POLITICS MEETS FRAUD

I have a mystery story for you, and it begins one October morning in 1954, when the agricultural reporter Ken Roland Towery, was making his morning rounds of the DeWitt County Courthouse (above). Each day Ken stopped in the offices of county officials, to see if anything newsworthy might be going on. 

Poking his head into the district clerk's office, he asked the secretary if anything was up. She replied no, but then she asked him a question. “Ken, what was going on out at the Country Club last night?” When Ken said he hadn't heard anything, she explained, “Oh, they had a big meeting out there, I understand.” And thus began a scandal that would bring down a three term Texas Governor.

Ken Towery had already led an unusual life. After joining the army in 1940 (above), he arrived in the Philippines just in time to be first wounded, and then in March of 1942, made a Japanese prisoner. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Korea, and did not get back to Texas until 1946. Under the G.I. bill he studied chemistry, but he had contracted tuberculous in Korea and he had to drop out. He took a job working for his hometown newspaper, the Cuero Record. 

The sleepy south Texas county seat (pronounced Quair-oh, Spanish for “rawhide”) stood at the junction of three highways, and along the “Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway”. The major business in the rolling countryside was raising cows, chickens and turkeys. And the major business in town was slaughtering them or shipping them elsewhere for slaughter – that and county government. So usually, nothing much happened in Cuero.

But when the secretary described the Country Club meeting to Ken that October morning, she used a few racial epithets, because in Texas in 1954, African Americans and Mexican Americans were usually allowed in the Country Club (above) only as servants. Ken returned to the paper and asked Elvin Wright, an African American press operator, if he could check with his neighbors about the meeting. A week later Wright told him, “All I know is they had a meeting out there and they talked land, they talked about a lot of land.”

That rang a bell with Ken. A few months earlier a local farmer named Webber had approached Ken with a letter on blue paper one his hired hands had received from the Veterans Land Board. The man wanted to know what the letter meant. Webber explained, “It looks like you bought some land somewhere”. But the man insisted, “I ain't bought no land.” 

Those two curious events, an illiterate man who had not bought land, and a racially mixed meeting in an area where, in Ken's words, “White people just don't set up big parties for colored field hands”, was enough to send the reporter looking for Shorty Robinson, the black custodian for the brand new Country Club. Shorty explained that two club members, T. J. McLarty and a Notary Republic named Ledbetter, had paid him ten dollars for every black veteran he had rounded up for the meeting with the Veteran's Land Board.

                               

The Veteran's Land Board was the brainchild of “General” Bascom Giles (above), eight term elected commissioner of the General Land Office in Austin, Texas. The land board had been approved by the voters in November of 1946. Under Giles' plan, the state issued $75 million in bonds. That money was then used to offer 40 year, 3% interest rate loans of up to $7,500 for each veteran applicant. With just 5% down, they could now purchase up to 20 acres of land.

Running the program was Giles, with oversight supposedly provided by three term Governor Alan Shivers (above) and Attorney General John Ben Shepperd.  In 1951, because of rising land prices, an amendment allowed two or more veterans to jointly purchase a tract, which they were allowed to later subdivide and resell. Ken Towery now headed off to Austin, to speak to Bascom Giles.

At first Ken was told “The General” might not even be in that afternoon. So Ken told the secretary that he was from Cuero, and wanted to talk about the blue letter received by Farmer William's employee. Within 20 minutes Bascom Giles (above) was warmly welcoming the reporter into his office. Giles began by insisting no irregularities had occurred in the program in DeWitt county, and yet blamed any mistakes on an appraiser who had already been fired. 

But, insisted Giles, he had checked the application in question, it had been signed by the farmhand, and any accusation of fraud was just “politics”. Ken left after the ten minute meeting, wondering why Giles was defending himself against accusations which Ken had not made.

Back in Ceuro, Ken confided his concerns to DeWitt County Attorney Wiley Cheatham. Wiley revealed he been investigating the Land Board since the previous August, when “ veterans started trickling in, complaining that they hadn't bought any land, wanting to know what the blue slips were, were there payments to be made. Some of them had pink slips...delinquent notices.” Wiley added he had heard of similar problems in at least six other counties.

