Huey announced the special session of the legislature on March 14; it was called on March 16 and scheduled to start on Monday, March 18, to last for six days. The original agenda included only correcting the problem pointed out by the Supreme Court. The official call listed several subjects: (1) an occupational licensing tax on the business of refining crude oil; (2) a revision to the drunk driving law; (3) authorizing New Orleans to pay for rights of way; (4) correcting the severance tax problem pointed out by the Supreme Court; and (5) changes to the inheritance tax laws.1
Oblivious to the fear his recent actions caused, Huey assumed his support in the December session would carry over. Overlooked was that the Old Regulars had voted for Huey’s bond issue only in obedience to the will of their constituents. The Dynamite Squad “had discussed for months the possibility of bringing charges against Huey and had [begun collecting] incriminating information.” Some of Huey’s supporters, moreover, opposed the oil tax, believing it was anti business. Harley Bozeman was one of them.2
Huey claimed in his autobiography that the oil tax would produce only a “rather insignificant” $1.5 million of “badly needed” revenue.3 Given Standard Oil’s reaction, it must have considered the tax significant or a harbinger of worse things to come. Baton Rouge had been on “fairly amiable” terms with Huey, but it considered the proposed tax “poison.”4
Standard Oil mobilized to oppose the tax. Its president, Daniel Weller, recruited Jeff Snyder, the popular Madison Parish politician and Klan leader to lobby the legislators. Weller and Snyder reserved a floor of the Heidelberg Hotel as their headquarters. Snyder demanded an unlimited budget. Then he went to work. By the time he was “through paying ’em off, things were pretty hot.” Legislators could pick up $15,000 to $20,000 any evening.5
The Baton Rouge State-Times began a series of unrelenting attacks with a double-columned editorial, with a theme of “grass will grow in the streets” if the tax is passed. Standard Oil’s parent had recently approved an expenditure of $8,500,000 to renovate the refinery but would not do so or continue to refine imported oil (90 percent of the oil it refined was imported) if the tax were imposed, and thus at least two thousand employees would be laid off.6
On Monday, March 18, Rabbi Walter Peiser refused to offer the legislature an opening prayer, feeling Huey was unworthy of divine favor. The motion to suspend the rules (requiring a two-thirds vote) that had passed easily in December failed, forty to thirty-six.7 Huey left the legislative floor just ahead of resolutions to expel him, and on occasions the House was in an uproar. Huey still misjudged the opposition, because he thought he had pledges of legislators to support his tax and because he had been successful before in overcoming opposition.8 Superintendent of Education Harris called a meeting of local school superintendents from all over the state to support the tax because its revenue was devoted to education. The press buried Harris’s comments.9
The problem of cattle ticks is remote to our time, but they were a big problem for farmers in the South. The federal government and associations of interested parties—doctors, veterinarians, and agricultural leaders—advocated dipping cows in a solution to kill the ticks. Farmers disliked the expense and didn’t see the benefits. Huey had vetoed a dipping measure passed in 1928.
Faced with declining support in the legislature for his oil tax, however, Huey now spoke to a tick eradication conference and offered to support its legislation if the conference would support his tax. They refused. Some legislators were in the audience. One of them, J. Y. Sanders Jr., construed this speech as an attempted bribe.
Huey then issued another legislative call to last for eighteen days, starting on Wednesday, March 20, to last until midnight April 6. At a longer session, the rules would not have to be suspended and his bill could pass with a majority vote. Huey also added local measures (paving a road in a parish, for example) to appeal to individual legislators he hoped to win to or keep on his side.10
He added a tax on carbon black, however, which backfired, eroding support from legislators representing districts that included this industry, some of whom had supported him and the oil tax.11 On Wednesday, when he appeared on the legislative floor, he encountered overwhelming hostility. On the objection of one member, approved by a thunderous majority, Huey was ordered off the floor, and he hustled off just ahead of the sergeant-at-arms. Sanders offered a resolution accusing Huey of offering a bribe at the tick eradication conference. A resolution condemning Huey’s actions passed the House and, the next day, the Senate.
On Thursday March 21, Lieutenant Governor Cyr addressed the Senate in an emotional but effective speech and accused Huey of allowing the state to be defrauded. A lease of state oil lands was assigned to a Texas company at a huge profit for the lessee but not the state, with Huey’s approval. Huey was a tyrant who padded highway commission payrolls and wanted to “dictate every move” of the legislature and “dip” into the court system as well. He asked God’s forgiveness for supporting him. Wild applause followed from the legislators and the galleries. Further resolutions extolled the oil industry and denounced Huey for appointing legislators to state jobs.12
On the same day, the Baton Rouge State-Times carried a front-page editorial titled: “This, Gentlemen, Is the Way Your Governor Fights.” Its editor, Charles Manship, had been given a message from Huey telling him to lay off him or he would disclose that Manship’s brother was in a state “insane asylum.” Admitting that his brother was being treated for mental illness, the editorial closed powerfully: “My brother Douglas, whom Governor Long has brought in the discussion, is about the same age as the Governor. He was in France in 1918, wearing the uniform of a United States soldier, while Governor Long was campaigning for office.”13
By Friday, floor leader William H. Bennett deserted Huey on the oil tax issue (noting that it was only on this issue). On Saturday, March 23, the Shreveport Journal suggested a probe of Huey and impeachment if Cyr’s charges proved true,14 although the Times-Picayune suggested immediate adjournment during this “troubled and delirious time.”15 Caddo’s state senator called for Cyr to initiate impeachment.16 Huey responded that Cyr’s charges implicated Governors Parker, Fuqua, and Pleasant, which made no impression.
