave me satisfaction to tell him his own, and I wound up by quoting what he said in 1880: "Now let Ben Hill resign and let Bullock take his place!" I expected it would infuriate him. Perhaps there was enough of the primitive savage left in me to enjoy the sorry spectacle ! He then appeared in the Atlanta Constitution raving like a maniac ! He spit newspaper venom at Dr. Felton until his ravings became insensate 1 He hashed over again his sputter- ings about the Markham House conference ; he tiptoed in ' ' bit- ter" rage and "able" vituperation, although four years had elapsed since he made such a curveting display of himself in 462 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics the year 1882. He quoted Mr. Hill's old denunciations of Dr. Felton and frothed at the pen until his temper became vicio.xs! But nothing he could say and nothing he could do disguised the real truth : he had to defend General Gordon 's and Senator Brown's connection with the convict lease, and they knew exactly how to make him step lively and get about it I It would be a pity to set down his ravings for future generations to read! Dr. Felton 's reply is worth reading, because he had become more familiar with the facts in regard to the juggling that occurred in Fulton county jail. He had secured the "Bill of exceptions" which had been used in a court trial, held before Judge George Hillyer, in which the full details were given. I have the document at this writing, and Governor Smith ap- peared as attorney for one of the lease companies — possibly the 'one headed by John W. Murphy and "his friend, John W. Renfro." I had been waiting for an opportunity to bring it out, and it is still, in my opinion, one of the smallest, meanest, most scurvy and contemptible political tricks ever known to any State or section. When you consider that the trick was worked by ex-Gov. Jos. E. Brown, lessee, Senator John B. Gordon, lessee, and the chief executive of the State, James Mil- ton Smith, perhaps a partner in the lease, and the juggle took place over four poor, miserable wretches — still in Fulton county jail, undelivered to their masters, you will agree with me, I know, that we lived in a day of small men with smaller principles ! Dr. Felton 's reply to Governor Smith was sent to The Con- stitution, where Smith's attack had been printed. That paper refused to print it. Then Dr. Felton wrote the following letter : "Near Cartersville, June 17, 1886. "Editor Telegraph: The Constitution allowed Governor Smith to attack me in an interview, which appeared last Sun- day in their columns. I replied in a letter, a part of which I forwarded to you last Tuesday, which was proper, in defense of myself in regard to statements made by The Constitution; also, I reserved the reply to Governor Smith, offering it to The Constitution to print, as a matter of simple justice to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 463 myself and to its readers. They refused to publish, as you will see by an authoritative statement made to you by another. After flooding the State with Governor Smith's attack, they deliberately refused to allow me a line in defense. Now will you publish it? With thanks for your kindness in the past, I shall esteem the publication of the full letter as a favor. "W. H. FELTON." ''Near Cartersville, June 16, 1886. "Editors Constitution: When last I saw Governor Smith, he met me in the Kimball House to thank me for "saving" the railroad commission. The last letter I had from him was in reply to one of mine, in which I condoled with him for the "walloping" given him by Governor McDaniel, and that letter is unique in its tone and general get up." (I copied it near the beginning of this review of Governor Smith's politics). "Governor McDaniel would enjoy it nov\^ at this time, since Governor Smith has been forced back into traces and made to pull nolens volens. The last I heard of him until he entered this canvass, he was praising me before the members of the State Agricultural Society. Some unaccountable change has come over the spirit of his dreams. I have divined the cause. So soon as a convict lease candidate appeared, he was obliged to support him. Governor Smith was attorney for one or two of these lease companies in the year 1879. In a trial before Fulton superior court, to enjoin Principal Keeper Nelms against granting con- victs to the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad, Governor Smith testified under oath before W. I. Heyward, justice of the peace, Fulton county, on November 26, 1879, in these words: "In the negotiations which led to the contracts, de- ponent talked in reference thereto with John B. Gordon, Joseph E. Brown and Thomas Alexander, who seemed to speak for their respective companies. The interviews which deponent had with these gentlemen while negotiations were pending were numerous and deponent cannot undertake to give more than a general recollection of what transpired." This fastens the negotiations and the parties connected therewith. (Smith was then governor and the chief executive when these nego- tiations took place). "W. B. Lowe testifies on oath, before 464 My jVIemoirs op Georgia Politics George Hillyer, October 12, 1881, "that Smith would organize his company (Gordon's company) if some convicts were thrown back on the State. Lockett and Lowe rushed to Marietta to persuade General Phillips to surrender convicts, promising to return them immediately with pay for time and expense. Phillips refused, as he wanted more convicts and it would dishearten the stockholders of the road. In the meantime they found four convicts in Fulton county jail not yet assigned to anybody, in the custody of John T. Brown, principal keeper (Smith's brother-in-law), who was ordered to turn them over to Phillips, who refused them and Governor Smith then issued an executive order granting the immediate use of convicts to General Gordon's camp and others, although their contract did not begin until April 1, 1879, and Governor Smith thus anticipated the legal lease on December 1, 1876. Now, John T. Brown, a personal subordinate of Governor Smith and also his brother-in-law, knew these convicts had never been assigned to Phillips, for Phillips testified on oath before Samuel Wiel, N. P., October 3, 1881, that these four convicts were never in his possession one minute, and they were assigned to him, not for the purpose of adding them to the number of convicts held by him, but at the special request of complainants, that he might decline to receive them and they were then assigned by the order of the governor, and said convicts were in Fulton county jail and never in fact in de- fendant 's possession. ' ' Comment is needless. Governor Smith went before the legis- lature two weeks afterwards and said "it had become neces- sary to establish permanent camps and he had done so," but there was no word to show that he and John B. Gordon had been in consultation, to hoodwink the State of Georgia over four convicts in Fulton county jail. By this despicable, con- temptible trick, John B. Gordon was able to populate his plantation in Taylor county with 169 slaves, for which he paid $11 per annum, and for every sixty of them he received fifty bales of cotton, clear money. Now it is not strange that the "author of the system," which Governor Smith calls him- self, should rush to General Gordon's support. In justice to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 465 Smith, it should be said he was trying to get into the United States senate. He had failed to be renominated for governor, although he forced the leasing of convicts three years ahead of time to oblige General Gordon, and this was the last des- perate effort to secure the position in the senate. The legis- lature, manipulated by Gordon and Colquitt, "walloped" him from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light and he ''quit speaking" to Gordon until this campaign opened, according to Gordon him- self. This is harmony "in a horn!" I attacked the lease system and Governor Smith quit speaking to me and abuses me. Governor Smith cannot defend that dirty trick with four convicts in Fulton county jail. It disgraces him as an execu- tive of the State. His neglect and incompetency lost $220,000 to the State in the Jones case. Go to the records of Fulton county superior court for the proof! His trade with lobbyists lost a large sum to the tax-payers, who saw a claim recovered from the general government of $200,000, one-fourth of which was paid out instanter to friends of Gordon and Colquitt, who had no more to do with passing the claim through the forty- fourth congress than you had in defeating Gladstone's home- rule bill. Except to go to St. Louis as a delegate to a nomin- ating Democratic convention, failure was written on Governor Smith and his administration, and having tried unsuccessfully to get into other offices for years, he induced Colquitt to make him railroad commissioner, which act he paid for in a Smith- like manner by abusing his benefactor from Dade to Chatham. Present my compliments to Governor Smith ! I am happy to enjoy the good opinion of some people, and I am pleased to know I do not gratify the "author of the convict lease sys- tem," in my exposure of corruption. There is a more serious charge still against Governor Smith. In the year 1876 there was a bill passed by the legislature, and approved by the Governor, bearing date of February 28, 1876, which he afterwards pronounced "illegal and void," which declaration you will find in the records of Fulton su- perior court and signed by James M. Smith, as attorney for a lease company. Remember, he approved and afterwards makes declaration that it was illegal and void. 466 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics As you may rightfully suppose, it concerned the leasing of convicts. Whenever you touch that cankerous sore on the body politic, James M. Smith will wince, for he says he was the author of the system. He is its head and front, and while his principal keeper and brother-in-law, John T. Brown, did the dirty work and was understood to be well acquainted with the profits, pecuniary or otherwise, everybody recognizes the author of the system behind and above him. Can anybody give a satisfactory reason why Governor Smith should work that four convict trick when the convict lease of 1874 had three years to run before the new lease became operative? Whence his anxiety? Why should he have hur- ried matters so precipitately? R. F. Maddox testifies before W. L. Peel, N. P., on October 14, 1881, that Governor Smith told him he would be very glad that it could be so arranged as to enable him to organize and locate the camps and the penitentiary lease during his term. Now, the question arises, why would he be so "glad?" The four-convict trick was worked on December 21, 1876, and he went out of office early in January. Mr. Editor, the con- clusion is irresistible and it stamps him, not only as "author of the system, ' ' but something worse ! I cannot afford to bandy words or debate in Governor Smith's billingsgate, there- fore I present you facts in return for his abuse. Say to your "hit dogs" I am not disturbed by their yelping. For six years the people of Georgia trusted me with an important office, and I defy any man living to trace a dishonest dollar to my pocket, or a corrupt vote on my record. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON." This letter silenced ex-Governor Smith for the time being. His ravings continued, however, of course, but they were con- fined to his own habitat and the people of Georgia had better acquaintance with Dr. Felton, who had been serving in the legislature two years and, according to Governor Smith, had "saved the railroad commission." Dr. Felton believed that Colonel Trammell was placed on the commission to see that "railroad interests" were not "hurt." He (Trammell) always represented Governor Brown's ideas in railroad matters, just as General Phillips was found in evidence when "convict My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 467 talk" was heard or seen in newspapers. Governor Colquitt appointed Mr. Trammell, and he also appointed Governor Smith, but Dr. Felton was convinced that Smith would be more apt to sustain the commission, as Governor Brown was its open and avowed enemy and Mr. Trammell abode "under the shelter of his wing." Governor McDaniel was opposed to Governor Smith, who talked too much for such a politician with so vulnerable a record, and he put him out at the back door with a kick ! I did not care anything about this political rumpus. I had formed an opinion of Governor Smith that stayed with me, but it will impress any reader of this book that it was not to be expected that ex-Governor Smith would afterwards hang around Governor Colquitt (then Senator Colquitt), or beg for Governor Gordon's influence in seeking a federal position; namely, an appointment on the inter-state commission at Washington City! Yet that is what actually happened in the year 1887, and I was indebted to the Macon Telegraph for the news that Governor Smith would become a formal applicant for a place on the inter-state commission, and I soon found he was making "goo-goo eyes" at the two Georgia Senators, namely, Colquitt and Brown, to get the place. The inter-state commission paid a salary of $7,500 per an- num and is like a paymaster's place in the army — a life tenure, if the "interests" do not object. The news was gratifying to me, remembering as I did "Chadband," "oily palms," "Uriah Keep," "humbleness," and the convict lease trick with the four convicts, and Gov- ernor Smith's lack of manhood when Colonel Farrow told him he falsified about the Markham House conference, so I was pre- pared to remind the ex-governor of these reminiscences, and accordingly the following appeared in the Macon Telegraph in 1887. And Governor Smith did not get the place! Ex-Governor Smith Seeking Office. Editor Telegraph: When your faithful Atlanta corres- pondent made known the fact that ex-Gov. James Milton Smith would be a formal applicant for a place on the inter-state commerce commission, it recalled the famous gubernatorial canvass of last year. It was reported then that the ex-gov- ernor, having been deceived by the Kirkwood Mutual, when 468 My Memoiks of Georgia Politics he ran for the senate in the year 1877, took "time by the fore- lock" in the last deal, and had the pledge for present support in plain black and white, and that the convict ring made pledges and signed documents that made his present can- didacy a foregone conclusion. Of course, your correspondent never saw the pledge, and cannot vouch for its accuracy, but nobody at this time doubts the existence of such a political conspiracy and coalition. The ex-governor has some excep- tional traits of character, and is a far better lawyer than nine- tenths of his political associates at the bar, but in the presence of his ambition or afflicted by his craving for office, he is certainly one of the weakest men of the age. He was Col- quitt's appointee, and yet he did not comprehend the fatality of opposing Colquitt, still hanging on to the office. Had he relinquished the office to fight Colquitt, he would have re- tained at least the respect of the country in defeat. The old proverb goes "Whether you pound snow or melt it, you only get water," and the ex-governor alternately pounds and melts the Kirkwood ring to get office. Having pounded Colquitt in 1880, he proceeds to honeysnuggle him in 1887, to become rail- road commissioner for the Union, at a salary of $7,500 per annum. What a picture to behold ! The violent leader of the Norwood canvass on his knees to Colquitt for another fat office ! The man who denounced Gordon and Brown in Colum- bus, and who frothed with indignation when that city draped her drums in black because of the calamity that had befallen the State, now clamoring before these worthies to assist him in his extremity — as an office-seeker before President Cleveland! But it may be said, he paid them last year for this support. Exactly so ; but such pay ! such support ! ! When General Gordon went to Columbus in 1880, to reply to Governor Smith's ferocious assault, the papers were kind enough to chronicle what he said, and The Constitution was happy to report it to the world, so it is of no harm to repeat it again. The general made one of the hits of the canvass right there and then, because Governor Smith was so vulner- able. He showed the Columbus people that Governor Smith's bark was worse than his bite, for while Smith denounced Col- quitt, because of the Alston fee. Smith was the very man who made the Alston contract, and while Smith held up the signing of the Northeastern bonds to public scorn. Smith himself had signed railroad bonds for the North and South Railroad at twice the amount per mile, losing not only the interest on the bonds by his mismanagement, but two hundred thousand of the principal ; also signing the bonds of the celebrated Rome and Memphis Railroad, all of which were dead loss to the State. It was a bad case of "the pot calling the kettle black," My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 469 and demonstrated to a certainty that "those who fear feathers should not flock with wild fowl." When the General got ready for the final blow — the John L. Sullivan lick, so to speak — he took the ex-governor "under the rib" in these words, "James Milton Smith is the high priest of the convict system." "James Milton Smith approved the law, for I know it." It was not known to others at that time that James Milton Smith, together with John B. Gordon and Joseph E. Brown, were the three people who played the game of thimble-rig over four convicts in Fulton county jail to circumvent, deceive and defraud the people of Georgia in disposing of her convicts for twenty years. Thereby hangs the tale ! In the convict lease you find the tie which makes all three harmonize and pull together ! Mutual aid is demanded and nobody dares to kick! With one of the triumvirate in the senate, another in the executive chair, it would not do to leave the "high priest of the convict system" out in the cold. But even Henry Clay, great as he was, suf- fered from a political trade, and while it may be possible that ex-Governor Smith will be able to control the Kirkwood mu- tual, and the convict ring, to his pecuniary benefit in securing the office of commissioner, yet the stigma of such coalition will never be effaced while there is breath in his body — or a name on his grave-stone. Like James Gunn, senator, who chaper- oned the Yazoo Fraud through the legislature of 1795, to fill his own pocket — James M. Smith, ex-governor, will go down in history as a man who sacrificed his principles, his fealty to the State which had honored him and his self-respect, to get the support of his political foes — in procuring a national ap- pointment — as a quid pro quo for such weakness and yielding, and shall it be said, betrayal? Is it not a fact that his con- version to Gordonism was almost as sudden as that of Saul, on his way to Damascus ? But, alas ! this blindness to every- thing "but the craving for office still lingers on his political and moral vision ! ' ' Poor Governor Smith ! This is a day of surprises ; and suppose it should transpire that the coalition fails to persuade the president that "the high priest of the convict system" is the one thing needful to the inter-state commission? Suppose it should happen as it did in 1877, that all their promises were like pie crust, made to be broken? PLAIN TALK. I watched Governor Gordon's actions in regard to the convict lease, and waited with some impatience for him to make an official report. His report in 1887 was as short as a goat's tail, and as thin 470 My ]\Iemoirs of Georgia Politics as skim milk. The convict lease system was still in force. He was a lessee — and Senator Brown was a lessee, working 300 able-bodied, long-term convicts at the Dade Coal mines. Men were coining fortunes out of the slave labor, and the stench of the system was well nigh intolerable. It had two years to run when the governor made his report in 1887, and the people of Georgia had become exceedingly restive. Dr. Felton was denouncing it in the legislature as an "epitomized hell." As a delegate from the Woman's Christian Union, I presented a memorial, in 1886, to the legislature when it met in November of that year, imploring the State authori- ties to take those convict women out of the prison camps, and thereby protect them from the lustful guards. I made the very first movement in this memorial, to separate the juvenile criminals from adults in crime, ever made in Georgia, and I persuaded Dr. Felton to champion it for us, which he did as long as he was a member of the legislature. This was the beginning of the Reformatory system, so much exploited in later years. I was invited by The Forum to write 3,000 words on this "cancer sore" in Georgia politics, and it appeared in the January number, 1887. My activity in this matter was the provoking cause of the Simmons' episode in the Georgia legislature, where Mr. Edgar Simmons, of Sumter county, called me the "Political She" of Georgia politics ! He attempted to do what the lessees desired to be done, humiliate Dr. Felton and myself for this active opposition to the convict lease system. If he was not paid in money for the service, he certainly got but little out of his foray on us at that time. (This episode is in another place). Thus it came about that I watched the progress of the convict lease legislation, and I will wind up my review of ex-Governor Smith's political career by giving an article I wrote for the Macon Daily Telegraph, September 10, 1887: "THEY GOT THEM." Some Reflections on Reading the Report of the Penitentiary Committee. Editor Telegraph: The evidence taken before the sub-com- mittee on the penitentiary is at last before the public. The full report of the whole committee is yet to come. Much of My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 471 the matter contained in this pamphlet of 202 pages has long been before the public, and many facts that were expected to appear are not there. To illustrate, the governor's report is exceedingly meagre in detail, except a brief statement of the different leases. Since May 11, 1868, down to the last lease for twenty years, made in June, 1876, with dates of such leasing, there is nothing to meet public expectation from that quarter. The executive office is dismally bare of all needful information. Of course the committee could not extract "blood from a turnip," but there has been more underhanded work and less recorded proof about this business than ever known before in any period of the State's history. One notable fact appears, however, worthy of mention just in this connection. From April 1, 1872, to April 1, 1874, the State cleared nearly $40,000 from the hire of something over 600 convicts. For the year 1886, with 1,527 convicts, the State only received $16,018. For more than twice the number of convicts the State gets but little over half as much as it did in the years 1872-3. The progress is backwards — thanks to incompetent governors. That's a nice state of affairs, as you will agree. In 1878-9-80, the lessees cost the State about eleven thousand dollars per annum, when the lease act expressly contemplated no such expense. In the year 1884 the State paid out $10,073 to watch the lessees and prevent injustice, yet the injustice and cruelty were in excess during that period. Last year they cost the State nearly $9,000, and who can say it amounted to a row of pins? By the time the number reaches 3,000, which a lessee swears he expects to realize before 1899, the State will come in debt merely to watch the men who are coining fortunes out of convict labor and violating law to do it. The people v»^ho figure smallest in this summary of facts are Governors Smith, Colquitt and McDaniel. If the report speaks truly, they knew their duty and did it not. Up to last winter no suit was ever brought for failures of contract by the lessees, although they had sub-let, p^ermitted to escape and maltreated convicts atrociously. Governor McDaniel actually suppressed the State physician's report by his own individual action. Westmoreland swears it was presented to him, and was withheld. Strange, but indisputable fact. The letter writ- ten by Wm. Phillips, as president of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad, which nominally surrendered four convicts to James M. Smith, governor, and by which said Smith put Company No. 2 in possession of convicts nearly three years before they were entitled to them, never went on record in executive department. On those four convicts, surreptitiously obtained, he set up and instituted the present lease system, 472 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics and yet no official notice of such surrender of convicts from the lessees themselves was allowed for examination and refer- ence to outsiders. Unless the governor was a lessee, a silent partner at the time or a retained attorney for lessees against the State, his conduct is inexplicable as well as indefensible. Had Bullock transgressed in this way he would have been howled out of Georgia. For eleven years these lease companies have only paid for twenty escapes, while the woods have been full, so to speak. The lessees were always shielded. Not a sale, release, sub-letting or direct hiring was permitted to appear in the executive office for examination or future refer- ence. The motives and methods are kept in the dark and the people are led to the conclusions that are painfully damaging to these officials in high places. Governor Colquitt's adminis- tration in regard to convicts was thoroughly reviewed by the legislature in 1879 and he came out second best, as he always did in open neglect of official duty, but he did no better after- ward, and l>e had his "own sweet way." But Governor Mc- Daniel's indifference to public opinion in this matter is in- comprehensible. One paragraph in J. W. English's testimony throws a fierce light on these omissions of duty. On page 25 he said, in answer to inqury : ' ' The effect of putting in a middle man would be to make one more witness for the les- sees. If you paid him $100 a month, we would pay him $10 or $15 more and get him. I consider convict labor the most desirable labor in the world." In the year 1872 the State paid only $2,000 in salaries to penitentiary officials, and cleared $20,000 from the lease of 600 convicts. In 1886 the State put in nearly $9,000 of salary money to protect 1,527 convicts, and, except in a few cases, the lessees "got them," beyond question — as well as all the profits. The inference is imperative, and cannot be gainsayed in the light of results. It would appear that the lessees "got them," whether of high or low degree. Money seems to be magical stuff. Another point is made that will bring to the State an unusual amount of criticism abroad, viz : the treatment of con- vict George T. Jackson. Lessee James swore he only required him "to read and fish," and with an assurance born of some- thing innate to the witness, he told the committee "that was work enough for Jackson." Jackson's friends paid his board in James's camp until it became public. Then it was refunded and the claim was settled under some other bill. That was agreeable to all parties. Jackson slept with the physician and ate with the guards. Yet his sentence was "hard labor in the penitentiary for six years." Justice was tempered with mercy, eh! My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 473 What a farce! God forbid it may not be the germ of a tragedy! Of course the way of the transgressor was hard, and Jackson's fate was singularly marked in some of its features ; but the proof is here set forth officially, beyond con- troversy, that the lease system is neither punishment for crime or reformation of criminals. Except the confinement and dis- grace which had been inflicted by the court which convicted him of a glaring crime, what punishment had he in the few months which intervened until his pardon reached him? Inhumanity to sick convicts bristles all through Dr. West- moreland's reports. A fifteen foot box, built up in an old field, with no opening but a door, covered with sheet iron, with only a few air holes chopped out close to the eaves, was the accommodation for sick convicts, both white and black, in legalized camps, (unless they paid their board and worked at reading and fishing!) Imagine a torrid sun beating down on this inhuman death trap, the sick convict chained to his bed, and you touch bottom, in this deep of cruelty. Yet Gov- ernor McDaniel withheld this information from us ! So cer- tainly do the lessees get them, that a man who reports these things runs the risk of being sworn into eternal perdition or a criminal court by paid hirelings, as was Dr. Houk, who left James's camp sickened with such cruelties and the unmerciful and tyrannical used of the bloody strap on helpless victims. Alston paid the penalty ; Dr. Houk was sworn against most atrociously and the conclusion is inevitable that the man who informs does it at the risk of both life and moral character. The disappointment is great that these executives were able to hide their tracks in this convict matter and defy the law. The report is painful and humiliating to the State. GEORGIA. GOVERNOR SMITH AND THE TREASURER. At the time when Gov. James Milton Smith was hurling epithets at Dr. Felton, in the year 1882, Judge H. K. McCay furnished the following manuscript to Dr. Felton to use. I hold the original copy. Because Ex-Governor Smith had the audacity to talk about "Chadband" and ''Titus Gates," in filthy comparisons, where he expended his billingsgate on a better man than himself and who, according to Hon. Edgar Simmons, of Sumter county, stood in the Kimball House lobby and declared that somebody should "horsewhip Felton on his bare back." I intend to place on record the conduct of Gov- ernor Smith as executive of the State, where the young men of Georgia can see and ponder over it. It is a notorious fact that the State lost a very large sum 474 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics of money while Treasurer John Jones was occupying that responsible office. It is well known that the bondsmen of Treasurer Jones were finally released on the payment of a meagre sum, compared with the amount lost to the State by the incompetency of the treasurer and the neglect (I will use no harder term) of the governor of the State of Georgia. Following so close on the heels of Bullock's foul administra- tion, this outrageous neglect (another word would be more fitting) was skilfully covered up, and to my tnind, there has never been a single doubt but that Gov. J. Milton Smith richly deserved an investigation by the legislature, and what such a failure also richly deserved. Here are the facts — given in by Judge McCay's own handwriting. It is well to say, he furnished a number of suggestions which were timely and a patriotic duty to the taxpayers in the year 1882 : "In the fall of 1873, just before the meeting of the legisla- ture. Governor Smith directed Jack Jones, the State treasurer, to make out his warrant and present his bonds, coupons, etc., so that warrants might be drawn and all matters arranged for his report to the legislature. Exactly to understand this, you must remember that ac- cording to law, money can only be drawn from the Treasury by the governor's warrant. But for convenience, the custom is for the treasurer to pay bonds and coupons as they are presented at his counter, or through his agents in New York, where he keeps his funds, and once or twice a year as these coupons and bonds accumu- late the treasurer makes out a statement, presents his bonds and coupons to the governor, who counts, examines and cancels them, draws a warrant on the treasury for them — has them sealed up in a package, the contents noted on the pack- age, and the whole deposited in the treasury vaults. This warrant is carried to the comptroller (who had the treasurer charged with the money gone into his hands) and he gives the treasurer credit on his books for the warrant. On the occasion I refer to, Jones, who had then been treas- urer nearly a year, made out his statement as required, amount- ing to perhaps six or seven hundred thousand dollars, but for some reason, it never could be told why, the vouchers, bonds and coupons were neither presented, counted, examined or cancelled, but continued in Jones, possession, not even sealed up ; and for about a year the comptroller's books showed a credit to Jones of this large amount, and Jones still in cus- tody of all the vouchers uncancelled. The governor gave Jones a warrant on the treasury for what he said he had paid, Jones retaining in his hands, uncounted and uncancelled, the vouchers on which the warrant was founded. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 475 But this was not done with fraudulent intent by Governor Smith. It was simply neglect. It was, however, one of the great causes of the great mistake and misfortune of the next year's settlement. Jones did not even keep these vouchers separate from those he afterwards paid. He kept no memorandum of his payment — trusting to the bonds and coupons as his vouchers and he did this when many of the bonds were over-due with no coupons on them, and the date of the payment, material, as the only mode of knowing how much interest had been paid. When the next year came round Jones presented his bonds and coupons for the two years — both years' payments inter- mingled. They were counted, cancelled and sealed up, but as will appear were never examined by this governor, Smith, who understood the matter of the State's outstanding bonds most thoroughly. Nevertheless Governor Smith gave Jones a warrant for all the bonds and coupons presented, less the amount included in the previous year's warrants. So negligently was this affair managed, that there was found in the box, covered by these two warrants, the bonds, after the examiner had broken the seal ; the statement by Jones of the interest he had paid on each over-due bond, amounting in all to about sixty thousand dollars, and besides this statement there were in the box bonds enoug-h to cover the bond warrants for both years. No notice seems to have been taken of this $60,000 at all ! Nor was this failure to notice ever discovered until Dr. Bozeman and the lawyers got at the truth before the auditor, and in the auditor's report. Jones was duly credited with what of it he had not really paid. But in this box there was also found two lots of bonds Jones had never paid at all, to- wit, a lot of $24,000 which Angier had taken up, by exchange of other bonds, and for which nobody was entitled to credit, since they were not paid with money but with bonds. These Angier had received from New York, and left sealed up, and the package marked in the treasury vaults. There was also found in this box $21,000 of bonds, for which Jones had exchanged other bonds, and for which no- body was entitled to credit. In addition to this, there were found about $149,000, old, over-due bonds, which had been paid in Bullock's time by Henry Clews, of New York, with the State's money and which he, nearly four years after he had paid them, were sold at auction in New York — had them bought in, presented to Jones at the treasury, and they were repaid by Jones. Be- sides all this, among the coupons which were included in 476 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics these warrants, there was a lot of coupons, to-wit, $44,000, paid off by Angier during the first year of Smith's adminis- tration and for which he gave Angier a warrant, but which the governor neglected to have cancelled. These were left in the vaults by Angier, sealed up, the package properly marked as paid coupons. However, in some mysterious way they got among Jones' vouchers and he got credit for them in the warrants, and therefore in account at the comptroller's office. Thus altogether Jones got warrants for paying two hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars of bonds and coupons, which were not a just charge on the State. It was claimed for Jones by his friends that he did not intend to do wrong, but he had only been careless — was not competent always to transact business and that things had got so mixed up and confused that, whilst his carelessness could not be excused, his integrity was still unimpeached. The payment of the Clews bonds, $149,000, was by the auditor, Captain Pace, of Covington, found to be inexcusable, and he refused him credit for them. But the jury were not satisfied that Jones had such information on the subject as justified the refusal of the auditor to credit him, and they found for Jones on this point. The evidence was, however, conclusive that this huge amount of bonds and coupons (two hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars) had been improperly covered by treasury warrants. The evidence showed that Governor Smith understood the whole matter. During the first year of his administration and while Angier was treasurer, the legislature had suspended the payment of bonds, for the express purpose of having the whole matter looked into, and they appointed a committee to go to New York and examine. That committee reported. The report was reprinted. By Clews' account, by Governor Bullock's let- ter, by the bond book and by the report of the committee, it was made apparent that all the Georgia bonds due before or on the 1st of January, 1871, were paid. Governor Smith* knew this very well. In preparing estimates for the legislature, this was assumed by him — he had looked into the whole matter, the exchanging of bonds was all done during his administration, by both Angier and Jones, and he thoroughly understood the whole matter, and had he been the treasurer or his bond been in suit, the State, as to this $149,000, would have certainly had the report of the auditor sustained by the jury. The whole trouble and loss to the State was caused, first, by the negligence of the governor in not counting the Angier coupons to be cancelled, and, second, by simply taking Jones' My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 477 word the first year, thus getting things in a muddle, and on the final statement in the second year in again taking Jones' word. The simplest count would have discovered something wrong in coupons — enough to cover Jones' whole claim, without counting his interest account of about $60,000 at all. Had Governor Smith just glanced at the $149,000 of Clews' bonds, all due on their face, on or before the 1st of January, 1871 ; some of them due six or seven years before, his thorough knowledge of the subject would have detected them, and this is true of the exchanged bonds. This exchange was made under his direction. It was begun and stopped by his direction, and he understood the whole subject. As the treasurer was not charged with the bonds he had used to take up other bonds with by exchange, it was the duty of the governor to have known exactly how many were ex- changed and to have had the bonds taken up, cancelled, labelled and stored away in the treasury vault. The treasury is only open to the warrant of the governor. It is his duty to see to it, or certainly to try to see to it, that he draws no warrant without proper vouchers and proper evidence. The facts stated above were all proven on the trial of the State vs. Jones and his securities, were written down by a stenographer and his writing is on file in Fulton superior court." Comment is needless ! Here was a governor of Georgia who "knew his duty and did it not." He was fully acquainted with his duty, but his indifference (I will not use the term that I should apply), lost to the State of Georgia all but about $40,000, which Jones' bondsmen offered to pay, and the State was simply robbed by somebody, and so long as the record exists, the suspicion will remain that Smith, like Bullock, "was on the make." Yet this unworthy executive tiptoed with indignation when he wanted somebody "to horsewhip Felton's bare back." If I have not settled accounts with the persecutor, I leave him to posterity to do it. Senator John B, Gordon and Dr. Felton It is not a pleasant task for me to express my opinion of General Gordon, because I had reasons, many of them, to avoid him and dislike him while he was in life, and it is dis- agreeable to feel obliged to mention his name in these pages. While Dr. Felton had various controversies with public men, of high and low degree, it was only General Gordon who felt compelled to begin an attack in Washington City on the wife of Dr. Felton, for political ends and purposes. I knew but little of him personally — I had scant acquaintance, at any time, save in the newspapers, and I saw him only occasionally in the senate. I did not understand for a good many years why he was so prominent in every place, according to the newspapers, until I found out in Washington City, how he kept at his beck and call a squad of scribblers, who chronicled everything he said and all he did and I was led to believe from what I saw and what I heard that he worked the papers and the reporters industriously for that purpose. That they were compensated in some way, I have never doubted. Gov. J. E. Brown felt obliged to call public attention to this feature of the situation in April, 1877, and declared that it had become "nauseous." The General had some of these willing men appointed to small positions in Washington City, particularly one from Macon, Ga. — a correspondent of the Macon Telegraph — who filled its columns with praise and in- discriminate puffing. Governor Brown called it "the puffing brigade. ' ' I chanced to unravel one clever little scheme, where the General had his own son appointed to an office under Colonel Fitzhugh, the doorkeeper of the house of representatives, and the office was tendered, under the solemn pledge that his son "should not accept." But the papers were industriously filled with praise, that this great General and senator should act so differently from other greedy politicians, who stuffed their own sons into these places of profit. After General Gordon My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 479 made an unprovoked assault on my good name and reputa- tion in Washington City, in 1879, I was able to obtain a written statement from Colonel Fitzhugh covering this ease in question and liberty to use the letter in my own defense, if necessary. I have the letter yet, but I published the facts in 1886, in the columns of the Macon Telegraph, and it can be found there in its files, under date of May 10, 1886. In closing this review of General Gordon's politics, I will pro- duce the article along with others. This article was signed "Plain Talk," and General Gordon read it, and his "puffing brigade" read it, but no one of them ever denied it. Its reproduction here is, therefore, perfectly legitimate and ger- mane to the subject under present consideration. This Fitzhugh episode is so characteristic of General Gor- don's political methods, so like his politics, that it serves as a sample of the whole. Yesterday, a small boy handed to me at my front door, a tiny box of stove polish, and said: "If you like it. Ma'am, here's where you can get a plenty," handing me also the vendor's card with name and address on it. This "Fitzhugh appointment" is like the sample box of stove polish — and is a fair sample of what could be gathered from "the stock in trade." I shall confine myself, therefore, to articles that were read by General Gordon when he was alive and fully able to dis- pute their correctness, if it had been possible or agreeable for him to do so. I made his politics and his career in Wash- ington City a text, very often, and I made my criticisms openly and where there was no probability that they should escape his attention. He made a ferocious and vindictive attack against me, and I gave him the best in my shop. The senator's effort, where I was attacked individually, begun in Washing- ton City and had its origin in the mind of my enemy — John B. Gordon, seiiator from Georgia, and came as a sequel to the Felton-Lester campaign of 1878. This was a very serious affair and assumed national notoriety before it was concluded. It had a deadly purpose — was meant to destroy. During the Felton-Lester campaign Col. D, S. Printup, of Rome, wrote us that J. E. Bryant was going to place a Mr. Holtzclaw in the race, as an Independent Republican. He 480 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics traveled on the railroad train with Bryant, who was on his way to Dalton, and Bryant talked freely of his purposes. He expressed great dislike for Felton ; said he was the most unmanageable Democrat in the delegation, and he intended to beat him and elect Lester by bringing in a third and Repub- lican candidate. (Wherever I can do so, I like to present the exact words of the persons whom I may name in my reminis- cences. I shall anticipate what I am about to relate by allow- ing Mr. J. E. Bryant, whose name in Bullock's time was high in authority, but whose acts as reviewed in later years, were made a conspicuous target by every Democratic newspaper in the State) : "A Radical Joins the Crusade. "Editor of the New York Times: In The Times of' the 26th instant a letter was published which purports to have been written by Mrs. Felton, the wife of Dr. Felton, an Independent Congressman from Georgia, in which she makes charges against me that seem to call for a reply. She says I informed a distinguished Democrat of Rome, Ga., that I intended to organize the Republicans in the interest of Judge Lester. I pronounce that statement false. She insinuates that I was furnished money by the national executive committee of the Democratic party to aid Judge Lester. That insinuation is entirely without foundation. She says she has been reliably informed that I was seeking money from the Republican na- tional committee. That is true. "I am chairman of the Republican State committee of Georgia. In the last congressional campaign Dr. Felton was Independent Democratic candidate for Congress, and Judge Lester was the regular Democratic candidate. Dr. Felton had been a State-rights secession Democrat ; Judge Lester had been a Union man and Democrat. Dr. Felton was extreme in his advocacy of the greenback heresy almost if not quite an ad- vocate of repudiation. He was very bitter in his denunciations of Republicans and Republicanism. He publicly boasted that he voted for the Potter resolutions, and openly stated that the Republicans were guilty of fraud in the last presidential elec- tion. I advised the Republicans in the seventh district not to support him. "Judge Holtzclaw was an Independent Republican for Con- gress in the seventh district. He was known to me as a true and able Republican, in many respects the superior of Felton. I advised the Republicans to vote against b^th Felton and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 481 Lester. * * * * x did visit Washington and ask the Re- publican Congress Committee to aid us to accomplish that re- sult. I trust neither Senator Ferry nor any other Republican was influenced by Mrs. Felton to oppose me and aid her hus- band, who professedly an Independent, is really one of the most extreme Democrats from the South." (Signed) JOHN E. BRYANT. New York, Thursday, February 27, 1879. When Col. Printup 's letter came, Dr. Felton was campaigning in the upper counties of the seventh district. I felt the secret force of this intelligence. I understood how Mr. Bryant was connected in Bullock's time with renegade Georgians, and how potent he might become in a crusade that was led by Bullock's friend, Judge Lester, and backed to the last notch on the stick by Bullock's chief justice, Ex-Gov. Brown. It was a formid- able coalition. I had a slight acquaintance with Senator Ferry, who was boarding at the National Hotel. He was well ac- quainted with Dr. Felton and a leader of the Republican party. I thought he was chairman of the National Republican Execu- tive Committee, but I was mistaken in that particular. I sat down and wrote him the following letter which will explain itself : ''Cartersville, Ga., Sept. 10, 1878. ' * Senator Ferry : ''In Dr. Felton 's absence on a campaign tour, I decided to write you a line and ask a favor which I presume to make on the strength of a friendly acquaintance, and my belief that you feel kindly to my husband. Let me state the case. My hus- band is an Independent. The Bourbon Democracy are making terrible efforts to beat him, because they want to control the offices of the State. They have put up a one-armed Confederate soldier to arouse the war feeling. He is proven to be a lobby- ist and a corrupt man. Dr. Felton will have a fair field if the Republican vote can be left free. These Bourbons have in- duced a former revenue officer to declare himself an Indepen- dent Republican candidate and some bad men of the Republi- can party are indorsing him. Now the favor I desire is this : This man has no earthly chance for re-election, the men who vote for him will only throw the election to this bloody-shirt Bourbon. This is the only district where an Independent has 482 ^Iy IMemoirs of Georgia Politics ever succeeded. It is the only foothold for a better conserva- tive party. If Dr. Felton is crushed out the State lapses into this solid Bourbon Democracy, which is proven to be intensely corrupt and which holds all the public offices. "Dr. Felton is a strong greenback man, also a friend to North- ern rivers on the Committee of Commerce. Will you write a line to the Executive Committee in Washington counselling the withdrawal of this Republican candidate who has no show- ing and let the field be open in this district. You will receive the gratitude of my husband who is your friend. "Please, as far as possible, break up this discussion in the Republican party, for Dr. Felton has some friends who will stand to him in any case and you will see the effect in 1880, when there can be no organization of the Republican party. "This letter is written in confidence, and I trust you will burn it after reading it. A wife 's anxiety must be my apology. I hope your health is recovered. Howard, my little son, joins in kind regards to you. "Very respectfully, "MRS. W. H. FELTON." P. S. A line also the chairman in Georgia will do good. You know how kindly Dr. Felton feels to Northern members. This fact will do good. Dr. Felton never saw this letter. I sent it as soon as I wrote it. It was written as a personal letter, in confidence, to a per- son I had always esteemed as a gentleman. I had no reply to it, heard nothing whatever from it afterwards until I saw a "demand for my name" in the Augusta Chronicle and Consti- tutionalist, to which I made a prompt reply. Senator Ferry came to Dr. Felton 's seat and told him that Senator Gordon, of Georgia, had been to him and asked if Dr. Felton 's wife (myself) had not applied through him for Re- publican money to help his election in Georgia. Senator Ferry explained to Dr. Felton that he was absent in the summer, and had no recollection of the letter, but that he had turned over all letters that concerned politics to his colleague in Michigan. Mr. Ilubbell was a member of the National Executive Committee. Mr. Hubbell had no recollection of the letter, but he said he had turned over all such letters to Hon. George C. Gorham, secretary of the Senate and also secretary My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 483 of the National Republican Executive Committee. Dr. Felton addressed a letter to Mr. Gorham, and I copy here Mr. Gor- ham's reply : "Office of Secretary of Senate, "Washington, Feb. 19, 1879. "W. H. Felton, M. C, Sir: "I am in receipt of yours of yesterday's date asking me to state whether the Republican Executive Committee of which I am secretary, furnished pecuniary aid to yourself or your friends last fall or whether that committee assisted with money the Independent movement in the seventh district of Georgia last fall or at any time and finally whether I have any knowl- edge that Republicans individually or as an organization fur- nished directly or indirectly pecuniary aid at any time or any place in your elections. "To all these inquiries I reply in the negative. I know of no pecuniary aid or in your behalf by any Republican individu- ally or collectively at any time. "Very respectfully yours, (Signed) "GEO. C. GORHAM." I spoke to Mr. Hubbell and told him I would esteem it a real favor if he would hunt up my letter, as it passed through his hands, and I needed it to prove absolutely that I had never asked for a cent to aid Dr. Felton 's election. But I realized that my letter might be abstracted as letters are often abstracted to inflict an injury on others, and I had kept no copy, in my haste and anxiety about the coalition with J. E. Bryant. On the 19th of February I made this reply to the Augusta Chronicle and Constitutionalist : "Messrs. Editors: "I hope you will allow me sufficient space in your paper to reply to your editorial of last Sunday, which you will please copy here : "Give the Name. "Mr. A. W. Reese, in his editorial correspondence with the Macon Telegraph and Messenger, charges that during the re- cent canvass in the seventh district, a letter was written to Senator Ferry, Republican, of Michigan, imploring in the most piteously pathetic terms, material aid from the Radical 484 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics campaign committee, for Dr. Felton, against the Democratic nominee and party. "Mr. Reese says Senator Ferry sent the letter to Mr. Hub- bell, a Republican member of the House from the same State, and also a member of same campaign committee. It was after- wards turned over to Mr. Gorham, secretary of the committee and secretary of the Senate. All the persons named agree as to the nature and text of the letter and how eloquently the writer plead for 'Radical money' to enable the so-called In- dependent to carry the election." "Mr. Reese does not give the name of the writer, but leaves the impression that Mrs. Felton was the writer. In a matter of this kind there should not be any hints or insinuations. He should give the name by all means." (Here is my reply) : "Although A. W. Reese, of the Macon Telegraph and Mes- senger, is the person known as my assailant, his name being signed to the article on which you comment. General Gordon is recognized by me as the author of this assault." Since "A. W. R. " did not give the name for which you call I cannot assert that I am the person pointed at, but as you and others are similarly impressed that it was intended for me, I shall reply" to it. I have become in some measure accustomed to the abuse showered so liberally on my husband and myself in the late congressional campaign, but I am glad to say no provocation has ever induced either of us to retaliate upon the families of our opponents. Chivalry seems to be at a discount with the so-called organized in Georgia. All good citizens who respect and protect their own heartstones will give the Independents credit for better conduct. I understand the charge to be that I plead in piteously, pathetic terms for "Radical money" to help my husband's election. Had I done so, it Avould have come with bad grace from an owner of the Macon Telegraph and Messenger, whose paper was subsidized by Ex-Gov. Brown in the matter of the (/ railroad lease in the sum of two thousand dollars. I only recognize the master in this attack, not the servitor, who does General Gordon's puffing as well as his dirty work in his newspaper. If A. W. Reese, in his strenuous efforts to secure a place under the Senate organization finds it necessary to show this subservience to Gen. Gordon, we cannot stoop to notice a man working for such selfish ends and substantial rewards. The Senator, I find, has been very active in this matter — his position entitles him to some attention. "When a United States Senator can run a camp of convicts which is a "disgrace to civilization" for money, when he can manipulate a Southern Insurance Company and a Southern My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 485 Publishing- Company, not to speak of other circumlocution en- terprises where the money of the subscribers disappears for- ever, when he could borrow the money of a Southern bishop, and the bishop sold the collaterals for only one dollar in the hundred, you need not feel surprise that he could attack the wife of a political opponent. When his name in connection with the money of Jay Gould and Huntington was the street talk of Washington City, which astonished the startled ears of Judge Underwood and Col. D. S. Printup, last spring (1878) commented on by strangers at a dinner table of one of the principal hotels in Washington City, can you wonder that he can see money at the bottom of any enterprise ? If he and A. W. Reese desire to establish the precedent of fighting ladies to injure their husbands, they may find it uncomfortable if well carried out. Precedents count astonish- ingly sometimes. The charge that I wrote to Senator Ferry or anybody else asking for Radical money, I firmly deny. If A. W. Reese will furnish a genuine letter of mine, I shall need no other proof. That I did write a friendly letter to Senator Ferry, with whom I had had acquaintance for several years, asking him to use his influence to break up a combination with Bryant in the Holtz- claw movement, I frankly admit. Mr. Bryant informed a gen- tleman of Rome, Ga., a distinguished Democrat, that he was on his way to Dalton, the day before he brought out Holtz- claw, to organize the Republicans in the interest of Judge Les- ter. Do you desire his name? The fact that Bryant was fur- nished money by the National Executive Committee of the Democratic party was published in full in the Indianapolis Journal of October 24, 1878. That Bryant was seeking to get money from the Republican National Committee, I was also reliably informed. I did re- quest Senator Ferry to use his influence to circumvent this nefarious plot ; I have no disposition to deny it. I should likely do so again under similar circumstances. My husband was away from home in the upper counties and my wifely anxiety induced me to write without delay, which I did on my own responsibility, and over my own signature. What his cooler judgment might have advised, I did not know. He cer- tainly appreciated my interest in his success against the strong combinations to which the history of Georgia furnishes no parallel. It was a bitter fight made by very unscrupulous men, and I have no apology to make for my efforts in behalf of my husband. It is a sad day for Georgia when sensational paper mendi- cants can assail the wife when the husband stands in the path 486 My Memoiks of Georgia Politics of a public man, from whom the scribbler derives his official existence and whose patronage he enjoys. If I am thus to be made the target of "organized" abuse, the Independents of the State may understand that no man's home is sacred from attack if he dares to resist the encroach- ments of the public plunderers of the old Commonwealth of Georgia, I think I understand and appreciate the feelings of good and honest men in both parties, and they will rebuke any party or clique that spares no sex or condition in their insane desire to keep themselves in office. The very fact that shifty politicians attack everybody who interferes with their combination for public plunder has done more to injure the Democratic organization in Georgia than everything else. To this they add the resolve to attack women, because guilty cowardice refuses to meet more respon- sible persons. Drive the money changers from the Democratic temple and set up officials whose honor and reputation are dearer than convict camps or the money of Jay Gould or Huntington. MRS. W. H. FELTON. When my indignation was thus expending itself I had not yet recovered my letter addressed to Senator Ferry, or I should have printed it then and there. On the 25th of February we were seated at our usual table in the breakfast hall of the Old National Hotel in company with Hon. M. A. Candler, of Georgia; Ex-Senator Norwood, of Georgia, and Hon. "Tete" Smith, of the Second district in Georgia. Hon. Mr. Hubbell came in on his way to his break- fast, when he stopped and handed me a paper, saying: "Here is your letter, Mrs. Felton. ' ' He told me he had taken an exact copy also, which I was glad to hear. I read it aloud, and show- ed the letter to those present. Hon. M. A. Candler was imme- diately interviewed by a reporter of the Atlanta Constitution, in which interview he said: "Yes, I saw the letter. It ap- pears that Mrs. Felton wrote to Senator Ferry, he sent it to Mr. Hubbell in Michigan, who sent it to Gorham in California, the secretary of the National Republican Committee in Wash- ington. There is no request for money. * * * * She asks the help of Senator Ferry to suppress the Republican candi- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 487 date to make her husband's chances better. The letter is a plain business-like document covering about two sheets. I suppose Gorham sent it back to Mrs. Felton. She does not seem to be ashamed of anything in the letter. The best plan it would seem to be is to publish it just as it is." Hon. A. H. Stephens was asked about it, he said he had examined it critically, and he said, ''there is not one word in it to sustain the charge or the mischievous allegations, and not one word to contradict what she had previously written to the Augusta newspaper." In the meantime the Atlanta Constitution was placing head- lines like this: "Felton's Ferry" and the Telegraph and Mes- senger continued to declare that Dr. Felton implored Gorham to find the letter or destroy it, and the venal press that hoped to find "thrift follow fawning," were alike impervious to facts and the truth. I could spot the money of Huntington, as I had been advised in the year-bef ore 's canvass, and the lectures that were read to "Mrs. Felton's husband" were sim- ply astounding in their audacity. Gen. Gordon waited some days before he made reply, for he did not date his reply letter until March 4, 1879. It can be found in the files of the various papers of the State of Georgia and I shall only give a summary of the communication in this place. He refused to reply to me at all ; but he said there was no room for doubt that Dr. Felton was the "author of all the calumnies "repeated in his organs in the Seventh district; and that Dr. Felton was the first Georgian he knew who shielded his falsehoods behind a woman, and that woman his wife. He had never heard of such conduct in any civilized land. He said he had to go into the seventh district to speak for the nominee, because it was the call of his party that he did not attack Dr. Felton on the stump until his "slanders" demanded it. The Southern Insurance Company failed from no fault of his for two epidemics and a panic did it. (He used letter- heads in his correspondence late in 1874, which declared the Insurance Company had then a capital of one million five hun- dred thousand dollars. I have one of them with a letter signed by "J. B. Gordon" at the bottom. It was common report they were taking in money in the morning in Atlanta, when the 488 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics newsboys were crying its bankrupt failure in the afternoon. 