AN EPISODE FROM THE AFTERMATH OF RECONSTRUCTION:THE CALCASIEU LOG WAR 1877-1879 by Tom Watson

As the returns came in after the Election Day, November 7, 1876, it appeared that sixteen years of Republican grip on the White House had been broken. The Democratic presidential candidate, New York's Governor Samuel J. Tilden had garnered a comfortable lead in the popular vote over his Republican opponent, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. At the time, “Grantism” had become synonymous with political corruption, and nearly four years of hard times had converted into general political malaise. Additionally, President Ulysses S. Grant’s use of the army to prop up Republican state governments in the south had fallen into disfavor with many northerners. Partisan Democrats were euphoric, particularly in the southern states. Tilden would rid them forever of detested Republican interference in their internal affairs.

The Democratic triumph, however, proved to be ephemeral. Electoral College votes actually determine the outcome of a presidential election, and Tilden’s 184 undisputed electoral votes fell one shy of a majority. Hayes had 165 electoral votes, while both parties laid claim to twenty electoral votes divided among four states: Oregon, Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. Republican political leaders began plotting to get them all, thereby electing Hayes by the slimmest of all possible majorities.

Notice the lettering on the left hindquarter of the donkey. When the presidential Electoral Commission awarded Louisiana's

electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, Democrat Samuel Tilden was effectively "kicked out" of contention in the

controversial presidential election of 1876. Courtesy of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library.

Hayes had carried Oregon, but Tilden received one of the state’s three electoral votes on a technicality. Eventually this vote went into the Hayes column without causing too much political strife. The battle then moved to the three former Confederate states and became fierce. In these states, both sides had claimed victory, and competing sets of Republican and Democrat governments laid claim to legitimacy. Each sent certified official Electoral College returns to Congress, creating an almost insoluble political crisis.

The United States Constitution makes no clear provision for resolving disputed Electoral College votes. It states only that the president of the Senate shall open the sealed returns from each state before a joint assembly of Congress, and after the vote count is tallied the winner is declared. Whereas in 1876 the Republicans controlled the Senate, Democrats commanded a majority in the House. With the presidency at stake, the resulting political impasse made a mutually acceptable solution all but unattainable.

After wrangling for weeks, Congress agreed to appoint a special fifteen-member Electoral Commission. This body consisted of five senators, five representatives and five Supreme Court justices. Under an informal understanding, seven Republicans and a like number of Democrats held seats on the commission. It was tacitly understood that one commissioner, Justice David Davis, an independent, would cast the deciding vote. At the last moment however, Davis withdrew from the commission and a staunch Republican, Justice Joseph Bradley took his place. The commission then proceeded to investigate on a state-by-state basis. In each case it voted strictly along party lines, eight to seven, and awarded every electoral vote to Hayes. Under the agreement, it would have taken a majority vote in both houses to overrule the commission, impossible under the circumstances.

Democratic congressmen cried foul and denounced the outcome as a blatant case of political highway robbery. They threatened to delay the process until inauguration day passed by with no president-elect on hand to take the oath of office. Marches on Washington to pressure Congress into awarding the job to Tilden got to, but not beyond, the talking stage. Behind the scenes, however, Republican deal makers eventually succeeded in getting enough southern Democrats to acquiesce in Hayes’s election for something their states wanted even more than a Tilden presidency—deliverance forever from so-called “black Republican, Carpetbag-Scalawag” control of state and local government.

The basis for the bargain had been in place before the presidential campaign had begun. When formally accepting the Republican nomination, Governor Hayes announced his dislike of using the army to support unwanted and unpopular Republican regimes in the southern states. All he would require in return for removing the troops was a pledge from southern political leaders to respect and protect the hard won civil and political rights of the freedmen (former slave and thus grateful Republicans) as embodied in the recently ratified thirteenth through fifteenth constitutional amendments. Although Hayes held himself aloof from any involvement in the bargaining on his behalf, his intermediaries assured southern Democrats his position remained the same. Vague promises of federal support for internal improvements in the south as well as for construction of a southern transcontinental railroad also went into complex behind the scenes bargaining that came to light of day as the Compromise of 1877.

On March, 2, 1877, an exhausted House of Representatives finally acted in favor of Hayes only three days before he took the oath of office. Meanwhile, President Grant had done what he could to pave the way for a smooth transition. He confided to his cabinet and to southern intermediaries that political skullduggery committed by both parties in Louisiana made it impossible to tell which side had actually won. To soften the blow of defeat, he telegrammed Stephen J. Packard, the state’s Republican claimant to the governorship that public opinion ran strongly against him. Grant even ordered the troops posted around the Republican state house in New Orleans as a safeguard against violence to withdraw. However, General William T. Sherman, the army’s top commander, soon countermanded these orders. And so matters stood when Rutherford B. Hayes became President of the United States. The dispirited Republicans in Florida soon dropped out of contention, but the decision on which government to recognize in South Carolina and Louisiana had not been made.

One may only speculate that Hayes was behind General Sherman’s orders to the army in Louisiana to remain on post. Subsequent events suggest that the President planned to use their presence to extract the best possible bargain he could from Louisiana’s Democrat leaders. He also had to consider the sentiments of the Republican leadership in the Senate, absolutely essential to securing confirmation of his state of cabinet appointees, and several were quite controversial. Maine’s Republican Senator James G. Blaine, a powerful leader of his party’s hard-line, anti-southern faction, all but dared the president to abandon the Republican regimes in Louisiana and South Carolina. Along with many of his senatorial colleagues, Blaine also held the reform element in his own party, including Hayes, in contempt. And Carl Schurz, the nominee for Secretary of Interior, stood out not only as an ardent champion of civil service reform, but also as a Republican of dubious loyalty.

A Rhinelander by birth, Schurz, as a young university student, championed the German liberal cause in the uprisings of 1848. When the forces of conservatism crushed the hastily fashioned resistance, he fled into exile and eventually migrated to America in 1852. He got into politics and journalism as a staunch member of the newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party and campaigned energetically for Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The Republican triumph earned Schurz a deserved reputation as a potent German-American leader and spokesman. After a brief stint as United States Minister to Spain, he became one of Lincoln’s “political generals” and served with little distinction during the Civil War.

This photograph of Carl Schurz was taken in 1879 when he served as Secretary of the Interior

During Reconstruction, Schurz supported the cause of the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson’s mild “restoration” policy toward the defeated South. Indeed, he was among the first to advocate granting voting rights along with citizenship to the emancipated slaves. During his one-term stint representing Missouri in the Senate, 1869-75, he broke with the Grant administration over corruption. Schurz’s attitude toward Grant’s Reconstruction policies also changed. To him, keeping troops in the south accomplished nothing more than maintaining corrupt, unpopular “black Republican” regimes in power. This exacerbated racial resentment among white southerners and fueled violence against freedmen. In 1872 Schurz committed the “unpardonable sin” of bolting the party and leading an opposition movement in which liberal Republicans fused with Democrats in support of the controversial New York newspaper mogul, Horace Greeley.

Schurz and like-minder liberals of the era believed getting “upright men” back into public service would cure all the country’s problems. During Grant’s presidency federal patronage had fallen into the hands of a few powerful Republican senators such as Blaine and Senator Roscoe G. Conkling of New York. These “spoilsmen” doled out federal jobs to the party faithful, building powerful political machines in the process. To the "bosses," all was well as long as their minions of federal payrolls gave the party’s ticket their all—including a percentage of their salaries—at election time. To idealistic reformers, the nation needed an impartially administered civil service based solely on merit instead of a self-serving system riddled with graft and corruption. To the realistic bosses, civil service reform meant losing elections.

Schurz had been welcomed in the Hayes campaign because of his unquestioned skills at attracting the German-American vote. However, because of his rebellious streak, some of the president’s advisers felt naming him to a cabinet post was a mistake. Nonetheless, Hayes and Schurz were like-minded on most issues, such as the need to end Reconstruction and to implement civil service reform. The two got along well together and also became cordial friends.

Once the Senate confirmed his cabinet appointees, Hayes worked toward ending Reconstruction Rival Democrat and Republican administrations had taken office in Louisiana and South Carolina. Each claimed legitimacy, and each vied for national recognition. While remaining outwardly noncommittal, the president bided his time while developments ran their course. In South Carolina, the Republican regime collapsed after the army pulled out on April tenth. In Louisiana, the settlement took longer, giving the Pelican State the dubious distinction of undergoing the longest period of Reconstruction - some fifteen years - in the entire former Confederacy.

In New Orleans, Democratic Governor and ex-Confederate General Francis T. Nicholls, along with his legislature "governed" the state from the Odd Fellows Hall. His Republican rival, Governor Packard "governed" under army protection from the St. Louis Hotel, hoping that somehow his political misfortunes could be reversed. Nicholls, however had the upper hand. He was a patrician gentleman planter whose views on race were moderate and paternalistic. He and his supporters, through intermediaries in the national capital, repeatedly declared a willingness to respect the rights of both black and white Republicans, preserve the peace, and uphold law and order. Moreover, Nicholls had succeeded in keeping politically inspired violence in reasonable check. He was considered the "real" governor in most of the parishes outside New Orleans, and he had even appointed a few blacks to local offices. After mid-January, the Packard legislature, where factionalism ran rife, was never again able to raise a quorum. What little chance Packard had of holding on rested on the sentiments of Senator Blaine and like-minded members of Congress who felt he should not be abandoned.