The Senate passed by a vote of seventeen to fifteen a bill to have a committee investigate Huey’s claim that state institutions needed more money. Huey had thus lost his majority in the Senate. Huey issued a supplemental agenda asking the legislature to enact any revenue measure to support schools and state institutions. This was a face-saving compromise for all sides, but his opponents smelled blood and wanted the oil tax voted down. To prevent this humiliation, Huey and his remaining leaders decided to adjourn on Monday night. They figured that he still commanded a majority vote in the House. If the House adjourned, the Senate would have to as well. The plan was for House leader Fournet to recognize J. Cleveland Fruge, who would move to adjourn indefinitely. Fournet would then dispatch a committee chairman to notify the Senate, and fast.
But the Dynamite Squad was now talking impeachment, and the New Orleans Item wanted to avoid an early adjournment to humiliate Huey. Because the oil tax was dead, Jeff Snyder prepared to leave. When he learned of the impeachment plans, he advised Huey’s opponents to impeach him “now,” because if they “fooled around” and waited, Huey was so smart that they would lose.17 The Dynamite Squad wasn’t planning on delay. They heard rumors of Huey’s plan to adjourn and searched for a reason to stop it.
Representative Harney Bogan of Caddo produced a reason. Huey’s exbodyguard, Battling Bozeman, claimed that Huey, with the odor of liquor on his breath, had asked Bozeman to kill J. Y. Sanders Jr. Bogan secured an affidavit saying this from Bozeman. Anti-Long Representative Cecil Morgan was selected to present it. Sanders believed that Huey uttered the words while drunk, not intending Bozeman to act on them. Anti-Long Representative Mason Spencer didn’t believe a word of the affidavit but used it to impeach Huey anyway.
Rumors of some spectacular move by the Dynamite Squad had reached Huey’s forces. When the House convened, therefore, both sides were edgy.18
After the roll call, Morgan announced a point of personal privilege and talked without being recognized. Morgan waved the Bozeman affidavit before the legislators and described the murder plot. Fruge shouted his motion to adjourn, Fournet recognized him and ordered Morgan to take his seat, under the direction of the sergeant-at-arms. The Dynamite Squad formed a human barricade so the sergeant couldn’t reach Morgan. They escorted him down the center aisle toward the podium. Bedlam erupted. Fruge yelled for his adjournment motion to be put to a vote. Fournet called for the vote. The voting machine showed sixty-seven yeas and thirteen nays. Fournet declared the motion passed, discarded his gavel, and exited.
What had been bedlam now became violent mayhem. Representatives rushed the podium, some climbing over desks, many yelling “No, No, No,” the “machine is fixed,” or “you goddam crook,” because their votes had shown as yes when they had voted no. Believing the vote was faked, they were outraged: “Oh God, please don’t let them get away with it.”
Fournet returned to the podium but faced a sea of outraged representatives. Huey’s supporters Lorris Wimberly and Lester Lautenshlager (who had left to notify the Senate but returned to find a melee) now protected Fournet from anti-Long legislators rushing to attack. Clinton Sayes jumped from desk to desk, vaulted from the clerk’s table to the ladder leading to the voting machine, tumbled down, landed on the cedar desk with a crash, leapt to the press table below, hurdled the bullpen to a front-row member’s desk, all the while screaming “the machine’s wrong.” Sayes and Wimberly fought. Sayes’s forehead was cut by Wimberly’s diamond ring, someone’s brass knuckles, or a ceiling fan that hit him while he was standing on a desk. Depending on who tells the story, it either bled a few drops or in a gushing stream. George Perault charged through and carried Sayes to safety. The blood—a little or a lot—gave a name to the evening, “Bloody Monday.”
A brawl followed. Inkwells, books, and pastepots were thrown. Grown men wrestled around and threw punches. The sergeant-at-arms and his colleagues tried to separate the combatants. Several anti-Long legislators asked Fournet to put to a vote a motion appealing his ruling of adjournment, but he refused. Representative Williams took the speaker’s chair and yelled for all “red blooded” members to stay in session. Mason Spencer then gave a “hog call” and obtained enough silence to conduct an oral poll of the members on whether the House had voted to adjourn. Nine votes to sustain the ruling were far outweighed by the seventy-nine votes to overrule it. Spencer nominated anti-Long Representative George J. Ginsberg—he had pointed out that the vote was a nullity anyway in the absence of a concurrence by the Senate—to be temporary Speaker. He was approved by a voice vote, after which a motion to adjourn only until the next day at 11 a.m. was passed.19
In the Senate, meanwhile, a resolution condemning the tax passed. The president of the Senate, Philip Gilbert, then moved to adjourn. They got word from Lautenschlager and Wimberly of the House’s adjournment, but then heard the pandemonium and discovered that no adjournment had taken place. Cyr (as lieutenant governor, presiding) ruled Gilbert’s motion out of order. On Gilbert’s appeal of that ruling, Cyr was sustained, nineteen to seventeen.