1 • He said it was Dr. Felton's habit to slander every cause and every man, who had the confidence of Gen. Robert E. Lee. (I have in my possession a printed copy of a memorial sermon delivered by Dr. Felton when the news reached Cartersville of his death that has been pronounced the. very finest eulogy in print of Gen. Robert E. Lee. A more dastardly statement never was uttered by any honest man in his senses.) He ad- mitted the book enterprise had made no money, but he had hopes for its future success. He did borrow $300 from a Southern bishop, as well as he could remember, but the holy man was dead and his son served on his staff; but he now stood ready to make it good what- ever the amount might be. He completely dodged the convict^ question by saying the State was at liberty to do as it pleased with his convicts. (Alas! He paid at first nothing for the poor wretches, and one of his prison camps paid him fifty bales of cotton each year as rental for hire of only sixty con- victs sub-let to Edward Cox.) Said the general, "he (Felton) and no other man believes me capable of corrupt practices as a Senator of the United States." ("Huntington's private let- ters had not then been uncovered to the public gaze, but Hon. Allen G. Thurman told one of the most honored men in the Georgia delegation who told me that he had never been so astonished and confounded as he was when Gen. Gordon took Huntington's side in opposition to the Thurman Funding Bill, and an army officer gave Messrs. Underwood and Printup his card when he was belaboring the men who sold out for Pacific Railroad bribe money, even naming the price in figures. The public was certainly not so oblivious of the general's common reputation in Washington City as he supposed"). He then rose to the "height of the argument" when he charged Dr. Felton with being false to his people in war and peace, and begrimed with an unholy alliance with the enemies of his coun- try, and he (Felton) has had audacious effrontery enough to "assail my character," etc. Dr. Felton's reply to Gen. Gordon covered the whole busi- ness, and the senator never dared to answer. With Dr. Fel- ton's reply, the public discussion of my letter ended, and then My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 489 the newspapers divided right and left as they favored Felton or Gordon. The Milledgeville Union Recorder said: Some parsons hide behind their coat, To save their precious life, But Parson Felton beats them all He hides behind his wife. The Columbus Enquirer-Sun came out under a heading: "The Madame Roland, of Georgia," Mrs. Felton. The Gainesville Southron thus discoursed: "Were it not for the high character of the Atlanta Consti- tution we would say it has not done justice to Mrs. Felton in its editorials That Mrs. Gordon should be commended for re- ceiving the scarred general in her arms on a field of battle, and Mrs. Felton condemned for standing by her husband in a contest where his private character and everything else to him and her were at stake should remain quiet or be denounced as unfeminine. We can scarcely see. ' ' We admire the devotion of Mrs. Gordon on the field of bat- tle (if the story is true) and we love the bravery of Mrs. Fel- ton in standing by her husband, beset with all manner of malicious lies to compass his defeat for an office in which he discharged every duty faithfully and with ability. "That's our idea of a noble woman and a true wife. It's a free country, and the Constitution has a right to its opinions and the legitimate consequences, and we think they will get the latter in due time." From the Augusta Evening Sentinel : ' ' On our first page we reproduce Mrs. Felton 's very remark- able letter addressed to the editors of the Chronicle and Con- stitutionalist. It is remarkable in many ways. In the first place few of the gentler sex could write a letter coached in such vigorous and marrowy English and fewer still are capable of doing literary battle with presumed assailants of the mas- culine gender. Mrs. Felton has adroitly got in all the evidence that she deemed important in dealing with her presumptuous adversaries. We can hardly credit that either Gen. Gordon or Mr. Reese would make war on a lady, no matter how much 490 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics that lady may have, in her husband's behalf, endeavored to thwart their opposition to him. It is recorded of William Tell that he dared death itself rather than bow to Gesler's cap, yet he was willing to make a obeisance to Madame Gesler's bonnet. We confess we have an admiration for Mrs. Felton, beyond the poor power of words to convey. She is indeed a helpmeet of whom a royal man would be proud — his loving aid when present — his noblest buckler when absent. Mrs. Felton is the Maria Thresa of Georgia, for she has the best attributes of a woman, and the aspiring soul of a man. She wears no dia- dem like the daughter of the Caesars, but she is fashioned in the mould of gentlest dignity and the power to command over inferior beings. We hesitate to believe that any Georgian in high or low station would willingly assail so devoted a wife, so majestic a lady, so glorious an intellect." Said the Enquirer-Sun, Columbus: "We expected Gen. Gordon to deny the charges. We are sorry he has not done this in regard to seeking Mrs. Felton 's letter. Everything fades into insignificance when compared with the effort to drag down a good wife and loving mother. We certainly expected Gen. Gordon to deny this charge, but he has not done it. We confess to a very painful disappoint- ment. ' ' Thirty-two long years have passed since this wordy contest came off. My opinion has never changed as to the viciousness of the attack made upon me through the columns of the Macon Telegraph and Messenger. I realized then the deadly animus that was exhibited by certain politicians and newspapers in Georgia. Thirty-odd years have worn off some of my repug- nance to these men and their methods, but it has taught mo the value of keeping scrapbooks, and I would advise every man who enters politics to keep a scrapbook on his table and always paste it down when he finds a politician who talks very much and is likely to overdo himself in various ways in pub- lished articles. I desire to state here that the ink was hardly dry on Dr. Felton 's reply to Gen. Gordon when the awful tragedy oc- curred in the capitol in Atlanta — namely, the killing of Hon. Robt. Alston, by Gen. Gordon's sub-lessee, Edward Cox. Before My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 491 we left "Washington City — Mr. Alston come several times to see us in our National Hotel parlor. The last time he came, he was in evident distress and under excitement. He said he had received a very unhappy letter from his wife that morn- ing, and she was actually afraid somebody would kill him, because he had made the report of the committee denouncing the atrocities of various convict camps in Georgia. He also said the whole lot were angry and the "women had been re- peating" to her various things, etc., and she had written him a very distressed letter indeed. He was anxious for Gen. Gor- don to get away from that convict lease ; he had begged him to do it, etc. He asked to see the seventh district newspaperu that were discussing the report he wrote "with gloves off." He would read awhile, then walk the floor and talk about hifi wife's discomfort at home and her premonition of danger to his life. Dr. Felton's reply to Gen. Gordon was written and mailed on March 8, 1879, and in less than a week poor Mr. Alston was dead and buried. He appealed to the governor ; he appeal- ed' to the State treasurer, and told them Mr. Cox was armed and hunting him down, but nobody seemed interested enough to inform the police authorities. I did hear that a policeman who knew something about this armed pursuit was dismissed from the force, but it has always seemed more than strange to me that the victim should not have been reasonably shielded from this threatened and impending fate. "We were making it hot in our Independent newspapers for the convict lessee, and I flung out a "dare" in my open letter to Gen. Gordon, and I always shall believe that poor "Bob" Alston would now be living but for his fruitless effort to shield his friend, Senator Gordon, in this matter when he hurried to Atlanta and met his doom. Here is Dr. Felton's reply: " Cartersville, Ga., March 8, 1879. "To the Chronicle and Constitutionalist: "Messrs. Editors: I have just read the letter of Gen. Gor- don addressed to you, and dated "Washington, March 4, 1879. I understood before I left Washington that a grand consulta- tion was held to conclude the attack commenced on my wife in the Macon Telegraph and Messenger some weeks ago. If 492 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics this manifesto signed by Senator Gordon embodies all the strength and strategy that the 'organized' can command after •full consultation with visiting and resident statesmen we are surprised at the weakness, malice and impotency of such a warfare. "Gen. Gordon ignores my wife in this communication. It is a pity that this sober second thought had not occurred to his mind at an earlier stage of this controversy. I wish it dis- tinctly understood that Gen. Gordon was the real author and instigator of the attack on my wife in the Macon Telegraph and Messenger. He was the man who commenced the search for the letter in the city of Washington and expressed great solicitude to be placed in the possession of its contents ; and knowing these things my wife dealt with him rather than Reese, the nominal author. When Gen. Gordon instituted the search for my wife's letter, the fact was soon made known to me. He went in person to Senator Ferry and applied for her letter. He begged to know its contents and gave as a reason for this meddlesome interference that 'Felton was his bitterest foe.' He states in the letter before me he did not go into the seventh district of his own choice, but went at the call of 'his party.' Did his party send him on this errand likewise? "About as soon as his pliant tool could send a letter to the paper in Macon, my wife's name was emblazoned all over Georgia charging that she plead in 'piteously, pathetic terms' for radical money to help my election. When Gen. Gordon talks about slanders on his good name, it will be well for him to recollect who dragged my wife's name into the public prints ! Yielding to her earnest request and satisfied that no mind in the State was more thoroughly competent, I as her protector, acceded to her wishes when she proposed to meas- ure foils with a United States Senator, who was too prudent to appear in the assault, which he engaged A. W. Reese to make. With a soul filled with righteous indignation, she re- pelled the charge in a way that these maligners and revengeful slanderers of a noble wife will never forget. Gen. Gordon had no personal interest in her letter that he sought. It did not allude to him directly or indirectly. His search for it was born of malice actuated by hatred. I have My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 493 her original letter. Others have seen it. Not one dollar was asked for; no pecuniary aid was requested, and the false alle- gation recoils on the heads of those who promulgated the slan- der. When the howling political dervishes of the seventh congressional district had slandered every member of my fam- ily and when their foul tongues and filthy pens were insuffi- cient for this occasion, there was no other man in the State outside our district whose proclivities for falsehood promised so much "aid and comfort" as did Gen. Gordon. He rushed to the rescue and became the leader of these caluminators of a wife who was struggling for the success of her hubsand. Not satisfied with this warfare in Georgia he has carried into congressional circles. From the capitol of the United States he continues the dirty work begun in the seventh district last fall. A woman's quick intellect and deep sense of wrong made her punish her assailant with merited severity. General Gordon said in a public speech he "had met Blaine, Morton and Conkling — the meanest and blackest Republicans of that body, but that Felton was meaner than all ! " He also said, "one more success would make Felton and his friends respectable," implying by that expression that they had not yet attained respectability. He also said "Independents must be crushed to the wall, and crushed eternally." He wound up a speech in Atlanta by saying "my success was by repeat- ing negro votes." He knew this assertion to be utterly false. When I spoke in Atlanta, less than a week before his re- election to the senate, I was urged by friends to retaliate upon him for his repeated and slanderous assaults on my character and good name, and denounce publicly one of the most vulner- able political records ever made by a United States senator. I steadily refrained in the interest of harmony and good will, and because my heart craved peace. W^hen this final attack on my wife constrains her to turn like the worm, and sting the foot that aims to crush it — what does he say? Does he deny the charges? No. He explains — he prevaricates— he apologizes! ^^ ^ ^.y J j^uHM. ^Jh C^^ft^ She charged that Gen. Gordon bor r ow ed ttlB- ^canty o o r wng a e ^.n L ft . l i &l y-' f uau o f God , and«-4©ptjstted ^th him as -sexjurity it jsfalgfijb--- -NfT He says "the law was passed by the chosen 494 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics legislature, without his knowledge or agency ! " If we are cor- rectly informed, the Yazoo Frauds were passed by a similar body, manipulated by a United States senator, and like some of the statesmen of that time, it seems that General Gordon stands ready to reap the profits of such favorable legislation. She charged that General Gordon borrowed the scanty savings of a holy man of God, deposited with him a security certain worthless collaterals. Does he deny it? No. He says he stands ready to "make good every cent of the loss." Ah! the good man is gone, and does not need the generous proposal to become an honest man! If he had but applied a pittance of his large income from insurance companies to the liquida- tion of this debt during the life time of the good bishop, he might stand up and say to the world, " 'Tis false!" She charged that he could manipulate a Southern Insurance Com- pany, and a Southern University Publishing Company, in which the money of the subscribers disappeared forever. Does he deny the charge? No. In the insurance company, he says "every death policy was paid." Ah! It was the money of the living policy holders, she asserted, had gone forever! He persuaded hundreds, by his oily tongue and deceptive pen, to invest their money in this company, from which he drew an immense salary while these unfortunate policy-holders know their money is gone forever. As for the University Publishing Company, he attempts to plaster over the fraud by saying he desired to give the country "Southern books, that did not slander our people." Soon after the war this distinguished general ascertained that an appeal to Southern pride and sectional honor was the short road to the pockets of Southern men, and he has traveled that road in pursuit of his own emoluments until it is worn smooth. The charge about Southern books was not as to their value or quality. It was not whether General Lee had ap- proved or disapproved of the enterprise; but that the money invested in the concern through General Gordon's influence had left the pockets of the survivors and had never returned. I heard a distinguished member of congress from Georgia say some days ago that he had several Yimdred dollars of this My' Memoirs of Georgia Politics 495 worthless university scrip, which he had advised his wife to burn as waste paper. All the way down South from Baltimore, we hear of men who invested in this South Sea Bubble, and up to the present time General Gordon admits it has made no money for the stockholders. Did he get no percentage? No profits? Again, my wife reported the fact that his name, in connec- tion with Jay Gould and Huntington, was the street talk of "Washington City and some of this talk astonished and morti- fied two Georgians, then visiting the city. He replies "that it was the mere gabble of the friends and advocates of two op- posing railroad companies," and goes off into an extended explanation of his vote, which he seems to think gave rise to the gabble. Since General Gordon, by his humble tool, Reese, did not hesitate to publish my wife's name to the general public in connection with "Radical money," she decided to give him the benefit of a general criticism on the money of Jay Gould and Huntington. In a spirit of fairness and candor she referred him to the distinguished Georgians, who heard from strangers these damaging charges. When he gives as satisfactory proof of his innocence as she has furnished of hers, he may congratulate himself, but it is my opinion that his vindication will be a work of much greater magnitude. Allow me to say just here, it would be a novel sight in any other State to see a lady of the highest social standing, thus openly and by name attacked and then to be lectured by a venal press for allowing her name to appear in print in reply. General Gordon, in his peroration, says: "I was false to my people in war, begrimed in a wicked and corrupt alliance with the enemies of my party, my section and people." He knows that after uttering these foul slanders at every cross roads and county precinct in the Seventh Congressional dis- trict last fall, the purest and best citizens of that district, with a unanimity and zeal unparalleled in the history of Georgia politics, placed the seal of falsehood and condemnation upon his statements. Now, having shown in the outset of this letter that he was guilty of a base falsehood against my innocent and noble 496 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics wife, and after a succinct review of all the facts involved in the controversy, I close with the conviction that the country will award a just and impartial verdict. Like the great Duke of Marlborough, he has besmirched a brilliant war record with financial official complications, until Georgians blush that the grand old State is represented in the highest councils of the nation by such a man. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. As I have written elsewhere, the assassination of Col. Bob Alston occurred while the newspapers were circulating this very letter of Dr. Felton in reply to General Gordon's attack on myself. There was never such a trial known to Georgia criminal courts before. Senator Gordon and Governor Col- quitt were subpeoned as witnesses for the State, the two men of all others most interested, because the victim appealed to Governor Colquitt, not half an hour before he was killed in the State Capitol, and told his excellency that Cox was pur- suing him to kill and it was about Senator Gordon's business — the sub-renting of Gordon's convicts — that Cox was pur- suing Alston to his death. It spoke loudly for political domination by these two high officials — that the State excused the witnesses. An attorney declared it to be incomprehensible — and the prisoner on trial for murder excused also these two dignitaries — and it was generally understood that Cox would have a sheltering hand as soon as these two gentlemen could work the trick. And they did work the trick by inducing Governor Stephens to pardon Cox two or three years later. Dr. Felton alludes to a speech made in Atlanta a short time before General Gordon was re-elected to the United States senate. I had begged him to give the General a reminder that night that people who lived in glass houses should not throw stones. He was worn down physically and disinclined to further strife, but he should have done so — that was the time and the opportunity. Hon. Henry Carlton, of Athens, stopped our carriage before the State House door and plead with him to ignore General Gordon and not discuss his doings that night. He said General Gordon had made a mistake in going to the Seventh district and he would not do so again, and as a friend to both parties, he implored Dr. Felton to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 497 pass him by. I heard it all ; I felt in my bones that it was the time to stand, erect and hurl defiance at a public official who had not only traversed the Seventh district with atrocious charges against Dr. Felton's character, but who had in- troduced a bill in congress that had caused town talk in Washington City, as being influenced by the Pacific Railroad magnates, and who kept a well known lobby under the very shadow of the dome of the nation's capitol. But I said no more, and with his forbearing spirit (which I did not possess, worth a cent on that occasion), Dr. Felton made a speech that night which was as free from animosity or unkindness as any I ever heard anywhere under the most favorable and benign influences. That a severe arraignment of Senator Gor- don was looked for, the mission of Dr. Henry Carlton ex- plained, to my mind. That it was naturally expected, I had no reason to doubt as an immense crowd was present, and I shall ever believe that every man who is unjustly assailed in political or social life owes it to himself to make the people who do it, apologize or prove their statements, and if they will do neither, give them what they deserve and the "best in your shop. ' ' The killing of Mr. Alston in the State Capitol not only stopped further censures from General Gordon, but it con- vinced me that Dr. Felton would be unwise to attempt a Con- gressional canvass in 1880 with little money and confronted with the famous trio — Brown, Colquitt and Gordon — in con- trol of the politics of the State, but he thought somebody ought to stand up for right and truth, etc. Senator Hill wrote to Dr. Felton, asking him to come to Atlanta, that he had a proposition to make to him in regard to his race for congress that year. I pondered this matter all day, during his absence. As I remember, I met Dr. Felton at the depot, late in the afternoon, and he told me what the proposition was that Senator Hill had authority to offer him. Said he, ''Simply that I shall agree to forever quit the field if opposition is silenced against me this year." I did not need to be told that he had rejected the proposition that day. If he had accepted the proposed terms of the leaders of Democ- racy, then he would be expected to silently concur with them 498 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics in the existing race between Colquitt, Brown, Gordon, on one side and ex-Senator Norwood on the other, and support the triumvirate who were fighting for the highest offices of the State of Georgia — after he (Felton) had denounced the "bargain and sale" in public and private times without men- tion. As he did reject, and he went his way to his congres- sional race, it is unnecessary to say that his defeat might be predicted. From that time on I continued to plead with him that it was folly to attempt a race for congress with so much money staked out against him. But he resisted my appeal three times — until he was convinced of its uselessness in a State where both United States senators and a governor were championing the infamous convict lease system. In a published communication printed in the Working Man's World, an authorized interview, General Gordon positively denied any connection with the convict lease system. This denial was made in the year 1886. I searched the records and found he was hiring convicts, the contract reaching to the year 1889. ABSOLUTE PROOF. II JOHN B. GORDON'S STATEMENT TO THE WORKING WORLD UNTRUE. "For years I have considered the convict lease system a great evil, and I am in favor of doing all I can to break it up. Yes, sir, if I am elected I will recommend such action as will enable us to abolish this evil. "I am not interested in any convict lease, directly or in- directly. I was interested for a short time, but I got clear of that as soon as I could. "Some of my friends desired me to aid them in securing convicts, and after a great deal of persuasion, I consented to go on their bonds, which you can see by referring to the records, which I would like for you to publish. You will find I am not mentioned in the partnership." — Extract from the Workingman World's interview. CONTRACT Between John B. Gordon and Edward Cox. State of Georgia — County of Fulton : Whereas, John B. Gordon, of the county of DeKalb, State aforesaid, is one of the My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 499 lessees of the State Penitentiary No. 2, and whereas, the said John B. Gordon is the owner of a plantation on Flint river, in Taylor county, State aforesaid, which plantation constitutes a branch of Penitentiary No. 2, and whereas, the said John B. Gordon believes that Edward Cox, of the county of Taylor, is a careful manager and would humanely treat the convicts entrusted to his care ; therefore know all men by these presents, that the said John B. Gordon and Edward Cox have this thirteenth (13th) day of August, 1878, made and entered into the folio v/ing agreement : The said John B. Gordon con- stitutes and appoints the said Edward Cox his agent to manage and work his plantation in the said county of Taylor and sixty convicts to be placed thereon, which number shall be main- tained during the continuance of this agency, if possible, from the number of hands under Gordon's control after April 1, 1879. In consideration whereof the said Edward Cox agrees to furnish all the means necessary for the working of said plan- tation and for keeping the said convicts in a proper manner, to keep the plantation in good repair, and to treat the convicts humanely and kindly and to accept for his services all that remains of all the crops of whatever nature soever raised on the said plantation, after paying to the said Gordon yearly the amount due by the said Gordon to the State of Georgia for the said sixty convicts, and after turning fifty bales of cotton over to said Gordon, which cotton is to be an average crop lot, and twenty-five bales are to be turned over on the 15th day of November, and twenty-five on the 15th day of December of each year during the continuance of this agency. It is expressly understood that the said Gordon is to be held in no way liable for the money used in making said crop. The said Cox further agrees to indemnify the said Gordon for any loss he may sustain by reason of the negligence of said Cox in allowing convicts to escape. It is further agreed that this agency shall begin to run from the 1st day of January, 1879, and shall continue eight years therefrom, provided the said Cox complies in every way with his agreement and further complies in every way with the act of the legislature, 1876, leasing the convicts. In testimony whereof we have hereunto affixed our hands and seals the day and date first above mentioned. J. B. GORDON, (Seal.) EDWARD COX, (Seal.) Witness: R. A. Alston, W. M. Ragsdale. (The above is on file in the clerk's office. Supreme Court, Atlanta. ) 500 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics MORE MONEY FOR GORDON. Another Contract for the Hire of Convicts Set Out in Full. State of Georgia — Fulton County : This agreement, entered into between John B. Gordon, of the county of DeKalb, State aforesaid, and Chess B. Howard, of the county of Crawford, State aforesaid, witnesses that for and in consideration of the sum of ($4,000) four thousand dollars cash in hand paid, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, and in further con- sideration of fifty bales of cotton, each weighing four hundred and fifty pounds of an average crop lot, twenty-five bales to be delivered on the 15th of November, and twenty-five bales on the 15th of December of each year, for eight years, count- ing the present as the first of the eight years, and in further consideration of the assumption of the debts incurred by the firm of Gordon & Cox, in running the plantation of the said Gordon, in Taylor county, for which said Gordon may be liable on the terms, and to the amount of hereinafter set forth, and the further consideration, that the said Howard will as- sume and pay whatever may hereafter become due or may now be due the said State of Georgia, for the use of said convicts, the said John B. Gordon has bargained, sold, assigned and transferred, and doth by these presents bargain, sell and transfer unto the said Chess B. Howard, his heirs and assigns, all his right, title and interest of whatsoever nature or kind in the convict lease, known as Penitentiary No. 2, and all his control over the convicts, by reason of his interest in the Pen- itentiary No. 2, and his right to enter and take possession of his plantation in Taylor county, and the sixty convicts there- on, or that were to be placed thereon by reason of any for- feiture of Edward Cox, his agent and manager, from a failure on the part of said Cox to comply with the contract made between the said Gordon and the said Cox, in August of the year last passed. The said Chess B. Howard covenants and agrees to pay promptly to the said Gordon the fifty bales of cotton a year for the next eight years, of the weight and kind and at the dates above mentioned, counting the present as the first of the eight. The said Howard covenants and agrees to assume the debts of Gordon & Cox, for which the said Gordon is liable to the amount of $3,000. After the property of Edward Cox, of the firm of Gordon & Cox, which is liable for the debts of the firm, has been exhausted or made to pay said debts as far as pos- sible — that is, the said Howard holds himself liable to pay $3,000 of the debts of Gordon & Cox out of his own pocket. If after the property of the said Edward Cox, which is liable for the debts of Gordon & Cox, has been applied to the pay- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 501 ment of the same, a balance should still be due on said debts, it is distinctly understood and agreed that Howard shall pay said balance, provided it does not exceed $3,000. If the balance due on the debts of said firm, after the property of said Cox, which is liable for the debts, has been applied to- wards the payment of the same, should exceed $3,000 of said balances, the said Howard covenants and agrees to give the said John B. Gordon bond with good security in the sum of $3,000 for the faithful compliance of that part of this contract which relates to the payment of the debts of the firm of Gor- don & Cox. Said Howard further agrees to give to said John B. Gordon good bond and security in the sum of $18,000 to indemnify him for his liability to the State of Georgia, and Howard assumes to pay whatever is now due or may here- after become due to the State of Georgia for the use of said convicts. It is further understood and agreed between the parties to this agreement that should the said Chess B. Howard fail to comply with this agreement to pay the debts of the firm of Gordon & Cox and to deliver the fifty bales of cotton yearly to the said Gordon, then in addition to bond and security above mentioned, the said Howard shall forfeit all right to the sixty convicts for the balance of the eight years unexpired at the time of his failure to comply with his agreement, and the said Gordon shall have the right to enter immediately upon his plantation, to take possession of it and take charge of the sixty convicts and dispose of them for the unexpired time of eight years in any manner he lawfully can. At the expiration of the eight years from the 7th of January, 1879, the convicts shall go back into the possession of the said Gordon. The said Howard further agrees to keep the planta- tion of the said Gordon in Taylor county in good repair, to keep up the fences and return said plantation on the 1st day of January, 1887, in good cultivatable condition. It is further distinctly understood that the said Gordon warranteth nothing herein conveyed except as against himself and his heirs and assigns. In testimony whereof we have hereunto affixed our hands and seals. Executed by John B. Gordon in the City of Washington, D. C, the 1st day of April, 1879, and executed by Chess B. Howard in the county and State aforesaid, April 1879. JOHN B. GORDON, (L. S.) C. B. HOWARD, (L. S.) Howard Fincher, Jas. N. Fitzpatrick, Geo. W. Maddox, J. P. ; John F. Troutman. I charged Senator Gordon with duping the poor Confederate soldiers all over the South in that South Sea Bubble — the University Publishing scheme — and it was a Georgia congress- 502 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics man from the county of Bibb who told us his university scrip was waste paper. I am also told that the General was the only "book agent" who ever "sharped" ex-Governor Brown successfully on the same line. The thing was a fraud, a fake, set up to catch the unwary. General Toombs, in the presence of others as well as myself, told about being visited at White Sulphur Springs, Va., by the General, who desired he (Toombs) should take a thousand dollars worth of the scrip and General Toombs told him he did not have the thousand dollars to spare. Whereupon the Georgia book agent told him he only wanted his name — he "needn't pay any money." What General Toombs told to us and what he said to General Gordon would not do to set down in my book of recollections. It was too crowded with ex- pletives ! The Southern Insurance Company was a more daring venture still, and the dupes were scattered from Baltimore to Texas. I have in my possession a letter-head of the insurance company — with the names of General Gordon as president, and General Colquitt, vice-president, in which the assets of the insurance company were printed, namely "one million five hundred thousand dollars." It was a genuine advertisement, and this sheet of office paper contained a note to myself, from the General, then United States senator, and signed by J. B. Gordon himself. When the scheme exploded, in 1876, these gentlemen were drawing salaries, as I was informed by Col- onel Alston, anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 per annum. A Georgia editor who had been duped said these people were taking in money for policies in the forenoon and the newsboys were crying the extra of the explosion in the after- noon of the same day. But an editorial in a South Carolina paper, called the "Barnwell People," thus states the case: "The State of Georgia is now being exercised considerably by accusations and counter-accusations between Senator Gordon and Dr. Felton and wife. Gordon accuses the Feltons of coqueting with Radicalism — in other words, 'a black line of battle, officered by white faces.' The Feltons accuse Gordon of participating in various swindles since the war, and par- ticularly with that gigantic swindle called 'The Southern Life My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 503 Insurance Company,' with which so many of our Barnwell citizens are, to their sorrow, too well acquainted. With regard to Gordon's charge against the Feltons' we have this much to say, that Georgia is now a battle field of warring Democ- racy, in which the blacks are slipped in by both factions for ambitious purposes, and without passing an opinion on the Feltons, male or female, we can only say, so far as Gordon's charge is concerned they are 'doing at Rome, only as Rome does.' As to the counter-charge against General Gordon, we are very much afraid he has got the worst of it, for we do know that at the very time that he and the weak-minded governor of Georgia, Colquitt, were lending their hitherto honored names to bolster up this wretched, infamous bubble, which impoverished so many of our people, they were well aware that the Augusta branch was in the hands of the notorious, un- scrupulous adventurer, J. H. Miller — that the officer was a defaulter for a year or two before the explosion, to the amount of $40,000 ; that the Atlanta branch held a mortgage and other liens upon all the assets of the Augusta branch and its renewal premiums : that the carriage and horses of this forger. Miller, by which he dazzled the eyes of the community with a fictitious property, were mortgaged to the Atlanta branch — and that at any moment the whole affair was subject to disaster. If General Gordon or Governor Colquitt deny this knowl- edge, we then charge them with a crime almost equal in moral, if not in legal turpitude, a crime, alas ! too common amongst our people, that of assuming for filthy lucre, position of grave trust and responsibility for which they are not rendered com- petent either by previous training or natural ability. On the other horn of the dilemma, we gore them. It is a hopeless task to inquire, as the News and Courier does, for a satis- factory explanation of this detestable crime. It will ever stand against them and their children as a blot upon their fair escutcheon. ' ' I will append an open letter addressed to General Gordon which he also saw in the public prints, and in my collection of clippings I could make a fair sized volume, if time or space permitted : 504 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics An Open Letter to General Gordon. Morris Station, Ga., May 25, 1886. Hon. John B. Gordon: A few months ago your post office was New York. Your letter announcing your candidacy was headed "DeKalb County." This is hardly the name of a post- office, hence I know not where to address you, unless it be in care of the Constitution or of Joseph E. Brown. I am informed that you stated in Cuthbert that you would repay any man who would say that you were the cause of his losing money by the Southern Life Insurance Company, and who thought you ought to do so, all the losses he sustained by the company. I assure you that but for the fact that your name and that of Alfred H. Colquitt appeared as the managers or officers of that branch in which I took a policy, and that I deemed you entirely competent to, and that you would, pro- tect the interests of those whom your influence led to invest in the concern, I would now be better off the amount paid into it. My confidence in the ability and integrity of you two alone induced me to invest in it. Certain it is that I lost $1,536 in the Southern Life Insurance Company, for which I still hold a policy, and equally certain is it that but for my confidence in you and Colquitt I would not have lost it. About one year before the final collapse of the company I made an effort to get my money out of it, offering to take, first, 75 per cent, of the amount paid in, afterward 66 2-3 per cent., and finally 50 per cent. To all of these offers I received a positive negative reply. In connection with this request I forwarded a written agreement from my wife and children, the latter then of age, releasing all claims upon the company upon the refunding of one-half the money I had paid in. The only thing I could get was a paid-up policy for the above amount, I thought, as the sequel proved that the thing was rotten to the core, and my confidence in you was shaken. I have never received one cent on that policy. I am old and poor and need it. You are said to be rich. Whether you reaped any benefit from my money, I can not say. That you were the cause of my losing it, is certain. But for my con- fidence in you I would not have lost it. I took you as surety for the debt and feel that you owe me the money and that out of your abundance you ought to repay me at least a part of it. I do not include fifteen years interest on this amount. I will be more than satisfied with the principal — if I can get it, and will publicly acknowledge its receipt as I have publicly demanded it. I must say, however, that should you see fit to return my money it will not buy my support for you. Prac- tical experience and ordinary observation of your career have fullv convinced me that you are wholly impractical, not fitted il My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 505 in any particular to look after the interests of the great State of Georgia. My demand is one of simple justice and not an offer of sale of my support for the place you seek at the hands of the people. , Respectfully, JOHN S. CALLAWAY. I made mention of money borrowed from a Bishop and General Gordon named the amount as $300. My information came from Hon. A. H. Stephens and his recollection made it many thousands. But I copy here from the letter of Mr. Stephens, a letter written to me from Culpepper, Va., in the year 1880 : ''Culpepper C. H., Va., 26 June, 1880. "Dear Mrs. Felton: I have just reached here. It is now about 4 p. m. ; the air cool and pleasant after a great fall of rain at 3 p. m. I found your letter of 22d, and am much sur- prised at the information you give as to the Newcomb-Gordon arrangement. I never heard anything of the sort before, but murder will out, and the truth will get out after awhile I expect. I always thought there was a very big pile of money at the bottom of it somewhere, but did not know where. Be- fore receiving your letter I discovered in looking through my scrap books that I had copies of the papers referred to, and from what I understand to be the bottom facts — I confess I am utterly amazed at rereading General Gordon's statement in denial of what you said about his use or misuse of Bishop Wilmer's money. I do wish that Dr. Felton had probed into the matter and brought out the truth of the case. As I under- stand from one who ought to know, but one whose name I am not authorized to use in connection with this subject, General Gordon solicited and obtained from Bishop Wilmer, soon after the war, between $5,000 and $10,000 — the exact amount be- lieved to be six thousand dollars. This sum was lent to him on no security whatever but his own individual note. It was put in the Brunswick speculation" (The saw-mills, where Gen- eral Gordon, as I was told and published the fact, had soaked up somewhere about $100,000 for George Shorter, who, in despair, took his own life). "Subsequently General Gordon secured it, as was represented, by perfectly good stocks in a coal mine, but on which the legal representative of the Bishop received about 1 cent on the dollar. These, I think, are the 506 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics bottom facts, or substantially so. Gordon's words, as you see, are peculiar. He is positively explicit in saying that he never owed or borrowed from any Bishop, North or South, except from a holy man, then dead, and then goes on to say that the holy man loaned him or handed him, unsolicited, about $300, which he had either secured at par stock, or was ready to do it. You will notice that he does not say that he did not borrow other moneys than that $300 from that holy man. He is very positive he did not borrow from any Bishop except this holy man — and states that he received about $300 from him. If he received other funds from him, he does not say he repaid that, or was ready to pay, etc. This thing should be probed and brought out as a matter of veracity. He is now going about in the State defending his character, and the papers are lauding him as spotless and pure, when if the facts in this ease, as I understand them, his statement is nothing but an unmitigated falsehood," etc., etc. (Signed) "A. H. S." I might have a good deal to say about a sheep ranch that Mr. Stephens jollied him about, in Washington and in the newspapers, where somebody adventured $8,000 and as usual it went glimmering, but I am now going to prove the Jay Gould and Huntington matter, and I shall say nothing and use no publication save those that General Gordon saw in print, during the Bacon-Gordon campaign, and which he failed to deny as any honest, patriotic senator would stand up to deny and hurl "falsehood" in the face of the "defamer. " "When Senator Gordon went into print to charge me with getting Radical money from the Republican campaign com- mittee to elect my husband, the story of Huntington's tell tale letters had not been published, but I was reliably informed that he was working for Huntington in the senate, and I charged him with it in an article written for the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, in the mid-summer of 1878, while the Lester campaign was going on. He came into our own county to defame Dr. Felton, and "the boys" pelted him with squibs about Huntington. It was known that he was antagonizing the Thurman funding bill, with a bill that no Southern Demo- crat with clean hands could understand. Hon. Allen Thurman My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 507 complained to a Georgia congressman, and said he had about lost faith in some Southern senators. I hunted up the bill and read it aloud to Mr. Stephens, and he lost faith in some Southern men — because Senator John B. Gordon introduced for the Pacific Railroads, on the 12th of January, 1877, this bill which would have forever robbed the government of a very large portion of their legal obligations to the people of the United States. If you will examine a previous chapter on the Pacific Lobby you will see that Mr. Huntington claims Senator Gordon as "his man," and this bill as "his bill." Five days after, on January 17th, Huntington writes to Colton, he thinks he "can pass our sinking fund bill," with $200,000. That amount was to be applied to senators first, and congress- men next. How applied, it is unnecessary to explain. On March 7th Huntington writes to Colton, "My bill did not pass ($200,000 being insufficient), but it is in better shape than ever before." Why? Because this corrupter of public men says he "spent two whole days in fixing up the railroad committee of the senate." Who did he place on the senate committee, among others? Simply the Georgia senator who introduced "his bill." The most natural thing to happen. I have not time to discuss the ethics of this corruption in that era of our history. These railroad magnates not only elected their men at home, but placed them on committees when they served as legislators in the National Capitol. In the face of this fearful statement made by Huntington to his partner, Colton, General Gordon went into print, in Georgia, to say "there were no insinuations against myself." Of course, plain facts were not to be ranked with insinuations. They were the thing itself, not the shell to it. The facts were the cream, and insinuations were only the froth, or sour whey. To clinch it harder, Hunt- ington said his committee had been tampered with after he fixed it, and Gordon, his man, was "taken off" and Bogy, of Missouri, put on. The evidence is indisputable. Huntington owned his man, Gordon, and the presumption is he paid out lobby money to get him! Huntington writes again to "Friend Colton," he is "urging Senator Gordon to get up a party of Southern men to go over his road to California," and such a trip "will cost the railroad company $10,000, but it will be 508 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics money well expended. ' ' Not content with buying this Georgia "soldier, always to let," he was to be used as a decoy duck to snare other Southern men into the toils of Huntington and company. Friend Colton is also applauded for his zeal in getting so many names signed to the request for Senator Gor- don and friends to go to California in so short a time. What an easy and plausible scheme ! How smooth on the outside ; how devilish on the inside ! But somewhere the alarm had been whispered around. Gordon had ticketed his trade on his back when he introduced Huntington's bill, and Huntington further states, "Gordon and others were not afraid to go, but some dislike to go on an invitation from the railroad." Is there no word of insinuation in this statement? The senator's newspaper down in Georgia made free to declare that a "dozen corporations were ready to employ the General," but the intimation given by Huntington in this correspondence is that "the longest pole knocked down the persimmon." That General Gordon was Huntington's man is proven be- yond the shadow of a doubt, and Huntington's words em- phatically prove the truth of the charge I made. Not only did the General, also ex-Senator Gordon, deny this charge, as he did his interest in the convict lease, but he pronounced it "slander." In the year 1886 he made a public speech at Dublin, Laurens county, Georgia, in which he charged my husband with the same crime of bribery as a congressman from Georgia. I will copy here my husband's reply to General Gordon, written from "Near Cartersville, Ga., June 25, 1886. "Editors of Telegraph: I read this morning The Telegraph's report of General Gordon's speech at Dublin, Laurens county, after my return from Dalton. If he is correctly reported, he has told the people of Dublin a falsehood, equal in cupidity and cowardice to his denial of his connection with the con- vict lease, which has been proven to be a wilful, knowing false- hood by the records of the supreme court and his own signed and witnessed contracts, both with Edward Cox and C. B. Howard, already printed in The Telegraph. I ask you to copy your report of that part of his speech in which he used my name, although the falsehood here set forth degrades him even My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 509 below decent respect. "Huntington and Scott wanted the right of way to build the Pacific road. Scott wanted that and more. He wanted the government to endorse $50,000,000 of his private corporation bonds. One proposed to build the road for nothing — the other asked a possible tax and the certain guarantees of interest by the government on fifty millions of his private company's bonds. The man who has been uttering slanders about me in this matter is W. H. Felton, who, in that contest, was on Scott's side and I was fighting it. W. H. Felton was the defendant of that fifty million dollar lobby scheme, and I led the attacks on it that the road might h& built without a dollar of tax. ' ' If General Gordon used those words, as here copied from your paper, he is not only "hollow-headed, deceitful, unprin- cipled, dishonorable and unreliable in every way," to use Mr. Stephens' language of General Gordon, but he is also a gigantic liar and the truth is not in him." (I will here in- terrupt to say that Hon. A. H. Stephens thus expressed him- self in a letter written to me from "Liberty Hall," and dated September 14, 1880." The letter lies before me today (Feb. 20, 1911) as I write these lines.) "I defy him to show a single line in the Congressional Record, or any other document of congress, where I defended any scheme of Tom Scott or any other lobby scheme whatever. I defy him to show a speech or a vote to prove I was on Tom Scott's side, or Huntington's side, or Jay Gould's side, or any other corruptionist 's side. I defy him to show any 'contest' where I defended, by speech or vote, any lobby scheme, where he led an 'attack' on it. I did vote for the Thurman funding bill, in company with every member of the house of representatives from Georgia and every voting mem- ber of the whole house but two ; one of those was Ben Butler, of Massachusetts, and the other Mr. Lynde, of Wisconsin, both said to be attorneys of the road. I did vote with the tax- payers in the house, while J. B. Gordon voted with Hunting- ton and the railroads in the senate, but that vote in the house and senate had nothing whatever to do with building a rail- road for Scott, or with endorsing fifty millions of bonds to help Scott. I did not have an opportunity to vote on the bill 510 IMy Memoirs op Georgia Politics introduced by General Gordon in the senate, which Hunting- ton called his ' ' bill, ' ' and which he thought he could pass with $200,000. It was killed in the senate, slaughtered before the eyes of Huntington's "man," alias John B. Gordon, by the patriotism of Senators Cockrell and Wallace, Democrats, and Senator Sherman, Republican. If it had lived long enough to reach the house, I would have voted against it as I have no doubt would have been done by every other member from Georgia. It was a despicable bill, born of monopoly and pressed by the "infernal force" of Huntington's gold. I should have defended the tax-payers to the best of my ability from that $200,000 used by Huntington to press General Gor- don's bill through the senate and house, and that bill had no more to do with building Tom Scott's railroad or Tom Scott's lobby scheme, than Gladstone's present bill before the people of Great Britain now has with General Gordon's can- didacy. General Gordon was obliged to know that this false hood would be exposed. He was obliged to know he would be proven a liar, from the official records, yet he brazenly at- tempts this filthy falsehood among a people who were not prepared with official records to show the desperation and shameless efforts. General Gordon is gifted in such men- dacious exploits. He can tell the most unwarrantable false- hoods in face of the evidence that I have ever known as human being to concoct and propagate. The only speech I ever listened to in congress on the Texas Pacific Railroad was made by Congressman Otho Singleton, of Mississippi ; the only congressional speech I ever read on the subject was made by L. Q. C. Lamar in the senate. Does General Gordon pretend to say these gentlemen were defend- ing "Tom Scott's lobby scheme, while he was attacking it?" To their honor be it said, both these gentlemen voted against General Gordon on the Thurman funding bill, and they hon- ored Mississippi by their vote. Hon. A. H. Stephens was pronounced in favor of the Texas Pacific Railroad. He affirmed, time and again, that the South should have a competing road with those giant monopolies built up in the North and West, built by government money lavished upon them without stint. Had this bill advocated by My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 511 Lamar, Stephens, Randall Gibson, and Garland ever reached the house of representatives, where I had a vote, I should certainly have been more inclined to help the war-devastated South, rather than continue to pour into Huntington's cotfers the bounty of the government, which had been heaped upon him without measure. So would any other Southern man who had an eye to the prosperity of the South, rather than to Huntington's corrupting gold. Huntington says he paid men to go through the South to defeat this Southern railroad, just as Huntington paid men in the senate to defeat it. Today that railroad which should have been a Southern road, controlled by Southern men (of which Gov. J. E. Brown was elected a director in Philadelphia) is now only a branch of Huntington's great California monopoly and John B. Gordon now says he did it. The profits rightfully belonging to the South have been directed into the coffers of a railroad magnate who used his money on congressmen and senators to prevent any com- petition with his railroad system. I ask the readers of the Telegraph which of these men was most trustworthy? I ask them to consider this matter before Gordon is placed in control of Georgia's finances. I authorize the Telegraph to say to General Gordon that I bring proof to establish every charge made by myself against him — proof from official documents and Huntington's letters, the truth of which he does not deny. In reviewing General Gordon's course and his utterances since he was imported from Wall Street, New York, to be- come the candidate of a clique for the governorship of Georgia, it is the bounden duty of the citizens of the State to examine into his qualifications for this position. Governor Brown found an enormous weight of political guilt resting on his shoulders when he traded with Foster and Stanley Matthews, to do something not yet fully revealed. I find an enormous weight of political infamy resting on his shoulders when he became Huntington's "man" in the United States senate to betray the tax-payers of this country. I find an enormous weight of political trickery and infamy resting on his shoulders, when sworn testimony develops the methods by which he secured control of Georgia's convicts for twenty 512 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics years to the injury of the tax-payers and the free labor of this State. I shall tell the people of Georgia he is unsafe, un- worthy and unreliable, so long as these attested facts stand out as they do to his shame and discredit. His success at this time would lower the standard of political rectitude, and place a premium on political treachery and official unfaithfulness, which, in my opinion, would do more to debauch the young men of the State than anything which has occurred in history. His brilliant war record, -like that of Marlborough, has been trailed in the dust to fill his pockets with gold. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. FELTON'S FACTS. A VIGOROUS REPLY TO THE CONSTITUTION'S CHARGE OF SLANDER. The Doctor Reiterates His Charge Against General Gordon and Forcibly Reminds the Ring Organ That Telling "Truth Is Not Slander." Near Cartersville, Ga., June 7. Editors Constitution: I was surprised on reading yester- day 's Constitution to find you had resolved to attack me before you even allowed your readers to examine into my statements, which you denominate slander. You make an unqualified charge, and if you are correct I should be punishable under the law. If you are not correct, you have slandered me. I demand a hearing in the same columns in which the attack appeared. The issue is now between you and myself. General Gordon has deliberately ignored the plain, unvarnished charges against his political character. He endeavors to silence criticism by calling them slanders, although he knows he cannot answer and confesses guilt by silence. But it is different with you. You and I are responsible to the public, and if you have spoken the truth, I deserve condemnation. If I have spoken the truth, you owe me proper amends. I have no fear of the result, and you cannot deprive me of a hearing in your columns without plac- ing yourself in the attitude of a malicious and unjust partisan, upon whose head such injustice must recoil. I would remind you that Mr. Hill is dead. You and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 513 General Gordon have dragged his name into this canvass when he is not alive to reply for himself. My newspaper controversy with Mr. Hill was settled up in his lifetime ; I suppose satis- factorily to himself, as he made no reply to my last letter on the subject. You are incorrect in saying I assaulted him when he was sick. I have Mr. Grady's interview with Mr. Hill be- fore me, in which he is authorized to say for ]\Ir. Hill that he was in the finest health and spirits, and determined to attack me all over Georgia as endeavoring to "Africanize the State." I defended myself promptly from the assult which Hon. A. H. Stephens denominated as a most unwise and unjust charge. These are facts, and it is late in the day for you to rise up and defend Mr. Hill, where he declined to defend himself either in person or by proxy. You are incorrect in saying I pursued his good name with hatred or revenge. When his son, Charles Hill, was a candi- date before the legislature for his present office, my vote and influence would have defeated him, yet I cast it for him. His brother thanked me on the spot, and gave expression to some kind feelings unnecessary to mention. Remember Mr. Hill is dead. General Gordon used his monu- ment and the exercises at which Mr. Davis was present for an unholy purpose, and I am well enough acquainted with Mr. Hill's opinion of General Gordon, in years gone by, to say he would have been indignant at the efi'ort of General Gordon as was Mr. Davis when he became fully acquainted with the methods employed by General Gordon's friends in this cam- paign, when he was informed of their extent and the purpose for which his visit to Georgia was used by them. Nothing escapes General Gordon, however. He appeared as chief mourner at Mr. Stephens' funeral, when the latter wrote as late as September, 1880, that General Gordon was "hollow- headed, deceitful, unprincipled, dishonorable and unreliable in every way." I have the letter. He appeared at General Grant's funeral as chief mourner, with the infamous Belmont coal mine swindle still hanging over him and a matter of open discussion in the courts of New York City. You cannot wonder, then, that he is now ready to ride into some office on Mr. Hill's fame, although Mr. Hill himself informed me of the slanderous letters on his private character written by General Gordon to members of the legislature to defeat Mr. Hill for the senate. Mr. Grady ha*s not forgotten his own denunciation of General Gordon upon this matter, which occurred in "Washington directly after Mr. Hill's election, and which words were noted at the time by other persons as well as myself. When you go behind dead men to attack me, I can give you a Roland for every Oliver, but you shall always be the first 514 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics to inaugurate such a fight, and I charge you again to remem- ber that Mr. Hill is dead. Now for General Gordon. As to General Gordon, I have made no statement without the proof. That you may be able to defend him if you can, since he fails to defend himself, I will restate the charges here, and unless you can successfully refute them, you will stand convicted before the people of the offense charged by you upon myself. I have charged, and shall continue to charge, that General Gordon introduced a bill into the forty-fourth congress on the 13th of January, 1877, to antagonize the Thurman funding bill, which bill he advocated in a speech before the senate. I charge that C. P. Huntington, president of the Central Pacific Railroad, called that bill introduced by Gordon "our bill," and Avrote to Colton, his California partner, that he could pass that bill with $200,000. He did not pass it, thank God! He wrote to Colton two days after the forty-fifth congress convened, on March 7, 1877, that his bill was in better shape to pass than ever before, as he stayed two days in Washington fixing up the senate committee on railroads. On the 10th of March he wrote to Colton that "Tom Scott had succeeded in putting one of his men off and in putting one of Scott's men on. Gordon, of Georgia, was put oft' and Bogy, of Missouri, was put on." I charge General Gordon with being Huntington's "man," because he introduced Huntington's bill, and because Hunt- ington calls him "his man" — and General Gordon does not deny it. Truth is not slander, Mr. Editor, and the truth has been told if the Congressional Record and C. P. Huntington are to be believed. I charge General Gordon with endeavoring to decoy thirty Southern congressmen into the toils of Huntington, Avho said that trip would cost the railroad $10,000. I charge General Gordon with voting against the Thurman funding bill, when every member of the house of representa- tives voted for it, but Ben Butler and Mr. Lynde, of Wiscon- sin. S. S. Cox, in a speech that day, said the railroad kings boasted "out best senators have their price." Colonel Printup and Judge Underwood told me General Gordon was denounced in a hotel dining-room as a man who had been bought by the railroads, with the price stated, while they were visiting Washington in the spring of 3878. Ask them if these things were not so discussed in their hearing at that time. I charge General Gordon with endeavoring to trade with My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 515 Stanley Mathews and Charles Foster after Hayes and Tilden's canvass for the presidency was closed. The letters written by those gentlemen to General Gordon and John Young Brown were published in the Constitution by authority of Senator Joseph E. Brown in the year 1877. Governor Brown derided General Gordon ; he held him up to public scorn, and he proved as true what General Gordon then called a slander, just as I have proved to be true, what you now call slander. I charge General Gordon with being a convict lessee, on the original contract bond, responsible now to the State, and as the man who signed a contract with Edward Cox, Gordon to furnish sixty convicts for eight years, for which he was to receive fifty bales of cotton as rental. I refer to supreme court records for the proof. His statement to the Working World that his name was "never mentioned in the partnership," I prove to be unqualifiedly false, by the same authority. Truth is not slander, Mr. Editor. I charge General Gordon with having left the United States Senate, as he has said, to accept $14,000 annually, as general counsel for Victor Newcomb, who, at that time, was ordering Governor Brown to charge every man who received goods that were transported by the Western and Atlantic Railroad three cents per hundred pounds extra, if those goods were shipped from Cincinnati, I charge General Gordon with being in the employ of Victor Newcomb, whose effort was to control the lease shares of the State road, in his own interest, in open de- fiance of the lease law — and while Victor Newcomb was thus seeking to defeat the will of the people of Georgia, and to con- trol the State road, John B. Gordon was doing some work for Victor Newcomb, for which Gordon was to receive twice the salary that the lessees of the State road pay to Governor Brown. Now I demand proof in refutation of these charges, from the Constitution, which has entered the fight, and de- nounced me as a slanderer. Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. How Did Gen. Gordon Get the Convicts? Let me go back and review this convict lease matter — a system that became an intolerable stench in the public nostrils, and which was 'narated" in London journals as the darkest blot on the civilization of the nineteenth century. The lease under which Gen. Gordon and his associates acquired posses- sion of these miserable slaves was made on June 21, 1876, by an executive order signed by Gov. J. M. Smith. Gordon's Company (and the general was the active spokesman of his company if Smith spoke truly), offered $425,000 for them all about 1,200 at that time. The number runs high into the thousands now. They were to pay for these slaves in instal- ments annually during twenty years. Gov. Smith did not ac- cept the bid, but divided out the convicts between three com- panies; and they were to pay a total of $25,000 per year with all expenses of guarding, delivering, chaplains, etc., to be paid by the State. The old lease had three years to run when this new lease was made. The old lessees had absolute control until April 1, 1879. Gen. Gordon's Company could not get a single negro slave alias convict until the old lease expired. Then the trickery came into play. All at once it appeared that the new lease law was in force, and Gordon & Co. were in possession of a large number of the convicts. How did they trick the law? Listen: Mr. Lockett and Mr. Lowe, of Gor- don's Company, put pressure on Gov. Smith, whose term as governor expired January, 1877, and who was a candidate for the United States Senate at the same time. Governor Smith wanted "influence," and the lessees wanted the convicts. Unless some convict camps were abolished by reason of ill doing or illegality there was no chance to get one legally for Senator Gordon, Colquitt & Co. But General Phillips, who had been the political pet of Gov. Brown from time immemo- rial, was a holder of State convicts which convicts he was given to build the Marietta and North Georgia road (in de- fiance of Constitutional law, which forbade State aid to rail- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 517 roads and who hired out these convicts to anybody who would pay him for them), was persuaded to throw up some convicts, and the governor would then turn them over to the new com- pany — Gordon's Company and then would have what they wanted. Gen. Phillips resisted. He wanted all these slaves — all he could get — but the lessees gave Phillips a written obligation that if he would perform in the secret trick, and allow Gor don's Company to come in along with the Dade Coal Company in 1876 instead of waiting to 1879, then he should "not be hurt." Gen. Phillips consented to perform as trick manager, and accordingly he refused to accept four of these miserable creatures then incarcerated in Fulton county jail, and which were never in his possession. "Whereupon Gov. James Milton Smith, himself privy and party to the trick, issued an execu- tive order dated December 21, 1876, and by this order he turn- ed over all the State's convicts to the new lessees that Gordon's Company might get in immediately and begin to draw immense profits for which they paid not one penny as a starter. Ex- Gov. Brown was guaranteed 300 long-term, able-bodied slaves not only for twenty years, but twenty-three years. Gen. Gor- don's Company and the State House Company, headed by the all-powerful "Clerk Murphy," composed the other two lease companies a close co-operation. Remember the ' ' trick was performed in secret, and the secret did not leak until the tricksters fell out among themselves, and while honest men did not get their rights," according to the old saw, honest men were ashamed and mortified to know that United States Senator Gordon and the acting Governor Smith and the Governor-elect Colquitt and an Ex-Gov. Brown were caught juggling in Fulton county jail over four misera- ble, degraded convicts, to enter into and manipulate a convict lease which run for twenty-three years instead of twenty, and every year was an added disgrace to the good name of the State and the prison camps were "epitomized hells" of cruelty and inhumanity. I could fill a volume of 600 pages with the enormities of this crime and its perpetrators. It poured in millions of clean profit to the bank accounts of these men entrenched in the 518 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics highest offices in the State of Georgia, and they were so full and saucy that they named the successful politicians all over the State. Every few years these convict lessees were com- pelled to pay out big money when legislative investigations were ordered, and despite the fact that the atrocities were proven, the worst things complained of were found to be mildly presented, these all-powerful convict lessees (like Hunt- ington; paid their "kept organs," their corrupt legislators, their subservient judges and obedient solicitors with either political positions or plain cash until the evil was well-nigh impregnable. Alston lost his life because he prepared a report in which some of the prison camp atrocities were set down after the penitentiary committee had examined these places of torture as well as indecency, and because his committee reported twenty-five little bastard children, under three years of age, born of prisoned convict women and lustful guards in the win- ter of 1878-79. I will copy here an editorial from a North Georgia paper, printed in 1880 (at a time when Gordon was kind enough to turn over his seat in the Senate obligingly to Gov. Brown, and both were convict lessees, and Governor Colquitt made the appointment to cover the exchange) concerning the State's profit from its immense number of State's convicts. "Gordon, Brown & Co., penitentiary lessees, only paid the State this year $22,061.40 for the hire of 1,200 convicts, really slaves. Of this amount it took all but two thousand dollars to pay for guards — the keeper, the chaplain and physicians. We have not heard what went with the left-over $2,000. One escape only was paid for. "We hear that all escapes are report- ed as dead to escape the fine of $500 per escape. No. 1. Gov. Brown's Company turned in $6,464.28; Gordon's Company, Lowe, Lockett, et al., turned in $7,991.81, and the State House crowd; Renfro and Murphy, turned in $7,593.96. The State of Georgia furnished slaves to its political masters, who get them cheap as dirt, and yet the whole amount has been ab- sorbed by Nelms & Co., except $2,000, and the taxpayers sweat in the corn field to raise the money to pay judges, solicitors and other officials who convict these slaves and provide mil- lions for the lessees." The inhumanity was so dark and degrading that it beggars description. As I stated that the Democratic Congressional My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 519 Committee paid money to Holtzelaw's campaign in the seventh congressional district to aid Lester and defeat Felton, I like to furnish my proof in small undertakings as well as greater ones. There was sent to me during the Lester-Felton campaign a copy of the Indianapolis Journal bearing date October 24, 1878. The marked article was headed thus: The Democrats buying up cheap Republicans in Northern Georgia to oppose Felton for Congress. "It has leaked out that the Congressional Campaign Com- mittee of the National Democracy has been furnishing money to certain obscure Republicans in Northern Georgia to aid them in making a diversion in opposition to the re-election of Congressman Felton, Independent Democrat. "Perhaps it is the first time on record when Democrats have furnished money to aid the canvass of a Republican, but as Felton has always received the Republican vote in his district, they hope to defeat his re-election by furnishing means to os- tensibly aid the election of one Iloltzclaw, a self-appointed candidate, who is thus aiding the election of Lester, the regu- lar Democratic nominee in the seventh district." It was not the "first time" by many! And Iloltzclaw 's party delivered the goods as per contract and in fourteen large populous counties composing the seventh district, this candidate who carried the pirate flag of the Re- publican party and was drawing pay from the National Demo- cratic Congressional Committee, actually received two votes in the election, the balance voted for George N. Lester and John B. Gordon was the leader of this movement. In the general's reply to my letter in 1879, he said Dr. Felton had been elected by "repeating negro votes." I have the proof written by his henchman, Henry W. Grady, in the Atlanta Constitution that John B. Gordon, in a speech made for Lester in our own town of Cartersville, called on the negroes in the audience to rise up and pledge their votes then and there for Lester. He blew hot and cold from the same mouth, this "man" of Hunting- ton! The entire campaign, organized by Gen. Gordon to aid Judge Lester, was set forth on the very lowest plane of ward Democ- racy, a condition in Georgia that made self-government a crime. The weak were brought to the front, and the strong 520 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics sent to the rear. There was no principle, no progress, nothing but a rebel war cry and the shaking of Judge Lester's empty sleeve by Gordon, by this "Swiss soldier always to let." W. H, Barnum, the head of the National Democratic Committee, has been quoted as saying he kept peace in national congres- sional campaigns in his own peculiar way. "The way to keep a happy family," said he, "and put the snake on good terms with the dove, and the cat with the mouse in the same cage, is to keep them well fed." The money disbursed by the Na- tional Congressional Committee was applied to this base pur- pose in the seventh congressional campaign of 1878, to defeat an honest Independent Democrat, led by a man who was em- ployed by Huntington, owned by Huntington, and who voted in the same year (1878) to defeat the taxpayers of these United States, and to swell his employer's profits from his unholy Pacific Railroad monopoly ! Judge Lester was employed as a lobbyist by Ex-Gov. Joseph E. Brown to prevent an investigation of the State road lease I^ in the year 1872, and Ex-Gov. Brown paid him one thousand dollars for this service, and furnished Judge Lester's receipt for the money, and Ex-Gov. Brown used the word, "lobbying." Senator John B. Gordon became the "man" of Collis P. Hunt- ington previous to January 12, 1877, at which time Hunting- ton thought $200,000 would be sufficient to pass Gordon's bill, which was Huntington's "bill," through Congress. Hunting- ton, himself being witness to his ownership of Gordon, and the uses to which he aimed to apply him ! "Why should not such worthies all flock together? The dove and the snake, the mouse and the cat "all in the same cage!" In the year 1879 an investigation was ordered by the Na- tional House of Representatives and $10,000 appropriated to to pay for it, to examine into the cipher of dispatches, which passed and repassed in the Hayes-Tilden campaign. Manton Marble was put on the stand February 7th in New York City. He went to Florida to look after the electoral vote. He did not go at the request of anyone. He received a cipher from Nephew Pelton at the Everett House, and addressed all his own telegrams to Pelton. He was very obscure in his testi- mony about the telegrams he sent to Senator Gordon, and My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 521 Gordon, as usual, denied the whole business. Marble said he did not buy the Florida electoral vote, "but it was for sale." A number of ciphers were used with Gordon's cipher name at the bottom, but he knew nothing about any of them. These cipher telegrams were captured from a Senate committee room, and there were nearly 30,000 of them. They lay in Sena- tor Morton's committee room and under lock and key, but Gen. Gordon's faithful servitor in the Macon Telegraph said it was a trick by which the "dirty Radicals profited." But there was no explanation given of the trick in South Caro- lina, where two Democrats "profited," namely. Gen. Wade Hampton for governor, elected along with Hayes, and M. C. Butler, who went into the United States Senate, along with William C. Kellogg, who won his seat with Democratic Gov- ernor Nicholls in the State of Louisiana. A neater trick was never turned by any professional gambler in Monte Carlo. Superserviceable Reese, in the Macon Telegraph, informed his readers at home that Senator Gordon felt alarmed, "not understanding the usages of telegraph companies, lest some damaging plot has been laid to injure him." The ciphers sent to Pelton from South Carolina were closely traced to General Gordon. He was, as I was told, known as "Pope," and the last frantic telegram sent to Nephew Pelton, in Balti- more, where $5,000 was ordered "to be sent to Haskell" (who was Wade Hampton's son-in-law), was signed "Pope." General Mart Gary, of Edgefield, S. C, in an interview given to the New York Herald, bearing date of December 5, 1879, declares most positively that Governor Tilden was be- trayed by Southern leaders. He declared that Hampton told him (Gary) that he desired to withdraw the Tilden electors in the campaign of 1876. Hampton also said to Cooke and Mackay, Radicals, "if you elect me governor, I don't care who you elect for President." It was nothing more or less than an offer to surrender the electoral vote of South Carolina to Hayes, to secure the governorship to Wade Hampton. There can be no doubt that the trade with Hampton was made at the time that Hayes was given the electoral vote of South Carolina in November, 1876. When John Young Brown, of Kentucky, and John B. Gordon, of Georgia, dickered with 522 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Chas. Foster and Stanley Matthews after the election and after Hayes was inaugurated it was only "feeding time with the snake and the dove and the cat and the mouse, for all were in the same cage." They had been in alliance for several months and were only finding an outlet or a clever pretense to notify the public. At the time that Stanley Matthews was fighting Hunting- ton's battles in the Senate and John B. Gordon was intro- ducing Huntington's sinking fund bill January 12, 1877, the transfer of Tilden's electoral vote in South Carolina had al- ready been accomplished, so testifies Gen. Mart Gary. Mat- thews and Gordon were not strangers to one another in the winter of 1876-77. Both belonged to the same monopolist, and nothing could be easier than an after dinner arrangement, where Matthews and Gordon could appear before President Hayes and issue a notice that the President had agreed with these worthies about removing troops from South Carolina! It was the political crime of the century! It will ever stand as a crime, an outrage on the principles of free government and against a free people. This outrage induced Ex-Gov. J. E. Brown to appear in the Atlanta Constitution on April 15, 1877, and he did there and then excoriate the Senator from Georgia in these words: "They would see Tilden, the Democratic candidate, who was fairly elected and whose first official act would have been the removal of the troops from the two States mentioned (South Carolina and Louisiana), fraudulently counted out, and see Hayes, who was not elected, fraudulently counted in and the administration of the government taken out of the hands of the Democracy and placed in the hands of the Republicans for four years, rather than risk revolution. But they virtually declared that they were ready to take the chances of revolu- tion if they failed to get a pledge for the removal of the troops. This is the clear purport of the case if it means anything and upon this basis the bargain was consummated and Tilden was sold out." * * * Gov. Brown quoted at length from the published letters of John Young Brown to show who were the people who were trading and combining on the question of getting troops removed from South Carolina and Louisiana. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 523 He said "these quotations show conclusively that while Brown did most of the talking, Gordon was present by previous ar- rangement, and a party to the whole transaction." Hon. John Young Brown wrote to an old friend in Cartersville, a former neighbor of Brown's in Kentucky, and I saw the letter and Dr. Felton used it time and again on the stump, in which Brown, of Kentucky, expressed great surprise that Gen. Gordon had denied his participation as to the visits and correspondence be- tween Foster and Matthews and reiterated the statement that Gordon was there and assenting to every word he (Brown) had said of the whole matter. But the Senator from Georgia wrote to Hon. Joel Abbott Billups, of Madison, Ga., the fol- lowing open letter dated April 14, 1877 : "The charge that I made any bargain of any sort, or had any understanding of any character with Foster whom I saw or with Matthews, whom I did not see until after the inaugu- ration, looking either to the presidential count, or to the ac- tion of any Democrat in reference to future organization of house or parties, is basely false in every syllable and in every sense. I did not then have, nor have I since had, one word of conversation with either of these gentlemen, nor with anybody else looking to any political compromise with either of these gentlemen, nor with anybody else looking to any political ar- rangements of any description whatever." John Young Brown as emphatically declared that he went with Gen. Gordon in search of Hon. Charles Foster and found him and no one else was present but Foster, Brown and Gor- don. "His reply was satisfactory to my friend. Gen. (Jordon, and myself." John Young Brown produced and published a letter addressed to "Hon. J. Y. Brown and J. B. Gordon," dated February 26, 1877, in which Charles Foster wrote: "Referring to the conversation had with you yesterday, in which Gov. Hayes' policy as to the status of certain Southern States was discussed, we desire to say in reply that we can assure you in the strongest possible manner of our great desire to have adopted such a policy as will give to the people of South Carolina and Louisiana the right to control their own affairs in their own way and to say further that we feel au- thorized froTxi an acquaintance with and knowledge of Gov. 524 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Hayes and his views on the question to pledge ourselves to you for him that such will be his policy." CHARLES FOSTER. On the next day Stanley Matthews and Charles Foster signed another letter dated February 27, 1877, to same effect. Gov. Hayes was not inaugurated until March 4, 1877, and Brown with Gordon were threatening to break up the count of the electoral vote, and such threatening was understood by these two friends of Hayes. Gen. Gordon's absolute, un- qualified denial, written to Col. Joel Abbott Billups is astound- ingly astonishing in view of these facts. Ex-Gov. Joseph E. Brown winds up by saying: "You can neither acquit your friend by attempting to sup- press the evidence against him, nor can you divert popular attention by raising collateral issues. Is he guilty? That's the question. I have shown by incontrovertible evidence that in this transaction an enormous weight of political guilt rests upon his shoulders." (Signed) JOSEPH E. BROWN. This denial letter, written to Hon. Mr. Billups, was the sec- ond one of a series of unqualified falsehoods with which I be- came acquainted with in Gen. Gordon's history. The first was his lie by indirection, when he wrote to me in 1874, that he was then starting to South Georgia to fill engagements of long standing and could not tell when he would be in Atlanta again, and the very next Saturday he was in the seventh district aid- ing Col. Dabney and abusing Dr. Felton. This second false- hood did not astonish me any more than his statement to the Working World newspaper that he "had no connection with the convict lease, directly or indirectly,'' or that his alliance with C. P. Huntington had no basis in fact, as it was only "gabble." Before I pass along to his resignation of the senatorial seat to Gov. BrowTi, I desire to call attention to the indisputable fact that Gen. Gordon was in South Carolina when the electoral vote of Tilden was withdrawn and Hayes' electoral vote was set up. Smith Weed, of New York, went to Baltimore to meet Nephew Pelton, and expected to get $80,000 or $90,000 from Mr. Tilden, but Mr. Tilden recalled his nephew and "Pope" My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 525 (Gen. Gordon), made the last call for $5,000 to be sent to Has- kell, Wade Hampton's son-in-law. It is the logic of succeed- ing events that somebody made a larger offer and a better trade and there was enough in the trade to satisfy the traders. On March 6th, Stanley Matthews wrote a consoling letter to Governor Chamberlain, of South Carolina, and to this letter was appended a postscript signed W. M. Evarts, secretary of State. "Dear Sir: I have read this letter (Matthews' letter to Chamberlain), and conversed with Col. Haskell and Senator Gordon on this subject so interesting to us all. I should be very glad to aid in solution of the difficulties of the situation, and especially to hear from you speedily. With my compli- ments to Mrs. Chamberlain. Yours very truly, W. M. EVARTS." Read this and tell us if Mr. Evarts had not been consulting with Hampton's son-in-law and John B. Gordon, of Georgia! How does this tally with the denial to Hon. J. A. Billups? In November, 1876, Smith Weed, of New York, appeared in Columbia, S. C, and begun to telegraph to Mr. Tilden's con- fidential friend Havemyer. As soon as Havemyer received the dispatches they were sent on to Mr. Tilden's house, and Nephew Pelton did the work of replying. November 13, Weed asks: **If a few dollars can be placed in returning board. What say you ? ' ' Later in the day he asks : ' ' If returning board can be procured absolutely, will you deposit $30,000?" November 14: "Shall I increase to $40,000 if required to make sure ? " To this the answer came : ' ' You can go' to fifty if necessary." November 18 Weed sends a dispatch: "Ma- jority of board can be secured — cost is- $80,000. " Later in the day he says: "You must have the money at Barnum's in Baltimore early Monday morning. I go at ten tonight." He registered at Barnum's on Monday, 20th of November. Pelton was in Baltimore that morning, and went to Barnum's hotel. That day, Weed telegraphed in cipher to Gordon, in Columbia : * ' Matters arranged by returning board agent. In- form Haskell and telegraph news!" To make it plain, these people were going to bleed Uncle Sammy Tilden of $80,000, and count him in as President and Wade Hampton as gover- nor. Later in the day, Weed telegraphed from Baltimore to 526 ^Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics Gordon: "Have the court hold on to the electoral vote until fixed or failure. May be a little delay." The same day "Pope," who was Gordon, telegraphed to Weed, who had gone on to New York : ' ' Send $5,000 immediately to Haskell ; this will make court all right." On 22d, Pope thus tele- graphed Weed: "Have Democratic friends in New York in- form their friends by telegraph in New Orleans, that court is firm and prospects of electoral vote all right. Answer about the $5,000 telegram." On 23d, he again telegraphed Weed: "Expense too heavy for electoral ticket, unless money is sent to Haskell. Telegraph Haskell to draw immediately!" All this took place in November, 1876, The dickering with Foster and Matthews was only a blind to throw sand in somebody's eyes in April, 1877. While Gen. Gordon was figuring in Columbia, S. C, a friend of mine, a distinguished Republican, Hon. Amos T. Akerman, was requested to go over to South Carolina and see that Hayes and Chamberlain had a square deal. At my request he wrote me what he learned in South Carolina. There has never been a question in my mind, but that Tilden's election would have been secured, as he needed only one vote, if Mr. Tilden had sent the large amount demanded by those trading Demo- crats in South Carolina. Hon. Cyrus W. Field had a newspaper controversy with Mr. Tilden and said Mr. Cooper was in Mr. Tilden's house the night Nephew Pelton started to Baltimore to meet Smith Weed as per agreement. The conclusion is irresistible that somebody, not Tilden (who recalled Pelton from Baltimore), bid higher for the electoral vote of South Carolina and by this hocus- pocus Hampton was seated along with R. B. Hayes ! When Senator Gordon gave up his seat in the Senate to Ex-Gov. Brown, the New Orleans Times openly declared that Senator Gordon's advocacy of Kellogg would ruin him. when the facts were known, and the National Republican, Gorham's paper, when he was secretary of the Senate, and hand in glove with the Pacific slope railroad magnates very coolly declared there was a mine under Gordon's feet, which might explode on short notice, and therefore he "beat a hasty retreat" from the Senate. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 527 The Kellogg case was considered a very mysterious one, and without sworn testimony to clinch the matter, I shall al- ways believe there was a combination made up of trading Democrats and Republicans by which Mr. Tilden was sold out in Columbia, S. C, and New Orleans, La., and that Mr. Tilden might have held the presidency if he had traded with the con- spirators in Columbia. "What use had they for $80,000 or $90, 000, except to grease their own machine? The election was over, and Wade Hampton had been quite ready, according to Gen. Gary to put aside the electoral vote of Tilden, preferring to take his chances with Hayes. In a published speech made by Hampton at the time, he admitted his obligation to negro voters — "without them" he would have been defeated. Til- den's barrel was not tapped, so the other crowd "got 'em." The next and closing paragraphs on the subject of Senator Gordon's politics will be a brief mention of his resignation from the Senate, and his tender of the position to his ancient enemy, Ex-Gov. Brown, through Gov. Alfred H. Colquitt. In this connection I will say here what I have said before. I do not believe it was Gov. Brown's money which induced this money-loving General Gordon to vacate the seat in the Sen- ate. Ex-Gov. Brown could buy men when they were willing to sell their influence for money or the offer of political posi- tions, but this was one time when the figures were steep for Gov. Brown ; and it was never the ex-governor 's habit to sell his own influence for money. He left such money trading to smaller men, and weaker natures. He knew a great deal of what other Georgia politicians had done and were doing, and he always kept people about him, who could be useful in ferreting out the invisible, if not the unknown. He took what was offered him by weak Gov. Colquitt, and most likely he did not afterwards make known what he knew of Gen. Gordon's politics, or financial movements, after the seat in the Senate was made easy to him. He was an able man in intel- lect, either at Home or in Washington City. This is my opin- ion, based upon my close and long continued attention to Gov. Brown's political movements. He was a dictator in Georgia politics, even while he v/as being roundly abused by the ma- jority of Georgia's Democratic politicians. 528 . My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I think it is well to copy here a very plain statement made by Maj. J. F. Hanson, lately deceased, and printed over his own initials in his own paper (the Macon Telegraph), and bearing date of June 5, 1886, and written from New York City. Said he : " General Gordon has earned an unenviable notoriety by reason of the many wild-cat schemes with which his name has been connected. His dupes are scattered all over the Southern and many of the Northern States. For a time personal pride in some instances, and in others the hope of recovering back a portion of the money invested at his solici- tation, and which so far as can be learned has proven without exception in every case a total loss, induced men who had been deceived to remain silent. * * * Times have changed in this respect, men can be found here and there as everywhere else in the country to discuss the methods through which Gen. eral Gordon has been operating. They are also furnishing facts touching many of his performances which bid fair in time to blast what little he has left of a once brilliant and spotless reputation. As an evidence of this, it has recently come out that General Gordon's stories about the attorneyship for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad are in direct conflict with well-known facts with reference to Mr. Newcomb 's purpooses in giving him employment. General Gordon's many statements of the reasons influencing his resignation are so conflicting that he has no right to complain if the truth is told, even if it places him in a position from which he cannot escape and sweeps away the last doubt as to the disreputable work as was his to perform. Newcomb thought at one time he had secured control of the State Road. He proposed to reorganize by making General Alexander the president and another prominent railroad man in Georgia vice-president. He laid his plans before a gentle- man whose word will be taken as sufficient evidence on this point. He had other designs on Georgia and contiguous States beyond the control and reorganization of the W. & A. Railroad, and to carry them out he consulted with the same person, with reference to employing a man of "influence" to assist in the work. As he proposed to supersede Governor Brown as presi- dent of the State Road, he investigated his standing in the State with reference to his employment. Governor Brown was at that time very unpopular with the People of Georgia, and for this reason it was determined he was not the man for the place. Newcomb then asked about General Gordon's "in- fluence." * * * Shortly after this conference a party of Georgians, by engagement, met Newcomb at a dinner in New York. Much to their surprise, after reaching the place where My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 529" the dinner was given, General Gordon appeared, and as it also appeared, had come over from Washington on a special invita- tion to be present. He was received by Newcomb with the utmost familiarity and cordiality. The plan for reorganizing the State Road was discussed at the dinner. As Newcomb thought he had control, it did not occur to him that failure in carrying out the scheme was at all probable. * * * Governor Brown was summoned to New York, and this matter was laid before him. It then transpired that Newcomb was not in possession of all the facts with reference to the lease law, but Governor Brown acquainted him with them, however, and informed him no matter who owned the lease, the original lessees were bound to retain the control, etc. In short, they refused to step down and out. This unexpected turn in affairs upset Newcomb 's plan for the reorganization of the road. This statement of cold facts, which cannot be denied, puts at rest the question of General Gordon's expectation that he was to be made president of the State Road. The original lessees never entertained the idea, and it is now clear that Newcomb had no such intention. When Gordon resigned his seat in the senate, he stated among other things, that he had been offered the "attorneyship of the L. & N. Railroad." It was well known in Georgia that he was no lawyer. No man of any intelligence in the State ever believed for a moment that he had been employed as an attornej^. Besides the salary which his friend Grady said he was to receive was such as to have commanded the best legal talent in the land. When Gordon, at Eatonton, was pressed on this point, he admitted he was not to be employed "as a lawyer, but as counsellor and adviser to the president, Newcomb. As General Gordon knew the purpose for which he was employed, as indicated by Newcomb, when investigating the question of his influence in Georgia, it was but natural he should have sought to hide his mission as lobbyist under the name of attorney. These lobbyists usually call themselves attorneys. It is not strange that he failed to openly advertise himself, or the real character of the position. * * * "We have not said that General Gordon knew the nature of the service he was to perform. There was no doubt of its character in view of Mr. Newcomb 's action from frank statements made when he canvassed the case of General Gordon, but we do have the right to hold him to the logical results of the abandonment of his position as alleged attorney. It is a painful fact that he did not throw off the deception until it was plain to him that he could not longer conceal his true position. There is no doubt of the truth of the statements here made with reference to Newcomb 's plans, when he canvassed General Gordon's influence in the State of 530 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Georgia. It is not necessary now to follow the general in his career while connected with the L. & N. Railroad. As a sug- gestion as to what is to come, it may not be amiss to say that his claim of having built the Georgia Pacific is as preposterous as the claim that he saved South Carolina and Louisiana. J. F. H. In this connection it is proper to say that Judge Wm. M. Reese told me that Gen. Alexander, then vice-president of the L. & N. Railroad, told him: "Gen. Gordon's name had never appeared on the railroad's books, for a dollar of salary." This statement was published time and again during Judge Reese's liloiime and also in Gen. Alexander's lifetime with no question or denial. The first public notice of the intended resignation came to a crowd of young men belonging to the Pioneer Fire Company of Athens, en route to Rome on May 10, 1880, and told to them by Mr. Grady, who was known to be Gen. Gordon's in- timate friend in public and in private, and it was supposed that Mr. Grady had made considerable money out of his ad- vocacy of Gen. Gordon. The resignation did not occur until nearly ten days later, and Gen. Gordon was sharply brought to task by Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, because the general occupied his seat in the Senate six days after the governor of Georgia had accepted the resignation. It was a novel sight to see Gen. Gordon present Gov. Brown's credentials in a body where he had no legal or official business whatever, be- cause the resignation bore date of May 18, and Gov. Brown took the seat on May 26. The correspondent of the Macon Telegraph thus informed his paper: ''Ex-Governor Brown, of Georgia, was today qualified as United States Senator in place of General Gordon. The new senator's credentials were presented by General Gordon, who in a few words, formally announced to the senate he had resigned and his successor had been appointed by the gov- ernor of Georgia. When the credentials were read, the next graceful step would have been to swear in the new senator, but Mr. Edmunds, who never fails to pick flaws in any and everything that comes up, called attention to the fact that while Brown's credentials were dated May 21, Senator Gordon was still in his seat today. Under the circumstances he said there had been no vacancy, and Mr. Brown should not be sworn in, or else "Senator Gordon had occupied his seat and voted after he had ceased to be a senator." ]\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics 531 There was considerable stir about it, but it ended when Senator Ben Hill took Gov. Brown's arm and went up to the vice-president's desk and Brown was sworn in. Knowing as I did the fight that Senator Thurman, of the Democratic party, and Senator Edmunds, of the Republican party, had encount- ered with Pacific lobby money, and of the bill introduced by Gen. Gordon to aid Huntington and defeat Thurman and Ed- munds, I just set it down that the Senator from Vermont could not resist the very human inclination to lift Huntington's "man" out of the Senate with a well-deserved kick at the very last minute ! Then the press was filled with reasons for the exchange of seats, and what Gen. Gordon really proposed to do. He told the reporter of the Baltimore American he was "too poor to stay in the Senate," but that is too thin, for he plead in piteously pathetic terms" before certain Georgia legislators in 1890 to be allowed to go back to the Senate or he was a ruined man." I have excellent authority for the last state- ment whenever it is called for. Senator Brown was visiting in Nashville, Tenn., when he received his appointment, and when interviewed in Atlanta said he did not intend to resign the presidency of the W. & A. Railroad. On May 20, Gen. Gordon told a reporter of the Savannah Morning News that he would become counsel for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad "and all its branches" and "would act in Newcomb's place, while Newcomb was absent in Europe at an early date." A special to the Philadelphia Press May 20 said : ' ' Gordon, it is said stood in momentary dread of a threatened exposure which would summarily close his public career and ring the curtain down in darkness. ' ' The Chronicle says : ' ' Our Washington correspondent throws some light upon the subject today. It is barely possible he resigned because he could not help himself. It seems to be a case of necessity and sharp ne- cessity at that." On the same day, there was a startling arti- cle reprinted in Washington City from the Irish World, because of a letter addressed to Chairman McLane of the Pacific Rail- road Committee, written by one J. A. George, of the census bureau, who said he had letters and documents to prove the bribery of three Senators and that $100,000 land grant bonds 532 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics were placed with a member of the House, and were distributed to purchase votes for a scheme. The Irish World then dis- cussed the matter further by saying: "The Texas Pacific Corporation, the arm of this vast Pacific Railroad monster of plunder, is now before Congress for the purpose of extending this land grant. (The railroad now is called the Southem Pacific). "That men sent to Washington to represent and protect the people can have the hardihood to entertain its schemes would be incredible, but for the enormous bribes held out to them. For the sake of maintaining a show of decency, it is possible the farce of an investigating committee may be gone through with but that will be the only response a de- frauded people will hear of it. Meanwhile it is a provoking piece of impudence that on the same day the House Committee of Pacific Railroads secured a letter from Gen. Sherman, who advocates legislation for the extension of the Northern Pacific Railroad claiming it would give homes to two or three mil- lion people. ' ' The New York World said : ' ' The very fact that there is no immediate necessity for establishing a new status between the Pacific roads and the government and at the same time an investigation is opposed strenuously, is prima facie proof that there is something wrong in the extension bill which speculators and lobbyists are endeavoring to force through Congress. * * * * The dishonest Congressmen who think they can afford to vote for this bill must have indeed extraordinary inducements." But to return to Gen. Gordon's reasons for resignation. In a public speech in Leesburg, Ga., he told the audience he "did intend to carry the real secret to his grave." In the next speech he declared he was moved to it by a "flattering offer from a man named Hogg to go into a big railroad enterprise in Oregon." On May 12, 1886, in a public speech, he said: "I left the Senate for other fields. I built the Georgia Pacific Railroad when I had not one dollar of money, and after it had wrecked three powerful corporations of the State." Gen. Gordon told Maj. Houston, of DeKalb county, he resigned from the Senate to build the Georgia Pacific Railroad, and he could not be Senator and railroad capitalist at the same time. Maj. Hous- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 533 ton made this statement in most apparent simplicity, and pub- lished it in the Atlanta Journal. And says Maj. Houston-. "The demand for his services in behalf of the Georgia Pacific came from Northern capitalists, who controlled lines antagon- istic to those in which Gov. Brown was interested." Gen. Gordon had an interview in Atlanta June 6, 1880, and it was published under headlines called "Gordon's Defense," in which he said : ' ' Some months ago I met a Confederate friend, T. Edenton Hogg, formerly of Louisiana, who had ac- quired a large fortune on the Pacific Coast and was engaged in important enterprises in Oregon. He made me such offers as induced me to consent to go and join him. It was my pur- pose to continue in public life until the legislature should meet but the letter which I hand the reporter will show why it be- came necessary for me to decide at once." The letter was published and Gen. Gordon adds : "To accept this proposition and one I was arranging for my sons, I sent my resignation to the governor." On May 19, 1880, Henry Grady, from Washington, sent the following to the Atlanta Constitution: "Gen. Gordon himself says the first thing he wants is a few weeks of rest. He has had several flattering offers, but will do nothing for some time." C. H. Williams, the regular correspondent of the At- lanta Constitution, sent that paper an interview on May 25, 1880, in which the following appeared: "But general," I asked, "why did you not hold on until the end of the session and draw your salary as Senator until the legislature met?" General Gordon quickly answered: "Because I could not postpone my business arrangements that long. Gov. Colquitt begged me to do so, but I could not." Have you any objec- tion to stating the nature of the business arrangements alluded to? "Certainly not," said Gen. Gordon. "It is that of gen- eral counsel to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Co." In Dublin, Laurens county, where Gen. Gordon spoke (and Maj. Hanson followed him) he said: "I resigned my seat because I was in debt, I was heavily in debt. I declared more than a year before I intended to resign and rebuild my for- tunes. The opportunity did come. It came, when it compelled me at once to embrace it or lose it. I resigned and I embraced 534 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics it. I would do it again under the same circumstances. " (That was the day and the hour when he falsely declared that my husband, W. H. Felton, was working for a fifty million lobby scheme, and he (Gordon) fought him in Congress on it). I remember a short sentence found in the Atlanta Consti- tution after Huntington's letters came out, which letters trans- fixed their friend, Gen. Gordon, for all time to come. Speak- ing of Huntington, the editorial ran along as follows: ' ' Huntington was a more accomplished corruptionist than ever Oakes Ames was. Huntington is an elegant rascal, who couples sentiment to observation, and a lack of morality to both with an abandon which is not wholly unattractive." I leave it to the readers of this book to decide upon the elegant unattrac- tiveness or lack of morality in the many reasons given by Gen. Gordon for slipping out of the Senate in the year 1880. But I have something additional still to add to the long cata- logue of resignation reasons before I leave the subject with you. There was a Mr. Bowker up in Boston, who made a fertilizer proposition to our resigning Georgia Senator, which he accepted and he was happy that it would give his sons also fine positions in the "Southern branch of Mr. Bowker 's plant." This Bowker proposition is so refreshing and so cheeky that I desire to embalm his memory in this book of recollections : It is taken from the Boston Daily Advertiser, and it dilates on Gen. Gordon's resignation (and was also published in the Atlanta Constitution), and bears date of May 30th: "Gen. Gordon left here this morning for Atlanta, Ga Before his depature he was visited by your correspondent, and from the following conversation, it will be seen that the gen- eral has associated himself with the Bowker fertilizer Com pany of your city." I should like to inquire as to the truth of it? I asked: "Yes. I was induced to resign in a large measure by the proposition submitted to me by the Bowker Fertilizer Company, of Boston and New York. * * * This led to a correspondence between the fertilizer company of your city and New York, which has developed into an arrangement between us. They have offices in both cities, but the principal man-ufaeturing is now done in Boston. They propose to in- crease their capital stock very largely. I myself becoming a My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 535 subscriber, as far as I can commaud funds to pay for the stock and to locate their largest manufacturing establishment some- where near the city of New York. ' ' What relation will you sustain to the company, general? "I shall be the president of the Southern department, with my headquarters at my home in Atlanta, Ga. My sons, who are young men just beginning- life, will take charge of the agency of course under my general supervision." The conviction is irresistible. The effort to dodge the real reason for his resignation made this much-honored citizen of Georgia twist and turn and whiffle about until it becomes actually painful to contemplate. Why did he not name "the friend on the Pacific, ' ' and be done with it ? Did the Bowker plant ever show up? Was it not like the sawmills, the swind- ling insurance company, the Georgia Pacific, the Oregon Hogg, and the rest of the bogus reasons all cut from the same piece of cloth ! His fertile-brained friend and apologist Henry Grady in- terviewed the general, and he said he was going to develop the large coal mines in Alabama belonging to his brothers and himself. (I presume these were not the coal stocks he gave to Bishop Wilmer, which were sold at 1 cent on the dollar). He had great hopes of his Clinch county sheep ranch. It was said that Congressman Whitehouse sunk $8,000 that was ad- ventured along with Gen. Gordon in a Taylor county sheep ranch with 40,000 acres of Gen. Gordon's land, enclosed by the work of his large force of convicts, which the State turned over to him to work as he pleased. And Henry Grady also said the general was going into the law along with Judge Bleckly, and the scribe made particular mention of a grand and tempting offer, that of being the railroad president of a great Southern railroad in Florida, of which I will have soqae- thing to copy later, published by the Engineer of the Florida Railroad himself. Par parenthesis. I must not forget to men- tion that General Gordon testified before a congressional in- vestigating committee in 1871 that he was the Grand Cyclops of the Ku-Klux Klan in the Southern States and that he and the general afterwards Governor Colquitt, were the highest officials of the organization. He testified under oath that the 536 ^Iy Memoirs op Georgia Politics organization was composed principally of Confederate sol- diers (and with "elegant" audacity) he said they voted ne- groes in great numbers, "in some counties the large majority. In Houston county, where there are 2,300 negroes, we voted nearly 2,000 when I (Gordon) was a candidate." They were hired to vote the Democratic ticket. "Yes, sir. A great many were hired, if you call it hiring." This veritable history of this era of Gen. Gordon's life is a fair sample of his methods used in Georgia elections. He could with impunity swear that he voted all the negroes in Houston county, except a few, when he "was a candidate." Yet he tiptoed with indig- nation at the idea that negroes might be voted for other can- didates in the State of Georgia. Before I introduce the engineer of the Great Florida Rail- road and Steamship Company, I will narrate a story that was told to me by a person intimately connected with Gen. Gor- don at the time when he Avas supposed to be in Victor New- comb 's employ. But for the fact that it might be harmful to the good children of one of Dr. Felton's strongest political friends, in a large Georgia city, I would give the names, and it would then be all convincing to others as it was to myself. Mr. Victor Newcomb was only a blind, after that gentleman found he had been deceived as to his control of the State road lease. It was evened off by giving Gen. Gordon some sort of showing in what was called at the time the Georgia Western Railroad. The general admitted in print that he bought it "by giving his note for $50,000, but he did not pay a dollar for it. ' ' It was the Pacific Railroad magnate that was in evidence some time later, and as I have always believed this "elegant rascal" intended to make a connecting line through Georgia, as he made the Southern Pacific Railroad the South arm ; now begin- ning at New Orleans of his great system of Pacific railroads going towards Los Angeles in California. Put that down in your book and remember it ! In the year 1880, there was a gigantic political battle between the Grant and Blaine men. It was supposed that Grant would get the Republican vote in Georgia, all that Secretary Sherman did not get, with the officeholders. It would be a formidable vote in the convention. Mr. Tilden was set aside. Our great Senator Gordon could My INIemoirs of Georgia Politics 537 not think of the electoral vote hiatus in South Carolina and Louisiana and then shout for Tilden. So it was decided to run Stephen J. Field, a friend to Pacific railroads, notably from California. The meeting of the Field Democrats from Georgia in New York City, and the conference there with Blaine Republicans was something for me to remember also and every item of the trade was perfected down here in Geor- gia, as narrated to me. As Mr. Blaine had the first call in the battle, and defeated Gen. Grant with Gen. Garfield, the boom of Gen. Field went to pieces and Gen. Hancock was led out as the man to be sacrificed. Mr. Blaine was the ablest and most powerful Senator for Huntington in the fight on the Thurman funding bill and in this gigantic struggle backed with Pacific Railroad "influence," IMr. Blaine was marching along in the campaign of 1880 all over the country, and which elected Gen. Garfield to the pfesidency. In 1884. Mr. Blaine made the campaign for himself, and failed in a neck and neck race with Grover Cleveland. In 1886, Gen. Gordon suddenly appeared in Georgia with "oodles" of money after an absence of four years and the campaign that followed for governor was recognized as a triumph of money. In 1890 he went to the Farmers' Alliance on his knees seeking their votes to be able to go to the Senate with his fam- ily, a position which he had solemnly declared would not sup- port him. He went out of the Senate to serve Victor Newcomb as he said (to get a handsome salary) and he went back to the Senate in 1890 when Georgia's political bosses were de- ceiving the farmers to get office. In the subsequent contest over the State road, it so hap- pened that Dr. Felton was sent to the Georgia legislature to lead in the lease movement. A sale was decreed and the whole business for a time seemed to be hung up in the air, the deter- mination to sell had grown to such proportions. Eternity alone can reveal the inside and outside maneuvers of that era in Georgia's history. I now give place to Engineer Jones, of the Great International and Steamship Railroad Company. 538 My IMemoirs of Georgia Politics NUTS FOR GORDON. He is Deliberately Charged with Swindling His Employees. The true Inwardness of His Florida Scheme — How He Tried to Get Railroad Property Away From Where it Could be Attached. Tampa, Fla., July 23. — Editor Telegraph: A few years ago the people of Florida were startled at the announcement of a gigantic railroad scheme, which was intended to open up the resources of the State from north to south, and call to her shores the great trade of South America, Mexico and Cuba. Lines of steamships were to be established connecting this road with Europe and the various ports in the countries men- tioned, and the State of Florida was to be made by this enter- prise the great commercial center of the Western World. Influenced by the high sounding statements of the company who undertook to carry this scheme to its completion and the bombastic utterances of its president (the so called "Hero of Appomatox) the legislature granted a charter giving privileges and land grants greater than have ever before or since been conferred upon a syndicate by any legislature in the Union, actually going so far, that, should this company fulfill this contract, the State would have to pay them in cash, if not able to do so in land. Thus did "The International Railroad and Steamship Com- pany" come with a great flourish of trumpets before the peo- ple. Pamphlets by the thousand were circulated, advertising the scheme, asserting its solidity, and offering wonderful in- ducements to purchasers of stock. Its supporters would ex- press surprise if anyone should doubt the success of the com- pany, for was not General John B. Gordon (whose name alone was enough to make the "world turn pale") at the head, cen- ter and foot of the enterprise. This latter fact was promi- nently put before the public, and every advantage sought to be obtained from it. The general's picture was taken, repre- senting him with the proud bearing and eagle eye, as when he faced the Yankees at Appomatox. It appeared in a full page illustration upon many of the advertising papers. It was Gordon first, last and all the time, and the people cheered and were happy. But, how are the mighty fallen? A splurge was made and then the enterprise ended. The few thousand dollars raise to begin on (magnified to millions in the eyes of the general) were thrown into a sand bed, much to the grief of some promi- nent citizens connected with the line. The work done was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 539 worse than useless, and remains a standing monument of the general's unfitness as a railroad manager or a business man. On the picturesque banks of the Hillsborough river, a dock of logs was constructed that should be left to go down to pos- terity as a specimen of engineering never surpassed in the record of the country. This was intended to receive the many ship loads of iron that were then said to be on their way ; but they must have been phantom ships of the nature of the flying Dutchman, and they never showed up in Tampa Bay, wherever else they may have gone. Having shaken the confidence of the people of Tampa and Hillsborough county, the next move was to Sumterville. There another dash was made. Sumterville was to be ''the junction" of the various branches of the line, and consequently would become a great city. The people there became excited, their enthusiasm rose to fever heat. The credit of the county went up, supplies were liberally furnished by the various merchants for provisioning the corps ; but alas, for their hopes, a few miles of grading were completed and the extensive work came again to a standstill ; but it would not do to stop altogether — the charter must be saved at all hazards, so some of the engi- neers were retained in the service of the company, and a few colored hands were employed to grade. So month after month went by, with no prospect of reward. The pay of the corps was not forthcoming, and all hands, merchants included, lived on the strength of telegrams, letters, promises, etc., from the general and those at headquarters, that heavy Avork would soon begin with everything paid up. At last the general announced himself ready. Arrange- ments had been completed with certain capitalists to go ahead with the line. Engineers were sent out to set side tracks, etc., for car loads of rails, and hopes rose again ; but from informa- tion received these capitalists refused to submit to the exorbi- tant claims of General Gordon in regard to management, etc. The motto with him has always been aut Gordon, aut nullus — either Gordon or nobody, and up went that prospect for the completion of the road. Things now looked serious. Gordon still announced his invincibility, but faith in him had departed. The merchants began to refuse credit. It was a case of semi-starvation in the engineers' camp, and no money came to their relief. T* make matters worse, this "honorable man" (for does he not claim to be an honorable man, who now offers himself for the governorship of Georgia?) wrote to the assistant engineer and endeavored to get the best of the railroad property ship- ped to him at Atlanta, evidently to lay his hands upon it and avoid an attachment. He did not write and ask permission 540 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics of the chief engineer, who was in Jacksonville, (and whose advice in regard to the construction of the road it \yould have been well to have followed long ago.) He evidently did not want him to know anything of this dodging, but the merchants of Sumterville found it out, and were a little too quick for him. The property was attached for the debts of the com- pany, and some of the money due was by this action recovered. But General Gordon left his engineer corps, (those who stood by him and his charter), without the money for which they honestly labored, and some of them were men with families who could ill afford to lose it. His assurances and promises amounted to nothing. He has not even paid up some of the colored hands, who did what colored men very seldom do, viz. : work on the strength of a man 's word. General Gordon appears today as a man in whom no confi- dence can be placed — notwithstanding the announcement that he has sold out his railroad interests in Florida and received cash in hand $200,000. The people of Florida would just like to know what interests he has here to sell out. He has broken his word to the public, he has forfeited every pledge he made the State, and yet in the face of this he has the assurance to ask the people of Georgia to elect him their governor, simply because he is or was General Gordon and fought in the South- ern cause. Such a man is no credit to any country or any people. He has bulldozed the Floridians on the railroad question, and he now seeks to bulldoze the Georgians on the governorship. As to his action in keeping men employed on the strength of what turned out to be a false representation, his admirers may call it what they please, but all truly honest men will put it down as nothing more nor less than a bare-faced swindle? I am, sir, truly yours, JOHN R. JONES, Formerly of the Engineer Corps International Railroad and Steamship Company. WHO APPEARED TO INAUGURATE GORDON. THE TELEGRAPH, Published every day in the year and weekly by the Telegraph and Messenger Publishing Co., 27 Mulberry street, Macon, Ga. A Political Cyclorama. Old Confederates who went to look at the battle of Gettys- burg, as exhibited at our fair last week, were somewhat disap- pointed at the prominence given to the Federal forces in the picture. This was natural. The Confederates did some hot My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 541 work at Gettysburg, but the truth of history will demand that the Federals have the most conspicuous places. It was our misfortune and not our fault that this must be. We are com- pelled to take things as we find them, and not as we would have them. The State capitol of Georgia represented a political cyclo- rama on Tuesday last, if not worthy of the painter's brush, at least calculated to arrest the pen of the historian. General Gordon was being inaugurated governor of Geor- gia with all "the pomp and glorious circumstance of war." Seated near him was Rutherford B. Hayes, who once en- joyed the presidency of the United States without having re- ceived a majority of the popular vote. Near Hayes were sitting two sable statesmen. The senior senator from Georgia who, ten years ago, was fiercely assailing General Gordon for an alleged trade with Mr. Hayes, by which the South was sac- rificed, was in a prominent position. The chief justice, who administered the oath of office and who at the time referred to was greatly perturbed in spirit, occupied a distinguished po- sition. Ex-Gov. Bullock, once a refugee from the State of Geor- gia, and in whose reign the present convict system was es- tablished, sat well to the front, while in the main gallery were gathered members of the Prison Congress, in which the con- vict system of Georgia had just been denounced. We have called this a cyclorama. Considering the changes in the positions of the men present, it might be more properly called a moving political panorama. As Mr. Hidell, the Editor, Saw the Struggle Between Hunting- ton and the Texas Pacific Railroad. (Rome Courier). W. H. Hidell, Proprietor. Wednesday Morning, June 2, 1886. GENERAL GORDON AND THE PACIFIC RAILROADS. "Scott's Southern Pacific scheme" is the way in which General Gordon, at Ringgold, spoke of Scott's Texas Pacific Railroad, intended as a competing line to the Huntington system, and to defeat which Huntington used and expended so lavishly large sums of money in and from Washington City(?). Well, let us see what this "scheme" was and whether there was any corruption fund connected with it ! The United States government, before the war, had appointed a commission to survey several routes for a Pacific railroad and recommend the one most eligible and best suited. This work they thor- oughly performed under direction of the war department and 542 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics during Pierce's administration, while Hon. Jeff Davis was secretary of war, several large volumes were published recom- mending the route near the 35th parallel of latitude as the best and most desirable one, the line which Colonel Scott afterwards got control of, in 1872-3, and undertook to con- struct a Southern road to the Pacific. In 1873, Colonel Scott, having secured all the charters and land grants pertaining to this line, and constructed the road from Texarkana through Paris and Bonham to some point farther westward, Fort Worth, we believe, went to Europe to sell bonds of the road to complete it. Arriving there, he invited certain capitalists and bankers to meet him to whom he explained his business, and who promptly agreed to take all his Texas Pacific bonds, but it being then late in the day, and all present more or less fatigued, Colonel Scott suggested the morrow for finishing the business, which was assented to. Just here it may be remarked that Colonel Scott's reception in Europe and liis success, thus far, were very different from General Gordon's on a similar mission about four years ago. The morrow came and with it the crushing news from the United States of the failure of Jay Cooke and the consequent financial panic prevading the whole country, which knocked the very bottom out of all American securities, except govern- ments, and even shook these. The result was none of the European capitalists or bankers would touch an American security, except governments, then or for some time after- wards, with a forty foot pole. Had Colonel Scott completed the business the evening before he could have returned with the money for his bonds. As it was, he returned, as General Gordon did, but not for the same reason, without having dis- posed of a single bond he carried over. After Colonel Scott's return and upon consultation with his associates interested in the Texas Pacific, they properly de- cided that they might, under all the circumstances, justly request the federal government (which had built the Union Pacific, of Huntington's system, and was then, and had been, as it is now still, paying the interest on their bonded debt, and liable ultimately for the principal) to aid them to the limited extent they had agreed upon to ask. Colonel Scott and a friend came to Washington from Philadelphia in 1874 with a bill they had prepared for presentation to congress. They called upon the writer and requested him, as a friend, to introduce them to Hon. Alex. H. Stephens. The writer plainly informed them what manner of man Mr. Stephens was, that he would read their bill, and if his judgment and conscience approved it, he would favor and urge it; otherwise, not. Colonel Scott answered he so regarded him, and hence desired My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 543 the introduction, at the same time explaining his bill. Next day they were presented to Mr. Stephens, who read the bill, amended it with pen in some particulars as he read it, and handing it back to Colonel Scott, said: "I have always favored the building of this road, believing the South should have it, and I will support that bill" (as amended by him). Colonel Scott heartily accepted and adopted the amended bill and asked Mr. Stephens to champion it in the house, which he agreed to do, and did so, as well as his health permitted. Now, what was this measure which Mr. Stephens agreed to champion, this "scheme" which General Gordon, by his own admission, nay, boast, assisted to defeat in the interest of Huntington's "schemes?" Colonel Scott, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Lamar and the friends of the Texas Pacific simply asked the United States government to guarantee the payment of the interest on the company's bonds for a limited number of years. It was not asked, expected or intended that the government should even pay the interest, but simply by its guaranty to make the bonds marketable again, in the then financial panic that the country was passing through. The whole object and purpose was to restore the marketability of the bonds so as to dispose of them ; and to indemnify the government against any loss in any contingency, the company proposed to give it a first mortgage on the road and lands and everything as security. Was not this fair and just, and particularly so when compared with the status of Huntington's roads? Answer, honest, intelligent Georgians, and decide for yourselves on which side the "millions of profit were at stake" General Gordon spoke of in his Ringgold speech ! It is and was a notorious fact, which smelled to High Heaven in Washington, that Huntington freely used and lavishly expended money to corrupt Southern newspapers and politicians, as well as con- gress, to defeat the Texas Pacific bill and consequently the completion of the competing line to his system. Yes, indeed, "millions of profit were at stake," to the Huntington gang! It was the defeat of this measure and the action of certain men on the Thurman bill which caused honest Allen G. Thur- man to declare he had lost confidence in some Southern men. And yet the old Bullock gang in a new shape, the "Atlanta Ring," has the brazen audacity to present to intelligent Geor- gians who know these facts this supporter of Huntington's schemes, as pax excellence, the candidate of the anti-monopo- lists and of the people ! God save the mark ! Our readers may look for more and worse ahead when we come to explain Huntington's scheme "in which millions of profit were at stake" to him and his gang. Huntington was not buying "silence" or "absence," but votes and the "in- 544 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics fluence" of venal newspapers and politicians, particularly at the South, because the Texas Pacific was being pressed by its friends as a Southern measure that was due the South, and at first the South was practically solid upon the question until the fumes of Huntington's gold blunted the moral sensibilities of some. General Gordon's Political Methods and Spontaneous Com- bustion, (Macon Telegraph, May 10, 1886.) Editor Telegraph: In the Atlanta Constitution's report of General Gordon's candidacy, as announced by himself at Savannah, the people are told that the General "does not see how he can resist the pressure from all parts of the State," that he should make the race. This statement provoked a smile among the knowing ones who are apprised as to the peculiar way in which the General manufactures public opinion, or "pressure," which is his latest term for it. To be correct in diagnosing his case, your correspondent will give an illustra tion — susceptible of proof from headquarters. In the year 1875, the Democratic house of representatives met in Washington — the first after the Civil War. A certain Mr. Fitzhugh, "a bigger man than Grant," was made door- keeper. Fitzhugh hailed from Texas. To secure his election, he made a promise to certain Texas representatives that he would appoint Jennings, another Texan, to assistant door- keeper's place. Just then Senator Gordon interfered. He wrote a letter to Fitzhugh to come over to Georgetown (his residence), "to make no promises" to any one "for any specified place" and to "avoid everybody" — except the Gen- eral. "Come over," wrote the General, "this p. m. and get out of the way until we can look over the ground and see what is best for you." Signed J. i^. Gordon. Fitzhugh Went. Gordon wined atid dined him. After the General thought he was mellow, he lasked the door-keeper to appoint his son, Hugh Gordon, to assMant door-keeper's place, or more properly, tender it to Hugh. Said Fitzhugh, "I can't do it. General; I have already Uade the appointment of Jennings, to please my own delegation. I would like to oblige My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 545 you by appointing your son, but my hands are tied. I had to appoint Jennings to get the Texas support." General Gordon blandly remarked: "I know that, but if you will only write a letter tendering the position to my son, I'll see you are not embarrassed. My son will not accept it." With this understanding, Fitzhugh wrote the letter and Hugh Gordon replied in these words : "Georgetown, December 8, 1875. "Colonel Fitzhugh, Doorkeeper, etc. — My Dear Colonel: Your note of the 6th instant did not reach me until this morning. I appreciate the offer you make me most highly, and would most gladly avail myself of your kindness and ac- cept the position tendered but for several reasons. Father thinks it best I should not accept any position, and in defer- ence to his wishes I have decided to decline your kind offer. Again thanking you for your consideration, I am yours truly, what is best for you. ' ' Signed J^M. Gordon. A few days later the writer saw published in all the North- ern papers, and industriously copied in the South, an article headed — "The Roman Senator — General Gordon," and it was stated that the assistant door-keeper's place had been tendered to General Gordon's noble son, Hugh, but Gen- eral Gordon objected so seriously to nepotism, and was such a pure and honorable statesman he could not allow his son to accept, although the General was a poor man and needed the money to complete his son's education. Now, i*f anybody can beat this for cheap advertising, trot him out! If the "pressure" that is now affecting the "Roman Senator" should pan out to be a manufactured article, won't it be the joke of the season? The door-keeper "pressure" is literal and exact — one of the many contrivances for cheap notoriety set on foot by this willing candidate for governor. PLAIN TALK. "When the above was written, in 1886, copies of this cor- respondence were in my hands. I had liberty to use them, after General Gordon made his foray against me in the year 1879. I took the opportunity when I saw how "pressure" was manufactured, in 1886. w> 546 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics In my opinion, the General was actively in the service of Huntington and the L. & N. road when he came to Georgia, in 1886, and his former connection with Huntington's railroad schetnes before congress are a sufficient warrant for the belief or opinion — and the consequent failure to break down the railroad commission or to sell the Western & Atlantic Rail- road convinced those great railroad authorities that the Gen- eral should be returned to the senate. I propose to compile another volume of my individual reminiscences or personal recollections, where "Plain Talks" articles will appear in regular sequence and preparedness. The resignation from the senate may be more fully explained by that time. Dr. Felton Elected to Legfislature Through the earnest entreaty of friends all over the Seventh district, and particularly in Bartow county, where he resided. Dr. Felton was chosen as a candidate for the house of repre- sentatives and elected in October, 1884, to that responsible place. The railroad commission was under fire and there was a strong faction urging the sale of the State's railroad, when the existing lease expired, which would happen early in 1890. I remember when a crowd of some of the best men in our county drove up unexpectedly to our gate and made him a formal tender of the position, if he could be induced to accept. They told him that a crisis was upon the State right then, and the need of safe and honest leadership in the legislature was apparent. The lessees of the W. & A. Railroad were clamor- ing for betterments. The same lessees were moving their agents in the legislature towards the emasculation of the rail- road commission. These friends told him that the prominent newspapers were flopping to the side of money. That money had procured the ratification of the existing lease in 1872. That he (Felton) had exposed the use of money in the Lester campaign, and they had sufficient evidence to understand that the State Road lessees and the convict lessees would expend money in large sums to break down the commission, sell the State road and make themselves absolute masters of the situa- tion in Georgia. "Would he consent to go to the legislature and defend the people of the State and protect the tax-payers in these particular matters?" Dr. Felton understood what it meant to antagonize the State Road lessees and the convict lessees. He knew they had counted him out in 1880. In 1882, they had prevailed upon the senile ambition of Alex. H. Stephens until the aged man was induced to enter their service to reach the executive chair. They were coining millions out of these leases, revenues belonging to the State, and could easily spend a hundred thousand on corrupt men in the general assembly to remove the railroads in Georgia from under the authority of the railroad commission. They were moving 548 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics heaven and earth to secure the sale of the W. & A. Railroad for eight millions of dollars. Ex-Governor Smith, then a rail- road commissioner, made "no bones" of his opinion that Governor McDaniel was the "railroad's man," in a high office. Senator Brown came out in a letter denying that the W. & A. Railroad was subject to the railroad commission. If these people had their way and could carry out their will, railroad syndicates as well as State road lessees and convict lessees would be absolute masters of the State of Georgia. The visitors reminded Dr. Felton of his wide experience in congressional legislation — of his remarkable gifts in oratory — of their absolute faith in his integrity, and they asked for his assist- ance in the crisis. We talked it over after they left and decided that he could not refuse this appeal. We understood that he would be a target for venom, that they could pay purchasable men to write newspaper articles over other signatures than their own, as had been done in his congressional campaigns, to injure him in the State. We knew that corrupt politicians would raise the "Rebel yell" to cover their schemes of public plunder, and that Bullock Democrats and Bullock Republicans would do Senator Brown's bidding, because they were enlisted in his service. His "man" on the railroad commission and several supreme court judges were accused (perhaps falsely) of wearing his collar. He and Senator Colquitt were absolute masters of federal patronage, and if Cleveland was elected in November they would hold our greedy office-seeking contingent in the ' ' hollow of the hand. ' ' To enter into a political furnace, already heated seven times seven, was a daring deed for even such a courageous man as Dr. Felton, and we were prepared to expect trouble at the hands of men who had made a business of paying for lobby work, before the State legislature, and who did not scruple at buying and bartering for even a seat in the United States senate. We had information that Huntington was seeking to find a Southern outlet, through Georgia, in the direction of New Orleans, and that the Louisville & Nashville syndicate had designs upon the ownership of the W. & A. Railroad. All of which came to pass, because the L. & N. Railroad placed My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 549 its vice-president, E. B. Stahlman, into the receivership of the W. & A. Railroad lease, to effectually account for his activity in the State Capitol at Atlanta. Huntington and the L. & N. authorities were in pursuit of their schemes; (Ex- Senator Gordon, from Wall Street and Washington City, came to Georgia to fill the executive chair, in 1886, and pushed his campaign by floods of money, and the control of a venal press, using the same old "Rebel yell," and the "drum and fife" to hide their monumental schemes for public plunder). Under date of January 10, 1884, the Chicago Tribune made the bold statement that Georgia railroads kept a senator in the United States senate, and Haxper's Weekly copied the statement editorially to prove the use of money in politics. Huntington kept more than one senator for his use, according to the same authority. (While I am writing this down (April, 1911), the State of Illinois and United States senators are working together, might and main, to keep out William Lorimer, who was elected by bribe money to the high position of United States senator). We were aware that Huntington's money and L. & N. Rail- road money would do all that bribe money could do to in- fluence the breaking down of the Georgia railroad commission, and we felt the use of such money in more than two Seventh district congressional campaigns ; but the appeal made to Dr. Felton touched his patriotism in such a way that he could not refuse, and for six years he held on, until he "saved the railroad commission," if Railroad Commissioners Wallace and Smith were candid in their declarations to Dr. Felton, and he saved the State Road from a mammoth railroad syndicate and kept it for the use and profit of the tax-payers of Georgia. He laid the bottom sills for a reformatory prison system, pro- tected the Lunatic Asylum from its avowed enemies, aroused the people of Georgia to the horrors of the convict lease system, moved the temperance forces into line towards State-wide prohibition, and did more to protect the University of Georgia from well-planned schemes of emasculation and destruction than any man in Georgia — no matter what may be his title or his political assumption of leadership in advocacy of the movements here named. 