President Hayes became convinced that Nicholls could be trusted. On March 20, he decided to dispatch a five-member commission to Louisiana to resolve the dispute. The commissioners arrived in New Orleans on April 5 with confidential instructions that favored the Nicholls cause. The commission refused Packard’s entreaties to reexamine the election returns and declare him the lawful governor. The embattled Republican also learned that the President intended to withdraw the troops as soon as he was confident that no violence would result. The commission then bided its time while local businessmen and politicians, using promises, bribes and cajolery, persuaded enough Packard legislators to take seats in the Nicholls legislature, giving it unchallengeable legitimacy. On April 24, 1877, under Hayes’s orders the army marched away as throngs of New Orleanians cheered them along. The president eventually appointed Packard to a lucrative consular post as a conciliatory gesture by way of closing the final chapter on the tumultuous Reconstruction Era.

The Lake Charles Echo, a staunchly Conservative Democrat newspaper, received the "good" news from New Orleans through telegrams. It informed its readership in a terse message date-lined April 20^th, “Packard’s Legislature played out. Large accessions to Nicholls Legislature.” A second, dated April 25^th, reported: “Statehouse turned over to Gov. Nicholls.”

For the most part tiny Lake Charles, the seat of government for sprawling but isolated and sparsely populated Imperial Calcasieu Parish, had managed to evade unwanted Carpetbagger intrusions during Reconstruction. To be sure, the Republican dominated state legislature in 1870 had carved coastal Cameron Parish off it southern reaches, but Democrats controlled the governments of both parishes. Whereas in the state as a whole black accounted for a slight majority of the total population, in southwest Louisiana they numbered only around 10 percent. The Grand Old Party lacked a demographic base in Imperial Calcasieu, and consequently Carpetbaggers apparently preferred locating elsewhere. They found other, more developed parts of the state where large concentrations of black voters resided, and where better chances for personal gain beckoned, more attractive.

Lake Charles in 1875 looking northward from the southwest corner of present-day Ryan and Pujo Streets.

Note the deep drainage ditch in the center of the street. Unless otherwise indicated, all illustrations herein are reproduced

At the Civil War’s end, the miniscule settlement along the eastern shore of the pretty, almost circular shaped body of water known as Lake Charles was nothing more than a one-store, one-church community inhabited by twenty families, more or less. A crudely built, clapboarded courthouse distinguished it as some sort of de facto seat of parish government. Under a legislative act of 1867, it officially became a town. Its few streets were alternatively dusty or muddy. The roads connecting it to the outside world were little more than crude trails laid out somewhat haphazardly. Land travel in any direction even in dry seasons was arduous and adventuresome, in wetter times, nigh impossible.

In the parish subsistence agriculture prevailed except for the few farmers whose land lay reasonably near navigable streams. Open range cattle grazing, however had been established on the vast prairies of southwest Louisiana since time immemorial. Mild winter kept losses to the elements at a minimum, and the hardy native cattle, descended from Spanish Longhorns, virtually took care of themselves. These animals rarely encountered herdsmen other than during annual roundups for branding, or when young beeves were separated and driven to market in New Orleans. Cattle drovers following the old Opelousas Trail eastward occasionally swam herds across the Calcasieu River slightly north of Lake Charles. The spectacle provided a bit of excitement for its residents and gave its general merchants a chance to sell a modest amount of supplies. The rangy Longhorn’s “built-in” transportation system made it the only local commodity capable of reaching distant markets overland. Railroad connection to New Orleans and Texas, while much speculated about locally, lay in the future. Lake Charles depended on water transportation for virtually all of its needs.

The photographer captured this image just as a freshly cut longleaf pine began falling to the ground.

The Calcasieu watershed met these needs admirably. Navigable for some thirty miles above the small town of about 600 souls at Reconstruction’s end, the deep, slow moving river meandered southward until it met the Gulf of Mexico at Calcasieu Pass, around thirty-seven miles below Lake Charles. Sandbars lying across the channel where the stream left Calcasieu Lake and again where it emptied into the sea somewhat impeded navigation. Nonetheless, Lake Charles in1877 served as an unofficial port of call for around sixty schooners. These shallow-draft vessels engaged primarily in carrying on a lively lumber trade with Galveston and other Texas ports, for the town had become fully attuned to the continual whine of circular saws ripping through pine logs.

Northward from Lake Charles, the Calcasieu and it tributaries branched through vast, almost unbroken stands of first growth longleaf pine. These magnificent, slow growing trees, tall and straight-grained, supplied the lion’s share of logs for the sawmills. Southern yellow pine lumber was in high demand as a superior or and versatile building material, whether used as boards, construction timbers, or in shipbuilding. Cypress also grew abundantly in sloughs and swampy stretches bordering streams. Known for its resistance to decay it was used extensively for making shingles and water cisterns. The bald cypress, however paled in local importance when compared to the longleaf pine. It was more difficult and costly to harvest and transport on a regular basis.

Captain Daniel Goos, who came up the Calcasieu in 1855 and installed his sawmill northeast of Lake Charles, stood out as the patriarch of the local lumber industry. In 1866, with lumber in high demand nationally, this affable German-born entrepreneur began shipping boards to Galveston, Texas, where they fetched over fifteen dollars per thousand feet, a highly attractive price. Within a decade some dozen mills were operating in Lake Charles and environs. The little sawmill town, unlike most of the agrarian, cotton-dependent south, had developed an industrial base with a small but significant payroll. A few of its citizens enjoyed moderate prosperity. The larger mills grossed up to $250,000 per year, and a handful of merchants approached $50,000 in total annual sales. Skilled mechanics, such as sawyers, millwrights, and ship carpenters made comfortable, reasonably secure livings, as did quite a few schooner captains.

This map of Imperial Calcasieu Parish is an enlarged detail taken from the General Land Office map of Louisiana.

Notice how the Calcasieu River and its branches made Lake Charles an ideal location for the lumber trade.

The map also shows once important settlements that have disappeared over time. The Citgo Refinery occupies former

Log cutting was of far more than passing economic importance to the rural folk scattered long the many tributaries of the Calcasieu lying between Houston River in the west and Bayou Serpent in the east. Logging was a seasonal occupation that complemented subsistence farming. Families cultivated corn, peas, sweet potatoes, and other crops for home use. They also raised hogs and other livestock. The men went into the woods after harvest time with their axes and saws. After felling the pines and topping them off, usually at the first limb, they used ox teams to skid the logs to some landing alongside a nearby stream. Each log was marked or branded for identification purposes.

Logs afforded these rural families something hard to come by in most other places of the impoverished, cash-starved south—money, but more frequently, credit. Many country merchants served as middlemen in the log trade. They furnished their customers with coffee, sugar, staples, dry goods and perhaps an occasional jug of liquor. They accepted logs in exchange during the cutting season.

After the trees were felled in the fall and winter months, logging activity came to a standstill in anticipation of the spring rains. The logs lay in or alongside shallow streams waiting for freshets to float them down to tidewater. After the logs were “driven” single file to open water, crews then lashed then tightly side-by-side into twelve-log units. Then they strung these together in rows to form long rafts. The length of a raft depended on the width of a stream and the nature of its twists and turns. Rafts generally contained several logs that drifted slowly with the current to the mills. The rafts men used long paddles to steer their cargoes in mid-stream.

Goos shipyard and sawmill in 1874. The residence of Captain Daniel Goos is seen in the background.

When a raft reached its destination, the logs were deposited for safekeeping behind chain booms until they could be sawed into lumber. Rafting was slow, dangerous work. Many logs traveled over seventy miles from where they were felled.

The first log rafts of the season had just begun to reach the mills near Lake Charles around the time President Hayes had ordered the troops guarding Packard to withdraw. In little more than a month some of these same soldiers would be encamped along the Calcasieu above Lake Charles. A federal agent had already arrived in the parish, and what he discovered would upset the routine there for many months to come. The “Calcasieu Log War” was about to begin.

In 1866 Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act. This measure discontinued the sale of federal land in five southern states, including Louisiana. By reserving these tracts exclusively for homesteading radical Republicans believed they had insured access for freedmen as well as poor southern whites to farms and economic independence. The lawmakers, however, overlooked the fact that very little of the remaining public domain in the affected state was suitable for cultivation. Most of the land set aside by the law contained shallow, acidic topsoil where vast stands of virgin pine thrived. Very few genuine homesteaders had attempted to settle in such areas. Consequently, in 1876 southern congressmen were able to get the law repealed. The change would become effective after a five-year interval during which these vast tracts could be surveyed before they were opened for sale to the public.

During the debates leading to the law’s repeal, southern congressmen went beyond emphasizing that the timberlands were poorly suited to farming. They also cited countless cases of “phony” homesteaders filing fraudulent claims, cutting all the trees within reach, and moving on. They also alluded to the complicity of employees of the Interior Department’s General Land Office in these incidents. Inasmuch as Carl Schurz loathed corruption in government, he determined to put it to an end.

Moreover, Schurz and his subordinate, General Land Commissioner J. A. Williamson, were conservationists a generation ahead of the times. They agreed on the importance of protecting the nation’s dwindling timber supply against wanton, wasteful destruction. To achieve the dual goals of ending thievery and conserving the public forests, they completely overhauled existing practices for dealing with timber depredations on public land.

This nineteenth century scene shows a crew forming log rafts before floating them downriver to the mills.

