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diff --git a/old/62864-0.txt b/old/62864-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 07dcba5..0000000 --- a/old/62864-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6245 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Huey Long Murder Case, by Hermann B. Deutsch - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Huey Long Murder Case - -Author: Hermann B. Deutsch - -Release Date: August 6, 2020 [EBook #62864] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUEY LONG MURDER CASE *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Harry Lamé and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - - - - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_. - Small capitals have been changed to ALL CAPITALS. Superscript-t has - been transcribed as ^t. - - More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text. - - - - - The Huey Long - Murder Case - - by Hermann B. Deutsch - - Doubleday & Company, Inc. - Garden City, New York, 1963 - - - - - Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-15869 - Copyright © 1963 by Hermann B. Deutsch - All Rights Reserved - Printed in the United States of America - First Edition - - - - - In Boundless Affection, This Modest Volume - Is Dedicated to - _THE LYING NEWSPAPERS_ - A Generic Term Applied by Huey P. Long to - _The Free Press of a Free Republic_. - Especially is it dedicated to any and all who - during almost half a century have been - My Fellow Workers - As Typified by - John F. Tims and Ralph Nicholson - And Most Specially Is It Dedicated to the Memory of - Richard Finnegan and Marshall Ballard. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - Foreword ix - - Chapter 1: Prelude to an Inquest 1 - - Chapter 2: Profile of a Kingfish 13 - - Chapter 3: August 8, 1935: Washington 29 - - Chapter 4: August 30 to September 2 39 - - Chapter 5: September 3 to September 7 53 - - Chapter 6: September 8: Morning 69 - - Chapter 7: September 8: Afternoon 75 - - Chapter 8: September 8: Nightfall 81 - - Chapter 9: September 8: 9:30 P.M. 91 - - Chapter 10: September 8-9: Midnight 103 - - Chapter 11: The Aftermath 127 - - Chapter 12: Summation 145 - - Chapter 13: The Motive 157 - - Epilogue 171 - - - - -FOREWORD - - -Until I undertook to gather all available evidence for what I hoped to -make a definitive inquiry into the circumstances of Huey Long’s -assassination, I had no idea of how many gaps there were in my knowledge -of what took place. Yet except for the actual shooting, which fewer than -a dozen persons were present to see, and for what then took place in the -operating room of Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium, most of what had any -bearing on the circumstances took place before my eyes. - -Consequently I am so deeply indebted to so many who were good enough to -fill those gaps with eyewitness reports, that no words of mine could -begin to settle the score. Chief among those whose claims on my -gratitude I can never wholly acquit are Dr. Cecil A. Lorio of Baton -Rouge, one of the only two surviving physicians who played any part in -the pre-operative, operative, and post-operative treatment of the dying -Senator; Dr. Chester Williams, the present coroner of East Baton Rouge -parish, who made it possible for me to see, study and understand the -microfilmed hospital chart sketchily covering the thirty hours that -elapsed between the time of the shooting and its fatal termination; Col. -Murphy J. Roden, retired head of the Louisiana State police, who was the -only person to grapple with Dr. Weiss; my friend and for many years -colleague, Charles E. Frampton; Sheriff Elliott Coleman of Tensas -parish; Chief Justice John B. Fournet of the Supreme Court of Louisiana; -and Juvenile Court Judge James O’Connor, who carried the stricken -Kingfish to the hospital after the shooting. - -No less am I under obligations to Earle J. Christenberry, Seymour -Weiss, and Richard W. Leche, to whom I owe so much of the information on -background elements that alone make intelligible some of the otherwise -enigmatic phases of what actually occupied no more than a fractional -moment of crisis. - -My thanks are likewise tendered to Captain Theophile Landry, formerly an -officer of the state police; to General Louis Guerre who was that -organization’s first commandant; to Adjutant-General Raymond Fleming of -Louisiana; to Charles L. Bennett, managing Editor of the Oklahoma City -_Times_; and particularly to Dr. James D. Rives and Dr. Frank Loria of -New Orleans. - -To my one time professional competitor but always close friend, -Congressman F. Edw. Hebert, I tender this inadequate word of -appreciation for the assistance so freely rendered by him in gathering -material. To another friend and colleague, Charles L. Dufour, I am -deeply indebted for assistance in proofreading. - -And finally, I am more grateful than I can say to my brother Eberhard, -an unfaltering--and what is more, successful--champion before the courts -of the principle of press freedom, for advice in preparing the final -draft of this manuscript; to LeBaron Barker for invaluable suggestions -in revising the original draft; and to all others who, in ways great and -small, have been of assistance in making possible the completion of this -task. - - Hermann B. Deutsch. - - Metairie, La. - October 31, 1962 - - - - -_The Huey Long Murder Case_ - - - - -1 ---- PRELUDE TO AN INQUEST - - “_Assassination has never changed the history of the world._” - - ----DISRAELI - - -The motives which prompt a killer to do away with a public figure are -frequently anything but clear. On the other hand, the identity of such -an assassin rarely is in doubt. The assassin himself sees to that, in -obvious eagerness to attain recognition as the central figure of a -world-shaking event. - -President McKinley, for example, was shot down in full view of the -throng that moved forward to shake his hand at the Pan-American -Exposition in Buffalo. Czolgosz, his anarchist assassin, boasted of his -deed, making no effort to escape. John Wilkes Booth, one cog in a large -plot, did not withdraw in the dimness of the stage box from which he -fired on Lincoln, but leaped into the footlights’ full blaze to posture -and declaim: “_Sic semper tyrannis!_” - -In recent times the perpetrator of an unsuccessful attempt at mass -assassination actually clamored for recognition. When the late Cardinal -Mundelein became archbishop of Chicago in 1919, community leaders -tendered him a banquet of welcome. At the very opening of the repast, -during the soup course, the diners became violently ill. By great good -fortune--probably because so much poison had been introduced into the -soup that even the first few spoonfuls caused illness before a fatal -dose could be taken into the system--none of the diners lost his life -as a result of the decision of an assistant cook, Jean Crones, to do -away with the leaders of Catholicism in Chicago. - -The cook made good his escape. He has never been apprehended. But for -days he sent a letter each morning to the newspapers and to the police -telling just how he had kneaded arsenic into the dumplings he had been -assigned to prepare for the soup, how he had later bleached his hair -with lime whose fumes almost overcame him, in just which suburbs he had -hidden out on which days, and so on. Short of surrendering to the -police, he did all that lay in his power to identify himself as one who -had attempted a mass murder of unprecedented proportions. - -One could go down a long list of political assassinations throughout the -world during the past century, and find that almost without exception -the identity of the extroverted killer was not a matter of the slightest -doubt. No one questions the fact that a Nazi named Planetta murdered -Engelbert Dollfuss in his chancellery, that Gavrilo Prinzip shot the -Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, or that President Castillo Armas -of Guatemala was killed by a Communist among his bodyguards, Romero -Vasquez, who underscored his part of the plot by committing suicide. - -In modern history, however, one political assassination is still being -hotly debated, not merely as to the motives which prompted the deed, but -as to the identity of the one whose bullet inflicted the fatal wound. -This was the killing of Huey P. Long, self-proclaimed “Kingfish” of -Louisiana, who was on the very threshold of a bold attempt to extend his -dominion to the limits of the United States via the White House when Dr. -Carl Austin Weiss, Jr., fired on him, and was almost instantly mowed -down by a fusillade from the weapons of the bodyguards with whom Senator -Long surrounded himself wherever he went. - -To this day, nearly thirty years after the event, there are those who -believe that the assassination was part of a plot of which President -Franklin Roosevelt had cognizance and in which representatives of his -political organization participated. Only a month prior to his death -Huey Long had charged publicly on the Senate floor that, at a secret -conference in a New Orleans hotel, representatives of “Roosevelt the -Little” had assured the other conferees the President would undoubtedly -“pardon the man who killed Long.” - -There are those who accept the coroner’s verdict that the homicidal -bullet was fired by young Dr. Weiss from the eight-dollar Belgian -automatic pistol he had purchased years earlier in France where he was -doing postgraduate work in medicine. According to his father, testifying -at the inquest which followed the deaths of the two principals, Dr. -Weiss carried this pistol in his car at night, ever since intruders had -been found loitering about the Weiss garage. - -A great many others--quite possibly a majority of those who express an -opinion on the matter--insist that the bullet of whose effects Long died -was not the one fired by Dr. Weiss, but a ricochet from one of the -bodyguards’ guns in the furious volley that followed. - -Still others, and among these are many of the physicians and nurses who -knew Dr. Weiss well, feel certain to this day that he did not fire a -shot at all, that he was not the sort of person who could have brought -himself to take the life of another human being. It is their contention -that Dr. Weiss merely threatened to strike the Kingfish with his -fist--may indeed have done so, since Long did reach the hospital with an -abrasion of the lip after he was rushed from the capitol to Our Lady of -the Lake Sanitarium. After the blow or threat of one the young physician -was immediately gunned down, according to this version of the incident, -a chance shot thus inflicting the wound of which, some thirty hours -later, Senator Long died. - -The foregoing contradictory views are still further complicated by the -fact that there are many with whom it is an article of faith that -regardless of who fired the ultimately fatal shot, the leader they -idolized would have been saved but for an emergency operation performed -on him that same night by Dr. Arthur Vidrine. - -Finally, there is no agreement to this day on what could have prompted -Dr. Weiss to commit an act which almost everyone who knew him still -regards as utterly foreign to his nature. No valid motive for this deed -has ever been definitively established. One assumption has it that the -doctor was the chosen instrument of the “murder conference” whose -discussions Long made the text of the last speech he delivered on the -Senate floor. - -Others feel that inasmuch as Long was on the point of gerrymandering -Mrs. Weiss’s father, Judge Ben Pavy, out of the place on the bench he -had held for seven successive terms, Dr. Weiss’s act was one of -reprisal. At least one connection of the Weiss and Pavy families has -held that Dr. Weiss was actuated purely by a patriotic conviction that -only through the death of Long could his authoritarian regime be -demolished and liberty be restored to Louisiana. - -In view of the foregoing, one question poses itself rather relentlessly: -At this late date is an effort to compose such far-ranging differences -of conviction and surmise worth while? Can any purpose beyond a remotely -academic recording of facts be served thereby? Is there anything that -distinguishes in historical significance the assassination of Huey Long -from the public shooting which in time brought about the death of, let -us say, Mayor William Gaynor of New York? - -It is because those questions seemed to answer themselves, and -unanimously, in the affirmative that the data chronicled in the -following narrative were gathered. They represent among other items the -statements of every surviving eyewitness to the actual shooting, and of -surviving physicians who were present during, or assisted in, the -emergency operation performed by Dr. Vidrine. They include the never -previously revealed hospital chart of the thirty hours Senator Long was -a patient at Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium. - -This was no easy search for truth. There are still those who refuse to -discuss the assassination of Huey Long with anyone who does not share to -the fullest their individual views of what took place. None the less, -the significance of two figures--Franklin Roosevelt and Huey Long--so -curiously alike and yet so dissimilar, indicated a genuine need to weigh -every scrap of obtainable evidence and assess any rational conclusions -to be drawn from them. - -During the early 1930s no two names were better known in the United -States than those of Roosevelt and Long. The former was the product of a -patrician heritage plus the gloss of Groton and Harvard. The latter had -received no formal education beyond that afforded by the Winnfield high -school. An intermittent career as a book auctioneer, Cottolene salesman, -and door-to-door canvasser in the rural South did nothing to soften the -rough edges of his early environment. No two modes of address could have -differed more radically than the polished modulation of F.D.R.’s -fireside chats and the bucolic idiom of one of Huey Long’s campaign -rodomontades: “Glory be, we brought ’em up to the lick-log that -time”--“He thinks he’s running for the Senate but watch us clean his -plow for him come November”--“Every time I think of how I was suckered -in on that proposition I feel like I’d ought to be bored for the hollow -horn.” - -It was once stated that before Seymour Weiss, the New Orleans hotel man -who was perhaps his closest friend, took him in hand, he dressed like a -misprint in a tailored-by-mail catalogue. The description was apt. -Early photographs prove it, if proof be needed. Even when he was -oil-rich from his expanding law practice in Shreveport, he wore a ring -in which a huge diamond gleamed, and a tie-pin in which another, equally -large, was set. - -“Stop talkin’ po’-mouth to me, son,” an elderly legislator at Baton -Rouge once advised him. “You got di’monds all over you. Bet you even got -di’mond buttons on yo’ draw’s.” - -None the less he was superbly endowed with what, for want of a better -term, might be called personal magnetism, a quality that drew crowds as -sheep are drawn to a salt trough. Nowhere was this manifested more -strikingly than in Washington, where throngs packed the Senate galleries -the moment it was known that he was about to deliver a speech. - -He was a superb actor, too. Telling the same anecdote seven or eight -times a day, day after day in campaign after campaign, he would none the -less deliver it with the same chuckling verve at the thousandth -repetition with which he had told it initially. Little bubbles of -laughter escaped him as though involuntarily when he built up to the nub -of a jest. The effect of such tricks of stagecraft was heightened by the -unhurried but uninterrupted flow of words, the affectation of homely -idiom, the Southerner’s easy slurring of consonants. - -In Arkansas, at the time of the unparalleled Caraway campaign of 1932, -every gathering set a new attendance record for the time and place. The -address Long delivered from the band shell at Little Rock drew the -largest crowd ever assembled in the history of the state. And when the -motorized campaign party whipped from one city to the next to meet the -demands of a tightly co-ordinated speaking schedule, crowds lined even -the back roads through which the cars passed; crowds of those who, -unable for one reason or another to leave their small farmsteads in that -depression-harried autumn, waited patiently by the dusty roadsides for -a fleeting glimpse of the limousine in which Huey Long whizzed by them. - -He was at his best in the rough and tumble of partisan politics, both on -the hustings and on the Senate floor. When Harold Ickes said Huey had -“halitosis of the intellect,” Long retorted by dubbing him “the chinch -bug of Chicago.” To be sure, this was after he had broken with the -Roosevelt administration, when, scoffing at the Civilian Conservation -Corps, he offered to “eat every pine seedling they’ll ever grow in -Louisiana.” At the same time, when arguing fiscal policy with the -Senate’s veteran on such matters, Carter Glass, he said bluntly in the -course of debate that “I happen to know more about branch banking than -the gentleman from Virginia does.” - -In these respects, as in matters of politesse, Roosevelt was the very -antithesis of the gentleman from Louisiana. Yet neither would brook -opposition from within his partisans’ ranks. The breach between -Roosevelt and as selfless a supporter as James A. Farley was to all -intents and purposes identical with the disagreements that broke the -ententes between Long and every campaign manager and newspaper publisher -who had ever supported his candidacy. Escaping conviction on impeachment -charges, he announced: “I’ll have to grow me a new crop of legislators -in Louisiana.” When some of Roosevelt’s early New Deal legislation was -nullified by the Supreme Court, the President promptly sponsored a bill -to increase the number of Supreme Court justices, with himself to name -at one swoop six additional members; and he did his best to force what -was widely referred to as his “court packing” measure through Congress. - -Long campaigned vigorously through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and -other northern Midwest states for Roosevelt in 1932. Some of these -states went Democratic for the first time in more than a generation. -Admittedly this was not all due to Long’s stump speeches. But no one -knew better than Franklin Roosevelt that much of his success in the -Long-toured regions was due to the gentleman from Winnfield. He was one -of the few political leaders who did not underestimate the Long -potential, who correctly evaluated the Long influence in overturning the -politics of Arkansas to make Hattie Caraway the first woman ever elected -to a full term in the United States Senate. He had few illusions, if -any, on the score of the national organization of personal followers -Long was building through his Share-Our-Wealth clubs. - -Under the circumstances it was inevitable that these two, neither of -whom would ever admit a potential palace rival into the inner circle of -his aides, should become implacable opponents. Long was on the point of -announcing his candidacy for president against Roosevelt for the 1936 -campaign when a bullet cut short his career. The challenge he proposed -to fling at the man who subsequently carried all but two of the Union’s -states was neither a forlorn token like that of Governor Landon, nor a -visionary crusade like the campaign of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor. No -one appraised this more realistically than Roosevelt himself. He never -underestimated the sort of monolithic organization Long could create -around the hard core of existing Share-Our-Wealth clubs, the amount of -whose mail, as delivered to the Senate office building, dwarfed that -delivered to any other member of the Congress. - -In pursuance of his objective, Earle Christenberry, with Raymond Daniell -of the New York _Times_, had completed, by midsummer of 1935, the -manuscript of a short book to be signed by Huey Long, under the title of -_My First Days in the White House_. He had written no part of this -rather naïve treatise himself, though he had discussed it in general -terms with those who did draft it. An earlier book “by Huey P. -Long”--_Every Man a King_--was actually a collaboration in which the -prophet of Share-Our-Wealth had dictated sections to the late John -Klorer, then editor of Long’s weekly _American Progress_ (née _Louisiana -Progress_), who later became a successful scenarist in Hollywood. But -the helter-skelter discussions in which Long outlined his ideas for _My -First Days in the White House_ were turned into reasonably coherent -prose by Daniell and Christenberry; much of the manuscript Long never -even saw until it was in final form. - -It was an artless bit of oversimplified future history, written in the -past tense to describe the inauguration of President Huey Long, his -appointment of a cabinet (Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Alfred -E. Smith were among its members), and the adoption of