550 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics In discussing the reformatory system Dr. Felton collided with the Representative of Sumter county, Hon. Edgar Sim- mons, and I was an eye-witness and a listener to Mr. Simmons' attack on myself — and also Dr. Felton 's speech in defense of his wife. Both occurred in the old Capitol building and it would have been a terrible trial to me if I had not experienced and met an attempted defamation of character, originated by a senator of the United States, in the year 1879. I had been able to meet the first attack most successfully. The picture in my memory of my aged husband's noble bearing as he flung defiance in Simmons' face, and actually withered his op- ponent by the force of his righteous indignation, has never faded or been dimmed by time. It was a privilege to suffer to receive the public tribute that Dr. Felton gave his comrade in politics. Dr. Felton 's Argument in Favor of Railroad Commission. (Reported by Atlanta Constitution). Speaking before the legislature, he said in his opinion a great majority of the people of Georgia did not want the com- mission modified in the least. The railroads in Georgia ought to be satisfied with the commission. The present law was drafted by State Senator McDaniel, now our executive, and was approved by Governor Brown, General A. R. Lawton and other railroad authorities." Mr. Gordon, of Savannah, speak- ing for General Lawton, said the statement was entirely un- true. "Very well," said Dr. Felton, "I had good authority for making the statement, but I wish to be corrected if I am wrong. The board of trade of Atlanta approved, but three of them opposed — Mr. J. C. Kimball, ex-Governor Bullock and an employee of the Georgia Pacific Railroad." The present question is the most important one before the legislature since the war, possibly at any period of our history. It is not a question of who shall regulate — it is not a question of ar- bitrary power; but the question is, who shall govern Georgia? Who shall make her laws — who shall reap and enjoy the fruits of the labor of the country — the honest toiler or a few rail- road magnates ? You all know who have watched this question that the oppression by the railroads is like starving the ox that treadeth out the grain, while a few favored men fatten on the products of the threshing floor. Will you supply the people with the lees of the wine press, while you give the favored few the spiced wine of the vintage? The tendency of wealth is to organize into railroad corpora- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 551 tions. What is wealth? It is not the gold or silver of the banker. It is the product of labor. The friends of the bill say there are $70,000,000 invested in railroads in Georgia. Why, then, do these railroad officials return their property to the comptroller general at only $52,000,000? It is said that in the United States there are seven billions of dollars invested in railroads — that they dis- burse annually $250,000,000, and that over a million of men are connected with them. This chartered, aggregated, organ- ized and concentrated wealth rivals the federal government in its power and patronage. Never before had there been such a desire in Georgia to build railroads. What stands in the way of their building? Mr. Gordon: "All that stands in their way is the passage of this bill. Pass it, and they may be built." Mr. Felton : ' ' The gentleman has said just what I wanted him to say. If the commission has made the Central Railroad too poor to pay for the tallow to grease the wheels of its roll- ing stock, why such a spirit to invest in corporations that lead to poverty? (Laughter and applause). The railroads are the modern colossus. They differ with the ancient colossus in this, that while it only straddled the harbor of Rhodes, they straddle the United States of America, and all commerce, all law, all labor and all government must slavishly and humbly pass under its straddle. (Laughter and applause). Wealth and patronage is power. I assert that these chartered companies are dangerous to public liberty — their very existence is a threat to constitutional government. What is their watch- word ? Consolidation. The friends of this bill say they want consolidation. The great syndicate of which Mr. Gordon is an honored, valuable and highly esteemed member, the Central Railroad, does not desire competition. The very apprehension or suggestion of competition acts upon them just like a red flag acts in the arena upon a Spanish bull fight. You just mention com- petition — do you just suggest competition, and the Central, with lowered head, tail up in the air, and with a bellow that would shake the woods of Bashan, rushes to the contest. (Ap- plause). Their object is to swallow up the shorter lines. I charge here that the trunk lines of Georgia do not desire the building of new roads in Georgia, except as feeders. They wish to sup- press them to prevent competition. Holding a paper in his hand, Dr. Felton remarked that it was the most striking document it had ever been his mis- fortune to read. It was a circular, issued by the Railway Shareholders' Association of Wall Street, New York, of which 552 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Gen. E. P. Alexander was president. There are $100,000 of capital stock in the association. They received daily, monthly or annual contributions from railroad men, for the object of preventing unfriendly legislation against their interests. They say in this circular they intend to have the press and lawyers to defeat unfriendly legislation and precent the building of competitive lines. May not this account for the wonderful newspaper flop in Georgia? **I imagine the Central Railroad is a component part of this very association." (Applause). "They consider everything unfriendly that restricts them from their chartered privileges. They have done more to suppress railroad building than all other causes combined. "An attorney of the Central Railroad takes the position that the pool is right and competition is wrong. The East Tennes- see, Virginia & Georgia Railroad finds united opposition from this railroad because they fear competition. "Mr. Speaker, your own town has the reputation of being bottled up." (Laugher). "It is hermetically sealed. Your senator says they have not only sealed you up, but they have stolen the only river that God has given to Columbus." (Laughter). "Bottled up! Who bottled you up, ]\Ir. Speaker? Will you just tell me who killed Cock Robin?" (Laughter). "The president of the Central Railroad bought the Georgia Railroad, leased it for 99 years, which is equivalent to a sale, for $600,000 per annum ; 14 per cent on the capital stock of the road. The Louisville & Nashville offered the Central $25,000 for its bargain and the Central took it. Am I not telling the truth? Is this not driving out foreign capital? "Foreign capital controls the lease of the Western & Atlantic Railroad ; foreign capital is largely invested in the East Ten- nessee, Virginia & Georgia — all since the creation of the com- mission. "Wall Street, which is ever seeking to humiliate labor, to make money dear, and the products of labor cheap — Wall Street, the headquarters of the Railway Shareholders' Associa- tion, never invests in a Georgia railroad without expecting to make Georgia farmers foot the bill." (Applause). "1 love the Central Railroad ; I am its friend. If it was oppressed I would go to its relief. "The Central has purchased the Mobile & Girard, the Rome & Columbus, the Montgomery & Eufaula, the Elberton & Madison, the Savannah, Griffin & North Alabama, the Savan- nah & Memphis, the Augusta & Knoxville, the Port Royal, the Georgia, the Brunswick, the Atlanta & West Point, the St. Mary's & Western, the Macon & Augusta, the Western of My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 553 Alabama, the Gainesville & Jug Tavern, the Walton, and the Macon & Western Railroads. It strangled them. "Port Royal was one of the most promising towns in South Carolina with a magnificent harbor. Where is Port Royal today? The Central found it necessary to bottle up Port Royal. The compresses are there, but no cotton. The rail- road is there, and I am told that occasionally, a lazy train drags its slow length along over that once magnificent stretch of road. The harbor is there, but I am told that only now and then the sail of a second-class ship flaps upon the lazy bosom of that once magnificent harbor. I am told the bats are there, the owls are there, and that the lone fisherman spreads his net where once proud ships ploughed the waters. I am told that the olive and the vine have ceased their production and why? Because the Central had found it necessary to bottle up Port Royal! (Laughter.) "I predict there will be some sort of strangulation before the Georgia Midland reaches its destination. "When I think about these strangulations, I try to imagine how the midwives employed by Old Pharoah looked. You will recollect Pharoah ! He ordered all the male children born into the world strangled at their birth. I have attempted to imagine how those old hags, sitting around the couch of suffering, must have watched anxiously for this opportunity for obedience to the despot who had issued the cruel order. I have attempted to imagine sometimes how these Central railroad authorities, most clever and excellent gentlemen they are, would look, spectacles on nose, and down to the very end of the nose, as they sit around the labor couch of some new-born railroad project, and I have attempted to imagine my friend (Mr. Gordon, of Savannah), as he would sit there in this grave and dignified. (Here the laughter drowned the speaker's voice, and the most uproarious cheers and shouts rent the air. It was a full minute before order was restored. Mr. Gordon joining in the laugh.) The doctor proceeded. "Watching the favorable opportunity, and just before the cries announcing a man-child is born into the world, these modern accouchers have done their work ; and the railroad project is strangled at its birth. There is one opportunity for you, Mr. Speaker! (Laughter.) "The Good Book tells us that Pharoah got in a terrible rage one d'ly and called up two of these celebrated accouchers, and was abou^ to execule them forthwith, and they would have been executed because of a refusael to obey his command, but they replied : ' We cannot carry out your command because Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women ; they are L-i-v-e-1-y. ' (Great cheering and laughter.) "I hope Colum- 554 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics bus will be lively. (Repeated laughter and cheer.) "Take a look at the newspapers, at Vie advertisements of patent- medicine men. You see a picture of the patient before taking and of the same man after taking. Take a view of the rail- roads, before the establishment of the Railroad Commission and of them since. Photograph them and I do not fear the result. Put no trust in a deposed despot ! The commission has saved the people of Georgia a million dollars in freights alone! The Central Railroad, before the commission was created, charged on one car load for ten miles, where there was no competition, $130, and where there was competition, $60. Since the commission the charge went down to $32. The Central Railroad will carry grain and bacon from Cin- cinnati or Louisville to Savannah for less than to Atlanta, or for less than from Atlanta to Decatur, Stone Mountain, Madi- son, Griffin or Macon. Is it a matter of surprise that Georgia is poor? The Central Railroad taps 67 counties in Georgia. Dur- ing ten years they increased in population 179,560; in cotton bales, 340,977 ; in bushels of corn, 1,740,136 bushels, while they decreased in taxable values $3,338,277. The Savannah, Florida and Western taps 14 counties. The net decrease in ten years was $32,000. The East Tennessee- Virginia and Georgia Railroad,. 18 counties; increase, $6,547,- 875. The Brunswick & Albany, six counties, increase, $2,375,000. Western & Atlantic, nine counties, increase, $9,200,000. The Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line, ten counties, increase, $3,894,948. The Marietta and North Georgia, five counties, increase, $838,000. The Georgia Pacific, two counties, increase, $481,547. Chatham county (Savannah), in the same period, a decrease of $6,397,879. In 1872, the Central Railroad property was valued at $584,000. In 1882 at $5,000,000. It is now the rich- est corporation in the South. The Central Railroad swallowed up the wealth of 67 coun- ties and yet Savannah merchants are not benefited. Let us draw two pictures: Take an humble cottage in one of these counties that the Central runs through. It is humble though sacred and consecrated. Father, mother and children are dedicated to toil. It is a little home, but sweet to the heart and pleasant in every association. It may be a log cabin, but consecrated to virtue and toil. See that family in early dawn, by the light of the tallow dip, breakfasting on the coarsest diet, and immediately after father and the children 556 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics boys and girls, hurry to the fields, the workshops and factory to labor until night, even then they scarcely food and raiment. No schools ! No church ! No luxury ! Take that other home ! It is magnificent in its surroundings, luxurious in its apartments ! Take its flashing receptions, its magnificent entertainments that drive away ennui. Look at its rich wardrobes, crowded with silk and laces ! In easy in- dulgence the men roll in wealth. His eyes stick out with fat- ness and no fear of the future. The question today is, which will you vote to help? You have got to meet it. You have got to vote for one or the other. God being my helper I will stand today and forever by the humble home of the laborer. (Applause). He alluded to a cartoon in the Georgia Cracker. THE PEOPLE'S VICTORY. Atlanta Journal. The great struggle is over the anti-commission bill in the legislature, which has for weeks engrossed the attention of the State, culminated this morning in the House, and resulted in a victory for the people. The Senate bill failed to receive the requisite constitutional majority. We rejoice over the result, not on our own account, but on account of the people whose interests were seriously involved in the matter, and which would have suffered great and inevitably injury had the desperate attempt of the railroads and the colossal coali- iton which they had under their control, succeed in forcing the issue in their favor. Every purpose of the bill was disguised. Disguise it as they will, was a bold attempt on the part of the railroads to be rid of the Railroad Commission, and to regain the power they formerly had to make their own rates, without the fear of effectual interference on the part of this regulating body sworn to perform their duty as the agents of the people through the constitution and the legislature. To accomplish their purpose to emasculate the commission, every agency which unlimited money power and unscrupulous disregard of all interests save their own selfish ones could compass and control was set in motion, a subsidized or cunningly misled press lent its powerful aid to the scheme, and for a long time the cause of the people against aggression, rapacity and the rule of the "bosses," trembled in the scale, and the pros- pect looked ominous. But thanks to the unwavering fidelity of the true representatives of the people in the House, the masterly eloquence of their speakers, the inherent righteous- ness of their cause, and the steadfastness to principle of the little phalanx of the press who refused to take sides with mo- nopolists and bosses against the people, the scheme of the lat- ter has failed and wisdom, justice and moderation have tri- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 557 umphed. Let it be distinctly understood that the men who fought this iniquitous bill are not "communists," nor that they fail to recognize the great value of railroads, their in- calculable usefulness and their splendid record as developers of Georgia's material interests. This is frankly conceded. But the interests of the people are supreme, and while benefits are reciprocal, the creature must not presume to be greater than the creator. The railroads attempted to change this prime relationship and were defeated, as they should have been. Let us learn a lesson from this of mutual forbearance, comity and patriotism. These crises work for the good of a people after all. The vote was then had with the following result : SACRED To the Memory of Those Voting in Favor of Railroad Monopolies versus The People— 82 Those who voted for the people and against railroad mo- nopolies were 73. I hold the names, but omit them here. Dr. Felton's speech addressed to the legislature produced a reply from Gen. E. P. Alexander, who occupied a position under the Federal government known as director of Pacific railroads. The general and President Grover Cleveland were both fishing experts and the president gave his fishing comrade a high office, as we were told, just as President Taft, who is devoted to golf, found a Supreme Court judge in Augusta, Georgia. General Alexander addressed a tart letter to Dr. Felton, bearing date of October 21, 1885, in which he called upon him "to repair the wrong he had done him, and sought to do and said the falsity of every single statement and in- sinuation which you have made concerning me will suggest an equally full and earnest effort in that direction. I am not, have never been either the president or a member of any such association whatever, and in spite of the evidence of the cir- cular. I do not believe there is or ever has been any such an association. * * * * Secondly, you speak of me as the largest stockholder of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, drawing "immense dividends" wrung from its patrons. I have never owned but one small fraction of a single share of Western and Atlanta stock, and that I have owned but for five and a half years. For nearly two years there have been no dividends at all, and I will gladly transfer to you the stock itself and all the dividends I ever did receive for a large dis- 553 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics count from the cost of it, and I guarantee you that the divi- dends you will receive will never trouble your conscience. Thirdly, you intimate that I have bribed, or attempted to bribe, a portion of the Georgia legislature. In fact I was absent from the State during the greater part of the session, and had not the remotest connection with anything that was done on either side, etc." Respectfully, (Signed) E. P. ALEXANDER. This was an emphatic disclaimer, and he herein declared he had never been a member of the Railway Shareholders' Association, had only a small fraction of a single share in the W. & A. lease stock, and had never had any interest in the legislative discussion of the commission or railroad inter- ests whatever. When Dr. Felton came in with the mail, and the newspaper containing this public denial, he pointed it out to me. After I read it, I said he "cannot be a government director of Pa- cific railroads, and hold any shares or stock in any railroad — the law forbids it, but you spoke by authority of the circular and the lease shares, and you did not charge him with bribing the legislature." As Dr. Felton was very busy with crop gathering, also with legislative work, he said to me : " Do you get the facts in shape for me, and then allow the facts to set- tle the question." On October 22, 1885, the day that General Alexander's let- ter reached us Dr. Felton and myself prepared the following : "To Hon. E. P. Alexander, Government Director of Pacific Roads : * ' My Dear Sir : I have just finished reading your published letter in the Atlanta Constitution of this date. As it is courte- ous and respectful in tone and words, I shall take pleasure in making a reply equally courteous and respectful. You request me to explain or retract what I said in the Georgia legislature about your connection with the Railway Share- holders' Association. If in excitement and heat of debate I make statements not authorized by testimony and the facts it is my duty and my delight to make an unequivocal retrac- tion of the same. If such statements need further explanation, it is always my pleasure to explain. If the facts and the testi- mony and the statements agree, I shall endeavor to do justice to all myself included. If you, as supposed member of this association, had ever allowed your name to be used in con- nection with its aims and purposes, you cannot complain if inquiry should be made into the text of the operations in Georgia or elsewhere, and it was legitimate to criticise it. The copy of the circular, which I hold, was placed in my possession by one of the first railroad men in the Union. (I My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 559 shall do no harm at this time to say by a member of the Geor- gia Railroad Commission). I am confident he had never seen any published denial of your connection with it, as I am very sorry no such denial ever fell under my eye. My speech was made on October 2d, and no friend of yours was found to do so for a week afterwards. Such silence is hard to understand. I have not the slightest objection to any man's joining such an association, nor does it concern me or the public as to how the money of such an association is distributed, provided it is not done in violation of the fundamental law of Georgia to the destruction of the productive industries of the State. I am not personally familiar with the methods used by such associations, for it has been my good or evil fortune to move outside of railway associations, as I am unfamiliar with their inside workings as with their large salaries or dividends. Whatever statements I have made were made upon the printed circular, which set forth its aims and purposes, signed by John Livingston, of 212 Astor House, Broadway, N. Y., also from the extract taken from your letter, written by yourself, seeking the position as president, and also a letter written by Albert Fink, Trunk Line commissioner, 346 Broadway, N. Y., whose kindly ofl&ces in this connection you had heretofore solicited. Your connection with the lease of the W. & A. Railroad I obtain from your own testimony before a legislative committee, also the testimony of C. H. Phinizy and C. I. Brown before the same body. The facts in regard to your dividends from the State road, I obtain from a statement setting forth the earnings, the ex- penses, and the net profits of that road since the year 1878, which statement was verified in the comptroller's office in At- lanta. Your connection with the lease you admit and begun five and a half years ago, and I think you will retract your offer to turn over to me your interest when the figures appear in cold type. But I will first refer to the objects of the Railway Associa- tion as detailed in the circular. They are : 1. "To minimize and prevent the interference of irrespon- sible State officials with the regulation and management of railways with the rates fixed by their charters." Now, my dear sir, this published declaration was in exact harmony with the late attempt to break down the Railroad Commission of Georgia. No advocate of the late railroad bill attempted less than did this Railway Shareholders' Association. 2. The imconstitutional repeal of all laws, taxing the in- come of railways. 560 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 3. The change of the present system of assessment in sev- eral States. 4. The alteration of laws relating to compensation for rail- way accidents. 5. The repeal of free railroad laws, so that other roads shall not be constructed which shall interfere with or even threaten the incomes and profits of the Trunk Line roads of the United States. Ah, my dear general, when you see how one great railroad system has been able to gobble up every road South of At- lanta is it not plain that all "free railroad laws" in Georgia have now become a nullity? 6. To oppose all legislation in Congress affecting railroads or hampering their "unjust and unreasonable incomes." This circular proposes to accumulate information as to the events and needs of railway legislation, taxation, investments, supervision and management, to publish and disseminate the same. It will cause to be prepared arguments and addresses against every unfair measure affecting railways and through the press and otherwise place the same before executive legis- lative and judicial officers, and the public. It will employ counsel before legislative bodies and committees to promote such legislation as shall be required to protect railway in- terests and to defeat inimical measures. The scope of its usefulness will be as unlimited as the means which shall be placed at its command. The question of meas- ures for promoting good legislation and securing just decis- ions for their mutual protection, is one upon which all rail- roads "should pool their issues." The jealousies naturally existing among rival lines should not prevent action for their common welfare." This circular, my dear sir, was printed and issued on Jan- uary 21, 1884, about the time the war opened on "railroad commissions" in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and other States. John Livingston, the acting president of the association, says : " It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the advantages and co-operation of Gen. E. P. Alexander, of Georgia, who, through the kindly co-operation of Mr. Albert Fink, Trunk Line Com- missioner, has been selected for the post of president from the fifteenth proximo of the Railway Shareholders' Association, which will have his earnest assistance towards making it an eminent success. It may be readily assumed that he would not enter into connection with the undertaking without care- ful investigation and a thorough conviction of its merits. "General Alexander, who is not now connected with any railroad, commended by Commissioner Fink and by prominent railroad men in the South and West, having been made fami- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 561 liar with the workings of this organization under date of January 4, 1884, writes: "Should you wish to advance my name with any one who does not know me, Mr. Albert Fink, I am very sure, would give me such an indorsement as would answer as he recominended me two years ago to be his own successor. ' "Now, my dear general, what is it you wish me to retract? If you fell among 'cranks and fellows,' had you not better retract that letter? Did he forge your name to your supposed letter? Mr. Albert Fink thus wrote to Mr. John Livingston under date New York, January 19, 1884: 'Yours of Decem- ber 31, was only received this morning and yours of 5th inst., two days ago. I herewith return letter from General Alexan- der. General Alexander has been connected with railroads for many years and stands very high as a railroad manager and a gentleman. He was formerly connected with the Louis- ville and Nashville Railroad Company. He has written much on the railroad problem and very sensibly.' " Yours respectfully, ALBERT FINK. In default of any notice from you as to your retiracy from a position sought by yourself and urged by Commissioner Fink, what further explanation can you ask at my hands? When the "Courant (The Courant was owned by myself and edited by Dr. Felton and myself), asked "Where would General Alexander try it on?" What question would be more natural? When it asked, "Is the money of this Shareholders' Association now being used on the Georgia Legislature?" was not such an inference to be drawn from such a circular, which had unlimited means to control legislation? Was not this money devoted to this use? It falls to your share, my dear general, to issue another circular to meet the eye of every person who has heard of your aforetime connection with the Railway Shareholders' Association, especially as you now hold so important a posi- tion as a government director of Pacific roads? This 'huge confidence game," as you term it, has no doubt worked you injury and the public use of a letter credited to yourself, was calculated to deceive the wisest and the best. This was not a secret circular. It was intended to be scattered abroad. You admit it was sent to Europe to beguile railroaders and contributors out of which contributions your large salary was to be paid. You intimate in your letter that you were "at- tracted to the scheme by the offer of a large salary, with small demands on your time." When I found a circular representing such aims and pur- poses, chartered by the laws of the State of New York with 562 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics your name at its head, the sole object of which was to "con- trol legislation" by "unlimited means," I felt it a duty to this people to denounce it in the strongest terms. Under simi- lar circumstances I should do it again. Since you repudiate the association in print and denounce it as a fraud. I will take pleasure in giving you my humble assistance, to so denounce it especially as you now represent the United States in the position of government railroad di- rector. It was a nefarious scheme to deceive and injure the great producing classes of this country, and the attempted control of all the departments of the government by corrupt money was a threat that neither you nor I can afford to let pass without a merited rebuke. Now a few words in regard to your dividends from the earnings of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. A legislative committee a few years ago examined into the ownership of these lease shares. A. T. Hackett, chairman on part of the Senate, and John W. Maddox, on part of the House. This committee also inquired into the validity of the present bond. It was shown that you had purchased four and one-half shares from the "Wadley pool," besides one-fourth share you had purchased from Gov. Joe Brown. C. H. Phinizy also pur- chased from the Wadley pool, and you and he controlled the largest amount of shares in the lease. You admit you have owned an interest for five and one-half years. Your income from that source would therefore begin in 1880. The net in- come for that year was $406,794.60. Divide this income by 23, and you get the value per share. The net income in May, 1881, was $392,976.35. Divide again by 23, and you can count it up for yourself. If you desire to part with your investment, where could you find a better one in Georgia? The gross re- ceipts in May, 1882, were $1,576,905.59, and the net income $157,310.87 In May, 1883, the net income was $237,114.80. Your shares in the 23 would bring something handsome, that is, if you turned them over to me. The net incomes in 1884- 1885 were somewhat smaller, owing to the drought and pre- vailing financial distress in the country, but still worth having when you convey it to me. ^.^ Of course, my dear general, I cannot tell how this large income is distributed or to what it is applied, but a business which pays so handsomely puts to shame the struggles of thousands, whose produce pays you transportation one way and Avhose scarcity of supplies yields the railroads such hand- some returns in bringing food and extras within their reach. These net incomes to the lessees are small amounts to the rich and opulent, but an increase in rates would make ten thousand poor homes still poorer if legislation is controlled My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 563 against them, no matter by what means. I have no unfriendly motive to you or to others in thus elaborating this subject, and I have no disposition to inquire into your private affairs (as to whether you hold these shares in trust for your family or otherwise), but since you ques- tioned the "truth of the dividends," as explained in the Courant, I will give you my information on the subject as frankly as possible. The legislative report makes Mr. C. H. Phinizy say: "Each share is worth about $5,000 per annum." He owns 3 7-8 shares and he is well prepared to testify. This return is too significant to both of you to be regarded in the scale of "bet- ter investments," but it looks as big as a "cart wheel" to a poor farmer like myself. Your 4 3-4 shares resemble a for- tune to me. Disclaiming any unkind feeling to you personally and deter- mined to retract anything that is untrue, as well as to explain anything that may not be clear to your mind in connection with either the Railway Shareholders' Association, as well as shares in the Western and Atlantic Railroad that lies in my power, I remain, Yours most respectfully. W. H. FELTON. P. S. The newspapers that copied Gen. Alexander's letter will certainly allow this reply to appear in their columns in justice to him if not to others. W. H. F. General Alexander came back like a tornado and made public a long reply (and I again set to work to gather up and prepare answering data). He started out by saying: "I refuse to bandy words with you," and then went on with the "bandy" over two closely printed columns in the Atlanta Constitution. He haled the Courant, my newspaper into his court, and arraigned the editor (myself) because I proceeded to publish the following: ■'General E. P. Alexander is the president of the association. 'Henry Jewett, director for 20 railroad companies. ■'Sam Sloan, director for 23 railroad companies. ■'Jay Gould, director for 24 railroad companies. ■'George Roberts, director for 26 railroad companies. 'Aug. Schell, director for 28 railroad companies. 'Sidney Dillon, director for 36 railroad companies. 'T. L. Ames, director for 52 railroad companies. ■'Seven directors and 209 railroad companies includes 120,- 000 miles of railroad, 90,000 investors and employs 1,100,000 persons. Here it is in a nutshell, and E. P. Alexander, of Georgia, at the head ! He has also been appointed government director on the Pacific roads, which roads also pays him to do the things here enumerated!" Dr. Felton did not see the Courant until it was printed, but 564 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics knowing what I do know now in the light of Huntington's tell tale letters, it was astonishing that a plain North Georgia wo- man, editing a weekly paper, could have hit a nail so squarely on the head ! General Alexander went for my spouse with Avords that impressed us that he was putting up a bluff game on us, be- cause he said he had furnished the Atlanta paper with a bona fide circular, in which he was to become the president on February 15, 1884, whereas Dr. Felton had antedated the de- but of this forgetful president on January 21, 1884. He ac- cused Dr. Felton of feigning ignorance for an ignoble purpose ; but all the same he then suddenly recollected that he had writ- ten to Mr. Fink and somehow his memory was stimulated until his early denial startles us with its endeavor to deceive some- body ! His last letter with its confession of his real acquain- tance with a circular and with his acknowledgement of its aims and purposes, is humiliating to read, and unexplainable as coming from a man, who had been so highly honored in public offices. His circular, the one he owned to, he said was dated 1883, and the editor, in pity for the gentleman, did not publish the circular of 1883. General Alexander then explained his possession of the shares he bought from the "Wadley pool." He was trustee for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. He concluded his lengthy letter in the following words: "I never met Dr. Fel- ton and was 3,000 miles away when he sought to pose before the people of Georgia as honest and incorruptible by charging me with bribery and corruption. I have been forced to exhibit him in his true colors. What they are the public can now judge for themselves." E. P. ALEXANDER. When our mail was brought in and I read this screed aloud to Dr. Felton, he said to me: "What do you think of him now?" I replied in substance as follows: "He has been placed in his position as government director of Pacific roads to serve the railroads. He demonstrated his peculiar qualities for this service during his brief connection with this mooted Railway Association. Nothing you can say to him will dis- lodge him from that position, but you can prove to the people of Georgia what we have known for a long time, that the State road lease is not only without a bond for performance of its contract with the State, but that men, Georgians, have been hired with big salaries to conceal the ownership of lease shares in defiance of the explicit terms of that contract. This man did what better men were afraid or unwilling to do, namely, carry in his own name what did not belong to him, to enable the Louisville and Nashville Railroad to defeat the will of the taxpayers of Georgia. What do you think of him? My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 565 I asked." "Just exactly what I thought when the circular was handed to me by , who understood what was going on right before the Georgia legislature with Stahlman, the vice-president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, on the ground moving heaven and earth to destroy or emasculate the Railroad Commission of Georgia." "But," he continued, "he says he has exhibited me in my true colors." God helping — with your help also — I will show him up for "good and always" this time. Get your writing desk and we will give him another hearing before the people of Georgia." Near Cartersville, Nov. 24, 1885. Gen. E. P. Alexander, Government Director of Pacific Rail- roads : Sir: Your letter in today's Constitution does not surprise me. Men of your caliber always adopt the role of bully when no other reply presents itself. Your first letter gave some intimations of the gentleman. Your last, effectually removes such an impression from my mind. You now deserve words suited to your character. It is important that the people of this country should know the manner of man, who has been able to foist himself into the position you hold. If you are a veteran railroad intriguer, if you have been culpable in minor matters, and if you were attracted to the director's position as you were to the Rail- way Shareholders' Association by the "hope of a large salary with small demands on your time," the people should under- stand it. Your brow-beating demand on me for retraction and silence gives me opportunity to throw some light on the subject. Your personal quarrels are very small things com- pared to the danger which menaces the nation in allowing such a man to decide between its interests and the demands of monopolies. It was a most fortuitous circumstance that brought the Railway Shareholders' Association to the front, revealing its avowed aims and purposes. That it had exist- ence even you are now ready to admit. If Congress had fallen on such a document when Oakes Ames uncovered to public scorn James Brooks, of New York, who was also a govern- ment director of Pacific Railroads, it would have induced more carefulness in future selections. It is now understood that the circular, which like Banquo's ghost, will not down in your case, was issued by a kind of a trades union organization to be understood by initiated rail- roaders, but to be kept concealed from the people who were to be duped and from their executive judicial and legislative servants who were to be corrupted by the "infernal force of gold." When you telegraphed me last Thursday for the name of 566 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics the man who handed me the copy in my possession, I treated this strange request as it deserved, with silence. If, as I was pected you desired to "spot" him, you should get no help from me. Now, remember. Gen. Alexander, you said in your first let- ter to me: "I do not believe there is, or ever has been such an Eissociation. " Did you state a deliberate untruth, because you felt that those circulars were in safe hiding? You may take another month's delay for a rejoinder, and you may bluster in every newspaper in Georgia, but you shall not track your man through me or the distinguished parties who were in posses- sion of this circular before I received it. You shall not evade. You shall not escape the facts. You then, not only knew that you had sought the presidency of the Raihvay Shareholders' Association, but you had asked Mr. Fink to help you. When you virtually denied the existence of the association, did you suppose Mr. Fink or Mr. Livings- ton or other interested people would never see such denial? V/hy is it that neither Mr. Fink or Mr. Livingston do not now support you with some sort of denial? A month's search has produced a circular in your own pos- session where I suspect it has always been secreted, although you informed me and the public, "I do not believe there is or ever has been such an association." After such unqualified repudiation in your first letter, what did I reply to you? Mark it! "Since you repudiate the as- sociation in print and denounce it as a fraud, I will take pleas- ure in giving you my humble assistance to also denounce it, especially as you now represent the United States in the po- sition of government director?" That circular was a printed document open to public criti- cism, justly deserving denunciation, and altliough you said in your last letter that you had published a notice of dissolu- tion of partnership with Mr. Livingston, that notice, which is supposed to be your remedy, has never yet been published where I could see it. No, sir, you bring nothing forward but your own unsup- ported word which may do for some people, but it would not do for me, if I was responsible to the people of this Union for your behavior in the government directorship. You may be trustee for too many railroads! In the face of your first denial you now admit you did exchange references with Livingston. Why does not his referee aid you now ? Too thin, general, too thin ! After a month's delay, you summon courage to even indorse a circular. You say this in your letter of today. You garbled My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 567 it of course, but one sentence stands there like a placard on a knave's back, viz: "The association will cause to be pre- pared arg-uments and addresses against every unfair measure affecting railways and through the press and otherwise place the same before executive, judicial legislative officers and the public. It will employ counsel before legislative bodies and committees to promote such proper legislation as shall be re- quired to protect railv/ay interests and to defeat immical measures. The scope of its usefulness shall be as unlimited as the means v/hich shall be placed at its disposal." Money was to be used to control legislation. When I, as a member of the Georgia legislature, found such arguments and addresses against the Railroad Commission of the State, daily and hourly poured in upon us when I found "Counsel" swarming thick before this legislative body, when I saw the press almost solidly arrayed against the commis- sion; I could see the scope of the Railway Shareholders' As- sociation, and I knew such work meant ' ' unlimited means. ' ' Somebody was employed and getting paid without a doubt! Your name as president was the prominent recommendation to Southern railroads in the shareholders' programme. Mr. Fink's recommendation answered for those who did not know .you, and in default of any notice of dissolution or partnership with Fink or Livingston, you were the only man in the United States who was published as controlling "unlimited means" to corrupt the various departments of the State government. Under similar circumstances, I should do exactly what I did then, namely, denounce such organization, a combine for the avowed purpose to control with money all the railroad legislation of this country. So far as I am able, I shall aid the people of these United States to examine into the sort of arguments and addresses that are made before the government directors of Pacific railroads. You now virtually indorse the aims and purposes of Liv- ingston's circular. You have not only changed your mind as to confessing the existence of such an association, but you have the effrontery to negatively approve it in your let- ter received today. And since you now admit having written a letter from which Livingston copied, you can never escape or evade your appli- cation to Livingston for the position of president of such an association. You admit you exchanged references. You gave Fink, but you do not name his referee to the public. Livingston published his circular January 21, 1884, and if the circular placed in the hands of the Constitution bears date of 1883, as you state, it is barely possible that the one I hold is a little fuller and more emphatic on your presidency than 568 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics the one you furnished, particularly as Mr. Livingston an- nounces the date of your application to be January 4, 1884. You did write to Mr. Livingston on January 4, 1884, in these words: "Should you wish to advance my name with any one who does not know me, Mr. Albert Fink, I am very sure would give me such an indorsement as will answer as he recommended me two years ago to be his own successor. Mr. Fink's letter endorsing you was dated January 10, 1884. So you see, Gen. Alexander, your connection would not be likely to appear in a circular dated in 1883. How could it? (This evasion may astonish some people, but it does not astonish me, as you will see when your peculiar relations to the Western and Atlantic Railroad are uncovered). No matter if the concern had been "bogus" with a "bogus secretary," as you state, you were not bogus, and you admit you were "in pursuit of a large salary with small demands on your time." No matter if the thing turned out to be a "fraud" and allured men of means on both sides of the At- lantic, your application and Fink's endorsement made you a contemptible "stool pigeon" to attract game! Let us examine into the bluster you make over the Courant's publication of your supposed allies in the association. Mr. John Livingston published his prospectus of the association on the same sheet that he sets forth the prospectus of the Railway Advocate and of his Railway Directory. Ordinarily such publication would not be construed into a close alliance of the three, but Mr. Livingston publishes this directory for a given purpose. He tells in plain English what connection that directory is to have with the Alexander presi- dency and the Railway Shareholders ' Association. Hear him : "The publication and preparation of the railway directory has been deemed the first step reuqisite to facilitate the ef- forts of the Shareholders' Association. "Why?" To. promote such unification of the railway interests as has been secured by capital invested in other enterprises and as is essential to protect them against further aggression, the primary object for which the association is founded." The directory was intended to supplement the association. The seven directors "pooled" their money and had already agreed to advance with locked shields against any adverse legislation. The directory was the first step. Where you and Mr. Fink were not known, their names would draw more money and more influence. The directory pushed the associa- tion and the association supplemented the directory. History gives the antecedents of several of these directors. Jay Gould had no scruples as to pushing his schemes in Con- gress. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 569 It is reported and not denied that he bought an appoint- ment of judge for the Supreme bench with money for a cam- paign. ("Stanley Matthews for judge, and Garfield's cam- paign"). He has long figured in railway legislation. He is set down for twenty-four companies. Mr. H. L. Ames, if I am correctly informed, inherited the mantle of his father Oakes Ames, who was ignominously expelled from Congress for bribing Congressmen and a government director of Pacific Railroads ! Mr. Sidney Dillon was the president of the ina- mous Credit Mobilier Company, when it became necessary to expel Brooks, who took his pay through Dillon. These two, Ames and Dillon, are set down as controlling ninety compan- ies. This is sufficient to see who were to push the association into usefulness; to "facilitate its efforts. "When men lie down with dogs they get up with fleas," says the old adage, and the association was caught in ques- tionable company and since the association facilitated itself with such directors in 1883 as well as in 1884, and as some- body has furnished you with one of the first date, and I hold one of the second date, you needn't pose any longer as a help- less innocent entrapped without your knowing it. The "baby act," I would remind you, does not meet your case. The association was legally chartered and Livingston declares you examined it "carefully." Mr. Livingston, to facilitate your offer, expressly declares that you carefully investigated the scheme becoming con- vinced of its merits. Now, general, where did you expect the large salary to come from if the directors did not pay it? Money does not "grow on trees," even in New York, and "honor bright," as the children say, did not your 1883 cir- cular promise a large salary with such a directory to push the association? This was the "first step," and I shall always believe the step that facilitated your effort to seek the presi- dency. A man of your financial sagacity was not blindfolded and dragged into it by force, and you may continue to cry "fraud," "bogus," ignorance and even stupidity, but you only dropped it as I believe when the "large salary" dropped out of the organization." (Par parenthesis. The change from the presidency to the government directorship of Pacific roads, was easy. After Mr. Cleveland became the guest of Gen. Alexander in a fish- ing affair, it was more than easy to be recommended by the aforesaid directors to the control of Pacific roads. The ser- pent found Eve's ear, and the president of the association found Mr. Cleveland's ear, and simply went up higher!) "When the Courant found your association so intimately connected with such a directory, it put the public on notice; 570 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics that the "first step" had been taken. Nobody has offered to defend your connection with it, even the newspapers which you say publislied your notice of dissolution of partnership do not explain for you, and the association passed for its full value until it was proven a forgery, and you have that yet to do. The public can draw its own conclusions as to your fitness for your present position, after even so short an alliance with these railroad magnates. In my opinion you always follow the "large salary." Now a word on your connections with the Western and Atlantic Railroad. You complain that your sworn testimony was so badly printed it fails to do you justice, we will take what the Atlanta Constitution reports of you. All the prin- cipal men of that paper were examined at the same time with you and we will leave it to them. The attorney-general, Clifford Anderson, reported to the governor the fact that there was no bond in the lease of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. The legislature heard your testimony and that of others, and the attorney-general was called in. He laid great stress upon the law, which said : "No rail- road company or express company or companies or combi- nations of either shall in any event become lessees of the road." It is not possible to misconstrue these words. In your letter today, you say you were trustee for the Louisville and Nash- ville combination and Mr. Newcomb was wise enough to know he could not legally do what you undertook to do, viz. : to thwart the expressed will of the people of Georgia and you did it covertly. As a director of that road, you were a part of the Louisville and Nashville combination. When you made that confession did you understand its length and breadth? Did you comprehend for a moment your present position before the people of this State? It was law- ful to be a trustee for your family, but not for this railroad. Whenever before was a railroad so impotent that it had to conceal its property in this way ? I could not envy your pres- ent feelings if you owned every railroad in Georgia! The 'Constitution's comment on the attorney-general's decision says editorially: "When the Louisville and Nash- ville bought the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, they found among its assets seven shares and a half of the State road lease. When Col. Cole found himself dispossessed, real- izing that the Western and Atlantic Railroad was the cue to the situation he at once set to work to prevent a majority of the shares from falling into the hands of the men who had bought him out. A pool was formed of 11 3-8 shares, one- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 571 eighth more than a majority of the shares, by Messrs. Johnson, of Macon, Cole, Peters and others. These shares were pooled to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Louisville and Nashville at high price. These shares were placed in New York and Mr. ]\Ioses Taylor advanced the money on them. Things remained in this shape for some time, when it is said Mr. Wadley sold to General Alexander — he(Wadley) took two shares for himself, letting Moses Taylor have two shares and Mr. Raoul (his son-in-law) two shares. This is about the way the shares stand at present. Colonel Cole owns half a share, and a few fractions are owned elsewhere. The rumor on the streets that the Louisville and Nashville or its friends hold nineteen and three-eighths shares is ex- plained as follows : The Louisville and Nashville bought with the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad seven and one- half shares. Gen. Alexander bought from the Wadley pool four and one-half shares. Mr. Phinizy bought one share from Col. Grant, which makes thirteen shares. The seven shares held by Mr. Wadley and Taylor and Raoul are considered friendly to the L. & N. Railroad. It was discovered shortly after the friends of the L. & N. Railroad commenced buying these shares that the holding of a share did not carry the right to vote, that the control re- mained with the original lessees ; since that time they are said to have sold seven and one-half shares to outsiders, being moved to this course by the additional information that the law would not permit the control of the State road by parties living out of the State. . The highest price paid for a share was two years ago — seventy thousand dollars. Shortly after the lease was made, the lessees determined to issue $40,000 of in- come bonds to each share of stock making the entire issue of bonds $880,000. It must be stated that Mr. B. H. Hill's share and all subsequent shares were sold after these bonds were distributed and that each lessee received $10,000 of bonds in addition to the price of his stock. These bonds are ten per cent, quarterly bonds, and sell for $113 in the market. These bonds are payable out of the earnings of the road." Here, Gen. Alexander, you find something of the bonded debt, which you assault me upon. Remember I gave you ''net income" and your imputation of my veracity is only equalled by your deceit. But let us proceed : "It will be seen that the lessee who sold his share for fifty thousand dollars, the average price, has received something like fifty thousand dollars from income bonds besides making one hundred thousand dollars in bulk the lease has paid him, besides the dividends he drew on the stock and incomes. It is known that the dividends have been paid for the last two 572 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics years on lease shares, besides the interest on income bonds and sinking fund. One dividend amounted to $5,000 per share. Last year they paid ten t^'housand dollars a share dividend. The last report was in 18l2, when the net earnings were four hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Deducting the rental would leave one hundred and sixty thousand dollars to the lessees. It is said the profits have been doubled since that date." This is the published statement made in 1883, as I remember. The Constitution can give you the date. Messrs. Hemphill, Howell, Finch and Grady were examined by the same committee that examined you. They were each and all acquainted with facts and with your testimony and with the ownership of the lease so you will hardly call them "ignorant" or "filled with duplicity." Governor Brown testified at the same time and when asked if the majority of the lease shares were held and controlled by Georgians, he said: "I know nothing to the contrary." If you were only a trustee for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad when you were a director, who did you represent when you purchased four and one-half shares from the "Wad- ley pool?" Gov. Brown also told a legislative committee that Mr. Wadley paid $600,000 for a controlling majority, and the Constitution says the Wadley pool was organized to keep the L. & N. Railroad from getting a majority. Here's richness! The lease law of Georgia expressly forbade anyA railroad from becoming a lessee for obvious reasons. There is a mys- tery in this thimble-rigging which places some people in a very mysterious light. If not too much of a conundrum, I would ask if a man who would connive at a fraud in a State matter would not also be willing to connive at a fraud in Federal matters? N. L. Hutchins swore he bought his share from you, and he asked you to place the dividend to his credit on the note towards the purchase. C. I. Brown swore he owned two shares in his own right. He had given General Alexander "his note" for them, and he paid on the note "some money arising from dividends on his shares." That accounts for three of them. Gumming is said to have procured his in the same way. That accounts for four, and yet with their holdings of such lease shares, you are set down as trustee for four and a half shares and one-fourth share as owner in your own right. Did Hutchins and Brown swear falsely or did the Constitution, which recites these facts, falsely represent them? I discard that badly printed testimony and demand that you apply at the proper place for a whitewashing, if they can afford to stultify themselves to give it to you. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 573 The State of Georgia sees in you a man who assumed the trusteeship for a railroad when that road could not lawfully claim lease shares in its own name. You say you did not get a cent as trustee, but you can tell that to those who do not know how you were attracted to Railway Shareholders' Associations. The latge salary was no doubt ample to cover such illegal trusts and the question arises, if you could thus deceive the State of Georgia, where you had character to sustain, what will you do away from home as government director? I never met you in my life, Gen. Alexander, and until you appeared as the published president of an association, mani- festly organized to defeat all railroad legislation, that was not friendly to railways, by corrupt money, I had a good opinion of you. But you have unmasked yourself! You seem to for- get that you, with Mr. Fink and Mr. Livingston, are responsi- ble for your debut as president of this Railway Shareholders' Association. But one of the trio has spoken to the Georgia public, and perhaps it will be sensible for you not to forget it. You told me a "bogus secretary" referred your letter to Fink. Yet Mr. Fink was not "bogus." Mr. Fink would be of service in disconnecting you with Mr. Livingston. Had you kept aloof from them both until you were attracted by more than a large salary, you would not be at this moment the victim of misapprehension and suspicion. Had you not been found in a supposed position where great harm was threatened to every man in Georgia, except rail- road owners, I should not have alluded to you there or else- where. Instead of commending me for exposing a fraud on on you, you attack me. Instead of placing Messrs. Fink and Livingston on trial, you condemn me. To show the public how successfully you were made to answer their purpose, I will copy here Mr. Livingston's announcement of your accepted office with them : "It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the advantages of the co- operation of Gen. E. P. Alexander, of Georgia, who through the kindly recommendation of Mr. Albert Fink, the Trunk Line Commissioner, has been selected as president from the fifteenth proximo of the Railway Shareholders' Association, which will have his earnest assistance towards making it a success. It may be readily assumed that he would not enter into a connection with the undertaking without careful in- vestigation and a thorough personal conviction of its merits, and that it is so firmly established, has such earnest friends and supporters as to insure not only its permanency, but its ability to afford early and tangible evidence of results ac- complished. Gen. Alexander is not now connected with anv 574 jNTy Memoirs op Georgia Politics railroad. ''-(Why did the Louisville and Nashville give up his services?) commended by Commissioner Fink and by prominent railroad men in the South and West has been made familiar Avith the working of this organization, under date of January 4, 1884, writes : ' ' Should you wish to advance my name with any one who does not know me, Mr. Albert Fink would, I am sure, give me such an indorsement as would an- swer, as he recommended me two years ago to be his own suc- cessor. " (Successor to what? Was it the presidency of this identical association?) "Commissioner Fink responded to our further application by a letter which the following is a copy : "Trunk Line Commissioner, New York Central and Hudson River, New York and Lake Erie, and West Pennsylvania, and Baltimore and Ohio Railroads. Office Commissioner, No. 346 Broadway, N. Y., Jan. 10, 1884. Mr. John Livingston, Secretary — Dear Sir : Yours of De- cember 31st was only received today, and yours of 5th instant two days ago. I herewith return letter from Gen. Alexander. General Alexander has been connected with railroads for many years. He stands very high as a railroad man and a gentleman. He was formerly vice-president Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company. He has written much on the railroad problem and sensibly.