Notice the high water levels in the background. This must have been an optimal time for "driving" logs down the normally

shallow branches that emptied into the larger streams that formed the Calcasieu watershed.

The old system dated from 1854 when the General Land Office first sent a few agents into the field with orders to investigate and prosecute timber thieves in the Great Lakes area. Within two years this approach was modified, and responsibility for handling timber depredations cases eventually wound up in local branches of the General Land Office. In 1860, the secretary of Interior initiated a policy favoring compromise over prosecution in timber depredation cases. Corruption set in, and local land office clerks altogether too often settled timber damage cases for a pittance. In short, the system operated in most areas as a sort of license to steal from the government for lumbermen with enough nerve and the “right” connections. Williamson stripped the authority to make compromise settlements from all local land office clerks and shifted the responsibility for handling timber depredation cases directly under his control. He then appointed a number of carefully chosen special timber agents and granted them full and exclusive control over investigating and initiating prosecution in all timber cases within their areas of assignment. A special appropriation of $25,000 supported this tough, “no compromise” approach that held promise for eradicating timber stealing on the public domain once and for all.

On March 15, 1877, the commissioner appointed Murray A. Carter, a clerk in the General Land Office, as special timer agent for the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Williamson had reports from federal land surveyors working in southwest Louisiana of “extensive depredations” in progress there. Accordingly, he directed Carter to make an investigation of the Calcasieu watershed his first order of business.

The oxen in this team in all likelihood came out of cattle native to the prairies of Southwest Louisiana.

One end of a log would be lashed high up on the axle of the cart and skidded to a nearby stream for floating

Carter left Washington for New Orleans on the same day he received his appointment and assignment. He spent over a week in the Crescent City checking in with the local land office and the federal district attorney. Early in April Carter arrived in Ville Platte and met with the federal surveyors. They informed him that a month’s work lay ahead before they could move westward into the timber belt, and, consequently, on April 7 Carter struck out alone toward the Calcasieu River.

The agent stopped at Cole’s store, located at hickory Flat around four miles east of the river, before crossing it on his way to visit the Whiskey Chitto. He found there a large number of freshly felled logs, nearly all cut off public land, lying near the stream waiting for the water to rise. He retraced his route to the Cole establishment before heading southward toward Bayou Serpent. When he arrived there, he learned he had barely missed the departure of an 1,800-log raft for Lake Charles, his next destination.

Before he reached the little sawmill town, Carter was already convinced that logging was the “principal business” of the parish and the logs destined for the surrounding mills came “almost exclusively” from government land. They cut hundreds of thousands of feet daily from which the United States received “not … one dollar.” He spent over two weeks in and around the community gathering more evidence. He tried to satisfy the curiosity of wary citizens by explaining he had come to look into alligator hunting. However, he apparently spent too much time hanging around sawmills and making forays into logging camps for the ruse to be effective. Carter received warnings he was “at considerable personal risk” when traveling alone through the piney woods.

The timber agent seemed to agree. “Life is not valued highly here,” he wrote Williamson, “at best the knife, shotgun and pistol are frequently called on [to settle] differences.” His investigation convinced him that ninety percent of all local homestead claims were fraudulent and the extent of log stealing was “indescribable.” The log cutters were a propertyless, penniless lot “whose capital [was] the axe.” It was futile to hope for recovery for past damages under these circumstances.

The best approach, Carter suggested would be to strike before an estimated 40,000 logs could be floated to the mills. Swift legal action could preserve them as evidence. Exemplary criminal prosecution then could follow - providing that competent witnesses willing to testify could be rounded up. With practically everyone in the parish criminally liable, finding credible witnesses, Carter realized, was no small undertaking. With steady rain bringing a rise in water levels during the final days of April, the agent, with Williamson’s approval, returned to New Orleans to prepare his case.

United States Attorney General Charles Devens had paved the way by placing District Attorney George S. Lacey at Carter’s disposal. Lacey had formerly served as city attorney for New Orleans during the tenure of its last Republican mayor. On May 3, 1877, they brought suit in federal court against Joseph Hampton and others, named and unnamed, all residents of Calcasieu Parish, for having in their possession “a large quantity and number of pine and other logs and timber…belonging to the United States.” Armed with a blanket writ of sequestration, Carter returned to Lake Charles accompanied by Deputy Marshall John J. Gainey and one assistant. The government’s seizure of logs began in earnest on May 11 and went on for three days without stint.

The local lumbermen, apparently drawing on past experience, underestimated the seriousness of the situation. They proposed to settle matters by offering the government ten cents per log. Williamson responded from Washington that the offer "cannot be entertained." No logs were to be sold until an inventory could be completed and then only at appraised market value. The Interior Department’s hard-line policy jelled organized local resistance to the unwanted federal intrusion.

Carter soon began bombarding his superiors with alarming reports of mounting local opposition and pleas for additional help. When Deputy Marshal Gainey hired three local men as log keepers to guard the seized logs, they were driven off by threats. The Echo sneeringly commented that “three Hayes Democrats who could read and write” and willing to work in Schurz’s newly formed civil service couldn’t be found in the parish. Log rafts were being spirited to sawmills under cover of moonlight in defiance of officially served writs of seizure. The deputy marshal’s appeal to local authorities to form a posse for his assistance fell on deaf ears. The parish judge and the sheriff, Carter alleged, were deeply involved in the lumber trade. Most inhabitants were “lawless and desperate” characters, and in the absence of quick action he predicted all the government’s property would be lost. When word of plots against his life reached him, the harried timber agent began sleeping with a repeating rifle near at hand.

Logs floating within the confines of a log boom adjacent to some unidentified sawmill on the Calcasieu River.

High-level official in New Orleans and Washington exchanged views on how to handle the crises brewing along the Calcasieu. General Christopher C. Augur, in command of the troops concentrated near the Crescent City during the Nicholls-Packard standoff, refused to dispatch soldiers to the embattled area. Attorney General Devens held misgivings against using the army, probably out of concern over embarrassing the administration. J. R. G. Pitkin, federal marshal for Louisiana, informed Devens he could send fifty “picked men” to Lake Charles within twenty-four hours, if Augur could furnish him with fifty rifles and a dozen pistols. The estimated cost, including pay, rations and the “extortionate” rates demanded by ship owners would amount to six thousand dollars per month, considered then an enormous outlay. District Attorney Lacey expressed reluctance to approve Pitkin’s plan without Devens' approval. Devens, worried about straining the judicial budget, advised Pitkin against sending fifty men “unless absolutely necessary.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of War George W. McCrary overruled General Augur. Two companies of the 13^th Infantry Regiment, totaling some eighty officers and men, deployed from Jackson Barracks to an encampment on the Calcasieu River near the Goos sawmill. They arrived on May 27 under orders to keep peace only; the soldiers were to assist the deputy marshal in any other capacity.

The limits imposed on the military required the Department of Justice to beef up the manpower needed in Calcasieu Parish. Counting and safeguarding thousands of logs scattered over sixty square miles of backwoods and some 300 miles of waterways loomed as a formidable task. Most of the recruits came from the ranks of the recently defunct Metropolitan Police, whose duty had been to protect carpetbag governments in New Orleans. When the "outsiders" arrived in Lake Charles, many but not all the local populace boycotted them. Some landlords refused them lodging, and liverymen charged them exorbitant rates for renting horses. “An onerous and laborious task,” in the words of a close observer, lay ahead of the government’s men.

Seeing their overtures for a quick and easy settlement rebuffed, in June seven lumbermen with interest in sawmills intervened as defendants in United States v. Joseph C. Hampton et al. The leader of the group was Allen J. Perkins, a member of a pioneer family in Calcasieu Parish. In his early forties, Perkins operated a sawmill located on the west bank of the Calcasieu above Lake Charles near a tiny settlement known as Bagdad. He also owned two general stores. His cousin, Eli Perkins, who owned the mill at Rose Bluff, became the eighth lumberman to join the suit when he intervened several weeks later.

Allen J. Perkins played a prominent role in the leadership of the local opposition to the federal government's

Mill owner Joseph L. Ryan, whose father, Jacob, is credited with founding Lake Charles, brought his firm into the suit. The younger Ryan owned a half interest in the Ryan and Geary mill situated just above the town on the northeastern bend of the lakeshore. Ryan, mid-thirtyish, also owned 2,000 acres of timber in the parish and a small herd of cattle. His partner and brother-in-law, James P. Geary, a native of Pennsylvania, came to Lake Charles in 1869.

Intervener Hardy C. Gill was the senior partner in the firm of Gill and Platz, founded in 1872. His partner, Peter Platz, German by birth, accompanied Goos to the area in 1855. Gill, born in Mississippi, had been in the Calcasieu lumber trade since around 1867. in addition to their sawmill near Bagdad, the partners owned real estate and schooners.

W. B. Norris, a schooner captain, and his co-partner, James C. Jones, operated the Norris and Company mill, which was located close by Bagdad. Norris first sailed up the Calcasieu in 1866 and became a permanent fixture in the Calcasieu lumber trade. Besides the mill in Calcasieu Parish, the partners had a place of business in Texas. Both also resided in Galveston, and both owned property in Texas as well as in Louisiana.

The eight lumbermen stepped into the case by claiming ownership of a large number of the logs the government had wrongfully seized, and they alleged that the logs they claimed had been legally taken off private land. They asked the courts to release their property and pledged themselves to post surety bonds amounting to fifty percent above the appraised value of the logs in accordance with Louisiana civil law.

