GREED

 

I cannot conceive of a worse possible moment for the young man to deliver his lie. Two weeks before, the 3 day battle of the Wilderness had killed 2,246 men and wounded some 12,000 more.  Three days ago,  in the Shenandoah Valley, yet another Federal Army had been ambushed at the Battle of New Market, where 96 federal soldiers were killed, 520 were wounded and 225 were captured - 13% of the Federal troops committed on that field.

And this very morning, 18 May, 1864, General Grant was leading his weary army once again into battle at Spotsylvania Courthouse, which would kill 2,725 men, including legendary General John Sedgwick,  and wound another 13,400 men. It seemed as if everything the Federal government attempted in this third spring of Civil War, was producing only more blood. And, at 3:30am that morning, a young man had arrived with a missive, to seemingly drop the other shoe. 

It purported to be a bulletin from the Associated Press, which had been in business since 1848, and contained the text of a White House Proclamation. The operative passage began in the third paragraph. 

“In view...of the situation in Virginia...and the general state of the country, I, Abraham Lincoln (above)...by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution...call forth the citizens of the United States, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, to the aggregate number of four hundred thousand, in order to suppress the existing rebellious combinations...”

The reaction to news of a new half million man draft, in the city which the year before had produced three days of rioting (above) in response to Lincoln's first call for a draft, was expected to be even more violence. One hundred twenty had died in the summer of 1863, at least eleven African-Americans had been lynched, untold numbers beaten, and fifty large buildings had been burned down. Many on Wall Street took this as a sign the Federal government was losing the war, and they expected investors  to dump their stocks for gold.

At first glance the notice seemed legitimate. It was written on the same cheap oily tissue paper used by the Associated Press. But it had not arrived in the usual fashion. Several editors were suspicious, but with only moments before the deadline to start the presses, and fearing hesitation would mean their papers would be scooped by the competition,  three Democratic leaning papers rushed the story into the print – The World, the Journal of Commerce, and the Brooklyn Eagle. 

But the night editor of the New York Times, a Republican paper, did not recognize the handwriting, and found it had not been delivered in an AP envelope. The editor held his own presses while he dispatched a messenger for confirmation from the Associated Press. The AP editor promptly replied , “The 'Proclamation' is false as hell and not promulgated through this office. The handwriting is not familiar.”

By 9:00am Wall Street was in an uproar, with investors and brokers crowding all the newspaper offices (above), demanding an answer. Was the proclamation real or not? When the markets opened, the price of gold rose about 10%, but quickly fell back after Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary-of-War Edward Stanton,  both telegraphed to all the New York papers that the report was  “an absolute forgery.” 

And if the Lincoln administration had stopped there everything would have been all right. But Lincoln himself ordered the Military commander in New York City,  General John Adams Dix (above), to seize the offices of the Journal of Commerce and the New York World, and to ”arrest and imprison...the Editors, proprietors, and publishers.” It seemed the bloody mess in Virginia was making everybody a little jumpy.

The Journal of Commerce was a small anti-slavery newspaper founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and founder of the anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" party. That paper opposed using force to put down the rebellion. So the Postmaster General had refused to deliver the JOC via the mail, crippling the paper outside New York City, where most of its 35,000 readers lived. 

William Cowper Prime (above), a lawyer, an artist and author and "near east enthusiast" as well as business manager of the JOC, wrote to his wife that afternoon, “Found on coming down town that we, in common with the World...had been hoaxed by a most ingenious scoundrel.” That evening Federal soldiers arrived to close down the paper and arrest the guiltless Mr. Prime.

Considerably less innocent was the two cent per copy, “New York World”. The paper was owned by the Democratic National Committee, and directed by the DNC chairman, August Belmont. In its pages anything with a whiff of Lincoln or Republicanism about it was opposed. Every day the paper was filled with articles warning of the threat of the ballooning war debt, and criticism of the administration's military strategy. Its editorials called for repeal of the emancipation proclamation, and a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. It was the platform of the Democratic Party in 1864. But these were not  the position of the World's editor, Mr. Manton Malone Marble.

Marble  (above) was a newspaperman with printer's ink in his veins. Employed as the Night Editor, he had bought the bankrupt World in 1861, dreaming of a non-partisan fact based style of journalism. But after just six months he had been forced to seek new backers, and the Democratic Party had eagerly stepped in. Marble lost friends and staff members when he signed the deal. 