* Yours respectfully, ALBERT FINK." This association was chartered under the lav/s of New York and to denounce me for charging you with the presidency of the association is the veriest madness. The published cir- cular of an association carries with it the existence of such organization — until it is disproved, and when I charged you with its presidency before the legislature no man in the gen- eral assembly or in the State was prepared to say you were not its president. You were so mixed in the matter of the lease shares of the State Road, that no man was prepared to say where you belonged or what yon controlled. My "family responsibilities ' ' are neither mixed nor in confusion ; but your business matters and business responsibilities, especially with railroads, appear to be irretrievably mixed and confused. Good bye. General Alexander! W. H. FELTON. General Alexander wrote a short card, addressed to Atlanta Constitution, in which he said: "Lest silence on the subject might be misconstrued, I will say in reference to my having held shares of Western & Atlantic Railroad stock, as trustee for a road in which I was an officer — that it is probably done by others to this day — with the full knowledge of the legisla- ture and executive and without objection, legal or moral. And so far from having made any secret of it, I had it registered as "trustee" stock, expressly to put on inquiry all who had any desire to know. He produced likewise a card which ap- I ]\Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics 575 peared in the Atlanta Constitution, dated February 3, 1884, and was dated at Augusta, February 2, 1884, and reads thus : To Atlanta Constitution : The announcement of my name as president of Shareholders' Association of New York was with- out my knowledge or consent. E. P. ALEXANDER. Dr. Pelton addressed a short letter to Atlanta Constitution on December 11, 1885: "The card of Gen. E. P. Alexander in today's Constitution would not provoke a single word from me (for no honorable man would kick a fallen foe), but there is one statement which should be investigated by the people of the State, namely: "I will say with reference to my having held shares of Western & Atlantic stock as trustee for a road of which I was an officer, that it is probably being done by others in this day, with full knowledge of the legislative and executive and without objection, legal or moral. I had it registered as trustee stock expressly to put on inquiry all who may desire to know. ' ' Now is this true ? Who is it that is now holding lease shares in open violation of the statutes which expressly forbids any railroad or express company, companies or combinations of either, to become lessees of the road in any event? I do not ask a reply from General Alexander, but I do ask a response from the executive of the State. It behooves Gov- ernor McDaniel to clear his skirts or be considered particeps criminis in this violation of law. As a member of the legisla- ture, I deny this "full knowledge," and had this confession appeared two months ago there would have been searching investigation. Hon. A. H. Stephens pronounced the procurance of the lease act as "corrupt," and the legislature that ratified it "no better than Bullock," throwing up the share presented to him because he could not hold it honorably. That leasing to private citizens was. done, under color of law, while the law is explicit that "railroads shall not be permitted to hold shares in any event." If these railroads are now violating this statute, it is the governor's duty to stop it. If General Alexander has not misrepresented him, nothing can excuse his longer negligence. The legislature will not meet in nearly twelve months and the people of the State will expect and demand prompt action from the executive, unless an unqualified repudiation of Gen- eral Alexander's very lame effort is had to shift responsibility upon the shoulders of the executive. The remedy is some- where, and we must look to Governor McDaniel for relief. There is nothing to be said in defense of General Alexander's position. Being one of a gang of plunderers does not lighten the weight of wrongdoing, and a man who pleads guilty in 576 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics such a way, throwing himself on the mercy of the public, is not only cowardly but impudent. But what could be expected from one who stubbornly denies the existence of an organization — and in the same breath makes the thing so tangible that he publishes his withdrawal from the presidency, from one who affirmed there was no such circular when one turned up in his own possession — from one who evidently is afraid to tackle Livingston, the man who got it up, printed and distributed it — and one who has spent his time in the unexplainable pursuit of the person, who merely handed a circular to distinguished gentlemen before it came into my possession ; and especially from a man whose sense of public and private honor is so dull that he could betray the State of Georgia to aid the L. & N. Railroad, "without a cent of compensation" except the salary they gave him as vice- president. Such a depressed standard of right and wrong unfits him for the responsible position of government director of Pacific railroads, where his opportunities will be unlimited, if he should be disposed to favor railroads. The deception in the matter of the lease shares was com- plete. The Louisville & Nashville bought seven and a half shares from the Nashville & Chattanooga. General Alexander then bought four and a half from the Wadley pool — which he does not deny — yet he completely hoodwinked that astute financier, Governor Brown, who, testifying under oath, was asked if the majority of the lease shares were held and con- trolled by Georgians, made this answer: "I know nothing to the contrary." "Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When we practice to deceive." He deceived the State of Georgia — yet he claims to be a Georgian — in his appointment as government director. He deceived Governor Brown, who is responsible to the State for a lawful compliance with the lease act, and the question forces itself on every thinking mind, "Will he not deceive the gov- ernment at Washington?" Respectfully, W. H. FELTON. Dr. Felton made his speech ver}^ early in October of 1885, and I sent a copy of The Courant to Judge Reagan of Texas. Judge Reagan had been chairman of committee of commerce during four years, while Dr. Felton was member of same com- mittee in house of representatives. He left congress to go to Texas and work and serve on a railroad commission for his native State. He wrote thus to Dr. Felton : "Palestine, Texas, October 15, 1885. "Hon. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga. — Dear Sir: I have just received the Cartersville Courant of the 8th instant, for My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 577 which I suppose I am indebted to your courtesy. I have read with great interest and pleasure your masterly speech on railroad matters and the accompanying editorials. "God grant that you and those who act with you may save Georgia from being put in the condition which the railroads have imposed on the great States of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where it is notorious that they control legislation and courts by bribery and other corrupt practices. "I am sick with dengue fever and so nervous that, as you will see, I can scarcely write, but I was not willing to forego the opportunity of thanking you for your pieces in your paper and more especially for your brave and noble advocacy of the rights and interests of the people. My wife joins me in our best wishes for yourself and Mrs. Felton. ' ' Very respectfully, JOHN H. REAGAN. ' ' At the time of writing this letter Judge Reagan was the sole survivor of Jefferson Davis' cabinet — being the Confederate postmaster general during its brief four years of life. Judge Charles G. Janes, of Cedartown, Ga., wrote the fol- lowing : "Cedartown, Ga., October 15, 1885. "Hon. W. H. Felton — Dear Sir: Those people of Georgia who are not blinded to their own interest — not hoodwinked or bullied by the railroads — will appreciate your efforts in sup- port of the railroad commission. In my humble opinion, the most important question in State politics today is Vv^hether the people shall control the railroads or the railroads the people, and I have watched with much interest and anxiety the progress of the bill to amend the law creating the com- mission. "I have been opposed to you in your races for congress in this district, always, however, acknowledging your worth as a man and a representative, but feeling so strongly /the great good you were doing for the people of Georgia in your late fight against the railroads, I could not refrain from saying to you a word in commendation of your course. "Very respectfully, CHAS. G. JANES." A letter written to Dr. Felton by Ex-Governor Smith, who was removed by Governor McDaniel from the chairmanship of the Georgia Railroad Commission, can be found in my review of Gov. James Milton Smith, in another chapter. He thor- oughly despised Governor McDaniel as a servant of the railroad interests, and if ever Governor McDaniel asked for an explanation as to the illegal holding of lease shares by the L. & N. Railroad or the Nashville & Chat- tanooga Railroad, no publication to that effect ever fell under my eye. The name "trustee," as used by General Alexander, 578 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics was understood to be trustee for members of his own family — never as trustee for a robust and belligerent railroad com- pany. The people of the State were awakened to a serious fact, when the investigation was ordered and when General Alexander was forced to swear to his ownership of lease shares, but it did not transpire that he was wearing a mask to deceive the people of Georgia in his service to the Louisville & Nash- ville Railroad, until Dr. Felton's correspondence with him brought it out into general notice. If he had at any time made it known as to the quality of his trusteeship, he would have been worse treated than either Dr. Felton or John Livingston of New York treated him when he dropped the Railway Share- holders' Association and made tracks towards the Pacific Rail- roads — under President Cleveland's administration. But the railroads could snarl and snap, and to add another sort of spice to this controversy I will copy here from the Chattanooga Times of October 25, 1885, a short editorial: "Dr. Felton, of the Georgia legislature, is the same sensa- tional demagogue he was in congress. In his effort to per- petuate railroad spoilatian in Georgia, he libeled Gen. E. P. Alexander. The General has written the reverend politician a rather scathing letter, showing him that he slandered and falsified, that there was no such association as he described and demanding unconditional retraction of this and other charges. Felton is like our Tennessee Agrarians. They like he, prove the righteousness of robbing the railroads, by de- nouncing every man who asks for justice in that behalf as a briber, bribe-taker, public robber, and so on for quality and amount. ' ' Dr. Felton could not kick at every cur that barked at him, but I had liberty to look after the Chattanooga Times and reply to this unprovoked and unjust editorial, so I cared for the editor in the following terms: "Cartersville, Ga., October 28, 1885. "A friend has sent me a copy of the Chattanooga Times of October 25th, which was received today. The editor of the Times takes occasion to call me some names and uses some epithets that I shall feel bound to notice, if he is worthy of it. Otherwise I shall treat him with the contempt he merits. The good opinion of knaves is to be avoided, if possible, and their abuse is often the highest praise. Before I notice the Times, I would like to inquire if this is the creature that Mr. Colyar, of the Nashville paper, 'denounced as a liar,' and of whom he said nine-tenths of the Chattanooga people would not be- lieve on his oath? Unless it is a different person, I shall have nothing to say in reply. Very respectfully, "W. H. FELTON." My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 579 If that gun was not spiked, its explosions were not suf- ficiently loud to reach down to this neck of the woods. A gentleman from Georgia chanced to meet Hon. Roscoe Conkling in the State Capitol at Albany about the same time. They were not acquainted but they fell into conversation and Georgia was named as the home of this visiting friend of ours. At once Mr. Conkling had some good things to say of Georgia and asked the following question: "Tell me, what is Felton doing these days?" The friend proceeded to give a brief ac- count of Dr. Felton 's brave fight to save the railroad com- mission before the legislature. When our friend, who lived in lower Georgia, returned he wrote us of what Mr. Conkling further said, which may be briefly stated, as the great New York statesman did not waste words: "I remember Felton well, although I was in the senate and he was in the house. He impressed me, sir, as the best equipped man in legislation that Georgia furnished while he was there. He was able, very eloquent and recognized as a man of parts with lofty in- tegrity. ' ' I wrote a letter to Mr. Conkling at once, signing Dr. Felton 's name, of course, and the reply letter lies before me now. It is nearly twenty-six years old, but it is written with Mr. Conkling 's own hand. ''New York, December 21, 1885. "My Dear Sir: On receipt of your valued letter and en- closure it was my purpose promptly to write my thanks, but in my many hurried goings and comings and unusual per- plexity of work, owing to having been three months absent in Europe, I have been belated till now in making answer. I beg you to believe no neglect was intended. Without agreeing to all you so kindly say — the motive and friendliness of your words is highly appreciated. I beg you to receive my warm acknowledgments and the sincere wish that many a merry Christmas and happy New Years may wait on you and yours. "Sincerelv your obedient servant,' ROSCOE CONKLING. "Hon. W. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga." In closing this review of State politics in 1885, and the correspondence with Gen. E. P. Alexander, it is comforting to me now, that Dr. Felton has gone to his eternal reward, that he had noble and true acquaintances and friends, whose regard and appreciation is ample to make me put aside the unpleasant strife that tricksters and venal newspapers forced upon him. Major Campbell Wallace said to him, in 1885, "Doctor, you certainly saved the railroad commission." 580 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Brunswick Herald, December 2, 1885. Semi-Weekly. CORNERED. General Alexander has bit off more than he can chew. Immediately after the legislature adjourned he said, in his published defense, that "he did not believe there is or ever was such an association as the Railway Shareholders' Associa- tion ; ' ' and now in another defense, he not only admits the existence of such association, but that he did desire the presi- dency of the same by the "hope of a large salary with small demands on his time. ' ' Not only that, but Alexander actually endorses the association and its objects. Few public men ever put themselves in such an unenviable position as General Alexander has done in this matter. Felton, in his reply to Alexander's last letter, says : "Money was to be used to control legislation. When I, as a member of the Georgia legislature, found such 'arguments and ad- dresses' against the railroad commission of the State, daily and hourly poured in on us ; when I found ' counsel ' swarming thick before the legislative body — when I saw 'the press' almost solidly arrayed against the commission — I could see the scope of the Railway Shareholders' Association, and I knew such work meant 'unlimited means.' Somebody was employed and getting paid without doubt. Your name as president was the prominent recommendation to Southern rail- roads in the shareholders' programme. Mr. Fink's indorse- ment recommended you to those who did not know you, and in default of any notice of dissolution of partnership with Fink or Livingston, you were the only man in the United States who was published as controlling 'unlimited means' to corrupt the various departments of the State government. Under similar circumstances, I should do again exactly what I did then — denounce any such combination, which avowed its purpose to control with money all railroad legislation in this country; and so far as I am able, I shall aid the people of these United States to examine into the sort of arguments and addresses that are made before the government directors of Pacific railroads. You now virtually indorse the avowed aims and purposes of Livingston's circular. You have not only changed your mind as to confessing the existence of such an organization, but you have the effrontery to negatively ap- prove it in your last letter, received today." If Cleveland ever gets to see Felton on Alexander, he will ask for Alexander's resignation. He ought to send it in with- out the request of the president. History of Reformatory Movement in Georgia In the spring of 1886 I was invited to attend a Woman's Christian Temperance Union meeting, which was to assemble in the city of Macon. Up to that time I had not joined any organization, but there had been so many dreadful publica- tions concerning the enormities of chain gang camps, of the herding of women and small criminals in the same prison pens with men, and the working of convict women under brutal overseers who were made to submit to these brutal guards, and which resulted in placing infants in these prison pens — born on the chain — and the demoralization of juvenile criminals who were educated into deeper crimes by association with veterans in vice, lust and murder ; that I determined to join the organ- ization, to be able to fight these evils with numbers. I had been hammering away at the degraded and disgraceful con- vict lease system for years, but everybody seemed to be afraid to encounter the vengeance of the lessees, entrenched in the highest offices of the State. These lessees were likewise the political bosses in every county. They named judges and solicitors. They elected members to the legislature. They were coining large wealth out of these poor convicts — ninety- hundredths of whiom were negroes. At the time I connected myself with the W. C. T. U. organ- ization in Macon, a lessee of convicts was United States sen- ator. The other senator was recognized as a ''silent partner," and a gubernatorial candidate, himself a lessee, was already in Georgia — bringing with him floods of money — to over- come the honest voters of the State and to corrupt every newspaper that would sell its space to such malign influences. Dr. Felton had introduced reformatory bills, from 1884 up to that time. He had endeavored to interest Governor Mc- Daniel in the year 1884. I hold now a reply made to him, by Governor McDaniel, who wrote favorably and promised to in- corporate a suggestion to that effect in his forthcoming mes- 582 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics sage in 1884. But the lessees had so much authority in the legislature and were credited with owning a majority of the members thereof, that nothing could be enacted into law. They even laughed the movement to scorn ! I therefore determined to use any small influence I might have with the good temperance women of Georgia to compel these convict lease authorities to separate the women convicts from the men, and to organize a State-wide movement for a reformatory prison for juveniles. These noble Avomen heard my resolutions and then gave me authority' to present a memorial to the legislature when it met, in November, 1886. Dr. Felton agreed to champion our undertaking in the legislature and we thus made considerable headway. I will not incorporate the memorial in this crowded volume, as my individual memoirs will embrace my individual efforts in philanthrophy, etc. — a volume already in preparation for the printer. Dr. Felton introduced our resolution — the house gave an order for printing 300 copies, and I was delighted to know what we really could do on this line. My activity angered the lessees. They saw something was now doing that meant business. The Forum invited an article from my pen and I do not suppose there were ever 3,000 words, freighted with more meaning or fuller of "ginger," than that arraignment of our convict lessees in Georgia, who were filling the highest offices in the State. The antagonism to me was deadly, and the reformatory movement was scotched at every turn. It was understood in the summer of 1887 that some legislator would be selected to hit at me as hard as he dared to do it.- This eventuated when Mr. E. 'G. Simmons made his attack in the following August, and he was selected from South Georgia, because any North Georgia politicians who might be able to attack, might also be handled without gloves. Therefore we collided with the "man from Sumter." I happened to be sitting in the house gallery when Mr. Simmons made his venture. I heard what he said in relation to Rider Haggard's new book, "She." From my seat in the gallery I had a good view of his face. I noted the delight that My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 583 was expressed in the faces of the men that I knew favored the lease, and were opposing Dr. Felton's reformatory bill. Some of the principal lessees were said to be present and listening — hoping, no doubt, to get their money's worth out of such oratory. Mr. Simmons did the subject justice from their point of view. He was hitting at "She"— the "Political She" of Georgia with earnest licks. He enjoyed the notoriety, he spread himself, and many faces were turned in expectation to my seat in the gallery. Nobody that listened was in doubt as to what he was aiming to do. He rubbed it in. Every allusion was veiled, but the veil was thin. I felt the hot blood surge in my veins. I would have given considerable money for the privilege of ansAvering him then and there, and nothing was plainer than the employment of a willing legislator to do wiiat no one of his political owners was willing to under- take. Dr. Felton had rooms at the Talmage House at the time, and I went there for dinner. He usually left home for Atlanta on Mondays, and this was Friday, August 7th, as I remember. He loved his home so much that my trips to visit liim, when the legislature was in session, were like breaths of home air and home sunshine for him. We were late for our dinner. Hon. William Hamilton Fel- ton, of Macon county, was at table with us — only we three. Colonel Felton said to me : ' ' Did you get here in time for Sim- mons ' speech?" "Yes, sir," I replied. I then asked of Dr. Felton, "did you hear it?" "I did," he answered, "and I'll take care of him in due time." "That's right. Doctor," said Cousin Ham. "If you never make another speech in the Georgia legislature, this is one time I shall urge you to make a speech in reply to that attack. I heard your speech the other day — you never had a word to say of Simmons, directly or indirectly. I heard all you said. This speech today was an unprovoked assault — the man- was surely demented. ' ' I sus- pected he was well stimulated, but Dr. Felton 's reply to Cousin Ham Felton, I never Avill forget : ' ' Colonel, I never did that man any harm in my life. I have no acquaintance with him, and he has been manifestly employed on a 'put-up-job.' I will give him until next Wednesday, when the Reformatory bill 584 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics comes up again, to apologize for this ruffianism. I hope he will see his error. I dislike to say to him what that speech of today deserves, but I shall say it — unless he recovers himself sufficiently to come to me and tell me he regrets the wanton things he said under excitement." I did not see Dr. Felton again until he reached home late Saturday, but he told me it was generally understood that some of the lessees had engaged Simmons to make the attack. Before he left, on next Monday morning, he asked me this question: "What did Macauley say of that scoundrel, Barere, the dirty tool of a dirty gang in Paris who was, all things con- sidered, the meanest villian that disgraced the bloody con- spirators engaged in the French Revolution?" I took down Macaulay's essays from the book case and read as much of it to him as the time allowed before he left for the train to Atlanta. If Dr. Felton made any other preparation for the reply speech to Mr. Simmons, I have no knowledge of it. I noted that the Atlanta newspapers were expecting Dr. J'elton's fusilade on Wednesday, so I took the first train that I could reach that morning but we had a delay with the train. I hurried to the old Capitol, but I had difficulty in getting into the gallery. I could hear Dr. Felton 's fine, clear-trained voice as I went up the steps from the street. But for the fact that the usher in the gallery knew me by sight I never would have reached a seat in that packed place. The jam was something to remember. Whether Dr. Felton ever saw my face that forenoon during the speech, I cannot tell, but there were opera glasses in plenty trained on me while he was speaking. When I had time to think of myself I remembered there were big, glad tears coursing down my cheeks, and I said to myself, "Even a convict lease attack has its compensations." I watched Mr. Simmons and the conspirators who had egged him on — and I did him the justice to believe he got but little for his service to a bloated corporation, which was willing to stand in the rear while he was exposed in the front. (Although the money perhaps had run into four figures — or the pay might have been their influence towards securing his own election). That influences were often used or paid for in legislation, I My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 585 have documentary proof, and am prepared to show if proof is demanded. In discussing- Mr. Simmons' and Dr. Feiton's speeches, it will be well to begin at the beginning, in the year 1885, to make connected history. The newspapers that printed a synopsis of Dr. Feiton's argument in the year 1885 for a reformatory prison, had great headlines — "AN EPITOMIZED HELL." \ That is What Dr. Felton Calls the Georgia Chain Gang-. (Reported by Atlanta Constitution.) In the house yesterday the special order was Dr. Feiton's bill to establish a reformatory prison, or house of correction for juveniles and female convicts. The bill was read and Mr. Gordon, of Chatham, offered to amend by striking out a pro- vision in the fifth section, that the juvenile convicts should be taught the elementary branches of an English education. With another minor change in the ninth section, Mr. Gordon said he approved the bill. Mr. Butt, of Marion, moved to take up the bill by sections. At this moment Dr. Felton, the author of the bill, arose and said: "Before we proceed to the con- sideration of this bill by sections, I would like to address the house very briefly in explanation of some portions of the bill. I am pleased to knoAV that a majority of the intelligent, right- thinking people of Georgia with whom I have come in contact, endorse the establishment of such a reformatory prison and that many members of this house express a deep interest in the objects and purposes of the bill. If it is not perfect, let us amend it. Let each member regard it as his bill. Let us move to strike out, or to insert or move to amend until we perfect it. I introduced it as a nucleus around which the patriotism, the wisdom and the humanity of this house could construct a bill that would be honorable to Georgia and credit- able to her statesmen. I only wish to retain the leading features of the bill — a reformatory prison — a house of correc- tion for juvenile offenders and female convicts. That strikes the keynote of the humanity of Georgia, and it is my experi- ence that whenever the humanity of Georgia is properly ap- pealed to, Georgia's great heart is ready to respond." Dr. Felton then went on at length to give the History of Prison Reform, and showed that the experiment, while a new one in Georgia, is an old one in other States and countries. He referred at 586 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics considerable length to the reformatory prisons of New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He mentioned the reform prison at Elmira as a model. There the offenders may be released as soon as they are reformed and the good of society would best be subserved by their discharge. In New York, of the 1,205 prisoners permanently discharged, 90 per cent, become law-abiding citizens, and of the 640 temporarily dis- charged, 80 per cent, become law-abiding citizens and indus- trious men. The result is most satisfactor3^ They say it is cheaper to reform a young criminal than to try him again and send him to Auburn, or to some of the five or six penitentiaries in New York. They say it is cheaper to reform a boy than to hang him when he grows to adult age. Look at our court houses and jails — absolutely they are crowded with criminals ! Crime is increasing — multiplying a hundred fold. Georgia never has had such a flood of crime. Our good and worthy governor tells us in his message that crime is decreasing — when the facts show there were more murders committed last year in the State of Georgia than was ever known in her history. There are 1,534 convicts in the chain gangs of Georgia. Crime is increasing fearfully. No man is safe, no family is safe, no household is safe, no species of property is safe. I wish I had time to read to you the documents I have to prove the benefits of the reformatory prisons. I. wish you could hear in detail the wonderful story of their success in other States. If this was a mere piece of ordinary legislation, I would stand here and quibble about the ninth part of a hair, I would quibble and haggle and talk and controvert every position for the sake of economy. I know, sir, we are poor! I know the farmers were never more financially embarrassed than they are today. Education is a matter that could be postponed — and the glory of Georgia would not suffer. JMagnificent public buildings are desirable. It is honorable to have marble halls and gilded domes and Corinthian columns. When we approach such questions we ask, can we afford it? Sir, this general assembly could order a suspension of the work on the new Capitol tomorrow and Georgia's good name, and Georgia's civilization Avould not necessarily suffer. But, sir, when you bring up the question of Georgia's honor and glory and reputation and Christian civilization and hu- manity, then everything requires that she should be rescued if it takes the last dollar in the public treasury. It is said and repeated that the glory of the State is of supreme importance. Take your prison system ! Juveniles and old, hardened crira- ]My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 587 inals, men and women, black and white, the obdurate and un- conquerable, are all huddled and chained together. You have a system that is degrading — that is barbarous — that is devilish. You have a system that, it seems to me, if the fiends of hell had undertaken to devise a system, devilish, barbarous and malignant, they could not have succeeded more fully than Georgia has succeeded in her system. Georgia's honor, Georgia's glory, Georgia's good name, Georgia's kindness and gentleness and charity and Christianity and humanity are all involved, and in the name of God, and for Georgia's glory, let us rescue this grand old State!" (Question asked) : "Is there not a law to keep the men and women apart?" Mr. Felton : "I'll come to that. I repeat, where on earth can you find a law for the present system in Georgia? I pause for a reply. I am in earnest. I am not talking for talk's sake. Is there any gentleman here to respond? I pause for a reply. There are distinguished lawyers here in this house — will they point out the law? Mr. Chairman, there is a record that I would to God I could blot out — not repeal — but blot from the records of Georgia so that it would not be transmitted to coming generations as evidence of the shame and humiliation and corruption and fraud of their fathers. What was the original act? It was to get an island and every convict in Georgia was to be sent there and they were to be duly separated. Where do you find the law for the present system? Here is a book (holding up a small pamphlet). It is called Bill of Exceptions. I'll venture there are not a dozen of them in Georgia, for it has been wonderfully suppressed. But it is a treasure to every body who wants to know the secret history of this chain gang system. Under the original law, the very old and very young, the feeble and idiotic, were to be kept under the supervision of good physicians and humane chaplains and keepers, to be worked on the Central farm, in a healthful locality, while the old and confirmed criminal was to be sent to the mines and brick-yards and to build railroads. But by certain and political legardemain, and certain personal and individual sorcery — that entire system was transmitted into an Epitomized Hell, just to make a chain gang system, and I will apologize to the law and to you if I don't prove it to be an epitomized hell. Here is the testimony of a man who swears that there was turned over to the Marietta & North Georgia Railroad Com- pany, in order to save three years to the lessees, fifty of the worst in the penitentiary^ and of that number seven were 588 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics women and six were children. One was a poor old creature between eighty and ninety; one a poor wretch with his arm broken and the bone sticking out, one was perfectly blind — and such were the convicts turned over to the company to build a railroad with." Dr. Felton proceeded at some length to discuss the objects of prisons. He said the idea was to reform the criminal so as to protect society from his viciousness. He accounted for the increase of crime by saying that every convict now released makes two or more criminals by his teachings." (Adjourn- ment. ) "Yesterday in the house the discussion of Dr. Felton 's bill to establish a reformatory prison for juveniles and female convicts was resumed. Dr. Felton held the floor and quite a large number of citizens, among them many ladies, gathered in the galleries to hear him speak. Very soon after the house met a very handsome bouquet was brought and laid on the desk of Dr. Felton, a tribute from some admirer. As soon as the opening proceedings were over. Dr. Felton arose and said : "As I stated yesterday this is a question in which I feel great interest as a Georgian. I have no personal interest in the matter. I desire the success of this bill not so much for the personal benefit to the convict, although I humbly trust and believe I have the ordinary instincts of common humanity and that I am always moved to sympathy, when I see the suffering of a human being. But that, sir, is not the thing that moves the friends of this measure. When I closed on yesterday I was dwelling upon the point that the object of all legal punishment was the protection of society. I had, if you remember, illustrated this position by describing (The Constitution's report here omitted a great part of the speech) how ^ve arrest the Smallpox patient, who is at large, not for his own good, but for the good of society. If a negro was at large with the smallpox on him, you would not say : ' Oh ! he is only a negro! Let him go!' I would like to dwell just a few minutes longer on this very prominent thought connected with this very important question. "I do wish I could impress the members of this house and the people of Georgia with this leading thought, this con- trolling thought in all this reformatory movement. It is not, I repeat, through sympathy with the convict, though of course we all sympathize with the poor miserable wretch, degraded as he is, criminal as he is, and deserving excruciating retribu- tive pains, as he may be. "We sympathize with the agony he may thus justly and legally realize in consequence of his crime, but, sir, this is not the controlling motive. "We seek to protect the people of Georgia. What a long Monument to Dr. W. H. Felton, Coukt House Lawn, Cartersville. My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 589 list of crimes we now have ! When I take up the Atlanta Con- stitution, excellent paper as it is, my first business is to glance at the telegraphic world. Frequently it is absolutely crowded with rapes, murders, with every description of crime known to your penal code. ' ' Gentlemen, if this thing progresses will not the very pillars of society be threatened. As I mentioned yesterday every one of these ex-convicts Becomes a Crime Circle. The probability is that the convict will soon return to the chain-gang. Ask Col. Towers, the keeper of the penitentiary ; ask Mr. Nelms, who has just retired from that position, and [ venture they will tell you, assure you, that they carry back the men, who have just a few months before been discharged f^v pardoned from the same chain-gang. The thief has been cdu'-'ated in larceny, the burglar in burglary, the rapist, in that infamous crime, and so throughout the entire catalogue of crimes. Your chain-gangs are great schools of vice, of im- morality and of crime, because the only educators in those chain-gangs are thieves, are rapists, are burglars, are mur- derers ! Think of it ! You who are surprised at the increase in crime ! I sometimes hear a preacher of the gospel from his pulpit, lamenting this fearful increase in crime, for the grand old State of my birth and of my education and my life, but he should remember that Georgia is largely responsible for it all! Does he call to mind that the State authorities are largely responsible for the increase in criminals? Georgia, by perpetuating her present prison system, becomes the propa- gator of crime. "She stands out in the estimation of the world in the Character of Procuress. Hard word this, but a true word. Georgia stands out in the attitude and character of procuress for the chain-gangs of the State. One of her leading duties, judging from her present system, is to multiply criminals, to multiply convicts, to swell indefinitely these chain-gangs. ''We can easily remember, Mr. Chairman, when we were here last winter the number of convicts in the chain-gangs was but little over twelve hundred. Today there are 1,534 convicts in your chain-gangs. Only six months since we ad- journed and yet an increase of nearly 300. Where is this thing to stop ? I am talking to you as Georgians. There were discharged from your chain-gangs last year 379 convicts. You then created 379 crime circles, because none of them went back reformed; none of them went back with increased reverence 590 JMy Memoirs of Georgia Politics for law. They came back hating law, despising the restraints '>f law, enemies of society, the enemies of the white people with hatred and malignity in their hearts. Determined to Have Revenge for what they call unjust punishment of their crimes. In the nanie of God, in the name of Georgia, my countrymen, and my fellow legislators, let us awake to the future. Have you ever considered that punishment with civilization has been modi- fied 1 This present S3'stem is cruel ; it is savage, the present system is unChristian and uncivilized. Have you ever thought, Mr. Chairman, how within the last three or four hundred years, legal punishment has been modified and softened under the progress of Christian civilization? Do you not understand that as society advances, progress in intelligence and civiliza- tion that punishment for many crimes is softened? I am glad to live in the nineteenth century. There is no phase in our old constitution with which I am more pleased than these words: 'Excessive bail shall not be required, and excessive and unusual and cruel punishment shall not be inflicted.' Thank God for those words ! How they show us the progress of society ! They sparkle like diamonds on the dark background of by gone ages ! They tell of great lumber-rooms of the past, filled with rubbish, of disgrace, of excessive cruelty ! "Mr. Chairman, in Muscogee county, the other day, three white women were convicted, and rather than send those wo- men to our system of chain-gangs, where under other circum- stances they would have been sent, absolutely they were re- turned to jail life for a long period rather than subject them to this miserable school of vice, immorality, and crime and Shame and Degradation. "Take that little white boy, or black boy, I care not which. He is a Georgian. You are his guardian. In the sight of God and all men you are his keeper if he is sentenced by the courts to the chain-gangs of Georgia. "Who is responsible for Doc Jackson ? Who ? The owners of that camp ? No. You are, sir. The legislature of Georgia is responsible for him. Take that boy raised in idleness, he is brought up a vagabond, a vagrant; he has had no kind hand to protect him, shield liim or guide him. He commits some petty crime and is sen- tenced to the chain-gang. You there chain him to a miserable convict, who teaches him to hate society and its laws,, and thus he becomes a professional and expert criminal. You then turn him loose, send him back to Fulton county and what is the result? He advances in crime. In a few months he com- mits some fearful act. "Mr. Chairman, the great cause of crime in Georgia is idle- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 591 ness and the want of a home. A home ! Home is consecrated with the vow of husband and wife, and children are gathered there. There industry dwells. There love, affection and vir- ture dwell ! Hard toil from morning until dark, occupies every hour. I never pass one of those hard-working rural homes that I do not mentally exclaim: 'There stands a safe- guard of Georgia's future, and America's freedom.' (Ap- plause.) God grant they may multiply an hundred fold! It is the lack of such homes that fills the chain-gang. Some petty offense, and the boy goes to Lockett and Company, or Lowe and Company. Candor compels me to say that Gov. Brown manages his Dade county camps admirably. As a Georgian and a member of this House, I can stand here today and say there is at least one humane man in charge of Georgia's miser- able convicts or a portion of them. But what do you have such a miserable system for? What for? Is it for a valuable consideration? There are 1,534 convicts and you receive for their hire $25,000 and when you have paid expenses out of that you have nothing remaining. Your convicts actually work for their victuals and clothes, and what are these convicts worth? They had a little rumpus over on the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad, and it became necessary to find out what a convict was worth. It was testified that Mr. West, of Cedartown, was hiring some of them at $180 per annum, some at $150 per annum, and for the 200 convicts they said they wanted $200,000. Another gentleman testified they were worth $150 per annum. In Tennessee they have an average of 1,300 convicts and the State receives from their hire a hundred and one thousand dollars net. For yours you get a mere nothing. What do you do it for ? What for ? Oh ! what for ? You are simply putting money in the pockets of these lessees — while you enjoy the honor of making them rich, and you pay the taxes to arrest criminals and convict them and even send them off to these chain-gangs. My Heavenly Father, what a cir- cumstance is this? What for? I again ask Avhat for? "I can endure a great deal if I hope to be compensated. Sometimes I go through with great fatigue, toil, self-denial, myself and my family, but we can stand it, with the hope of pecuniary gain or pleasure, if we can be compensated. But I come to you now, and ask you why do you keep up these schools of vice, of degradation, of suffering and humiliation, just for the privilege of making Lockett, Lowe, Smith, Brown and many more indefinitely rich ? Millionaires ! Nearly a mil- lion dollars a year are you giving to a few political — no, I will not say it, no harsh words now! (Applause.) You actually do these things in order to have the Honest toilers of the State interferred with by this mis- 592 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics erable system. Mr. Chairman, I am no demagogue; I am not, though there are those who have said so ; I am anxious to protect capital and wealth and all that. I am no communist. I am no sensationalist. I desire to live in those old channels o£ integrity and success that have been tried and demonstrated to be right, but I can tell you sir, I am not surprised at the murmurings of the coming storm that come up from various parts of Georgia, from the honest, hard-working mechanics not only in the city of Atlanta, but all over Georgia, murmurings of the coming storm, and they do not intend to submit much longer to this outrageous discrimination against their labor by the convict labor of Georgia. ( Applause.) You have on the banks of the Chattahoochee river a vast convict camp. I have newspaper authority for the statement that they are making 50,000 brick per day to go into your State capitol. T would much rather the honest workers here in Atlanta were engaged in this work rather than that a few convict bosses should be made rich b.y convict labor at the expense of Honest mechanics in Atlanta. Do stop. I pray you ! Why are you keeping up this camp? For whose benefit? It does not pay you in money or in character ! Oh ! character ! ' ' Dr. Felton spoke of women's rights and of the way that woman was treated in less civilized countries, and then said: "But, sir, it has been reserved for Georgia, my own native State, for this old land for more than a hundred years, the land of ni}^ fathers, to foster the present prison system, and if possible to make a deeper, darker and more fearful hell for women than for the male criminal. "Mr. Chairman pardon me, but I owe an obligation to my State, I owe it to the cause I am championing. Mr. Clerk, read here, sir. (Dr. Felton sent to the clerk's desk the report of the principal keeper of the. penitentiary). Facts, sir, must come, though it may bring a blush to every cheek. Kead what I have here marked. This is the report of J. R. Towers upon the camp of W. B. Lowe, of this state. The clerk read: 'Sep- tember 6. Visited W. B. Lowe's camp, part of penitentiary No. 2, at Steel's Mills in Dodge county. This camp I found in bad condition and many complaints as to the management and conduct of the overseer, a Mr. Brj^ant. First. He would not allow the sick to stay in the hospital as ordered by the physician in charge. Second. The women at this camp, four in number, complained that Bryant compelled them all to sub- mit to his carnal desires, and he would threaten them with the lash if they did not submit. One of these women is now preg- nant, and tells me that Bryant is the father of the unknown infant. This conduct and report I made to Captain Nelms, the principal keeper, and he was discharged which Avas done by My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 593 Mr. Lowe and another man put in his place. ' The clerk began reading in a low tone. Dr. Felton exclaimed: "Read it loud! Let it come!' After it was concluded, Dr. Felton said: 'It is a shame ! Yes a shame 1 . A disgrace, dishonor to Georgia. In the name of humanity and justice to womanhood in the name of virtue and all that is good, let us rescue Georgia from this foul blot today.' (Applause.) "What objection can any Georgian have to this reformatory measure? There can be none in the world. Then rise up and work for this cause of humanity. Won't you feel happier? Won't you die with a brighter sky over your deathbed? Won't you breathe your last with more composure, and surrender life's duties with a consciousness that you have given a vote to rescue Georgia from the foulest blot that ever rested upon her escutcheon?" Mr. Harrison, of Quitman, opposed the bill and answered Dr. Felton in a red-hot speech. He said if there was a fault, it was with the officials and not the system. In speaking of female convicts, he denounced them as the veriest fiends that walked the earth. He said when a negro got out of the chain gang he was made a hero and a martyr, and bears no disgrace in the eyes of his people. Mr. Harrell, of Webster, opposed the bill. Mr. Arnheim, of Dougherty, attacked the bill and said the present law was suf- ficient. Mr. Butt, of Marion, said it was contrary to law to pass such a bill, as the lessees have a vested right in all the convicts. Mr. Russell, of Harris, spoke against the bill. (I have here noticed the members who rose up to protect the lessees and defraud the State of Georgia of her lawful revenues and to put millions in the pockets of these lessees. The allusion to "vested rights" was a parallel to Nero's lib- erty to kill the Christian martyrs. Poor Georgia was truly in bondage!) As I was greatly interested in the reform movement, I ques- tioned Dr. Felton as to the chances of the bill every time T saw him. While he hoped against hope, he often said to me : "The convict lessees have filled the legislature with their men. They have millions at stake and they are active in every county of the State. We are denounced in Europe. The Northern people are rabid in criticism of Georgia's Democratic legislature; but so long as the triumvirate in Georgia politics hold the whip hand, we can do nothing but protest. ' ' Dr. Felton 's bill came up again, but he knew it was doomed. Mr. Brandt, of Richmond, spoke earnestly in its favor, but Messrs. Harrell, Ballard, Hall, of Dodge, and Thomas, of Ful- ton, opposed it. With Mr. Brandt, of Richmond, stood his colleages, Calvin and Robbe, also Mr. Hackett, of Catoosa. 594 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Mr. Harris, of Bibb, moved that the whole house report favor- ably, but it was a Mr. Wheeler, of Walker county, who moved that the committee report adversely. The motion carried with eighty-one yeas and thirty-five nays, but before the vote was declared Dr. Felton made one more effort to protect Georgia's good name and the character of the legislature. He said, "that he meant no disrespect on yesterday in discussing the bill, as to the centers of wealth. The centers in wealth were also the centers in crime. He referred to himself as a farmer. His bread, his living came from the plow. After advocating the necessity for a reformatory measure, he further said: "I hear gentlemen get up here and argue that the present system looks to reformation. But I say here there is no law under God's heaven for this present system. It was a manipulation between politicians in the State of Georgia outside of and in- dependent of law." 'Deny it, if you dare?' shouted the doctor. His face was as red as fire, his tall form trembled as he moved. As he walked the aisle, in speaking, not a murmur of applause greeted his utterances as the gray-haired legislator proceeded to preach the funeral of his bill. ' ' Reformation ! Do you say reformation? Where is one that has ever been reformed? Where is the boy or girl ever sent back to be reformed? Not one. Crime is multiplying and you are responsible for it. The chain-gang system is responsible for it ! I know what 's the matter! This miserable — yes this damnable system has been covered up and disguised under the name of party success, and it is said 'let it alone for the party's good.' " Here the members looked at one another and winked, but the Stillness of Death reigned and only the voice of the speaker was heard : "I know, sir, ' ' he continued, ' ' that this miserable system has entered into your political conventions. I know that it has often ruled with the power of an autocrat in your gubernatorial, congressional and county elections. Its ramifi- cations enter every little back room caucus, and there are thousands of intelligent Georgians today who unhesitatingly assert that no man who opposes the convict lease system in Georgia could ever be elected governor or member of Con- gress, and in some counties could never be a member of the Georgia legislature. Speaking from a political standpoint, F peaking as a Democrat and a Georgian, I believe it would be wise to wipe out this miserable system for the sake of the part.y and the State. Democrat ! Just go to the convention that nominated Grover Cleveland. Its platform opposes the bringing convict labor into Conflict with free labor. You thrcAv up your hats and shouted for Democracy when spoils is the fruit of the shout, but when adherence to principle is demanded; you meekly My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 595 bow to the local bosses of your own State ; vote against this bill and you repudiate the national platform. Mark you ! You are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses today! I never cast a vote in my life since the old Whig party went down that was not Democratic to the core. By voting against this bill you throw the Democratic platform to the winds. You practically say, to the world, we Avill preserve this iniquity, this abomina- tion, this disgrace, this burning shame to Georgia because a few political bosses who can give you office and who are in- fluential in giving you office demand the surrender. For their benefit You throw Democracy to the dogs. I repeat with emphasis that the man who votes against this bill puts himself outside the Democratic platform upon which Grover Cleveland was made President of these United States." Mr. Hopson. "Is not your speech a reflection on Governor McDaniel and every man connected with the penitentiary sys- tem?" Felton. ' ' Reflection ? I say reflection ! Have you never seen a man who could talk eloquently and beautifully for the people against monopoly and ring rule and against corrupt political influences M^hen he got into office somehow slide imperceptibly into the ring and with corruption?" Hopson pale with anger. "Don't you believe the people of Georgia are Avilling to put Governor McDaniel's religion against yours ? ' ' Felton. "Religion has nothing to do with this matter. I assert here, as it is my right to do, that I believe this miserable convict system which has no argument to defend it, is to be perpetuated because it is in the interest of the political bosses who manage the Democratic party in Georgia." Mr. Loffley. "Do you claim that the passage of this bill will break up the lease system. Felton. "This will be an entering wedge, and will teach these lessees that the courts and the legislature have a higher authority than what is called 'vested rights' that the people of Georgia can dispose of their convicts according to their own sweet will. He spoke again of the injustice to free labor of the 50,000 brick per day, for convict brick camps had wiped out the brick industry around Atlanta. Speaking further he said: "May God help me, for patience has ceased to be a virtue. It is intolerable. The only reason the masses of Georgia have not risen up and hurled from power such an iniquity is the appeal has not been directly made to them. You can not keep this question from the people. I deal in no threat. God knows T do not. If there is anything I do desire, it is the peaceful 596 My JMemoirs of Georgia Politics quiet and prosperity of Georgia that sweet peace that settles down upon a prosperous and contented people. But I tell you, you can not keep this question from the ballot box. The people will not submit to this outrage that you are here at- tempting to perpetuate. I trust the Democratic party will take charge of this matter and reform it inside the party. Let us live up to the doctrines we promulgate. Consistency is all I ask." Dr. Felton cheered the men who stood with him in defeat. "Thank God, when you are dying, when you turn your faces to the wall and earthly light is being extinguished the support you have given this righteous measure will be a bright are lighting up your hope, and brightening your path to eternal rest. No man can regret this vote, when dying. He can not regret it when he hands in his accounting to a God of mercy. With these words I rest my record, and with this appeal I leave the measure with you." The Atlanta Constitution's re- porter said there was no applause, but a death-like stillness. Somebody sent me a copy of Hon. John Kelly's New York Star, in which the editor paid his respects to the Constitution, and said it was recognized in the Union as the "kept organ of the convict lease of Georgia;" and I feel assured the Atlanta newspaper would have given a better showing to the reform movement if it had been free to speak and untrammelled in action. Knowing as I do the sincerity of Dr. Felton 's endeavor to redeem the State of Georgia from this foul blot on her escutcheon; his final words were to me like the words of the Hebrew prophets, lamenting over Jerusalem. Fifty years from today the very recollection of how thousands of poor negro convicts were crowded into this foul system to make fortunes for political bosses will be horrible to talk about, and the subservient lawmakers will be awful to consider. REFORMATORY BILL DEFEATED, Constitution, August, 1885. THE REFORM PRISON. The Bill Killed by an Overwhelming Vote. Mr. Arnheim Speaks in Opposition to the Bill — Mr. Abbott Advocates the Bill— The Bill is Lost— The Railroad Com- mission Bill Comes Up and is Passed — Other Notes. Yesterday the reform prison bill was overwhelming defeated in the House. The question, when the House met, was the report of the committee of the whole House adverse to the bill. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 597 Mr. Russell, of Harris. Mr. Russell, of Harris, spoke in opposition to the bill. He said he could not sit still and see himself hustled out of the Democratic party by the gentleman from Bartow. He said there was no such plank in the national platform as that to which Dr. Felton had alluded, and admitting that there was, there was also a plank against sumptuary laws, and a few days before the doctor had voted for a sumptuary law in the House, and there he was inconsistent with the platform. He said that in spite of all that, however, the bill had nothing to do with Democracy, and the plea of the gentleman from Bartow should influence no one. Mr. Wheeler, of Walker, called the previous question, which was sustained. The twenty minutes allowed the committee for closing the debate was by ]\Ir. Harris, the chairman, equally apportioned between Mr. Arnheim Avho opposed the bill and Mr. Abbott who favored it. Answering' Dr. Felton. Mr. Arnheim, the member from Dougherty, spoke in an- swer to Dr. Felton. He called attention of the House to the decision of the Supreme Court and said as the gentleman from Bartow had accused the Democratic party of fraud and cor- ruption he hoped he would not make that charge against the judiciary of the State. That court announces that the act of 1876 authorizing the lease was constitutional and valid and binding upon the lessee and the State. The State has under control the moral and physical condition of the convicts, and can make all needful regulation as regards their safe keeping, guarding, clothing, medical treatment, etc. But, says the gen- tleman, pass this bill and it will be an entering wedge to put the lessess upon notice that the State is about to inaugurate a different system. No expenditure of $50,000 or $15,000 is necessary to teach the lessees what we may do or what we can do. Are you willing to set aside the solemn decision of your court and take for granted the assertion of the gentleman from Bartow? But the gentleman goes further and says that those who vote adversely on this bill will throw Democracy to the dogs. That is a pretty strong assertion. Mr. Arnheim read a portion of the platform, but could not find the part to which Dr. Felton alluded. Yes, Mr. Chairman, continued Mr. Arnheim, there is no such thing in the platform as he claims, and yet he would read us out of the Democratic party because we disagree with him. The Democratic party, the grand old father of our political faith, is kind and indulgent. Though we may stray off; though we may go like the prodigal son, 598 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics herd sAviue and camp with them, and even though we have eaten the husks, when we return into the told he will kill the fatted calf. (Applause.) It is grand enough, large enough and magnanimous enough, though we should err today it will forgive us, tomorrow. In passing laws Ave do the best we can. Sentiment is changing and time is changing, and we must adapt ourselves to circumstances and the Democratic party will not spurn us. Dr. Felton said: "I am right, sir," and asked Mr. Arnheim to read the following part of the platform, which he did : "It professes a desire to elevate labor. It has subjected American working men to the competition of the convict and imported labor." "That," said Dr. Felton, in an undertone, "is the charge the Democrats make against the Republicans, and the party is the opponent of the Republicans." Mr. Arnheim 's time having expired he was forced to con- clude without further answers to the doctor. Mr. Abbott, of Fulton. Mr. Abbott, of Fulton, spoke in favor of the bill. He said the bill should be discussed without bitterness. He hoped the House would disagree to the report of the committee. No gentleman on the floor would say he was opposed to the meas- ure as an original proposition. He had listened attentively, and he had heard no reason why the bill should not be passed. Criminals had always been considered a public burden. No man has ever insisted that a prison system could be made renumerative when, you consider the expense of trying the prisoners. The question is how to repress crime and how con- victs may be reformed. It is an old question. Continental Europe has been engaged on the problem more than a thousand years. Every State of the Union is grappling with the ques- tion. The bill ought to pass. Humble though the beginning may be it will bring public attention to the matter, and time will give us something better. It is a good bill and a correct measure. It is a bill that the special committee of nine for- mulated and there is little fault in it. It is not a political measure. It is unfortunate that it has been linked with the present penitentiary system. It has nothing to do with that system. The Bill is Killed. The twenty minutes having expired the vote was taken, and resulted as follows: — 40 for and 100 against. This was the condition of the reformatory movement when tlie temperance women met in State convention in the city of My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 599 IMacon in the spring of 1886 ; and it was in this convention I introduced the resolution and was given authority to present a memorial to the legislature looking toward the reformatory prison, which Dr. Felton had so ably presented in the pre- ceeding legislature and which had been signally defeated by members who were either in the service of the convict lessees, or who had been elected by that influence to seats in the General Assembly. The memorial was a stinging criticism of the convict lease system ; and was as before stated, followed by an article in The Forum on the same line in January, 1887. I had aroused the anger of those lessees and their understrap- pers in the legislature by these efforts. Dr. Felton promptly introduced the reformatory bill in the legislature of 1886-87. The fact that Gen. Gordon's election to the governorship indicated that the convict lease was firmly ''fixed in the saddle" did not deter him at all. He pledged his word that he was going to hold on as long as life lasted and his physical strength had not departed. He met in debate some of the very men who had antagonized him in the legis- lature of 1884-85. The defeat of his first bill made it seem more necessary that he should try again. With a lessee in the United States Senate and another Sena- tor who did what he was expected to do and another lessee in the executive office, and others, open in defiance, it looked like a forlorn hope to rise up and try it over again. But that was exactly what Dr. Felton did, and he always said it was agitation that counted in such a struggle. • No reform could make headway without constant and unremitting agitation. I could have also said, "there is no salvation Avithout suffering." It is well to copy here what the New York Tribune said editorially : A BLOT UPON CIVILIZATION. New York Daily Tribune, Sunday, August 28, 1887. The conscience of Georgia seems at last to be awaking. The convict lease system is said to be doomed. It is none too soon, for in some of its features it is as great a disgrace to our Ameri- can civilization as slavery itself, and it has often been char- acterized by even greater cruelties and more revolting out- rages upon natural rights. The wonder is that it should have endured so long. The truth has been told about it time and again by some of the best-known men in the South, but it was able to hold its ground because men of high standing and great influence, governors and United States Senators, were making fortunes out of it, every dollar of which it is hardl}- too much to say, was stained with human blood. Any one who is curious to see what an atrocious and wicked svstem of convict slavery 600 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics is still practiced in several States of the Union, more than twenty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, has only to read Mr. George W. Cable's account of it, published some years since. But even Mr. Cable was not able to tell the whole truth about it, because he could not write what women and children might not read. And yet when Ex-Congressman Felton introduced a bill in the Georgia legislature two years ago to reform the worst abuses of the system, it received only forty-nine votes. This year he has renewed his effort, as investigation is in progress by the legislature, and just in time, let us hope, to give the system its death-blow, disclosures have been made of dreadful cruelties and abuses. The first of these, which has not found its way North, was with relation to the convict camps on the Augusta and Chattanooga Railroad. The sanitary condition of the camps was shocking. The State's chief medical officer reported that he found "incipient evidence of scurvy or some- thing very much like it." With an average of seventy-eight convicts in camp, he found that 645 days of work were lost by convicts through sickness in the previous seven months, making five or six times as much sickness during the same period as in the camp on the Georgia Midland. Governor Gor- don, it should be said to his credit, at once issued an order for a change of management, and forbidding any further leases to these contractors. The Georgia Midland camp, it will be observed, was referred to in the reports as by comparison a model camp. Its lessees included some of the most promi- nent men in the State, among them one ex-governor. And now it has been discovered, by means of an anonymous letter to the governor, that convicts in this camp have been brutally whipped for revealing abuses. Their wounds made a ghastly sight, which must have recalled the worst days of slavery. The lease is to be annulled, and so also probably the one owned by Senator Joseph Brown, though it is said there is no com- plaint of that. But we fail to understand why even a United States Senator should be allowed to swell his millions b>- such a hideous traffic. These disclosures will doubtless help the passage of Dr. Eelton's bill, which, strange to say, has met with considerable opposition. The bill provides for placing the juvenile crimi- nals in houses of correction, and for separating the female from the male convicts, and so ending some of the worst hor- rors and cruelties of the present system. It would be better to go further and abolish the lease system altogether. The State has no more moral right to hand over convicts to the unrestrained and often brutal control of contractors than it has to sanction murder, which indeed it does, for lite latter My INIemoirs of Georgia Politics 601 often find it cheaper to kill a convict by overwork than they do to keep him alive. This shameful system prevails, with varying degrees of abuse, in seven of the Southern States, and the State of Georgia, as the report of the Commissioner of Labor at Washington, Carroll D. Wright, on convict labor, shows, makes a profit of $25,000 a year by handling its con- victs over, body and soul, men, women and children, to the contractors. And the number of children, by the way, that go into these convict camps, where the soul dies if the body does not, is dreadful to contemplate. Mr. Cable narrates how the governor of Texas pardoned in two years 200 convicts, one-fourth of whom were children between ten and sixteen years of age. Can such things be in a Christian land? VOICE FROM THE PAST Calling for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders. "Washington, Ga., August, 8, 1885. "Hon. W. H. Felton, House of Representatives, Atlanta, Ga. "Dear Sir: I read in the Constitution day before yesterday your speech on your 'Criminal Reform Act' with a great deal of pleasure, and I was astonished at its defeat by the House of Representatives. "While juvenile criminals should undoubtedly have an op- portunity for reform, by the remark I do not mean to exclude the old and hardened sinners in crime. "I was perfectly astonished to find that the measure seemed to meet with so little favor from the representatives of the people, and the motives which seemed to influence the oppo- nents of the measure were still more reprehensible and inde- fensible than the opposition itself. "I am very truly your friend, "R. TOOMBS, Per W. H. T." It is not my purpose to go over again the arguments that were again presented to the Georgia legislature by Dr. Fel- ton 's bill again introduced to remove the female convicts and to establish a reformatory prison for juvenile criminals, be- cause the arguments were the same on both sides; the objectors rallying to Brown, Gordon and Company, and the aged gray- haired legislator pleading with the General Assembly to pro- tect the good name of the State from this foul prison system. Several investigations had been ordered — some newspapers — notably the Augusta Chronicle had been discussing and oppos- ing the plea of "vested rights," and the terrible exposures that were occurring in various prison camps. The agitation was working like leaven in the political meal crock, and the people were beginning to wake up to the folly of giving away to Brown, Gordon and Company the revenues that should 602 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics have gone into the strong box of the State, a revenue received from its railroad property and its convicts. Dr. Felton made some allusion to the Enclish philanthropist, John Howard, in a discussion and in renewing the discussion the next opponent that bobbed up was Hon. Mr. Simmons, of Sumter county. Simmons dilated on John Howard, his fanaticism and his failures, of the woman Howard had mar- ried, a plain talker and a woman not much to be regarded, of Howard's only son — a jail bird, etc. The whole family a failure but if he (Simmons) had to go to his political death, it might be at the hands of the "political She," in Georgia politics. He made sport of Dr. Felton 's palsy, his infirmity, and made merry over his trembling limbs and aged, tottering frame. I heard it — every word! I divined his motive, and I sus- pected what his reward would be in thus doing what wiser if not better men would not dare to do, namely, attempt to wound Dr. Felton, wound his family and provoke (together with slack associates in and around Atlanta) ribald sneers and the usual coarse billingsgate that is associated with the dram bottle and saloon companions, when a member is away from home and regardless of the claims of society upon him in high position. I desire to quote this man correctly. A part of his speech appeared in the Atlanta Constitution next day. But the Con- stitution was Mr. Simmons' active political friend, and the allusion to the "Political She" Avas kindly omitted. Listen: "With the banner of prohibition in one hand, he will appeal to the whites, and with the banner of the reform prison, he will appeal to the colored race. "You might as well talk of damming up the Mississippi or penning up the Gulf stream in a half bushel, as to keep the gentleman from Bartow from penning the bent of his political aspirations. He Cares Nothing About the Passage of the bill. The gesture and hallelujah lick gives gratification and conviction to his soul. "The doctor has compared himself to John Howard. Let us see how that comparison fits. John Howard was born in 1729. Dr. Felton was not. John Howard died in 1790, Dr. Felton did not. He will not be dead in 1890. He said if he was a member for a thouusand years he would introduce his bill until he passed it. He never will pass it, and he will live a long time. (Much laughter). "John Howard was put in jail — Dr. Felton has never been there. John Howard was taken sick and nursed by a woman who was a plain talker^a great writer. She was a great My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 603 woman for statistics. He married her and commenced his efforts to reform the jails, and accomplished a great work. If Dr. Felton will begin on the jails I will join him. John Howard was sent to the honse of commons, and went crazy on reform. Whithread, a man of sense, Avas there and amended HoAvard's bills so that they might be effectual. In his old age HoAvard married a second wife, neglected his son and started ont gathering statistics on quarantine. He was captured and imprisoned and died from contagion. "His son committed a misdemeanor and was jailed." Simmons' comparison was complete. Howard married a woman — a "plain talker." I was a second wife. I had but one living child — a son. I had been corresponding with the Macon Telegraph in the Bacon-Gordon campaign, wrote num- erous articles — invited articles — some of them published in pamphlet form over my accepted signature, "Plain Talk," all of which will appear in my succeeding book of Individual Memoirs. I have been collecting statistics for more than forty years. Dr. Felton and myself had only one son, as I was his second wife. Now read his words ! Just as far as he dared, he attempted to defame my character before the Georgia legislature. He Avent as far as the law alloAved him to assail me indirectl.y. He brought in the name of Harriet Beecher StoAve, to give a more feminine squirt to his implications and insinuations, and he hung his whole attack on Dr. Felton 's chance allusion to John HoAvard, the English philanthropist. The name of Simmons had not been mentioned or alluded to in the faintest manner. Every one in that general assembly kneAv Avhat Simmons was trying to do — and as I always shall believe was paid to do. This speech of i\Tr. Simmons Avas delivered on Friday, and the bill Avas set for another hearing on the folloAving Wednes- day. The proceedings Avere not marked Avith more than usual interest, until Dr. Felton arose to speak. Then, as I Avas re- liably informed, the crowd on the floor and in the galleries became a jam. He had been speaking some time, when I made ray Avay into the gallery, but I knew there Avas steam rising — Avhen I reached the outside door of the old capitol that opened from Marietta street entrance. Dr. Felton 's A'oice had peculiar timbre that betokened something out of the common. It rung- clear, even on the outside. I had been in many campaigns AAdth him. I kncAV when the climax Avas near at hand, and the croAvd upstairs was so in- tent that it Avas difficult for me to Avedge my Avay through until I found a narroAv place to sit. The crowd across in the opposite gallery observed my entrance, but it was that tall, Avhite-headed, brave old veteran filled AAnth indignation doAvn 604 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics stairs that created all the sensations of the day. I saw him closely surrounded with eager men, wild with the delirium of the occasion. They shouted when they could do so ; they threw their hats aloft, when their feelings overcome them ; they hung upon his words, and they cheered to the echo. They cried, and then they laughed. I had seen occasions which nearly approached it, but none that excelled it. There are people still living in Cartersville who can tell you of a Brush-Arbor sermon, which I did not hear, but where he had his audience exactly where he could lift them at will, where they wept and they shouted, where they forgot everything in the world but the entrancing view he gave them of God's only begotton Son, who came to save the sinner, and the speaker's words still remain with them as they will tell you engraven on their heart of hearts ! They talk of it still as something that has never faded — never will die. I have often heard Rev. Sam Jones say, it was the most powerful oratory he ever heard from mortal lips. There was a grasp on something akin to the Infinite. DR. FELTON'S REPLY TO SIMMONS' ATTACK. (Reported by Atlanta Constitution.) The Opening Discussion. Mr. Felton, of Bibb, is chairman of the committee of the whole which has this reformatory prison bill under considera- tion. Mr. Bray was recognized as soon as the committee had began its sitting. He began by contesting that the State had a right to change the convict lease system. He referred to the "new star in the convict lease firmament" — Lex. He sup- posed that he was either a lessee or a hireling. "If the ar- ticles signed 'Lex' are meant to intimidate the house," said the speaker, "then I defy them. This house is free from out- side influence." He referred to the successful working of Fulton county's misdemeanor convicts on her public roads. Replying to the charge that reform is sentiment, Mr. Bray urged that it was practical. Do justice, and that is all that is asked. Concluding, he said: "The numerous congratu- lations to me from all quarters for the stand I have taken, satisfies me that in the great, honest heart of Georgia, every sentiment I advanced, not only now, but in the future, will find an echo until this damnable system is overwhelmed in the gulf of oblivion." Judge Harrell's Views. Judge Harrell opposed the bill for two reasons : That it embraced a class that ought not to be sent to the house of cor- rection to contaminate others less depraved ; and that it would My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 605 inaugurate a state of affairs worse than the present abuses of the convict lease. He said that reformatories were needed in the large cities but not in the country. He regretted that mem- bers had indulged in personalities, losing sight of the merits or demerits of the bill. Mr. Harrison, of Quitman, upheld the present system. He reviewed the circumstances under which the lease was made and repudiated the intima- tion of a "job," criticizing speakers for assailing the present lessees and neglecting the men who had a hand in its construc- tion. He criticized the bill, showing how, in his opinion, it was faulty. Dr. Felton's Terrible Denunciation. But it was Dr. Felton who drew the crowds of visitors and his speech was listened to with greatest interest. He said : Mr. Chairman — I desire to address the house once more on this subject. I will not detain it as I did the other day, but T wish to review some arguments which have been made against the bill. I desire further to offer some new arguments, why, in my judgment, this bill should pass. I am very glad that the people of the State have been instructed in regard to this bill that I want to present to you. I am glad that they have heard the arguments both for and against it. Every day, sir, in the newspapers, the citizens bid us God-speed in this work and reform of the present system. And every day we receive messages from the different portions of Georgia that the people are interested in the passage and the success of this measure. Since the discussion of this measure a few days ago in this house, a number of communications have been received by myself, and some by other members of this house, bidding this measure success, and hoping for its triumph among the people of Georgia. I have no doubt, if you were to submit this question to the ballot box in the State of Georgia, — I have no doubt but that it would receive the vote of a very large majority of the people of Georgia. I tell you the people of Georgia are humane ; I tell you the people of Georgia are intelligent ; I tell you, sir, the people of Georgia Are a Christian People, and when a humane question is presented to them fairly and squarely and intelligently, they are always to be found upon the side of humanity and intelligence. I know, sir, my native State has her enemies ; I know, sir, she has her opponents ; 606 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I know that men meet sometimes in distant cities pass reso- lutions denouncing the grand old State of Georgia, reflect- ing upon her character, and humanity, and intelligence, and capacity. We must be right about our convict business ; we must be right, absolutely right, and I think very few who come upon this floor can say that our prison system in reference to the juvenile convicts is approved by our own consciences or by the mercies of God. It is growing, sir. The Popular Sentiment is Changing. We have in this house two illustrious examples of it in this particular. Right here before me two honorable gentlemen, distinguished for their ability, distinguished for their patriot- ism, distingushed for their eloquence, two years ago were rec- ognized as able opponents of this system, and today, my friend from Webster and the gentleman from Dougherty, both of them come forward with substitutes for my reform bill. It is wonderful, the progress that it is making and has made for the last two years. Our Principal Idea and Feature is to reform the juvenile and female convicts of Georgia. Who that heard my friend two years ago would have thought it? Who of those who heard him two years ago discussing the idea of reform for a convict negro, for the lewd and fallen and depraved women convicts, who would have supposed that today that he would be found upon this floor advocating measures of reform for these criminal classes ? I tell you my friend Judge Harrell, Avith all his dignity, looks forward, and he is one of the jewels of the State of Georgia, and he is a friend of reform. (Applause.) Now, Mr. Chairman, let me correct some misapprehensions upon this matter. My friend from Quitman, Judge Harrison, just now said this bill makes no reference, has no reference to the present system, or at least to the right and propriety of the present convict lessees of Georgia. It does not touch them. It does not propose to interfere in the least with any of their claims or rights and privileges. I believe the gentleman from Dougherty the other day was impressed with this idea of my bill, so that he absolutely charged me with having modified my views in regard to the lease of the convicts of Georgia. That is my recollection, sir. I repeat and would emphasize that it has No Reference At All to those held now in the convict camps of Georgia. But when I said that, I didn't wish or desire, sir, that it be understood My jNIemoirs of Georgia Politics 607 as modifying in any way mj^ often expressed opinions con- cerning this most horrible prison system of Georgia — a system that for the past several years has destroyed the convicts bj- its savage cruelties; a system which dooms to death by disease the convicts of Georgia ; a system, sir, that is continually turn- ing out men and women hardened to crime to mix and mingle with and practice upon the lives and property and good name of the people of Georgia. Sir, I can not recall One Solitary Word in Its Defense that can be sustained by proof. The gentleman from Quitman this morning asked if it was not merciful and humane in its construction. I believe it was so intended to be. I believe when Furlow, of Ameri- cus, approved that bill, the original bill, that its purpose was a humane one. I have no doubt of that. Not only was the proposition humane, but the idea was reformatory. There is no intelligent Georgian today familiar with the history of this lease system that will not say that the original purpose of our sj^stem was reformation. But, oh ! the power of money, as my friend from Fulton has most truthfully said. A parcel of men have been fattening for the last twenty years upon blood and misery. This industry of Georgia has been all de- stroyed that it might bring money into their pockets. That is their idea. That is the history of it. That is the original pur- pose, and it is today. And I repeat, sir, and would emphasize this idea. That it was The Savage Criminalities of the System that first attracted the attention of the people to the system. Do you know a man, gentlemen, at the outset of this system that discussed its rights? The propriety of it? Why, do you remember ten years ago investigating committees were sent out by the legislature of Georgia, and they came back here, and describing those camps as absolutely not fitted for a wild beast, much less for human beings? That they whipped the men without mercy, that they were driven through every trying method by the boss man in trying to Ring- the Last Dollar from the blood and life of the Georgia convicts? (Applause.) I do not know but it is as bad now. I am told that if you will go down here to Griffin and go through the tents of those poor wretches that are working on the railroad tracks there for the convict lessees, you will find that you will mire up in mud half leg deep. I am told those poor creatures after working from the time the stars are shining in the morning ; — [I don't knoAv who made such sport of that, — but it is true] — 608 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics from the time the stars shine in the morning until the stars are shining at night, they are hustled into these tents and into these camps with mud and mire half leg deep, and Geor- gia is the guardian of these convicts. My God, deliver me from the convict lease system of Georgia. 1 am not going to review what I said the other day at all. The condition of these camps is familiar to every citizen of Georgia, and especially to every member of this house. I am not surprised at murder and gambling on Sunday, when it is notorious that these convict lessees often work these convicts on the Sabbath. The greatest day, the day upon which you should devote your time to religious services. On this day the convicts of Georgia, and for Avhom your are guardians and keepers, are forced under the lash to work on God's day — the day set apart for us all! Deny It If You Dare ! It is true, sir! I am not surprised. There are some clever men doubtless — I will not say all — among the lessees. I have-not one word to say about the lessees. Do you know, Mr. Chair- man, the other day one of these lessees was sick, supposed to be sick unto death. He was dangerously ill. He was delirious from fever, he was very ill. and I am informed that in this condition all that seemed to rise and prey upon his conscience and hope and memory was the convict camp of which he was the lessee ! I am told that in his delirious ravings, such words as these were heard talked : ' ' The con- victs, my God, my God ! ' ' There was ghosts — of horrible character, and the only thing that he thought of, while he was wild and delirious with fever, was the convict camp of which he was a co-partner. It seemed to prey like a nght- mare upon his conscience. I Am Not Surprised. I could use Shakespeare 's language in saying and telling you that as long as there is conscience there is hope for his future. But I imagine, sir, some of these lessees could pass this by and never think of it. Mr. Chairman, I wish to say to you and this house that my bill proposes a new institution. The gentleman from Dougherty comes forward with a substitute. He proposes that a camp be erected — two — one known as camp two and one known as camp three, and that the lessees be placed in charge of these camps and be entitled to All the Profits and Proceeds of the labor from these camps. In other words, he wants done what has been done for the last ten years, since this system My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 609 went into effect in 1876. He is doing just what has been done, and now he is proposing to modify the law, improve the law, in order to protect these juveniles and reform these fallen, miserable, depraved women. That is all of it. Did you notice in this proposed measure that he specifies how much food they are to eat and how much clothing they are to have, and he goes so far as to indicate how many cubic inches of God's free atmosphere one of these juveniles is to be allowed to breathe per day. (Continuous applause.) He gives you the exact num- ber of cubic inches those miserable little boys — white and black boys — must breathe every twenty-four hours. My God, has Georgia come to that ! What does he do? He puts the management and the execu- tion of this law into the hands of Mr. Lowe and others in charge of camps 2 and 3, and in the hands of Governor Brown, in that camp No. 1. He turns the management into their hands. Very well. That is the \a,\v now. For the last ten years you have had a law telling what you are to have in one provision and in one arrangement, and what sort of tents and houses they are to have. You have a law telling you how they are to be treated when they are sick, what medical attention they are to have. You have had a law requiring constant care and supervision, and you have had a law requiring care in the execution of the punishment. You have had every law that the gentleman comes forward with today and proposes. You have had a law separating the males from the females, and yet the convict camps Swarm With Illegitimate Children. A law requiring good, and wholesome food, and in sufficient quantities, and yet your camps are visited with scurvy, which is caused by the Avant of a sufficiency of food of the right char- acter. A law requiring religious instructions on Sunday, and yet, gambling in the camps when they are not at work on Sun- days, and murder, horrible murder occurs in them. You heard of one that was committed up here a few Sundays ago. You have got every imaginable law to protect and guard the help- less convicts, and yet, it is disregarded, it is trampled under foot, and the gentleman from Dougherty comes forward, such is his zeal for the lessees they must not lose any money, but they are to have the convicts in a camp and they are to make money out of them, they are to profit by it, they will make a good thing out of it. I am satisfied, says the gentleman from Dougherty, and I am satisfied he is interested In the Pockets of the Lessees more than he is in the reformation of the criminals. (Ap- plause and laughter.) With the old Hebrew children; I re- 610 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics member that when the avenger in cold blood took the law in his own hands he proceeded recklessly with the determi- nation of a blood hound to execute the slayer of another man ; I remember when he had no regard for ages or sexes, and no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. I remember that this grand law giver of the world, Moses, ordered those citizens refugeed, scattered here and there where they could be comfortable. Look at Webster's definition of the word and you will understand that meaning of the word "comfortable" for a prison. It was all blood before that ; all were blood hounds before that ; before this grand law giver. Mercy, mercy ; forbear- ance ; reformation, reformation ! I know thousands of Hebrews today who stand by tliis bill for mercy ; this bill for forbearance ; this bill for reforma- tion ; this bill that proposes to give hope to the fallen criminal children and to the fallen criminal women. His Respects to Mr. Simmons. There is another member here I wish to speak to. I dare not call him a gentleman. On this floor he read the other day from Maudsley, article after article, page after page, argu- ment after argument ; to show that the poor fallen creatures couldn't be reformed. A boy under sixteen can not be re- formed ! And that Avomen could not be reformed, lewd and miserable women can not be reformed, that reform was a mere crankism that was seeking to impress itself upon this legislature and upon Georgia. Now, I have no time to answer that point, but do you know who iMaudsley was? A distin- guished friend of mine who I see now on this hall floor, who a few hours after this exhibition of learning evidently so de- signed, and evidently so prized by the one delivering it, said he had been Stuffed for the Occasion. Do you know liis idea, the ground upon wliicli he based his whole argument the other day? He (Maudsley) was a dis- tinguished materialist it is true, but God deliver Georgians from all such learning. Do you knoAV his position? His lead- ing idea — the grand basis upon which this whole argument was based the other day! He takes the position that there is no God. Then, of course, there could be no accountability. If we have no God, to whom can you account? To whom should you go? But Maudsley 's position is, there is no God. There is no soul ! That is his second position. And his last position is, if there is to be a God for this world, it is the sun. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 611 The inference would be that the man from Sumter worships this God. (Great laughter and applause.) Much obliged, Mr. Chairman, but this must be A Day for a Free Fight. I want a free fight and a fair one. The inference is that the man from Sumter worships this God. Well, all I have got to say about that case, I am sorry for the sun. (Great applause.) Mr. Chairman, I want to impress this point on the house, for I am serious just here. The argument was read here the other day that reform for the juvenile convicts and for the women is impossible. I want you to note the source from which such argument comes. The man that told you there was no God, don't like such institutions as this bill contem- plates. The man that told you there is no soul, don't like houses of correction. The man that told you there was no accountability here or hereafter, don't approve the correct- ing of the juvenile and female convicts. I am willing to rest the argument there. I am willing to put it in the hands of this Christian legislature, for, as I said just now, Geor- gia is a Christian State. I say today, if there is any man in Georgia that don't like it, to use a little sarcasm from the language of a distinguished Georgian : ' ' Let him Pour It Back in the Jug and leave." This is a Christian State and I am talking to Christian legislators. I am talking to men who recognize the existence of a God, and who recognize the Sabbath day, and who recognize the immortality of the* soul and accountability of man. I am, therefore, talking to men who will, I believe, sheer from such argument as we had the other day. The necessity for the reformation grows every day. I am told the other day in one of the principal cities of Georgia — I will give no name — I am told that a white woman, a white woman, young but fallen, of course, and depraved, was found in the streets Avith iron anklets around her ankles. God pity the woman ! Once with a home and full of hope of heaven — and trust in God, a white woman with iron anklets around her leg, joined with a miserable batch of desperadoes working in the streets of a city — and that in Georgia ! The State of Geor- gia ! Georgians, mark it ! Mr. Sneaker and Mr. Chappel. That occurred in your beautiful city about two weeks ago. She was a young, beautiful girl, about nineteen years of age ; she was working and earning a comfortable support in one of the factories in the city of Columbus. A seducer came. She was at last 612 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Turned From the Factories and her friends deserted her and there was no place for her to shelter under, and she went to a miserable negro den in that city, for the purpose of obtaining shelter. The officers of the law, seeing white men and negroes passing continually, they finally arrested this girl in this low hag's den, and in- dicted her, and brought her to the bar of justice. They ac- quitted her by the jury in Muscogee county — God bless that jury! But what were the facts. Nobody would give her a piece of bread, or furnish her a shelter, and she went back to this miserable negro den and applied for admission, and the negro woman was frightened and refused to receive her, and her last resort was gone, and she begged the sheriff to put her in jail, that she Might Have Shelter and Bread, I get these facts from the lawyer that defended her. If there had been a house of correction this girl might have been restored — but, alas jerked from a comfortable home she was cast away by every one that knew her and abandoned by every- body. I am interested in success of this bill. I am perfectly will- ing now to take the substitute offered by my friend from Web- ster, if he will take his substitute and introduce the word "shall" instead of the word "may,'' I am willing to take the substitute from the gentleman from Dougherty if he will take it from that miserable crowd who have, fattened on the blood of the prisoners of the State of Georgia. I am willing to accept an amendment from any quarter whatever. Why, the man from Sumter the other day said: "Wliat is this bill? Wliy, Felton is not sincere; he don't care anything about the passage of this bill. He is not interested in it. Not at all. All that he desires is to get next to the people of Georgia with a prohibition banner in one hand and wave it to the white peaple, and the l)anner of reform in the other and wave it to the negroes of Georgia." That is what he said. Now, my fellow-members and ]\Ir. Speaker, I do not know that I am a ward politician. I do not know and do not think that man (pointing to Mr. Simmons) has sensibilities enough to rise above the gutters and slews and scum of a ward politician. Mr. Simmons — I protest that Mr. Felton — Not a Avord, not a word from that source. Mr. Simmons — Very well then, I will speak later. Mr. Felton — Every dog has his day. (Great applause and laughter.) He says you can not reform the negro. Why? Because he is filthy, he is afraid of water, he is unfaithful to My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 613 marital vows, he will steal, and in the next breath, he says, the negroes that know me would vote for me for president of the United States. He describes, with great particularity, the habits of the negro. My understanding was, that the man from Sumter reiterated time and again the filthy habits and the tendency to theft, and the antipathy for water, and yet, he says "the negroes that know me would vote for me for the president of the United States!" (Great laughter and applause.) Did you ever see two drops of rain coming together, meeting each other, from opposite directions, and did you ever notice when the contact came, how insensi- bly and imperceptibly they rushed into each other's bosom? Did you ever notice how the identity of the one was lost in the identity of the other? It seems that a dew drop on this floor met the negro dew drop of Sumter county and they rushed into each other's bosom. (Great applause.) It seems that the negro who never washed himself, and who was afraid of water, the negro who is unfaithful to marital vows, the negro who will steal met The Dew Drop From Sumter, and the identity of both was lost in the identity of one. Writ- ers on psychology and science tell us that sometimes when two souls meet they immediately recognize the 'affinity' of souls. And it seems that when the unwashed negro and the man from Sumter met each exclaimed 'my affinity' with one voice. The negro that knew him would elect him president of the United States ! Did you ever go along one of these streets and see one of those pretty little pugs lost from its mistress and com- ing down the street and did you ever notice two or three great big mastiffs going along with it and how the little pug snaps and bites, and he twists himself so that he is tilted upwards; he has an upward appearance. And he always barks around and tilts himself, and when he does that, he only exposes his hinder parts. That is what the man from Sumter reminds me of. (Great laughter.) The man from Sumter the other day, seeing a great crowd in these galleries, which he Didn't Draw Here at All he saw that his opportunity had come. His one opportunity of a lifetime. He managed to swerve himself and twist himself about seven times tighter. He twisted his tail about seven times tighter than usual upon the floor, and then tilted him- self so as to expose his hinder parts more than ever. (Great laughter and applause.) May my right hand and my tongue forget their cunning and their powers before I avail myself of the privileges of a member on this floor to ridicule the family 614 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics of another. I have the kindest feelings for the gentleman from Dougherty, and no discussion that has been made here upon this floor has been other than with the kindest of feelings, and I think the gentleman from Dougherty has the kindest feeling for me. I recognize in him the nobility of character that would forbid at all times and places his availing himself of the privileges of ridiculing another member of this house, and a member of the family of another. Mr. Simmons — Mr. Speaker: I submit that — Mr. Felton — I will not submit. I demand protection. The Speaker — The gentleman from Sumter can have his words recorded if he so desires. Mr. Felton — 'Yes, for God's sake have them recorded. He has run rough-shod over this house until he imagines he owns most of the house. His speech here the other day has been read from one end of this State to the other, and there are dozens of men on this floor at this hour who are from as many counties in Georgia who have told me that they have come here to ascertain how I will reply to the Ruffianly Attack Made Upon Me and my household, in this house the other day. (Applause.) He started the other day by making a comparison between me and John Howard, the philanthropist. I simply stated that he was the first to introduce, in the penitentiary system of the world, a reformatory process — that was all. I believe that was the only allusion that I made. Mr. Speaker, when a man swears that a horse is sixteen feet high and sticks to it, I re- spect him, but if he abandons the assertion and says he meant sixteen hands, I despise him. God deliver me from a back- biter — the man who stabs and then runs away and stabs an- other. Give me a man who stands by his words. He started the other day with a comparison between me and John How- ard, the philanthropist. I wish there was a resemblance. He was a man born in great wealth. He says 'Howard went crazy on quarantine.' I have never gone crazy on it. He says, 'Howard married his nurse.' I have never married my nurse. More than this I have never married any one except one of the Noblest and Purest and Most Intellectual women of Georgia. One, who, if she could put a thimblefull of her great brain into his cranium, would save these galleries from the tilting process of the other day. (Great and pro- longed applause.) A noble and true mother, and noble and true wife, who has only the interest of Georgia at heart, her native State, and its future welfare. I know, sir, the man from Sumter will try and evade and shirk the allusions of the other My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 615 day, when he made allusions to the word "she," where he used it in the attempt to disparage and mar and reflect upon the family of another. I would reply to the man in the lan- guage of Macaulay, that "he utters the infamous words of a coward, and the one small service that he can do is to hate her." When he intimates that my only son, now living, all the others crowned gloriously with the Father in Heaven, when he intimates that this is a prospective jailbird, prospective victim of the chain-gang lessees of Georgia, I would reply to him in my own language, "but still further exhibit yourself, still further expose yourself, where the people of Georgia know you. ' ' I would say, Oh, God, that my only son may shun him and his morals. I know some of you have read Burns, a man who seemed to always come nearest heaven's gates, and yet who was always farthest from it. He was traveling along in the country and he came to a house where he asked to be allowed to stay all night, and was admitted. There was a boy there, the only boy, and the next morning when he left the old lady went into his room and there she found on the table where he had left it, the following words, which had reference to their only boy: "Oh, God, make him All That a Father's Heart M'ould have him be. ' ' "We sometimes go into the closets and we pray for our children, and we particularize and specify, when we get on our knees, but I have often thought that it was su- perfluous, and if the father would bend upon his knees, and lift his eye and exclaim, "Oh, God, make him all that a father's heart would have him be," would cover the whole ground. And today my only boy — my prayer is that he may be the very opposite from what the man from Sumter is, in every- thing, his character, his opposite in manners and everything as I said before, and then when he is that, I will feel that God has made my boy all that a father's heart could desire. There is that little country home, a little way-side home, a home where I and my companion have lived for the last forty years, and, thank God, whatever may be its surroundings the heart is there. Whatever may be its surroundings All That I Love on God's green earth is there. And when the rude hand of the ruffian prompted by the hope of reward probably, attempts to try to ridicule it in the hope of future reward, I will hurl it back at him, and as long as I have the strength I will pro- tect her. It is true that I am old. It is true that my old form is bent as the man from Sumter said the other day, and it 616 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics is true my locks are Avhite, and it is true that ray nerves are shattered, and it is true that there are ten thousand indications that I am on the verge of the grave ; but as long as God gives me strength I Avill protect the innocent and speak for the pros- perity of Georgia until God takes me from this world. (Ap- plause.) Why should that rude ruffian attack me and my household? Had I done anything wrong? The gentleman from Dough- erty, the gentleman from Quitman, and I are old debators upon this question, but I am sure neither of us are hurt with the other. Why should this ruffian attack my Bent Form and My Old Age? Before I would use such terms, and, God knows it, such utterances on the floor of the Georgia legislature, before I would exhibit the lack of elements of a true man before this legislature as the man from Sumter did, I would suffer my right arm to be cut off. Hate him? despise him? No, sir, no, sir. I simply turn him over to the intelligence and virtue of Georgia. That is the worst fate that can befall him. I can not imagine a worse fate for the man from Sumter, and I turn him over to the intelligence and to the virtue of the people of Georgia. With them I leave him, and with this negro crowd, his supporters for the presidency of the United States. I leave him there to go there in charge of his supporters. My boy is a minor, and my wife is old like myself. He slaughters women and children. Why the other day down here in Bibb, Woolfolk slaughtered his whole family, having no regard for age. He slaughtered old age, and he slaughtered the infant, his sis- ters, his mother, all of his relations, and now, gentlemen, let me present to you The Woolfolk of Georgia, the legislator from Sumter, the man who would take the axe from the woodpile and make indiscriminate desctruction of the entire household. From this time I bid him a good-bye." I did not wish to hear what Simmons said against Dr. Fel- ton. I understood there was a conclave assembled as soon as Dr. Felton ceased speaking, all willing to gather up for him something they hoped might blunt the force of Dr. Felton 's defense of his family. His newspaper friends in Atlanta hunted up an old photo of myself, one of Dr. Felton, and Mr. Simmons brought forward one of his own. For what purpose these pictures were presented I know not, but I had nothing to be ashamed of, and a full determination in my own mind that I would fully acquaint myself with the antecedents of Mr. Simmons, in case he was further employed to bite or snarl My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 617 on Dr. Felton's track. To make a long story shorter, I pro- cured all I needed from Superior Court records, and paid the bill for copying the same and was promptly furnished more than I could ever need to put that prosecutor out of a decent discussion. The information had been voluntarily furnished to me, but I wanted the official seal, or signatures and had no difficulty in procuring the testimony. The "man from Sum- ter" came in again with a copy of Rider Haggards "She," and still it never occurred to him to admit he had erred in attacking me, as the political she of Georgia politics. Still more he stultified himself by repeating what he did say, which it is well to copy in this connection. Said Simmons, "the following is exactly what I did say." That when I died, that when I am to be sacrificed I shall die game. I shall die with the happy unction to my soul, the sweet consolation that I died by the hand of a political she." He asked in piteous tones. "Where is the analogy to his wife?" I can easily ask, "Where was analogy to any but a woman, and I was the only woman being discussed at the time?" He turned State's evi- dence to convict himself! j\Ir. Simmons then called up the dead and the living to find abusive language to hurl at Dr. Felton, Judge Lester, Gen. Gordon, Judge Branham, of Rome, who was accredited with making Dr. Felton show the white feather — a story so apochryphal, that it was never repeated in the seventh dis- trict. Ben Hill, who was pushed into a corner, and refused to defend himself in a newspaper controversy — Gov. Brown, — than whom nobody had so often abused as Ben. Hill himself — and the Markham House conference, that old chestnut that had never been sufficiently materialized to tell what they abused it for and lastly Governor Smith, who Simmons said called Dr. Felton the Titus Gates of Georgia, and who bleated in the Kimball House and wished somebody would lash Fel- ton's bare back, etc, etc. When Dr. Felton came home, I had read the report of Mr. Simmons' speech in the Atlanta newspapers, and he quietly remarked, "he is too insignificant now to notice again; let him go to those who hired him, and I trust I may never be obliged to notice him any more." I held on to my copies of the Su- perior Court records from Lee and Sumter counties, until they grew yellow with age, and the Simmons incident never crosses my mind unless some one refers to the debate that begun when the reformatory bill in the Georgia legislature was en tapis. One thing remained, however, in Dr. Felton's mind as well as my own, namely, the partisan deportment of Speaker Little, who made some unnecessary reflections that a presiding officer of superior mental caliber would not have made. 618 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics WAKING UP AN OLD LION. Dana, in New York Sun. Ex-Congressman Felton now represents Bartow county in the legislature of the State of Georgia. Both he and his ac- complished wife, to whom the readers of The Sun have often been indebted on Georgia matters, are deeply interested in the question of penitentiary reform. The present convict camp system is the subject of hot discussion and Dr. Felton introduced a bill reforming some of its savage criminalities^ so far as the juvenile and women convicts are concerned. An opponent of the bill, a Mr. Simmons, of Sumter county, made a personal attack the other day upon Dr. Felton in course of which he referred to Mrs. Felton in a manner of- fensive to her husband. The eloquent Ex-Congressman re- plied to Simmons in a two-hours' speech, the floor and gal- leries being packed with an excited audience. Mrs. Felton herself was present, and she heard the speech that is described by the Atlanta Constitution as a masterpiece of oratory. "The words seemed to blaze as they came from his lips. He swayed the crowd before him as he willed. At times he had strong frames trembling with strong emotion and suppressed indignation ; in an instant he chose that they should wildly cheer some chivalric sentiment. Before the echoes of applause had died away, strong men were weeping at the pathos of the old man, as he told of his declining days and years. In the gallery sat a gifted and matronly lady who bore his name. It was for her sake that he rose superior to all former occasions and placed on record as grand and complete a defense to a personal attack as an orator ever made." From the printed report of Dr. Felton 's impassioned speech in reply to Mr. Simmons, of Sumter, we quote the passage which refers to the attack on his home and family : "I have never married any one except one of the noblest^ purest and most intellectual women of Georgia. A noble and true mother, and a noble and true wife, who has only the interest of Georgia at heart, her native State, and its future welfare. I know, sir, that the man from Sumter will try and evade and shirk the allusions to the word ''She" where he used it in the attempt to disparage and mar and reflect upon the family of another. I would reply to this man in the lan- guage of Macaulay, 'he utters the infamous words of a cow- ard, and the one small service he can do is to hate her.' "There is that little country home, a little way-side home where I and my companion have lived for the last forty years, and thank God, whatever may be its surroundings, the heart is there. Whatever may be its surroundings, all I love on God's green earth is there. When the rude hand of a ruffian My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 6I9 prompted by the hope of reward most probably attempts to try to ridicule it, in this hope of a political reward, I will hurl it back at him and as long as I have the strength I will protect her. "It is true that I am old. It is true that my old form is bent as the man from Sumter told you the other day, and it is true that my locks are white, it is true that my nerves are shattered, and it is true that there are ten thousand indica- tions that I am on the verge of the grave ; but as long as God gives me strength I will protect the innocent, and speak for the prosperity of Georgia, until God takes me from this world." There does not seem to have been much left of Dr. Felton's assailant when the two-hours' speech was finished. The orator had the symapthy of the audience, as well as the inspiration of the presence of his wife, to whose life companionship he alluded in such touching terms. The appeal to the chivalry of the Georgian heart was irre- sistible. Men cheered wildly, hats and handkerchiefs went up in the air, and parliamentary restraints were forgotten in the enthusiasm of Dr. Felton's remarkable oratory. We con- gratulate him upon his triumph. A WILD SCENE. Atlanta Journal. Dr. Felton's Terrible Denunciation of Representative Simmons, of Sumter — The Most Exciting Hour of the Session — A Vast Crowd Holds Its Breath as Awful Invectives Are Hurled. It was as frightful as a murder. In the history of the Georgia legislature, no scene so dra- matic has been enacted, no satire so terrible has been heard, no phillipic so deadly and destructive has been delivered, as the scene and the satire and the phillipic wrought by Dr. Felton in the House of Representatives this morning. Dr. Felton was the speaker and Mr. Simmons, of Sumter, was the object of his terrific attack. The cause of the attack was the remark made by Mr. Sim- mons in concluding his speech of last Thursday. In the course of that speech Mr. Simmons was severely personal to Dr. Fel- ton, and in the conclusion of his remarks alluded in sarcastic terms to the "Political 'She' of Georgia." Whether Mr. Simmons intended this as an allusion to Mrs. Felton The Journal does not pretend to say. There are those who believe he did and others who protest that he did not. At any rate Dr. Felton believed it, and his wrath, smoulder- ing ominously through four pent-up days of repression, found 620 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics vent this morning in the most terrific invective ever heard in the House or in the State. The scene was dramatic. The House of Representatives, packed floor and gallery — every seat on the floor occupied — the aisles packed, the lobbies crowded, eager faces peering in the doorways — the galleries thronged with ladies and gentle- men, the ushers whispering, "Standing room only." And in the midst of the dense packed hall, hushed to a whisper, or riotous with applause, stood the tall figure of the famous old orator, his frame bent with age, his hands trembling with palsy, his eye flashing with feeling, his head white with the snows of seventy winters, and a volcano in his heart. And here, while hearts thrilled and hearers trembled, he poured out an impassioned, scornful and overwhelming torrent of ridi- cule and invective against "the defamer of my home and the slanderer of my wife." Such words, so delivered and with such effect, never fell from Georgia lips before. It was a mixture of John Randolph and Parson Brownlow, and we doubt if either ever equaled, as we know that neither ever surpassed, this withering, indignant personality. The burning words chilled into cold type may fail to stir as when they came from the impassioned lips of an orator with his face aglow with feeling, his lips breathing scorn, and his eye blaz- ing, but those who sat through the scene in the house will never forget it, and will recall it in years after as the most notable event of a stirring period in the politics of Georgia. Against this storm and whirlwind of wrathful eloquence, Mr. Simmons could no more avail than a leaf in a hurricane. Pale, silent and nervous, he sat under a denunciation which few men ever heard and which no man ever cares to hear but once. Once when the fierce blade of his aged adversary went deeper than usual into the quivering flesh, he essayed to rise, but the fiery Felton refused to yield one moment of the floor to the "Man from Sumter," who sat down to impatient torture again. And in the gallery sat the brilliant, cultured, and devoted wife for whom this magnificent defense was made, calm and dignified even through the shouts of tremendous applause that greeted the chivalric mention of her name. (From Macon Telegraph.) Atlanta, August 10. — When Mr. Simmons, of Sumter, made his attack on Dr. Felton, in the House last Thursday, in the debate on the reformatory prison bill, he let fly a boomerang in the direction of the "gentleman from Bartow," which came back home to him today with terrific force and effect. There had been great curiosity to know how Dr. Felton would reply to that attack, and when he rose this morning there was hardly My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 621 standing room on the floor of the House, and the gallery was crowded as I have never seen it before. There was expectancy on every face, and especially was this to be seen on the face of the gentleman from Sumter who had seated himself where he could see and hear the speaker. He could hardly have expected or dreamed of what was to follow. Dr. Felton rose to a height of invective never before equalled or approached on the floor of the Georgia legislature, and his scathing de- nunciation of his opponent was couched in words and tones which fairly burned. He carried the audience with him in this burning tide, and frequently the applause and shouts were almost deafening. Augusta Chronicle, Aug. 12, 1887. The scene in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, during the delivery of Dr. Felton 's great speech on his Re- formatory Prison bill, was simply indescribable. It was a historic occasion. The galleries and lobby were literally packed with the beauty and strength of the State. The scene was brilliant beyond compare. In the chair — the House was in Committee of the Whole — sat the handsome and accomplished young representative from Bibb, Mr. Felton. Mrs. Dr. W. H. Felton, a lady with a sweet and highly intellectual face, was in the gallery opposite the desk of her eloquent, venerable and distinguished husband. There were ladies of distinguished appearance on every bench in the galleries, and there were renowned, eminent gentlemen on the floor of the House and in the lobby, but Mrs. Felton, in the gallery, and Dr. Felton at his desk, just beginning his speech, were the most notable per- sonages in the vast assembly. Dr. Felton commenced his speech by congratulating the House that, after the lapse of time, the distinguished gentle- man from Webster (Mr. Harrell), and the able gentleman from Dougherty (Mr. Arnheim), had been won from the opposition ranks — each of the gentlemen named having submitted a sub- stitute for his (Dr. Felton 's) bill. Some time was devoted to the discussion of the two substitutes and pointing out their incongruities, obscurities and impracticalities. Then began one of the most powerful philipics ever de- livered before any assembly in this broad land. It was cut- ting, searching, withering, merciless. Mr. Simmons had made remarks and allusions which were interpreted by Dr. Felton as applying to his distinguished wife. When he came to reply to these supposed allusions, Dr. Fel- ton was at the height of his eloquence and power. Never have lips let flow a more resistless torrent of invective than that which Dr. Felton poured upon the gentleman from Sum- 622 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics ter for full three-quarters of an hour. That was a period so to speak, in the doctor's speech. Throughout, the galleries were in active sympathy with the venerable orator. This sympathy was manifested in round after round of applause and occasionally in ill-suppressed shouts of approval. The effect of the speech seemed electrical and absolutely irresistible. When the doctor referred to his home — not the abode of wealth or of extravagant and luxurious appointments — but the home where virtue rules and loves sits enthroned — the home where dwells the treasures of his heart and the chief joy of his life, the audience forgot the rules of the House and burst forth into the most deafening applause. "When Dr. Felton mentioned his wife as one of the truest and most lovable of women, and the brainiest and most intel- lectual woman in Georgia, the committee of the whole, the people in the galleries and in the lobby went into ecstasy, and the applause, heartily given, was thrice repeated — the tribute from husband to wife was so eloquently spoken and so noble. It was a study — to look from orator to wife and then upon listening hundreds, enchained by the oratory of a man to whom his wife is a very tower of strength and an unfailing inspiration. That speech and the hour's incidents will be handed down from father to son, and talked of as among the most remark- able events that have ever transpired in the legislative halls of Georgia. (From Macon Telegraph.) Atlanta, August 11. — The public filled the galleries of the House again this morning, evidently expecting a companion scene to yesterday. They were not disappointed. Mr. Sim- mons, of Sumter, made a studied reply to Mr. Felton, and alluding to him as the "creature from Bartow," was as severe in his denunciation as the occasion and the surroundings would permit. He disclaimed, as was expected, and as he could not fail to do, any reflection or reference in his speech of last week to Mrs. Felton, to whom he paid the highest tribute of respect and admiration. When he concluded Dr. Felton rose to reply, but he wa* shut off by the parliamentary tactics of gentlemen who thought the House had already had more than enough of this contro- versy. The Felton wine-room bill came up in the Senate this morn- ing as the special order. There was very little discussion on the bill, very little opposition to it, and very little interest apparently manifested in it. It passed almost without creating My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 623 a ripple, and by much larger majority even that had been expected. A series of able articles in defense of the lease is appearing in the Constitution, over the signature "Lex." It is under- stood "Lex" hides Senator Joseph E, Brown. The faces of Dr. W. H. Felton, Mrs. Felton and Mr. Sim- mons, of Sumter, beam from the first page of the Atlanta Journal this afternoon. It is rumored that Dr. Felton will endeavor to reply to Mr. Simmons tomorrow by rising to a question of personal privi- lege; but Speaker Little will not permit a reopening of the abusive controversy." ' Of course the reform bill went to defeat. That was arranged for when the majority of the legislature of 1886-87 was se- cured These corrupt men, calling themselves the Democratic party, had made it their business to antagonize every measure intro- duced by Dr. Felton. Why? Because they were all the time fearing and expecting that he might lead a reform move- ment to success and expose the inside rottenness of the ' ' men in control." When Hon. Allan G. Candler wrote that memorable letter against Gov. Atkinson's administration, and talked so freely about the dirty tricksters "who had ravished the Democratic party," I concluded we might rely upon getting the truth out of the mouths of "babes and sucklings." The so-called Demo- cratic party in Georgia had its hands deep down into the strong box of the State and the rapists themselves were the men who were fattening on the greasy drippings and leakage therefrom. The reformatory prison did eventuate, when a true blue partisan introduced and fathered it; the party claimed it, but the originator, the reformer, the patriotic heart of a true Geor- gian is entitled to the credit and Dr. Felton will be given the meed of praise by future historians. The Gordon-Bacon Campaign The visit of Hon. Jefferson Davis to Georgia when Senator B. H. Hill's monument was to be unveiled at a chosen location on Peachtree street, in Atlanta, was made memorable by two incidents, namely, the extraordinary enthusiasm which greeted the old-time Confederate President, and also the sudden ap- pearance of General Gordon after an absence for several years, and whose supposed location or residence was placed in Wall street, New York, when he was not visiting Washington City. His connection with Mr. Victor Newcomb seemed to be ephemeral, but he was doing some sort of outside work for somebody or for himself, and none of this apparent work had any connection with the various schemes which were pub- lished as valid reasons for his giving up the senatorial seat in 1880 to oblige Gov. Joseph E. Brown. The last published venture was the Florida and International Railroad scheme and some letters were received by Dr. Felton from a stranger — a gentleman then living in Walthourville, Ga., and which indicated that the general having bled that enterprise to exhaustion was about to descend on Georgia, seeking to graft the old State again. I have those letters now, and a" tale they did unfold!" The general's activity during Mr. Davis' visit was so vigor- ous and persistent that the veteran president was finally en- lightened as to its meaning, and I was informed he became restive at the time because a great and generous publica ova- tion and unstinted welcome to him should have been thus used and manipulated into a political scheme for ambitious pur- poses without his knowledge or consent. It seems a pity, still, that there should have been such a blur cast upon what everybody else intended should have been pure and undefiled hospitality for the noble tribute was per- sonal and generous to the limit to the aged chieftain, who was coming for the last time to visit the Empire State of th<» South. Gen, Gordon worked the newspapers; he kowtowed to the reporters; he never forgot himself under any and all circum- My Memoiks of Georgia Politics 625 stances when he saw the opportunity for magnifying his mili- tary deeds and political exploits. Even General Lee was ac- corded second place in numberless glowing descriptions of war incidents. The military slush joined to political gush that was deluged upon the readers of certain Georgia newspapers is something nauseous to remember, after so many passing years have weak- ened the odor and the recollection. Gov. Brown, in the early summer of 1877, became restless, called a halt, talked of the "puffing brigade," and said it was "nauseous" that he supposed there was somebody — some other persons representing Georgia in "Washington City as well as General Gordon. Because the general was so eager to publish me as kneeling before Radicals in authority, piteously pleading for Radical money to elect my husband, I owed him prompt and particular attention as to his own political methods. It was a trumped up tale he started in an attempt to humiliate and injure me as well as my husband, and I long ago concluded that Mr. Davis' visit to Georgia was outrageously perverted, so far as possible, to start off Gen. Gordon's campaign for governor in the year 1886, and that perversion should be recorded some- where and its proper value as history clearly estimated. In this connection it is well to say that Gen. Longstreet's appearance on that day at the monument unveiling, dressed in his old, faded, grey regimentals, was something that came close to the heart of Hon. Jefferson Davis, Every one who witnessed the meeting saw the clear and honest meaning of it. It was so genuine and sincere, a link in the chain that bound those two notables together with nothing to interrupt their close affecion. Just here I desire to relate a story that came to me in the late winter of 1881 told by Gen. Charles Field, Democratic doorkeeper of the House of Representatives, during the Forty- sixth Congress. The conversation occurred in "Washington City at the tea table of the old National Hotel — Dr. Felton was present. I was handed our evening mail by the bell boy, as we entered the tea room. The Atlanta Constitution of the day before was among other papers and letters. While we 626 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics were waiting to be served, I glanced over its pages for home news. That issue contained a long, elaborate and gushing account of the surrender at Appomattox, one of Mr. Grady's "special" performances. I mentioned the article to Gen. Field, and he told us he was with Gen. Lee all night before the surrender. He commanded the same regiment or brigade which Gen. Leo carried into the Confederate army, when he joined it after resigning from the old army. He was always afterwards near Gen. Lee with these true and tried Virginians. They were, in a sense, as he explained, his body guard. I read aloud a paragraph about that last night before Gen. Lee went out to meet Gen. Grant and hear the terms of sur- render. "Stop a minute, please, Mrs. Felton. What do they say about Gen. Longstreet?" asked Gen. Field. "Nothing, so far as I have read," was my reply. "Well, I desire to tell you that any story concerning that night before Appomattox, which leaves out Gen. Longstreet, is like the play of Hamlet with no Hamlet in it," remarked the general. "I know," said he. "I was there. I tell you that Gen. Lee had implicit confidence in Gen. Longstreet, and he gave an evidence of this confidence in an indisputable way that night. ' ' Gen. Field said there had been a council of war and it had been agreed that Gen. Grant's terms should be listened to looking to surrender. If the terms were honorable, the con- dition of the Southern army was such that further bloodshed and destruction of life would be cruel and unnecessary. This had been decided upon, and the council broke up. But it was a sleepless night in the tent. Some time after midnight, Gen. Longstreet was sent for — perhaps he had re- mained by Gen. Lee's request. In the gloom of the dark rainy night, these two men counseled together. General Lee finally said: "I can not accept dishonorable terms of surrender. My people would not agree to it. If they should propose such terms, I will throw myself among my