Special Agent Carter believed the worst from the moment he learned of his adversaries’ plans. He suspected that he lumbermen would be allowed to post ridiculously low bonds, gain possession of the best logs, and reduce the government’s evidence to a pile of sawdust before they could be properly inventoried.

In the practice of the time, for the purpose of keeping track of ownership, each log bore a brand or mark of identification. Any given aggregate of logs might contain a bewildering array of those identifying marks. Once the government counted and identified the provenance of the marked timber, the resulting inventories could be used as evidence. Carter relayed his misgivings to Washington, and Secretary Schurz had the Justice Department notify Lacey to with hold his consent to any bonding arrangements without having Carter’s full approval.

Carter had good reason to suspect the bonding scheme. Deputy Marshals began the task of inventorying logs on May 27, one day after the soldiers arrived. They quickly discovered the backcountry to be hostile territory. Crews were intimidated at almost every turn, and woodsmen took every opportunity to impede their work. Carter singled out Perkins, Ryan and Geary as the principal instigator behind the troublemakers. It was a reasonable ploy from the viewpoint of the lumbermen. Delaying the government inventory until they had their day in court served their interests.

Judge Edward C. Billings presided over the Hampton case. A native of Massachusetts, he settled in New Orleans in 1866. He was appointed to the federal bench during the Grant administration, presumably for political services rendered to the carpetbag Governor William Pitt Kellogg. Billings is best remembered for his involvement in the celebrated Myra Clark Gains case. In his later judicial career, he was elevated to the Federal appellate court.

Despite the forewarnings from Washington counsel for the intervening lumbermen in Carter’s estimation, caught Lacey “napping” and got favorable treatment in the courtroom of Judge Billings. He appointed F. C. Chamberlain as a special court commissioner to preside over hearings to be conducted in Lake Charles. Chamberlain had the authority to take sworn testimony of witnesses for the purpose of verifying the legitimacy of the interveners’ claims of ownership, identifying the logs particular to each claim, and setting the values of the surety bonds required for their release. The collateral required for each bond would be reached through an evaluation of each of logs by three court-appointed appraisers. Lacey at least managed to improve the government’s position by securing an amendment to the original order. Under the new rule Chamberlain lost the power to release logs from sequestration without securing the court’s approval beforehand.

The task of evaluating the logs in dispute went to two court appointed appraisers, one chosen by the lumbermen, and the other by the United States. The lumbermen selected W. H. Haskell of Lake Charles, a native New Englander and a Republican - a local rarity for that time. District Attorney Lacey chose a New Orleans wholesaler specializing in luxury import, Auguste Couturie, to represent the United States. The bench chose the third appraiser, designated as an umpire, whose presumed impartiality would enable him to reconcile any differences between the other two. Judge Billings chose General Leonard Sewell, a Republican who formerly held high command in the Metropolitan Police during the Kellogg administration, as umpire.

Carter was none too happy with any of Judge Billings’ choices, and particularly so with Sewell.

The special agent learned from an informant in the Crescent City that Sewell had “intimately" associated with Perkins and his cohorts before being named umpire. He allegedly advised and assisted in preparing their case. Matters worsened after the appraisers arrived in Lake Charles, where Perkins treated Sewell and Couturie as his personal guests. Convinced that the skullduggery was afoot, Carter embarked on a course of non-cooperation. He vowed to maintain the government’s control over all sequestered timber, the court’s commissioner and appraisers notwithstanding.

Sewell, Haskell and Couturie reached Lake Charles on June 11. When they asked Gainey for the inventories he had made, they got not reply. Two days later they sent a written request to both Carter and Gainey for the inventories. The two eventually informed the appraisers they had completed no inventories and would likely have none completed for six months. The work could not resume until additional help arrived from New Orleans. The perplexed appraisers informed New Orleans of their quandary, and Sewell told Carter before a roomful of citizens that he and Gainey were “evidently obstructing the order of Court.” Carter, according to Sewell, replied he was “determined these men….shall not have their logs.” When asked why, the agent allegedly declared, “when [the lumbermen] make war on the United States as they did during the late rebellion, we will teach them a lesson.” Couturie joined Sewell in expressing regret to see such matters “imported” into the issue at hand.

Sewell then offered the services of the appraisers plus “fifty competent men” to complete the inventory for the government free of charge. Carter declined the offer. Sewell reported the impasse to the court and waited on further instruction. At the behest of counsel for the intervenors, Judge Billings placed the appraisers in “full and entire control” of counting and appraising all logs claimed by the intervenors.

Freed from dependence on the deputy marshals, the three appraisers, assisted by local “volunteers,” began their work at Bayou Serpent. Just as the party finished counting, measuring and listing the marks of the impounded logs in the vicinity, Gainey and two assistants drove up in a buggy with a Winchester rifle in clear view. The deputy marshal gruffly asked Sewell what he was doing. Sewell answered that the appraisers were taking an inventory as ordered by the court. Gainey ordered then to leave, or he would “put [them] off by force.” Gainey then read a purported telegram ordering him to arrest the appraisers if they attempted to take any inventories. Although he refused to allow Sewell to read the message, the deputy marshal divulged it had come from District Attorney Lacey.

The confrontation ended when the appraisers left. In subsequent, less heated exchanges between the adversaries, it became clear that Carter and Gainey intended to stand by the writ of sequestration issued on May 3 that placed the United States Marshal for the District of Louisiana in exclusive control of accounting for the seized timber. Gainey, however, eventually backed down from his threats to halt the inventory with force. Thereafter, the appraisers were studiously ignored when the visited Bagdad and West Fork to complete their count of the logs claimed by the intervenors.

When reinforcements arrived from New Orleans Carter and Gainey made more seizures. They were also able to accelerate the government’s inventory work. The payroll peaked at twelve deputy marshals and thirty-five “log keepers,” but some put in fewer days then others. The government men finished the official log count on September 6. In slightly over three months, crews finished 105 elaborate inventories containing data on the locations, the number and average dimensions of logs by lot, the identifying marks the logs bore, and, where possible, ownership. The deputy marshal in charge of each count, signed, dated and vouched for the accuracy of each inventory in the presence of two witnesses. The work was hazardous; an accidental drowning claimed the life of one unidentified government log handler.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Chamberlain arrived in Lake Charles on June 27 and immediately set to work in the parish courthouse. He remained in town almost four weeks and labored at taking around 180 depositions from the intervenors, various supporting witnesses, and local property owners who offered collateral for the surety bonds. Shortly after Chamberlain arrived he issued a subpoena duces tecun ordering Gainey to furnish copies of inventories to Sewell and the other appraisers. The deputy marshal replied that his orders prevented him from recognizing the commissioner’s competency to issue binding orders, and moreover, he had not yet completed any inventories of the logs claimed by the intervenors. Gainey later turned over selected inventories to Chamberlain showing discrepancies in the log counts reported by the appraisers, probably to impugn their credibility.

The adversaries also continued the battle of nerve outside the commissioner’s court. Carter accused Sewell of slandering him in anonymously written news articles and also for instigating a petition addressed to Secretary Schurz asking for his removal. Circumstantial evidence lends credence to Carter’s accusations. The New Orleans Democrat’s coverage of events in Calcasieu Parish insinuated that Carter and others were engaged in nothing more than “political jobbery.” The “culprits,” the paper alleged, were attempting to enrich themselves and unnamed favorites at the expense of aggrieved, law abiding citizens seeking justice through the courts. Such lowly tactics, the paper averred, hearkened back to the dark days of corrupt carpetbag rule.

An incident of July 12 heightened tensions. Gainey boarded the Norris and Company tugboat Alert while she was towing a raft of logs on the Calcasieu River about seven miles north of Lake Charles. F. W. Wilson, an engineer, accompanied the deputy marshal. According to press accounts Gainey, pistol in hand, ordered the tug’s master, William Horne, to stop the engine. The master asked if Gainey was taking his vessel. Gainey then ordered Wilson to stop the engine, but Horne halted the engineer and asked Gainey to show him a warrant. Gainey jostled Horne around the deck, hoping to egg him into forceful resistance. Horne, however, merely refused to obey Gainey’s commands. The deputy marshal than sent Wilson for reinforcements.

The engineer returned to the Alert accompanied by a Captain Ellis and a detail of soldiers. Gainey then declared Horne to be under arrest, but Horne continued to ask to see a warrant. The captain stepped in and told Horne he was Gainey’s prisoner. Gainey then ordered the Alert around and had it docked at the military camp. The deputy marshal had Horne thrown in the guardhouse while he left to file charges with Chamberlain.

Horne, charged with resisting an officer in the performance of his duties, remained in custody until he appeared before Commissioner Chamberlain on July 14. After hearing both sides, the commissioner dismissed the charges and released the prisoner, characterizing Gainey’s behavior as “violent and ruffianly.” The Democrat’s account of the incident, submitted under the pen name “CALCASIEU,” questioned the use of soldiers to arrest “a citizen of a free state” and confine him as a military prisoner. The Picayune’s correspondent speculated Gainey had attempted to “provoke a conflict” between the soldiers and the citizenry. After this incident Carter ordered a chain boom placed across the Calcasieu to halt any further clandestine movement of logs. The Alert remained impounded as late as March 1878. Norris and Company filed suit for recovery of the vessel plus damages during that month.

