Sharp County record., 1901-10-18

sessment, would naturally have upon
the minds of the new board, just COM
ing in, when he appears before them
and urges a lower assessment. But |
do not believe that any
man has the right to use the
standing which the people have given
him by electing him to high Office,
to use that influence against the in
terest of the people and to his own
advancement.
From 1861 to 1865 this country
passed through a terrible ordeal the
miseries, the sorrows and the suffer
ings of which will never be forgotten.
Hundreds of thousands of lives were
lost, and untold millions OF treasure
expended. Through this country our
| homes were laid waste, and the land
was made desolate. Terrible as was
our experience then, it was succeeded
| by one almost as bitter, in fact, in
some respects more bitter. IN one
case, while we suffered outrage and
wrong, we had guns in our hands and
could in some measure redress the
| IL.
erless, we were compelled to submit
to wrongs, the memory of which will
last as long as the lives of those who
| suffered them. No purer patriot, no
| clearer-headed man, and no more thor
| ough Democrat ever lived than Hon.
| (Ja;e S. Black, of Pennsylvania. De-
| scriptive of a small part of what was
done in this country at that time, |
| Rad a paragraph from a paper by
| that great Democrat:
hThe Great Fraud. PIP. 916S17.
"The depredations they (the carpet
| baggers) committed were frightful.
They appropriated on one pretense or
| another, whatever they could lay their
hands on, pledged to themselves the
| credit of the state for uncounted mil
lions more. The public securities ran
down to half price, and still they put
their fraudulent bonds on the market
and sold them for what they would
fetch. The owners of the best real
| estate in town and country were ut
| terly impoverished, because the bur-
| dens upon it were heavier than the
rents would discharge. During the
| last ten years the city of New Or
| leans paid in the form of direct taxes
| more than the estimated value Of all
| the property in her limits, and still
has debt of equal amount unpatd. 1t
is not likely that other parts of the
state suffered less. The extent of
their spoliations can scarcely be cal
culated, but the testimony of the car
pet-baggers themselves against one
! another, the reports of committees
sent by congress to investigate the
| subject, other information from
sources entirely authentic, make it
safe to say that a general confagra-
ton, sweeping over all the state from
one end to the other, and destroying
| every building and every article OF
| personal property would have been a
visitation of mercy in comparison to
the curse of such government. This
may seem at first blush like gross
| exaggeration because it was worse
| than anything that misrule ever did
| before.
'"The greediest of Roman proconsuls
| left something to the provinces they
| wasted; the Norman did not strip the
| Saxon quite to the skin; the Puritans
| under Cromwell did not utterly desc
| late Ireland. Their rapacity was con-
| fined to the visible things, which they
| could presently handle and use. They
could not take what did not exist, but
the American carpetbagger has an in
| vention unknown to these old-faSh-
ioned robbers, which increases his
| stealing power as much as the steam
engine adds to the mechanical force
| of mere natural muscles. He makes
| negotiable bonds of the state, signs
and seals them according to the forms
| of law sells them, converts the pro-
ceeds to his own use, and then defes
Justice to go behind the returns
By this device his felonious fingers
are made long enough to reach into
the pockets of posterity; he lays his
lien on property yet uncreated he
| anticipates the labor of coming ages,
and appropriates the fruits of it in ad.
| vance; he coins the industry of future
generations into cash, and snatches the
inheritance from children whose ia
| thers are unborn"
This stupendous and thoroughly or
ganized system of plunder, so vividly
described by Judge Black, still hangs
like a nightmare now over cities,
| towns, counties and states in the
southern states. Many of these bonds
were so shrewdly devised that there
is no escape from the clutches of the
law. Fortunately for us here in Ar
kansas, some of these bonds were not
made according to the forms of law"
| and were declared fraudulent and to
have no binding force whatever, and
the people of the state, to protect
themselves, amended the constitution
so as to prevent their payment abso
lutely. But certain bank in New
York-the Hudson Bank-held certain
of these fraudulent bonds, having
come into possession of them thirty
years ago, and within the last year
| or two seem to have concluded that
they could collect them. An ex-gov-
| ernor, with sufficient influence to re-
| duce his own assessment of the prop
| erty of a railroad by million and
1 Ill b. ha