Virginia troops and then try to cut my way into the mountains. Gen. Longstreet will you command this forlorn hope and take the risk with me?" Gen. Field said it was something to remember when those war My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 627 veterans clasped hands and Gen. Longstreet promptly said, "Yes, I'll go with you." A Major Ransom, in a late number of Harper's Magazine tells of his going to Gen. Lee's tent late that night and of finding Gen. Longstreet there with the great commander. Once when General Longstreet was visiting us at home, I told him of our conversation with General Field. He said it was exactly true as to main facts, but with deprecating mod- esty he added: "But Gen. Grant's terms were honorable, the trouble did not happen, and it did not become me to go around telling folks, what General Lee talked about to me, in the secrecy and sacredness of that midnight hour. Being a con- fidential meeting, and private between us, I did not feel called upon to publish it, when nothing of public interest required its telling. If Gen. Lee had been so inclined that would have been all right. Now that he is dead, I do not incline to say anything more about it." "When I remember the storm of abuse heaped upon General Longstreet, by politicians in the South, a good many in Geor- gia, and when I recollect the effort that was made to saddle the failure at Gettysburg upon this heroic veteran of Gen. Lee's army after Gen. Lee nobly assumed it himself, I feel like going before a Georgia legislature ' and saying to that body: "With all your spendthrift proclivities and with full knowledge of how some of our tax money has been wasted and wrung from us without our consent and in defiance of constitutional law, I will say to you take enough out of the public treasury to paint his picture or place a marble shaft on our capitol grounds to show you are not base enough to persecute so good a soldier as General Longstreet while he was living (as many have done) and still refuse even a simple testimonial to the memory of General Lee's staunch defender, who of all the military leaders in his Virginia army was yet chosen in that crucial hour to stay beside him or mayhap die with him ! " He differed with some of our Democratic leaders on the course to be pursued after the war. Did not Gov. Brown do the same thing and more? General Longstreet died poor and others died rich. 628 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Georgia will never do her full duty until amends are made to General Lee 's brave old veteran. His trusted "Old Pete" was always sent to the most ex- posed places in war. He never failed to go, and to stand for the South 's defense before the foe. How well I remember the awful suspense preceeding the battle of Chickamauga in our part of the country. The Chero- kee gable end of Georgia was in throes of anxiety until we heard that Gen. Longstreet was on his way to the front, and we saw the trains go along carrying his loyal, trusted army corps. The memory of that time would ever impel me to do justice and give him his full meed of praise. The Democratic party whooped for Horace Greely. It nomi- nated for the federal presidency Gen. Hancock; it meekly swallowed some of the Pacific Railroad's tools in the Senate, and some even banqueted H. I. Kimball when he revisited Atlanta after Ex-Gov. Jos. Brown had denounced the Georgia Democrats for everything that the spelling book gave him names for in the year 1868. Still they not only worshipped Brown, but they gave him everything politically he asked for. Woman as I am, I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon than to be led along by interested people to denounce and seek to degrade thosie who were as brave as Gen. Longstreet in war, and who merely accepted a federal office after the war under Gen. Grant. He was the butt of Democratic scorn and the football of run-mad sectional partisanship ! The war- whoop and the rebel yell have covered up many dirty schemes of public plunder, but the persecution of Gen. Longstreet, a trained soldier, a true patriot, who was as good as the best, and the main-stay for the ill-fated armies of the Confederacy, is without a parallel for demoniac hate or excuse for unright- eous ingratitude ! Being only a plain soldier and no politician it was left to the fair dealing and sympathy of a Republican president to pro- vide food, raiment and a shelter to General Lee's right arm in the battles of the Confederacy in his old age and poverty! The Democratic party in Georgia has been convicted of many gross mistakes. It has been guilty of some gross favorit- ism — it's power was great and dangerous when it impeached My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 629 and banished poor Walsh Goldsmith while it sheltered John W. Renfro, under its enfolding wing for a similar offense, after a plea of guilty — it has elected some of its governors by the grossest of frauds, and actually commended one of its gubernatorial candidates along with a rape circular circulated among negro politicians to get negro votes, but it never did perform or carry out a more dastardly and revengeful deed of political ostracism than when it made the State of Georgia unwelcome to this greatest of General Lee's brave soldiers, when he returned to his home only to be assailed by vitupera- tive abuse and secret calumny. Why? Because his old friend, Gen. Grant, gave him a small position in his dire poverty when he had lost all but his honor in Georgia's defense. I speak plainly because I feel deeply! I never can forget that one political indictment against Dr. Felton was Gen. Longstreet's friendship for him. Every little venal newspaper, and every lick-spittle politician from Dade to Chatham had a fling at "Gen. Lee's old warhorse!" The most of the men who were there and war-whooping, perhaps had never smelt powder. When "Simon said wig-wag" they wigwagged. When Si- mon said, "thumbs up," up they went, but when anybody not inside the ring said, "thumbs down," they refused to move a thumb ! Subserviency then overstrained its very limit ! The first triumvirate in old Rome, 59 B. C, was composed of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Crassus, and Caesar crushed out the other triumvers and emasculated the Roman Republc by as- suming the dictatorship. Caesar was assassinated and Mark Antony joined forces with Octavius and Lepidus. They in- famously plotted to divide the functions of government among themselves until they finally destroyed the Republic of Rome. For nearly thirty years, a triumvirate ruled in Georgia politics and when they saw a close contest coming they either placed one of their own number in the executive seat or named the man who was to do their bidding, and the triumvirs filled their plethoric pockets always. But there were great issues coming in 1886. Therefore we heard a great flutter of wings overhead — a military drum beat — and the new candidate was here and ready to issue a decree and see the willing ones drop down to their knees at roll call. 630 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics I do not believe any State in the Union ever before witnessed such a political combination, which I call the triumvirate. Their convict lease property was worth anywhere from a quar- ter to a half million of dollars annual income. The State road lease paid at least $5,000 per share per annum clear money. There was a claim for betterments approximating two millions of dollars. It was therefore deemed necessary to put one of the triumvirate in the chief office, while the other two occupied seats in the United States Senate and controlled federal pat- ronage in Georgia. Gen. Gordon's connection with C. P. Huntington was not openly known in Georgia until his name appeared in 1884 in Huntington's correspondence. And it mattered nothing with the triumvirate except that orders were obeyed all along the line, and Georgia newspapers with perhaps a solitary excep- tion refrained for republishing the "damning" letters. Noth- ing can account for this remarkable silence save the power of money and triumvirate patronage. It was not mortified pride as it sometimes happens when the head of a family has been caught and brought into court, and convicted of a felony and the family go about in silence and suppressed grief. It was more like catching the daddy in a dirty fix, and being afraid to tell lest they all got a whipping for it. It was under- stood that overtures were made to Judge Simmons, but he went "shy" on a lively campaign. He was later elevated to the supreme bench. Major Bacon's name was received with favor by the still unterrified, and he entered the contest supposing the other side would pick from its roster some Georgian who was active either in the legislature or in Congress. But as before said, the sand hill cranes were overhead. The whir of wings was heard, and before one could look up and scan the sky, one of the triumvirate was sailing down toward Gov. McDaniel's chair, puissant and confident! About that time I received the following letter from Major Hanson, owner and sometimes editor of the Macon Telegraph: "Macon, Ga., May 10, 1886. "Mrs. R. A. Felton, Cartersville, ' ' Dear Madam : Your letter of last week was duly received. Thanks for your very kind acceptance of my explanation. We My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 631 are in for it now, and the field it promising. We are organiz- ing thoroughly and if indications are worth anything we can win this fight. "What I would like to get promptly is whatever can be se- cured concerning Gen. Gordon's resignation. His various in- terviews, the papers in which they were published, the dates, etc. Can you copy them and send copies by mail or make up notes of where they can be found and send your scrapbooks by Howard. Either will do. If you should send him, will pay all expenses of course. Suit your wishes in this matter and act as promptly as possible. "The Jeff Davis boom was a failure, so far as Gordon's connection with Hill and Davis is concerned. "Will not the doctor give us a lift? Now is the time to arouse the people of the State to their duty to themselves. We propose to hold Gordon to his record on every statement of facts discussing his acts, leaving his motives alone. "He is obliged to put himself on the defensive whenever he talks, even if he had not done so already. "Reports are conflicting as to the attitude of Brown and Colquitt. Some say they tried to keep him out of the race, while others attribute such position to Brown and claim that Colquitt, through Grady, has done the work of bringing him out. I don't know how this is. Walsh is solid, and doing groat good by editorials and personal work. "The doctor ought to help us. At least he has a choice of evils, if he should dislike both men. "Your letter on the Fitzhugh matter appeared this morn- ing. It is a clincher. It makes Gordon's methods very con- temptible. Respectfully, J. F. HANSON." From the time I had discovered that Gen. Gordon made a search for my letter to Senator Ferry in 1879 in regard to the fraud in Holtzclaw's candidacy in the seventh district, I kept a scrapbook on my writing table and whatever the sena- tor said or whatever was said of him, I took the trouble to paste down for future reference. I can tell now when he honeysnuggled President Hayes, of his scrap with Conkling, when he took a trip to the departments, when he made a speech in Mississippi, what was said of him by other Senators, how he and John Young Brown tried to pull the wool over Demo- cratic eyes in the South Carolina matter. What Gen. Gary said — cipher dispatches — and particularly what reasons and how they conflicted, after he suddenly left the Senate. I have even a published notice of a justice court's levy in Washington City on some stuff to satisfy creditors. A man who could stoop to searching for my letters was just such a person as I was convinced might bear watching ! So I 632 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics have a repertoire of clippings that have been a mine of infor- mation on how not to tell it ! I used "Plain Talk" for my pen signature, but I under- stood that everybody, like Hon. Mr. Edgar Simmons, of Sum- ter, knew where to find "Plain Talk." There was no secrecy about it. I held a determination in my mind well fixed that the press and politicians should get acquainted with Candidate Gordon for history had rarely furnished so complete an index, as Mr. Huntington furnished in his communicative letters to his partner Colton. A friend of Dr. Felton's in Washington told us of Ben Holliday's methods, a lobby chief who was in- terested more particularly in Southern Senators and Congress- men. Mr. Stephens got awakening information in the year 1877 through close friends of Senator Allan G. Thurman. So I had scrapbooks and clippings that were reliable with dates, and I had the leisure and the inclination to work them into shape. As this volume is devoted to my memoirs of Geor- gia politics, the next one will cover my own writings and ad- dresses, etc., and "Plain Talk" will have therein its own chap- ter. For all purposes at the present, my chapter on the Pacific Railroad lobby will give sufficient data. Dr. Felton had pressing invitations to speak in this Bacon campaign. Hundreds of letters of inquiry reached him. His first letter to the Macon Telegraph I will now introduce: "Near Cartersville, Ga., May 13, 1886. "Maj. J. F. Hanson, "My Dear Sir: Your letter to hand. I have read Major Bacon's speech before the Augusta people with much interest, and I can say to you frankly between the two candidates now in the field, my preference is strongly for Bacon. His i^olitical and official record is infinitely preferable to that of General Gordon, and the State of Georgia should see to it that no man shall be elected whose record is not in harmony with the Rail- road Commission against the convict lease enormity and the disposal of the State road. "We must not have a governor who will construct the per- sonale of the commission so that its decisions will for?ver be in favor of the railroads and against the people. We must not have a governor who, when the Western and Atlantic Railroad is re-leased, who will accept $25,000 per month when $35,000 is bid. We must not have a governor whose individual and personal interests are solely connected with railroads. Experience has taught us that such men will relinquish any trust, no matter how high when personal and pecuniary benefit is expected as a result. We must not have a governor whose political associations and antecedents would authorize the be- My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 633 lief that he would be a willing tool in the hands of other men, provided there was pecuniary profit to himself. "We must not have a governor upon whose record there is the slightest taint of convict lease iniquities and we must have a governor who will use his best energies to turn into the strong box of the State the revenues rightfully belonging to her, rather than into the pockets of individuals. Above all we must have a governor in sympathy with the honest laboring masses of the State who will execute the laws impartially with- out regard to the wealth on one side or the poverty on the other to please the one or oppress the other. "We have reached a point in Georgia politics where there needs to be no platform, except honesty, for the demand of the hour is honest men at the helm. I agree with you that it is every man's duty to lay aside all minor differences to protect the State and the taxpayer's money from wreck and waste; and although I fully intended to remain quietly at home ,with- out participation in political excitement this year there are features in the present gubernatorial canvass that should call every man to his post of duty. It is fair to say to you that while Major Bacon is my choice, in case the race is confined to the two prominent candidates, 1 should feel at perfect liberty to vote for any candidate whose views might in my opinion more fully accord with what I believe to be the best interests of Georgia. "Yours very respectfully, "W. H. FELTON." The Telegraph wrote thus editorially : "In another column we present a letter from Dr. W. H. Felton, which speaks for itself. Words from us can not add to the clearness and force with which Dr. Felton enforces the duty of every honest citizen in this canvass. He forcibly ex- presses in the word honesty, a very broad and significant word, the really one great overwhelming issue. Dr. Felton 's power and directness in any cause which he is enlisted is fa- miliar to the people of Georgia whom he has served with con- spicuous zeal and fidelity. It is not improbable that some of the gentlemen now being loaded in the State canvass in be- half of Gen. Gordon, may encounter him the 'Hightower' of Georgia before the voters of North Georgia." Dr. Felton consented finally to go into the campaign and m a speech made at Montezuma, Ga., he said the following: "I am not here seeking office, I am not seeking votes for myself, I come as a private citizen to present to you important facts which every Georgian should act upon in this guber- natorial canvass. Men are to be estimated solely by what they have said, how they have acted, and how they have voted and how they have conducted themselves in the past. * * * 634 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics We must inquire into their antecedents ; and by them judge of their political future. That record makes up their political and official character. * * * I am here as a Georgian to inquire into the political and official antecedents of Gen. Gor- don and of IMajor Bacon. There is not a man here, I suppose, who questions the bravery and fidelity of Gen. Gordon's rec- ord in war. lie was a gallant and faithful soldier, and Major Bacon's war record for fidelity and courage are equal to Gen. Gordon's. And I also believe there are ten thousand Georgians at the plow handles and in your workshops, in your fields, in your counting rooms whose war records are marked with as much fidelity and as much courage as either of them. But, fel- low citizens, the war is now over, thank God! May the fires of civic and fratracidal strife never be rekindled again upon the soil of Georgia ! The star-spangled banner is yours. "Long may it wave o'er the land of the free and home of the brave ! ' ' Let the man perish who would resurrect the strife, resur- rect the blood, resurrect the suffering, or resurrect the sorrows of our late civil war. * * * If we were in search of a com- manding general to command armies, we might select Gen. Gordon. I know of but one other living Georgian who might be selected if that was our motive in preference to Gen. Gor- don. He is a gallant and chivalric Georgian. Yonder he lives in Gainesville, forgotten in his obscurity, neglected in his re- tirement. I will never forget some facts which I will now give you, and were given to me by an eye witness at the time when Gen. Lee was turning out to meet Gen. Grant, to whom he was to surrender and to make terms of capitulation for the Confederate forces. General Lee called Gen. James Longstreet to his presence and addressed him in words like these: "General, I go yonder to hear the terms of our surrender. If they are honorable I shall accept them. If they are dishonorable I shall never accept them. If they are such that I can not accept them, I commit to you, General Longstreet, the task, the duty to cut through yonder federal forces and lead myself and my brave Virginians to safety or to death." In this campaign we have within us a sort of in- tuition or consciousness that it will settle to very considerable extent the future of our State. Almost, most intuitively we feel there is a big job on hand. We feel there is some big job that threatens our liberties and the financial prosperity of the State. A change must take place for the better or for the worse. * * * My countrymen, Georgia politics have been like clay in the hands of the potter. It is with you to deter- mine whether Georgia politics shall be run in behalf of the I My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 635 people at large or for the benefit of a few prominent gentle- men. Mr. Jefferson laid it down as one of the great principles of Democracy, its duty that we retrace our steps when we go astray. So I say to you today that Georgia must be brought back and located permanently under competent and honest statesmanship. We have long enough been under the guid- ance of Rings and Cliques. I think the people of Georgia have been long enough in swaddling clothes. You are old enough and should be wise enough to take charge of your own affairs. A few prominent politicians, generally interested in Corporations, or seeking so to be, have managed to control political power in Georgia. Their purpose has been not to benefit the people, not to benefit the people who toil and struggle, but to benefit the great cor- porations and of which they are to be placed as leaders and managers. As a result of it all you hear the cry that the prod- ucts of your sweat and toil have passed through your hand, but you find them lodged in the pockets of these corporations, of these great monopolies. Georgia is making as much wealth as she ever made. Where is it? You find it in the pockets of corporations, through the efforts of the politicians. How do they succeed? Generally by down right robbery and corruption. Unless you can check the growth of these rings who man- age you, and manage your ballot boxes for you for their po- litical and pecuniary aggrandisement, you might as well retire, go back to your wives and children, and tell them, you and they are serfs for all time to come. The inquiry is made today, whether the ballot box is the throne, where free men issue their orders or give direction to their will, or whether it is the throne where railroad kings or convict bosses issue their decrees ? Heretofore it has been in Georgia, where some railroad mag- nate or convict lessee issued his orders. And General Gordon says he is going to be governor "just like a cyclone!" It is not so much the cyclone that is going to make a governor as the cyclone that is to be and continue in our State matters after he is inaugurated. Just imagine what it will be in your State Treasury ! I can imagine the cyclone in the State House, I can also imagine when it reaches Col. Barnett's department. Doubtless you have seen dry weather whirlwinds when you saw them playing over in the dusty fields. Maybe you saw a leaf move. Then the leaf sprung up right in your pathway. In a moment more there was a considerable whirl, and way over yonder it is strong enough to blow over a shuck pen. 636 ^Iy Memoirs of Georgia Politics When it gets into Wright's office there will be a considerable whirl. When it gets to Bob Hardeman's office, the strong box of the State — my, father, what a storm ! It is not the storm when he is going to be governor, it is the storm that follows which I fear. * * * We are not interested in getting a governor to command our armies. We are not interested in placing men at the head of cliques and rings and monopolies and corporated wealth. We are in search of a governor to attend to our civil business, one who will manage our affairs economically, honestly and ably. This is the object of our search. A distinguished Georgian writing to me a few days ago used the following words : "Do you know that the governor we are now to elect, according to custom, holds his office four years? Do you remember that within that period there falls due $4,248,000 of bonded debt? In addition, the lease of the State road will expire in 1890, and that property worth $10,- 000,000 must be rearranged, readjusted? There are over $2,000,000 of annual taxes, perhaps a third more to be added to the fourteen millions of Georgia's public property. The proper management of that large sum would mean a great deal for Georgia. Its dishonest management for cliques and rings would tell \ery disastrously upon the industrial interests of the State." If we concede to General Gordon the utmost honesty and integrity of purpose, is there a Georgian who will not admit that he is without financial ability. I am talking to men who have interest in farms, in merchandise and their various in- dustries. I am talking to those who are interested in making a support for wife and children and in benefiting their per- sonal condition. I ask you if it is not conceded that General Gordon is absolutely without financial ability. Where is the man on God's earth that knows John B. Gordon that will tell you he is a financier? He is represented one day in the news- papers as financially up, the next day financially down. He is thus represented one day as a millionaire and the next day unable to meet the demands of his creditors. He is represented universally by the newspapers as a man engaged in railroad making, and the next day an uncertain factor in the financial world, first a railroad magnate, then something the reverse of it. This is the universal description by friend and foe alike. What is his present position? I know not. The other day his organ, the Atlanta Constitu- tion, represented him as floating on the wings of steam from New York City, clothed and panoplied with an immense for- tune to pursue this gubernatorial race. He landed in the city of Atlanta. His friends rushed up to congratulate him on his My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 637 newly acquired wealth, an immense fortune acquired by rail- road speculation. There w^as the usual Kimball House banquet. H. I. Kimball never reached Atlanta with a newly acquired fortune or a way open to produce a fortune for certain persons about him, that a banquet was not awaiting him. Backed by an immense fortune made in Florida in a railroad trade with coined millions, a banquet was offered General Gordon, but he was so engaged, in such a hurry to get over to Montgomery and place himself under the shadow of that glorious old man Jefferson Davis, he didn't have time to eat the banquet. His boom couldn't wait. He must nurse it, kindle it, keep it burning, and off he went to Montgomery! There are newspaper descriptions of his financial abilities I do not critically allude to his innumerable business failures since the wjir. 1 have nothing to say of his sawmill enterprise, of his book enterprise in which he swamped many hundreds. I have nothing to say about his book agency in which he sharped our most excellent Senator and Ex-Governor Brown. Noth- ing about his sheep ranch in which he swamped my most ex- cellent friend in former years — Congressman Whitehouse, of New York, nothing of the innumerable enterprises by which he was to develop Georgia, and how odious was that word "develop" in the days of Bullockism. They were his mis- fortunes ; they excited my commiseration. But when you take those enterprises and make them factors in estimating his ability as a financier, he is not a success. Now he comes here asking to handle, to manage your money. I ask you taxpayers with the knowledge you have of Gen. Gordon's financial pow- ers, are you disposed to trust the management of your money in his hands? Friends, are you disposed to commit the rearrangement of your immense railroad property to his care? Where is the Georgian of any intelligence or patriotism that would be willing to sell that road at $10,000,000, or at any price? That road is the goose that lays Georgia's golden egg. That road, my fellow-citizens, as long as you hold on to it forever places Georgia above the fear of bankruptcy. It will pay the interest on Georgia's large bonded debt. That road, if honestly man- aged, can be made to pay every dollar of the State's indebted- ness. If re-leased at what it is legitimately worth will, in a few years, educate every illiterate child in Georgia. As col- lateral, it can secure money at reasonable interest rates ; if legitimately managed, will be a barrier against unjust and unreasonable rate charges in Georgia and the producing people of our State. I said just now that General Gordon had no financial ability. I will say further, as a railroad speculator, he is an unfit 638 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics person to place in charge of your immense railroad property. Mr. Reuben Arnold, of Atlanta: "We desire to ask a ques- tion. If Bacon is nominated will you support him for gov- ernor?" Felton: "I will, sir." "If Gordon is nominated will .you support him?" Felton: "I will not, sir." (Pro- longed applause). "I make an unqualified statement. When General Gordon left the United States senate and ever since the field of his operations has been among railroad syndicates, among railroad jobbers and speculators in Wall street. He left the American senate, the most splendid trust ever com- mitted to one of its citizens, because he said; among many reasons, that it would not support his family. He left this splendid trust, as he said, to become general counselor and manager of the Louisville & Nashville railroad. I defy any man to question this and other statements I am now making. Just think of it ! General Gordon, the financier, the private counselor of Victor Newcomb, the railroad king of Wall street ! He says so, and we must accept his declarations. Governor Brown, when questioned a number of years ago concerning his objection to selling the State Railroad, among other things he said "Let it be sold for any amount of money, not one dollar of it would ever meet the bonds of the State of Georgia." It wouldn't have time to "get there, Eli!" No, not at all. He decided that the miserable vultures around Atlanta and the State Capitol and the State treasury would squander and waste the property without discharging one dollar of Georgia's indebtedness. And I believe it! * * * Victor Newcomb got a controlling interest in the lease shares some years ago — not long before General Gordon resigned from the senate. It was in direct violation of the lease law. Fortunatel}', he made known his purpose. Newcomb is a bold and fearless railroad speculator and a Wall Street gambler. He is a gambler in the hard earnings of the people of these United States. By the practice of outrage and infamy, he acquired a controlling interest in the lease shares of your railroad. He immediately announced his intention to abolish the railroad commission and re-lease the State Road for ninety-nine years at nominal figures. God help us ! (A voice, "That's a musty"). Good Lord, deliver us from such musties. He announced another purpose to build an independent line of railroad, and if he could get the W. & A. Railroad, that would fill the vacancy all right. But Governor BroAvn refused to yield his control of the W. & A. Railroad. What did Newcomb do? He bought what was called the Georgia Western, noAv known as the Georgia Pacific. In a few weeks General Gordon is employed as his private counselor and legal adviser and becomes owner of the Georgia Pacific, My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 639 and still Newcomb has no independent line into Atlanta. Gordon said he had no money to pay, but gave his note for $50,000, buying a railroad from Newcomb. I wonder if that note is cancelled? Victor Newcomb expected to demolish Georgia's railroad commission. That commission is the barrier for the protec- tion of our industrial classes. I know that men in high offices did ever3rthing that men/ could do to pull down and destroy that only bulwark between my State and the railroad corporations of Georgia. Only five votes were wanting to make the commission a nullity, and for days we battled in the house. Thank God ! we stayed their demands and their rapacity ! Where are we drifting, fellow citizens? Last summer when I was battling to the best of my ability for that railroad commission, and for what I thought to be the best interests of the State — weary and worn when I saw the tide turning against us, the Atlanta Constitution, General Gordon's organ today was denouncing me as a communist — an enemy to progress, an enemy to railroad development. Why? Because I was the friend and advocate of our rail- road commission ! Now it is pushing General Gordon as the especial friend of the railroad commission of Georgia ! No newspaper so bitterly denounced me as General Gordon's organ, The Con- stitution. No man has more bitterly denounced the railroad commission than General Gordon's employer, Victor New- comb. General Gordon said the other day that all he had was in- vested in railroads. Major Bacon said the same day, he had not a dollar invested in railroads. Gordon has not been recognized as a citizen of Georgia for the last three or four years. If I had been called upon to say where he lived, as late as three months ago, I should have sworn, to the best of my knowledge and belief, he lived in Wall street. New York. He says all his interests are in railroads today. General Washington, in the darkest days of these American colonies, issued this order: "Put none but Americans on guard tonight." What was his meaning? "Let no man stand guard whose interests and whose property, whose hopes and ambitions were in conflict, or whose purposes could be swerved by British gold or influence." That was the inter- pretation of the order, "Put none but Americans on guard." Georgians, I warn you that the great stake for which guber- natorial dice are now being thrown in Georgia is the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Put no man on guard whose interests. 640 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics whose hopes and finances arp ir. +1, Gordon is^unning all over [he Sflt! ^^^^^^^.^.^^P- General I am going into the executTve on r^v w'^^^°^' 'l^'^ ^ soldier. Just look at me!" I am ^o? ZmLZ T""'^ ^^^^ ^ 'y^^^nel just from Wall street-a mfnT.l^ ^ ^^^^.^ ^^ ^"^^d a man when Georgia's raTl^Ld iXes'f Te so" d "'?'' speculation, (The result has been told^n .\f ! ^^.^^^Pl^ involved. Felton.") ^""^"^ '"^ ^^^Pter headed ''Gordon and Congressional Campaign in 1890 When the year 1890 opened we had to listen to a great deal relating to what was known as the Farmers Alliance. It was claimed to be an organization from which everybody but farmers were excluded. It originated out in the West, and had a strong organization in Georgia. Hon. L. P. Livingston was president of the Georgia Alliance, and Hon. L. L. Polk, president of the National Farm^ers Alliance and Industrial Union. Polk lived in North Carolina. Colonel Polk was in Atlanta to attend the third annual convention of the State Alliance, when he said : ' ' There are now about 3,000,000 members of the order. Since the meeting in St. Louis, last December, Colorado has joined the Alliance — so have North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. We are organizing now in Michigan, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Wash- ington and California. Pennsylvania will be added to the per- fected States Thursday. The order is strongest numerically in the South. * * * The farmers of the West are willing to co-operate with the farmers of the South. They are heartily tired of sectionalism. I know it is charged b}^ the Democratic bosses of the South that we are disrupting the Democratic party and are selling out to the Republicans. It is argued with equal zeal in the Northwest, by the Republican bosses and papers, that the Alliance is only a Democratic trick to ensnare Republicans." Tennessee and Missouri had backed away from the sub-treasury plan, but Buchanan has just made it an issue in Tennessee and been elected overwhelmingly. It is all nonsense about refusing to endorse the sub-treasury plan in Tennessee. They had endorsed it, and elected their governor on it. The politicians made the sub-treasury plan our ultimatum. All right ! They can have war to the knife and the knife to the hilt if they want it." About the meeting in Ocala, Fla., Colonel Polk said: "It will be the annual meeting of the National Alliance and Industrial Union." We expect to have representatives from thirty-four different State Alliance organizations. Mr. Livingston said: "When the nominating time comes in the fall all those gentlemen who stand for re-election or re- nomination, which means election, will be asked to tell the people how they stand on these questions (sub-treasury etc.), and if they cannot answer directly, I can't pledge my people to vote for them. I shall certainly advise them not to do it." 642 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics On what will you ask candidates to commit themselves? First, the sub-treasury plan. * * * I am going to canvass the State on it and when I get through, I think I can say our people will not vote for any man who will not favor it. I mean in the nominations. If Mr. Blount, for instance, should say he favored the principle but could give us a better bill, we would say, "go ahead." The sub-treasury plan proposes briefly that the government shall take the farmers' staple crops into its warehouses and issue him negotiable certificates up to 80 per cent, of the value of his products. With no charges but the bare expense of storage and insurance the crop is to be kept there a year. In that time the farmer sells month by month, and this will regulate prices and prevent corners. Believing that with our whole soul our people will say to Mr. Clements or Mr. Stewart or Mr. Anybody else, "Will you vote for such a currency as we ask?" Some may say the farmer is asking too much, but this is what the government gives to the whiskey men. They get more. Whiskey is worth $3.00 a gallon the minute it is put in the bonded warehouse, because the age gives it value by anticipation. The whiskey is only worth 50 cents a gallon before. The farmer is only asking an extension of the favor granted to the national banks. They deposit bonds in vaults which stand in the place of bonded warehouses and they get 90 per cent, of the face value at 1 per cent, per annum. We only ask the government to advance 80 per cent, value and we will pay storage and insurance. We will ask candidates to commit themselves on railroad regulation. The railroads discriminate against terminal points as against villages and rural districts. A carload of Carolina phosphates is dropped off the train for me at Covington and the freight is $4.30. It goes on and drops several cars in Atlanta for Geo. W. Scott & Co., at $3.40 a ton. It drops several cars at Montgomery at $3.00 per ton, and at Meridian, Miss., for $2.80. We have decided to concentrate our whole strength on the sub-treasury and railroad ownership. With the first secured, the farmers will soon be able to build all the railroads we need, if it should become necessary." When the State Farmers Alliance did meet it adopted the St. Louis platform — which adopted the sub-treasury and gov- ernment ownership of railroads. The chairman of the judicial committee, Hon. Martin V. Calvin, furnished the following as the requirements of the Georgia State Alliance. These requirements were handed down in February, 1890, and were given out to the public. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 643 1. Bank stock ownership did not debar a man from the Alliance. 2. But a bank cashier was ineligible. 3. Parties who owned or operated their own warehouses were ineligible. 4. Agents for cotton seed mills, not controlled by Alliance, ineligible. Any person who keeps a store, who buys or sells for gain is ineligible. If he be a practicing attorney, he is in- eligible. A member cannot be expelled except for cause. A member in arrears for four months' dues is suspended by the operation of the Constitution. Citizenship in Georgia is a prerequisite for membership. Residence does not constitute citizenship. Unnaturalized persons are therefore ineligible. A cotton buyer or salesman is ineligible. Two black balls rejects the applicant. No de- mand can be made as to who casts the black balls. If it can be shown that the black balls were cast through malice, the offender shall be dealt with. Presidents of sub-Alliances are not ex-ofificio members of County Alliances. Delegates to a County Alliance must be elected. A demit can not be denied to a brother who is clear of the books and no charge pending. Sub-Alliances can impeach their presidents and expel him for cause. A member who buys or sells goods on his own account or on commission for another, renders himself obnoxious to the Constitution and must get out of the order. A member can carry a stock of supplies for the hands on his farm but if he sells anything to others, he becomes a mer- chant and ineligible. An Alliance man cannot clerk in a mer- cantile house. A person who buys or sells sewing machines is ineligible. An Alliance store cannot sell to persons outside the order. An Alliance can adopt the exclusive use of cotton bagging or forbid the use of jute bagging and enforce a penalty — sus- pension or expulsion. The Alliance can try a member who fails to pay his dues, because this conduct is unbecoming an Allianceman. Neither a railroad train hand, conductor, brake- man, or track hand is eligible — nor a real estate agent. A member is only clear of the books when he has paid all dues and all assessments. If a demitted brother applies for membership at another lodge, he cannot be admitted under six months. Country doctors and country preachers can be Alliancemen, and by country is meant all the land outside of regular towns divided into wards. (Signed) MARTIN V. CALVIN. Chairman Judicial Committee. The State Alliance in Texas split on the sub-treasury, and 644 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics United States Senator John H. Reagan said: "I do not see how congress can pass a law to enable the United States to loan 80 per cent, of the value of their crops and take the pro- duce, in pledge for the repayment of the loan. * * * The passage of such an act would be the longest step ever taken by this government in paternalism and class legislation, and would make the U. S. government a great merchant and money lender in defiance of all past notions as to its character and the reasons for its adoption by the people." By the time it became well understood in the Seventh dis- trict that thousands of voters would be disfranchised if no man could enter this secret oath-bound organization, except the classes here mentioned, the whole country begun to wake up. Over one hundred men in Cartersville, many of them Dr. Felton's strongest political opponents signed a petition ask- ing him to enter the canvass and wake up the farmers them- selves to the difficulties they were plunging into. All over the district those petitions were signed and sent to him. Mer- chants, railroad men, business men of all sorts, declared there would be a fatal injury to everyday lousiness — not only to those who were not in the Alliance but for Alliancemen themselves. Messengers came from other counties, pledging support, if he would only speak in the various counties and utter notes of warning to the deluded farmers who were being used by political sharpers and tricksters to get into office themsel''es. But the excitement reached a crisis when a copy of th-.^ o--th was secured and which showed the real vow. A copy was furnished to Dr. Felton and I kept it. The paper is yellow and well-thumbed, and I will copy it here : Oath in Farmers Alliance Ritual.. I (Candidate is placed at altar with his hand on the Bible). "I . . . ., in the presence of the Heavenly Father and these witnesses, do solemnlj^ affirm that I will never reveal any of the secrets of the Alliance to any one unless by strict test or in some legal manner, I find him entitled to receive them. I will conform to the Constitution and By-Laws of the Alliance and I will act in harmony with and endeavor to promote unity among the members ; I will never wrong or defame a worthy ( ?) member, but will always assist and protect him and his interests when in my power to do so. I will always speak the truth when talking to a member and will assist him in bearing the burdens and crosses of life. I will advise and do all in my power to keep any member from engaging in any immoral conduct, that would be likely to bring reproach upon him, his family or the Farmers Alliance. I will never propose for mem- bership or sanction the admission of any one whom I have My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 645 reason to believe to be an improper person — neither will I oppose the admission of any one solely on account of a per- sonal matter. I will always recognize and answer all lawful signs given me by a worthy member of the Alliance. I further- more solemnly affirm that should I be expelled from the Alli- ance from any cause whatever I will keep this obligation as sacred out of the Alliance as when a member. So help me God!" President of the Alliance also says the following : "Before you proceed it will be necessary to take on your- self a solemn obligation which I assure you will not conflict with your political and religious views. ' ' The dues were, as I was told, 25 cents a month, or perhaps it was the quarterly payment. This paper shows that a worthy (?) member must vote along with his brethren. In our town it was understood that the stores were to be boycotted — indeed, it was printed by one of the order, over the signa- ture of "Business Man." All who did not support Alliance candidates were not only to be spotted, but boycotted. No man who did not take this oath, could be a candidate for any- thing and receive a vote from an Allianceman. They had a pass-word, and they were sworn foes to national banks. As soon as Governor Gordon joined the Alliance he opened up on national banks. I saw a publication in a Covington paper, Mr. Livingston's home town, dated August 21, 1890, where it was stated that a Gordon henchman, maybe two, wrote a letter to Livingston asking him to sign his name to a paper asking the legislature members to elect Gordon to the senate. Livingston did not sign, but he showed the letter. Then the political Alliancemen raised a howl. It was dangerous to tell secrets. The Bartow county people came in with a petition with two hundred signers, praying Dr. Felton to go before the masses and tell the farmers that the politicians were leading them into a trap — that they were deceiving them. I have both these petitions in my scrap-book before me, and mass meetings were held in Cartersville and Rome. In Atlanta, after the legislature met, it was found that most of the candidates were rushing into Alliance meetings — taking the oath to vote and hold off everybody who did not join. Six out of ten of Georgia congressmen were retired under pressure, and every one of the new ones and the four old ones, were a unit for the free coinage of silver, and the president of the State Alliance took his seat on March 4, 1891, as con- gressman from the Atlanta district, and I heard no more about the sub-treasury or government control of railroads. Cotton dropped from 12 cents to 6, even to 4 cents, in 1894. 646 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Not one of the Alliancemen exploited Alliance principles in congress, save Mr. Watson ; and not one of them failed to drop the poor, oath-bound farmers after they took their seats but the member from the Tenth district, so far as I could learn. The Alliance put Governor Northen in the executive office, made congressmen out of Livingston, Moses, Everett, Lawson, Watson and Winn, and put Governor Gordon in the senate, and with the exceptions above noted, every one deserted the Alliance principles or tenets. Mr. Cleveland ran for president in 1892, and the gang fol- lowed him like the little pigs follow the sow, and the Alliance disappeared ! In 1891 the Alliance leaders met in Indianapolis in a great national convention, and Jerry Simpson was there, and Mrs. Lease, and there were charges against Macune, show- ing wholesale corruption and prostitution of official trusts. Polk was re-elected but the Georgia contingent was split into smithereens! Mr. Livingston was reported by the Journal cor- respondent, Mr. Claude Bennett, as saying, "Watson did not represent anything there — certainly not the Alliance. ' ' Branch a delegate from Columbia county censured Livingston for hav- ing told Gates in his speech at Atlanta Exposition that he would support the Democratic nominee for president, and Liv- ingston denied it." The clamor that reached us at home grew more and more persistent. I did my utmost to shut the door on it, but we were overwhelmed with letters, with visitors who came at all times — Sundays and Mondays — to persuade Dr. Felton into the race. For two solid weeks we were beseiged to allow his name to be used before the September congressional conven- tion to be held in Rome. I pulled one way — they pulled an- other. The men who had fought him hardest in the past were the most determined pleaders. I said, "Don't let them per- suade you into it ! Some are honest and will do all they say. Some I can not trust. Spare yourself and spare me." The inducement that finally prevailed with him came from men disconnected with political aspirations — those who saw that the country people were to be arrayed in fierce hostility to the town people, and if skilfully worked by political can- didates, would foster the worst elements of communistic enmity and bring untold distrust and lack of confidence in every department of State and national government. I knew there could be no sincerity among many of these candidates. I in- vestigated far enough to find that the railroads were4)ehind General Gordon. The L. & N. Railroad had come into posses- sion of the State Road for 29 years. After Mr. Everett pro- nounced for General Gordon for the Senate I saw what was behind the whole business. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 647 I was always met by the plea, "They are dragging down the farmers!" The oath which will compel them to buy from Alliance men only, and which forbids one of their boys to clerk in any other sort of a store, and which virtually makes the farming class a block of voters to be turned over to the most agile candidate in the bunch, will eventually work ruin to their own business. They are iDlindfolded. They must be warned ! ' ' Conditions narrowed down to a place where I had either to refuse to help him or put on a brave face and make the best of what was left to me. I chose the latter. There were brave men and true who stood with him in this rescue work, but there were others who acted, just as I ex- pected they would act. The rest of the story you can find in the newspapers — and newspapers were not his friends — but Dr. Felton did his part well in self-sacrifice and got well abused for doing it. Four years later a public speaker, from our own county and town, made a foul personal charge at a political public meeting in one of the upper counties, and said in so many words that Dr. Felton had sold his vote in the Georgia legislature on the lease question and I concealed the money he got as a bribe in the purchase of a farm, and I could not have made that money by "knitting and sewing." It pains me yet to remember what we had to bear in this matter, and it was particularly hard for me, because I had striven with all my might to avoid the campaign of 1890. I made a reply in the Atlanta papers, and the aged, gray- headed veteran made a public reply in 1894, two days after- wards, in our county court house in the presence of the speaker who made the foul charge against us, and defied him to produce one scintilla of evidence to prove it. Because of such slanderous efforts to besmirch his good name, I have printed this book, and except for my duty to my family and my individual sympathy for Dr. Felton, I would never again have collided with the ring politicians of the Seventh district. The people held public meetings in all the counties and the delegates were openly selected. Many of them were farmers and some were persons who were denounced as ineligible and therefore obnoxious to the Farmers' Alliance. They were present in Rome in large force when Dr. Felton and I reached the city. I had had all "my say" before we left home, and being determined to hold up Dr. Felton 's hands in defeat as well as success, I had nothing for the public but smiles and cheer- ing words to offer. 648 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics Felton Accepts the Nomination. (Rome Tribune.) Rome, Ga., September 3. — (Special.) — "The way to fight a thing is to fight it. You can't apologize for a thing and fight it at the same time." This remark made by Dr. Felton a few minutes ago, is the keynote of the campaign opened here this afternoon. It was the policy of his speech, which is even now thunder- ing in the ears of the people who heard it. Beginning at about half past 3 o'clock, he chained the at-' tention of the crowd in the opera house for an hour and a half, and almost every sentence was punctuated with applause. The opera house presented a remarkable scene. The stage and galleries were decorated with flags and bunting, and the men out in the audience were shouting and waving their hats. The house was packed with people, and along either side of the parquet and in the dress circle, were farmers, or men who had that appearance. He accepts the Nomination. Dr. Felton began by expressing his appreciation of the nomination as evidence of his political honesty and fealty to Democratic principles. This acceptance of the nomination was followed by tremend- ous and long continued cheering. Hats were waved, and one man raised an umbrella and flopped it as if in imitation of a rooster's Avings. The Reasons Which Influence Him. "I accept it," he continued, "from a sense of duty to my brother farmers of the Seventh Congressional district, (ap- plause) and the duty that I owe to every business man of every class and occupation in the Seventh district. (Applause). I accept it from a sense of the duty that I owe to the Democratic party. I accept it from a deep sense of the duty that I owe to the preservation, maintenance and perpetuation of the grandest and freest government on God's earth. (Applause). "If defeat were inevitable, and it is not, (great cheering and "hurrah for Felton") I feel today that the grand people that I have represented in congress, and a part of whom I have so long served in your State legislature, I feel today that this grand and noble constituency will do right if the heavens fall. (Cheers). But I say again that if defeat were inevitable, it is right and proper that the proceedings of this Democratic con- vention of the Seventh Congressional district should be spread out upon the record, the political records of this district at least, as a protest against claims and pretenses unparalelled in the history of the Democratic party. (Applause). My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 649 "I repeat, I accept the nomination from a sense of duty to the farmers." With this the Doctor alluded to his life on the farm for forty years, and challenged any man to point to the vote or the act of his in the legislature or in congress which was against the farmers' interest. Alluding to the State Road lease for $420,000 a year, the addition to the school fund of all tax arising from an appreciation of property, and to the fight for the railroad commission, which he said had saved millions to Georgia. He called on the members of the legislature to say who had fought longest and most faithfully for the measures. Touching on the Alliance. "I am a farmer," said he. "I have stood by their interests. I love them sincerely and truly, and I accept this nomination in part that I may warn them, and that I may entreat them to beware of the demagogue that is seeking to despoil them. (Great cheering, continued and renewed). I see in my State today a vast organization, secret, political, that has its purpose to deceive honest, incorruptible men, as pure as live under your shining heavens, conservative by nature and by occupation. I have seen them, under the impulse of the mo- ment, rushing pell mell into an organization that is designed to rob and plunder and despoil, not for their benefit, but for the crafty, designing and cunning demagogue. (Great cheer- ing and a voice, "You have got 'em down right.") "I am a farmer, but I have lived long enough to know that other industries and other occupations are important and essential as well as mine. (Applause). I have lived long enough to learn that when you injure one you retard the progress of another. When one suffers the whole body is disordered. (Applause). The industries of every country, the wealth-producing occupations, are all in mutual sympathy. They are mutually dependent one upon the other, and where you injure one you injure all. ' ' Drawing the Line. Here he drew a picture of the army and said: "Who would then have asked a brave, patriotic young volunteer his occupation ? Who would have said to him : Comrade, are you a farmer? Comrade, are you a merchant? Comrade, are you a clerk? Comrade, do you buy goods? Comrade, are you engaged in manufacturing? Comrade, are you a preacher in some city or incorporated town? Comrade, are you engaged in anything but agriculture ? And if the poor fellow says yes, he is kicked out as a dog (Great laughter and applause), un- worthy to stand by my side." 650 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics The Origin of the Alliance. Let us see the nativity of this new political party, for it is neither more nor less. Where were its platform and principles originated? Where was it born? In Georgia! No, sir, in St. Louis, Missouri. Who composed the organization that formed it? They were not all Democrats, they were not all farmers, they were not all Southern men. It was a conglomerated mass, a conglomeration of sore-heads. (Great cheering). Mark you, in this discussion I draw a broad line, as broad as that between heaven and the dark abyss, between the honest, true and pa- triotic farmers of Georgiar, who have gone into that organiza- tion with pure motives and honest purpose, and the leaders, cunning, crafty leaders, the cunning, crafty demagogues who seek to despoil. "The St. Louis platform has two leading features. The first is that we want the sub-treasury system. We want the government to build warehouses in every rich county in the United States. It does not read that way, but that is what it means. I suppose there would be two in the Seventh district. (A voice, "Clements says five.") I did not know there were five rich counties in the district. Then he argued that to build 1,000 warehouses would cost $50,000,000, and put a horde of federal officials under the appointing power of the administration. Probably Republicans would be sent here to administer on your cotton, said he. "Mark," he said, "the bill says the owners of these pro- ducts, cotton, corn, wheat, tobacco and oats, may deposit in the warehouses and draw 80 per cent, on their value. Richard- son, the great Mississippi farmer, and the cotton speculators could buy up all cotton, put it in the warehouses and draw money. Liverpool would say, "We don't want your cotton. We can get our supply from India, Egypt and Africa, but as a great favor we will give you 4 or 5 cents per pound for it." Dalrymple, the great wheat man of Dakota, and old Hutch, the grain cornerer, could buy all the grain and put it in the sub-treasury. The margin would be exhausted and the govern- ment would have to redeem money based on oats. In the mean- time the Norway rats will have done their work and the sub- treasury notes will have to be redeemed in coin, taxed out of the people, for the collateral will have gone down the stomach of the Norway rats. Then he drew a picture of the farmer's home. Of all men, you can least afford the results of a panic that is sure to result from this inflation and contraction of the currency. It was not Georgia that constructed this; it was done by fifty men at St. Louis, who sent it here to cram down the throats of the honest, industrious farmers of the Seventh district as the national Democratic My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 651 party. Fellow-citizens, it is my honest belief that that crowd there assembled at St. Louis knew no more about and cared no more for, and had no more to do with national Democracy than the devil has to do with holy water." (Great laughter and applause.) Then he compared the St. Louis convention to the star chamber. "Fellow-citizens, you have heard of the star chamber in old England, commencing way back yonder in the time of Edward the Third, and running all the way down to Charles the First, and probably a little into the reign of James. It was a secret political court, which met in a chamber whose ceiling was starred. The creatures of a despotic power met to do their corrupt master's will. They would bring up any citizen's name, hear ex-parte testimony, try and sentence him, and the poor wretch never knew of trial or sentence or charge, until the officers arrested him and led him to the block, where his hand, arm or foot or head was cut off for a political offense. It was not a religious court. The high commission determined religious offenses. "You have read of the council of ten in old Venice, that tried men in secret, passed upon men's characters in secret, that denounced them by sentence in secret, and it is wonderful that the bridge leading from the council of ten to those prison walls was called the Bridge of Sighs. My God, how many tears ! My God, how many breaking hearts felt that secret 'chamber ! ! Then he alluded to the Spanish inquisition, then to the know nothing party, of which, he said, a wave rolled over Georgia. They held secret meetings and tested men's political char- acters. In secret they tested men's political records. In secret they rejected or accepted political aspirants for office. They resolved that no foreigner can hold office in this country, for- getting that our ancestors were all foreigners. (Applause.) They resolved that no Catholic shall hold office in this country, forgetting that John Carroll, of Carrollton, was a Catholic ; forgetting that if you proscribe and ostracize Catholics, you can proscribe and ostracize Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, all; forgetting that the constitution forbids a religious test and religious proscription. No, sir, free government and secret political organizations can not live together. (Great applause.) Let me emphasize it. Government by a class and government by the people can not live together. (Applause.) One or the other must die. My countrymen say this day which shall survive." Here he referred to the Primitive Baptists, who eschewed secret political organizations. "God bless them; God bless 652 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics every freeman today that rallies under the banner of constitu- tional liberty. (Applause.) "Macauley says the star chamber became malignant and energetic in its rapacity. Robespierre died by the guillotine that, under his orders, had cut off more heads than all the despots. Nature works her own cures. They that take to the sword shall die by the sword." He then referred to the common expression, current a few weeks ago, that the suballiances were then slinging their bal- lots to determine who would represent the seventh district in Congress. It was done in secret, and men were chosen in secret. In conclusion, he said. "In sickness and in health, in sunshine or storm, whatever may betide, God being my helper, I propose to bear your standard to the best of my ability." (Tremendous cheering.) A Social Reception. Delegates and citizens pressed around Dr. and Mrs. Felton, almost suffocating them with attention. Mr. and Mrs. McClure tendered Dr. and Mrs. Felton an informal reception tonight, and many came in to give con- gratulations on the speech. Every county in the district sent up its duly elected dele- gates. There were seven from Chattooga, 13 from Pauld- ing, 4 from Whitfield, two from Walker, four from Murray, two from Catoosa, two from Cobb, 25 from Floyd — every militia district having sent its quota — 12 from Polk, two from Dade, 26 from Bartow, and two from Haralson. Only Gor- don county failed to nominate Dr. Felton of all the thirteen. The platform was patriotic and sensible, the unanimous en- dorsement which these delegates gave to Dr. Felton I have kept ail these years as a tribute wrung from his former ene- mies in spite of years of opposition. But the results of the October election in 1890 made the officeholders run to cover, and they made traitorous terms v/ith the alliance tricksters to hold their own positions. And it turned out as I had predicted — they forsook Dr. Felton and excepting some distinguished gentlemen who were honorable as well as patriotic, the enthusiastic following which pledged the strongest support at the Rome Convention went over to the alliance politicians. The public teat was all powerful, and the sub-treasury scheme petered out along with the alliance ritual. But the alliance served its purpose — it gave prominence to a lot of blatant demagogues, and they loaded down the national Democratic party until it was left prostrate and defeated for two decades and over. "Norway rats" would have eaten up My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 653 the sub-treasury, if they had been given a chance, but the scheme only served to elevate a lot of politicians who never would have risen out of their native habitat, save for the well exploited schemes of Macune, Polk, Mrs. Lease and Com- pany, and the "yard-stick" of the so-called Farmers' Alli- ance. It is a good place just here to allude to an editorial from the New York World, written a few weeks after the National Democratic party gave to Mr. Bryan the nomination for the presidency. Mr. Bryan, a Populist, supported Gen. Weaver instead of Cleveland in 1892. It goes to prove that the National Democratic party was in such straits that it was forced to accept Mr. Bryan at the Chicago Convention and has been too weak to do anything else since 1896. If he has his usual and continued political luck, Mr. Bryan will either be nominated in 1912, or he will be the arbiter of the future destiny of the National Democracy of the United States. John. W. Maddox and Dr. Felton In the year 1890 the Farmers' Alliance was in full blast. It retired all but four of the Georgia delegation in Congress, namely, Lester, Blount, Turner and Crisp. The others were steam-rollered, and their places were supplied by Messrs. Livingston, Moss, Winn, Everett, Lawson and Watson. The displaced members were a unit for tariff reform, and free coin- age of silver, and the new members claimed to be the same sort of a "unit," but it was the alliance yard-stick, the oath bound secret organization, the order which Mrs. Lease and Gen. Weaver, Polk and Macune brought to Georgia which caused the whirlgig in Georgia politics. Why the other four were not upset has not been well explained, though it was known that Mr. Crisp was member of a House committee connected with Pacific Railroad legislation, and Mr. Turner was a single-standard man. Nobody ever knew, I suppose what Mr. Blount advocated particularly except to hold on. Mr. Lester came from the Savannah district, where elections were a farce, and the "party