390 volution. The churches and the institutions of learning in Augusta are numerous, and the huge fair ground of the Cotton States' Mechanical and Agricultural Association occupies many pleasant acres just outside the eastern limits of the city. From the ashes of the great penitential conflagration in which the exigencies of war enveloped Atlanta, from the ruins of the thousand dwellings, factories, workshops, and railroad establishments totally destroyed in the blaze of 1864, has sprung up a new, vigorous, awkwardly alert city, very similar in character to the mammoth groupings of brick and stone in the North-west. There is but little that is distinctively Southern in Atlanta: it is the antithesis of Savannah; there is nothing that reminds one of the North in the deliciously embowered chief city of Georgia, surrounded with its romantic mosshung oaks, its rice lowlands, and its luxuriant gardens, where the magnolia, the bay, and the palmetto vie with one another in the exquisite inexplicable charm of their voluptuous beauty. Atlanta has an unfinished air; its business and residence streets are scattered along a range of pretty hills; but it is eminently modern and unromantic. The Western and Atlantic Railway unites it with Chattanooga, running through a country which was scourged in bitterest fashion by the war; the Georgia railroad connects it with Augusta; the Macon and Western with handsome and thriving Macon; the Atlanta and West Point road to the town of West Point, Alabama, gives a continuous line to Montgomery; and the new Piedmont Air Line, which has opened up the whole of Northern Georgia, gives it new and speedy communication with the North via Charlotte, in North Carolina. Great numbers of Northern people have flocked to Atlanta to live since the time when General Pope's will was law, and when the Bullock administration was just arising out of the chaos of the constitutional convention. The removal of the State capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta also gave the renaissant city a good start, and the wonderful manner in which it drew trade and capital to it from all sides made it the envy of its sister Georgian cities. A brief review of the progress of politics in the State since Atlanta became its capital will aid in arriving at an understanding of the present social and political condition of the commonwealth. When the reconstruction policy of the general government began, a large number of the citizens of Georgia declared for it, and among them was Mr. Bullock, subsequently governor of the State. In the political campaign which ensued, the opposite faction, which totally repudiated the recon A COUNTRY CART. struction acts, condescended to much proscription and denunciation, and numbers of Union men were driven from the State It was out of this campaign that the KuKlux conspiracy, as manifested in Georgia, is supposed to have grown. Prominent Republicans received lugubrious letters containing pictures of coffins, and acts of violence were not wanting, native Georgians, who were leading Republican officials, were hunted down, and assassinated; Republican meetings were dispersed, not without slaughter; and it was manifest from the outset that there was to be a decided upsetting of the attempt to enforce the policy inaugurated by the war. But the Republican party was organized, and its legislature, in which there were many negroes, went into session The first trouble that occurred was due to a discussion of the question whether or not men who had held office previous to the war, and then had taken part in the rebellion, were eligible for the legislature. The debate upon this matter was heated and angry, and the final decision was in favor of extreme liberality towards all who had fought on the Confederate side. Many of these were admitted to the State councils, and after a time, getting control of the middle men, they had the legislature in their hands. Their first act was to oust all the colored members, some thirty-six, -and to proceed on the basis that a white man's government was the only one for Georgia. The expulsion of the negroes was corrected by act of Congress; and in 1869 the colored element was re-admitted to the legislature. After this, Bullock, who was the first governor chosen under the operation of the reconstruction laws, had full sway for about two years. Some good laws were passed during that time, but the railroad legislation was the occasion of veritable disaster to the progress of reconstruction in Georgia. Bullock was in due time compelled to depart from the State, to save himself from imprisonment; and the Democratic party, completely triumphant, now and then announces its convictions through the medium of Robert Toombs, who has been its leader, and, in some measure, its exponent for many years. It is not long since this gentleman, in a speech made at Atlanta in favor of a convention to revise the constitution of the State, made use of the following language: "Why, look at that miserable thing you call a constitution! It commits you to all the lies of the revolution against you. It says your allegiance is first due to the Federal Government before it is due to your own State! Do you believe that? When you can wrench that from the constitution, do it!" Under the administration of Governor Bullock, a system of internal improvement was inaugurated, theoretically granting State aid to naissant railroads in the proportion in which the companies building those roads aided themselves. But bonds