Later in the month a gang of toughs frustrated Gainey’s attempted seizure of logs at the Gill and Platz mill. The group not only commandeered the logs, but also, according to the Echo ordered the deputy marshal to leave before they put holes in him “big enough to WALK A JACKASS THROUGH.” Gainey accused Sewell and Chamberlain of surreptitiously masterminding the incident.

By this time Commissioner Chamberlain had finished with depositions taken on behalf of the intervenors. The statements of the mill owners were similar in most respects. All declared they had bought the logs they claimed anywhere between one week and over a year before the writs of seizure had been served. All maintained that the government had brought their businesses to a standstill. To add more urgency to their concern that without hasty action thousands of logs could be lost in some storm-driven, rampaging flood. The lumbermen’s business activity had dropped any where between $60,000 to $25,000 below normal levels since the seizures began. All named the respective agents who had actually made the purchases on their behalf. Each of these agents inurn appeared before Chamberlain and testified as to the number of logs bought, their general location, and the identifying marks appearing on the logs claimed by their respective employers. Lacking throughout, however, were written bills of sale or other tangible forms of evidence.

The lumbermen also generally agreed on the value of the logs they claimed. These varied in worth according to location. Pine logs lying in or near streams and ready for floating were estimate at around fifty cents each, whereas those already moved to or near the mills were worth three times as much. Rough lumber went for between $8.50 and $9.00 per thousand feet at the mill, for an average of around $2.25 per log.

Toward the end of June, counsel for Ryan and Geary asked Chamberlain to release 1,873 logs claimed by their client and situated on Bayou Serpent. Based on the inventory and appraisal submitted by Sewell, Haskell and Couturie, the commissioner set the bond at $3,500.00. After “careful examination” of the collateral pledged by Abram Moss, John G. Gray, Captain Thomas Hansen and Paul Pujo, the commissioner declared his satisfaction with the bond tendered and requested Carter to release the logs to the claimants.

Carter objected on the grounds that the United States was not bound by any inventories and appraisals “said” to have been made by the court-appointed appraisers. Attorneys for Ryan and Geary then obtained a subpoena duces tecum from Chamberlain ordering Deputy Marshal Gainey to surrender the writ of seizure covering the Bayou Serpent logs. The deputy informed Chamberlain he had been instructed to deny his competency to issue binding orders; moreover, he declared, the inventory prepared by the court-appointed appraiser was legally invalid. Chamberlain, infuriated over the defiance of government men, appointed Sheriff A. L. Reid as his special deputy marshal to serve subpoenas in all future cases that arose.

Proceedings involving the other intervenors continued in Chamberlain’s court along the same lines. It became apparent that the timber agent was prepared to challenge his authority at every step. Chamberlain indeed exceeded his authority when he ordered the sequestered logs released from custody, for which he was immediately overruled and subsequently forced to resign. Carter had anticipated such action and had full backing from Washington to ignore the commissioner.

The United States, following the special agent’s suggestions, took a fourfold stance against the premature release of logs. First, nothing should be decided until the federal marshal in New Orleans returned the original writ of seizure to the federal court along with certified inventories showing exactly what logs the government had seized. Second, the United State claimed only such property as the government determined it had actually seized, and therefore wasn’t bound by any lists prepared by outside entities. Third, the marshal’s inventory was the key to establishing firm evidence of when, where and how many logs had been taken into custody, along with their identifying marks and insofar as possible, their true ownership. Fourth, the intervenors had failed to prove their right to bond because they had presented not bona fide evidence to back their claims. As an aside, Carter also inferred that “good security cannot be furnished for the property in this parish.”

At the time of the Carter-Chamberlain deadlock, the federal court in New Orleans had recessed for the summer and Judge Billing was away in New Haven, Connecticut. From there, early in July the jurist, at Lacey’s behest, wired Chamberlain to halt attempting to release logs without the express consent of the district attorney. This led Lacey, along with Lionel Sheldon and A. G. Brice, counselors for the intervenors, to bring the issue before Billings in an extraordinary court session held in Connecticut. During these proceedings, Billings upheld the defendants’ right to intervene, but he set aside the appraisals made in Lake Charles. He placed a nominal value of two dollars on each log and required bonds to exceed the court imposed value of logs released to claimants by twenty-five percent. Billing agreed to hear amended applications to bond after he returned to New Orleans.

Meanwhile, Jack Wharton, a Republican ally of former carpetbag Governor Henry C. Warmoth, had succeeded Pitkin as federal marshal. Accompanied by several deputies, Wharton visited Lake Charles in late July to assess the conflict and to expedite the inventory work. To lower tensions, he publicly declared conditions to be “peaceful and orderly” in the “good old democratic parish.” He also reported that the inventory was moving forward satisfactorily. The project would likely be completed within a few weeks.

In the last week of August Judge Billings entertained motions in New Orleans from the intervenors to set bonds and release logs. At this juncture the official government count of sequestered logs had surpassed 96,600 and included virtually all the logs earlier claimed by the lumbermen. Billings rules in their favor and allowed each claimant twenty days in which to post their respective bonds with the marshal. The ruling left Carter but one last recourse in his battle with the Calcasieu lumbermen; the fate of the logs at this point rested solely in Wharton’s hands.

The case presented by the intervenors was based on the civil codes of Louisiana. In state practice, bonds served as collateral against contested moveable property, thusly protecting the rights of parties’ to the suit should the case be decided in their favor. In such an outcome, if the collateral placed in escrow were lower in actual value, the holder of the bond became personally liable for the shortfall. The United States Marshal’s performance bond required by law came to only $20,000 dollars, whereas the lumbermen’s proffered bonds in the Hampton case exceeded that amount by almost $60,000. Carter had little trouble in getting Wharton’s assurances he would be extremely circumspect in accepting collateral based on Calcasieu property of doubtful value.

The lumbermen accused Wharton of “unjustly, arbitrarily and illegally” refusing to accept their bonds and appealed to Judge Billings for an injunction against the marshal. The judge denied their appeal on grounds he had no statutory authority to interfere. If he had ordered Wharton to accept the bonds, the marshal would have been absolved of personal liability for damages, and the government’s stake in the outcome of the case would have been jeopardized. Accordingly, the judge left matters entirely up to the marshal’s discretion, and the marshal bided his time.

With, according to Hardy C. Gill, “not a wheel…turning, nor a mill going,” the legal delays apparently made the residents of Lake Charles desperate for deliverance. Leading citizens implored Secretary Schuz to halt the proceedings because they had brought about “a complete suspension of business.” Unimpressed, the secretary curtly remarked that he believed “that sort of business ought to be suspended.” With the twenty-day interval set for bonding slipping by, and with logs rotting and suffering worm damage, the intervenors finally acquiesced. The consented to allow the government to dispose of the seized timber through public auction, a solution Wharton had proposed during his visit to Lake Charles. The proceeds would remain in escrow until the case was settled.

Hardy C. Gill at eighteen. This portrait was taken in 1862 around the time he volunteered for service

in the Confederate army. He rose to the rank of captain before he became a prisoner of war in 1864.

Marshal Wharton placed notices in newspapers scattered from Mobile to Texas announcing public auction to be held in Lake Charles on Friday, September 21. Around 95,000 logs, 4,400 cross ties and 54,000 feet of lumber were listed for sale. The logs would be sold in individual lots according to their respective locations and identifying marks. Cash bids were to be based on an average price per log in each lot.

Special Agent Carter found little cause for relaxation at this turn of events. His stay in Calcasieu Parish had been anything but pleasant; he had been reviled and denounced as an abusive, corrupt bureaucrat bent on lining his own pockets. He seemed determined to set an example in southwest Louisiana that would serve notice the Interior Department meant business in its campaign against timber thievery. He had already commenced preparing a move onto the Pearl River and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, his next targets, and hoped that success in Calcasieu might make his work there less difficult.

Carter’s immediate concern arose from reports that the local lumbermen agreed among themselves to bid no higher than fifteen cents per log at the auction. As a precaution against such a cabal, he suggested that Williamson authorize him to protect the government’s interests by granting him authority to enter bids on its behalf. Carter received personal instruction from Secretary Schurz to bid high enough on every lot to protect the government’s interest.

At the interval, Allen J. Perkins communicated his interest in buying an undisclosed amount of the sequestered timber directly to the Department of Interior. Commissioner Williamson curtly replied by collect telegram to submit any proposal to Carter. Whether intended or not, Williamson’s reply was a stinging rebuke. According to the Echo, in May Carter had openly declared his willingness to entertain proposals for settlements from anyone except Perkins.

Lumbermen who had not intervened in the Hampton case, led by Daniel Goos and his son-in-law, George Lock, also tried to bargain with Commissioner Williamson before the sale. Having “lately become aware” of the “great infractions … made on the public domain,” the petitioners pointed out that the abuse had “gone on so long … the people came to regard it as a privilege, if not a right, vouchsafed lumbermen by the Government.” They stated they had not “in any way interfered with or obstructed the writ of sequestration” and had “at all times” extended their hospitality and assistance to government officials. They trusted that when the inventory was completed, the government “would consider favorably …the representations of that part of the community that have acted in harmony with its policy.” The petitioners asked for “a fair and equitable settlement for themselves and those they represent in order that they may resume business.”

