NOT A PERFECT UNION

 

I was surprised how many of America's 18 million citizens were individually and collectively on a journey on Thursday, 10 September, 1846.  In the dry Nevada scrub lands,  members of the Donner Party, the last California emigrant wagon train of the season, awoke to see the error of their ways in the snow capped Ruby Mountains (above), the last range before the towering Sierra Nevada.. 

On that same day, out on the Great Plains, exhausted Mormons escaping religious persecution awoke to a violent downpour, and the commandment to rise from their sickbeds and retrace their steps. Sixty miles south of the Rio Grande River, an American invasion force was preparing to fall on the ill prepared Mexican city of Monterrey. While, at the center of this web of worry and hope, susceptible to each distant tug and pull, a 38 year old alcoholic was being chased by the shadows thrown up by a flickering whale oil lamp in a Washington, D.C. hotel room.

On Pennsylvania Avenue, at the foot of Capital Hill,   and a few steps from the fetid Washington Canal, stood the three story wood frame St. Charles Hotel (above) - soon to be renamed the Capital Hotel. The establishment catered to southerners, boasting a basement room where slaves could be restrained so securely the management offered to reimburse masters should their property escape. One of the most popular resident guests was the congressman from Alabama's 7^th district, Felix G. McConnell. He was known for his biting humor, his spendthrift ways and his voluminous drinking. And this night he had reached the end of a hundred dollar drunk.

Tales of 38 year old McConnell's impromptu inebriated parties were legendary. During his first term, after inviting the occupants of the bar at the upscale Brown's Hotel to “Come up and licker'”, he was confronted by the scrupulously proper John W. Dade, superintendent of the District's jails. Dade himself had also obviously been drinking for hours, and pompously inquired, 

“With whom have I the honor of drinking?” McConnell gave his stump speech reply. “"My name is Felix Grundy McConnell, Egad! I am a member of Congress from Alabama. My mother is a justice of the peace, my aunt keeps a livery stable, and my grandmother commanded a company in the Revolution and fit the British, gol darn their souls!”  “Old Jack” Dade formally replied “Sir, I am a man of high aspirations and peregrinations and can have nothing to do with such low-down scopangers as yourself. Good morning, sir!” That having been said Dade stayed to drink with McConnell, and the two became fast friends.

But perhaps McConnell's most famous moment of public excess had come at a performance of “The Nordic Paganini”, Old Bull - Ole Bornemann Bull, the Norwegian solo violinists (above) who was on his first American tour. The New York Herald reported, “At the close of some of his wonderful cadences, the very musicians in the orchestra flung down their instruments and stamped and applauded like madmen.” The same critic went on to suggest the “Prince of Violinists” drew up to 4,000 people to his concerts because his “...pyrotechnic style and dramatic manner...(which) captivated the musically uninitiated...”

Ole's bigger than life personality went over well in America.  And he “could talk politics with even more earnestness and force than he could talk music.” All in all he seemed another natural friend for Congressman McConnell, except Ole was a tea totaler.

Ole played four concerts over the holidays in 1843, and in the midst of the Christmas Eve performance in Washington, D.C., a drunken Congressman McConnell suddenly rose and shouted, “None of your high-falutin, but give us ‘Hail Columbia’ and bear hard on the treble’! “ As a music critic noted, people shouted, “"Throw him out!” So they did. But the policemen had their hands full, for McConnell was a husky chap, and full of spirituous encouragement...”, and the officers had to resort to their night sticks. But given that most of the audience was not there for the music but for the show, it was not a significant interruption. Briefly McConnell was charged with “rioting and disturbance”, before his high office and high powered friends saw the charges dismissed.

In his two terms in Congress, McConnell sponsored just two pieces of legislation. In his first term he introduce a bill to annex Ireland. The bill was just a jibe at northern Democrats who insensitively opposed the annexation of Texas, but who were sensitive to the fastest growing immigrant population in America - the Irish.  Having made his joke, Felix McConnell allowed the Ireland annexation bill to quietly die. But at the beginning of his second term, he touched on something much closer to his heart.

On 9 March, 1846, just five days into the 29^th Congress, McConnell introduced “A Bill to grant to the Head of a Family, Man, Maid or Widow, a Homestead not exceeding 160 acres of Land”. It was the first “Homestead Bill” introduced in the United States Capital (above). It's purpose was to democratize the frontier.