Everyone now concedes that the House’s voting machine was not fixed,20 although Fournet should have known something was wrong (did he really think they would adjourn by a vote of sixty-seven to thirteen?) and did nothing about it. The primitive electric machine didn’t clear all votes from the earlier roll call. Anti-Long legislators who knew the truth kept silent to foster the impression that the machine was rigged. Huey lost votes from legislators (F. B. Pratt of Morehouse, for example) who believed the voting machine was rigged and therefore switched to opposing Huey “’til Hell freezes over.”21
That night the Dynamite Squad decided to impeach Huey. They typed up nineteen charges. To avoid the charges being sent to a committee whose chairman would be appointed by Fournet, the House would meet as a committee of the whole, with someone else made chairman. A large, strangely calm crowd milled around the capitol, many armed.22
The next day at 11 a.m., Fournet apologized for announcing the adjournment and explained the malfunction of the voting machine. Another motion to adjourn was made but lost with only thirty-nine votes for it. Huey’s old majority had dissipated for good. Cecil Morgan asked to investigate (a) the Bozeman charge of murder solicitation, and (b) the spending of $6,000 of state funds to entertain the National Conference of Governors and $10,965 to repair the governor’s mansion. These resolutions passed. They were the warm-up.
In serious tones to a hushed House, the Dynamite Squad committee of four asked the House to impeach Huey on nineteen charges:
Baton Rouge was euphoric. Huey had been blocked and now might be overthrown. Ironically forgetting, as Williams notes, that Huey was a native Louisianan and that Standard Oil was a foreign corporation, the celebrants compared their joy to that felt when the carpetbagger Reconstruction governments were overthrown. The Times was more restrained: Huey was isolated but was “certain to put on a very good show.”23
The impeachers scheduled a mass meeting, with special seats reserved for legislators, and six to ten thousand people crowded the Community Club Pavilion on March 26 to attend a rally. The Standard Oil Band furnished music. They tried to disguise their sponsor by changing their normal uniforms for plain blue suits but forgot to rub off “Stanacola Band” from the big bass drum.
Concealed from the crowd, Huey heard some speakers describe him as incompetent and others as a brilliant schemer. The lead resolution adopted at the rally stated that Huey should be impeached because he proposed to tax Standard Oil to satisfy a personal grudge. Further resolutions denounced all taxation that would injure industrial, commercial, or agricultural property. “[I]t appeared that the opposition . . . was about ready to tax nobody but the one-horse farmer and small businessman.”24
Huey was paralyzed and depressed after the resolution was presented.25 He looked “as if a threshing machine passed over him,” and he “moped about the state house, a perfect picture of dejection and despair.”26 Julius said Huey was in bed, sobbing and suicidal. Huey confessed to two friends, “they’ve got me.”27 He considered resigning, reasoning that he could run for the Senate in 1930 without having an impeachment conviction on his record and win if the people were still with him.28 He told his wife he might be impeached. “Money does funny things to people,” he told her.29
Huey recovered, however, crediting—perhaps apocryphally—O. K. Allen with urging him to fight back legally in the legislature and politically by rallying the voters. Bob Maestri—“the fairest of all friends in foul weather”—pledged $40,000 to help. The money was spent to distribute circulars. The conservative rally and press handed him his theme, that he was being impeached because he proposed to tax Standard Oil.
Huey’s circulars featured long headlines and long copy. The first was titled “THe crOss Of gOlD: sTanDarD Oil cOmpany Vs. Huey p. lOng.” It suggested that members of the legislature had been bought by Standard Oil “for the purpose of crucifying” him. Here is an excerpt from another:
THE SAME FIGHT AGAIN!
THE STANDARD OIL COMPANY VS. HUEY P. LONG
Has It Become a Crime for a Governor to Fight for the School Children and the Cause of Suffering and Destitute Humanity? Newspapers of Standard Oil Company Battle to Keep This Nefarious Corporation (Thrown Out of Texas) from Paying Any Reasonable Tax at All
People of Louisiana:
I had rather go down to a thousand impeachments than to admit that I am the Governor of the State that does not dare to call the Standard Oil Company to account so that we can educate our children and care for destitute, sick and afflicted. If this State is still to be ruled by the power of the money of this corporation, I am too weak for its governor. . . .
