Every man who could get security made haste to borrow his hundred, and every man with real estate mortgaged it for a thousand. Coin now disappeared, and dollar bills torn into pieces were used for small change. Depreciation began at once, and went on till the paper of the bank was not worth twenty-five cents on a dollar. Across the Ohio in Kentucky the financial situation was worse. In truth, politically, financially, and industrially, that State was the most distressed member of the Union. Her State bank paper would rarely pass at fifty cents on the dollar; her people were bankrupt, her relief system was a failure, and, in a desperate effort to sustain it, the Legislature had used methods and gone lengths revolutionary and anarchical in the extreme. The decision of Judge Clark, in 1822, that the replevin and stay laws were unconstitutional had been followed by an attempt to remove him by an address of the Legislature to the Governor. The effort failed; but when, in 1823, the Court of Appeals likewise declared the whole system of relief laws unconstitutional, the Assembly voted that the decision of the Court was erroneous, cut down the salary of each of the three judges to twenty-five cents a year, and made the question of removing them a political issue. The State from end to end was greatly excited; but when the election was over, the relief men, though they had a large majority, were still without the two-thirds vote necessary to carry an address for removal. Nevertheless, when the Legislature met in November, 1824, formal charges were again preferred against the Court.* To these complaints the judges were suffered to reply. They acknowledged their responsibility to the Legislature, but reminded that body that the constitution of Kentucky limited its control over the judiciary to impeachment, trial, conviction, and removal for misdemeanors, and to removal on address to the Governor, which must be carried by a two-thirds vote of each branch; they proved by a long argument the right of the judiciary to decide what was * Preamble, Resolutions, and Addresses of a Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives. 1825. ATTACKS ON THE COURTS. 163 law; dwelt at length on the importance of an independent judiciary to a free people living under free institutions, and cited in defence of this position that passage in the Declaration of Independence which reads, "He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries." Able as was the reply, it produced no effect, but was referred to a select committee, which reported a resolution vindicating the constitutionality of the replevin laws and the right of the Legislature to remove judges for errors of opinion. Yet another attempt was then made to carry an address to the Governor, and when this failed a bill was passed repealing the law which established the Court of Appeals. This the Senate and the Governor promptly approved, and the old Court was said to have no existence. A new Court was then created, and on its bench the Governor and Senate placed three men known to be supporters of the relief system. It was in December, 1824, that the repealing law was enacted, and on the fourth Monday in January, 1825, the old Court met pursuant to adjournment,* but met merely to inform the bar that no business would be transacted till the autumn term, lest by so doing they should increase the confusion and anarchy already existing. In February the new Court-"The People's Court of Appeals," as the newspapers named it-met, took the furniture of the old Court from its room to the Senate Chamber, and there began business. As about one hundred suits were then pending, a demand was made on the clerk of the old Court for the papers, and when he refused to comply he was cited to answer for contempt, and the clerk of the new Court, F. P. Blair, the sergeant, the tipstaves, and the crier, were sent to procure the documents by force. They went, accordingly, to the clerk's house, broke into it, and wrested part of the papers from him, and, finding they did not have all, made a second entrance by force and secured the remainder.† *The old Court adjourned just before the passage of the law. The Argus of Western America, January 5, 1825. The Argus, November 14, 1825. VOL. V. The excitement aroused by these acts was intense. The relief party was overjoyed at its success, declared that the Legislature had merely repealed a law, denied that any constitutional right was invaded, and denounced the old Court judges as the usurpers, the triumvirate, the enemies of popular liberty. On the other hand, the old Court party described the repealing law as a dreadful deed, a high-handed outrage, a stroke at constitutional government, and called on the people to condemn it at the polls. Pamphlets were written; the newspapers teemed with essays and editorials and long articles; politicians stumped the State from the Mississippi to the mountains; grand juries sometimes presented the Governor and the Legislature,* and sometimes the old Court judges; county and town meetings held by both parties issued addresses and passed resolutions of great length. "We complain," said the citizens of Green County, "that after the Court of Appeals had decided that the establishment of a branch of the United States Bank in Kentucky was unconstitutional, the judges yielded their opinion on the mere intimation that the Supreme Court had decided otherwise. The Court of Appeals of Virginia boldly refused to receive a decree of the Supreme