REPORT OF THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE TO WHOM WAS REFERRED THE "RESOLUTION OF INQUIRY" INTO ALLEGED "ILLEGAL USE, OR UNLAWFUL APPLICATION OF THE PUBLIC MONEY, OR ANY PART OF THE SCHOOL FUND FOR MOBILE COUNTY, OR OTHER PUBLIC FUND."

Montgomery, Alabama: John G. Stokes & Co., State Printers, 1870. 7, [1 blank] pp. Stitched in original printed green wrappers. Light old folds, wrappers lightly spotted, Very Good. Contemporary inscription at head of front wrapper, "Respects of G. Horton | Mobile." A Bostonian who had moved to Mobile as a young man, Horton was Mayor of Mobile at this time. Previously he had been an advocate of public education and had served on Mobile's school board. During the Civil War, he was jailed for Unionist sympathies. During Reconstruction his advocacy of civil rights placed his life in constant danger.

The Report is a chapter in Alabama's bitter Reconstruction strife. It attacks Dr. N.B. Cloud, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who was regarded by unreconstructed Alabamans as a Scalawag for his support of Reconstruction and the Republican Party. The Report also attacks G.L. Putnam, whom Cloud had named Mobile's superintendent of education, an appointment which other Mobile educators refused to recognize. Cloud brokered a compromise-- for which he lacked authority-- by making Putnam superintendent of Emerson College [known as the 'Blue School'], a Negro school run by the American Missionary Association. The Report accuses Cloud and Putnam of illegally diverting public funds to the support of the Blue School.
Ellison 1597. OCLC locates five copies as of August 2014, under two accession numbers. Item #29538

Price: $275.00