national -Share-Our-Wealth legislation under the supervision of a committee headed -by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Andrew W. Mellon! But it was gauged for -an audience which already believed that it was possible to redistribute -all large fortunes among the nation’s have-nots. It was never meant to -convert economists, financiers, and magnates. On the contrary, its -principal purpose was to notify all and sundry, especially “all,” that -Huey Long was a candidate for president and was confident of victory. - -During that early autumn of 1935 the United States stood at a windy -corner of world history. In Europe totalitarians had taken over Italy’s -tottering liberal monarchy in 1922, and in 1933 the “republic” of -Germany. In Louisiana a home-grown fascist with complete dominance over -his own state was challenging the national leadership. Long had already -put into operation at the local level an authoritarian principle of -governmental sovereignty. Legislative and judicial functions were almost -wholly concentrated in the hands of an executive who was in reality a -“ruler.” The architect of that change was setting himself to expand it -to national dimensions. - -The seriousness of this situation was recognized by observers of the -national scene. Raymond Gram Swing listed five public figures in a -volume entitled _Forerunners of American Fascism_ and named Huey Long as -the one of potentially greatest national danger. The others were Fr. -Coughlin, William Randolph Hearst, Sr., Theodore G. Bilbo of -Mississippi, and Dr. Townsend. George Horace Lorimer, long-time editor -of the _Saturday Evening Post_, ordered a three-part serial profile of -the senator from Louisiana. Most of this was published posthumously, as -was all of what was to have been Long’s _Mein Kampf_: _My First Days in -the White House_. - -_Kingfish_ was thus tapped for a vaulting effort to become America’s -_Duce_ or _Führer_ when violence put an abrupt end to the design and to -the life of its protagonist. Official records in the coroner’s office at -Baton Rouge give no details beyond those embodied on a printed form, -whose blank spaces were filled in to note the name, age, bodily -measurements, color, and sex of the decedent, together with a curt -notation ascribing death to a “gunshot wound (homicidal).” - -Nearly thirty years have passed since those notations were entered on an -official form to be filed in the archives of East Baton Rouge parish. -Death has by now claimed many of the witnesses whose testimony might -have been of value in determining what actually took place in the -marble-walled corridor where the Kingfish, hurrying along with -characteristically flapping stride, received his mortal wound. But many -other presential witnesses yet survive. - -No inquest worthy of the name has ever been conducted to decide and -record officially what the circumstances of Huey Long’s assassination -were. The family refused to authorize a necropsy. The death of Dr. -Vidrine in 1955 was a portent of the rapid and inevitable approach of -the day when the last eyewitness would have passed on. No one would then -be able to relate at first hand any detail of the violent moment which -averted a conflict pitting the two best-known public figures in the -United States against one another for virtual sovereignty over this -nation. - -That violent moment would thus pass into history as a confused welter of -mutually contradictory versions, of rumors, half truths, and whole -untruths. Amid these the Huey Long murder case would remain an unsolved -and probably insoluble mystery. It was for this reason that I undertook -several years ago to gather and collate whatever eyewitness testimony -might still be available. I had known Senator Long and his family for -many years. Of the newsmen who heard Huey Long make his first state-wide -political address at Hot Well on July 4, 1919, I am the only one still -actively reporting the course of events and the doings of public -figures. I had accompanied him not only on any number of his state -campaigns, but also on the remarkable Caraway campaign of 1932. - -I knew nearly all of his intimates, and was on first-name terms with -most of them then in the easy camaraderie of journalism. Without -exception every surviving witness I approached has given me his version -of what took place in the capitol corridor at the time of the shooting. -With but one exception every witness who was present in the operating -room and in the sickroom where Huey later died, has told me all that he -saw, heard, or did on that occasion. - -These several accounts do not agree at every point. Indeed, here and -there they are rather widely at variance. For that very reason they -merit belief. Such differences validate the integrity of testimony so -given. Had these accounts tallied in every minute particular after the -passage of more than a quarter of a century, or even after the passage -of twenty-five minutes, they would have been suspect, and properly so. -It is axiomatic that eyewitness accounts of the same event invariably -differ, even when given at once. The classic illustration of this is the -prize fight at whose conclusion one judge awards the victory to Boxer A, -the referee calls the combat a draw, and the other judge selects Boxer -B as the winner. - -The fact that there is no variance whatever between accounts given by -several witnesses, especially when their testimony concerns an -occurrence involving violence, is as certain an indication of collusive -fraud as is the fact that two signatures, ostensibly penned by the same -individual, show not the slightest difference in form, shading, or pen -pressure at any point. Unless one or both such signatures are forgeries, -absolute identity is a practical impossibility. - -The question of whether or not the Kingfish could have wrested political -control of the United States from Franklin Roosevelt became academic -when a bullet found its mark in his body. But a glance at the highlights -of his career offers some of the clues to what happened to him on -September 8, 1935. - - - - -2 ---- PROFILE OF A KINGFISH - - “_The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals - with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity._” - - ----SIR THOMAS BROWNE - - -One day some of the VIP’s of the Long political hierarchy were gathered -in the office of Governor Oscar Allen when a matter of legislative -procedure was under discussion. It is worth noting for the record that -the Governor’s chair was occupied by Senator Huey Long. Governor Allen -sat at one side of his desk. The names of the others do not matter. -Among them were highway commissioners, a state purchasing agent, floor -leaders from House and Senate, the head of an upstate levee board, and -the like. - -Huey was issuing orders and lost his temper over the apparent -inattention of some conferees, who were conducting a low-voiced -conversation in a corner of the room. - -“Shut up, damn it!” he shouted suddenly. “Shut up and listen to me. This -is the Kingfish of the Lodge talking!” - -From that day on he was “Kingfish.” Even Franklin Roosevelt, telephoning -him from New York during the hectic maneuvering which preceded that -summer’s Democratic national convention, greeted him with the words: -“Hello, Kingfish!” - -The self-proclaimed Kingfish was named Huey Pierce Long at his birth on -August 30, 1893, the third of four sons born to Huey Pierce Long, Sr., -and Caledonia Tyson Long. The family farm was near Winnfield, and by the -standards of that place and time the Longs were well off; not wealthy, -to be sure, but never in want. Winnfield, seat of Winn parish, is a -small wholly rural community not far from the center of the state. - -“Just _near_ the center of the state?” Westbrook Pegler once asked -Senator Long incredulously after watching him put his legislative -trained seals through their paces. “Just _near_ the center of the state? -I’m surprised you haven’t had the legislature declare it to _be_ the -center of the state.” - -Scholastically, Huey did not distinguish himself, and he took no part in -athletics, lacking the physical pugnacity that is the heritage of most -young males. His brother Earl, two years younger than Huey, frequently -asserted that “I had to do all Huey’s fighting for him.” But as long as -he remained in high school (he left after a disagreement with the -principal and before graduation) he was the best debater that -institution ever numbered among its pupils. - -His first essay into the realm of self-support came at age fourteen, -when he loaded a rented buggy with books and drove about the countryside -selling these at public auction. In doing so he laid the foundation for -what became the largest personal acquaintance any one individual ever -had among the farm folk of Louisiana. - -“I’d never stay at a hotel, even later on, when I was out selling -Cottolene or baking powder or lamp chimneys or whatever,” he would -boast. “I always drove out beyond town to a farmhouse where they’d take -me in and put up my horse, and I would pay them something and put in the -evening talking to them, and later I would make it my business to drop -those folks a post card so they’d be sure to remember me.” - -At summer’s end he entered Oklahoma University at Norman, hoping to -work his way through law school as weekend drummer for the Kaye Dawson -wholesale grocery. That did not work out. After a heated disagreement -with the head of the business he returned to Louisiana and became a -door-to-door salesman for Cottolene. In glorifying this product he held -cake-baking contests here, there, and yonder. - -“My job was to convince those women they could fry chickens, steaks, or -fish in something else besides hog lard, and bake a cake using something -else besides cow butter,” he explained. “I would quote the Bible to them -where it said not to use any part of the flesh of swine, and if I -couldn’t convince them out of the Bible, I would go into the kitchen and -bake a cake for them myself.” - -First prize for one of his cake-baking contests in Shreveport was -awarded to pretty Rose McConnell. Not long thereafter, she and Huey were -married. With all his savings and a substantial loan from his older -brother Julius, he managed to finance nearly a year of special study at -Tulane University’s law school in New Orleans. He and Rose shared a room -in a private home not far from the university, where among other -furnishings, a rented typewriter was installed. - -Young Mr. Long would bring home a law book, drive through it in furious -haste while his phenomenally retentive memory seized every really -salient detail, “and then I would abstract the hell out of it, dictating -to my wife, who would type it out for me.” With barely enough money for -housing, carfare, short rations, and such essentials as paper and -pencils, it is none the less probable that these were the least -troubled, most nearly contented and carefree days the couple would ever -know. Before year’s end he was admitted to the bar, and returned to -Winnfield with Rose to begin practice. - -He soon realized that despite local successes, the ambitious goals he -had set for himself could be attained only in a much larger field. So he -moved to Shreveport, which was just at the threshold of a tremendous -boom following the discovery of oil in the nearby Pine Island areas. By -accepting royalty shares and acreage allotments for legal services in -examining titles and the like, Huey was on the threshold of becoming -very wealthy, when he and the other Pine Islanders discovered that they -could not send their black gold to market unless they sold it at -ruinously low prices to owners of the only available pipeline. Long’s -implacable hostility toward the Standard Oil Company had its inception -then and there. - -As first step in a campaign to have pipelines declared common carriers, -he became a candidate for the Railroad (now Public Service) Commission -and was elected. The brothers Long presented a solid front on this -occasion, Julius and Earl working like beavers to help Huey win. George -(“Shan”) had moved to Oklahoma by that time to practice dentistry. Only -once thereafter were they politically united, and that was when Huey ran -for governor in 1928. - -Commissioner Long made his first state-wide stump speech the following -year at a rally and picnic which six candidates for governor had been -called to address. He had not been invited to speak, but asked -permission to say a few words--and stole the show! - -One must picture him: a young man whose bizarre garb was accented by the -fact that since he was wearing a bow tie, the gleaming stickpin with its -big diamond sparkled from the otherwise bare band of his shirt front. -The unruly forelock of rusty brown hair, a fleshy, cleft chin, and a -general air of earnest fury all radiated anger. His blistering -denunciation of the then governor as a pliant tool of the Standard Oil -Company, and his attack on the state fire marshal, an anti-Long politico -from Winnfield, as “the official barfly of the state of Louisiana” -captured all the next day’s headlines. - -Thenceforth the pattern of his future was set. He continued his attacks -on trusts and large corporations, certain that this would enlarge his -image as defender and champion of the downtrodden “pore folks.” His -assaults became so intemperate that in 1921, Governor John M. Parker -filed an affidavit against him with the Baton Rouge district attorney, -and thus brought about his arrest and trial on charges of criminal -libel. - -His attorneys were his brother Julius, Judge James G. Palmer of -Shreveport, and Judge Robert R. Reid of Amite. He was found guilty, but -his reputation as a pitiless opponent was already so great that only a -token sentence was imposed: one hour’s detention, which he served in the -Judge’s chambers, and a one-dollar fine. He was so delighted by the -outcome that he gave his youngest son, born that day, the names of his -attorneys: Palmer Reid Long. Also, some years later, he saw to it that -the judge who had imposed the token penalties was elected to the state -supreme court. - -Continuing his onslaughts against millionaires and monopolies, he ran -for governor in 1924 on a platform of taxing the owners of great -fortunes to aid the underprivileged in their struggle for a reasonable -share of the better life: education for their children, medical care for -all who could not afford to pay, and some sort of economic security for -all who toiled, be it in factory, market place, mine, or farm. - -He now inveighed against Wall Street as a whole, not merely against -isolated corporations as before. The Mellon fortune and the House of -Morgan came in for their oratorical lumps; but it is a matter of record -that later, when Earl and Huey had fallen out, the former testified -under oath before a Senate investigating committee that he had seen his -brother accept $10,000 from an official of the Electric Bond and Share -Company “in bills so new they looked like they’d just come off the -press.” - -However, from every stump Huey proclaimed that “ninety per cent of this -nation’s wealth is in the hands of ten per cent of its people.... The -Bible tells us that unless we redistribute the wealth of a country -amongst all of the people every so often, that country’s going to smash; -but we got too many folks running things in Louisiana and in Washington -that think they’re smarter than the Bible.” - -None the less he ran third in a three-man first primary. In view of the -fact that he had no organized backing it must be conceded that it was a -close third, an amazing achievement the credit for which must be given -to his wide acquaintance among the farm population and the matchless -fire of his eloquence. A number of factors contributed to his defeat. -One of them undeniably was his refusal, or inability, to recognize that -he “could not hold his liquor.” After a convivial evening at a -lake-front resort in New Orleans, he drove back to town with his -campaign manager at a wildly illicit speed and was promptly halted by a -motorcycle officer. His campaign manager hastily explained to the -patrolman that the car was his, and that his chauffeur, one Harold Swan, -had merely acted under orders. But the fact that Huey Long and Harold -Swan in this instance were one and the same came out later, along with -accounts of how Huey had gone tipsily from table to table at the Moulin -Rouge inviting all and sundry to be his personal guests at his inaugural -ball. - -Ordinarily, this might have won him votes in tolerant south Louisiana, -where prohibition was regarded as the figment of sick imaginations, like -the _loup garou_. But in south Louisiana he had few backers in that -campaign to begin with, being a north Louisiana hillman; and in north -Louisiana, where drinking had to be done in secret even before the -Volstead Act became nominally the law of the land, such reports were -sheer poison. - -Finally, the weather on election day turned foul. The wretched dirt -roads of the hinterlands where Huey’s voting strength was concentrated -became impassable, so that many of his supporters could not reach their -polling places. But four years later, when he once more ran for governor -in yet another three-man race, he barely missed a majority in the first -primary. No run-off was held, however, because one of his opponents -announced he would throw his support to Long, pulling with him many -followers, including a young St. Landry parish physician, Dr. F. Octave -Pavy, who had run for lieutenant governor. Under the circumstances a -second primary would have been merely an empty gesture of defiance. - -As governor, he rode roughshod over all opposition to his proposal to -furnish free textbooks to every school child, not merely in the public -schools, but in the Catholic parochial schools and the posh private -academies as well; for a highway-improvement program which he proposed -to finance out of increased gasoline taxes. Nor was he one to hide his -light under a bushel in pretended modesty. On the contrary, after each -success he rang the changes on Jack Horner’s classic “What a good [in -the sense of great] boy am I.” Moreover, it made little difference to -his devotees whether his promises of still greater benefits for the -future, or boasts about the wonders he had already achieved, were based -on fact or fiction. - -By way of illustration: Dr. Arthur Vidrine, a back-country physician, -was catapulted into the superintendency of the state’s huge Charity -Hospital at New Orleans, and later was additionally made dean of the new -state university College of Medicine Long decided to found. Vidrine had -won the new governor’s warm regard by captaining the Long cause in Ville -Platte, where he was a general practitioner. - -In some quarters there is a disposition to regard Arthur Vidrine as no -more than a hack who relied on political manipulation to secure -professional advancement. While it is obvious that his original support -of, and later complete subservience to, Huey Long brought him -extraordinary preferment, it must not be overlooked that in 1920, when -he was graduated from Tulane University’s college of medicine, he was a -sufficiently brilliant student to be chosen in open, nonpolitical -competition for the award of a Rhodes scholarship, and that for two -years he took advantage of this grant to pursue his studies abroad. - -After his return he served for a time as junior intern at New Orleans’ -huge Charity Hospital ... and within four years he was made -superintendent of that famous institution and dean of his state -university’s new medical school, both appointments being conferred on -him by newly elected Governor Huey Long, who lost no opportunity to -picture his protégé as something of a miracle man in the realm of -healing. - -To an early joint session of the legislature, His Excellency announced -that under his administration Dr. Vidrine had reduced cancer mortality -at Charity Hospital by one third. This was obvious nonsense. Had it not -been, the medical world would long since have beaten a path to the -ornamental iron gates of the century-old hospital in quest of further -enlightenment. - -One of the newspapers finally solved the mystery of this miracle of -healing. It stemmed solely from a change in the system of tabulating -mortality statistics. Calculated on the old basis, the death rate was -precisely what it had been before, a little better in some years, a -little worse in others. All this was set forth publicly in clear, simple -wording. But except for a few of the palace guard, who cynically -shrugged the explanation aside, not one of the Long followers accorded -it the slightest heed. They and their peerless standard bearer continued -to glory in the “fact” that he had reduced Charity’s cancer death rate -by a third. - -This accomplishment was by no means the only one of which young -Governor Long boasted. Less tactfully, and certainly less judiciously, -he made vainglorious public statements to the effect that “I hold all -fifty-two cards at Baton Rouge, and shuffle and deal them as I please”; -also that he had bought this legislator or that, “like you’d buy a sack -of potatoes to be delivered at your gate.” - -Within a year the House of Representatives impeached him on nine counts. -Huey had learned that such a movement was to be launched at a special -session in late March of 1929, and sent word to his legislative legions -to adjourn _sine die_ before an impeachment resolution could be -introduced. But an electric malfunction in the voting machine made it -appear that the House voted almost unanimously to adjourn, when in fact -opinion was sharply divided. A riot ensued, which was finally quelled -when Representative Mason Spencer of Tallulah, a brawny giant, bellowed -the words: “In the name of sanity and common sense!” Momentarily this -stilled the tumult and Spencer, not an official of the House, but merely -one of its members, called the roll himself, by voice, on which tally -only seven of the hundred members voted to adjourn. - -The committee of impeachment managers in the House was headed by Spencer -and by his close friend, another huge man, George Perrault of Opelousas. -However, the impeachment charges were aborted in the Senate, when Long -induced fifteen members of that thirty-nine-man body to sign a round -robin to the effect that on technical grounds they would refuse to -convict regardless of evidence. Since this was one vote more than enough -to block the two-thirds majority needed for conviction, the impeachment -charges were dropped. - -Spencer and Perrault remained inseparable friends, occupying adjacent -seats in the House to the day of Perrault’s death during the winter of -1934. On the night of September 8, 1935, Huey stopped to chat -momentarily with Spencer, who took occasion to protest against the -appointment of Edward Loeb, who had replaced his friend Perrault - -“All these years I’ve got used to having a man the size of George -Perrault sitting next to me,” he complained. “Did you have to make Oscar -appoint a pint-size member like Eddie Loeb to sit in his place here?” - -“You remind me,” retorted Long, “of the old nigger woman that was in a -bind of some sort, and her boss helped her out, giving her clothes or -money or vittles or whatever. So she said to him: ‘Mist’ Pete, you got a -white face, fo’ true, but you’s so good you’s bound to have a black -heart.’ That’s you, Mason. Your face is white, but you’ve sure enough -got a black heart.” - - * * * * * - -A year after the abortive impeachment Long announced he would run for -the Senate forthwith, though his gubernatorial tenure would not be -terminated for another two years. In this way, he said, he would submit -his case to the people. If they elected him, they would thereby express -approval of his program. If not, they would elect his opponent, the -long-time incumbent senator. Long was elected overwhelmingly, and then -went from one political success to another, electing another -Winnfieldian, his boyhood chum Oscar Allen, to succeed him as governor, -and smashingly defeating a ticket on which his brother Earl was running -for lieutenant governor with his brother Julius’ active support. It was -later that year that Earl testified against Huey before a Senate -committee. - -In that same year Huey Long entered Arkansas politics. Mrs. Hattie -Caraway, widow of Senator Thad Caraway, had been appointed to serve the -few remaining months of her husband’s term, then announced as a -candidate for re-election. Huey had two reasons for espousing her -candidacy. First, she had voted with him for a resolution favoring the -limitation of individual incomes by law to a maximum of a million -dollars a year. Secondly, the senior senator from Arkansas, Majority -Leader Joe T. Robinson, who had turned thumbs down on this resolution, -had endorsed one of the candidates opposing Mrs. Caraway’s election. -Thirdly, he felt it was time to put the country on notice that -Kingfishing could be carried successfully beyond the borders of its home -state. - -Mrs. Caraway was accorded no chance to win. Every organized political -group in the state had endorsed one or another of her six opponents, -among whom were included a national commander of the American Legion, -two former governors, a Supreme Court justice, and other bigwigs. The -opening address of the nine-day campaign Huey Long waged with Mrs. -Caraway was delivered at Magnolia, just north of the Louisiana border. -At its close, a dazed local political Pooh-Bah wired a major campaign -headquarters in Little Rock: “A tornado just passed through here. Very -few trees left standing, and even those are badly scarred up.” - -It was here that Long first formulated what later became the -Share-Our-Wealth clubs’ credo. - -“In this country,” he proclaimed, “we raise so much food there’d be -plenty for all if we never slaughtered another hog or harvested another -bushel of grain for the next two years, and yet people are going hungry. -We’ve got enough material for clothes if in the next two years we never -tanned another hide or raised another lock of cotton, and yet people are -going barefoot and naked. Enough houses in this land are standing empty -to put a roof over every head at night, and yet people are wandering the -highways for lack of shelter.” - -The remedy he proposed was simple: share our wealth instead of leaving -almost all of it in the hands of a greedy few. - -“All in this living world you’ve got to do,” he insisted, “is to limit -individual incomes to one million dollars a year, and fix it so nobody -when he dies can leave to any one child more than five million dollars. -And let me tell you something: holding one of those birds down to a -measly million dollars a year’s no sort of hardship on him. At that rate -of income, if he stopped to bathe and shave, he’d be just about five -hundred dollars the richer by the time he got his clothes back on. - -“What we got to do is break up those enormous fortunes like the -billion-dollar Mellon estate. By allowing them a million dollars a year -for spending-money you’ll agree we wouldn’t be hurting ’em any to speak -of. We’d have the balance to distribute amongst all the people, and that -would fix things so everybody’d be able to live like he could right now -if he made five thousand a year. Yes sir, like he was having five -thousand a year and a team of mules to work with, once we share the -wealth!” - -Today it is almost impossible to visualize the effect of so alluring a -prospect on a countryside forced at that time to rely on the Red Cross -for seed corn and sweet-potato slips to assure a winter’s food supply. -The rural Negroes in particular, their “furnish” sadly shrunken as a -result of the depression, accepted it almost as gospel that Huey Long -was promising them five thousand dollars a year and a team of mules. - -The impact of Long’s oratory was so clearly obvious that a special -committee waited on him at Texarkana, where he planned to close the -campaign on Saturday night, to ask that he remain in Arkansas over the -weekend to address meetings in the tier of counties along the -Mississippi River on Monday, the day before the election. He agreed to -do this, canceled plans to drive to Shreveport from Texarkana, and drove -back to Little Rock instead. Since this left the accompanying newsmen -with no grist for the early Monday editions, and since he had been -quoting the Bible right and left in his speeches, not to mention the -fact that in the glove compartment of his Cadillac a well-thumbed Bible -reposed beside a loaded revolver and an atomizer of throat spray, he was -asked where he expected to attend church the next morning. - -“Me go to church?” he inquired incredulously. “Why I haven’t been to a -church in so many years I don’t know when.” - -“But you’re always quoting the Bible and so....” - -“Bible’s the greatest book ever written,” he interrupted, “but I sure -don’t need anybody I can buy for six bits and a chew of tobacco to -explain it to me. When I need preachers I buy ’em cheap.” - -Mrs. Caraway’s first primary victory was a landslide. Well pleased, Huey -returned to Louisiana to defeat two-term incumbent Senator Edwin S. -Broussard and elect one of his chief attorneys in the impeachment case, -John H. Overton, in his stead. It was this election which a Senate -committee later investigated to sift allegations of fraud. The -investigation was recessed midway to give Senator Long an opportunity to -halt a threatened bank run by the simple expedient of having Oscar Allen -proclaim Saturday, February 4, a holiday celebrating the fact that -sixteen years before, on February 3 and 4, 1917, Woodrow Wilson had -severed diplomatic relations with Germany! - - PROCLAMATION - - STATE OF LOUISIANA - EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT - BATON ROUGE - - Whereas, on the nights of February 3 and 4, 1917, Woodrow Wilson, - president of the United States, severed diplomatic relations with the - Imperial German government; and - - Whereas, more than 16 years has intervened before the great American - people have turned their eyes back to the lofty ideals of human uplift - and new freedom as propounded by Woodrow Wilson; and - - Whereas, it is now fitting that due recognition be given by the great - State of Louisiana in line with the far-reaching principles enunciated - by the illustrious southerner who sought to break the fetters of - mankind throughout the world; - - Now, therefore, I, Oscar Kelly Allen, governor of the State of - Louisiana, do hereby ordain that Saturday, the fourth day of February, - 1933, the 16th anniversary of the severance of diplomatic relations - between the United States and the Imperial German government be, and - the same is hereby declared, a holiday throughout the State of - Louisiana and I do hereby order that all public business, including - schools, colleges, banks and other public enterprises be suspended on - said day and that the proper ceremonies to commemorate that event be - held. - - In witness whereof I have caused to be affixed the great seal of the - State of Louisiana on this, the third day of February, in the year of - Our Lord, A. D. 1933. - - [Illustration: Oscar Kelly Allen - - Governor] - - [Illustration: Attest: - - E. A. Conway - - Secretary of State.] - -This meant that all public offices, schools--and banks--were legally -forbidden to open their doors on that Saturday; by Sunday the Federal -Reserve authorities had put $20,000,000 at the disposal of the menaced -bank and the run which might have spread panic throughout the country -died a-borning. However, bank closures on a national scale were thus -postponed for only a month. March 4, while Franklin Roosevelt was taking -his first oath as president, state after state was ordering its banks to -close, as financial consternation (vectored from Detroit, however, and -not from New Orleans) stampeded across the land. - -One of the newly inaugurated President’s first acts--“The only thing we -have to fear is fear itself!”--was to order all the nation’s banks to -close until individually authorized by executive permit to reopen. But -the onus of having initiated the disaster had been averted from -Louisiana by Huey’s bizarre bank holiday, and this underscored the fact -that for some time past, the number and ratio of bank failures in -Louisiana had been far, far below the national average. It also -strengthened the growing conviction that Louisiana’s Long was something -more than another Southern demagogue like Mississippi’s Bilbo or Texas’ -Pa Ferguson. - -Franklin Roosevelt was probably never under any illusions on that score. -He gauged quite correctly the omen of Share-Our-Wealth’s growing -strength. It had been blueprinted for all to see when Mrs. Caraway’s -candidacy swept the boards in Arkansas, and again when this movement, -plus the oratorical spell cast by the Louisianian in stumping the -Midwestern prairie states, carried them for Roosevelt later that same -autumn. According to Long’s subsequent diatribes, he had campaigned thus -for “Roosevelt the Little” on the express understanding that the -president-to-be would back the program for limiting individual incomes -and bequests by statute. - -There is ample ground for the belief that Long was secretly gratified -when he realized that the New Dealers would have none of this proposal. -The issue which had served him so well in the past could thus be turned -against Roosevelt four years later, when Long planned to enter the lists -as a rival candidate for the world’s loftiest office. Publicly, to be -sure, he professed himself outraged by “this double cross,” bolted the -administration ranks once more, repeated an earlier, defiant fulmination -to the effect that if the New Dealers wished to withhold control over -Louisiana’s federal appointments from him, they could take this -patronage and “go slap dab to hell with it.” - -Roosevelt and his _fidus Achates_, Harry Hopkins, took him at his word, -and gave the anti-Long faction, headed by Mayor Walmsley of New Orleans, -a controlling voice in the distribution of federal patronage. The -breach between the two standard bearers--one heading the New Deal and -a federal bureaucracy tremendously swollen by a swarm of new -alphabetical agencies, the other all but worshiped as archangel of -Share-Our-Wealth--widened from month to month. - -Roosevelt left the anti-Long philippics to members of his cabinet and -other department heads: Hugh Johnson, NRA administrator, for example, or -Interior Secretary Harold Ickes. The climax to these interchanges came -in the late summer of 1935, when in an address delivered on the Senate -floor, Long charged that “Franklin Delano Roosevelt the first, the last, -and the littlest” was linked to a plot against his--Huey Long’s--life. - - - - -3 ---- AUGUST 8, 1935: WASHINGTON - - “_I haven’t the slightest doubt but that Roosevelt would pardon anyone - who killed Long._” - - ----UNIDENTIFIED VOICE FROM A DICTOGRAPH RECORD QUOTED BY HUEY LONG IN - AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE - - -Long’s charge that he had been selected for assassination by a cabal in -whose plot President Roosevelt was involved at least by implication made -headlines from coast to coast and filled page on page of the -_Congressional Record_. But it fell quite flat, being taken in a -Pickwickian rather than in any literal sense. Even the unthinking elders -of the Share-Our-Wealth clubs, their numbers now sadly shrunken by -reason of the march of time, still cling to a rather pathetic belief in -this extravagant bombast only by reason of an uncanny and unrelated -coincidence: within less than thirty days after making the charge Long -actually was assassinated. - -His climactic thrust at the White House was not taken too seriously at -the time, however, because, for one thing, Long had cried “plot against -me” too often. By the fall of 1935 the story was old hat, even though it -had never before been blazoned in so august a tribunal as the Senate, -and had never before involved, even by indirection, a chief executive. -On two previous occasions he had placed Baton Rouge under martial law, -calling out the militia, to defend him against plots on his life. Only -seven months before making the Senate speech in question he had -“exposed” the plot of a group of Baton Rouge citizens, a number of high -officials among them, to waylay his automobile on a given night while he -was being driven to New Orleans, and kill him at a lonely bend of the -River Road where the car would of necessity have to slow down. - -In proof of this he put on the witness stand an informer who had -infiltrated into the ranks of the supposedly plotting group, and who -testified as to the details of a conspiracy. - -Early in his senatorial career he had made himself so offensive in the -washroom of a club at Sands Point, Long Island, that the irate victim of -a demand to “make way for the Kingfish” slugged him. Since the blow -split the skin over an eyebrow, the incident could not be concealed. -Long promptly charged that hired bravos of the House of Morgan had -assaulted him in the club washroom, intent on taking his life. - -Finally, when what he told the Senate on that August day in 1935 was -boiled down in its own juices it made pretty thin gruel, as anyone who -cares to wade through the fine print of the _Congressional Record_ for -that date can see for himself. The truth is that on the eve of Congress’ -adjournment, Long was trying to build up against Roosevelt something he -could tub-thump before the voters in the next year’s presidential -campaign. - -On the principle that “the best defense is an attack,” he was keeping -the New Deal hierarchy in Washington so busily occupied on another front -that he could take advantage of their preoccupation to infiltrate -Louisiana’s federal patronage with his followers. - -Presumably control over these appointments to all sorts of oddball -positions under the PWA, WPA, and other auspices was now in the hands -of the anti-Long contingent, headed by among others a good half of the -state’s members in the lower house of Congress. But these were parochial -politicians, fumblingly inept at organizing such matters on a state-wide -scale. To cite but a single example, one project sponsored under the -anti-Long dispensation was a review of the newspaper files in the New -Orleans City Hall archives. By direction of Mayor Walmsley, so many -appointees were packed into this particular task that they had to work -in one-hour-a-day shifts in order to find physical room in the small -garret-like space set aside for it. - -Theoretically, they were to index these files, and to repair torn pages -with gummed tape as they came across them. Actually, they would for the -most part merely turn the leaves of the clumsy bound volumes until they -came to the Sunday comics or other such features, and read these at -leisure. Then they repaired to Lafayette Square when their hour of -demanded presence was up, and joked about the way they would put out of -joint the noses of the anti-Long leadership on election day; for of -course most of them were dedicated Share-Our-Wealthers eagerly looking -forward to $5000-a-year incomes when Huey Long got around to -redistributing the nation’s wealth. - -Meanwhile their Kingfish was giving the anti-Long leaders a real -Roland--an entire battalion of Rolands, in fact--for their patronage -Oliver. The spoils-system theory of a patronage plum is that its -bestowal is good for three votes; in other words, that the recipient and -at least two members of his family or circle of friends will vote for -the party favored by the job’s bestower. A United States senator would -normally be consulted about appointments to all federal patronage posts -not covered by civil service in his state: Collector of the Port, -Surveyor of the Port, Collector of Internal Revenue, district attorneys, -federal judges, and the like. During the early New Deal era this roster -was tremendously amplified by the staffs of numerous new alphabetical -agencies and their labor force. - -Huey Long may not have expected to be taken quite so literally when he -told the Roosevelt hierarchs they could take their patronage “slap-dab -to hell” as far as he was concerned. But when he saw that he was indeed -given no voice in any Louisiana federal appointment, he initiated an -entire series of special sessions of the state legislature which -subserviently enacted a succession of so-called “dictatorship laws.” -Under these statutes he took the control of every parochial and -municipal position in every city, village, and parish out of the hands -of the local authorities, and vested the appointive power in himself. - -He did this by creating new state boards, composed of officials of his -own selection, without whose certification no local public employee -could receive or hold any post on the public payroll. A board of teacher -certification was thus set up and without its--which is to say, Huey -Long’s--approval, no teacher, janitor, school-bus driver, or principal -could be employed by any local parish or city school board. No municipal -police officer or deputy sheriff throughout the state, no deputy clerk -or stenographer in any courthouse, no city or parish sanitary inspector, -and so on down the entire line of public payroll places, could continue -in his or her position unless specifically okayed by Senator Long. In -those pre-civil-service days the appointive state, parish, and city -employees in Louisiana outnumbered the federal patronage places within -the state by hundreds to one, even during the New Deal’s era of -production controls and “recovery.” - -Hence, for each federal patronage job he had nominally lost to his -opponents he gained hundreds--literally--of local appointments which -were thenceforth at his disposal. When this was pointed out in the -anti-Long press and he was asked for comment, he chuckled and said: -“I’m always ready to give anybody a biscuit for a barrel of flour.” - -In sum, he had brought practically all local public employees, including -those who staffed Mayor Walmsley’s city administration in New Orleans, -under the Long banner by the summer of 1935. Only a scant handful of -“dictatorship laws” yet remained