Since before the revolution money men had been bought up every tract of public land offered for sale, looking to profit by reselling it to other investors, as if it were stock in a company.  Land speculation fever was so powerful, most investors eagerly went into debt to obtain as much land as possible, intending to sell it again before their note became due. Like Russian roulette, this game could end in only one way.

The speculator would  do a hasty survey,  subdivide the land and then sell the sub-divisions to poorer speculators, who would subdivide the subdivision, and so on and so on until the most desperate and most financially strapped investors,  would borrow enough to by 40 acres and then plant crops.

By the time an actual farmer obtained a small tract,  the price was so inflated as to leave him deeply in debt. And the first bad year, the first crop failure, the farmers would be unable to meet their interest payments on the loans. The farmers would then "pull up stakes”, abandon the farm and the loan and move further west to repeat the process. Thus the land would revert to the last owner, who would then resell to the next sucker. It was a very profitable business model, and reminds me of the current student loan system. But like the current for-profit college scams, it did not broaden the tax base, nor fund community improvements, like schools, roads or canals. It only made the wealthy, richer still.

McConnell was far from alone even among southern Democrats seeking to break up this monopoly on land and money. Sam Huston from Texas wanted a homestead act. Andrew Johnson from Tennessee introduced his own version the same day as McConnell. But these southern progressives were being replaced by well funded, increasingly rabid pro-slavery politicians, who saw individual homesteaders as a block to the next generation of big slave plantations, and big money land speculators.  Wrote one historian, “In spite of the undoubted earnestness of (McConnell), the bill seems to have been regarded as a jest...(and did not) elicit a respectful hearing from his fellow congressmen.” Andrew Johnson's almost duplicate bill was given a respectful hearing - before it was killed in committee.

It was the disrespect that seems to have broken Congressman McConnell's heart. Despite his reputation as a “dare-devil and a spendthrift”, McConnell was devoted to his job, missing just 8% of his floor votes in 1846, well below the average. Perhaps if he had not left his wife Elizabeth and their three children back in Alabama, he would not have turned to drink in Washington. Perhaps if he had chosen to stay in a less expensive boarding house, where he could share meals and companionship with his colleges, as opposed to a $65 a month room at the St. Charles - perhaps things would have turned out differently for him. Except his father Perry had died at 52, also addicted to “ardent spirits”. And now it seemed, every one had judged the young lawyer from Talladega rightly as a joke and a drunk.

On the evening of 13 May 1846, the House of Representatives voted to go to war with Mexico – 174 to 14. The war had been sparked by the annexation of Texas by the United States, and was intended to help build a southern slave empire from Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia through Texas to California. Congressman McConnell voted with the majority for the war, but he knew, as did many other practical southerners, that the Mexican War led the south further under the control of firebrands and hot heads and, worse, bankers, all determined to extend slavery because they profited from it.

On Tuesday, 8 September, 1846,  McConnell went to visit the man who had given him his first job, as a Tennessee postmaster. President James K. Polk was surprised to see him, thinking McConnell had gone home to Alabama during the recess. 

In his meticulous diary Polk noted, “he looked ...as though he had just recovered from a fit of intoxication. He was sober, but was pale, his countenance haggard and his system nervous. He applied to me to borrow one hundred dollars (to clear up his debts) and said he would return it to me in ten days....I had known him in his youth and had not the moral courage to refuse. I gave him the one hundred dollars in gold and took his note. His hand was so tremulous that he could scarcely write his name to the note legibly. I think it probable that he will never pay me.”

Leaving the White House, McConnell settled his bill with the hackman (taxi driver), and disappeared. Where he was Tuesday night and all of Wednesday, no one could say. But early in the afternoon of Thursday, 10 September, 1846, McConnell appeared in the bar of the St. Charles, inviting the few patrons to “Come up and licker”. He kept clicking gold coins between his fingers, and telling everyone he had been given them by President Polk. He even loaned the barkeep $35, although the man may have simply been trying to take the money out of McConnell's pocket before he drank himself to death. As evening approached the Congressman asked for a pen and paper, and struggled to compose a note. But after some time he gave up, rose and said he was going to his room.

Once behind his the locked door, McConnell lay upon the bed, and taking a “hawkbill knife” (above), stabbed himself several times in the abdomen. And when that proved ineffective, he slashed his own throat, twice. A short time later, someone grew concerned enough to check in on the Congressman. Receiving  no reply to a knock, a pass key opened the room, and Felix Grundy McConnell was discovered atop a blood soaked mattress.