Wiley asked Ken to hold the story for a few days, while he drove the 94 miles up highway 183 to Austin. On Friday, 5 November, 1954, Cheatham informed Ken he had received no cooperation from the Land Board, and to go ahead with the story. Two weeks later, in the Sunday, 14 November, 1954 edition of the Cuero Record, Ken Towery broke the story of the Veteran's Land Board fraud.

The scam he laid out worked as follows: speculators like T. J. McLarty first obtained options on tracts of land at standard market prices. 

Then, at events like the sales pitch at the Cuero Country Club, they fooled minority veterans into signing authorizations to act as their agents. The speculators then bribed employees of the Land Board (including Giles) to provide highly inflated appraisals on the properties they held options on. Finally, in the veterans' names, the speculators obtained the 3% loans from the Veterans Land Board to purchase the property at the inflated price. They made only the 5% down payment at the option price, and pocketed the rest of the loan, leaving the veterans with the payments and ruined credit.

Two years later a Texas state Senate report would say, “The plan . . . constituted a highly reprehensible practice, especially in view of the 'spread' between the original purchase price paid by the 'promoters' and the appraised price paid by the Veterans Land Board, resulting in unconscionable and shocking profits . . . without risk and with only token expense to them and the 'rooking' of the veteran-purchaser.” The scam proved so profitable the speculators could even afford to pay many barely literate veterans up to a hundred dollars for their signatures. One veteran admitted, “They said they'd give me a new set of tires for my car and so I signed up.”

The scandal did not explode instantly. In fact, Bascom Giles had just been elected to his ninth term as Land Office Commissioner. But thanks to Ken Towerly's (above) work, investigations which had already begun in seven counties began producing headlines of their own. The State Attorney General, John Ben Shepperd, who had rarely attended meetings of the Veterans Land Board, quickly opened his own investigation.

As did that other absentee board member, Governor Alan Shivers (above). In all, twenty-one people were indicted by grand juries.

Early the following March,  Bascom Giles (above) was indicted for conspiracy to steal $83,000 (nearly $600,000 in present day). He was the first Texas state officer convicted for crimes committed while in office. He was sentenced to six years. Fines and civil suits by the state collected all but $3,000 of the money he stole.

When it was all over the State Auditor reported that over $3.5 million ($25 million today) had been stolen, defrauding 591 veterans and 39 land owners. Threatened with jail time, most of those indicted had cut deals, buying back the land from the veterans at the inflated price the crooks had been paid, and re-embursing the land board. So the state of Texas got most of their money back, and only two of the crooks did any substantial time behind bars, Bascom Giles and.  T.J. McLarty, of tiny Cuero.

Governor Shivers (above) was never directly implicated in any involvement in the Veterans' Land Board scandal, but because of his shoddy oversight, his reputation was so damaged that he did not run for re-election, and left politics. His greatest political claim to fame was that in 1952, as a conservative Democrat, he had delivered Texas to Republican Presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower. After politics, he served as a regent for the University of Texas, and died of a heart attack in January of 1985.

In 1955 Ken Towerly (above) won the Pulitzer Prize, and the Associated Press sent him a check for $4.00, for reprinting his story nationwide. He later interviewed Bascom Giles in the state penitentiary at Huntsville. In his own interview 60 years later, Ken recalled, “He had long stories, of course, like all crooks do...everybody out there is doing it, I don’t know why they picked on me....And I told Bascom...“If you know of anything, well just name them”...And he said, “Oh, no, it wouldn’t do any good.,,They're all doing it” After his release in 1958, Bascom Giles moved to Venice Florida, where he died in a car accident, in 1993.

And Ken went into politics. He never ran for public office, but he did work on the staff of Texas Republican Senator John Towers. He died in May of 2016, at the age of 93. He has lived a most unusual life.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Thirty - Seven

 

John Gregg (above) was a successful lawyer, with a practice in the east Texas flat lands of Fairfield County and a personal wealth of over a quarter of a million in today's dollars. Still he felt self conscious about comparing what he had to offer his 1858  bride, Mary Francis Garth, to what she was giving up – her father's large plantation in north central Alabama, with almost 200 slaves toiling daily to provide for her care and comfort.

