Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1877 — PALMETTO PLUNDERERS. [ARTICLE]

PALMETTO PLUNDERERS.

Revelation* of Carpet-Bag- Rnle in South Carolina. [From the Springfield Republican.] The true inwardness of the mongrel misgovemment under which South Carolina so long suffered is sharply illumined by the revelations of the just-con-cluded Grand Jury investigation. There was nothing in the history of the Albany Legislature in the day of Tweed which the carpet-bag Legislature of Columbia did not more than rival, as the sample chapter from its records, soon to take form in the trial of United States Senator Patterson for conspiracy and bribery, which is given by the special correspondent of the New York Herald, well shows.

The first indictment against Patterson is of conspiracy with ex-Treasurer N. G. Parker and ex-Financial Agent Kimpton to carry three bills through the Legislature. One, and the biggest of these, was the Blue Ridge Scrip bill. The Blue Ridge railroad was once a bona fide enterprise. It was entered into in 1853, with the object of obtaining a short freight line for the products of the West. The State subscribed $1,310,000, the city of Charleston $1,000,000 and private parties $200,000 at the outset ; $1,700,000 was paid in, and with this sum fifty miles of road was completed before the war put a stop to all such enterprises in the South. The project came to the front again in the dawn of reconstruction, and was industriously worked up in the Legislature of 1868 by the northern speculators mto whose hands it had fallen, among whom the Herald mentions Patterson, McClure, Parker, Neagleand Chamberlain—names familiar enough in the recent history of the State. An act was passed authorizing the issue of $4,000,000 of bonds and their indorsement by the Controller General of the State, the only consideration to be rendered being, of course, the completion of the road ; and it was also provided in the bill that these bonds should not be sold at less than par in currency. The company went into the markets with their guaranteed bonds, but failed to gain the confidence of capitalists, and the road was again at a dead stop. The course now taken by Patterson and his companions is thus described by the Herald: “ They had borrowed $200,000 of the State’s money from the financial agent* on tha pledge of $600,000 of their bonds, and they had a bill introduced into the Legislature (of 1872) requiring the State Treasurer, on the surrender of the remaining $3,400,000 of their bonds, to issue revenue-bond scrip for $1,800,000, which was to be redeemed by the State at the rate of $600,000 a year for three years by the levy of a special tax for that particular purpose. The SinkingFund Commissioners had already sold the $1,310,000 of stock in the company owned by the State to Patterson and others individually for $13,100 —that is, at the rate of 1 cent on the dollar—and the bill in question validated and confirmed that swindling sale. That is to say, the State, after having subscribed $1,310,000 for the building of the road, and indorsing the company’s bonds for $4,000,000 for. the sake of completing it, was made by this bill to give up all hope of having the road built and to ratify the sale of its stock for 1 cent on the dollar, and to pay $1,800,000 for the privilege of getting back a part of the bonds which it had indorsed without any other consideration than securing the completion of the road. ” A more outrageous piece of rascality in its way was seldom, if ever, perpetrated, and the means were worthy of the object. The Legislature was made up of as purchasable stuff, white and black, as any that ever met, and it was bought, some of the bribes being enormous ; the “reward” of the redoubtable Moses being stated as SIO,OOO or more, and Senators averaging $5,000. These bribes were paid—for Patterson had -no ready money—in the shape of orders on the Treasurer for scrip, in case the bill was passed. By the same means were put through the “ Validation bill,” legalizing the illegal issues of fraudulent bonds by the “financial board,” consisting of Gov. Scott, Atty. Gen. D. H. Chamberlain, since Governor, and Treasurer Parker; and the “Financial Agent’s Settlement bill,” authorizing the above board to settle with the finacial agent (Kimpton) without report to the Legislature—as good a device as Tweed’s Board of Audit.

This ingenious arrangement, devised to keep the knowledge of these frauds in the ring, whatever the public suspicion might be, was defeated by a piece of arrant treachery. The Herald correspondent states that Judge T. J. Mackey was one day in Patterson's house, in Columbia, when Patterson, Kimpton, Parker, Senator B. F. Whittemore (subsequently of cadetship-trading fame) and Hardy Solomon were in another. Parker and Kimpton left together, and a while after their departure Patterson intrusted a sealed package to Mackey to deliver to Kimpton. Mackey accepted the trust, but it occurred to him that there might be something interesting in the envelope, and so he called on Gov. Scott—who like himself had been left out of the ring—and the two decided that it would be eminently proper to inspect its contents. Their expectations were justified; the document within was so interesting that they had two photographic copies taken, and the negative destroyed on the spot. Gov. Scott took one copy, Judge Mackey another, and the original document, securely resealed, was handed to the unsuspecting Kimpton, who turned it over to Treasurer Parker in the Judge’s presence. Judge Mackey’s copy it is which has made the mischief before the Grand Jury.

This document was an order on the Treasurer for the delivery to Kimpton of $114,250 of revenue-bond scrip, specifying that it was to be used for the purpose of “ paying the expenses ” of passing through the Legislature the bills above described. The order was signed by Patterson, as President of the Blue Ridge Railroad Company, and was witnessed by R. B. Elliott, the colored Congressman from the Columbia district. The items of the second indictment against Mr. Patterson indicate what these “expenses” were. They charge bribery of Speaker S. H. Lee in the sum of $3,000; of our ex-Connecticut friend, Representative John B. Dennis, $2,000; of Representative Prince R. Rivers (the Major General of the State militia under the Republican administrations, and chief of the secret Republican “True Brotherhood,”) $500; of Senator B. P. Whittemore (ex-chaplain and ex-Congressman, and last week howling at a soldiers’ reunion up at Fitchburg against President

Hayes for not keeping him and his crowd in power in South Carolina), $5,000; of Senator (afterward Secretary of State) Hayne, $5,000; of Senator W. B. Nash (Hayes elector), $5,000; of Senator Owens, who has just died, $5,000; etc., etc. The correspondent states that this till of particulars is based upon the testimony of Dennis, Rivers and Lee, all Republicans, and hardly likely, one would think, to be willing witnesses to their own and their party’s shame. It is evident that the cry of “ political persecution” is hardly an effectual answer to such an indictment ns this; and it is also evident that his conversion to the virtues of President Hayes’ policy will not be sufficient to give Mr. Patterson a decent standing, even if it can save him his place in the United States Senate, at tho next, session.