The joke among journalists in the city was that Marble was now little more than a conductor for the stories August Belmont (above) wanted in the paper day in and day out. But there was still a spark of independence in Marble, and when he learned from an alert staffer, before dawn on the morning of 18 May, 1864, that his paper had published the proclamation, he ordered all copies still unsold to be withdrawn from street vendors, and even dispatched a fast ship to stop and board the steamer “Nova Scotia”, carrying bundles of the newspaper bound for England. Marble even ordered the ship's captain to buy back the free copy provided to the Nova Scotia's purser. It made no difference. Marble was arrested the evening of 18 May, and the offices of “The World” padlocked shut.

That very night the member papers of the Associated Press telegraphed the President, strongly defending Prime and Marble. The next day several of the editors, including Horace Greeley, of the Republican leaning Tribune, joined the chorus of demands that Marble and Prime be released. And it began to occur to Lincoln, that he had stepped into something unpleasant. He also had the calming influence of General Dix, who seems to have quickly suspected, along with the members of the AP, that this was not a rebel plot, nor even a Democratic one.

 

At the same time he arrested Prime and Marble, Dix also ordered the arrest of Joseph Howard, jr.,  night editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the only other paper to actually publish and distribute the false proclamation. 

Within a day Joe Howard (above) confessed. He assumed the false proclamation would drive up the price of gold, in preparation for which he had bought gold futures “short” -  meaning on credit. As one historian has noted, “Nothing worse was ever done for the purpose of speculation.” 

Two days later, on Saturday morning, 21 May,  police detectives stopped and arrested Francis Avery Mallson, a reporter for the Eagle, who had actually authored the fake telegram.  Francis had just been drafted into the army, and he had hoped profits from the scam would provide for his family while he was away at war. The next day, Sunday 22 May, military authorities released both Prime and Marble. But the damage had been done.

Marble was in a rage. He clearly felt betrayed and laid the blame for his arrest directly on Lincoln's head - where it belonged. On Monday, 23 May he unleashed his pen, in a letter that took up several columns of "The World".  “Not until today,” Marble wrote, “has The World been free to speak. But to those who have ears to hear, its absence has been more eloquent than its columns could ever be.” 

Lincoln had acted, wrote Marble (above), “for the purpose of gratifying an ignoble partisan resentment” He wondered “would you, Sir, have suppressed the Tribune and the Times as you suppressed the World and the Journal of Commerce?” He then answered the question for Mr. Lincoln. “You know you would not... Can you, whose eyes discern equality under every complexion, be blinded by the hue of partisanship.” George Templeton Strong, a diarist and observer of politics in New York, noted, “The martyred newspaper...vomits acid bile most copious.”

Marble now became the publicist for the Democratic Party, and its champion, General McClellan (above, center). He spent the next six months retelling every lie, and even creating a few new ones, about Lincoln, charging him with wanting to force "race mixing" on the public, and ignoring the pain and sacrifices of Union soldiers on the battlefield. 

And it might have cost Lincoln the election that November,  excerpt that on 2 September, 1864,  Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured the rail and industrial heart of the Confederacy - Atlanta, Georgia.  In that instant it was clear Lincoln was winning the war, and the Democrats were revealed as defeatists, with no answers, only protests. That November Lincoln received only 33% of the vote in New York City.  Despite that, he won the state, if barely, on his way to re-election, 55% of the popular vote, and 212 electoral votes to Democrat General George McClellan's 21

The World did not accept defeat, disparaging Lincoln's speech on the night of 13 April, 1865 - the day after Lee had surrendered - it described the President as groping “like a traveler in an unknown country, without a map.” 

The following night, 15 April, 1865,  John Wilkes Booth murdered the President, transforming Abraham Lincoln into a martyr, and the The New York World and it's editor into a petty, vindictive and racist party mouthpiece.  History does that every kind of thing every once in awhile.

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LURID BYRON

 

I have often pondered the ids and egos which thrive in the moral swamp which passes for modern American democracy .  As an example consider Byron Anthony (Low Tax) Looper (above), a politician, who in the words of his own defense counsel, certainly knew how to lose an election. It is a skill more valuable than you might first imagine.

He might have been a gentleman by act of Congress, but in 1985, according to Byron, in his third year at the United States Military Academy at West Point (above), he was thrown from a horse and so badly injured his knee, he was given an honorable discharge. West Point has a "no comment" on the details of his release.