to be enacted, and these were already -being drafted to his specifications. The moment Congress adjourned, when -he would be released from Washington and could return to Louisiana, they -would be rushed to enactment. - -Meanwhile he readied his parting shot against the White House. The -incident on which he based the grotesque charge that President Roosevelt -abetted, or at the very least knew of and acquiesced in, an -assassination plot was a supposedly _sub rosa_ political caucus held at -the Hotel De Soto in New Orleans on Sunday, July 21, 1935. The gathering -had been convened presumably without letting any outsider (i.e., -“nonplotter”) know it was to be held. Its ostensible objective was the -selection of an anti-Long gubernatorial candidate whom all anti-Long -factions would agree to support against any nominee the Senator might -hand-pick for endorsement. - -However, with what still appears to be a positive genius for fumbling, -the anti-Long leadership guarded with such butter-fingered zeal the -secret of whether, where, or when they were to meet that even before -they assembled, Long aides had ample time to install the microphone of a -dictograph in the room where the anti-Long General Staff was to confer. -The device functioned very fuzzily. Its recording (which it was hoped to -duplicate and replay from sound trucks throughout the ensuing campaign) -was only spottily intelligible. But a couple of court reporters had also -been equipped with earphones at a listening post, and their stenographic -transcript, though incomplete, afforded some excerpts which Senator -Long inflated into what he presented as a full-scale murder plot. - -His fulmination was delivered before a crowded gallery, as usual. This -popularity annoyed many of his senior colleagues, none more so than -Vice-President Garner, whom John L. Lewis was soon to stigmatize as -“that labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking evil old man.” More -than once, as the galleries emptied with a rush the moment Long -finished, Mr. Garner would call to the departing auditors, saying: “Yes, -you can go now! The show’s over!” - -In this instance, as on many previous occasions, there was no advance -hint of the fireworks to come. The fuse was a debate over the -Frazier-Lemke bill, and Senator Long contented himself at the outset -with charging that the administration was conducting “government by -blackmail.” In making this statement he was referring to NIRA, which had -succeeded NRA, the latter having been declared unconstitutional some -three months earlier. This had nothing to do with the Frazier-Lemke -bill, but it gave Mr. Long an opportunity to charge that no contracts -for PWA work were being financed unless the contractor agreed to abide -by all the provisions of the NRA code which the Supreme Court had -invalidated. - -That led to the statement that “we in Louisiana have never stood for -[such] blackmail from anybody,” which in turn led to a section of his -arraignment the _Congressional Record_ headed: - - “THE PLAN OF ROBBERY, MURDER, - BLACKMAIL, OR THEFT” - -He then loosed his farewell salvo. - -“I have a record of an anti-Long conference held by the anti-Long -Representatives from Louisiana in Congress,” he said in part. “The -faithful Roosevelt Congressmen had gone down there to put the Long -crowd out.... Here is what happened among the Congressmen representing -Roosevelt the first, the last and the littlest.” - -Holding aloft what he said was a transcript of the dictograph record, he -listed the names of those present, naming a collector of internal -revenue, an FERA manager for the state, and giving as the first direct -quote of one of the conferees a statement made by one Oscar Whilden, a -burly horse-and-mule dealer who had headed an anti-Long direct-action -group calling itself the Square Deal Association. Whilden was quoted as -saying at the very opening of the meeting that “I am out to murder, -kill, bulldoze, steal or anything else to win this election!” - -An unidentified voice mentioned that the anti-Long faction would be -aided by more “income tax indictments, and there will be some more -convictions. They tell me O. K. Allen will be the next to be indicted.” - -“That,” explained Mr. Long for the benefit of his hearers and the press -gallery, “is the governor of Louisiana. Send them down these culprits -and thieves and thugs who openly advocate murdering people, and who have -been participants in the murder of some people and in their undertaking -to murder others--send them down these thugs and thieves and culprits -and rascals who have been placed upon Government payrolls, drawing from -five to six thousand dollars a year, to carry on and wage war in the -name of the sacred flag, the Stars and Stripes. That is the kind of -government to which the administration has attached itself in the state -of Louisiana!” - -Four of Louisiana’s congressmen were named as having taken part in the -caucus which Senator Long dubbed a “murder conference.” They were J. Y. -Sanders, Jr., Cleveland Dear, Numa Montet, and John Sandlin. But it was -another of the conferees whom Senator Long quoted next, reading from -the transcript, as suggesting that “we have Dear to make a trip around -the state and then announce that the people want him to run for -Governor, and no one will know about this arrangement here ... as you -all know we must all keep all of this a secret and not even tell our own -families of what is done.” Whereupon, according to the record, another -voice proposed that “we should make fellows like Farley and Roosevelt -and the suffering corporations ... cough up enough to get rid of that -fellow.” - -Commented Senator Long: “Yes, we should make the Standard Oil Company -and the ‘suffering corporations’ cough up enough ... says Mr. Sandlin -... [but] I am going to teach my friends in the Senate how to lick this -kind of corruption. I am going to show them how to lick it to a -shirttail finish.... I am going to give you a lesson in January to show -you that the crookedness and rottenness and corruption of this -Government, however ably [_sic!_] financed and however many big -corporations join in it, will not get to first base.” - -More of the same sort of dialogue was read from the transcript. -Congressman Sandlin assured the meeting that President Roosevelt will -“endorse our candidate.” Another of the conferees, one O’Rourke, was -described by Long as having refused to testify when another witness at -an inquiry into one of Huey Long’s earlier murder-plot charges “swore -that he had hired O’Rourke to commit murder in Baton Rouge. I was the -man he was to kill so there was not much said about it except that he -refused to testify on the ground that he would incriminate himself, -whereupon Roosevelt employed him. He was qualified and he was -appointed.” - -The statement most frequently quoted in the weeks and months that -followed was that of an unidentified voice which the transcript reported -as saying: “I would draw in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would -take only one man, one gun and one bullet.” And some time thereafter, -according to the transcript, another unidentified voice declared that “I -haven’t the slightest doubt but that Roosevelt would pardon any one who -killed Long.” Thereupon someone asked: “But how could it be done?” and -the reply was: “The best way would be to just hang around Washington and -kill him right in the Senate.” - -The conference was adjourned after notifying Congressman Dear that the -people would clamor to have him run for governor of Louisiana. (The -significance of this is that in one of Dear’s final campaign speeches he -made the statement that gave rise to a widely disseminated and still -persistent version of the shooting that followed, by almost exactly one -month, the delivery of Long’s attack on the New Deal.) - -Long concluded his address to the Senate with the assertion that he had -exposed this presumably hush-hush meeting “to the United States Senate -and, I hope, to the country ... and I wish to announce further they have -sent additional inspectors and various other bureaucrats down in the -State.... - -“The State of Louisiana has no fear whatever of any kind of tactics thus -agreed upon and thus imposed. The State of Louisiana will remain a -state. When you hear from the election returns in the coming January ... -Louisiana will not have a government imposed on it that represents -murder, blackmail, oppression or destitution.” - -The Senate then resumed the business of the day. But most of the -correspondents in the press gallery had left and the talk was all of -Huey Long’s excoriation of the New Deal, of his promise that “if it is -in a Presidential primary, they will hear from the people of the United -States,” and of his declaration that rumors of the New Deal leaders -plotting to have him murdered were now “fully verified.” - -NOTE: Most of the purely local references, repetitions, adversions to -extraneous matters, and the like have been omitted from the foregoing -condensation of Senator Long’s last speech before the Senate. Those who -may wish to read the full text of his address will find it in the -_Congressional Record_ for August 9, 1935, pages 12780 through 12791. -The section headed “The Plan of Robbery, Murder, Blackmail, or Theft” -begins on page 12786, second column. - - - - -4 ---- AUGUST 30 TO SEPTEMBER 2 - - “_Behold, my desire is that mine adversary had written a book. Surely - I would take it upon my shoulder and bind it as a crown to me._” - - ----JOB - - -Congress did not adjourn its 1935 session until seventeen days after -Senator Long had delivered his blast about “the plan of robbery, murder, -blackmail, or theft” at the Roosevelt administration in general and at -its head in particular. This was, as he clearly stated in his reference -to presidential primaries, the opening move in launching his 1936 -candidacy for president; the next step would be publication and -distribution of _My First Days in the White House_. - -He devoted himself to revision of this manuscript during the fortnight -in which Congress remained in session, and marveled at the difficulties -he encountered. Like many another magnetic orator, he was no writer, and -in spite of the ghosts who had helped bring it into being, _My First -Days in the White House_ eloquently testifies to that fact. None the -less, had he lived, the book would have won him adherents by the -million. In all its naïve oversimplification, it was still a triumph of -classical composition beside the helter-skelter phraseology of his -senatorial and stump-speaking oratory. But the latter, like his many -other public utterances, his early political circulars, and even the -jumbled prose of his first book: _Every Man a King_, had been accepted -almost as gospel by Longolators who jeered at literate anti-Long -editorials as propaganda dictated and paid for by the Money Barons. - -Congress did adjourn in due course, and now it is time to follow Long -almost hour by hour through the final ten days of his life, assembling -an unbiased chronicle in order to dispel myths and reveal truths about -his assassination. His first concern was the publication of his book. -His only other fixed commitment before having Governor Allen call the -legislature into special session for the enactment of a final dossier of -dictatorship laws, was delivery of a Labor Day address at Oklahoma City -on September 2. He had accepted this invitation gladly, since it would -afford him an opportunity to couple evangelistic grandiloquence about -wealth-sharing with kind words about blind Senator Thomas Gore, who -faced stiff opposition in his campaign for re-election. - -Earle Christenberry was left in charge of the Washington office, where -he was to pack for transportation all documents and records which might -be needed to elect a Long-endorsed governor and other state officials in -Louisiana. Meanwhile, Mr. Long with the manuscript of his book and three -of his bodyguards went to New York for a few days of relaxation. - -It was also part of his long-range design to seek the Democratic Party’s -nomination for president at the 1936 convention. To be sure, he was -under no misconception as to the sort of fate this bid would encounter. -For one thing, Roosevelt’s personal popularity had reached new heights -as his first term drew to a close. His nomination for a second term was -all but inevitable. Long had attacked not only the administration as -such. He was carrying on corrosive personal feuds with Postmaster -General Farley, Interior Secretary Ickes, NRA Administrator Hugh -Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Joe Robinson, and a host of other party -bigwigs. - -Naturally, Louisiana’s Kingfish realized fully that these leaders, -controlling the party machinery in the convention of 1936, would see to -it not merely that F.D.R. received a virtually unanimous nomination for -a second term, but that even were Roosevelt eliminated from contention, -Huey Long’s effort to become the party’s standard bearer would be -rejected. - -Unquestionably, that is exactly what the Kingfish wanted. He already had -a virtually crackproof national organization in his swiftly expanding -Share-Our-Wealth clubs. The growth of this movement was now so rapid -that his staff found difficulty in keeping pace with it. So valuable had -its name become that both “Share _Our_ Wealth” and “Share _the_ Wealth” -were copyrighted in Earle Christenberry’s name. - -Long’s purpose was to rally from both the Republican and Democratic -camps the many who were still embittered by their struggles to escape -the Great Depression. Times had undeniably bettered. The economy would -reach a peak figure in 1937. But even the WPA “shovel leaners” were -convinced that the government owed them much more than was being doled -out on payday, and were entranced by the vision of a future in which -Huey Long would soak the rich to provide for each toiler, however lowly -his station, an income of $5000 a year and a span of mules. - -In the prairie corn and wheat belts, in the Dakotas and in Oklahoma, in -all the places where Long had preached wealth-sharing while campaigning -for Roosevelt, desperate landowners on the verge of eviction from -mortgaged or tax-delinquent acres their forebears had carved out of the -wilderness, were still rallying their friends and neighbors to help keep -potential bidders from foreclosure auctions. These too would recall -Long’s clamorous efforts to bring the Frazier-Lemke bill to a vote, and -the conservatives’ success in holding it back from the floor. One and -all, they would read _My First Days in the White House_, and they would -learn in its pages how readily a wealth-sharing miracle could come to -pass if only Huey Long were president.... - -None the less, publishers were chary of bringing out the book under -their imprint. To Long this was no matter for concern. Over a period of -at least three years a war chest for the presidential campaign he -planned to wage in 1936 had been growing steadily. It included not -merely money--a levy on the salaries of all public employees under his -domination in Louisiana, and major campaign contributions from -corporations that felt themselves obligated to show tangible -appreciation for past favors or sought to insure themselves against -future reprisal--it included also a solid stockpile of affidavits about -the boondoggles of divers federal agencies. Hard-pressed men, driven to -almost any lengths by the crying need of their families for such bare -necessities as food and shelter, were being forced to promise they would -“praise Roosevelt and cuss Long” before being granted a WPA laborer’s -pittance. - -At the outset of Long’s senatorial career this entire trove of cash and -documentary dynamite was kept in some strongboxes of the Mayflower -Hotel, where the Senator first established his capitol residence. But -for various reasons, at least one of which was the hotel’s refusal to -bar his political opponents from registering there while in Washington, -his relations with the Mayflower deteriorated rapidly to the point where -he moved to the Broadmoor, at 3601 Connecticut Avenue. The view from one -of the windows of his apartment overlooking Rock Creek Park charmed him. -At the same time the campaign cash and documents were transferred to the -safety-deposit vaults of the Riggs National Bank, where the Senator kept -a Washington checking account, or rather, where Earle Christenberry kept -it for him. - -Hence the question of paying for the publication of _My First Days in -the White House_ presented no problem. For that matter, neither did the -seeming permanence of a few scattered centers of anti-Long resistance in -Louisiana. Since the dictatorship laws enacted during the previous -twelvemonth made it virtually impossible to defeat Long proposals in the -legislature, or Long candidates at the polls, the fixity of a few -isolated opposition enclaves was desirable because, to quote Mr. Long, -“it gives me somebody to cuss out, and I can’t make a speech that’s -worth a damn unless I’m raising hell about what my enemies are doing.” - -Only one stubborn stronghold of this sort really irked him by its -refusal to capitulate. This was the parish of St. Landry, whose seat was -Opelousas. Always independent of alien dictation, this fourth-largest -county in Louisiana had remained uncompromisingly anti-Long under the -leadership of a couple of patriarchal autocrats: Judge Benjamin Pavy, -tall, heavy-set, and wide-shouldered, with a roundish countenance -against whose rather sallow complexion a white mustache stood out in -sharp contrast; and District Attorney Lee Garland, short and plump, his -features pink beneath a flowing crest of white hair. - -Garland, much the elder, had held office continuously for forty-four -years, Judge Pavy for twenty-eight. The latter had been elected to the -district bench in 1908, after an exceptionally bitter local contest in -which the leader of the anti-Pavy forces, Sheriff Marion Swords, went so -far as to charge that one of Ben Pavy’s distant relatives-in-law was an -individual the purity of whose Caucasian ancestry was open to challenge. -Since Judge Pavy was elected not only then, but continuously thereafter -for the next twenty-eight years in election after election, it is -obvious the report was given no credence at the time. With the passage -of years, the incident was forgotten. - -The situation in the parish of St. Landry would not have disturbed Huey -Long too greatly, had there not been the possibility that in some -future state Supreme Court election the heavy vote of that parish might -upset the high tribunal’s political four-to-three Long-faction majority. -On this ground alone it might be important for the Kingfish to alter the -political climate of the St. Landry judicial district before the larger -demands of an approaching presidential campaign monopolized his time and -energy. - -A matter of prestige was likewise involved. It was Long’s purpose to -take the stump personally in the St. Landry area, in order to bring -about the defeat of its heavily entrenched Pavy-Garland faction and -score a personal triumph. On the other hand, if through some mischance -his persuasive oratory and the well-drilled efficiency of his cohorts -failed to carry the day, the result would be hailed not merely in -Louisiana, but throughout the nation, as a personal defeat for the -Kingfish. Hence, nothing must be left to chance. Matters must be so -arranged that failure was to all intents and purposes impossible. - -This involved no very serious difficulties. Earlier that summer, when he -first outlined to his lieutenants plans for liquidating the Pavy-Garland -entente as a politically potent factor, he gave orders to prepare for a -special session of the legislature, this one to be called as soon as -Congress adjourned. Once convened, the lawmakers were to gerrymander St. -Landry from the thirteenth into the fifteenth judicial district. This -would leave Evangeline (Dr. Vidrine’s home bailiwick), small but -overwhelmingly pro-Long, as the only parish in the thirteenth district, -thus assuring the election of a friendly judge there. - -At the same time, it would annex St. Landry to another district which -already included three large pro-Long parishes. Admittedly, the enlarged -district would be given two judges instead of one, but under the new -arrangement neither could possibly be elected without Long’s -endorsement. - -Senator Long took it for granted that his wishes--commands, -rather--would be complied with at once. But some close friends earnestly -urged him to forgo the gerrymander, at least temporarily. Political -feeling was running too high as matters stood to risk possible violence, -perhaps even a popular uprising, through such high-handed and summary -procedures. Reluctantly, he agreed to hold this particular project in -abeyance, but only for the moment. - -At the close of August, however, with Congress in adjournment, and in -view of the need to neutralize the federal government’s policy of -patronage distribution solely for the benefit of his political foes