were overissued, and were negotiated by prominent bankers in New York city. The Brunswick and Albany Railroad was the principal project. About $6,000,000 worth of bonds were actually issued during the two years, all of which went to the Brunswick and Albany Railroad, with the exception of $600,000 granted to the Cartersville and Van West road. The party now in power has repudiated all the railroad bonds issued under Bullock's régime. The New York bankers have not suffered very much by this, but the repudiation will give the credit of the State a severe blow. The Governor, during these two years in which the reconstruction policy of Congress was upheld, seems to have had an agitated and miserable existence. He spent a great deal of time and money in Washington before he succeeded in procuring the legislation which restored the negroes to their places in the legislature in 1869. It is alleged that when he took the reins of government in Georgia he was worth no money, but that, a little time after he had assumed the office, he paid his debts, and became reasonably prosperous. But he was surrounded by an atmosphere of corruption, and it is difficult to say that he was individually dishonest. In his defense, which gives a very clear idea of the immense obstacles which wily and subtle men placed in his path, it is evident that he required the shrewdness of an archangel to march without stumbling. It was for the interest of the Democratic party in the State to make reconstruction unsuccessful, and towards that end they unceasingly toiled. The material on which one was compelled to work, to maintain the power of the reconstruction government in those days, was unreliable. One never knew when he was to be betrayed by the weakkneed or ignorant legislators who were his own friends. Prominent State officials were applied to to contribute money for "election purposes"-i. e., for the purchase of The career of H. I. Kimball in Atlanta, and in various enterprises in the commonwealth, has not a little to do with the present condition of politics in Georgia. In 1865, Mr. Kimball made his appearance in the State, and began by perfecting arrangements for placing sleeping cars on all the roads in the South. Atlanta was even then peering from beneath the ashes under which she had been buried, and was vaguely whispering prophecies of her future commercial greatness. The capital was likely to be removed from Milledgeville to that city as soon as a regular State government should be resumed, and Kimball, doubtless, saw that as readily as did any of the Atlantians. The Kimball-Ramsey-Pullman-Sleeping-Car Company was the name of the organization with which he started; and he intended, it is said, to get rich out of it by means of $300,000 franchise stock, which he was to have. This venture was not successful, and many people who furnished the money to buy the necessary cars were sufferers. His next venture was the "Atlanta Opera House." The original company which had contemplated erecting a mammoth block for an opera house, and for stores and public offices, had failed; the unfinished building was considered worth $115,000, but Mr. Kimball obtained possession of it for $33,000. This purchase A COTTON PRESS IN THE COUNTRY. gave him the means of raising money; he finished the Opera House, furnishing it up as a legislative edifice. At that time the leg islature was in session in Atlanta, in the City Hall. The city rented Kimball's new building, as soon as it was completed, for a State House. Kimball had fitted it up with $55,000, which, it is said, was advanced by Governor Bullock from the State funds. The legislature entered the new capital, and no sooner had they assembled than Mr. Kimball besought them to buy it. They at first refused, but subsequently purchased it for $300,000. As soon as this was decided on, the $55,000 loaned by the Governor to Kimball was returned, thus securing Governor Bullock against a charge of impeachment. Having prospered so well in the Opera House project, the ingenious Kimball conceived the scheme of the Kimball House, which is at present the largest hotel in Atlanta, and one of the largest in the Southern States. A bill was passed by the legislature allowing an advance to the Brunswick and Albany railroad-that is to say, two acts allowed Kimball, who was the contractor to build the road, to draw respectively $12,000 respectively $12,000 and $15,000 per mile, before building each section of twenty miles. By this issue he obtained the funds with which to build the Kimball House. He constructed the first twenty miles of the Brunswick and Albany railroad in good faith, then gradually encroach ed, until there was no longer any semblance of adherence to the letter of the act, which naturally required him to build the road as fast as the money was advanced. Meantime the Democrats were vigorously attacking Gov. Bullock, charging him with every kind of theft, and he was in a precarious situation, when he suddenly found that he had not a majority in the legislature that he could count on. Then ensued a severe struggle on his part against the ousting which was threatened. Kimball continued to unfold superb schemes, and turn them to his private account. In the fall of 1871, Gov. Bul lock paid a visit to California, whence he was hurried home by the announcement that the legislature was to meet in December. He returned; surveyed the political field; found that he was in imminent danger of being complicated and possibly impeached, and went North and