call," and vest-pocket nomina- tions prevailed. Whether any of these four gentlemen joined the alliance as did Gen. Gordon, I can not say, but it was un- derstood that they all made same sort of an obeisance except Mr. Turner of Brooks. Mr. Watson explained in 1894 in these words: "If I am wrong in fighting ring rule in Georgia, Mr. Black had also been leading a crusade against the "wicked political ring," which he assured me was "debauch- ing the State," and if I am wrong in fighting ring rule in Georgia, Mr. Black is one of the men who should hear me with great patience and pity, for I caught the tune from him. If I am wrong in standing by the principles of the Ocala plat- form of the Farmers' Alliance the Democrats did the country a grievous injustice in making a governor out of W. J. Northen and Congressmen out of Livingston, Moses, Everett and Law- son, and a Senator out of John B. Gordon. All these great and good men joined the Alliance and championed its prin- ciples, as did the majority of the newspapers who have since tried to hound me to political death." They were measured by the yard-stick and except one or two of these Alliance men, every one kicked down the ladder, by which they had climbed up in the loft. It goes without saying that the great majority of the new Alliance men would never have "made the rise" if the yard-stick and the sub- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 655 treasury had not elevated them into public notice. The "bot- tom rail was on top." In the seventh district, Mr. Maddox, a superior court judge, set his wires to working. By his verdicts in court, and his sentences as judge, he tied on to himself a lot of men in Rome and elsewhere, who were ready to do his bidding at all times. The men who pulled for him the hardest had been protected by the court in their escapades. For instance : There were a number of white men caught in a gambling scrape. They were indicted, convicted and brought before Judge Maddox for sentence. He placed a fine of a few dollars and turned them all loose. They were ready to "pay back" when the Judge concluded to steam-roller Mr. Everett, who was elected to Congress in 1890 and by all precedents in the organization was due a second term. Rev. Sam Jones held a revival meet- ing in Rome, and he fairly blistered the gamblers, the verdict, and the judge. He gave these "escaped gamblers" the name of "fat rabbits." They were the "pets" of Judge Maddox, when he overran Mr. Everett for the nomination. Those "fat rabbits," who were indicted for gambling and one for keeping a gambling house furiously advocated the judge. Perhaps it was the same day when the judge protected his "fat rabbits" that he sentenced Sam Jackson, a negro, for the same offense, gambling. He placed on him a fine of one thou- sand dollars, or a term in the chain-gang. The superior court records of Floyd county will give you exact details. This is the sort of a politician that Judge Maddox proved himself to be. (He has been placed again on the bench in the Rome judicial circuit. But that's the sort of a man that can keep this high position, and will continue to keep it, so long as he deals out justice in the same old way. The curse of political judges and solicitors in Georgia can never be fully understood or explained until the eternal judgment.) In my opinion, Mr. Everett was entirely too decent a man to suit the gang that pulled for Judge Maddox, and Judge Maddox was counted in in 1892, when the so-called primary came off. Nobody knew where he really stood on any public question, but it became apparent after 1892 that he followed the tide and doomed the poor farmers to dire poverty in his support of Mr. Cleveland's policy. True he talked to suit every crowd he was in, but he amounted to nothing more than a knot on a stick, as to helping the seventh district, except in giving fat positions to his pets and "fat rabbits." While he was a member of the legislature, he had made public no- toriety in Atlanta, resisted arrest, according to the newspa- pers, and with indignant protest claimed to be immune to arrest, calling himself the "Chief of the Cherokees." The 656 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics story has been published and narrated time and again. While be was Congressman he made additional notoriety at a sea- side resort in Georgia, and that story was given to me by a most responsible person with full permission to use it when- ever, wherever and as fully as I deemed it necessary. It was simply outrageous that the State of Georgia could not throw off men of Judge Maddox' class who, by such conduct, actually fatigued public contempt. Officials who failed to respect their high positions undoubtedly should be subject to "recall" if not to "referendum." I have no hesitancy in this publication. Judge Maddox, through his attorney, and by his personal effort, accused me of forging a circular that appeared in the campaign of 1894. He carried that plea to Washington City, and before the packed committee on elections. Then and there he not only accused me of forging the circular, but of altering contest papers signed and sent up by Justice Gaines, who presided in the contest court in Cartersville. A more dastardly effort never gained publicity. Neither charge was true. I never saw the circular until it was circulated, never heard of it until it was out, and the Gaines papers were signed by Justice Gaines, and he made affidavit that the charge against me was false and absolutely without foundation. The circular I will reprint, and I here testify that I not only did not write, print or know anything about it, but the man, B. F. Carter, who received it and to whom it was addressed, was ready at any time to be examined as a witness and was even present where he might have been examined ; yet Judge Maddox never called him to the stand, and never called me as a witness to prove his foul charge dur- ing the entire time of getting testimony. It was a concealed weapon and never hurled at me until the last hearing in Washington City in April, 1896. "Dalton, Ga., Nov. 1, 1894. "Mr. B. F. Carter, Cedartown, Ga., "Dear Sir: Judge Maddox, the present representative from the seventh congressional district of Georgia, in a talk with me on the streets the other day said he had been canvassing the district and would be re-elected because he had bought all the leading negroes in each county, and had bought them cheap, as they were not worth much any way, and should not be allowed to vote. "Very respectfully, "SAM HOLT, Dalton, Ga." This is the full text, and Judge Maddox permitted his Car tersville attorney to make the foul charge of forgery against me before the Committee on Elections, and the only man I was acquainted with on that committee. Hon. Charles Bart- My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 657 lett, from the sixth Georgia district, not only failed to rise and say that such a charge must be proven before it was presented there, but he manifested such rabid partisanship for Judge Maddox that it has always been unexplained, unless they were both kept in Congress by the same influences and for similar purposes. I had but five minutes in which to de- clare the forgery claim to be a false accusation and to explain that the three men from Georgia, these present — Messrs. Bran- ham, Fite and Maddox — were the most implacable and fero- cious political enemies that my husband had in the district. That was the "final touch" that these attorneys gave to the business, and I unhesitatingly declare that I have always believed that Hon. Charles Bartlett was placed on that Com- mittee of Elections to help Judge Maddox, and that he was the chosen spokesman for Maddox as well as for the com- mittee. He allowed that foul charge against my integrity, as a lady, to pass unchallenged. It is well known, positively established, that C. P. Hunting- ton placed men on committees and claimed them as his own men, and resented any disturbance of these committeemen after such placing had been made. In the year 1896, when the contest ease of Felton vs. Maddox was heard before the Elections Committee, E. P. Stahlman was in Washington City pressing his claim for Publishing House Money. He was thoroughly exposed when the lobby money was made the subject of investigation two years later. He was always antagonistic to Dr. Felton because he prowled around the legislature while the State road lease was discussed. They collided more than once in the committee room. Hon. Thos. Felder is on record as saying that Mr. Stahlman inter- ested himself in getting a Georgia member of Congress from the fifth district. Vice-President Stahlman, of the L. & N. Railroad, was interested in the seventh as well as the fifth district because there are only six miles of the W. & A. Rail- road in the fifth and about one hundred and thirty miles in the seventh district, which railroad traverses the seventh dis- trict from the Chattahoochee to the Tennessee line. After the election in 1894, the Fifty-third Congress con- tinued until March 4, 1895. The committees were named after the Fifty-fourth Congress was organized in 1895. Mr. Maddox was on the ground. Major Stahlman was lobbying in Washing- ton City for his various schemes, and the contest between Fel- ton and Maddox was held back until April, 1896, nearly two years after the election. This forgery charge was arranged for during that interval and Mr. Bartlett 's partisanship was so unexpected and pronounced that Gen. Dudley said to me : "Is that man Dr. Felton 's personal enemy? Has he forgotten 658 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics that he is a judge, not an attorney on this committee?" This occurred while the forgery charge was being pressed on me in that last and final hearing. There was relationship by marriage between Mr. Bartlett and Dr. Felton. I am enough of a "good Injun" to respect the rites of hospitality, and in conclusion I will say that if Dr. Felton had been on that committee in Mr. Bartlett 's place, and such a foul charge had been presented against Mr.. Bartlett 's wife, there would have been a different attitude and a proper defense or explanation if that committee had been ten times as large or more powerful. When Dr. Felton served on any committee. State or national, there was always dignified attention in marked contrast to the Jack-in-the-box performance we witnessed from a much smaller man in the National Congress in 1896. Those committees are known to be partisan, if nothing worse, in politics they care nothing for the testimony, and the case of Felton vs. Maddox was evidently in the hands of the mem- ber from Georgia, who claimed to know and who played the ignoble part of attorney and I presume Mr. Bartlett would have sacrificed any relative he had to hold his seat in Congress. Bibb county and the sixth district have long been remarkable for their humble acceptance of what ring politics offers to them, and if they can stand it, I am sure their politics is (at present) indifferent to me. It is quite fair to both of us for me to discuss Mr. Bartlett under these circumstances. He "broke into Congress" from the superior court bench. In a newspaper bearing date 1896. I find the following editorial : "A poor famished darky opened a cupboard and eased the pangs of hunger with a draught of milk. Judge Bartlett sent him up for fifteen years. A col- ored man stole a shot gun. and the same judge sent him to the chain-gang for fifteen years. A negro boy, 12 years old, caught out a horse to ride a few miles and back. He was sen- tenced to twelve years at hard labor." * * * These foul blots on our civilization were placed there by Democratic judges, placed in power by Democratic voters, sent to Democratic chain-gangs, where Democratic bosses tied them down, almost strangled them with water and then compelled them to get up and dance, smile and sing, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul, Let Me To Thy Bosom Fly." The evidence brought out in various investigations is quite sufficient to say that all these things here stated might be true. It was well understood that long sentences for negroes were more ^than agreeable to the Democratic bosses in Georgia, and it is well kno%vn that superior court judges were uniform in trying to step from My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 659 the bench into Congress. Messrs. Maddox and Bartlett were ripe samples of such ambitious politicians. The political situation in Georgia in 1894 will hardly ever be forgotten. Mr. Cleveland secured re-election in 1892, through Standard Oil influence, and former Alliance men in Georgia forsook the faith and became plain Democrats. Cotton went down to four and five cents. The farmers were prostrate, and nearly desperate. We sold our entire cotton crop in 1892 for a little over four cents, and it did not pay taxes, guano and farm supplies. The "Crown of Thorns" was placed on the producing classes of the country. The West was plastered over with mortgages, and I saw people from Kansas in 1893, and 4 who told me that they lost their last dollar between contraction legislation and the greed of money lend- ers and had to get away. All that the Farmers' Alliance claimed and worked for in 1890 was obliterated by the false representatives sent to Wash- ington. So the Alliance went out by the back door, and Messrs. Everett and Watson were defeated by Messrs. Black and Mad- dox. The others became zealots for Democracy, the usual trick with renegades. In 1894 the People's Party made a determined stand in Georgia, after the traitors went out and over to the opposition. A Congressional Convention met in Rome with delegates from all over the District early in Au- gust. That convention made a fervid appeal to Dr. Felton to allow them to vote for him. They were disqusted with Cleve- land, who not only placed negroes in office, but who received into the White House, Fred Douglass and his white wife as honored guests for a week. They were disgusted, fatigued with Maddox, who amounted to nothing except to fix his fol- lowers in office. State and national. They came in large num- bers to Dr. Felton to ask him to accept their support. They asked nothing from him but liberty to vote for him. I heard the appeal, and plead with my husband to spare himself this fatigue and annoyance. Mr. Watson's treatment in Richmond county in 1892 satisfied my mind that nothing would be omit- ted in the seventh district. I knew the temper of the opposi- tion. They had been tested before me for ten years. I was prepared to appreciate what Hon. J. W. Wofford, of Kansas City, said of them in a letter to Dr. Felton — ''they were the meanest set of politicians in the seventh district on God's footstool and not fit to tie his shoestrings." Their entreaties prevailed. Dr. Felton said, "they were honest, patriotic men; they were nearly desperate under the tyranny of national and State legislation, and it seemed a hard case when they could not have somebody to defend their cause, etc." I will omit my almost tearful pleading with him to 660 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics spare himself the villianous attempts they would make upon him. If I had understood then (as I became satisfied later) Stahlman's real business in Atlanta and Washington City, I might have feared what unprincipled men would do to de- feat, or to elect their chosen candidates. After Dr. Felton granted them permission to nominate him, I gave him the best help I could muster, but I felt more than anxious as to what might befall him. The October election opened the eyes of the tricksters. The farmers made a determined stand, and elected the governor (who was counted out) and a large number of legislature members. There were over thirty contests instituted in Geor- gia, claimants disputing for legislative seats. The decisions of the State committee on elections would tally with the same sort of committees in Washington City. The history of that period when Hon. Mr. Atkinson came in over Judge Hines, and what Hon. Allan G. Candler said of the "rape of the Democratic Party" in 1896, and what the Constitution said of "Yellowstone kit" in the governor's chair, furnished a full and complete arraignment of the Democratic party in Georgia. I am not going to reprint that "Rape Circular" in these pages, because there must be some regard to decency as well as merited exposure. Bartow county elected two People's party men to the legis- lature with more than 400 majority. Until the November election, Maddox politicians made every sort of an effort to defeat Dr. Felton. All other congressional candidates not belonging to the ring were fought. In Cobb county, where 500 majority was counted in for Atkinson, and with a concealed registration list, the farmers determined to examine the list before November. They sued out a mandamus before Judge Gober, who most obligingly (?) postponed the hearing to November 12, six days after the election would be over. Just here it is proper to say that the registration list was kept concealed, although the contest in Cobb could only be determined by comparison of the voting list with that of registration. Stanback, the tax collector, went into hiding. No subpoena would he answer. A duces tecum did not bring him, and Judge Gober 's partisanship made it impossible to obtain relief from the court. Mr. Clay said there were eight or nine hundred votes less in November, but the managers of election also gave Maddox 500 majority, and considering the poll in Cobb was small this 500 majority in Cobb for Maddox would have been a miracle in a fair election after nearly a thousand was taken off in November. Before Senator Clay died he gave me a word picture of the feuds in Marietta. He said it was a crime before God to hate My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 661 one another as the clans in his town hated each other. The story was a graphic one and doubtless not exaggerated, but if true, one-half should have been in the penitentiary and the other half in the insane asylum. I was told that in one election the ballot box counting was suspended to allow man- agers to get supper. The desperadoes placed the ballot box in the treasurer's vault and when the other man was eating supper, they locked themselves inside with a candle and stuffed the box with enough ballots to carry their men into office. These men were harmonious, so long as they fought the labor- ing and rural population. When they begun to knife each other then it was "dog eat dog," and their elections became carnivals of trickery, abuse and cheating. The resignation law required a printed list. The officials refused to print "because it was expensive." I know that the printing of 100,000 election tickets cost me $12.50 in At- lanta, twenty miles off, and this obstreperous official testified he was paid $25 to copy off the list. It was because the list could be altered and "eight or nine hundred names taken off" that the list was written and not printed. The vote in Cobb will always be within control, so long as such men are in office. In Cartersville voting lists were printed for October and November elections. No new assessment of taxes occurred be- tween the State and national election. The vote in October astounded the reigning officials so they mutilated the Novem- ber voting lists, and 300 names in the Cartersville precinct were cut off. Those lists were made up as the taxpayers paid taxes, the preceding year. From that book the qualified voters were named. Tax defaulters were turned over to the sheriff. If they paid, they could be registered, but the list must be gone over by county commissioners and verified before the Oc- tober election. This was done, and the lists prepared and were used in October. Yet in November 300 names were stricken — men who had voted in October at Cartersville and Maddox's attorney said 175 were tax defaulters. The misspelling of a name or omission of a letter disqualified a Felton voter. Men brought their tax receipts to Dr. Felton and said they had voted in October, but they were not allowed to vote for him. He encountered ruffianism at the polls, and although he had given to Bartow county the best service of more than forty years, he was browbeaten at his own precinct by the despera- does of the Maddox party. The testimony is all printed, it is here, and when he came home that night he said he would expose these election methods at every hazard. If he had to bear their insolence, their deeds should be exposed. It was a reign of terror. The tax collector admitted that he received pay after dark one Saturday night before 662 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics next Tuesday's election by interested men who paid up for defaulters to get their votes. "They paid cash until it gave out and then they paid in checks." His list for election use to be legal had to be gone over by county commissioners, verified, printed and tacked on court house wall inside of one day, Monday. The whole thing was a fraud, and he abused his authority and the commissioners were unfit for their po- sitions. Three hundred names stricken at one precinct ! The election in Rome was beyond description. It was there that Judge Maddox determined to raise his majority. He superintended the whole business. Postmaster Pepper paid out the cash, but his master or somebody who was interested in his election, had a plentiful supply within reach. A bond election was fastened on to a national election. This was a county affair, and oould have been used at State election in October, or more properly at the county election in January. The trick was so transparent that Hon. Seaborn Wright de- nounced the plot, and told them it would defeat bonds and invalidate both elections. He wrote the following to the At- lanta Constitution: HON. SEABORN WRIGHT EXPOSES FRAUD IN THE FLOYD ELECTION. The Manner in Which Dr. Felton Was Counted Out — The Guilty Ones Scored. Editor Constitution : For several years I have been a sub- ject of abuse by the politicians of my district. My crime has been that I have denounced political fraud and corruption, regardless of the party or man that perpetrated it. With the silence and seeming indifference of the Democratic press, the party, manipulated and controlled by a few men, has gone from bad to worse until its domination in Georgia is an absolute disgrace to the civilization of the State. I said during the campaign — I repeat it now — There is a Miniature Tammany Hall in every court house in Georgia. In the name of Democracy they control the people, hoisting themselves into office with no fitness of heart or brain for any trust. The infamy of the Augusta election becomes conspicuous by the daring boldness of the men who controlled it, but in a less degree frauds, destructive of the basic principles of the government in almost every county in the State are perpetrated. I have lived in Floyd county since manhood. The busi- ness men, farmers, mechanics, all the rank and file of her My IMemoirs of Georgia Politics 663 people, are honest and patrotic, and yet, with all the election machinery in the hands of a few political heelers they are as helpless as a lot of ten-year-old schoolboys. I Am No Partisan, I have largely lost faith in political platforms, because, as a rule, they are formulated by politicians who use them simply as a lever to office. T do believe with all my heart in a free ballot and fair count. Everything of any political value to the American people depends upon an absolutely pure, un- tainted election. Not then as a partisan, but simply to demonstrate what I already knew, I watched the election in Rome. I saw this : A Populist manager sworn in, and then given a seat at the back of the court house, 30 feet from the ballot boxes over which the Democratic managers alone presided and then the farce began. There were two ballot boxes, one for congressional, one for bond votes. I saw an open ticket for W. H. Felton handed the manager of the bond box. Instead of handing back to the voter and directing him to the proper box, it was quietly de- posited in the bond box. I had this vote taken out and my- self directed the voter to the proper box. I saw as reputable a gentleman as Mr. B. F. Camp deposit his ticket for Felton by mistake in the wrong box, and was refused the privilege of voting for Felton in the proper box. I saw such men as Green R. Dukes refused the privilege of voting for Felton because he was not registered. I then saw such men as John Boggs, "William O'Neal, John T. Patterson and many others vote for Maddox Without Being Registered, and with no protest from the managers. I saw dozens of negro men come to the polls to vote for Felton. I saw their votes openly purchased for Maddox with a 25 cent ticket to a barbecue just across the street from the court house. I saw the keeper of the Floyd county poorhouse bring to the polls his inmates, who had never paid a tax or had brains enough to register, and vote them for Maddox with no protest from the managers. The majority for John W. Maddox in Floyd county was 1,200, the bulk of his majority in the district. I am no Populist. I have twice refused their nomination for Congress when my election was assured, simply because I could not endorse their demands. But they are entitled, as any other party in Georgia is entitled to, an honest election. The man who denies it has 664 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics not an element of honesty or a drop of patriotic blood in him. The danger that confronts the people of Georgia from cor- rupt elections is not imaginary — it is immensely real. I pray God for a spirit of independence in Georgia that will sweep from power political mountebanks who have disgraced the State. The Constitution has begun the fight for pure elections. Will it keep it up? No spasmodic effort will accomplish the reform. The men who have controlled the machinery of the Democratic party will not readily submit to the enactment of a law that will hurl them from power. You make a big demand when you ask the average office- holder To Cut His Own Throat. Four years ago the rallying cry of the Democracy was, "Down with the infamous federal election laws!" They were repealed, but as sure as you and I live to the end of this cen- tury we will see them re-enacted with double power, if the States themselves do not purify their ballot boxes. I had rather a thousand times to see the weak and strong alike sur- rounded by federal bayonets at the polls than the weak swin- dled and defrauded by the strong of the priceless rights of freemen. I speak strongly on this subject because I feel it, and I feel it the stronger because of what has been the shameless indif- ference of the Democratic press of Georgia. Strike for an election law in Georgia that will guarantee not only a free vote, but an honest count — a law that will give to every party offering a candidate for office a manager at the polls — a law that will make every registrar ineligible to office and the list free at all times to public inspection. SEABORN WRIGHT. Rome, Ga. Congressman Maddox was there all day, and thore he counted in over 1,000 of the 1,500 majority he claimed in the seventh district. His majority in this single county was set down at 1,200. In addition to the illegal bond election he ran a barbecue close by the voting place. He placed a red ticket, value 25 cents inside the congressional ticket. That vote was paid for, and a bit of barbecue meat additional. He secured a former internal revenue official to manage the negroes with their red tickets in hand. It was in Ballew's house the meat was cut up and handed out. The official gang in Rome worked these schemes to the limit. The ''fat rabbits" fought nobly. One of them contributed $200 to the red ticket barbecue. No- body got a red ticket unless they voted for Maddox. It was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 665 a carnival of trickery, bribery and cheating all day. John Black, tax collector, helped with all his might, even prompting men to vote who were not registered, if they voted for Maddox. Jake Moore, sheriff, was active and afterwards promoted for his services to the place in the prison department by Gov. Atkin- son. He got more money and less honor out of the place than anybody in the State, when Georgia rose up and demolished the convict lease system, and he resigned to escape with his profits. He was the king bolt in Floyd county politics, under John W. Maddox. It was about the resignation that the trick was hidden and worked to the limit. Dr. Felton applied to Judge Wm. T. Newnan to know if registration could be enforced in one county and the "open and shut" voting in others. It would be a federal election and the inquiry was legitimate. Judge Newnan refused to reply. He either didn't know, or he wouldn't interrupt the plans of the political gang who secured him his life-time posi- tion. Judge Emory Speer was asked the same question and he said the registration would not figure at all, or words to that effect. Jake Moore, John Black and John Maddoy hurried to Atlanta and caucused there, came home and Mad- dox said the election should go by registration. He had a list prepared, a private list, and on election day one Hunt was its custodian, and Hunt swore he was paid for holding it by Pepper, the postmaster. One Bridges presided at the congressional box, a county school commissioner. Be- before the contest ended between Felton and Maddox, Bridges was a fugitive from justice, was pursued and overtaken at Memphis, and the county of Floyd lost a large amount of school money through Bridges. His reputation was reported to be unsavory before the election in 1894, so he was placed at the voting box in Rome to do the bidding of Maddox and Company. The law requires three managers and three clerks. Bridges was the only man that Maddox needed in the Rome court house to take in the votes for Congress. Judge Maddox was looking on when the poor house im- beciles, and those who never paid a tax, were voted solidly for himself. A poor negro named Ober voted for Felton, was refused a red ticket at the barbecue place, but he smelt liquor in the court house down in the engine room. When he was examined during the contest hearing, he said the liquor was there, but he did not vote right so he did not get it. It was Maddox liquor. The smell was so loud that others located the Maddox liquor in the engine room. As soon as he testified he was arrested, carried to Birmingham, Ala., on the charge that he "had sold a pint of liquor in Piedmont, Ala., four years before, and put in Birmingham jail." There he lay until 666 ^1y Memoirs of Georgia Politics he was called for trial and no prosecutor appeared. When the penniless negro reached Rome his family had been thrown out of their rented house and Ober told me that Maddox men told him to "leave Rome or starve!" When election returns came in, Dr. Felton had carried Bar- tow, Polk, Gordon, Haralson and Paulding, five out of thirteen counties. Murray county went to Maddox with twenty ma- jority — the difference was small in Whitfield. Dade came up with a huge Maddox vote and Cobb counted in 500 majority for him, with a concealed registration list. It was in Floyd and Cobb where registration frauds were most in evidence — 300 Felton votes were stricken off at Cartersville precinct alone and the Democratic officials in every county laid themselves out to keep their own fat places. Chairman Clay was rewarded with the United States senatorship. Jake Moore got a fat place in the prison department, and the conspirators got their promo- tions everywhere, for as Mr. Seaborn Wright said the average officeholder was working for himself in these terrible frauds. The fault lay in the cowardice of the people, who should re- member that such debauchery will finally destroy civil liberty and free institutions. The elections in Richmond county, like Rome's elections were a disgrace to the Commonwealth of Georgia. In one election, there were voted in Richmond county, thirty- five per cent, of the population. When Mr. Black rode in a carriage behind a coffin marked "Watson," on which coffin two drunk men played cards, as the procession moved in Augusta streets and where he saw the coffin burned in a wild frenzy of partisan hate, he should have known such a thing would kill itself, time enough being given. When wagon loads of negroes were driven from poll to poll by white men time and again voted as they were driven around, and paid ten cents a vote, the spectacle Avas not only disgraceful but sub- versive of everything we should hold dear in private life. From all over the State the cry of fraud was heard, after the elections of 1894. The methods used to elect Governor Atkinson that year were simply atrocious and disgraceful, and in 1896 it looked as if its brazen corruption would absolutely suffocate its own anatomy. We saw the Democratic party defeated abroad, and I verily believe the stench that it emitted in Georgia helped to make its overthrow complete at the time. Dr. Felton decided to carry the contest to Washington City. He supposed there would be some chance for a hearing there. There was absolutely none in Georgia. Those who have seen the effort to dislodge Mr. Lorimer, who was carried into the Senate by bribed legislators, so called Democrats in Illinois, My jVIemoirs of Georgia Politics 667 will conclude that Illinois had taken lessons from a State I could mention. We had difficulty in finding a lawyer to conduct for us the contest. They were afraid of political desperadoes clothed Avith judicial authority. I found myself very soon in the thick of the fight. The story is too long to detail in these pages, but I will set down a violent scene which occurred in Rome when Judge Branham attempted to attack Hon. Seaborn Wright, who was sitting very near me at the time. Mr. Wright had asked Judge Branham in my presence if he might be exam- ined as a witness that day, etc, having been unavoidably ab- sent when his presence was expected by us. Judge Branham answered wrathfully he "would not." I then told Mr. Wright that we would have ten days of rebuttal testimony, and he could then be heard. Mr. Wright remained in the court room, to my great relief. As soon as a witness was sworn Branham would interro- gate him as to Mr. Wright's character, questions entirely un- called for and unprovoked by Mr. Wright, who was a quiet listener. The questions were in a manner insulting, as well as rude. Finally Mr. Wright rose and asked the justice presiding to eive 1iim liberty to reply to these attacks on his character and integrity. Immediately Judge Branham cried out ! "You, Sv^aborn Wright, came here today to consume our time and irnerrupt our proceedings." Mr. Wright: "I pronounce that statement to be false." Judge Branham: "I pronounce you a liar. Seaborn Wright," and although fifteen or twenty feet distant he rushed between .ludge Maddox and his witness in front of the judge's stand, and dashed up to Mr. Wright shrieking: "I'll slap your face, Seaborn Wright ! ' ' Instanter, Mr. Wright placed a resounding whack on Judge Branham 's face, that was heard all over the room. The gentle justice looked as if he had been scared out of a month's growth — and Judge Maddox sputtered and glowered at Mr. Wright, as he led his counsel to his chair. Both were furious, but the man who forced the difficulty was neither rebuked or fined. At the next hearing Judge Maddox was quite ready to make a scene, by requiring me to deliver a copy of the Rome Tribune (newspaper) which I had borrowed from the editor that morning. The justice thought the paper should be given to Mr. Mad- dox. Our Mr. Davis said: "I'd like to see you make Mrs. Felton give it up." At which everybody laughed but the wrathful judge and his little justice. I made up my mind to wear out my silk umbrella on who- ever attempted to relieve me of the paper, and I am inclined 668 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics to think I should easily have found a reason for Judge Mad- dox's rudeness, where poor Ober also found something: "Down in the engine room." On the same day that Mr. Wright felt obliged to rebuke Judge Branham's violence, Dr. Felton was attending a contest hearing in Cartersville. One of our witnesses was set upon by a Maddox attorney with a knife and abusive threats. It was a reign of terror — where political judges and solicitors went in, from stem to stern, to browbeat and cower our witnesses. The Rome Tribune (newspaper) loaned to me, had a lengthy editorial on the foul election scenes in the city of Rome, and a call for cleaner methods and a reformed registration system. The articles were not written to aid us in the contest, but simply to call public attention to the disreputable methods universally employed at polling places in Rome. It spoke loudly for the patience or apathy of the Romans, who could not command decent observance of law and order during elec- tion times. I will also introduce an article written by Dr. Felton on the same subject : THE TRUE FACTS. Dr. Felton Tells Why He Stopped Proceedings — Mr. Fite, He Says, Went there for a Row and Tried to Raise One. Dr. Felton furnished the Atlanta Constitution of Sunday last the following article : I notice in today's paper a dispatch from Cartersville in which it is stated I stopped proceedings in the contest case between myself and Judge Maddox, affecting a seat in the fifty-fourth congress, because Mr. Fite occupied too much time in the cross-examination of my witnesses. Allow me to present the facts to your readers and to your- self, without comment. On Friday, January 25th, we met in Cartersville, as the law directs, to examine witnesses and record their testimony. Mr. Joel Branham and A. W. Fite, solicitor-general for the judicial circuit in which Bartow county is placed, appeared as the representatives of Judge Maddox. About twenty witnesses, perhaps more, were present. These attorneys fought everything that was presented. Irrelevant questions, technical quibbles, and unreasonable delay were forced upon the court. When night came, but one witness was cross-examined, and a mass of typewriting was made to cover nothing material to the case, but these objections, etc., as before stated. I myself heard A. W. Fite declare he would consume the entire forty days, in which I am allowed to take testimony, in My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 669 Bartow county unless he could ask all the questions he wished to ask. On Saturday morning we met again. My son and myself were sitting by the table when A. W. Fite came in, accom- panied by certain persons. He said he had understood there was to be a cutting and shooting scrape that morning. He further said he was pre- pared. . Approaching the table he said: "I will not strike an old man in his dotage, but he has a son present, twenty-five years old, and I can whip Felton or any of his friends." I laid my hand on my son, who had brought his hand down heavily on the table when Fite said: "What did you do that for, you coward?" The justice, Mr. R. B. Gaines, presiding officer in the pro- ceedings, called for the sheriff to sit in the court and preserve order during all the sessions. On Thursday, when we met again, this man Fite consumed the entire forenoon in the cross-examination of a single wit- ness. He was so disorderly that the court fined him and collected the fine on the spot. Seeing the impossibility of continuing the proceedings with such threats of violence, and the imminent danger of blood- shed if not assassination, I dismissed the court and took down the testimony of the witnesses there assembled, whose names had been given to Judge Maddox, or his representatives, as the law directs. This unnecessary delay of proceedings on the part of A. W. Fite, and his endeavor to provoke a personal conflict be- tween my son and himself, was apparent to every person present. My son was a witness, regularly subpoenaed, and had given A. W. Fite no provocation for this conduct in the court-room. These witnesses were detained in Cartersville, from all parts of the county, at heavy expense to me, the typewriter paid by myself, also the justice and the sheriff, with all the costs of the court. Therefore I dismissed the court for the reasons aforesaid, and will proceed to lay the facts before the fifty- fourth congress when it assembles. This A. W. Fite is the solicitor-general of the district in which I live, and it is his sworn duty to protect the lives and property of all persons in the county under forms of law. He attacked a witness in the court, with an epithet which was intended to provoke violence, for which he declared himself fully prepared. Very respectfully, W. H. FELTON. p s — The privilege of cross-examination will be ultimately 670 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics granted to Judge Maddox, and the dismissal of Fite applies to no other county but Bartow. W. H. F. Cartersville, Ga., February 2, 1895. As I said before, the Georgia case was not brought to a final hearing until April, 1896. In the summer of 1895 I was called to Washington several times to explain the testimony to General Dudley, who conducted our case. All that time Judge Maddox was on the ground, at work on that elections committee. I had a seat in General Dudley's library — or in the typewriter's room — where several ladies were employed. I could fill whole chapters with General Dud- ley's astonishment, that judicial officers were permitted to conduct such cases and browbeat witnesses in boss-ridden Georgia. He said it would be impossible to accept the results of the election with a fair committee. The bond election would invalidate the election in Floyd, with red tickets, as bribes to vote for Maddox. McCrary on Elections, the standard work, said all the counties must be uniform in their methods — this was a "mandatory statute," etc. When the hearing came on. General Dudley gave me a seat at his right hand. General Dudley explained the election methods in an hour. Then Branham, then Fite, in an hour and a half. General Dudley had concluding half hour. Solicitor Fite produced what purported to be an affidavit signed by Squire Gaines, accusing me of interlining his report with statements that were not true — that we adjourned hear- ings without cause, and both he and Branham declared me to be the author of the Sam Holt circular. Judge Branham had but little to say of Floyd county, but humped himself on Pauld- ing and Haralson. Cobb was passed over with one of his peculiar smiles. When General Dudley arose he said: "I have been con- nected with many election contests. I have never seen a case so weak in all my experience, where men have felt obliged to attack contestant's wife to bolster up their cause. I do not think that I or any other gentleman could be forced to do such a thing. Therefore I ask to be allowed to give Mrs. Felton five minutes of my time to reply to these outrageous assaults upon her reputation." I said: "You have been told that I falsified Esquire Gaines' certificate. I wrote out his statement at his request — he read it time and again, and signed it without an objection. (As soon as we could reach him by telegram, he promptly repudiated the whole thing as a slander. He sent his repudiation to the committee on elections immediately, but it was too late). I said neither myself or any of my family had anything to do in writing or printing the Sam Holt circular. Mr. Carter was My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 671 subpoenaed by Judge Maddox, at Cedartown, in Polk county. Carter appeared and Judge Maddox never called him at all. Carter was elected sheriff in 1894, and Judge Janes dis- possessed him." Just then Charley Bartlett sprung up to say, "The supreme court sustained the judge." I answered, "The supreme court said it had no jurisdiction — it was a political, not a judicial decision." I then told how Solicitor Fite made efforts to provoke a fight with my son in the court house — just to in- furiate his aged father. I had only time to say how Judge Branham fared for assaulting Mr. Wright, another witness, when my five minutes were up. Dr. Felton sat just in my rear and General Dudley took the time to say to us that Mr. Bartlett had evidently played the part of attorney for Mad- dox — and so far as I can judge, he had been busy from the date of his appointment on the elections committee, until this hearing was had. As I said in my preface to this book, small men placed in high positions can be alike dangerous and power- ful. More than two years after Mr. Bartlett used his committee to help Judge Maddox and to approve and condone the mis- erable frauds in Georgia elections (because he was the spokes- man for the committee at the hearing) ; Mr. E. B. Stahlman made an outrageous attack on me in his paper, the Nashville Banner. He was employed in Washington City for a number of years to lobby the Publishing House claims, by which he captured more than one-third of the claim to himself and to pass that claim he had use for all the votes in the house and senate that he could control. I investigated the assault of Stahlman, and found it was Judge Maddox, who had also assaulted my reputation before the house of representatives in a speech. I addressed a letter to Judge Maddox, sent it under cover to Congressman Fleming, (one of the best mem- bers of congress Georgia ever had) and Mr. Fleming wrote me a line to say he had delivered it per request. I politely asked Judge Maddox to reply and tell me if he had been correctly reported. Not a line did he send — and a respectable gentleman living in Rome afterwards said to me, "Pooh, Maddox couldn't reply!" A copy of the Congressional Record was applied for and there I found what Maddox said. He had only to walk across a corridor in the capitol, look over the expenses sworn to by authorized persons — all paid before the hearing except the lawyers, who conducted the case for Felton against Maddox, to know that he was uttering a base falsehood when he said Dr. Felton 's "wife got nearly all of $2,000 allowed the con- testant. ' ' There was no possible excuse for that brassy, dead- 672 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics eyed lie in that connection. He had himself been applying for more than an extra thousand, as his outlay and expenses in same contest, a fact that Hon. J. Watt Harris, of our county, made plain before a primary election in the Seventh district! I have never knovsrn how he divided with his "pals" in the contest, and while he denied any knowledge of his claim for extra pay — and while I expect there were many times when he was unable to know what he was doing or what was going on in congress, I concluded that Mr. Stahlman might also decide to graft the U. S. treasury again to help his friend, Maddox. With Dr. Felton's open letter, I bid Mr. Maddox adieu : Near Cartersville, Ga., July 11, 1898. To the Editor of The Journal : On June 20th Hon. John W. Maddox, from his place in the house of representatives, dis- cussing the allowance made to contestants and contestees, took occasion to say concerning the contest between himself and myself, before the fifty-fourth congress, that it would never have occurred ' ' except for the payment of $2,000 in expenses. ' ' In the same connection he declared that my wife "received the most of the fee." Evidently he was seeking to leave the im- pression that I instituted the contest to secure only the most of the $2,000 into my own hands, indirectly, and directly into the hands of my wife. It will be noticed that he is opposed to paying anything to contestants, so that when a member is counted in from the South by the most glaring frauds and corruption no rebuke to the wrong-doing would be permitted unless the defeated and honest candidate could pay all the expenses of such contests out of his own pocket, without any hope of reimbursement. That plan would evidently suit the corruptionists, and was worthy of the brain that evolved it. Allow me to copy the words as used by Judge Maddox from the Congressional Record, June 20, 1898, page 6926, No. 144: "Mr. Maddox — Mr. Chairman, I should like to ask the chair- man of the committee why it is that this bill carries appropria- tions for contestants in the fifty-fifth congress and not in the fifty-fourth. There are some 45 cases in the fifty-fourth con- gress. "Mr. Cannon — The contestants in the fifty-fourth congress were appropriated for during the fifty-fourth congress. "Mr. Maddox — There is a bill pending in this house to pay contestants in the fifty-fourth congress, of which I am one. "Mr. Cannon — That is in cases in excess of $2,000. "Mr. Maddox — And this is in excess of $2,000. "Mr. Cannon — Oh, no. "Mr. Maddox — Then I beg the gentleman's pardon. But I want to say this, that I am opposed to the payment of a dollay My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 673 over the $2,000 allowed by law. If I had it in my power we would not pay a cent for the contestants, for I stand here to- day as one of the victims who would never have had a contest except for the payment of $2,000 for expenses. It happened in my case that the wife of the contestant was one of the at- torneys that received the most of the fee. (Laughter.) Now, I say that I am opposed wholly to this business, and if we would wipe it off the statute books there would not be one- quarter as many contestants for seats in this house. I would amend it so as to pay only the party who got his case, as it is in all other courts. If this bill provides for the paying of a contestant $2,000 allowed by law, then I have nothing to say. "Mr. Cannon— That is all. ' ' Mr. Maddox — But if it went beyond that I did desire to say something." It was an unprincipled attack, to be made on a lady before that body — with no notice to her or to myself of such action. He took opportunity to vent his spite before the elections com- mittee in Washington City, in my presence, but no gentleman would have occupied the elevation of a seat in congress to utter this sneering statement, namely, that my wife "received the most of the fee," unless he knew it to be a fact beyond question. I was required to lay a bill for expenses before con- gress with the evidence, as collected, and paid for at the time. My attorneys here and in Washington corresponded as to the division of the $2,000 after all such expenses were paid. I had to present vouchers for the amounts that I paid out before a hearing could be had, and those expenses were filed in the house of representatives with the clerk, the official holding over from the fifty-third congress, that expired on March 4, 1895. I paid out in Bartow county for witnesses and officers of the court, service of subpoenas and other items with vouchers $ 98 . 55 In Cobb county for same work with vouchers 54 . 80 In Floyd county for same work with vouchers 50.00 In Polk county for same work with vouchers 12.22 For stenographers — expenses and per diem, with vouchers 130 . 86 For expressage of books and papers 5.95 For telegrams, with vouchers attached ' 15 . 62 For printing bills, with vouchers attached 144.50 Total $512.50 When the contest was over, Messrs. Dudley & Michener, our Washington attorneys, were paid the $2,000, with a "power of attorney" signed by myself. They paid themselves $1,000 and 674 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics returned a check of $1,000 to me to reimburse myself for the money expended in actual cash and all other accounts that were paid out between August, 1895, and April, 1896, when the case was decided in favor of Judge Maddox. In the meantime, between May 1, 1895, and April 6, 1896, my wife had been called to Washington four times to review the testimony and the brief and reply brief, and get the papers bearing on the local conditions of the case in proper shape. Mr. John K. Davis felt that he had done all he felt obliged to do when the testimony was taken, and he declined to go or to make a brief of the work down here. He and ]\Ir. Foster, of Marietta, made an agreement between themselves that the latter was to receive for the work in Cobb one-fourth of the amount received by Mr. Davis, which was agreeable to me. In this extremity the Washington attorneys said they must consult with my wife, as she appeared to be able to give them the data they heeded and which they were obliged to have at the different times she was sent for, as only Mr. Poster had presented a brief with the salient points in the single county of Cobb and he was not familiar with or expected to know anything of the situation in any of the other counties of the district. My wife spent $178.50 in the four trips, ranging from a few days up to more than a week at other times. She was only allowed $146.10 for these necessary expenses, and the balance was paid over to the local attorneys at home. I hold a receipt from Col. John K. Davis, of Cedartown, for $256, dated July 28, 1896, "in full for legal services, up to date in Felton and Maddox contest." I hold a receipt also from Col. J. Z. Foster, of Marietta, for $85.50, "in full for legal services >j up to date in Felton and Maddox contest, dated July 17, |i 1896." A letter from Messrs. Dudley & Michener received today says: "You can say (in reply to Maddox) that my firm was paid $1,000, and that the other half did not reimburse your husband for the amount expended in the prosecution of his contest by several dollars." Allow me to summarize, for I am particular to make the statement clear, because my wife's integrity has been thus assailed in the congress of the United States by the de facto representative from the Seventh Congressional district. Expenses in collecting the testimony. Math vouchers attached '. $ 512.50 Paid to attorneys, Dudley & Michener 1,000.00 Paid to attorney, John K. Davis 256.00 Paid to attorney, Jos. Z. Foster 85.40 Total $1,853.90 Mrs. Felton 's hotel expenses, railroad fare, sleeping cars, street car fare and meals en route 146.1 $2,000.00 My Memoirs op Georgia Politics 675 Am I not authorized to brand this man Maddox as an un- principled and malicious liar when he could stand in his place as the representative from this district and declare that this noble, true-hearted woman had received the "most of the fee?" Am I not authorized to say that he was the dirty tool of a dirty master, when he was quoted in the Nashville Banner's correspondence from Washington as authority for the state- ment that "Mrs. Felton had looted the United States treasury of $2,000, which is 40 per cent, of a congressman's salary?" The Banner's correspondent was anxious to strike her a blow because she ventilated the Methodist war claim scandal in the Atlanta Journal and the Washington Post, and placed by letter certain facts in the hands of Senator Lodge, who shortly afterwards moved for an investigation. But why should Congressman Maddox do dirty work for Major Stahlman's paper? Did the lobbyist pass through the Seventh district going and coming when he appeared in At- lanta to renominate a congressman shortly after the war claim appropriation passed, with his pockets strutted out with $100,- 800 that he never could have obtained in the senate if he had not uttered falsehoods that puts Ananias to the blush? I am told he has been pressing this war claim since 1895 with a contract for 35 per cent, in his pocket. Perhaps he is like the railroad magnate who was reported to the house in the year 1878 — 20 years ago — when the Thurman Pacific fund- ing bill was on its passage in that body. Hon. S. S. Cox declared that the magnate had said he actually "found it easier and cheaper to elect his men at home than to buy them in Washington." I can now see why I would not be accept- able to Major Stahlman, when my contest case was on in Washington in 1896, and his war claim went through without a hitch. The late municipal elections in Marietta and Cartersville, where Democrats openly bribed the voters without shame, repeated votes brazenly and counted out ad libitum all go to show that I had a warrant for such a contest in 1894. In Rome the tax-payers actually were stampeded in the superior court less than a year ago and were unable to convict the politician- preacher. Bridges, or recover a dollar of that stolen school money. I have been told that Mr. Bridges dared the "gang" to allow him to be sentenced" to the penitentiary. He "could and would explain where and when that money went in elec- tions." I felt the weight of Preacher Bridges' power and au- thority in 1894, when he was stationed alone at Judge Mad- dox 's ballot box in Rome, and received or flung out just such votes as were or were not desired. Judge Maddox had a 676 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics private registration list to guide Preacher Bridges in the hands of one Hunt, who testified on oath that the list was a private one, that he was never sworn as a manager or clerk, and he also was paid for his day's work by Judge Maddox's friends. I did the State a patriotic service in that contest and have no regrets to offer. I must take this occasion to say, however, that Judge Maddox, and all of his pimps, may now understand that an end has come to these base assaults on my wife. Perhaps the "Chief of the Cherokees" was able to plead exemption from arrest when a member of the legislature, but Congressman Maddox will find it both healthy and profitable to use different language hereafter before the house of repre- sentatives. I desire to say, furthermore, that lying is not unfamiliar to his character in connection with matters before that body. Some time in March a bill was introduced in the present congress to repay to contestants and contestees certain amounts alleged to have been spent in the fifty-fourth congress over and above the $2,000 allowed by law. It was introduced by a Mr. Johnson, of Indiana, and carried $50,000 or $60,000, as I now recollect. As soon as it was introduced and printed, a copy was sent to me, and to my astonishment I was set down as claiming $89, while Judge Maddox claimed $1,059.17 as his part. I repudiated the scheme by return mail, but not a sound was heard from John W. Maddox until Hon. J. W. Harris exposed the grab just before the primary election in June. Then he became vociferous in his dislike of the bill, and pleaded the "baby act," although he must unquestionably have heard of a bill that so vitally concerned himself, when that bill had to be read before him, then printed and laid on his own desk, and all the other desks, to be examined by every member in that body. If he is so ignorant that he is pushed along that way in spite of himself, he is too manifestly ignor- ant to occupy the seat. But if he calculated to get that bill passed without allowing his constituents, to know of it until he had added another thousand to his $5,000 salary and the $1,200 that he claims for clerk hire, he is just the man I have taken him to be in his conduct of congressional business. It was simply impossible that any member of that body should be claiming $1,059.17 from congress and himself un- aware of the fact for two months and over. Suppose he tells the people of Georgia what he spent that money for and shows them where it and the $2,000 went and the receipts for it, which would be evidently proper and fair since he asserts that my wife "received the most of the fee?" If he does such a thing of his own accord, all well and good, but if he is forced to appear and make his allegation good, or other- My Memoirs of Georgia Poutics wise suffer in more ways than one, then he may have to do something besides put in a claim for this money, and after- wards deny having done so. I'll warrant he never told Mr. Johnson, of Indiana, as much. General Grosvenor writes to my wife by today's mail and says, "nobody noticed the attack at the time, and so far as I know nobody has noticed it since." I can readily under- stand how such a scurvy politician could go unnoticed in that body; but it happens, once in awhile, that you feel obliged to kick a scurvy dog out of doors when he assaults you at home, with intent to bite. Judge Maddox has but little to lose in reputation by this exposure, because he was a disgrace to him- self and his position in the Georgia legislature, and a dis- grace to the bench, when he could sentence a poor negro to a year in the penitentiary or a thousand dollars fine and at the same term of court allow certain white men in Rome to go free with a nominal fine, after they pleaded guilty to gambling (and one to keeping a gambling house), a far deeper crime than that charged on the negro. Superior court records in Rome will give you the details. If he has ever done any- thing in this congress save to speak against war, and then vote for war, also to get a claim bill introduced to pay himself over $1,000 and then deny it, I have not heard of it, at home or abroad. He was evidently **on the make." It speaks loudly for the scarcity of candidates in the Democratic party of this district that it cannot muster up either a gentleman or a man of any ability to count in as the representative of the people of this district in congress. I know of no gentle- man in the Seventh district who would not have placed a higher estimate on his representative position than to have made this ignoble statement concerning my wife without furn- ishing the proof before the house of representatives. It re- quired a dirty blackguard to supplement the attack in Stahl- man's paper, and the blackguard was found ready to exploit his qualifications according to directions. Respectfully, WILLIAM H. FELTON. Closing Words After my contract was signed with the publishers I continued to send in chapter after chapter as I finished them. Every word in this book was written by my own fingers, after I had passed my seventy-fifth birthday. Not a typewritten line and not a page of copyist work was forwarded . The printers set up the galleys and their forms from my individual handwriting. But my old fashioned pen work spread over an astonishing amount of space, and I was obliged to be reminded that I had more copy than this book could possibly hold. So I have been compelled to omit an article on "Convict Leasing," also one on the "Leasing of the W. & A. Road," and one on "Tem- perance." I had written a stirring chapter on Dr. Felton's efforts for higher education in Georgia, which embraces the story of his last speech and last appearance in the House of Representatives when a most remarkable demonstration of his oratorical powers in an impromptu address before a joint session of both Houses was given. It was his last appearance in Atlanta, and it was the concensus of public opinion that his speech saved the day for the University of Georgia. He was obliged to sit because his limbs trembled, but the ancient fire of magnetic eloquence was evident. Hon, N. J. Hammond had made a long and exhaustive argument as chairman of the Board of Trustees, and it was a hard place to fill to come after a carefully prepared speaker before such an audience and without a single note or memorandum as preparation. But the very rafters trembled under the tumultuous cheering of the people who packed the building until standing room was in demand. It was always a sweet memory with this aged speak- er, who was ever most loyal to his beloved Alma-Mater, to remember his triumph on that occasion. But it was left to Gov. Allen Candler to rebuke this venerable trustee by giving the trusteeship directly afterwards to Judge Gober, of Marieta. The students held a mass meeting of indignation and I hold a copy of the fiery resolutions. Dr. My Memoirs of Georgia Politics 679 Felton was not disturbed, but I still resent the littleness and excessive partisanship of the removal. I have also in manuscript a history of the second Atkinson campaign, where Hon. Seaborn Wright bore aloft so bravely the prohibition flag of an earnest constituency. The story of the Rape Circular, where black rapists were encouraged to expect a pardon from Democratic governors after conviction and sentence to chain-gangs should be told. To that com- plexion had it come in old boss-ridden Georgia. It is nothing more than fair to quote right here Gov. Allen Candler's arraign- ment of his own party, because his wail was only the shrewd cry of ''Stop, thief" used for political effect. "Without any solicitation on my part, I find myself a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Georgia. The men who are behind the movement are not the professional politicians, 'the men who control,' but the rank and file of our party, the great middle class who pay the taxes and bear the burdens of government. I have never seen such an uprising of the common people in my life. "It is a rebellion against the men and their methods who ravished the Democratic party in 1894 and have dominated it ever since, the men who, by methods peculiar to themselves, deprived General Evans of the nomina- tion after he had fairly won it. "I was against them and their methods then, and they are against me now. I, therefore, feel at liberty to call on those who stood with me by General Evans in the contest to stand by me now. We fought them in the same phalanx for pure Democracy and clean methods with General Evans as our leader. Now that the same flag has been put into my hand and I am battling as he did for the same principles, I invoke that support for myself that we all gave the general at that time. Then by political trickery we lost, now by united action and honest methods we will win. We are right and the people are with us. "Many who were with the tricksters and traders then, disgusted with their methods are vrith us now. Let us, therefore, be vigilant and active and we vrill in October bury them and their nefarious methods so deep that the hands of resourrection will never reach them. Sincerely yours, ALLEN D. CANDLER. I have also in manuscript the attack made by Dr. Haygood (afterwards bishop) on Dr. Felton, and the use made of his words at the close of that Atkinson campaign by Hon. N. J. Hammond, in which the latter also made free use of my name and temperance articles, on the night before the October elec- <^J 680 My Memoirs of Georgia Politics tion in 1896. This will naturally come in my own recollections to be compiled and published before long. With the Rape Circular and the complaints urged in this Candler letter, it had to be an extraordinary endeavor when I was made the text and target of a political speech before a yelling mob of poli- ticians in the city of Atlanta. The Constitution's editorial on "Yellowstone Kit in Georgia Politics" deserves attention, and Col. Reuben Arnold's open letter of October 15, 1878, which appeared in the Atlanta Constitution when he gave publicity to Col. Hammond's politics when he salary-grabbed under Bullock and "subsequently denied his Lord and Master." I am regretful that space has thus failed me in this Book of Memoirs, but while time is fleeting and my physical strength somewhat abated, I expect Deo Volens to complete and print another volume of wider scope, thus bringing the story nearer to the present stirring scenes in Georgia politics. I also thank you, dear reader, for your kind attention. MRS. W. H. FELTON. Cartersville, Ga., July 20, 1911. f LEJa'31 H 1 c; ^ -^ Q f tl •^ <^ ^ '••' I 0^ ,0^ ^ ^^ APR 79 Wgf^ N. MANCHESTERr" " 0^ o V^ %v^' _^<^^ ^ o « o , ^