Although Wharton and Gainey endorsed the petition, it bore no fruit. To Schurz and Williamson, making a special settlement would only repeat past mistakes. Under the new dispensation there was no room for compromise. If Goos and the others wanted logs, they could bid at the auction. Indeed, for their troubles, Goos and Lock fell victim to whispered accusations that numbered them among the secret informants who had brought down the government’s wrath on the community. The embattled lumbermen felt compelled to publicly refute the rumor. Pointing out that some 15,000 of their logs had been seized; they declared they were guilty of nothing more than treating government agents with courtesy and respect.

A government receipt issued to Jacob Ryan, the "Father of Lake Charles," for logs bought during the four-day public auction

of over 90,000 logs that began on Sept. 21, 1877. It comes from the court records in United States v. Joseph Hampton et al.

September of 1877 turned out to be an unfavorable month for offering timber at public auction in Calcasieu Parish. Five days of rain inundated southwest Louisiana early in the month, and over-flowing streams threatened to sweep the sequestered logs away with heavy attendant losses. Reports reaching Wharton and Carter in New Orleans pictured Calcasieu Parish as an armed camp. As a precaution, the Treasury department’s revenue cutter Dix had been placed at the marshal’s disposal for the duration of the timber sale. He and Carter intended to “show the flag” in expectation that the armed vessel may have a calming effect on the community.

Capt. Daniel Goos, the dean of the Calcasieu mill owners in 1877, was courteous and accommodating

toward the federal agents at work in Calcasieu during the Log War. Many of his peers resented him for refusing to go along

with the campaign of obstructionism carried out by a large portion of the local residents.

Storms and turbulent seas interrupted the voyage of the Dix to Lake Charles and caused its master to seek safe haven at Morgan City. On September 17 Carter and Wharton struck out from there on a harrowing tip across soggy prairies and swollen streams. They reached Lake Charles during the morning hours of the appointed auction day. Storms had interrupted telegraph service, and Williamson had been trying desperately to communicate with Carter. The commissioner feared the government would have no buyer at the auction.

Marshal Wharton opened the bidding at noon under improving weather conditions. A large number of local men looked on silently while outside buyers were conspicuously absent, which Carter attributed to stormy conditions earlier in the week. He may have erred. Southern lumbermen everywhere had incentive to boycott a government sale of sequestered logs; they understood they were equally threatened.

The marshal halted the day’s biddings after selling only some 120 logs to the United States, for Carter was the sole bidder. He attributed the lack of bidding to the cabal, and the following morning he addressed the crowd before the auction resumed. He assured his listeners the government would remain silent if genuine competitive bidding began. He would bid only out of necessity to protect the interest of the government. The sale went on through September 28, and Wharton sold 104 lots containing a little less then 93,000 logs. Not offered at auction were some 2,300 logs seized at Hickory Flat. These formed the 105^th and last lot sequestered by federal marshals on the Calcasieu watershed. The inventory on these logs had not been finished in time for it to be included in the public advertisements. However, around 4,410 logs and 3,440 crossties Gainey had seized in August along the Louisiana side of the Sabine River went up for auction.

Carter reported to his superiors with pride that the sale made it abundantly clear that timber depredation would no longer be tolerated anywhere. The lumbermen of Calcasieu had been taught “a lesson which will never be forgotten,” a lesson he hoped would spread far and wide.

Excerpted from one of the 105 government inventories made on logs seized in Calcasieu Parish in 1877.

These logs were allegedly cut without permission on land belonging to the federal government.

The United States purchased 74,664 logs, or around eighty percent of the timber sold, at a total price of $9,738.56. Carter frequently acquired logs with nominal bids as low as ten cents per log for lots located in less accessible areas. The highest bids went for prime logs situated in tidewater and ready for rafting downstream. Some of these lots sold for as much as ninety cents per log. Private purchasers bought 18,874 of the more accessible loge for a total price of $11,537.55. The lumber and crossties also went to individual buyers at prices of $310.00 and $195.00 respectively. Hilaire Escoubas and T. R. Jones, clerks on the payrolls of Allen J. Perkins and Norris and Company respectively bought logs on the last day of the auction, presumably on behalf of their employers. Jacob Ryan followed suit, probably as an agent for his son Joseph, co-owner of Ryan and Geary. W. E. Gill seemingly acted for his brother, Hardy, principal partner in Gill and Platz. Joseph Hampton, the logger and namesake for the suit, was the only identifiable original defendant to bid successfully.

During and after the auction Carter tried in vain to summon the Dix to Lake Charles. The captain refused to budge, claiming that the bar at Calcasieu Pass was too shallow for the vessel to cross safely. He apparently had other reasons, however, because the heavy rainfall had raised the water levels in the river appreciably. A personality clash may have been the cause behind the standoff, for the timber agent’s zeal at times irritated his associates. Whatever lay behind the standoff, Wharton once again traveled by land when he left Lake Charles.

The federal government’s presence in Calcasieu Parish by no means ended when Marshal Wharton sounded the gavel on the sale of the last lot of timber. Some 75,000 government logs needed protection until they could be disposed of, and before the sale “lawless elements,” had threatened either to burn or drive spikes into any logs the government bought. Carter received quick assurances from Washington that the soldiers would remain in place as long as required. The special agent, however, preferred that they be replaced. The officers grumbled openly in the presence of soldiers about their miserable lot, and morale sank accordingly. Some officers, it was rumored, had told civilians they hoped some raging torrent would carry the logs to a watery grave so they could be relieved from their wretched assignment. Carter asked for cavalry to be sent as replacements because of the advantages mounted troops would have in patrolling the vast, almost inaccessible area over which the logs were scattered. Schurz conferred with the Secretary of War about the matter, but no changes were made. The infantry remained until June 11, 1878.

Carter foresaw a pent up local demand for the government’s timber as soon as the privately purchased logs had been sawed into timber. In the interim, he suggested renting a local sawmill and disposing of the lumber through requisitions from the war department. Military installations being built along the western frontier in Texas could furnish ready outlets for lumber. Sending government-sawed lumber to the military, Carter opined, would goad Calcasieu lumbermen into buying the rest. Nothing ever came of this suggestion.

When his superiors asked what prices could be obtained, Carter estimated the government should receive around forty cents from logs lying where they were cut, sixty-five cents for those adjacent to smaller streams, and between one dollar and a dollar seventy-five for logs lying in or near deep water. Schurz instructed the agent to “get as much as you can” and to hold the logs until demand developed or “until they rot.” These post-auction estimates were far lower than the four dollars per log value Carter mentioned when he first visited Calcasieu Parish. Indeed, they were quite close to the valuations set by the court-appointed appraisers.

Government sales in Calcasieu Parish went slowly after the auction. Although local lumbermen bought logs occasionally, the New Orleans Times reported the United States still held around 70,000 logs as of November 10, 1877. Cutting of Calcasieu pine was at a standstill, and some loggers had moved to the state owned cypress stands along the Sabine River. Lumber dealers and general merchants of Galveston, hurt from the loss of the Calcasieu market, complained to Congress, as did Mississippians reeling under Special Agent Carter’s most recent onslaught. The chorus of complaints heightened as the Department of Interior extended its crusade against timber depredation to Florida, Minnesota, Montana Territory and other sections.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the Hampton case moved through the federal court at a snail’s pace, delayed by a seemingly interminable series of motions and counter motions. The government apparently intended to allow Carter time enough to consolidate his evidence. A federal surveyor, George D. Bradford, had been sent out to map the exact location where logs had been taken off federal land in Calcasieu Parish. This time consuming, costly work was essential to establishing beyond reasonable doubt the government’s claim to the sequestered logs. The Echo had a low opinion of Bradford’s professional qualifications and commented he knew “no more about surveying than a savage of the wilds of Africa.” Had the editor known that Bradford was the very informant who had brought about the investigation in Calcasieu, he may have been less charitable.

Secretary Schurz was pleased with the initial results of his department’s campaign against timber thievery on public lands. As of September 1877, four months of seizures completed in Minnesota and Louisiana had placed timber with an estimated market value of $180,000 in the government’s hands. This figure looked ingressive, considering that settlements with timber poachers over the preceding twenty years had netted the United States only around $154,000. The new, no-compromise program promised to bring great sums into the treasury and halt timber depredations on the timber domain in one fell swoop. To carry it forward, however, would require special appropriations and legislative changes. To achieve these ends, Schurz made an effort to build congressional support.

Early in 1878 The General Land Office publicized the accomplishments of the past year. In Minnesota, timber depredations had virtually ended, and the government expected to recover the value of cutover public lands there through pending litigation. In Louisiana, where work had “just commenced,” the government held logs equaling 28,000,000 feet of lumber in Calcasieu Parish alone, and more recent operations in Caddo Parish resulted in the seizure of logs and lumber valued at around $96,000. The crackdown was at full speed in Mississippi, and logs, lumber and turpentine seized there totaled an estimated $368,000. Work in Florida had begun with the filing of six civil and six criminal suits. Preliminary investigations indicated that most states and territories of the far west, as well as other southern states called out for further activity. In summation, the Interior Department disclosed that 190 civil and thirty-eight criminal timber depredation suits had been filed in1877 and timber valued at slightly under $875,000 had been seized.

Secretary Schurz asked Congress to appropriate $20,000 to continue his assault on timber thievery, a sum that quadrupled the pre-1877 amount normally granted the Department of Interior for that purpose. Many congressmen, however, saw the government crackdown from a different perspective. Some represented constituents who had been adversely affected, while others saw it as an opportunity to besmirch Schurz and to embarrass the Hayes administration. Complaints and pleas for relief from many quarters in 1877 had already set the stage for a senate committee investigation of the land office’s new timber depredations policy. Early in the following year the full senate turned its attention to the matter.

