Chapter VII: Part 7

When evaluating this forecast, the first thought that comes to mind is a matter of record: within a month of Long’s death one of his top-echelon supporters was brought to trial on a tax-evasion indictment. Mr. Irey’s organization had selected this particular indictment because it was regarded as the government’s strongest case against any Long administration official. At the trial’s close the jury verdict was “not guilty”!

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

Some obvious minor typographical and punctuation errors have been
corrected silently.

The text underneath Figs. 10 and 11 has been transcribed from the
illustration, not from the actual text.

Page 70: George Washington (vessel’s name) has been changed to _George
Washington_ (cf. _American Farmer_).

End of Project Gutenberg's The Huey Long Murder Case, by Hermann B. Deutsch