A Washington newspaper said, “No doubt can be entertained that Mr. McConnell committed the act in a state of mental hallucination – most probably under the influence of delirium tremens, brought on by the intemperate course of his life.” According to the Baltimore Sun, “His friends say that for about a week past he had relinquished drinking, owing to indisposition, and that the absence of his usual stimulus caused great despondency...he had his watch and valuable jewelry on his person, besides a sum of money.” President Polk added to his diary, “A jury of inquest was held and found a verdict that he had destroyed himself. It was a melancholy instance of the effects of intemperance...he was a true Democrat and a trusted friend".

Having been thus safely categorized and dismissed as an alcoholic and a jokester, Felix Grundy McConnell was buried in the Congressional Cemetery. Other than an occasional mention of his bill to annex Ireland, he was almost immediately forgotten. It was easier that way, to forget that he and other southerners, had once attempted to change the economics of the nation in a way that might have made the civil war unnecessary, that might have saved both of his sons, one born after his death, from having to fight in a war which cost the state of Alabama almost 40% of its population, men, women and children, black and white, wise and foolish, saint and sinner, alcoholic and tea-totaler.

God bless Felix Grundy McConnell, for his journey. He did his best to guide the people of Alabama and the nation to a “more perfect union”.  He tried to lead them down a path to avoid war.  And if others did not notice his effort, that was their loss. And if he stumbled on the path, that was to be expected. In this journey we all take, failure is inevitable. That is what makes success so sweet. That is why the journey must be made every day, to a “more perfect union”. Not perfect, just more perfect. And that was Felix Grundy McConnell – not perfect. Like the rest of us.

- 30 -

THE GREAT ABSCONDING

 

I am sure you have heard of “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and probably “Slick Willy” Clinton, and maybe even Martin Van “Ruin”, or “Ruther-”fraud” B. Hays or maybe even  “Ten Cent” Jimmy Buchanan - who opined that a dime was a fair daily wage, and vetoed new colleges because “"there were already too many educated people",  But I'm willing to bet few have ever heard of James William “Honest Dick” Tate, even if they are from Kentucky. But you ought to have.

 

Sans his nom de plume, there was nothing special about James Tate (above). He was of average height and average weight. His forehead was made large by his retreating jet-black hair line. But his bushy “coffee strainer” mustache was the fashion in his day. However, it did hide a down turned mouth, that perhaps hinted at the tragic death of Howard, his three year old son. Still his daughter, Edmonia Lloyd Tate, survived, as did his loving wife Lucy Hawkins Tate. Then in 1867, after 13 years in various appointed positions in Kentucky politics, the 36 year old James Tate had so “materially contributed, by his personal popularity, to the great success of the Democratic party"  that he was nominated and elected State Treasurer.  Of course the racist propaganda also cemented the Democrat's hold on state politics.

The Treasurer was responsible for all funds collected in fees, permits, taxes, fines and rents, managed the state's bank accounts, paid state employees and dispensed benefits and verified and paid all bills. And despite it being around the time of this election that James acquired his cognomen, I cannot escape the suspicion “Honest Dick” Tate was not chosen for his probity, but for his “popularity”. In fact it was Democratic Party supporters who actually bonded him, pledging their wealth as a guarantee of Tate's “rock sand honesty”, as required by law before he could assume the position. But that guarantee was contingent upon other state officials verifying “Honest Dick's” work  And there is no evidence anybody ever actually did that.

To the public, James “Honest Dick “Tate was an average man, making an average salary, just $2,400 a year (barely $60,000 today), with perks worth perhaps a thousand dollars more. James' average unassuming home, at Second and Shelby Streets in Frankfort, cost all of $6,000 (about $100k today). But James was moving in powerful circles now, re-elected every two years for the next two decades. He was the “Treasurer for Life”.  

Inside Frankfort Democratic circles it became known that should a politician need to borrow a few thousand dollars, as Governor Preston H. Leslie (above) did in 1872, then “Honest Dick” would be happy to accept their IOU, and not be too bothersome about demanding prompt repayment. So amiable was “Honest Dick” that he had a safe filled with personal checks, cashed for Democratic friends, but never submitted for reimbursement.

James Tate also chased his own financial Eldorado, investing in land in Indiana, Virginia and Tennessee, along with several coal mines in Kentucky. However the land he bought does not appear to have appreciated in value, and the mines never seemed to produce enough coal to justify their purchase price. James also tried speculating in stocks and, it appears, when those investments failed, in even more direct forms of gambling. And like all gamblers, losing was just an excuse to risk even more.