On March 1, 18878, Senator Lucius Q. C. Lamar, a Mississippi Democrat, successfully steered a bill through the Senate requiring the federal judiciary to conduct a special court session in Jackson County to hear all timer depredation cases arising within his home state. The county sat squarely within the heart of the Gulf Coast timber belt and was an epicenter of anti-government hostility. During the floor debate, James B. Eustis, Louisiana’s junior senator, offered an amendment, subsequently withdrawn, that would have included Lake Charles in the bill. Eustis explained he had simply used the occasion to draw attention to the sufferings of the people of Calcasieu Parish at the hands of Carter and Gainey. Senator Blaine’s remarks in support of the bill strongly suggested that Secretary Schurz had been overzealous in enforcing the timber laws. The so-called “log camp court” bill passed in the House of Representatives and headed for a certain presidential veto. Its backers expected as much and contented themselves in having served notice of their displeasure with Secretary Schurz.

Within a fortnight Blaine launched a second, more sensational attack on Schurz. The occasion arose during a debate on timber depredations in Montana Territory. The senator began by pointing out the Secretary of Interior’s foreign origins. Blaine conceded that Schurz could not be held accountable for the circumstances surrounding his place of birth. Nonetheless, his Teutonic background made him unsuitable for administering public land policy in America. The secretary’s behavior toward Montana, based perhaps on “boyhood instinct,” indicated he was attempting to impose the laws of the Kingdom of Prussia on a sparsely populated territory appreciably larger than his native land.

With little regard for fact, the crafty Blaine depicted the hardship Schurz’s actions inflicted on the poor, lonely Montana frontier family. The secretary, the senator postulated, had sent his “spies and pimps” to seize their firewood supply and then exact from his victims an exorbitant price of one dollar per cord. At that rate, Blaine mussed, the territory’s firewood supply would bring in over one billion dollars. The senator conjured and emotional picture of families huddled together, shivering around empty hearth while struggling to survive the icy arctic blasts of a Montana winter. Blaine searched his mind for a comparison of Schurz’s “tyranny” and found it in a charge leveled against King George III in the Declaration of Independence: “He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Senator Blaine’s fiery comments focused national attention on the issue. The Senate proceeded to trim back Schurz’s budget request for use in timber depredation cases to the customary pre-1877 $5,000 and attached a crippling amendment. No funds could be used to seize timber in any territory of the United States unless it was intended for shipment and use elsewhere. The House of Representatives concurred, and the budget cut with its tacked on amendment passed into law. Schurz responded that he was guilty of nothing more than fulfilling his obligation to execute laws his detractors had not seen fit to repeal. Without additional funds, however, his plans to expand the program into new areas evaporated.

Even before Congress slighted Schurz’s request for an expanded budget, the General Land Office had begun to feel the pinch of additional costs. In Carter’s Gulf Department, timber agents assigned to Arkansas and Florida had been dismissed as an economy measure. Next, Commissioner Williamson announced on March 1 that fifty-three persons on his Washington payroll faced the choice of either accepting indefinite layoffs or dismissals. The added expense burden may have arisen out of the necessity to survey areas where timber had been illegally cut. It was both costly and time consuming, but an absolutely necessary step for proving the government’s case in a court of law.

Representative John Acklen of St. Mary Parish also entered the fray against the embattled Department of Interior on behalf of his “oppressed” constituents in Calcasieu Parish. The dapper, youngish congressman raised serious allegations against Carter and Murray, charging both with criminal misconduct. Acklen had the services of Leonard Sewell, who had come to Washington as a star witness for the southwest Louisiana lumbermen. The former umpire in the Hampton case specified several charges against the government men in an affidavit. He alleged Carter on more than one occasion had attempted to bribe him into cooperating against the intervenors. Failing in his bribery scheme, the special agent then obstructed the work of the appraisers at every turn. At Carter’s orders Gainey had threatened Sewell with violence. The deputy marshal, according to Sewell, based his repeated refusals to cooperate with the court appointed appraisers on direct orders from Schurz, Devens and Williamson.

During the Alert incident, Sewell alleged, Carter had attempted to bribe Commissioner Chamberlain into sending Horne to New Orleans in chains. When bribery again failed to work, Carter’s intrigue secured the commissioner’s “dismissal.” The special agent’s manipulations, according to Sewell, lay behind Judge Billings’ setting aside the “true and honorable” appraisals submitted by his own appointees. During the public auction, Carter, according to Sewell, conspired to discourage local lumbermen from bidding so that his “friends” could buy logs for a pittance. Sewell affirmed that Allen and Eli Perkins, James Geary, Joseph Ryan, Joseph Hampton and many others could readily corroborate his allegations.

When Sewell formally brought his accusations to the attention of the Interior and Justice departments the New Orleans Democrat reported exultantly that a full congressional investigation was in the offing. Sewell, “armed with a startling array of facts,’ was prepared to expose the inner workings of “the Schurzian programme, on the Prussian plan, as applied to citizens of the United States.” Acklen, however, took a different approach. The self-styled Hayes Democrat envisioned allowing the Interior Department to conduct an in-house investigation, but one in which Sewell would figure prominently.

The reformist Secretary of Interior could scarcely ignore Sewell’s charges and had already appointed Special Agent C. C. Adams to conduct an inquiry. This step, however, fell short of what Acklen had in mind: a full-blown formal hearing to be conducted in Lake Charles with Sewell included as a co-equal to Adams. In a lengthy meeting Acklen argued that the nation would dismiss a purely internal investigation as a “whitewash.”

This writ authorized federal deputy marshals to seize upwards to 100,000 logs in Calcasieu Parish in 1877.

These logs were allegedly cut without permission on land belonging to the federal government.

He overcame Schurz’s legalistic quibbling about Sewell’s role when it was agreed that Adams would engage him as a special counsel. This, according to Acklen, assured the citizens of Calcasieu a fair and full hearing of their complaints. Schurz also had misgivings about Carter’s personal safety, and Acklen overcame this obstacle when he arranged for a telegraphic guarantee from Lake Charles that the special agent would not be “bulldozed or molested” during the proceedings. Schurz reluctantly accepted Acklen’s terms in order to stave off a threatened independent House select committee hearing at Lake Charles that would coincide with the Adams inquiry.

Special agent Carter, accompanied by legal counsel, revisited Lake Charles for the last time on Sunday, April 20, two days in advance of the opening of the formal hearings. The community had prepared a reception for his return in the from of a grand jury indictment for criminal trespass. He was required to post bond before being released from Sheriff Reid’s custody. When Deputy Marshal Gainey arrived the next day, he faced the more serious charge of assault with a deadly weapon. He, too, was released on bond.

The Dix, with Special Agent Adams aboard, docked at the lakeshore on Monday afternoon. M. H. Hale, an official from the treasury department, accompanied him. Hale came to examine the legitimacy of the substantial claims to wrongfully seized timber lodged by the intervenors and, if warranted by fact, to make settlements. Adams apparently made a favorable impression on the community. The Echo described him as being a dark-eyed handsome man of great decorum and “sincerely” thanked Schurz for having sent someone who would “sift the truth from the mass of falsehood” surrounding the seizures made in Calcasieu.

The hearings opened in the parish courthouse the following morning with Sewell called as the prosecution’s first witness. Local attorney George H. Wells, who had defended Horne in the Alert incident, represented Sewell with the assistance of ex-commissioner F. C. Chamberlain. A. C. Lewis of New Orleans represented Carter. Sewell opened the testimony with a blanket allegation that Carter, Gainey and others willfully and knowingly had violated the Constitution of the United States and had cast aside their “sworn duty” as law officers to break both state and federal statutes. He recited for the record the same charges he had made in Washington. With Adams’ permission he then expanded the list of charges to include: taking private property for public use under false pretenses, illegally blocking navigable streams, releasing seized logs to “friends” without requiring either intervention or bond, conspiring to discourage private bidding during the auction, and causing to be made an inaccurate and unauthorized survey of certain lands. Overall, Sewell concluded, Carter and his minions had for nearly one year maintained “a system of harsh and tyrannical oppression on hundreds of citizens.”

The hearing continued in Lake Charles for nineteen days. Thirty- four witnesses appeared for the lumbermen and six for the government. Orders issued by the commanding general of the Gulf Department prevented one Sewell witness, Infantry Lieutenant James B. Gos, from taking the stand. The transcript of the proceedings exceeded one thousand pages. Carter frequently interrupted the testimony with technical objections, which Adams quickly overruled. The special agent also protested that local press coverage prejudiced his case. Both he and Gainey left Lake Charles before Adams adjourned the hearings and returned to New Orleans to review documents on file in Judge Billings’ court and Marshal Wharton’s office. Hale found nothing amiss during his examination of the illegal seizure complaints.

In the Crescent City the tide turned in favor of the government’s side when Adams consented to hear testimony from Gainey. Sewell and Chamberlain objected vehemently on grounds that Adams had promised to hear only from Wharton and Billings in New Orleans. It was impossible, they protested, to bring rebuttal witnesses from Lake Charles; moreover, Gainey could have taken the stand in Lake Charles if he had so wished. Adams overruled them, probably because requiring the deputy marshal testify in Lake Charles would have been akin to tossing a lighted match on a powder keg. According to the Echo Gainey “swore all over the case with the same lofty disbelief” in divine retribution he had shown in Lake Charles during the Alert incident.