They’ve fought me harder this time than ever before. Where they poured out hundreds in other fights, they have poured out ten thousand in this one. They have covered their newspapers, front, inside and out with every imaginable lie and vilification; they have stormed the State House to where the weak-hearted feared even for the life and safety of my supporters and myself. By a process known only to them they have been able to either “take over, to beat over or to buy over” some in whom I had reposed respect and confidence and for whom I yet indulge a charity. . . .
. . . I asked that on a gallon of lubricating oil manufactured in Louisiana and selling for $1.40, that the State be paid 1/7 of 1 cent (out of the $1.40), and that the same tax be paid on the gasoline, benzene, kerosene, etc. The bill which I drew distributed the money thus raised to the school children and to the various hospitals and colleges of the State. . . .
Why, today we make such things as cotton seed oil mills pay this tax to refine our own cotton seed oil; but the Standard Oil Company is to be allowed to tear the State wide open and to remove the Governor from office who dares to mention that anything can be done with them.30
Another one, headlined “THe sTanDarD Oil regulars,” claimed the old “gang” was trying to scuttle his free bridges. Another promised revelations that would split his opponents wide open.31 State-owned trucks driven by off-duty state policemen delivered these circulars to his followers and state workers. A circular printed in the evening would be distributed all over the state the next day.
On April 1, the House convened as a committee of the whole to decide on the impeachment charges. When the impeachers sought to remove Fournet as speaker, Huey had three supporters suggest three separate opponents for the position, and when that debate concluded, they suggested three more, until a majority was against Fournet’s removal, “one of the most brilliant political maneuverings in the face of overwhelming odds ever effected by any political leader.”32
Nevertheless, the Times now predicted the end of Huey’s career.33 Attorney General Saint asked an impeachment expert from Oklahoma—that state had recently impeached several governors—to help. The House and Senate demanded that Huey furnish proof of vote buying but dropped this when Huey asked for a committee investigation and promised to provide it his evidence in confidence.34
On April 2, Huey’s adherents cited an 1855 law prescribing an impeachment process but lost their motion to use this procedure.35 One representative denounced the impeachment: “It looks to me like an illegal mess. . . . We are trying to imitate Mexico. We are trying to copy after Oklahoma who has had four governors in seven years. . . . I am not a Long supporter. None of my family is on the payroll, but . . . we should dump this whole thing into the Mississippi River, tuck our tails between our legs and run home.”36 Also attacked was the imported Oklahoma impeachment expert. Saint sent him packing.37
Huey called a mass meeting in Baton Rouge on April 4. State workers38 and his followers across the state attended, and some looked as if they had not stopped to change clothes. Huey sent dozens of telegrams to local leaders telling them to bring their people to the rally. The crowds overflowed the hall and exceeded the size of the impeacher’s rally.
John Overton gave a dramatic opening address—either because he believed in Huey or because he was paid—claiming that Huey was the first governor to keep his promises and was throwing out the old clique. Ending, he said:
He is backed to the wall in his efforts to redeem his campaign pledges.
As I see him there now, with his rapier flashing, fencing off the enemies to the left, to the front and to the right, when this smoke of battle shall have cleared, as in the beginning, I will be standing or lying by the side of Huey P. Long.39
Huey spoke for two hours. “That night men and women laughed, wept, shouted, clenched their fists as Huey cried scorn, told country jokes, talked of vindication in phrases from his favorite romantic novelists, and ended . . . with [the poem] ‘Invictus.’ ”40 “[P]eople in front of the old capitol [were] on their knees praying for Huey during impeachment.”41
Earl Long dealt with legislators individually; he “never slept in the impeachment.” Earl sent an airplane to fetch one businessman to come to the capitol to lobby a legislator.42 Leander Perez of Plaquemines Parish, a rising power in his local organization, a shrewd and ruthless lawyer, led the daily caucus of the thirty or more Long legislators. Former governor Simpson helped Huey; he was perhaps the best parliamentarian in the state.43
The Dynamite Squad recruited volunteer lawyers, including Esmond Phelps and Edward Rightor, to arrange for witnesses and marshal the legal precedents to justify the impeachment. Cecil Morgan was the floor leader who examined witnesses.