back -home, he decided that the time for action was at hand. Once more he sent -word to Baton Rouge that preparations for a special legislative session, -the fourth of that calendar year, be started without further delay. It -should be convened on the night of Saturday, September 7. - -Meanwhile certain bills, embodying the statutory changes he wanted, -should be drafted forthwith by Executive Counsel George Wallace, so that -he--Huey--could check their wording in advance, and make any amendments -he deemed necessary. This must be done with secrecy--not the sort of -puerile intrigue with which his opponents had assembled their hotel -conference, but under a tight cloak of concealment, so as to catch the -opposition unawares. The gerrymander that would retire Judge Pavy to -private life was to be the first measure introduced and passed, becoming -House Bill Number One and later Act Number One. The date of the state’s -congressional primaries was also to be moved up from September 1936 to -January. These should be held at the same time as the primaries for -governor and other elective state officers. And there was another -measure, one still in the planning stage, the details of which he would -give later; something to take the sting out of Roosevelt’s punitive -dispensation of federal patronage in Louisiana. - -Having disposed of these matters, Long left Washington for New York with -three of his most trusted bodyguards--Murphy Roden, Paul Voitier, and -Theophile Landry. All he had in mind at the moment was a day or two of -relaxation. August 30 was his birthday. He would be forty-two years old. -This in itself called for some sort of celebration. Besides, in view of -the busy weeks ahead--the Labor Day speech in Oklahoma on September 2, -the special session of the legislature, the need to rush _My First Days -in the White House_ into print, the fall and winter campaign for state -offices, the presidential campaign to follow--this might well be, for no -one knew how long, his last opportunity for casual diversion. - -“We flew to New York from Washington,” Captain Landry recalls, “and went -straight to the New Yorker Hotel, where they always put the Senator in a -suite on the thirty-second floor. We got there on August 29. I remember -that because the next day, a Friday, was his birthday, and Ralph Hitz, -the owner of the hotel, sent up a big birthday cake. Lila Lee, a New -Orleans girl who was vocalist for Nick Lucas’ band that was playing the -New Yorker’s supper room, came up to the suite with the cake to sing -Happy-birthday-dear-Huey. After the cake had been cut and we all had a -taste of it, he gave the rest to Miss Lee. - -“About that time Lou Irwin came up to take us out to dinner. I think the -Senator had talked to him on the phone about finding someone to publish -his book, and that Lou had said this was out of his line, since he was a -theatrical agent, but he would inquire around and see what could be -done. Earle Christenberry wasn’t with us. He had remained in Washington -to gather up all the things the Senator might need in Louisiana, papers -and so on, and he was going to take his time driving home with them -while we went on to Oklahoma City. - -“Anyway, Lou Irwin said he had just booked a show into some place -uptown. I have forgotten the name of it; all I remember is it was quite -a ways uptown, and Lou told us they had just imported from France some -chef that made the best onion soup in the world. - -“So we went there to eat, and we had hardly sat down when who should -come over to our table but Phil Baker, the radio star. He said: -‘Senator, I want you to meet the two most beautiful girls in New York, -my wife Peggy and her niece.’ I don’t remember the niece’s name, but she -was a young girl that looked to be about eighteen, and she was very -pretty. Baker was all excited, talking about having just signed a -contract that very day with the Gulf Refining people to take over their -radio show, the one Will Rogers, who got killed in a plane crash with -Wiley Post up in Alaska a couple of weeks before that, used to do.” - -The name of the niece was Cleanthe Carr. Her father, Gene Carr, was one -of the best-known cartoonists and comic-strip originators in the -country. His work was widely syndicated. - -“The Senator got up to dance with Mrs. Baker,” the Landry account -continues, “and she must have told him, while they were dancing, about -this niece being an artist, because when they came back to the table he -picked up a napkin and gave it to this girl, saying: ‘Young lady, I -understand you’re quite a cartoonist. Let’s see you sketch me here on -this napkin!’ Well, she made a perfect sketch of him, with his arms out -and his hair flying, as though he were making a hell-fire speech. He -thought the sketch was fine, but Phil Baker said we ought to see some of -her serious work, and we all should come up to his apartment, where he -had quite a few of the paintings she had done. - -“So we left. I don’t think Lou Irwin came with us. But anyway, after we -had been quite a long while at the Baker apartment, Senator Long said -the niece would have to do the pictures for his book that he had written -about how he was already elected president and what he did in the White -House to redistribute the wealth after he was inaugurated. By the time -we got back to the hotel it was three o’clock in the morning. - -“The Senator went over to the newsstand to look at the headlines in the -morning papers, and a gentleman who had been in the lobby when we came -in got up and came over to me and asked if my name was Captain Landry. I -told him yes, that was right, and he said he wanted to talk to Mr. Long. -I said: ‘Man, don’t you see what time it is? You haven’t got a chance to -see him now. You better come back tomorrow.’ - -“So he said it was very important for him to talk to the Senator right -away, that he had been sent up from Washington by Earle Christenberry, -and that was how he knew what my name was. He also said he represented -the Harrisburg _Telegraph_ Publishing Company in Harrisburg, -Pennsylvania, and they were anxious to publish the Senator’s book about -his first days in the White House. Naturally, that made a difference, -because that was one of the things Senator Long had come to New York -for, so I went across the lobby to the newsstand and told him what the -story was. - -“At first he said he wasn’t about to talk to anybody that time of night, -but when I told him how Earle had sent the man up special because the -Harrisburg _Telegraph_ people wanted to publish the book, and how the -man said he had just missed us when we went out to supper, and had been -waiting in the lobby ever since, the Senator said: ‘Well, all right, -then. Tell him to come up to 3200 in about ten minutes, but make him -understand he’ll have to talk damn fast when he gets there.’ So I did, -and the man--I have forgotten his name; that’s if I ever knew it--didn’t -have to talk so fast after all, because the meeting didn’t break up -till after five o’clock, when we all just about barely had time to get -packed and catch the first train for Harrisburg. - -“This was Saturday morning, August 31, and we went from the station at -Harrisburg right to the office of the newspaper and I know they must -have reached an agreement about printing the book, because when we left -by train for St. Louis that evening, two stenographers and a sort of -editor from the Harrisburg _Telegraph_ came along, and they were working -most of the night and all the next morning, cutting down the manuscript -for this book. It was too long the way it was written. Anyhow, as I -remember, they cut out two hundred pages, and finished just about the -time we got ready to cross the bridge and pull into St. Louis, where we -only had about five minutes to change to the train for Oklahoma City. - -“This was a Sunday morning, and while I don’t know how the word had got -around St. Louis that Huey Long was passing through, I tell you that old -station there was packed and jammed like nobody ever saw before, with -people that were not working, it being Sunday, so they just wanted to -catch one glimpse of the man while he was passing through.” - -Senator Long, Theophile Landry, and Paul Voitier, another bodyguard, -reached Oklahoma City late that afternoon. Only one public official, -Mayor Frank Martin, was at the station to greet the distinguished -visitor. - -“Officials in Fadeout as Huey Lands” headlined the Oklahoma City -_Times_. Most conspicuous among the absentees was State Labor -Commissioner W. A. Murphy who, when invited by the local Trades and -Labor Council some days earlier to appear jointly with Long as one of -the Labor Day speakers, replied: - -“I won’t be near or in a parade or program with that fellow.... A man -trying to destroy the only President who ever tried to help union labor -doesn’t deserve the support of labor, let alone being its guest.” - -Long was suffering from an attack of hay fever and from near-exhaustion -when he reached the Black Hotel. He had had almost no sleep since the -previous Friday morning. But he was in better spirits the next day when -he greeted among others Kaye Dawson, the produce merchant for whom he -had been a part-time salesman in Norman during his brief interlude of -trying to work his way through the law school of the University of -Oklahoma. It is worth noting, however, that when Dawson invited him to -visit his home, Long stipulated that both Landry and Voitier be included -in the invitation. - -He rode in the Labor Day parade that morning, too, and returned to his -hotel suite to hold an impromptu press conference about his -Share-Our-Wealth program. But when one of the reporters asked him -whether he had ever pressed the charge, made only two or three weeks -earlier, that several Louisiana congressmen were plotting his death, he -snapped: - -“I’m tired of talking. If you can’t stay here without asking questions, -get the hell out. Can’t you see I’m tired?” - -That afternoon the Labor Day crowd at the Fair Grounds cheered his -speech lustily, even his attacks on Roosevelt and Hoover, whom he -compared to the peddler of two patent medicines, High Popalorum and Low -Popahiram, both being made from the bark of the same tree. - -“But for one the peddler peeled the bark off from the top down,” he -explained, “and for the other he peeled it off from the bottom up. And -that’s the way it is at Washington. Roosevelt and his crowd are skinning -us from the ear down, and Hoover and the Republicans are doing the job -from the ankle up. But they’ve both been skinning us and there ain’t -either side left now.” - -“Huey May Toss Hat,” headlined the _Oklahoman_ next day, and quoted -Huey’s promise that “if Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hoover are the nominees -next year, or anyone that looks like Roosevelt or Hoover, we will have -us another candidate.” - -He left almost immediately after the rally, even though the only -available eastbound train would carry him no farther along the road to -Louisiana than Dallas. From that point he and his two bodyguards motored -to Shreveport, where they were met by another of the bodyguards, George -McQuiston, who had been dispatched from Baton Rouge in a state-police -car to await the Senator’s coming. - -They passed the night at the Washington-Youree Hotel, where the Kingfish -conferred with his local political satraps. The following morning he and -his entourage left for Baton Rouge, arriving in time to begin a -day-and-night series of meetings with Governor Allen, George Wallace, -Secretary of State Eugene Conway, and others. There Landry and the -Senator parted company. - -“He said for me to go to New Orleans and rest there, and go on a -vacation if I wanted to,” Landry added. “He said something about all of -us going on a vacation soon, just as soon as things in Baton Rouge got -settled. If only I had stayed with him I might have been where I could -save his life! But the one thing that never came into my mind was that -anybody would try anything in Baton Rouge. Not in Baton Rouge, where he -was always surrounded by some of us ... not in Baton Rouge where you’d -think he’d surely be safe....” - - - - -5 ---- SEPTEMBER 3 TO SEPTEMBER 7 - - “_There is nothing more difficult to undertake, more uncertain to - succeed, and more dangerous to manage, than to prescribe new laws._” - - ----MACHIAVELLI - - -Tuesday far into the night, throughout Wednesday, and again Thursday -until well past noon, Long labored with attorneys, officials, -secretaries, and typists, going over and over the measures to be -introduced when the forthcoming special legislative session was -convened. The streamlined rush with which such bills were speeded to -final enactment in less than five days did not allow for delays to -correct them once they had been dropped into the hopper. - -The system that made this possible was not original with the Kingfish. -It had been devised by two astute parliamentarians, Oramel Simpson and -George Wallace, to meet the exigencies of a flood crisis in 1927. - -By convening the legislature late at night, with all bills whipped into -final shape before the lawmakers assembled, having one member introduce -all the bills, suspending the rules to have them all referred at once, -and all to the same committee, regardless of content, what would -otherwise be delayed by being parceled out on two separate legislative -days could be accomplished in a matter of minutes. - -Then, immediately after midnight, or even the next morning, the -committee could meet, gallop through the dossier, give all -administration-sponsored measures a favorable report, and turn thumbs -down on all anti-administration proposals (the record was forty-four -bills thus “considered” in an hour and seven minutes), report them back -to the House, and order them engrossed and put on the calendar for final -action the next morning. That would be another legislative day. - -On the morrow the House would then pass the bills as fast as the clerk -could mumble a few words of the title and the members could press the -electric-voting-machine buttons. Immediately thereafter the bills would -be rushed across the corridor to the Senate, where the same routine -would be followed. - -Thus the third legislative day in the House would also be the first -legislative day in the Senate, so that a few minutes after the fourth -midnight, the governor could sign the bills into law, each measure -having been read “in full” on three separate days in each house. - -This was a brilliant device for meeting an emergency; the iniquity of it -lay in the fact that, when employed as routine, it shut off all real -study of the proposals, and barred opponents or representatives of the -public from being heard on them before committees. - - * * * * * - -By Thursday noon, September 5, everything was in readiness for the -introduction at a moment’s notice of thirty-one administration- (i.e., -“Long”) sponsored must bills--all this without one official word to -indicate that a special session was so much as contemplated. None the -less, among the press correspondents in the capitol gallery it was taken -for granted that such an assembly would be convened at the weekend; but -when they pressed Senator Long to confirm or deny the surmise, he -professed complete ignorance. - -“As far’s I know,” he said blandly, “Oscar hasn’t made up his mind -about if he’ll call one any time soon. Leastaways he never said a word -to me about it.” - -“When are you going to make up his mind so he can tell you?” quipped one -of the reporters. - -“He’d near about kill you if he heard you say that,” chuckled the -Kingfish good-naturedly, “and his wife would finish the job.” - -He spent some time then chatting informally with rural well-wishers, -while waiting for Murphy Roden, who had driven the Cadillac with License -Plate Number 1 from Washington to New Orleans and was to call for its -owner that afternoon in Baton Rouge. The Senator was due to make one of -his fiery radio broadcasts over a state-wide hookup that night at eight -in the Roosevelt Hotel. After a late lunch at the Heidelberg Hotel -coffee shop he read the first installment of a biographical sketch of -his career which had just appeared on the newsstands that day in the -_Saturday Evening Post_. Then at length, with a group of friends and a -cadre of bodyguards to see him off, he left for New Orleans. The -bystanders urged him in parting to “pour it on ’em, Kingfish ... give -’em hell, Huey, you’re just the boy that can do it!” The party reached -the Roosevelt barely five minutes before he was scheduled to begin -broadcasting. - -He spoke that night for a little more than three hours, interrupting the -early portion of his program from time to time to say, as was his custom -on such occasions: - -“This is Senator Huey P. Long talking, and since the lying newspapers -won’t tell you these things, I’ll get the boys to play a little music -for the next five minutes or so, and while they’re doing that you go -call some friends and neighbors on the telephone and let them know I’m -on the air, and if they really want the truth they can turn on their -radios and tune in.” - -One of the major proposals he made public that night was a project for -enabling unusually gifted high-school students to continue their -education through college at virtually no cost to themselves or their -parents. Education for the underprivileged--e.g., the free-schoolbook -law--had been one of the most potent elements in the grand strategy of -his drive for popular support when he first entered public life. It -highlighted the last public address of his career as well. - -“One thousand boys and girls,” he pledged, “will be given a practically -free college education at L.S.U. next year. We’ll select the ones that -make the best grades and send them through college, a thousand of them -for a starter. I already asked Dr. Smith [Louisiana State University -president] whether he could do it beginning this fall, if we came up -with a hundred thousand dollars extra for the University appropriation, -and he said, well, he might be able to do it, anyway he would try. So I -asked him could he do it if we gave him an extra two hundred thousand -dollars, and he said yes indeed he sure could. So I told him we would -give him _three_ hundred thousand dollars just to make sure he had -enough.” - -Of course he attacked the Roosevelt administration at the national level -and for its intrusion via patronage into the local arena of Louisiana -politics; and equally of course he “poured it on” Mayor Walmsley, -Congressman Sandlin, “the whole old plunderbund that you’ve done got rid -of once and that Roosevelt is trying to saddle back onto you.” - -At intervals the musicians would play “Every Man a King,” and Senator -Long, who claimed authorship of the lyrics but could not carry a tune, -would recite one chorus to the band’s accompaniment; and once he recited -a chorus of “Sweetheart of L.S.U.,” for which he had also written the -lyrics to music composed by Castro Carrazo, the state university’s -bandmaster. - -At the end of his three-hour stint he was driven to his home in posh -Audubon Boulevard and spent the night there with his family. But he was -up and away early enough the next morning--Friday--to eat breakfast in -the Roosevelt Hotel coffee shop, talking with an uninterrupted -succession of callers while he was at the table, and again in his -twelfth-floor suite, access to which could be gained only if one were -passed by a succession of bodyguards. Technically, these were officers -of the State Bureau of Investigation and Identification, which had come -into being during Long’s term as governor. - -The bill creating it was introduced by an anti-Long member as a -nonpolitical measure, at a time when Louisiana had no state -constabulary. The jurisdiction of each sheriff and his deputies was -restricted to his county. What the backers of the new measure sought was -the creation of a force which, working in conjunction with the F.B.I., -would have state-wide jurisdiction. - -Instead of opposing this, on the ground that it was inspired by -political opponents, Long espoused it enthusiastically, and then turned -it into a personal elite guard whose powers were broader than those of -any mere local peace officer. Certain particularly trustworthy members -of the group were assigned to duty as his bodyguards. - -They screened all who sought to approach him in his twelfth-floor -retreat at the Roosevelt where he remained throughout Friday, busily -instructing influential leaders on how best to speed the work of the -special session which would be convened on the following night. Earlier -he had summoned Earle Christenberry from his home to the hotel, hoping -to straighten out his income-tax situation. Two ninety-day postponements -on making a return had already been extended to him by the Bureau. -However, there would be no further extensions, he was told. A return -would have to be made by September 15. None the less, an unending stream -of visitors made it impossible for these two to seclude themselves to -prepare the belated return. - -Much of the day’s discussion