He finished his education at the University of Georgia, majoring in Political Science.  Then he might have been a Democrat, thanks to his uncle Max Roach Looper, a state Representative from tiny Dawsonville, Georgia. But Byron lost his first election there in 1987, and after three years as a legislative aide, legend has it, that he went to Preto Rico

He claimed to have worked there as the sober assistant to a university president. But the university does not seem to have existed, nor did the president.  So what was he doing on The Island of Enchantment", and did he really go there?  It remains a mystery, which doesn't actually interest many people.

According to Miss Modesta Blansett, who dated him for awhile,  Byron was a real charmer and a political junkie.  Except when he drank, which was often. On those occasions he “exhibited a dark, angry temper”.  Byron had two traffic tickets for drunk driving in Hall County, Georgia, and in March of 1986 he pleaded “no contest” to a third. In 1987 he picked up another DUI conviction in Atlanta. Then, like many people approaching thirty, Byron felt the need to re-invent himself. So in 1993 he returned home, one hundred miles north as the crow flies, to the 931 area code, to the Cumberland Plateau of central Tennessee.

As a small boy Byron had left Cookeville, the farming and industrial community bisected by Interstate 40, 80 miles east of Nashville and 100 west of Knoxville. But times and circumstances had changed Byron. His “pinstriped oxford cloth and double-breasted suits” and power ties no longer fit in among the 24,000 overhaul wearing farmers in the Putnam County capital, nor even with the 11,000 students attending Tennessee Tech, nestled in the center of town. 

Still, shortly after his arrival, Byron decided to register to run as a Republican against the popular local Democratic state Representative Jere Hargrove (above).  Mr. Hargrove remembered being puzzled just a few days after Byron had filed paperwork to run against him when he received a letter from "Low Tax", seeking help in getting a job with the Farmers Home Administration.   Hargrove says he never responded “because I thought it was crazy.” He remembered the campaign which followed as “dirty”. And for Byron it was unproductive. He lost. Again.

Still, Byron refused to give up. As the Republican county Chairman Scott Ebersole remembered, “He was playing politics all the time.” Byron even took out an ad in the political magazine, “Campaigns & Elections”, seeking the help of a consultant. 

Consultant William Lindsay Adams, based in Louisiana, answered that ad, but found his interview with Byron made him “uncomfortable”. “Byron told him that if a candidate wasn't in the race at the end, it wouldn't cost him very much to win”. Adams quoted Looper as saying it would just be “about 35 cents” – the price of a bullet. After that conversation, Adams stopped answering Bryon's calls.

Then in 1996, Byron found Republican backing for a run against the 14 year Putnam County Tax Assessor, Bill Rippetoe. Their support was understandable, since if elected, Byron would be the first Republican to hold a county wide office since the civil war.  Byron took part in no debates, and made no public appearances. But he did run a lot of negative radio ads, claiming that Rippetoe had fixed tax assessments for his friends.  There was no evidence for this, of course, so Rippetoe was not prepared to respond.

And to prove his philosophy on property taxes, Byron invested $4.95 to legally change his middle name from Anthony to “(Low Tax)” - parentheses included.  He did run one positive ad, promising he was “a new kind of leader”, and introducing his wife Terry to the voters. However, Terry Guess was not his wife, but merely his girlfriend, who was also his landlady. He was renting a room in her house. But by the time the truth had come out, Bryon had finally achieved his dream – he won the election by 1,100 votes. Sound familiar?

A week after taking the oath of office, on Thursday, 12 September, 1996, "Low Tax" (above) called a press conference to announce he had discovered $100 million worth of property taxes had not been paid. But before the reverberations from that headline had reached the farthest corners of Putnam county, from Hanging Limb to Muddy Pond, the County Commission, to which Byron reported, responded that $100 million was the “normal backlog” for property taxes at that time of year. They also suggested that Bryon should just do his job and stop holding press conferences. After further checking, Byron held a press conference to announce they were right. Then he left town – for Puerto Rico.  Or so he said.

This time Byron was gone three weeks, which in a town the size of Cookeville did not go un-noticed. When he returned he cleaned house, firing dozens of staffers, and hiring a “Security Chief”, who swept the office for listening devices. None were found. 

"Low Tax" also assigned three employees to photocopy more then 5,000 pages of County Commission records. When this expense was questioned, he held a press conference to announce he had uncovered “a good ol' boy network” and was suing to make the documents public. In response the County Commission revealed that the documents already were public. This time “Low Tax” was forced to issue a written apology.  Said County Executive Doug McBroom, “His attitude was that we're all dumb, and he was here to save us...but he kept getting caught.”