The Louisiana Constitution allowed impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors, incompetency, corruption, favoritism, extortion, gross misconduct, and habitual drunkenness. Members of the Dynamite Squad believed the legislature could impeach anyone for any reason and, thus, any of the nineteen charges could justify impeachment and removal. Some impeachers, however, conceded that some charges were thrown in for scenery.44 The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote that Huey had not yet been impeached for the heinous offense of playing the saxophone.45
Huey’s boyhood pal Harley Bozeman deserted him. In a story Bozeman denies, Bozeman went to see Huey in his hotel room and urged him to resign to save his friends. In the middle of cutting his toenails, Huey snapped: “Bozeman, I wouldn’t give the value of that toenail for a sonofabitch like you.”46
With the battle lines drawn and the procedure decided, testimony began. Huey’s wife came down from Shreveport to sit in the gallery, wearing a new white dress. A prominent Baton Rouge woman remarked, “Doesn’t Mrs. Long have cheek, wearing white when she should have on black.”47
Testimony on the Manship charge was taken first. Professor Hair points out that Huey’s cruel tactic rightly backfired, but that he “was also telling the publisher that a wealthy family that placed one of its members in a public hospital so crowded that not all persons needing treatment could be admitted, and then opposed taxation to upgrade the institution, was vulnerable to criticism.” Huey made speeches to that effect,48 but he didn’t always take this high road. In at least two speeches, Huey said the insanity of Manship’s brother resulted from syphilis, not wartime-induced shell shock.49
Three legislators next claimed that Huey offered, respectively, help obtaining a loan or repayment of a debt owed to the state, some appointments, and a job. McClanahan said all prior governors have given patronage to their friends, an argument offensive to J. Y. Sanders Jr., the son of one of those governors.50 Then witnesses related that Huey had bragged that he had bought Senator Bennett like a “sack of potatoes.” Huey denied this. Others insisted it was a jesting political brag. One witness, however, said: “I thought he meant it. The Governor said that Mr. Bennett was one of the brainiest men in the lower House and I had to have him.”51 Bennett testified that while he was elected as an anti-Long candidate he voted with Huey when he could and had helped pass several of Huey’s bills. After the session, he asked Huey for a job, and Huey gave him one with the Highway Commission.
Bennett did an about-face the next day, however, not as to the facts, but as to Huey. Now convinced that Huey had made the remarks, he described them as contemptible and resigned the job Huey gave him. After this juicy testimony, however, the impeachers dropped the bribery inquiry, probably for the reasons stated by McClanahan and because they might expose their colleagues’ misconduct, colleagues whose votes they needed. They also declined to call judges to testify. Cecil Morgan offered a resolution that all judges would, if called to testify, deny that Huey ever influenced them. Nevertheless, on April 11 they charged Huey with attempts to bribe legislators and judges.52
When $6,000 was appropriated to entertain the visiting governors, Alice Lee Grosjean took the check and cashed it, receiving $6,000 in twenty-dollar bills. Seymour Weiss arranged the entertainment for the governors. Weiss said the total bill was $6,200 but wouldn’t explain what $2,100 of it was for—because it was used for illegal liquor and prostitutes.53 A legislator called Weiss contemptible, an insect, and decried the use of state money, not for the needy as Huey claimed, but, as he suspected, in a whorehouse.54 In his autobiography, Huey said he had a receipt for all expenses.55
On April 24, Representative McClanahan, always vocal on Huey’s behalf, said the money “went where all such money goes for entertaining conventions other than religious ones. The governor had no opportunity to put his witnesses on the stand for this is a grand jury proceeding. But you know that money was spent on champagne and fine whiskies. I challenge you to deny it. Even if it was wrong, you cannot say the money was spent for the governor’s personal benefit.”56 The House could have cited Weiss for contempt for failing to answer their questions, but didn’t, and never offered him immunity in exchange for his testimony.57
The day after Grosjean cashed the $6,000 check, Frank Odom paid for a car for Huey, trading in his own car and paying $1,300 with twenty-dollar bills. The car he bought had painted on the side “Not State Property, Executive Department.” Huey was quoted as telling anti-Long legislator Sayes over beers that “You damn suckers wouldn’t give me $10,000 for a car but I will get the car just the same.”58 The impeachers thought he must have taken some of the $6,000 allocated to the governor’s conference to buy the car.
Further testimony established that Huey had purchased law books by writing a check on the mansion fund. Huey ridiculed the legislators for thinking the governor had no need to consult law books, but this dodged the issue of using money appropriated for one purpose differently. It was a small amount of money ($1,100), but wrong. Whether it deserves removal from office or, say, censure, reprimand, or an order of restitution is open to debate.
