The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-05-22
Alpha and Omega OF That
Contempt Case.
CLASH OF KEEN WITS
The Lawyers Purge Themselves by
PiIinq Peion on 0ssa and Leave
the Supreme Court MarVeII-
ing. Incident of Recon-
struCtiOn Days
BY II. l.. GRAY.


Reference having been made in sew
eral instances in the hearing and re-
ports of the contempt proceedings
against the Lumberton bar to the fa-
nous case of Elk Parte Moore, as q
result of which a large portion of the
bar of North Carolina was for a time
debarred from practice, L have
thought that at this day, thirty-five
years after the stirring events that
gave rise to that proceeding, a resume
of the case and the pleadings and of
the events that led thereto, might be
of general interest.
In the reconstruction year of 1868,
the members of the Supreme Court
were Chief Justice Richmond M.
Pearson and Associate Justices Will
liam II. Battle and Edwin G. Reade--
Chief Justice Pearson and Associate
Justice Reade Republicans. The cam
paign of that year, while Republican
success was a foregone copclusion,
was one of the bitterest in the history
of the State. The worst element of
the Commonwealth, that had been held
under before and during the war, were
now joined in battle array with the
emancipated negroes and the more
dangerous carpet-baggers in poll
teal combination that was at the time
invincible. With the novel taste of
power in their mouths, this element
went easily to eXceSses of all kinds.
The leaders were for the most part
as ignorant and vicious as the rank
and file of the dominant party, and the
few able and honest men who We're in
that utilization were compelled to pan
der in a greater or less degree to the
passions and prejudices of the times.
for their very political existence.
Drunk with success, maddened with
the realization of their wild dreams
of elevation over their former mas
ters, greedy of booty, eager as the
proletariat ever is for a forced recog-
milton of an equality that he knows he
does not possess, this element COM
menced the carnival of fraud and
crime and the career of slander and
insult which planted in the body of
the reconstruction party the cancer OF
death even in the hour of its birth.
AT Raleigh the STANDARD" the
paper which had been edited by Gov
ernor Holden, was then in the charge
of a Yankee negrophile by the name Of
Paige-a man of neither education
nor morals but possessing bitter and
unclean pen which admirably fitted
him for the position he held. During
the campaign in 1868 there appeared
in the Standard an article addressed
to the recently emancipated negroes
which is entitled to take front rank
in the long list of infamies which the
State was called upon to endure as the
result of the war. Calling upon the
negroes to demand social and political
equality it advised them in default to
take to the torch or the sword; charg-
ing miscegenation between white men
and negro women it advised negro
men to retaliate by taking liberties
with the wives, sisters and daughters {
of their white neighbors.
The spirit of the South was never
better illustrated than by the fact
that, having penned his article, MIR.
Paige became at once q, hasty bird of
passage. SO far as is known the
magnet of his fears thenceforward
kept him securely anchored far north
of the Mason and Dixon Line; so that
his name fingers today only in some
of the strenuous expressions of what
Joe Turner called his r"old editorial"
and in the memory of our older citi-
zenship as one of the more fIagrant
incidents of political nightmare that
continued for a decade. That this Mr..
Paige should have been thus eliminat-
ed at time when those OF his kidney
were in complete control of the gov
ernment and upheld by the bayonets
of hostile soldiery is but another
evidence of the unequalled quality OF
virtue of a people, who, under subjec-
ton, were yet indomitable in defeat.
Naturally this article and other
campaign eXcresences of a like nature
blew as a blast furnace upon the pas
sions of both white and black. And
when it was whispered that one of the
Supreme Court Judges was the author
of a bitterly partisan and iniiammato
ry Legislative Address" calling upon
the negroes to assert their rights.
the bar Of the State stood
aghast with horror and amazement.
Already both the Superior and SUI
preme Court Judges had shocked pre-
cedent and legal Ye;tiona,itg by
their participation in political affairs.
Some of them had gone into political
conventions; others h..d made spee' h.
e3 on tie stump; nearly Mll &C them
had given active aid in the way ot
shrewd counsel to the ring that was
prostituting the credit and the good
name of the State. In a carpet-bag
parade with torch-lights and flying
banners of incendiary device two of
the Judges of the Supreme Court had
ridden publicly as honored guests of
the party that was responsible for the
public debauch.
These were the conditions, then
from which the contempt proceedings
at length arose. During all the time
that these events were occurring
the heated campaign
Continued on Second Page.)