Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1881-01-08
TENNEssEE.s DEBT.
Col. McCIure'S Views ON that I'm
pOrtant SubjecG-HaWkinS' Prob
able Course.
McCIure's Nashville letter to the PhiIadeI-
phia Times

able Course.
McCIure's Nashville letter to the PhiIadeI-
phia Times.
Tennessee, like Virginia, has
been cut loose from the sanctity of
public credit, and there is more
danger of absolute Reputation ulti-
mately than most of the debtors and
creditors apprehend. Every at
tempt to settle a public debt issue
by appeal to the people results in
Generalization and endangers the
overthrow of honesty. 1t tempts
the demagOgue to appeal to the
cupidity of the taxpayer, and what
begins at adjustment follows with
readjustment and ends inca general
indifference to public credit, if not
in square Reputation. 1t is so in
Virginia; it is so in Tennessee; it is
so in Louisiana, and it was so in
Georgia. The political distinction
of high-tax and loW-tax in Tennes-
see is an indefinite one, but so far as
drawn lines are visiblethe high-tax
party propose to pay sixty per cent.
of the existing debt in six lter cent.
bonds. while the low-tax party pro-
pose to pay fifty per cent. in four
per cent. bonds. There are middle
men on both sides, but the issue is
defined as / state it. When the war
began Tennessee owed some twenty
millions, of which about sixteen
millions was for railroads which
were solvent and paid their inter-
est, leaving about four millions as
the actual debt of the state. But
reconstruction brought to Tennes-
see, as it did to other rebelIious
states, an utterly reckless and prOfli-
gate state rule. The eIractic and
desperate BroWnlow made himself
governor by union bayonets, had a
general legislative ticket voted for
where polls could be opened, and
thus made up a legislature cOm-
posed of some honest union men,
some skulkers from both armies,
and an assortment Ofnegroes- Many
of them were declared elected from
counties in which they did not re-
ceive a single. vote, and where there
was no pretense of an election but
BrOWnlOW wanted govern ment
and he thus made it. In 1869, after
two years of BrownlOw's highly
original illustration of popular gov
ernment, he was reelected, as he
disfranchised all who had ever aid
ed rebellion and appointed his own
election officers. He then elected
himself to the senate, leaving De-
witt G. Senter, the lieutenant-guV-
ernor. in the executive chair. Gov.
Senter saw that BrownloW rule
could not last, as it had given birth
to the kuklux and general inse-
curity to both person and property,
and he began to conserve republi-
can authority. He was denounced
by BrownlOW and his reckless fol-
lowers for his hesitation, and they
nominated Gen, Stokes to succeed
him; but Senter had learned Brown
lows ways of carrying elections,
and he took the field against Stokes,
his own election officers,
and made a regulation Brownlow
majority against the BrownlOw
party. Thus the rule of the a0ven-
turer and jobber was overthrown in
1870; but meantime the BrowniOW
had increased the
debt nearly thirty millions, making
an aggregate of nearly fifty millions,
with less than three hundred mill
ious of taxable property in the en-
tire state. The taxes were largely
increased, and the available re-
sources of the state were expended,
leaving Tennessee with mountain
of debt and generally impoverished.
In 1873 the first practical effort was
made to adjust the debt. The
Brownlow government, after more
than doubling the debt with little
compensation to the state, by the
issue of bonds to speculative rail-
road combinations, passed a law au-
thorizing railway companies to pay
their debt to the state in any of the
state bonds. Some of the bonds
were worth only nominal rates in