Williams writes that Huey treated the books as “his private possession,” but how one could distinguish between private use and public use while he was governor is difficult to understand (he was allowed to practice law privately while governor). The books were stored in a Highway Commission office rented from a bank, not at his home or private office. After his death, his family sold his complete collection of law books, including those purchased in 1928, to the state, but this does not establish Huey’s intent in 1928.59
The impeachers charged that Huey paid for defective highway culverts because a political ally did the work. Huey said the culverts were contracted for by a previous governor, that he negotiated a deduction from further invoices, and that the culverts were still in use.60
The impeachers charged Huey with cursing, with testimony from a telephone operator who was caught eavesdropping and heard Huey profanely tell Allen to fire her. Shreveport witnesses testified to Huey’s denunciations at the time of the air-base matter: “there is that goddamned n—loving Andrew Querbes; there is that goddamned Randall sonofabitch Moore . . . and that goddamned shitass Ewing.” The ladies in the galleries blushed and clutched their pearls; the Longites excoriated the impeachers for allowing this language in front of ladies. The secretary of state said the epithets would have to be removed from the record or he could not send the journals through the mails because of laws against obscenity.61
Hotelman Alfred Danziger explained Huey’s attendance at a “studio” party. Held after a hotel dinner celebrating someone’s birthday, the party included a piano player and six girls who danced the hula in skimpy island-type costumes. Danziger thought Huey stayed an hour and had one drink. One of the girls tried to sit in his lap, but he pushed her away. One of the entertainers, Helen Clifford, said Huey was drunk and “frisky,” and that he had stroked a girl’s hair. Several legislators insisted on the record that she give them her telephone number.62 Clifford’s husband (they were separated) testified that she had been offered a job to make her affidavit. The impeachers tried but failed to get evidence that Alice Lee Grosjean was Huey’s mistress.63
The president of the State Normal School in Natchitoches claimed that Huey forced him to resign after an eighteen-year career because he refused to campaign for a judge, support the referendum on constitutional amendments, or fix a problem at a polling place during an election. “I was incensed. I never heard such a request being made of a college president.” Other witnesses said he had an “over-disciplined” policy and pressured faculty and students to buy cars at the president’s car dealership, or that he was deeply political and should have been fired.64
The last witness called was the impeachers’ least favorite: Battling Bozeman. His testimony revealed him as a dim-witted, pathetic person who made his allegations because Huey fired him. In later speeches, Huey joked about this charge: “If J. Y. Sanders Sr. had died twenty years ago I wouldn’t be governor. If J. Y. Sanders Jr. lives twenty more years I may be President of the United States. A Sanders is what I need for my political future.”65 That was an incisive comment—not about the murder charge—but about how politically obtuse conservatives made it easier for Huey to win. The House declined to impeach Huey on this charge. They never even brought this charge to a vote.66
Huey’s supporters claimed that all charges voted on after April 6 were illegal, because that was the last date set by Huey’s call for the special session. The impeachers, however, believed the legislature had the constitutional ability to impeach at any time. An article by political scientist Newton Baker67 explained that at regular legislative sessions, scheduled by the Louisiana Constitution to take place every other year, the legislature can act on anything, including impeachment. Under the Louisiana Constitution of 1921, a special session could not legislate on matters outside the governor’s call, but legislating is different from impeaching. Special sessions cannot last longer than the shorter of thirty days or the time set by the call, however. The provision’s wording can be read to limit the time for the session itself rather than only the time for legislative enactments during a special session (384). If “legislating” is different from “impeaching” and the constitutional time limits only apply to legislating, the legislature could self-convene to impeach. Yet Baker denied this, “although there seems to be some authority which inclines that way.” (380). Omitted by Baker was that two-thirds of both houses could force a special session to be convened.68 One therefore wonders (1) why the legislature should be allowed to self-convene or exceed the time limit on the special session without a two-thirds vote and (2) why the impeachers didn’t invoke this provision to schedule their own special session to begin immediately after April 6 (the last day of the special session) to checkmate Huey’s timeliness defense.
On April 6, the House voted to impeach Huey on the Manship charge. Huey’s forces agreed to allow this charge to be voted on before midnight. This was a weak charge and therefore a bad agreement for the impeachers. Defending Huey, House leader Ellender strangely conceded that the threat might amount to blackmail, but it was made as a private individual and, therefore, was not an impeachable offense. A representative who often criticized Huey’s crudeness described this argument as “heifer manure.”69
Another ally—George Delesdernier—then rose and gave a ridiculous address, comparing Huey to a divine creature trying to relieve suffering and remedy illiteracy, but who was shackled to a cross of paper, one of the uprights manufactured from a saintly piece (whatever that is), the horizontal part from the beams of the moon. Confronted with cries of blasphemy, he shouted: “Take my life but give me my character!” and then fainted.70
Huey’s leaders offered a compromise that he be reprimanded and apologize to Manship. All of Huey’s adherents voted for this, but to no avail. By a vote of fifty-eight to forty, Huey was impeached, and nine members headed by Mason Spencer would present the case for Huey’s removal from office to the Senate.