Federal Court, but our Court of Appeals gave up its opinion, and the dangerous influence and power of the banks has spread over Kentucky. We complain that the Court of Appeals has denied the right of the Legislature to pass laws to relieve the unfortunate citizens of the Commonwealth even in cases of general calamity; that it has denied the right of the Legislature to tax the United States Bank branches doing business in Kentucky, and as a consequence thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of stock yields not one cent toward the support of government, while the poor laborer who owns one hundred dollars' worth of property must pay his tax or lose his all. We complain that the judges have denied the right of the Legislature to call them to an account for an official act or judicial opinion; that they have thereby attempted to make themselves independent and beyond the * Grand juries of Garrard, Franklin, Montgomery, and others presented the Governor. 1825. OLD COURT AND NEW COURT. 165 reach of any power; that they have arrogated to themselves the right to interpret the constitution, and have insisted that their opinion shall rule the Legislature. We deny that the judges have any vested right of office. The investiture is made by the Legislature, which is enjoined to establish one Court of Appeals, and, having once done so by the enactment of a law, the act becomes subject to amendment or repeal just as any other." * A Harrison County meeting declared that all power is inherent in the people; that all constitutions are divestments of power by the people; that all authority not expressly given is reserved; and that, as the constitution of Kentucky did not forbid the repeal of the law establishing the Court, the Legislature, as the representative of the people, had a right to reorganize the Court at its pleasure.† Never had a more exciting campaign been made in Kentucky. The appeal was to the honesty, the hard sense, and the deliberate judgment of the plain people, and, as has always been the case whenever such appeals have been made, the right triumphed. In the House of Representatives which swept away the old Court relief men were greatly in the majority; but in the House elected in the autumn of 1825 there were sixty-two in favor of the old Court and thirty-eight in favor of the new. This signal victory was construed to mean a vigorous condemnation of the reorganizing act. The old Court, therefore, began once more to hear arguments and decide cases, and the House when it met in November repealed the law which established the new Court; but the Senate, by a vote of twenty to eighteen, rejected it, and two Courts of Appeals continued to struggle for supremacy. The Governor urged the old Court judges to resign, that he might fill their places with relief men, but they would not. The minority of the Senate issued a long address to the people, and another campaign almost as exciting as Argus of Western America, April 20, 1825. + Ibid., April 27, 1825. The Senate consisted of thirty-eight members, of whom nine were elected in 1825. After the defeat of the bill by the Senate sixteen senators issued an Adr dress to the People. # Address of Sixteen Senators to the People of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. American Daily Advertiser, January 12, 1826. the last followed in the autumn of 1826. When it ended, the Senate had been won, and at the next session the new Court was promptly abolished by the passage of the repealing act over the veto of the Governor. With the triumph of what were called "correct principles" the former prosperity of Kentucky returned. Her citizens ceased to migrate in large numbers, law and order took the place of anarchy, and she once more joined in the march. of progress with her sister States of the West. Never had that progress been more rapid. Thirteen years before, the people of New Orleans would rush to the levee to see a steamboat as one of the curiosities of the age. Now there were ninety-five such vessels on the Mississippi and its tributaries and five at Mobile, while many more had been lost by fire, by boiler explosions, and by running foul of snags and sawyers. In 1820 the shortest voyage up the river from New Orleans to Shippingport was two-and-twenty days, and the shortest down was twelve. Now it was a slow boat that could not come up against the current in twelve days and go down in six. Increase of speed had thus practically doubled the number of trips by shortening the time one half, had reduced freight rates and fares, had greatly facilitated the interchange of commodities, and had stimulated production. In 1809 a barge of sixty tons, with a crew of thirty-five men, was slowly forced up the Cumberland river by warping and bushwhacking to Nashville, to the amazement of the citizens. Barges had many a time gone down to New Orleans, but never before had the river been ascended by a vessel large enough to engage in trade with the city at the mouth of the Mississippi. The whole State rang with the news, and planters and farmers for miles around Nashville came to see the little craft at anchor off the town as a monument of enterprise. Thereafter Nashville was annually visited by at least two, which made the voyage from New Orleans in ninety days. Now sixteen steamboats could scarcely do the transportation required by the citizens.* Louisville gave employment to forty-two steamers, making a hundred and forty trips and carrying all * Qhio Monitor, June 10, 1829. |