All of this was below the surface, while in the public view the 1878 “Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky” noted that “Honest Dick” Tate was “successively re-elected by popular majorities, perhaps exceeding those obtained by any other candidate for office in the State...it would seem that his lease on the office might be regarded as a fixed fact.” And in 1886, John McAfee described James Tate as the “trusted and honored treasurer” with an “unblemished record for probity and principle...(James) is held in high esteem, and his integrity and forbearance are regarded as of the highest order.”. But rumors must have been floating about Frankfort, because during the 1887 campaign for governor, the perennial second place Kentucky party, the Republicans,  brought the issue to the surface.

Their candidate that year was the ex-prosecutor from Garrard County, orator William O'Connell Brady (above), and in what may have been the first Republican use of a “Big Government” attack, Brady charged the Democrats had created unneeded extravagant new offices, like Railroad Commissioners and an Agricultural Bureau. And almost as an aside, Brady suggested the time was past due for an audit of “Honest Dick” Tate's books

The Republicans had no evidence, but the attacks were so popular that after just one debate, ex-Confederate General and Democratic candidate Simon Bolivar Buckner, invented a reason to avoid any further debates.

Democrat Buckner (above) defeated Republican Brady, of course, but his 3 August, 1887 margin of victory was just 5 points, compared with a 19 point Democratic win in the 1883 election. 

Brady had made the strongest Republican showing since the Civil War, and it scared the hell out of the Democrats. In the same election, James “Honest Dick” Tate won re-election for the 11^th time, by a margin of 67,000 votes, far more impressive than Governor Buckner's 16,712 vote margin.

It was during the autumn of 1887  that newly elected Democratic State Senator John Kerr Hendrick (above), an ex-prosecutor from Livingston County, called for a full audit of “Honest Dick”'s books

But James Tate said a family illness required his attention, and he needed a little time to get the records together. Senator Hendricks thought Tate was stalling, but Governor Buckner agreed to put the audit off until the spring of 1888.

It was than that a change appeared in “Honest Dick's” modus operendi. Some on his staff noted cash deposits in the state's bank accounts slowed to a trickle. And, if any had noticed before, he paid in full a number of his personal debts. Then on Wednesday, 14 March, 1888, Henry Murray, a Treasury Clerk, noticed his boss in the office vault, filling two tobacco sacks with gold and silver coins, and an approximately 4 inch thick roll of paper money. Murray assumed the Treasurer was preparing to make a bank deposit. And even after “Honest Dick” was found to have slipped out of the office unseen, no one was alarmed. A note left on his desk informed the staff he was going to Louisville for two days. It caused little notice. And long time staffers knew better than to expect the boss to return to the office before Monday.

But “Honest Dick” did not return on Monday morning. A staffer dispatched to his home on Second Street, was told his wife Lucy had not heard from him since he left for Louisville, the previous Wednesday. Telegraphed inquires to the Ohio River town said the Treasurer was last seen on Friday evening at a bar, drinking heavily.  On Saturday, 17 March, he had been seen boarding a train for Cincinnati.  After that, James “Honest Dick” Tate simply vanished. Newspapers would call it the “Great Kentucky Absconsion”.

The scene left behind told the story of a desperately disorganized personality. Staffers said it had always been that way. The account books seemed written in barely legible hieroglyphics, filled with post dated transactions, erasures, corrections, and indecipherable notations. The safe contained a number of women's beaded handbags and purses, and a satchel belonging to a dead infant.  It was also brimming with $150,000 in IOUs and “cold checks” ranging from $5 to $5,000, some going back ten years. No hard cash was left behind except for a one thousand dollar bundle of $10 bills, found under the safe. How long it had laid there in the dust, no one could say.

In the afternoon of Tuesday 20 March 1888, the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives,  the President of the state Senate and the Secretary of State, received the following message: “It having been learned this morning that said James W. Tate has been absent from his office since the 15th instant...there is in all probability a large deficit in his public accounts...we by virtue of the authority vested in us...hereby suspend said James W. Tate...” It was signed “S. B. BUCKNER, Governor”. From this day forward, “Honest Dick” Tate would be referred to as “The Defaulting Treasurer.”.