At one of his many press conferences, Byron was faced with an allegation that he had fired staffers because they were Democrats. But Byron had a ready answer for that charge. It was preposterous, he said, since he was secretly a Democrat, too. A quick look at the records revealed that for once Byron was telling the truth. He was a registered Democrat. Still. Whereupon, the Democratic Party  had him purged from their rolls. The Republicans were perfectly happy to have him as a member since, in heavily Democratic Putnam County,  beggars couldn't be choosers.

Meanwhile, the work in the Tax Assessor's office became increasingly chaotic. Byron would disappear from the office for days at a time, and when he did show up, he spent his time trying to transfer properties to the tax rolls of neighboring counties – specifically properties owned by members of the County Commission who were giving him such a hard time. His new Security Chief got into a fist fight with a voter. Some property owners charged Byron had “shaken them down” for political contributions. And when they did not contribute, Bryon increased their property tax assessments. Under Byron's stewardship, records went missing, and his remaining employees had spent 90 hours working on his next campaign, for the congressional seat held by Democrat Bart Gordon.

His congressional campaign had barley gotten off the ground when in March of 1998, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation hit Byron with a 14 count indictment for official misconduct, theft of services, misuse of county property and misuse of county employees. In the primary Bryon came in third in a field of four Republicans.  

But the resourceful young man had an ace in the hole. In the same election, he was the only Republican who had filed to run against the popular five term Democratic State Senator, Tommy Burks (above) . By default Byron thus qualified for the general election in November.

Nobody expected Byron to win, evidently not even Byron. But Tommy Burks (above) had been a politician to long to ever be over confident. He told a friend, “This Looper boy is absolutely crazy. I believe he's capable of doing anything.” And then in August, another lawsuit was filed against Byron, from an unexpected source. 

It was filed by Byron's former girlfriend and landlady, Terry Guess. She alleged that in December of 1997, after they had broken up, Byron had assaulted and raped her. And when she thereupon ordered him out of her house, he had filed a false transfer of ownership, putting her home in his name. But Terry's breaking point came when she discovered she was pregnant. Now, with the baby due in a few weeks, she sued Bryron, asking for $1.3 million in damages and child support. 

Byron did his best to “handle” the suit. He held a press conference. He referred to Terry as “a former stripper”, and complained “She left me with heart palpitations, a small box of memorabilia, and a red G-string.” It was a good line, but it did not help his career.

But Byron had uncovered a “quirk” in the election laws of Tennessee which he felt certain would bring him victory. Early on the morning of 9 October, 1998,  Byron (Low Tax) Looper drove a black sedan onto a pig and tobacco farm, and stopped next to a pumpkin patch, along side of a pick up truck. Then he fired one 9mm round into the skull of State Senator Tommy Burks, killing him instantly.

According to Tennessee law, a candidate who dies within 30 days of an election, must have his name removed from the ballot. Byron figured he would win by default - emphases on "fault".  Because   Byron had not counted on  his clever cover up dissolving like salt in a Tennessee thunderstorm. 

In a matter of hours the cops had discovered that Byron had bought the sedan in Georgia, resold it there to a different Georgia car dealer a few hours after the murder. And worse, Byron had been recognized at the scene by two of Tommy Burk's farmhands. 

Plus there was his confession to a childhood friend (above) a few hours later after the murder.  

On election day Byron was in jail, and although he was still the only living candidate on the ballot, and although his radio ads continued to be aired, Charlotte Burks (above. left), Tommy's widow, received 30,252 write in votes against Byron (Low Tax) Looper's 1,531 votes. The lady finally retired from politics in 2014, after 4 terms in the state senate. 

Yup,  that Byron (Low Tax) Looper (above) sure knew how to lose an election. And a court case. He changed lawyers eight times, but in August of 2000,  Byron was finally convicted of first degree murder. Even after his conviction he tried to run  for another term as assessor from jail, until the State Attorney General removed him from office.

Eventually he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the Morgan County Correctional Complex (above). And that was when he got yet another name change, becoming  inmate #323358 .  That name stuck until  26 June, 2013, when a female counselor informed Byron that he was losing his private cell and being transferred to the prison's general population.  Byron slapped her face, and was subdued by a guard. Later that day he was found dead in his isolation cell. 

A pair of autopsies revealed he died of a combination of high levels of antidepressant and "deterioration of his heart muscle". Just as if he ever had one.  His unofficial epitaph was provided by his last (of 8) attorney, McCracken Poston. He called Byron " a colorful character in both Georgia and Tennessee politics" . But Poston was forced to add, "The fact that Byron was an unusual, if often difficult, client is well documented."    Again, sound familiar?

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