resigned. Shortly after, Kimball disappeared from Atlanta and from his Southern field of operations, and the bubble burst. FOUNTAIN IN FORSYTH PARK, SAVANNAH, GA. The state railroad, running from Atlanta northward to Chattanooga, had been leased under Bullock's administration. The Democrats, who now came into power, charged that the governor was guilty of gross official misconduct in leasing the road, although it was done in obedience to an act of the legislature, and they proceeded to prosecute every one who had been connected with the management of it under the Bullock régime. They based their charge against the governor upon the theory that he was personally and pecuniarily interested in the road, as Kimball was one of the lessees, and the governor was alleged to be Kimball's partner. This, however, the governor expressly denies, showing that the road, which, for the twenty years from its building up to 1868, had been an expense to the sta. e, and a fruitful source of political corruption, was made profitable under the lease system. The prosecutions by the Democratic party were characterized by a great deal of acerbity, and in one case the Supreme Court decided that much injustice was inflicted upon a prosecuted party. The democratic legislative committee appointed to investigate the official conduct of the late governor was in session seven months, and confined its final report mainly to denunciations of the governor's course on the supposition that he was Kimball's partner. They took complete control of the state government, gloried in the repudiation of the various bonds issued from 1869 to 1871, and maintained that the reconstruction acts of Congress were "unconstitutional, revolutionary, null, and void." Certainly reconstruction is null and void in Georgia. It has been a complete failure there. That there have been glaring injustices practiced on both sides, no fair-minded man can for an instant doubt. The Republican administration lasted scarcely three years; and the legitimate results of the war were not maintained so long as that after 1868. Out of the 90,000 colored voters in the state, scarcely thirty thousand vote to-day: free schools are almost unknown outside the large cities and towns; and there has not been a Republican inspector of elections since the Democrats assumed power. To judge from the testimony of native Georgians, who are Republicans, and who have never been suspected of any dishonesty or untruth, the negroes are very grossly intimidated; and the Ku-Klux faction still exists as a kind of invisible empire. This is naturally to be expected after the occurrences in Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama: it is the revulsion from tyrannical ignorance and carpet-baggery; and may prove as baneful in its results as has its degraded and disrepu table opposite. The democrat of Georgia talks with all the more emphasis of a white man's government in his commonwealth, because he feels that there is a black man's government in a neighboring state; if he has ever had any exaggerated fears as to a too free assumption of civil rights by his ex-slave, those fears are accented ten-fold since he has seen the real injustice practiced by negroes where they have attained supreme, unrestricted power. Both the whites and blacks in the state have large and effective military organizations, and drill constantly, as if dumbly preparing for some possible future strife. The battalions of the white race still cling to the Confederate gray, in some cases; the negro militiaman blossoms into a variety of gorgeous uniforms. I saw a company of blacks assembling in Atlanta; they were good-looking, stalwart men, and went about their work with the utmost nonchalance, while here and there a white muttered between his teeth something unmistakably like "d-n niggers." There is a very large negro population in Atlanta and the surrounding country. But few traces of the war are now left in Atlanta. The residence streets have a smart new air; many fine houses have been recently built, and their Northern architecture and trim gardens afford a pleasant surprise after the tum ble down, unpainted repudiated. One said that he could not inform me how much the State debt, as construed by the reconstructionists, was: he reckoned no one knew; the scoundrels who contracted the debt had run away; if they could lay hands on Bullock they would put him in the penitentiary. I found, everywhere I went in the Capitol, a spirit of extreme bitterness prevailing against the departed carpet-baggers; and all complained that the State affairs had been left in a wretched condition. The attempt to establish free common schools throughout Georgia has thus far resulted in failure. Prior to the war there was but little effort made at the education of the masses. A small sum was appropriated as the "indigent school fund," but the majority of the poorer classes in the back country remained in dense ignorance. In the present State School Commissioner's office I was informed that there had been no common school open outside the large cities for some time. It was alleged that the school fund had been diverted to unlawful purposes during the "previous administration," and that the State had been much embarrassed by a debt of $300,000, incurred in prematurely putting schools into operation. There seems no doubt of a sincere desire on the part of the Georgia Conservatives to maintain free schools; and it is, by the way, noteworthy that three A VIEW IN FORSYTH PARK, SAVANNAH. |