George Willis, a Democratic spin doctor, was left spinning. “Such (a) flash of lightning and peal of thunder as was never heard before or since came out of clear sky and rocked the state and the Democratic party as nothing had done since the (Civil) war."  Kentucky's state historian noted that “almost everyone was under suspicion either as an accomplice of Tate or because of owing the treasury money, and those who had borrowed money from the treasury were numerous.” Briefly, and perhaps for the first time in Kentucky history, the politicians were ashamed. The Governor made a personal loan to keep the state afloat for awhile.

So inaccurate and confused was The Defaulting Treasurer's record keeping that it proved difficult to make an accurate estimate of the missing funds. And it was not in the interest of those with checks and IOU's in the safe to make an accurate accounting. A week later Governor Buckner announced the missing tally at approximately $247,128.50 (almost $6 million in today's money). Within a week James “Honest Dick” Tate was impeached in absentia on six counts and removed from office, and then indicted by a grand jury.  A reward of $5,000 was offered for his arrest. But the reward was never claimed.

Honest Dick's wife Lucy had to leave Frankfort because the state of Kentucky seized the family home  and everything of value within it, all of James' bank and stock accounts, including 100 barrels of “Big Spring” bourbon whiskey – another bad investment by the “Defaulting Treasurer”.   Luckily, daughter Edmomia had married a man named Martin, and was living free and clear in distant Kansas City, so the abandoned Lucy could live with her. 

The house, the whiskey, the investments, were all sold at auction, and collected $50,000 (over $1 million today.) But that left the bond holders on the hook for the remaining $200,000 (about $5 million today). They paid, but thanks to a Kentucky Supreme Court decision in 1895, none of those who had authored checks or IOU's found in the safe were required to reimburse the bond holders. That judgement was marked “Not to be officially reported”, and sealed. Most of the names on the IOU's never became public.

But what happened to the “Defaulting Treasurer”, “the Great Absconder”, AKA James “Honest Dick” Tate? He was rumored to be everywhere from Bremen, Germany to Toronto, Canada. Some said he had joined the expiate Confederate community in Honduras, or Brazil, where slavery remained until May of 1888.  In October of 1893 there was a brief flurry of excitement when a newspaper reported he was “Said to have been seen on the “Cotton Belt Train.” in Arizona Territory. But that proved to be mistaken identity, since the New York Times had reported “friends who should know” said he had died in China three years earlier.  In 1894 Navy Ensign Hugh Rodman, who had known Tate back in Frankfort, reportedly had dinner with the “Defaulting Treasurer” in Japan, and said he was not well. That should not have been surprising, since he would have been well over sixty by then.

Edmonia later admitted to receiving letters from her father, posted from San Francisco, British Columbia and Japan. The last one read, in part, “I know I will be much denounced and by parties who forget former circumstances”. He professed to being interested in returning to denounce his partners in crime. In 1896 1,200 Kentuckians signed a petition asking the Governor to grant a pardon to James Tate, so he could return and name names.  No such pardon was ever offered. With time new scandals rocked Kentucky, and people forgot about “Honest Dick “ Tate. But we should remember our mistakes. That is how we learn.

- 30 -  

THE GREAT ABSCONDING

 

I am sure you have heard of “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and probably “Slick Willy” Clinton, and maybe even Martin Van “Ruin”, or “Ruther-”fraud” B. Hays or maybe even  “Ten Cent” Jimmy Buchanan - who opined that a dime was a fair daily wage, and vetoed new colleges because “"there were already too many educated people",  But I'm willing to bet few have ever heard of James William “Honest Dick” Tate, even if they are from Kentucky. But you ought to have.

 

Sans his nom de plume, there was nothing special about James Tate (above). He was of average height and average weight. His forehead was made large by his retreating jet-black hair line. But his bushy “coffee strainer” mustache was the fashion in his day. However, it did hide a down turned mouth, that perhaps hinted at the tragic death of Howard, his three year old son. Still his daughter, Edmonia Lloyd Tate, survived, as did his loving wife Lucy Hawkins Tate. Then in 1867, after 13 years in various appointed positions in Kentucky politics, the 36 year old James Tate had so “materially contributed, by his personal popularity, to the great success of the Democratic party"  that he was nominated and elected State Treasurer.  Of course the racist propaganda also cemented the Democrat's hold on state politics.