The Senate appointed one committee to escort Chief Justice O’Niell to preside, and another to prepare the rules. That night a drunk O’Niell met a member of the Dynamite Squad in a hotel lobby. Discussing accusations of bias, O’Niell declaimed, “Don’t they think that I’ll give the thieving sonofabitch a fair trial?”71
On April 25, the House added to the Manship charge voted on April 6 and the attempted bribery charges voted on April 11 charges of (a) misappropriation of state money (governor’s conference money and automobile purchase); (b) interference with the state training school and the removal of one of its officials by paying him $5,400 to do no work; (c) misappropriation of the mansion maintenance funds (including a payment of $728.25 to Huey’s cousin Otho Long); (d) the purchase of law books for $1,112; and (e) payment of a state contractor $4,000 for defective culverts. On April 26 the House voted the final charge: that Huey had forced appointees to sign undated resignations, insulted citizens, discharged a college president, appointed a corrupt parole officer, and demonstrated that he was incompetent and temperamentally unfit for office.72 One publisher threatened to have a court declare Huey insane. Fournet argued in vain that “you wouldn’t convict a . . . chicken thief on such evidence.”73
The votes and the speeches took place in an atmosphere of tension, danger, and violence. Men on each side armed themselves, ate together, and traveled together. Conservative businessman Oscar Whilden wrote a circular that said hanging, shooting, or knifing would be too good for Huey, that instead he should be nailed by the ears to a blackjack post, stripped naked, and “thoroughly horsewhipped.” Opposition leader Harney Bogan and Bob Maestri met in a capital hallway when Earl Long accosted them: Why was Maestri talking to that “sonofabitch?” Bogan then hit Earl, and the two men fought. Earl bit him on his face and neck, scratched him, and tried to pull his cheek off. Earl later bragged that he tore Bogan to pieces. Bogan got a tetanus shot. When Huey was told about the fight, he said, “I bet Earl bit him, didn’t he?” Then Huey suggested to state Senator Boone that they go to the capitol. They found a large and hostile crowd. Boone draped a handkerchief over a penknife to pretend he had a gun and coaxed Huey from the site, convinced that, had Huey remained, he would have been shot.74
The struggle for votes intensified when the forum shifted to the Senate. The Old Regulars had collected money from businessmen to “get” Huey.75 Representative Joe Fisher was offered $40,000 to persuade his brother, state Senator Jules Fisher, to vote to convict, and they offered power “unheard of” to Jules directly.76 Senator William C. Boone was offered $25,000 but refused it, then was offered $50,000, but Boone threatened to kill the offeror.77
The unpopularity of Lieutenant Governor Paul Cyr, next in line for the governorship, was a handicap to the impeachers. Impeacher Mason Spencer told three senators he would impeach Cyr if they voted to convict Huey. The president of the Senate, Phillip Gilbert, next in line for the governorship after Cyr, was offered the job but turned the impeachers down.78
Earl Long called a man who had opened a new typewriter agency and asked him how many he could assemble. He made thirty-five available. Secretaries and Huey appeared as if by magic. Huey then strode up and down dictating hundreds of telegrams to be sent to people throughout the state—without notes. When Alice Lee Grosjean returned the typewriters and asked for a bill, the man had a defining moment or a revelation that character was destiny. He said the typewriters were free.79
Huey’s local leaders came to Baton Rouge to meet with senators who might be wavering. Huey’s local supporters regularly lobbied Senators Larcade and Barousse to counteract intense pressure exerted on them by Huey’s opponents. Printed notices appeared in Larcade’s hometown that, if he voted to acquit, he would be tarred and feathered.80
Roads for their parishes and jobs for themselves were offered to secure other votes. Ironically, the Constitutional Convention in 1921 changed the Louisiana Constitution to allow an impeached governor to remain in office until and unless convicted. Without that provision, Paul Cyr would have taken over upon impeachment, dismantled Huey’s patronage army, and crippled his ability to offer jobs or favors to legislators.81
Earl Long and O. K. Allen visited one senator at 11 p.m. one evening and stayed until 4 a.m., offering him a congressional seat, the state treasurer position, or the business of state insurance, which would have yielded $50,000 per year. Baptist preacher and state Senator James L. Anderson was a supporter, but Huey discovered that he was meeting with his opponents and suspected he might defect. Anderson had planned a trip to Shreveport to visit a sick friend who was a fierce enemy of Huey. Huey suggested that Anderson join him on the platform for a speech in Shreveport. Anderson agreed but then was a no-show. Learning that Anderson had traveled to Baton Rouge, Huey drove all night to confront him. They had a violent argument. Huey provided him with a small amount of cash to repay a loan. Before or after this confrontation, Huey’s allies either set Anderson up or learned that he had set himself up by having a “drink” with a woman in her hotel room. Huey’s men got the key to the room from a cooperative hotel employee and burst in on the pair. “They bought him and we bought him back,” one Long leader said. “I don’t believe in killing people, but in war I think you have to kill people,” said another.82
On April 15, Gilbert offered a resolution in the Senate stating that charges voted on by the House after April 6 could not be considered because they were processed in a special session scheduled to end on April 6; anything done after that was illegal. Gilbert’s resolution failed by a vote of twenty-three to fifteen. This should have warned the impeachers that Huey had fifteen senators on his side, one more than necessary to acquit him.
Two days later, on April 17, Huey held a news conference to announce a speaking tour and remarked that he had fourteen senators who would stand by him. Huge crowds greeted him. It is a measure of the incompetence of the impeachers that Huey could ridicule or admit so many of the charges:
Huey made his own accusations: W. H. Cutrer was bought so cheap “they felt like they were stealing him”;83 Senator Labbe received a new car from Standard Oil; J. Y. Sanders wanted the state to buy a bridge for $5.5 million when the one right beside it cost only $1.5 million. About a deaf representative, Huey said: “Deafness sometimes passes for honesty.” This representative replied: “No gentleman refers to another’s infirmity,” but continued by calling Huey “crazy,” apparently not an infirmity.
