The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-08-10
TEN YEARS OF ALABAMA
Mo- 15-Administrati on of Governor Patton
1865-1874

, on juries. The petition averred that pc l titioners had been taught to lie on tn,
 ilitary, but in vain. The general, the. 1 said, seemed indifferent, as were th' | judges. White men only received th' emoluments of office, but black men pait | taxes. In Mobile. half the policemen should be negroes, thus recovering $6000 | of public money to their race. At Hunts vile, Circuit Judge Haralson sent a mes
 sage to Judge Busteed, proposed to di Niue the use of the courthouse between them. Busteed replied that Haralson was a usurper, that the state of Alabama had no legal existence, and he would reeog- nize no state circuit judge.
 At Mont somery tho Freedman's bureau rented a building for negro school Adams, from New York, came as super lntendent. He employed ten white north ern teachers. who were paid by north ern societies and associated charities. In one of the eastern counties a similar school was set up the principal, a young
 man, a graduate of Dartmouth college The whites encouraged all peaceably con ducted negro schools. As soon as Gov
 A B. Moore was released from prison where the invader confined him in Fort
 Pulaski. he called meeting at his home town, Marion, to organize movement to educate the negroes. At least one formel slave owner taught q negro school al Uniontown In response to the former gov ernor's advice,
 Gen. John Pope, United States army issued an order to the legislature of Geor- gia to make no appropriations to the Uni
 versity of the state at Athens. The in stitution did not receive negroes, but was filled with sons of prominent rebels.
 "Order 49," from General Pope's head quarters, forbade any of the civil oft cers of Georgia, Alabama and Florida | from publishing official notices in rebe newspapers. United States Marshal John Hardy, published daily at Montgomery the largest paper in the state, and to him , vent the printing patronage of the civil offices. It was a capital(?) newspaper in more senses of the word than one, founded upon the woe of a whole people and conducted by an expert newspaper man who knew no rule of personal re- spcrsibility
 Governor Parsons announced on talk ing office that the war had cost Alabama S50O 600, 900 in property, and the four years fighting so much for disregard of his timely warning of old. The estimate may well stand.
 The government forced upon the state, after the Confederate armies were paroled upon the exact reverse principle, cost niore in property values than the activi- ties of the war. Improved lands of the state, when the war opened, were valued by the census at S162, ,S04.32l. The nexi census, taken when the military govern ment was in full sway, gave the same lands f decrease of value in round num- bers of S10O,000000. There was loss 1T cotton production, from the standard oi 1860, of at least half million bales veal for four years, from 1S65 to 1870. This two million bales at $50 per bale was SSOo, O00,oO0. The loss in corn, live stock and ether farm property in the same foul years cannot be estimated, so great is It. Suffice 1t to be said the loss resulting from revolutionary forces of production in the four years of alleged peace, faf surpassed the destruction of war. The mere change of status of the negro labor from bondmen to wage earners would have left the market with no loss of prod ucts
 If the cotton found by the invader had been left with it's owners, not only must agriculture have been immediately re- stored, on the soundest footing, but great investment in industries would have fol- lowed. Carpet baggers and seallawass would have sunk their diminished heads ] below the current of prosperity that would have forced good government into power
 Birmingham would have sprung up in l stGrltly and would have grown with un- l paralleled rapidity.
 JOHN WITHERSPOON DUBOSE.