The Garth's were cousins to Patrick Henry. And Jessie Winston Garth (above)  himself had spent time with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, and was a long time friend of the 10^th President of the United States, John Tyler.  Jessie  himself had been a general in the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812.   After moving south to share in the lands bullied from native peoples, Jessie Garth had helped found the town of Decatur, helped write the Alabama state constitution, was the first President of the state senate and had served in the state house as well. 

He was the first President of First National Bank  (above) in Decatur, and owned enough stock in the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, that the first steam engine to pull a train into Decatur was named after him. John Gregg would never measure up to Jessie Garth's social accomplishment. But there was an even more fundamental matter dividing John Gregg from his father-in-law.

Seventy year old slave owner Jessie Winston Garth would willing give up his slaves, he insisted, in order to save the union of the United States of America . But having never fought beside northerners, 34 year old John Gregg (above) felt no need to compromise or learn from the free labor of the north.   Lincoln observed before he took the oath of office that secessionist demanded Republicans not only promise to not touch slavery, they must somehow convince men like John Gregg they would not touch slavery.  And by 1861, that was no longer possible. 

These were violent, ambitious men like John Gregg who were unwilling to admit their "peculiar institution" was both economically and morally bankrupt.  A civil war could only hasten the death of slavery, and yet men like John Gregg were driven to bring on the cataclysm that would destroy it.  

As was observed at the time, secession was a logical discordance which had gripped one third of the nation. Without such periodic bouts of insanity humans would never have needed the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation.

In the name of defending slavery, John Gregg became colonel of the 746 men from 9 east Texas counties who formed the 7^th Volunteer infantry regiment.  In the summer of 1861, after Mary Francis had been sent back to the Garth's Alabama estates for safety,  John had joined his regiment at Hopkinsville, Tennessee, on the border with neutral Kentucky.  There, over six months, disease buried 130 of Gregg's men before they fired a shot in anger. 

Then, in February of 1862 another 20 were killed and 40 wounded at the battle of Fort Donelson. Almost all of the remainder, including John, were forced to surrender.

The 7^th Regiment was paroled and exchanged at Vicksburg in the fall of that year.   By 1863 John was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, and the Texas 7^th joined with the 3^rd, 10^th,, 41^st and 50^th Tennessee regiments into the 4,500 man 10^th Battalion or Gregg's Brigade. They were supported by Bledsoe's Missouri Battery, a smooth bore 6 pound bronze cannon called “Old Sacramento” and a pair of iron 6 pound cannon, all under Captain Hiram Bledsoe.

For the first 4 months of 1863, Gregg's Battalion was stationed 80 feet above the Mississippi river at Port Hudson (above), some 20 miles north of Federal lines at Natchez, Mississippi. Until Sunday,  3 May, 1863, that is - when a telegram arrived from Lieutenant General Pemberton in Vicksburg. Grant's breakout at Port Gibson had forced a desperate reshuffling of battle lines. Pemberton ordered Gregg and his men to move with all dispatch to Jackson, Mississippi, 200 miles away.

G

So on Monday, 4 May, at Port Hudson (above) General Gregg loaded his men onto the 7 cars of the Port Hudson and Clinton Railroad, for the 20 mile trip inland to the seat of East Feliciana Parish.

Their top speed over the corroded line was no more than 5 miles an hour. And after a seemingly endless series of shuttles back and forth the brigade's trip terminated in Clinton, a town of 1,500 white souls. Gregg's 4,500 Tennesseans and Texans then began a 37 mile forced march in the heat and dust of a suddenly dry Mississippi spring.  Fifteen miles east of town they crossed the almost empty Amite river and then camped beside the trickle of the Tickfaw creek. Private W.J. Davidson of the 41st Tennessee remembered, ", Our rations gave out and the heat and dust was almost insufferable." The next day they reached Kent's Mills. Here Gregg's Battalion boarded cars of the New Orleans and Jackson railroad, to continue their journey north.