The large crowds gave Huey an enthusiastic reception. He sprinkled promises—more roads for example—into his speeches.84 Huey was used to receiving flowers and tributes, but now he often received flowers that had never seen a hothouse and were tendered by hands too young to vote.85
Either Huey himself or one of his supporters, probably Leander Perez, maybe Simpson, Senator Boone, or his brother Julius, decided to record his supporters on a document that became known as the “Round Robin.” It stated that the impeachment proceedings were illegal to the extent that they considered any charge after April 6, and that the Manship charge, the only one timely filed, was not a reason to remove him.
In law, motions to dismiss a complaint are made in many cases. The theory is that, even if everything in an opponent’s filed complaint is true, there is no basis for the lawsuit. (Someone could sue on a contract for prostitution, for example, but the case would be dismissed in most states because it was an illegal contract even if made.) A motion to dismiss saves everyone the expense and delay of a trial when it can be determined from the complaint that the lawsuit cannot be won.
It was difficult to get fifteen senators to sign the Round Robin. Many were reluctant because they were committing to vote to acquit regardless of the evidence. Once Huey got the signatures, it would be difficult for the adherents to change their minds. He made phone calls to the likely signers, sent them an automobile, and summoned them to Baton Rouge.
The last signer, Fred Oser, was reluctant. He talked to Huey until dawn, and then wanted to discuss it with his law partner. Huey brought the law partner to Baton Rouge. The partner and Oser talked until breakfast time, when Oser signed. After he signed, Huey said it was the first time he’d been able to eat breakfast in months. He had been subsisting on strawberries and cream.86 Now that he had his fifteen signers, Alice Lee Grosjean put the document in her brassiere, and then it was transferred to a bank safety-deposit box.87
After Mason Spencer presented the final charge, the Senate ordered Huey to answer on May 14. Huey ended his speaking tour on May 13. On the same date, Standard Oil denied in the press that it had “interfere[d] in politics.” On May 14, Huey appeared in the Senate, confident, wearing a white suit with a black tie, carrying a cigar. He shook hands with several senators. O’Niell proclaimed the Senate was ready to sit as a court of impeachment. Nine lawyers accompanied Huey: Leander Perez, Caleb Weber, George Wallace, Allen Ellender, Harvey Peltier, his brother Julius, Louis Morgan, John Overton, and Dudley Guilbeau, an array of talent showing geographical and political diversity.88
Overton moved to dismiss (a demurrer, according to the terminology of the time) the last seven charges because they were filed too late. The demurrer was over five thousand pages long, and the arguments took all day, after which the Senate recessed. The next morning, a vote was taken on whether charges two through eight were untimely. The demurrer failed, but by a vote of twenty to nineteen. Three senators who opposed Huey and one additional senator agreed that the charges were untimely, four more votes than Gilbert’s resolution received and five more votes than the one-third necessary to acquit.
Next, the first charge regarding Manship was considered. Perez argued that the information about Manship was a public record and that Huey had uttered his remarks in a personal capacity. The impeachers argued that Huey tried to influence the legislature by squelching editorials. The motion against this charge was based on its substance—even if true, Huey shouldn’t be removed—as opposed to timeliness, a procedural (but constitutionally based) argument. The three anti-Long senators who had voted with Huey on the timeliness motion now rejoined the anti-Long side, voting that the Manship charge was an offense justifying removal. But five senators who had voted against Huey on the timeliness motion voted that the Manship charge was insufficient to remove him. The charge was therefore dismissed by a vote of twenty-one to eighteen.
Conservatives cast some of the twenty-one votes for Huey. The state senator who had been offered by Huey any job he wanted except the governorship joined Huey—not because of any reward; he received nothing—but because he thought the impeachment was doomed to fail and was tearing the state apart. Senator Labbe switched, probably because of Huey’s speech accusing him of accepting an automobile from Standard Oil. Another conservative switched in exchange for a promise of a road in his district. (The irony here is rich.)
The impeachers were crestfallen and Huey’s supporters jubilant. They decided to end the impeachment the next day, bringing the Round Robin out of the bank box, preparing another version, more condensed, and readying it for May 16. Senator Gilbert presented it, reporting that the signers would not vote to convict on the only remaining charges, two through eight, because they were untimely, and then moved to adjourn indefinitely. One anti-Long senator (oddly, one who agreed that charges two through eight were untimely) insisted that the signers be questioned whether they would vote to acquit “regardless of the testimony.” Each answered yes.
The senators took a break. The impeachers offered a resolution deploring the Round Robineers but consented to adjournment. And so, it was over, just like that. Huey left the chamber and went to his office where a group of friends gathered. Rose threw her arms around him and he kissed her, saying she was still the state’s First Lady. She left to phone their children. He acknowledged the loyalty of Gilbert. He gave some autographs, signed “Huey P. Long, Governor of Louisiana by the grace of the people.”89
Huey was still subject to impeachment during a regularly scheduled legislative session or could be subject to a recall election.90 His supporters had begun a recall election against an anti-Long representative, but one proponent was egged at a public meeting on May 9 and others were threatened. Advisors counseled Huey to “proceed carefully.”91