In the light of past experience the conjecture that Long would in time
have gained the presidency is not one casually to be shrugged aside. Had
he ever attained “My First Days in the White House,” subjection of the
large cities (not the rural areas) would have been his primary
objective. Just as New Orleans was the last foothold of the
carpetbaggers in the 1870s, Boston, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia,
Chicago, and others might have learned what it is like to live under the
rule of force from without.
* * * * *
The other prediction referred to above was made by Mason Spencer in the
course of a bitter address on the floor of the House of Representatives
in April 1935. Spencer withdrew from public office at the close of this
legislative term, as did also Dr. Octave Pavy. Both died of heart
attacks within weeks of one another in the summer of 1962. But whereas
Spencer forsook politics almost altogether, Dr. Pavy retained a very
active quasi-Warwickian interest in parochial campaigns.
He retired from forty years of the practice of medicine at an advanced
age, and moved from his home at Leonville on Bayou Teche to Opelousas.
But his popularity along the bayou-side, where by that time he had
delivered more than fifty-eight hundred babies, was so widespread that
patients demanded he continue to treat them, so that he had to establish
a small office. From this GHQ he successfully brought about the defeat
of an opposition sheriff, winning a scandalously large sum of money in
bets on the outcome of the election. He converted most of his winnings
into currency, packed them into an ordinary water-bucket, and carrying
this, he marched triumphantly around and around the Opelousas courthouse
square, shouting his exultation to the four winds.
He had been among the first to cheer Mason Spencer’s closing remarks in
April 1935 at a special session during which the Kingfish brought about
the enactment of a bill which to all intents and purposes gave him the
sole right to appoint every commissioner and other polling-booth
official in every voting precinct for every election throughout
Louisiana.
“I am not one of those who cries ‘Hail, Caesar!’” Spencer said in slow
and measured tones, “nor have I cried ‘Jail Caesar!’ But this ugly bill
disfranchises the white people of Louisiana.... I can see blood on the
marble floor of this capitol, for if you ride this thing through, it
will travel with the white horse of death. In the pitiful story of Esau
the Bible teaches us it is possible for a man to sell his own
birthright. But the gravestones on a thousand battlefields teach you
that you cannot sell the birthright of another white man!”
Within five months there was blood on the marble floor of the capitol.
Transcriber’s Notes
The source document uses the word capitol both for capitol and for
capital; this usage has been retained. Inconsistent spelling and
grammar have not been standardised.
Changes made
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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