The Treasurer was responsible for all funds collected in fees, permits, taxes, fines and rents, managed the state's bank accounts, paid state employees and dispensed benefits and verified and paid all bills. And despite it being around the time of this election that James acquired his cognomen, I cannot escape the suspicion “Honest Dick” Tate was not chosen for his probity, but for his “popularity”. In fact it was Democratic Party supporters who actually bonded him, pledging their wealth as a guarantee of Tate's “rock sand honesty”, as required by law before he could assume the position. But that guarantee was contingent upon other state officials verifying “Honest Dick's” work  And there is no evidence anybody ever actually did that.

To the public, James “Honest Dick “Tate was an average man, making an average salary, just $2,400 a year (barely $60,000 today), with perks worth perhaps a thousand dollars more. James' average unassuming home, at Second and Shelby Streets in Frankfort, cost all of $6,000 (about $100k today). But James was moving in powerful circles now, re-elected every two years for the next two decades. He was the “Treasurer for Life”.  

Inside Frankfort Democratic circles it became known that should a politician need to borrow a few thousand dollars, as Governor Preston H. Leslie (above) did in 1872, then “Honest Dick” would be happy to accept their IOU, and not be too bothersome about demanding prompt repayment. So amiable was “Honest Dick” that he had a safe filled with personal checks, cashed for Democratic friends, but never submitted for reimbursement.

James Tate also chased his own financial Eldorado, investing in land in Indiana, Virginia and Tennessee, along with several coal mines in Kentucky. However the land he bought does not appear to have appreciated in value, and the mines never seemed to produce enough coal to justify their purchase price. James also tried speculating in stocks and, it appears, when those investments failed, in even more direct forms of gambling. And like all gamblers, losing was just an excuse to risk even more.

All of this was below the surface, while in the public view the 1878 “Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky” noted that “Honest Dick” Tate was “successively re-elected by popular majorities, perhaps exceeding those obtained by any other candidate for office in the State...it would seem that his lease on the office might be regarded as a fixed fact.” And in 1886, John McAfee described James Tate as the “trusted and honored treasurer” with an “unblemished record for probity and principle...(James) is held in high esteem, and his integrity and forbearance are regarded as of the highest order.”. But rumors must have been floating about Frankfort, because during the 1887 campaign for governor, the perennial second place Kentucky party, the Republicans,  brought the issue to the surface.

Their candidate that year was the ex-prosecutor from Garrard County, orator William O'Connell Brady (above), and in what may have been the first Republican use of a “Big Government” attack, Brady charged the Democrats had created unneeded extravagant new offices, like Railroad Commissioners and an Agricultural Bureau. And almost as an aside, Brady suggested the time was past due for an audit of “Honest Dick” Tate's books

The Republicans had no evidence, but the attacks were so popular that after just one debate, ex-Confederate General and Democratic candidate Simon Bolivar Buckner, invented a reason to avoid any further debates.

Democrat Buckner (above) defeated Republican Brady, of course, but his 3 August, 1887 margin of victory was just 5 points, compared with a 19 point Democratic win in the 1883 election. 

Brady had made the strongest Republican showing since the Civil War, and it scared the hell out of the Democrats. In the same election, James “Honest Dick” Tate won re-election for the 11^th time, by a margin of 67,000 votes, far more impressive than Governor Buckner's 16,712 vote margin.

It was during the autumn of 1887  that newly elected Democratic State Senator John Kerr Hendrick (above), an ex-prosecutor from Livingston County, called for a full audit of “Honest Dick”'s books

But James Tate said a family illness required his attention, and he needed a little time to get the records together. Senator Hendricks thought Tate was stalling, but Governor Buckner agreed to put the audit off until the spring of 1888.

It was than that a change appeared in “Honest Dick's” modus operendi. Some on his staff noted cash deposits in the state's bank accounts slowed to a trickle. And, if any had noticed before, he paid in full a number of his personal debts. Then on Wednesday, 14 March, 1888, Henry Murray, a Treasury Clerk, noticed his boss in the office vault, filling two tobacco sacks with gold and silver coins, and an approximately 4 inch thick roll of paper money. Murray assumed the Treasurer was preparing to make a bank deposit. And even after “Honest Dick” was found to have slipped out of the office unseen, no one was alarmed. A note left on his desk informed the staff he was going to Louisville for two days. It caused little notice. And long time staffers knew better than to expect the boss to return to the office before Monday.

