The Plymouth tribune. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1901-1911, 1906-12-13
NOTORIOUS BooDLER DEAD.
F. ]. Moses, Ex-Governor, Ex-Con
vict, Drug Fiend, Asphyxiated.

Former Governor Franklin J. Mos
es OF South Carolina, was found dead
in bed Tuesday morning in lodg
ing house at Winthrop Beach, Mass,
gas escaping from small stove used
to heat the room having asphyxiated
him. Forty-two years ago he hoisted
the palmetto flag of South Carolina
over the ruins of Fort Sumpter, hav-
ing been deputed to that work By
Governor Pickens, whose private sec
rotary he then was He had shortly
before graduate with high honors
from college. His father was a man of
wealth and social distinction and
trusted member of the judiciary of
the state.
Young Moses served throughout
the civil war on the confederate side,
as did his father, and when the war
was over they both attained positions
of influence by accepting the recon-
struction acts and the new order of
things i'll the south. The father be-
came a chief justice of the supreme
court of South Carolina and died
while holding that position. Franklin
became a member of the state legis-
lature, then speaker of the house and
subsequently, in 1870, governor.
There was time when he had con-
troll of almost unlimited wealth and
lived like an eastern prince He end
ed his days broken, gray and seedy,
eking out slender subsistence by
his wits.
The rapidity with which he ran the
whole gamut of personal ambition
proved his genius. His sagacity in
taking up the cause of the newly en-
franchised freedmen at the close of
the war after having fought on the
confederate side was rewarded. AS
speaker of the assembly he engaged
in career of corruption, bribery and
robbery which has had few parallels
in the country.
He levied toll upon every public
and private legislative measure with
money in it that required his signat-
ure
He gave away pardons like holiday
baubles Criminals of every descrip-
ton were pardoned by telegraph, by
letter, by verbal orders to jailers and
with a freedom that promised inn
munity to crime so long as the Of
fender owned in Moses friend. His
own wife and family were forced to
cast him off,
For a few years he lived in and
about New York, but his methods of
obtaining money brorght him into
the grasp of the law and in 1882 he
was sent to the penitentiary for six
months for swindling
He was next heard of in Detroit
in 1884, where he was sent TO jail for
swindling Rev. DR.. Rockford. He was
arrested upon the expiration of his
sentence on jan 81, 1885 by Boston
officers for swindling Colonel Thorn
as Wentworth Higginson of Cam
bridge out OF $34 under false pre-
lenses. Other sentences followed and
he was not free until 1890
Moses attributed his downfall to
| the use of drugs. Before hearing his
sentence in the last case in which he
appeared before the court he made "a
i statement in (which he said:
i I'm 1872, when l occupied the posi-
ton of chief magistrate of one of the
proudest states in the union, was
} driven by social ostracism, despite
my position and the counsels of men
high in public life, to seek relief in
that alone which seemed to be able
TO give rest TO o mind i'll at ease
namely-to the use of morphine.
) From morphine next took to us.
ing opium. In fact, In 1876, the time
when the Republican party surren
dered the state to the opposition,
had become so addicted to the influ
. ence of the drug that ] could not live
) without it"
Then he told of his sojourn in New
: York. where he sank to the loves
r depths of degradation. OF recen
: years he had not been In the public
eye and he had eked out a bare exis
5 tence about the bucket shops OF Bos