But they had barely resumed their progress when, shortly after crossing the Mississippi state border they had to disembark again. Two weeks earlier Grierson's Yankee raiders had destroyed many of the rails between Osyka and Brookhaven, Mississippi. So it was another 47 mile forced march, before Gregg's Battalion could board a third train for the 56 final miles into the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi. The Battalion had marched over 100 miles and traveled 100 miles by rail in 5 long exhausting days. They arrived in Jackson early on Saturday 9 May, 1863. That evening the weary rebels drank their fill from the cool waters of the upper Pearl River.

But the next day General Gregg received new orders from General Pemberton. And before dawn on Monday, 11 May, John Gregg would lead his weary battalion on yet another forced march of 27 miles to the southwest. That afternoon they were greeted by cheering crowds at the town of Raymond, happy to see so many Confederate soldiers after a week of apparent abandonment. Their joy was mitigated somewhat when after filing into a field just south of town, “…the brigade...were too tired to stand in line...and everyone dropped...as soon as we halted.” 

General Gregg, meanwhile was seething with anger. The cavalry he expected to find guarding the roads south of Raymond (above) , were nowhere to be seen.

Pemberton was trying to form a ring to contain Grant's army, behind the Big Black River to the west, and its tributaries Fourteen Mile and Baker's creeks to the north and east. And the force he chose to stake out the positions south of Raymond until Gregg's men arrived, were the 500 troopers of Colonel Willaim “Wirt" Adams 1^st Mississippi cavalry regiment. And the reason they were not where they were supposed to be had to do with their hot headed commander.

Both 49 year old William "Wirt" Adams (above)  and his younger brother Daniel were violent southern gentlemen prone to spontaneous duels -slash -brawls to defend their “honor”. Younger brother Daniel had even been tried for the murder of a journalist, but the jury generously found he had been acting in self defense.  Colonel Adams would eventually die in a similar encounter on a street corner.  But that was 20 years in the future. On Friday, 8 May, the 1^st Mississippi cavalry were in Jackson, resting men and horses after futile and frustrating week spent chasing Gerierson's raiders across central Mississippi, with only a brief encounter at cannon range to slate their hunger. 

Pemberton now ordered Colonel Adams to “picket” his men on the roads south of Raymond. But he also ordered Adams to ride to Edward's Depot, to assess the situation there.

Two weeks earlier Pemberton had been so desperate for cavalry to stop Colonel Gierson's raid, he had ordered 3 companies of the 20^th Mississippi Infantry at Jackson, Mississippi – about 400 men - to be put on horseback, and sent to Edward's Depot to guard the 300 muskets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition stored in Edward's Produce and Grocery. These guns were one of dozens of such arsenals through out Mississippi,  kept to deal with a feared uprising by the victims of the allegedly “benign” institution of slavery.

On 6 May, 1863 a 100 man scouting detachment of the 20^th Mississippi horse-slash- infantry, out of Edwards Depot, was surprised along Bakers Creek by union cavalry.  And it was their capture which had so frightened editor and publisher George William Harper at Raymond, that he had inspired Pemberton's concern about the capabilities of the metamorphosed 20th Mississippi. 

And that was why Pemberton had asked Colonel Adams to ride the 25 miles from Jackson, through Bolton, and across Bakers Creek to Edward's Depot. Once there he was to coolly observe and calmly report about the condition and combat readiness of the 20th regiment.  But cool and calm were not words usually associated with either of the Adams boys.

If Colonel Adams had caught up with Grierson's raiders, even for a brief struggle, he might have reacted differently to Pemberton's orders.  But the insult of  burned box cars and warehouses along the Grierson's route was seared into his mind. He had breathed in the stench of blackened wooden cross ties and bridges, felt the humiliating heat of smoldering and twisted bow tied iron rails. His honor demanded revenge. Revenge was something William Wirt Adams understood.

So on Saturday morning 10 May,  even though ordered to  picket his men on the roads between Raymond and Forty-mile Creek,  Brigadier General William Wirt Adams had mounted his entire command and ridden the 25 miles to Edward's Depot.  Here, behind Confederate lines, all was confusion. Adams spent the next 48 hours in Edward's Depot, looking for a fight, unaware he had just missed the most important one in his life. 