While Adams wrapped up his investigation in the Crescent City, the mutual animosity between Sewell and Gainey surfaced violently. Somewhere outside the hearing room the two antagonists became involved in an altercation. Sewell alleged the deputy marshal attacked him with a sword cane and he foiled the onslaught by seizing the weapon and breaking its blade. Gainey then reportedly drew his revolver but was stopped from firing when an onlooker restrained him. Gainey denied both having drawn the sword and carrying a revolver on his person during the incident.

Adams and Hale returned to Washington and concluded their report. By August, their preliminary work indicated that Carter would be exonerated. The special agent resumed his duties in Mississippi where the sheriff of Harrison County arrested him on trumped up trespass charges. Carter frantically notified Williamson from Mississippi City he had been unable over several days to contact the United States attorney. Meanwhile, as Williamson scrambled around to arrange bond, his special agent languished under house arrest “hemmed in …by yellow fever and quarantine.”

The formal Adams report reached Secretary Schurz’s desk early in October, almost simultaneously with news that Carter succumbed to the ravages of the dreaded “yellow Jack.” Whether the embattled agent learned of his complete vindication before he passed away is unclear. The report also brought to light the extreme measures the Calcasieu intervenors and their allies had had taken in attempting to thwart the federal government. Documents had been placed in the files of the Hampton case without Judge Billings’ knowledge or consent. The report indirectly but scathingly denounced Sewell for his “malignant” conduct against the interests of the United States. If Sewell ever saw or heard of the report, he could take solace from having received a faculty appointment as Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Louisiana. At any rate, the Louisiana press denounced the Adams report as a cover-up.

The court awarded Geary and his partner, Joseph Ryan, $1,500.00 in damages for claims they filed in the Hampton case.

The Adams investigation served as a precursor to the Department of Interior’s Annual Report in which Schurz devoted considerable space to timber depredations. After reviewing the extreme difficulties his timber agents experienced in the south, the secretary observed that “anything like complete success” in halting wanton spoliation was unattainable without the “hearty cooperation” of Congress. To withhold support, he pointed out, merely encouraged depredators “to persist in their lawless operations …” Schurz went farther than requesting effective means for combating timber thievery. He asked Congress to create timber reserves to remedy what he envisioned as an imminent shortage of natural resource vital to the nation’s economic well-being. Through sound management, timberlands could be sold at prices based on stumpage, young growth could be protected, and reforestation could ensure replenishment.

The Secretary of Interior’s judgment and timing left something to be desired. He not only wanted an unfriendly Congress to act against powerful and influential timber interests, but also to support a controversial issue for which there was little popular concern. Trees had a miniscule constituency when one considers the prevailing cultural attitudes of the 1870’s. The seemingly endless forests the first Anglo colonists encountered on their arrival in America were beyond their comprehension. In their cultural tradition, the relatively few forests left undisturbed in Europe were forbidding places, the haunts of demons, ferocious beasts and outlaws. The newcomers to America’s shores, feeling intimidated, almost immediately began to subdue the surrounding forests for the sake of survival. From these times onward into the late nineteenth century, American culture regarded the woodmen’s axe as primary tool for the advancement of civilization. Progress came with each clearing made for a farmstead and each village site carved out of the wilderness. Accordingly, legislation passed in 1878 virtually ensured lumbermen open access to public forests in the far western states and territories. In the following year, a law applicable to the southern states retroactively exculpated timber poachers who paid a pittance for cutover land.

Meanwhile, during the final months of 1877, the adversaries in the Hampton case filed motion against motion demanding “sufficient and legal” proof of ownership. The intervenors also unsuccessfully called for dismissal on the grounds that the United States had offered no proof of the seized timber’s value. A motion filed by Lacey in December secured the court’s approval for the government to make surveys and prepare maps supporting its claims of ownership, a step that meant even more delays.

As time passed the wall of resistance the intervenors in the Hampton suit erected in Calcasieu Parish began to crumble. By May, 1878, Hardly Gill, Platz, the Perkinses, along with Joseph Hampton and eight of the other loggers listed as original defendants had signed confessions of judgment and withdrawn from the case. In exchange, the government agreed to assume their court cost and fees. Strangely enough, James L Gray, a clerk employed by Ryan and Geary, became the last person to intervene only days earlier. He claimed ownership of some 1,300 logs of undisclosed value bearing the mark “H.”

On April 12, 1879, Judge Billings finally settled the suit insofar as it pertained to the remaining intervenors. Gray’s clam was dismissed in favor of the United States. However, Ryan and Geary, along with Norris and Company received awards of $1,500 and $1,000 respectively for their claims out of $5,500 in proceeds from government sales that had been set aside for that purpose. The parties agreed to pay court costs and to refrain from seeking further damages from the United States or its officers and employees.

The New York Times, in summing up the Adams report, obliquely referred to Reconstruction-style southern resistance in it coverage of the “bitterness and opposition” the federal government encountered in its “attempts to enforce the law in the South.” Calcasieu Parish had the dubious distinction of being thrust into the vanguard of southern resistance to the Schurz crusade. The interplay between the antagonists there closely paralleled incidents that occurred elsewhere during the recent days of Radical Reconstruction. The boycotts, threats and general harassment of government officials fit the pattern of pre-1877 southern tactics, as did the outcry against a pack of allegedly corrupt, self-serving bureaucrats who profited from the support of an uncaring Republican administration. The use of military peacekeepers in the South originated during Reconstruction and the “blockade” of the Calcasieu River amounted to a de facto form of martial law. The presence of soldiers quite possibly stifled the outbreak of armed violence against timber agents as later occurred in Mississippi. Jack Wharton mused retrospectively that if any three of his deputies had attempted to roam about in the backcountry of Calcasieu, as did Sewell, Haskell and Couturie in 1877, “they would have been killed.”

On the other hand, there were significant differences. Foremost among these was the absence of racial overtones. While the men of Calcasieu who organized and abetted the opposition to the federal agent were staunch Democrats, they held no compunctions against consorting with alumni of the New Orleans carpetbagger fraternity when it served their ends. Both Sewell and Chamberlain fit well within that group of artful political manipulators. Moreover, the Calcasieu lumbermen outwardly professed their loyalty to the Union. They claimed their resistance stemmed from the necessity of protecting their interests from crooked, grasping scoundrels who abused their power. The local leadership also, perhaps out of expediency, resorted to the courts rather than to widespread outbursts of violence.

In most aspects the Department of Interior’s victory in the Hampton case rang hollow. Recovery of damages to government property barely exceeded overall costs. Total receipts from the federal marshal’s sales of seized logs and lumber amounted to a tad over $12,000 whereas the overall expenses of inventorying and guarding the sequestered timber totaled somewhat over $15,000. Why the government failed to act on an offer George Lock Made in November 1877 to buy the remaining logs for $45,000 is unknown. Before leaving Lake Charles, Commissioner Adams sold the 21,918 logs left under government safekeeping along the Calcasieu watershed for a reported price of $6,631. He also arranged to sell some 4,000 logs situated along the Sabine for an undisclosed amount. By the time, around twenty percent of the seized timber, according to the Echo, had rotted away.

The message to timber thieves the deceased Carter and his superior, Secretary Schurz had hoped to send forth from the Calcasieu to the rest of the nation created dissonance in the halls of Congress. Bipartisan majorities in both houses made short shrift of the vaunted timber conservation crusade without evoking public outcry. Taking timber off the public domain remained an entrenched tradition throughout the land for another generation. A talented idealist and visionary, Carl Schurz remains the only German-born American to hold both a senate seat and cabinet post. However, throughout his long and varied involvement in public affairs, he never seemed inclined to take heed of the adage, “politics is the art of the possible.”

Within a short time the sawmills around Lake Charles rebounded. Production of lumber in 1879 exceeded the pre-1877 high by around thirty-five percent. At the juncture the chastened bureaucracy of the General Land Office opened all public lands in southwest Louisiana to purchase at $1.25 per acre. Within two years northern speculators began to buy tens of thousands acres of timberland. Unlike Carter and Gainey, they received a hearty welcome to Calcasieu Parish, where displays of inhospitality and distrust of outsiders as exhibited in the days of the Log War receded rapidly into the past.

Gates, Paul W. “Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866-1888,” Journal of Southern History, VI (August, 1940), 303-330.

Hoogenboom, Ari. Rutherford B. Hayes, Warrior and President. University Press of Kansas, 1995.

Millet, Donald J. “The Lumber Industry of 'Imperial Calcasieu, 1865-1900,” Louisiana History, VII (Winter, 1966), 51-69.

Shafer, Joseph. Carl Schurz, Militant Liberal. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1930.

Taylor, Joe Gray. Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877. Louisiana State University Press, 1975.

Trefousse, Hans L. Carl Schurz, a Biography. University of Tennessee Press, 1982.

Williams, Michael. Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Report on the Seizure of Logs and Lumber. S. Executive Doc. No. 9, 45^th Cong., 2d sess, 1878.

U.S. Department of the Interior. Annual Report of the Secretary of Interior for 1878. G. P. O., 1878.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Bureau of Land Management, Special Services Division. “Letters Sent to Timber Division, 1862-1887,” Record Group 49.

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Southwest Region. “United States V. Joseph Hampton et al,” Case No. 8207. Record Group 21, Records of the Courts of the United States.