But “Honest Dick” did not return on Monday morning. A staffer dispatched to his home on Second Street, was told his wife Lucy had not heard from him since he left for Louisville, the previous Wednesday. Telegraphed inquires to the Ohio River town said the Treasurer was last seen on Friday evening at a bar, drinking heavily.  On Saturday, 17 March, he had been seen boarding a train for Cincinnati.  After that, James “Honest Dick” Tate simply vanished. Newspapers would call it the “Great Kentucky Absconsion”.

The scene left behind told the story of a desperately disorganized personality. Staffers said it had always been that way. The account books seemed written in barely legible hieroglyphics, filled with post dated transactions, erasures, corrections, and indecipherable notations. The safe contained a number of women's beaded handbags and purses, and a satchel belonging to a dead infant.  It was also brimming with $150,000 in IOUs and “cold checks” ranging from $5 to $5,000, some going back ten years. No hard cash was left behind except for a one thousand dollar bundle of $10 bills, found under the safe. How long it had laid there in the dust, no one could say.

In the afternoon of Tuesday 20 March 1888, the Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives,  the President of the state Senate and the Secretary of State, received the following message: “It having been learned this morning that said James W. Tate has been absent from his office since the 15th instant...there is in all probability a large deficit in his public accounts...we by virtue of the authority vested in us...hereby suspend said James W. Tate...” It was signed “S. B. BUCKNER, Governor”. From this day forward, “Honest Dick” Tate would be referred to as “The Defaulting Treasurer.”.

George Willis, a Democratic spin doctor, was left spinning. “Such (a) flash of lightning and peal of thunder as was never heard before or since came out of clear sky and rocked the state and the Democratic party as nothing had done since the (Civil) war."  Kentucky's state historian noted that “almost everyone was under suspicion either as an accomplice of Tate or because of owing the treasury money, and those who had borrowed money from the treasury were numerous.” Briefly, and perhaps for the first time in Kentucky history, the politicians were ashamed. The Governor made a personal loan to keep the state afloat for awhile.

So inaccurate and confused was The Defaulting Treasurer's record keeping that it proved difficult to make an accurate estimate of the missing funds. And it was not in the interest of those with checks and IOU's in the safe to make an accurate accounting. A week later Governor Buckner announced the missing tally at approximately $247,128.50 (almost $6 million in today's money). Within a week James “Honest Dick” Tate was impeached in absentia on six counts and removed from office, and then indicted by a grand jury.  A reward of $5,000 was offered for his arrest. But the reward was never claimed.

Honest Dick's wife Lucy had to leave Frankfort because the state of Kentucky seized the family home  and everything of value within it, all of James' bank and stock accounts, including 100 barrels of “Big Spring” bourbon whiskey – another bad investment by the “Defaulting Treasurer”.   Luckily, daughter Edmomia had married a man named Martin, and was living free and clear in distant Kansas City, so the abandoned Lucy could live with her. 

The house, the whiskey, the investments, were all sold at auction, and collected $50,000 (over $1 million today.) But that left the bond holders on the hook for the remaining $200,000 (about $5 million today). They paid, but thanks to a Kentucky Supreme Court decision in 1895, none of those who had authored checks or IOU's found in the safe were required to reimburse the bond holders. That judgement was marked “Not to be officially reported”, and sealed. Most of the names on the IOU's never became public.

But what happened to the “Defaulting Treasurer”, “the Great Absconder”, AKA James “Honest Dick” Tate? He was rumored to be everywhere from Bremen, Germany to Toronto, Canada. Some said he had joined the expiate Confederate community in Honduras, or Brazil, where slavery remained until May of 1888.  In October of 1893 there was a brief flurry of excitement when a newspaper reported he was “Said to have been seen on the “Cotton Belt Train.” in Arizona Territory. But that proved to be mistaken identity, since the New York Times had reported “friends who should know” said he had died in China three years earlier.  In 1894 Navy Ensign Hugh Rodman, who had known Tate back in Frankfort, reportedly had dinner with the “Defaulting Treasurer” in Japan, and said he was not well. That should not have been surprising, since he would have been well over sixty by then.

Edmonia later admitted to receiving letters from her father, posted from San Francisco, British Columbia and Japan. The last one read, in part, “I know I will be much denounced and by parties who forget former circumstances”. He professed to being interested in returning to denounce his partners in crime. In 1896 1,200 Kentuckians signed a petition asking the Governor to grant a pardon to James Tate, so he could return and name names.  No such pardon was ever offered. With time new scandals rocked Kentucky, and people forgot about “Honest Dick “ Tate. But we should remember our mistakes. That is how we learn.

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