Because, on the evening of 11 May,  Brigadier General John Gregg's 4,500 infantrymen were  left defending the three roads leading into the town of Raymond without the eyes and ears of cavalry to warn them of any approaching Yankee army.  And the Yankees were approaching,  In great numbers.

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NEVER SAY DIE - SAY DAMN

  

There are two versions of how James "Farmer Jim" Ferguson passed the Texas state bar exam in 1897.  In the first story, the chairman of bar exam committee was an old family friend. In the second version Jim bought a bottle of whiskey for the man who actually administered the test.  One or both could have been true, since Ferguson told both versions for the rest of his life. 

Two years after becoming a lawyer, the 28 year old married Miriam Wallace (above). Considering the couple's subsequent behavior, the New Year's Eve nuptials were obviously timed for tax purposes.

How he became Governor of Texas in 1914 is another disputed tale. In what I call the “Virgin Mary” version, “Farmer Jim” (above) rejected nomination by the anti-prohibition party, but all the other candidates withdrew, thrusting greatness upon him. The only problem is that Ferguson had been a political manager for ten years, and had even directed the election campaign of the previous Governor. All things considered, I don't think he was entitled to wear white to this wedding.

In his day job he was a successful banker, even though it was the farmers who elected him. “Farmer Jim” had “considerable native ability and...a captivating personality. As a political speaker he had few equals.” And his election, well funded by the liquor industry, was just part of the 1914 anti-prohibition backlash. 

The laws he introduced to limit farm land rents were declared unconstitutional, but in politics its usually the thought that counts. Not unexpectedly, he did not achieve much in his first two year term. Being Governor of Texas is a little like being a “fluffer” in a porn movie. In 1916 James was elected to a second term by a comfortable 60,000 vote margin. But then rumors began to emerge he had been using state funds to buy personal groceries. Suddenly Jim was in trouble.

His instincts were to attack. So he began to boast that he was no "city slicker" nor a "college dude", and had not "suffered the damages" of a college education,  And since the professors at the University of Texas were close at hand, and easy targets, he described them as taking three years to learn "You couldn't grow wool on an armadillo." He described graduates as returning from 3 years of in Austin  with just "a mandolin and liver damage".  

Jim Ferguson demanded that the University fire the "lazy and corrupt history Professor Eugene Campbell Barker (above).  Barker had just written a biography of Texas patriot Stephan Austin, and Jim found a number of the books revelations insulting. When UT President Robert Vinson asked for evidence of Barker's frauds, Governor Jim” feigned outrage. “I don't have to give any reasons, I am governor of the State of Texas!” When that response was met with laughter, Ferguson vetoed the Universities next budget.  

At the same time Farmer Jim announced a five member search committee, which he chaired, had chosen to build a new campus for the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical college in Abilene, instead of in Austin.. However, Speaker of the Texas House, Franklin Oliver Fuller, who was a prohibitionist  and also a committee member, then signed an affidavit that he had not voted to move the new school to Abilene.

And when Lt. Governor William Pettus Hobby (above) submitted a similar affidavit, Fuller charged the governor was moving the school to Abilene in exchange for a bribe from the east Texas businessmen. 

Ferguson then submitted his own affidavit insisting he had not voted for Abilene either - meaning that Abilene had won the new campus despite no one who was willing to admit having voted for it. 

On 23 July, 1917, Speaker Fuller (above) called for a special session of the Texas legislature, to consider impeaching the Governor for trying to fix the election to choose the universities' new campus,

Now, only the Governor could call a special session in the state house in Austin (above), and Fuller's move would have come to nothing had Governor Ferguson not been indicted shortly thereafter by a Travis County grand jury for embezzlement of pubic funds. Jim Ferguson had no trouble making the $13,000 bail, but he was now desperate to change the subject. 

First the Governor (above) announced his re-election campaign for a third term, and then he called for a special session of the state legislature to reconsider a budget for the University of Texas. The legislature did meet that August, but they spent all their time removing Governor Ferguson from office.

Ferguson went down insisting his impeachment by this “kangaroo Court” was unconstitutional because he had not called the legislature for that purpose. Nobody in Austin (above) seemed to care. 

Seeking to avoid the worst, “Farmer Jim” resigned from office the day before the final vote. Again, nobody seemed to care. The State Senate voted 25 to 3 to toss him out of office, and added the proviso that James Ferguson was henceforth bared from holding any elective office in the state of Texas. In 1918 he tried again for the governorship, but was defeated in the primary by Acting Governor Hobby. And in 1922, when the state Supreme Court affirmed the lifetime bans, it seemed his criminal career....ah, political career, had been cut short.

But “Farmer Jim” (above)  followed a motto from a 1922 newspaper poem. “Never say “die”—say “damn.” In short, anybody who thought that James Ferguson was finished, did not truly know James “Farmer Jim” Ferguson. Or his wife, Miriam

On the 1924 campaign trail she became “Ma”, and she hated that name. But it worked so well as in the slogan - “Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa” - that it stuck. She began every stump speech by assuring voters that with her they would get “two governors for the price of one”, and then she would introduce her husband, one time Governor but now James “Pa” Ferguson.  

Ma and Pa won the election with 57% of the vote. When they pulled up in front of the Governor's mansion in Austin, Miriam crowed, “We departed in disgrace; we now return in glory.”

The one thing Miriam did not say, during her tenure was “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.” Although this was  often attributed to Miriam, the quote goes back to at least 1881. 

But in her January 1925 state-of-the-state address to the legislature, “Ma” Ferguson did point out Texas' prisons were so overcrowded, she had to decided to “adopt a most liberal policy in the matter of pardons.” She then proceeded to hand out, on average, 100 pardons a month. 

Some were granted even before the convicted prisoner had reached the prison. The joke around Austin was that a visitor met Governor Ferguson at the Capital's front door. As he stepped aside to let the lady enter first, he said, “Pardon me.” To which Miriam replied, “Sure. Come on in. It'll only take a minute or two to do the paperwork.”

But it wasn't only the number that bothered people, it was the methodology. Most of “Ma's”  (above center) pardons were granted on the sole recommendation of “Pa” (above, to her right).

In one interview, it was alleged, a father, begging for a pardon for his son, was exasperated because the ex-governor kept trying to sell him a horse for $5,000. Finally the father demanded, “What on earth would I want with a $5,000 horse.” “Farmer Jim” replied, “Well, I figure your son might ride him home from the penitentiary if you bought him.” Said an insider, “Jim's the governor; Ma signs the papers."

In 1926, Attorney General Dan Moody (above right) decided to run against the corrupt “Ferguson-ism”, and Miriam and James (above left) lost by 150,00 votes in the Democratic primary, which was tantamount to general defeat in the one-party state of Texas. In 1928, for the first time in 12 years, there were no Ferguson on the ballot in Texas. 

In 1930, the couple tried again, but again failed in the primary. Then, in 1932, with the depression ravaging the nation, Texans were desperate enough to give Ferguson-ism another try, and Ma was elected to a another two year term. 

This time there were immediate rumors of kickbacks in the highway department, but nothing could be proven, and in any case, even Texas was not big enough to overcome the world-wide depression. Miriam lost her re-election bid in 1934, and a year later, just to be sure, the voters passed an amendment to the state Constitution which took the power to pardon out of the governor's hands..

James and Miriam (above, center) tried one more time in 1940, for old time's sake. But “Farmer Jim” was getting frail, forgetful as to who he was angry with. His stump speeches were few and not as powerful as they once were. And “Ma” had never been that interested in politics. The dynamic duo went down to ignominious defeat. 

In September of 1944, “One of the most colorful and divisive...figures ever in Texas politics”, James “Farmer Jim” “Pa” Ferguson died of a stroke. Miriam, the second woman governor in United States history, lived for another 17 years, and never said another political thing in her life. She died of heart failure, at the age of 86, in 1961. And other than a modicum of entertainment, it is hard to find any thing  either of them did which made the lives of the average residents any easier. 

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