concerned itself with the potential -candidates for the Long slate in the approaching January election. Most -of the minor officials--state auditor, register of the land office, -commissioner of agriculture, and the like--would be endorsed for -re-election as a matter of course. All had been Long stalwarts for -years. But under the constitution a governor was prohibited from -succeeding himself, and since Justice Fournet’s elevation to the state -Supreme Court, the lieutenant-governorship had been filled by an acting -president pro tem of the Senate. - -A number of top-echelon figures in the Long organization each advanced -claims to selection as gubernatorial candidate. Each regarded himself as -the logical choice. - -Meanwhile, as late as Friday afternoon, the Kingfish continued to insist -to reporters who inquired about the rumored special session that “Oscar” -had not yet told him when or whether a summons to such a legislative -assembly would be issued ... and even while he was telling the newsmen -this, highway motorcycle officers were delivering to every rural doorway -in the state a circular which had been rushed into print at Baton Rouge -two days earlier. - -The text on one side of this fly-sheet followed the standard pattern of -a Long attack on all who might oppose the program to be furthered by the -special session, those who “want to put [us] back into the hands of -thugs, thieves and scoundrels, who loaded the state down with debt and -gave the people nothing, who kept the people in the mud and deprived -their children of education....” - -The other side of the sheet bore an equally vehement excoriation of -President Roosevelt and his regime, which was using the weight of -federal patronage and federal tax money to defeat “our” movement ... -“the man who promised to redistribute the wealth, but we know now he is -not going to keep his word....” - -He remained in his suite until dinnertime, when he joined Seymour Weiss -in the Fountain Lounge, and made an engagement to play golf with him at -the Audubon Park Club’s course in the morning. To Earle Christenberry’s -admonition about the inescapable need to file his income tax before the -fifteenth he said: - -“Come up to Baton Rouge Sunday morning, and we’ll work in the apartment -in the State House where we won’t be interrupted. Bring the papers with -you.” - -He slept well that night--Friday--and rose refreshed to drive out to -Audubon Park with Seymour Weiss in the latter’s spandy-new Cadillac, -which had been delivered only the afternoon before, and would be ruined -the next night by the reckless speed with which, not yet broken in, it -was driven to Baton Rouge after news of the shooting reached New -Orleans. - -The morning was pleasant, and Senator Long enjoyed the game to the -fullest. An indifferent golfer at best, he played primarily for the -thrill of sending an occasional long drive screaming down the fairway. -Whenever he achieved this, and more particularly if in doing so he -outdistanced his friend Seymour’s drive, he shouted with a delight which -not even an ensuing flubbed approach could quench. - -The game also gave him an opportunity to discuss current developments -and problems with one of the few friends he trusted completely. That -Saturday he and Weiss seated themselves on a tee bench, and let foursome -after foursome go through while they talked in the only relative privacy -available to them. What about the federal patronage impasse? - -“I told him,” Mr. Weiss recalls, “that some of the leaders were -worrying. After all, if the Walmsley-Sandlin people were the only ones -who could give out those federal jobs.... And he interrupted me at that -point and asked me had I ever heard of the tenth article of the Bill of -Rights? Well, of course I had, and told him so. He said yes, everybody -had heard of it, but did I realize what was in it? - -“Then he went on to explain that while it was only about three lines -long, it provided that anything not specifically permitted to the -federal government or forbidden to the states by the Constitution was -straight-out reserved to the individual states or to the people. - -“I said something like all right, so what then, and he said, as nearly -as I can remember his words: - -“‘So then there’s a bill going into that special session tonight--Oscar -must have done issued the call by this time--providing a thousand-dollar -fine and one hell of a heavy jail term for any federal employee who -interferes with Louisiana’s rights under Article Ten. So anybody that -uses federal funds to interfere with our program is going to be arrested -and tried under the law we’re about to pass. That’ll give them something -to think about up yonder.’ - -“I didn’t believe any such law as that could be made to hold water and -said so, and even he admitted that it was open to interpretation, though -he still thought it was perfectly sound. But he also said it wouldn’t -make any difference because long before the question could reach the -Supreme Court at Washington and be settled, that federal-patronage deal -would be so badly scrambled up it wouldn’t affect the outcome of our -election in January one bit. He also said he had been telling all our -people to take every slick dime of Washington money that was offered to -them, and then go to the polls and vote for our candidates, because his -program would do more for them than they ever would get out of those -lousy WPA jobs. - -“The main thing he tried to impress on me that morning was that I could -forget all my worries about the presidential campaign. ‘Everything’s in -wonderful shape,’ he said to me. ‘It’s never been in better shape. All -the money we’re going to need we already have in hand, I mean we’ve got -it right now, not just pledges but cash; and on top of that we’ve got a -load of affidavits and other documents about some of the things that -have been going on, a stack of papers heavy enough to break down a -bullock.’ - -“As I remember, I asked if this was the material in the vaults of the -Riggs National Bank, and that was when he really surprised me. He said -no, everything had been taken out of the Riggs vaults just a few days -before he left Washington, and put in another place for safekeeping. But -he didn’t say where he had put it, and I didn’t ask. After all, he was -the one to decide where he wanted it, and why, and if the time ever came -when it was important for me to know where it was, he would tell me. And -besides, he was so confident about everything being in the best possible -shape, so sure things couldn’t be better, that I felt no anxiety about -it. - -“‘We’re going to handle the campaign exactly the same way as we did in -the West for that double-crossing Roosevelt in 1932,’ he told me. -‘Between us, we’ll pick out the main towns in each state, and you’ll go -there five or six days in advance and try to line up someone who will -serve as chairman of the meeting when I get there.’ That is how we did -it in 1932, and it wasn’t always easy, because hunting for Democrats in -the Dakotas in those days, or in Minnesota, was exactly like the old one -about the needle in a haystack. In some of those towns there just wasn’t -a Democrat. But I would stick to it and find someone, no matter who. If -the only Democrat I could produce was a truck driver, all right. Huey -would have a truck driver for chairman of the meeting he would address -on behalf of Franklin Roosevelt for president. - -“‘It’ll be a lot easier this time,’ Huey went on while we were talking -during that Saturday golf game, ‘because you know and I know I make my -best speeches when I’m taking the hide off of somebody. I never could -make a decent Fourth of July oration in my whole damn life. But give me -something to raise hell about and somebody to blame for doing it, like I -had when I was campaigning for Mrs. Caraway in Arkansas, and nobody can -stop me! - -“‘Not only that, but you’ll get on the radio and give out interviews to -the newspapers before I hit town, with all that same old business about -this interesting and controversial personality that’s about to come to -town, the man they had been reading and hearing so much about, and they -would have this chance to come out and find out the truth for -themselves. Also what date he’ll be there and so on, and how he would -talk about a topic of importance to the whole country, and most of all -to them, with Joe Whoozis to preside over the meeting, and that’ll draw -a big crowd every time, no matter if they’re Democrats or what. And no -matter if they’re Democrats or what I’ll have every last, living one of -them talking and thinking and voting my way before I get through.’ - -“You see, all Huey ever wanted was to get a crowd in front of him. You -could leave the rest to him. He had done just that in Arkansas three -years before, and everything was better organized by 1935. Not only -would I be there with arrangements and interviews, but the boys would -have come to town and distributed literature and cartoon circulars to -every house in the place and printed copies of some of Huey’s speeches -about share-the-wealth and so on. - -“‘We’ll do it just like Arkansas, only on a hell of a lot bigger scale,’ -he said. ‘We’ll have all the copies we need of _My First Days in the -White House_ along with the Share-Our-Wealth book, which we didn’t have -in ’32, and when I come to town with the sound trucks and deliver the -speech of my life, you just watch them flock over to our side.... Yes, -sure, there’s enough money to pay for all those books and pamphlets and -everything else we’ll need.’ - -“How much money was in that box? I haven’t any idea, and I don’t think -anyone else ever knew. It came from all sorts of sources. State and city -employees contributed two per cent of their pay for campaign purposes. -Those were the so-called deducts. Then there were campaign contributions -from people who disliked Roosevelt and believed Huey could whip him, and -didn’t care whether he called himself Republican or Democrat or -Vegetarian, just so long as he licked Roosevelt or made it possible for -somebody else to lick him. Also, there were contributions from people -who were under obligations to Huey, like the banks he kept solvent in -Louisiana. I don’t believe even he had any idea how much the total came -to. A million, maybe; maybe several millions. All I know for certain -sure is that he said for me not to worry about financing the campaign, -that we had every round dollar we ever would need of campaign expenses -already put away for safekeeping after he took it out of the Riggs bank -vaults--and to this day nobody has ever been able to find out what -became of it! - -“During the course of our game that morning, walking down the fairways, -we talked a lot about the governorship too. As I remember it, Huey -mentioned a number of names, and some he said just didn’t have what it’d -take to run a state, and about some he said he didn’t want to buck the -north Louisiana prejudice against voting for a Catholic for governor, -because there was no use making a campaign any harder than you -absolutely had to, even if you could win it anyway. - -“The one thing he said we’d have to be careful about was that if he -picked one of the half dozen or so that regarded themselves each one as -the rightful Long candidate, he would make some of the others so sore -there would be a chance of a split in the party, and that was one thing -he wanted to avoid. - -“Well, with all our time out for talking, it was about two o’clock in -the afternoon when we finished our round. He had certainly seemed to -enjoy it, both the exercise and the chance to talk without having every -Tom, Dick, and Harry coming over to interrupt and say he just wanted to -shake hands. Also it must have been a relief to be able to talk without -worrying about people listening in or repeating what he was supposed to -have said. - -“We went back to the hotel for lunch. He said there was no need of me -coming up to Baton Rouge either that night or the next day, as the first -time the bills would come up for passage would be in the House on Monday -morning; it would be just routine up to that time. So I said Bob Maestri -[State Conservation Commissioner and later for ten years mayor of New -Orleans] and I would be in Baton Rouge on Monday morning, and then we -parted. Murphy Roden had been waiting to drive Huey to the capitol, and -they left, right after lunch. Everything indicated the going would be so -smooth and easy. Who could have dreamed that the next time I saw him, -only a day later, he would be waiting for Dr. Maes to come up from New -Orleans and try to save his life?” - - * * * * * - -Baton Rouge’s hotel lobbies and the State House corridors alike were -crowded by the time Murphy Roden and the Senator reached the skyscraper -capitol, where they went at once to his apartment on the twenty-fourth -floor. He had the state maintain a suite for him there because he felt -that at that height the freedom from pollen and dust enabled him to -sleep better. - -Most of the House members were already on hand, but many of the senators -did not trouble to put in an appearance until the following day. Since -all bills were to be introduced in the House, the Senate had nothing -more momentous on its agenda than to meet, answer roll call, listen to -the chaplain’s invocation, and appoint two committees. One of these -would solemnly inform the governor, and the other the House, that the -Senate of Louisiana was lawfully convened and ready for business. Having -conveyed this somewhat less than startling intelligence, the token -quorum by which a constitutional mandate had been fulfilled could, and -in fact did, adjourn until Monday afternoon, at which time all bills -duly passed by the lower house would be laid before them. - -These would be headed by House Bill Number One, the anti-Pavy -gerrymander, and a somewhat similar measure which was designed to keep -Congressman J. Y. Sanders, Jr., from returning to his home in Baton -Rouge to run for a judgeship. His father, a former governor and -congressman, stood at the very head of Huey Long’s _bête noire_ list. -Another measure high on Long’s “must” roster made provision for the fact -that his current senatorial term would expire unless renewed in the fall -of 1936 by re-election. - -But in one-party Louisiana, the Democratic primary was the only actual -election, even though technically it selected merely a party nominee. -Its date was fixed for September by the state election law as this -statute currently stood. Obviously, a campaign for a senatorial primary -to be held in the fall of 1936 would play hob with Long’s plans to run -against Roosevelt for the presidency that same season. Consequently, one -of Huey’s thirty-one must bills amended the state election law by -setting the primary’s date ahead from September to January. Thus Mr. -Long could win the Democratic nomination (equivalent to election in -Louisiana) for senator at the year’s outset; with that as paid-up -political insurance he would be free to devote the balance of 1936 to -his presidential campaign. - -Another of the must bills is significant in this connection in spite of -the fact that it was rooted in a strictly personal grudge, because it so -strikingly exemplifies the savagery with which at an earlier stage of -his career Long made Negro affiliation the prime target of political -attack. - -Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Southwest Louisiana Acadian, had run for governor -several times, had been a legislator off and on, and would one day -become a millionaire as author and high priest of a nostrum called -Hadacol. He and Long had been allies as members of the Public Service -Commission in the old days, but had fallen out and had been at swords’ -points ever since. - -Defeated by the Kingfish when he sought to retain his office, LeBlanc -organized a burial-insurance society of a type immensely popular among -the Negroes. Since he catered primarily to this segment of the -population, he put in a Negro nominal president of the “coffin club,” as -Long invariably called it. In the columns of his weekly newspaper, _The -American Progress_, Long thereafter lost no opportunity to reproduce -what purported to be one of the brochures issued by LeBlanc’s company, -showing pictures of LeBlanc and the Negro officers of the company -together. Ultimately, Long had a law passed banning from Louisiana that -type of insurance society. - -LeBlanc thereafter moved the company’s home office across the state line -into Texas, and continued in business. Although no longer pillorying -opponents by reason of Negro affiliation, Long included in his must -bills a prohibition against publishing, printing, or broadcasting in -Louisiana any advertising matter by insurance companies not authorized -to do business in the state. - -Occupied with these and a thousand and one other such minutiae of -legislative procedure, Long remained on the main floor of the capitol -that Saturday night until the House adjourned, trailing a nimbus of -bodyguards as he dashed back and forth between Governor Allen’s office -and the House chamber. Some of his leading supporters tried vainly to -keep up with him: Dr. Vidrine, “Cousin Jessie” Nugent, Dr. Clarence -Lorio, Louisiana State University president James Monroe Smith. These -had little to occupy them, for all the must bills were introduced by -their “official” author, Chairman Burke of the Ways and Means Committee; -and under a suspension of the rules, each was immediately referred to -Mr. Burke’s committee as quickly as he could say “Ways and Means” and -Speaker Ellender could utter a contrapuntal “Any objections? Hearing -none, so ordered!” - -Thrill seekers behind the railings and in the gallery had anticipated at -least some show of oratorical fireworks. Disappointed when they found -the proceedings about as exciting as listening to a couple of clerks -take inventory in the kitchenware stockroom of a department store, they -drifted away and left the capitol for their homes, while Long and the -faithful Murphy Roden retired to the Senator’s twenty-fourth-floor -retreat. - - - - -6 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: MORNING - - “_Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government - shall be on his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful._” - - ----ISAIAH - - -Young Dr. Carl Weiss, his wife, and his baby son occupied a modest home -on Lakeland Drive, not far from the capitol, and therefore likewise -conveniently near Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium, where he did most of -his surgical work. The capitol had been built on what was formerly the -state university campus. From its north façade the windows of the -governor’s office looked out across a small, artificial body of water, -still known as University Lake, to the big hospital on the opposite -bank. - -Thus Dr. Weiss, Jr., and Huey Long were within but a few blocks of one -another when they rose early Sunday morning. Yvonne Pavy Weiss rose -early too. Together she and her husband woke, fed and dressed their -three-months-old son, Carl Austin Weiss III, and went with him to the -home of Dr. Weiss, Sr., where two doting grandparents fondly took over -the baby’s care, while the young couple went to Mass. As the elder Dr. -Weiss put it in a subsequent statement: - -“I was with [my son] practically all day. He and his wife came with -their baby to our house early in the morning. They left the baby with me -and my wife while they went to St. Joseph’s Church for Mass. After -that, his wife returned to our house, while my son went to Scheinuk’s [a -Baton Rouge florist] to inquire about a patient who had consulted him -the day before. - -“Mr. Scheinuk gave my son a bouquet of flowers, saying he had not sent -any flowers when the baby was born, and my son came home saying: ‘Look -what Mr. Scheinuk sent the baby.’ My son and his wife then went to their -home, and returned to take dinner at my house at 1 P.M.” - -Dr. Weiss, Jr., was twenty-nine years old. He had been graduated at -fifteen from Baton Rouge High School and had begun his premedical work -at Louisiana State University, transferring to Tulane, where he received -his academic degree as Bachelor of Science in 1925, and his degree as -Doctor of Medicine in 1927. - -“He served as an intern at Tulane,” his father once related, “and then -at the American Hospital in Paris. He studied under the masters at -Vienna, and after completing his work in Paris, served at Bellevue -Hospital in New York. The last six months of his stay at Bellevue he was -chief of clinic. He then came to Baton Rouge to practice here.” - -He had sailed from Hoboken on the _George Washington_ on September 19, -1928, and returned to New York on May 19, 1930, aboard the _American -Farmer_. On his customs declaration, filed when re-entering the United -States, he listed $247 worth of purchases made during his twenty months -abroad, including twenty dollars’ worth of surgical instruments, a -forty-five dollar camera, five dollars’ worth of fencing equipment, old -swords for which he had paid six dollars, and a pistol for which he had -paid eight dollars, a small Belgian automatic, made on the Browning -patents. - -In college and in his postgraduate work he devoted himself to his -studies with a single-mindedness that excluded athletics, though he -seems to have taken up fencing while abroad, a sport of many European -surgeons. One may therefore take it for granted that while at Tulane he -neither shared pilgrimages to the wide-open gaming establishments just -across the parish line from New Orleans in adjoining areas, nor -patronized the peep-hole Joe-sent-me establishments where needled beer, -home-brew, raisin wine, and cut whisky were retailed in the sanctified -era of national prohibition. - -At one time a story was current that he had met Yvonne Pavy while both -were students in Paris. This was not the case. She did not leave for -France until a year after he had returned to the United States. An honor -graduate of Tulane University’s Newcomb College for Women, she had been -immensely popular in the social and sorority life of her student years. -In 1931 she was selected as one of a group of girls who were sent to -Paris to represent Acadian Louisiana. At the same time she was awarded -on a competitive basis a French-government scholarship to the Sorbonne, -and extended her Parisian sojourn to pursue language studies there. - -Returning to Opelousas, she was appointed to a teaching position in the -grade school at St. Martinville, where Emmeline Labiche, who according -to Louisiana tradition was the prototype of Longfellow’s Evangeline, had -died nearly two centuries before. The following year she went to Baton -Rouge to study for her master’s degree at the state university, where -she taught a French class at the same time. - -Short-lived as it then was, her professional teaching career did follow -a Pavy family tradition. Her sister Marie taught in one of the Opelousas -grade schools, and one of her father’s brothers, Paul Pavy, was -principal of the high school there until Huey Long, as inflexible in his -attitude toward the Pavy family as Judge Pavy was in his attitude toward -him, dismissed them out of hand by invoking one of the “dictatorship -statutes”--the one requiring the certification of every public-school -employee by a Long-controlled state board. - -When Carl Weiss, Jr., returned to Baton Rouge, he joined his father in -the practice of medicine. However, he was so determined not to -capitalize on the wide esteem and affection in which the elder Dr. Carl -Weiss was held that for a time he called himself “Dr. C. Austin Weiss.” -It was not long, however, before he built up a substantial practice on -his own account. - -During the course of her postgraduate year at Louisiana State -University, Yvonne Pavy had occasion to visit the office of the senior -Dr. Weiss for treatment of some minor ailment. When the physician -learned of her year at the Sorbonne he told her of his son’s studies at -the American Hospital in Paris. So they met, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr., -and the daughter of Judge Ben Pavy of Opelousas. They fell deeply in -love and were married in December 1933. In midsummer of 1935 their son, -the third Carl Austin Weiss, was born, and the sense of fulfillment this -kindled in the happy young parents was no greater than the affection -lavished on him by his grandparents. - - * * * * * - -That same Sunday morning Huey Long ordered breakfast sent up from the -capitol cafeteria to his twenty-fourth-floor suite. He telephoned Earle -Christenberry in New Orleans, reminding him of their engagement -concerning the income-tax return that must be filed before another seven -days passed. Earle had already packed all the necessary papers, the -receipted bills, the canceled checks drawn by the Senator against his -two accounts, one in the Riggs National Bank at Washington and one in -the National Bank of Commerce at New Orleans. Earle customarily made out -all the checks for Huey to sign, and deposited the Kingfish’s senatorial -salary to Long’s account. - -“Huey and I had signature cards on file at the Riggs bank in Washington -and the National Bank of Commerce in New Orleans,” Christenberry -explained. “The only checks he wrote were the ones he issued in New -York, and the first I would know of it was when the cancelled check came -with the monthly statement, or a call from the bank that the account was -overdrawn.” - -Many persons were under the impression that Long also had a large -financial interest in a Win-or-Lose Oil Company but, says Christenberry, -“to my knowledge as secretary-treasurer of the company, he had no -interest in this corporation, and I so testified in federal court. -Months after Huey’s death one of the stockholders testified that one -certificate issued in his name in reality represented Huey’s holdings, -but if he received dividends they were paid to him in cash by the holder -of that stock certificate, by whom the canceled checks were endorsed and -cashed.” - -Earle reached Baton Rouge some time before noon, and prepared to go over -all the papers with his friend and employer. But within a short time, -the work being little more than well begun, Long threw up his hands in a -characteristic gesture, as though brushing a distasteful matter out of -existence. - -“He said to me,” reported Mr. Christenberry, “‘You know what this is all -about, don’t you?’ and I said I did. ‘Well, all right then,’ he told me, -‘you take all this stuff back to New Orleans with you and fill out the -forms, and then bring the whole thing back Monday or Tuesday, and I’ll -sign the damn papers and we’ll be rid of them. Look, I’m not even going -to stay here till the end of this session. I’ll leave Tuesday, maybe -even tomorrow, right after the House passes the bills, and come down to -New Orleans and sign them there. And you know what we’ll do then? We’ll -go on a vacation together, just you and me, no bodyguards or anything. -We’ll get in your car and go wherever we want to go without making one -single, slivery plan in advance.’ - -“After that, he and I went down to the cafeteria and had lunch. -Naturally, there was the same steady procession as always of people -coming to the table to say hello, but not so many as there would have -been any other time except Sunday noon. Most of the legislators and -out-of-town politicians would not be in till later that evening because -the Senate was to be in recess till Monday and the House wasn’t going to -meet till eight, and it was going to be just a short session to order -the bills put on the calendar for the next morning.” - - * * * * * - -John Fournet was one of the out-of-town notables whose arrival that -evening was expected. He had been a member of the Long peerage for -years, but had refrained from political activity of that sort ever since -his elevation to the state Supreme Court a year or so earlier. - -None the less, he had been Speaker of the House for four years, he had -been elected to the lieutenant-governorship on the Long-supported Allen -ticket in 1932, and was one of those whose name was frequently mentioned -as Long’s likely choice for endorsement to become Oscar Allen’s -successor. - -Senator Long had requested him to come to the capitol for a conference, -and he had left New Orleans early that morning for the home of his -parents in Jackson, planning to invite his father to accompany him to -Baton Rouge. It would be a proud thing for the elder Fournet to see the -deference paid his son as a state Supreme Court justice, as an intimate -of the Kingfish, and perhaps as a candidate for governor of Louisiana. - - - - -7 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: AFTERNOON - - “This day may be the last to any of us at a moment.” - - ----HORATIO NELSON - - -The thirty-one must bills which were certain to be enacted into law -within no more than three more days were the subject of Sunday’s -mealtime talk throughout Louisiana that noon. Huey Long was expressing -complete confidence as to what these would do to “put a crimp into -Roosevelt’s notion he can run Louisiana.” Everyone who paused at his -table in the capitol cafeteria was given the same heartening assurance. - -In private homes everywhere authentic information as to what the new -laws would provide was available for the first time on this day. In New -Orleans, Baton Rouge, Monroe, Alexandria, Shreveport, and Lake Charles -the morning papers had carried full accounts of the introduction of -these measures, giving the subject matter of each bill in summary form. - -Thus the members of the Weiss family at last had before them full -information about the measure which would displace the father of young -Mrs. Weiss from the judicial position he had held continuously since -before she was born. But the table talk at the senior Dr. Weiss’s home -was anything but dispirited. - -“My son ate heartily and joked at the dinner,” he said when referring to -the occasion; and this was borne out in a statement by Yvonne’s uncle, -Dr. F. Octave Pavy, who was in Baton Rouge for the session as one of -St. Landry parish’s three House members. - -In any case, while the gerrymander was not ignored in the Weiss family -conversation, it was not looked upon as a disaster; and after dinner all -five--three men named Carl Austin Weiss and the wives of the two older -ones--motored to the Amite River where Dr. Weiss, Sr., had a summer -camp. - -Frequently on such occasions, but by no means always, Carl and Yvonne -took with them the small-caliber Belgian automatic pistol he had brought -back from abroad and customarily kept in his car when he went out on -night calls. He and his wife would engage in target practice, shooting -at cans either while these were stationary or as they floated down the -placid current of the river. - -But on this particular Sunday they did not bring the gun. Carl and -Yvonne went swimming and had a gay time of it, while the elders, seated -on the warm sand of the high bank, dandled their wonderful -three-month-old grandson. - -“While they were swimming,” Dr. Weiss, Sr., recalled later, “I remarked -to my wife: ‘That boy is just skin and bones,’ and she said: ‘Yes, we -have got to make him take a rest, he has been working too hard lately.’” - -Seeing them there, that pleasant afternoon, any observer would have -concluded that this was a family group whose members gave no indication -of being troubled by forebodings of an impending disaster. - -Obviously the wonderful baby must have had a feeding and an occasional -change sometime during the afternoon, and no doubt he slept in his -mother’s arms once the party tidied up the camp ground, got into the -car, and headed homeward a little after sundown. - - * * * * * - -In his high apartment Huey Long, who had not left the capitol since -Murphy Roden drove him to Baton Rouge from New Orleans on the previous -afternoon, gathered his top legislative and political leaders for a -consultation about the candidate his faction should endorse for -governor. His brother Earl was not among those present, nor was he under -consideration for any elective office. The breach between them stemmed -from the time Earl ran for lieutenant governor on an anti-Huey ticket -three years before. - -Justice Fournet, who stood high in the Kingfish’s favor, was not present -at the conference either. He did not reach the capitol until well after -dark. Another absentee was Judge Richard W. Leche of the Circuit Court -of Appeal, but---- - -“Huey had telephoned me to come up for the session,” he said in -recalling what he could of the day’s events. “However, I had been thrown -from a horse just a fortnight or so before, while vacationing with Mrs. -Leche in Arizona. The fall fractured my left upper arm just below the -shoulder. Huey had joked with me about it, saying it was a pity I hadn’t -broken my neck instead, and I replied that this illustrated once more -his readiness to make any sacrifice for the good of the state. - -“When he asked me if I would come to Baton Rouge for the session, I -assumed this was because I had been Governor Allen’s secretary and knew -all the legislators. But since it was hardly proper for a judge of the -appellate bench to be a lobbyist even on behalf of the administration to -which he owes his position, I told him that with my left arm in an -airplane splint it was almost impossible for me to get around, and that -I would have to stay in New Orleans right along to have dressings -changed, and the like. He didn’t seem pleased, but nothing more was said -about it at the time. - -“However, when he called me at my home in Metairie Sunday afternoon he -had something else in mind. The first thing he asked me was: ‘Dick, what -the hell are you, outside of being an Indian?’ For a moment this had me -stumped. I couldn’t imagine what he meant. Then I remembered that two -or three years earlier, a group of us were chatting about one thing and -another, and the question of religion came up. That was one thing Huey -never bothered about. I mean what any man’s religious beliefs were. -Anyway, someone in the crowd asked me what my religion was. I answered -that as I saw it, religion was something that dealt with the hereafter, -and the only people who had a hereafter I thought I could enjoy were the -Indians. They believed in a happy hunting ground, and as for me, give me -a gun and a dog and some shells and you could keep your harps and your -wings. Anyway, I said I guessed that by religion I would be classed as -an Indian. So when Huey asked me over the phone what I was, aside from -being an Indian, I said: - -“‘You mean you’re asking me what my religion is?’ - -“‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he answered. ‘You’re going to be my -candidate for governor, and some of the boys here said I couldn’t run -you because you’re a Catholic and it’s too tough to swing north -Louisiana’s vote to a Catholic for governor.’ - -“‘Well, I was born a Catholic,’ I told him. - -“‘You didn’t run out on them, did you?’ he demanded. - -“‘No,’ I told him, ‘but I changed to the Presbyterian church a long time -back. Now listen, Huey. I’ve got no idea of running for governor. I’ve -got exactly the kind of position I like, and down here they make a -practice of re-electing judges who have not been guilty of flagrant -misconduct, so my future’s secure.’ - -“He said something about how I had better leave all that to him, and he -would see me in New Orleans as soon as the session was over and we would -talk further about it. That ended the conversation. I never spoke to him -again.” - - * * * * * - -Another of the intimates Huey Long summoned to Baton Rouge that -afternoon was Public Service Commissioner (now Juvenile Court Judge) -James P. O’Connor. The reason for this was never disclosed, for when -O’Connor arrived “we just chatted about a lot of inconsequentialities. -One of the things he was all worked up over was writing some more songs -with Castro Carrazo for the L.S.U. football team.” - - * * * * * - -The afternoon wore on. Apparently Judge Leche was the only one in whom -the Senator confided about the gubernatorial selection. - -“Senator Long did not leave the capitol all day,” Murphy Roden says in -telling about the events in which he played so large a role. “As long as -he was in his apartment there was no break in the stream of people who -came to call on him. The House was to meet that night and approve the -committee’s favorable report on the bills so they could be passed and -sent to the Senate the next day. - -“After he dressed, the Senator was in and out of the apartment, spending -some of the time in Governor Allen’s office. I brought his supper up to -him from the cafeteria, and several persons were there talking to him -while he ate, but no one ate with him. He went down to the governor’s -office about seven o’clock, even though the House wasn’t scheduled to -meet until eight.” - - - - -8 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: NIGHTFALL - - “_The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their - friends hope or their foes fear._” - - ----THOMAS HUXLEY - - -Huey Long came down to the main floor of the capitol an hour before the -House was to go into session to arrange for an early morning caucus of -his followers the next day. Primarily he wanted to make certain that -there would then be no absentees among votes on which he knew he could -rely. - -At regular sessions of the legislature, when House and Senate were -normally convened during the forenoon, such early conferences were daily -affairs. But since in this instance the ordinary routine did not apply, -he was bent on making assurance doubly sure. - -Behind closed doors he always took charge of caucuses in person, -outlining step by step what was to be done on that particular day: who -should make which motions, at what point debate should be cut off by -moving the previous question, how the presiding officer was to rule on -certain points of order, should these be raised by the opposition, and -so on. - -Since the next morning’s session of the House would be the only -genuinely important one of the current assembly, the one at which all -thirty-one must bills were to be passed and sent on to the Senate, he -was taking no chances on unexpected difficulties due to absenteeism. -Not only must every one of his partisans be in his seat when the Speaker -called the House to order, but all the House whips and other aides must -attend the morning’s caucus without fail, to rehearse in the most minute -detail every procedural step to be taken on the House floor, and every -counter to each procedural obstacle any anti-Long member might seek to -raise. - -That Sunday evening, seated at Governor Allen’s desk, Long was sending -for his legislative leaders, one by one, and giving them the names of -the men they each had to bring to the caucus by eight the next morning. - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile, as nearly as can be determined, the five members of the Weiss -family returned from their Amite River outing shortly after nightfall. -The young physician and his wife left his parents’ home with the baby -for their own Lakeland Avenue residence. A composite of various -subsequent accounts pictures the scene there as one of tranquil -domesticity. - -Yvonne prepared the baby for bed while Carl went out to the yard and -remained there for a time, petting the dog. Coming back indoors about -8:15, he made a telephone call to his anesthetist, Dr. J. Webb McGehee. -Yvonne assumed that this call was to a patient, but Dr. McGehee later -confirmed the fact that Dr. Weiss called “and asked me if I knew that -the operation for the following day had been changed from Our Lady of -the Lake Sanitarium to the General Hospital. I told him I knew that.” - -Miss Theoda Carriere, one of the registered nurses later called to -attend Senator Long, lived not far from the home of Dr. Weiss. After a -twelve-hour day stint at the Sanitarium, in attendance on a -traffic-accident victim, she was taking her ease on the front gallery of -her home. She saw Dr. Weiss leave his house at this time, and depart in -the direction of Baton Rouge General Hospital. There he checked the -condition of the patient on whom he was to operate the next day. - -In view of the time factor involved, he must have gone from the hospital -directly to the State House, leaving his car in the capitol’s parking -area, where it was found later. At least five eyewitnesses place him in -the north corridor of the Capitol’s main floor a little before 9:30, -waiting in a shallow niche opposite the double door to Governor Allen’s -anteroom. - - * * * * * - -Charles E. Frampton is now manager of the State Museum at the Cabildo in -New Orleans, the building in whose _sala capitular_ the transfer of -Louisiana from France to the United States was consummated. But in 1935 -he was one of the veterans of the press gallery at Baton Rouge. He -describes what he saw as follows: - -“Some time after eight o’clock on this particular Sunday night I was -seated with Governor Allen at his desk when George Coad, then editor of -the _Morning Tribune_ in New Orleans, called me by phone from the office -and said a hurricane had wrecked a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in -southern Florida, and that a number of ex-soldiers had been drowned. He -asked me if Senator Long was there, and I said I believed he was in the -House chamber. Then he asked me to tell him about the storm, and the CCC -disaster, and get any comment he might want to make. I told Coad to hold -the line; I thought I could get Huey on the phone. - -“I picked up another phone on the governor’s desk and called the House -sergeant-at-arms. Joe Messina answered and said yes, the Senator was -right there. I asked if I might talk to him, and he told me to wait a -minute. After an interval Huey got on the phone. I relayed what Coad had -told me, and asked if he cared to comment on it. He said, ‘Hell, yes! -Mr. Roosevelt must be pretty happy tonight, because every ex-soldier he -gets killed off is one less vote against him.’ We chatted for a minute -or so longer, and I asked whether he intended to do anything about this -when he got back to Washington, and he replied by asking where I was. -When I told him I was in Oscar Allen’s office, he said: ‘Wait there. I’m -coming there myself in just a few minutes.’ - -“I hung up, picked up the other phone, and relayed the conversation to -Coad, telling him that since Huey was on the way over I might have an -add for him, and to hang on the line. He said he would, and again I laid -down the phone without breaking the connection. - -“Oscar and I talked for a couple of minutes, and then I thought to -myself I had better not wait for Huey to come to me; after all, he was a -United States senator and I was a reporter looking for a story, so maybe -I’d better go see him. Telling Coad to hang on, I then went out of the -governor’s private office into the big reception room adjoining it, and -opened one of the double doors leading into the corridor that extends -from the House chamber to the Senate. As I opened the door this whole -thing blew up right in my face.” - - * * * * * - -Justice Fournet takes up the narrative at this point. Here is his -statement: - -“In the late afternoon my father and I drove from Jackson to Baton -Rouge, and I went to the twenty-fourth floor of the capitol in search of -Huey. He was not in his apartment, so I returned to the main floor, and -looked into the House chamber, where I was informed the Senator was. -Sure enough, he was there on the House floor, followed or attended by -Joe Messina and talking to Mason Spencer. - -“Just as I caught sight of Huey he rushed to the Speaker’s rostrum and -began to talk with Ellender. When he left there it looked to me as -though the House was about to adjourn. Huey rushed by Joe Messina and -me. We tried to follow as best we could and got into the north corridor, -into which the House and Senate cloakrooms, the Speaker’s and lieutenant -governor’s office, as well as the governor’s office and those of his -secretary and executive counsel all open. - -[Illustration: 1 February, 1935: On the Speaker’s rostrum in the House -chamber at Baton Rouge, Huey Long is shown with Hermann Deutsch. Left, -Speaker (now U. S. Senator) Allen J. Ellender; right foreground (back to -camera) Executive Counsel George M. Wallace. - -(LEON TRICE)] - -[Illustration: 2 Official transcript (not the original) of customs -declaration filed by Dr. Weiss on returning to this country from medical -studies abroad. The seventh item on it is the Belgian automatic found -beside his lifeless hand after Huey Long was shot.] - -[Illustration: 3 Dr. Weiss’s pistol, which normally holds seven -cartridges, contained only five unfired ones (and an empty, jammed in -the ejector) when it was picked up after the shooting.] - -[Illustration: 4 & 5 The watch which was shot from Murphy Roden’s wrist -while he was grappling with Dr. Weiss. The dial shows the time of the -struggle, the dent in the back was obviously made by a small bullet.] - -[Illustration: 6 No “small blue punctures” were left by the bullets of -bodyguards who mowed down Dr. Weiss in the niche where he had waited for -Senator Long. The photograph was made after authorities, seeking to -establish his identity, had turned over the body which fell face down.] - -[Illustration: 7 The funeral cortege, moving from the capitol to a newly -prepared crypt which is now the site of a monument. Right foreground, -the L.S.U. student band playing “Every Man a King” in a minor key as the -Kingfish’s dirge.] - -[Illustration: 8 Huey Long’s casket, as it was borne down the capitol’s -48 granite steps followed by members of his family. The two leading -pallbearers are (left) Seymour Weiss and Governor Oscar Allen.] - -[Illustration: 9 Laborers work around the clock to prepare a vault in -time for Huey Long’s funeral, as crowds wait on the capitol steps to -file past the bier where his body lies in state.] - -[Illustration: 10 & 11 Huey Long was enshrined as a saint by some of his -followers as shown by these personals from want-ad pages of the -_Times-Picayune_. The one at left appeared on March 26, 1936, the other -on January 11, 1937. - - Left hand advertisement: - - THANKS to the late Senator Huey P. Long for favor granted. Mrs. H. - Gomme. - - Right hand advertisement: - - THANKS S^t. Raymond, S^t. Anthony, Sen. Huey P. Long favor granted. - ROSE ANDERTON. - -“There was not a soul in that corridor when we got there except Louis -LeSage and Roy Heidelberg, who were seated on the ledge of the window at -the east end of the corridor. I asked them where Huey had gone and they -said he was in the governor’s office, so Joe and I walked to the door of -that office at a leisurely pace, and as we approached the door I could -hear a voice which I recognized as that of Senator Long ask: - -“‘Has everybody been notified about the meeting tomorrow morning?’ and a -voice which I identified as that of Joe Bates of the Police Bureau of -Identification answered: ‘Yes, Senator.’ - -“At this point I noticed three or four people lined up against the -marble recess in the corridor wall opposite the door to the governor’s -anteroom. I don’t remember the exact number but I definitely recall -there were more than one. Just then Huey walked out of the office door -of the governor’s secretary and....” - - * * * * * - -The third eyewitness to what took place was Elliott Coleman, on special -assignment as one of the Senator’s bodyguards and later for many years -sheriff of Tensas parish. He says of the night in question: - -“I was an officer of what was then known as the Bureau of Criminal -Identification, which was headed by General Louis F. Guerre. He had -directed me to come from my home in Waterproof for duty at the state -capitol during the special session of the legislature. There was nothing -specific of an alarming nature, but there was a general feeling of -uneasiness in view of the murder-plot probe against the Senator earlier -that year, after the Square Deal Association disorders. - -“Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on Saturday, but on Sunday -night, when the special session was meeting, I went into the House -chamber and was standing back of the railing with State Senator Jimmie -Noe, and he was trying to get me to help him in his effort to get Huey’s -endorsement as a candidate for governor in the campaign that was about -to begin. - -“Huey was in the House, circulating about the floor, talking to this -member and to that, with Murphy Roden and George McQuiston remaining -outside the railing but as near to him as they could. Huey was talking -to Mason Spencer and they were probably joking with each other, or -telling a funny story, because they laughed, and then Huey went up on -the rostrum and sat with Speaker Allen Ellender for a time. All this -while I was outside the railing with Jimmie Noe, and he was talking -about getting Huey to back him for governor. - -“While Jimmie was talking to me, Huey jumped up all of a sudden, from -where he was seated on Ellender’s rostrum, and hurried down the side to -the corridor. I figured the House was about to adjourn, so I left Jimmie -and turned to hurry into the corridor myself. There were not many -persons there and I saw Huey, followed by Murphy Roden, go into Allen’s -office, and it seemed to me like he wasn’t in there hardly at all, that -it was almost as if he had turned right around and come back out. He was -met as he came out by Justice Fournet, and they were walking toward the -elevator and toward where I was standing, with Murphy Roden following.” - - * * * * * - -Judge James O’Connor’s testimony logically follows that of Sheriff -Coleman. He says: - -“I was in the House chamber when Huey came sort of storming in and sat -down beside Allen Ellender on the rostrum. I was standing in the space -between the railing and the wall, chatting with friends, when Huey -beckoned to me as though saying: ‘Come on over, I want to talk to you.’ - -“When I got there he said something that struck me as unusual, because -he had not been smoking in months, maybe not in as much as a year. He -said: ‘I want you to get me half a dozen Corona Belvedere cigars.’ I -asked him where to get those, and he said: ‘Downstairs in the cafeteria. -They have a box of them there.’ - -“When I came downstairs something else struck me as very peculiar. There -wasn’t a soul in that basement on this Sunday night. I walked into the -cafeteria. They had just air-conditioned it, and the new glass doors -were very heavy. There was no one in that restaurant either, except -three or four of the girls behind the counter. I got the cigars and then -sat down to drink a cup of coffee, and was about to finish it, when I -heard a noise like cannon crackers going off. It was coming faintly -through those heavy glass doors....” - - * * * * * - -Murphy Roden, who recently retired as Superintendent of State Police -with the rank of colonel, is last of the surviving eyewitnesses to take -up the tale. A graduate of the F.B.I. school and therefore a specially -trained observer, his memory is sharp and vivid in recalling what took -place during the violent interlude in which he played so large a role. -He says: - -“Whenever the Senator returned to the governor’s office I would wait in -the anteroom, and as he went out I would leave just ahead of him, and -Elliott Coleman would walk just behind him. He made several trips into -the House chamber and back while the House was briefly in session that -night. - -“On the last such trip the Senator spent a little time on the floor, -talking jocularly to several of the members, and then sat for a time -with Speaker Ellender on the rostrum. At such times I would follow his -movements as best I could from outside the railing, and when he hurried -out I would try to anticipate his movements so as to be just ahead of -him when he left the hall. The House seemed to be about ready to adjourn -then, and he rose and hurried from the rostrum toward the governor’s -office. I was ahead of him and when he turned in I went into the -anteroom and waited for him there. He went into the inner office where -Governor Allen was. Joe Bates, a special agent of the Bureau of Criminal -Identification and Investigation, and A. P. White, the Governor’s -secretary, were in there too, along with some other persons whose -identity I do not recall except for Chick Frampton of the _Item_, who -was standing over Allen’s desk and using the telephone in there. - -“Senator Long was in that office only a moment or two. It seemed to me -as though he had walked right in, turned around, and gone right out, -going through the anteroom and heading back toward the hallway. I -realized he was going back out, and managed to get into the hall just -ahead of him, so as to be in front of him when he got out there. But he -was walking fast and caught up to me and was just about beside me at my -left. We are speaking now in terms of my being just one step ahead of -him as he came out. - -“Judge Fournet was standing at the partly opened door that led from the -hallway directly into the governor’s inner office, a private entry and -exit to that office. Behind us was Elliott Coleman. Chick Frampton had -also hurried out of the governor’s outer office and anteroom right -behind us. The Senator was going back in the direction of the House -chamber from which he had just come, and from which people were just -beginning to move out. But at the private door to Governor Allen’s inner -office he stopped, and we were standing still as Judge Fournet came up -and started to talk to him. I have no idea what they were talking about, -because I was not watching them or paying attention, but looking around -us as always to see what other persons nearby were doing. - -“One of them was a young man in a white linen suit....” - - * * * * * - -It is 9:30. One floor below, in the otherwise deserted basement -cafeteria, Judge O’Connor is still sipping the last of his coffee when, -muffled by distance and the heavy glass doors of the restaurant, he -hears a noise like exploding cannon crackers. - - - - -9 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: 9:30 P.M. - - “_Do we ever hear the most recent fact related in exactly the same way - by the several people who were at the same time eye-witnesses to it? - No._” - - ----LORD CHESTERFIELD - - -The stage is set for a violent climax. Huey Long has turned through -the anteroom of the governor’s office, where Chick Frampton, -bending over the desk with his back to the door, is preparing once -more to lay down the telephone without breaking the long-distance -connection to New Orleans. He has told his editor, Coad, to hang on -while he--Frampton--goes in search of the Senator, and does not see -Huey just behind him. Intent on his conversation with Coad, he has -heard neither the Senator’s question as to whether everyone has been -notified about the morning’s early caucus, nor Joe Bates’s affirmative -reply. - -By the time he puts down the telephone and turns, Huey Long has already -dashed out into the hallway where John Fournet steps forward to greet -him. The Senator stops momentarily to talk to A. P. White in the partly -opened private doorway to the inner office. He has noticed, while -looking over the House from the Speaker’s rostrum, that some of his -legislative supporters are absent, and asks White where the hell this -one, that one, and the other one are, adding: “Find them. If necessary, -sober them up, and have them at that meeting because we just might need -their votes tomorrow!” Then he turns, facing the direction of the House -chamber. - -For that one fractional moment every actor is motionless: Huey Long, -with John Fournet at his left elbow and Murphy Roden just behind his -right shoulder; Chick Frampton in the very act of stepping into the -corridor from the double doors of the governor’s anteroom; Elliott -Coleman down the hall in the direction of the House, near the door of -the small private elevator reserved for the governor’s use; and among -three or four individuals standing in the marble-paneled niche recessed -into the wall opposite the double doors where Frampton is standing, a -slim figure in a white suit. - -The fractional moment passes. Let us turn once more to Murphy Roden’s -graphic account of what transpired: - -“... a young man in a white linen suit, who held a straw hat in his hand -loosely before him, and below the waist, so that both of his hands -seemed to be concealed behind it. He walked toward us from the direction -of the House chamber and I did not see the gun until his right hand came -out from beneath his hat and he extended the gun chest high and at arm’s -length. In that same instant I realized that this was no jest, no toy -gun, and leaped. I seized the hand and the gun in my right hand and bore -down, and as I did so the gun went off. The cartridge ejected and the -recoil of the ejector slide bruised the web of my right hand between -thumb and forefinger, though I was not conscious of the hurt and did not -see the injury, a very minor one, until later. - -“I tried to wrest the gun away, but saw I could not do it in time, so -shifted my grip on it from my right hand to my left and threw my right -arm around his neck. As I did this, my hard leather heels slipped on the -marble floor and my feet shot out from under me, so that we both went -down, the young man and I, with him on top. That is the last pair of -hard leather heels I have ever worn. While we were falling, my wrist -watch was shot off, but again I was not conscious of it. I did not even -miss my watch until I was being treated at the hospital, later that same -night. - -“It has always been my belief that it was Dr. Weiss who fired a second -shot as we were falling and that it was this one which shot off my -watch. There are several reasons for this conclusion on my part. -Firstly, his gun was of small caliber, 7.6 millimeter, which is about -the equivalent of our .32-caliber automatic, a Belgian Browning which he -had brought back with him from abroad. When it was examined later, it -had only five cartridges in it. Normally it holds seven. I have always -had a deep conviction that Dr. Weiss fired twice, and that I saw the -first shell ejected. When his gun was recovered from the floor, a shell -was found caught in the ejecting mechanism which I am convinced was the -second shell. The dent on my watch, which was later recovered and which -I still have, was made by a small-caliber bullet. - -“As we were falling--Dr. Weiss and I--I released his gun hand, and -reached for my pistol, a Colt .38 special on a .45 frame, loaded with -hollow-point ammunition, which I carried in a shoulder holster. By the -time we hit the deck I had it out and fired one shot into his throat, -under his chin, upward into his head and saw the flesh open up. I -struggled to get out from beneath him, and as I partially freed myself, -all hell broke loose. The others may have waited till I got partially -clear before they fired, for I think I got to my knees by the time they -started, and that probably saved my life. But I was being deafened and -my eyes were burning with particles of powder from those shots. - -“Moreover, for all I knew this might have been an attack in force, which -was why I was struggling so desperately to get to my feet. But by the -time I really was on my feet, I could not see any more because of the -muzzle blasts from other guns. While I did not learn this until later, -shots had passed so close to me that the powder burns penetrated my -coat, shirt, and undershirt, and burned my skin beneath, all along my -back. I felt my way blindly down the hall in the direction of the Senate -chamber, with my left hand on the corridor wall and my gun still in my -right hand, till I turned a corner and reached a niche where there was a -marble settee. This was right near the stairway where Huey had gone -down, as I learned later. I was practically blinded for the time. The -settee had a padded seat, and I waited there till Ty Campbell, a state -highway patrolman, saw me and took me to the hospital. - -“It was there that I missed my watch and saw the furrow plowed across -the back of my wrist where the scar of it is still visible; also the -pinch or scratch in the web between my right thumb and index finger. I -did not know for two days what had become of my watch, but it was -returned to me later by King Strenzke, chief of the Baton Rouge city -police. Someone had picked it up off the floor at the scene of all the -shooting, and had turned it over to the police while authorities were -still trying to establish the identity of Dr. Weiss.” - - * * * * * - -Justice Fournet’s statement differs from Roden’s at several points, as -it does from the accounts of Coleman and Frampton, each of which differs -in one detail or another from all the others. Just as it was given, with -none of the discrepancies modified, altered, or omitted, the Fournet -account of what took place continues in the narrative which follows: - -“... Just then, Huey came out of the door to the office of the -Governor’s secretary.” (Actually, he had come out of the main double -doors of the anteroom, and was merely pausing at the other point to -impress on White the importance of getting in touch with certain -absentee members.) “We walked toward each other, but instead of the -usual air of greeting I saw a startled, terrified expression, a sort of -look of shock, and simultaneously I saw this fellow who had been -standing in the recess oppose Huey with a little black gun. This was -right within a foot of me, so I threw my hands at him to grab him, just -as he shot, and Murphy Roden--I don’t know where he came from but I -presume he had followed the Senator out into the hall from the inner -office--anyway, at the same instant when I threw my hands and the shot -was fired, Murphy Roden lunged and seized the gun and the man’s hand in -his left hand. This must have been at almost the very instant the shot -was fired, for Murphy’s hand kept the shell of the little automatic from -ejecting, which is why the man whose body was later identified as that -of Dr. Weiss could not fire another shot. - -“It is hard to describe in sequence all the things that were happening -in practically one and the same instant. As Murphy grappled with Weiss, -the gesture I had made to push the man away was completed, and my hands -pushed the two struggling men partly to the floor. Weiss had both hands -around his gun, trying to fire again, and this time at Roden; and Roden, -while holding his desperate clutch about the gun which was waving wildly -this way and that, was trying to get his own gun from his shoulder -holster, and I was still standing there with my hands outstretched from -pushing them, when Elliott Coleman from quite a ways down the hall fired -the second shot I heard that night, as well as two others. - -“In that same instant of general confusion that boiled up I heard Huey -give just one shout, a sort of hoot, and then he ran like a wild deer. I -bent over to help Roden disarm Weiss, and twisted a muscle in my back so -that for a moment I could not move in any direction. It was then I saw -that one of Elliott Coleman’s bullets had shot away Murphy Roden’s wrist -watch, but the next two hit Weiss. At the first one his whole body -jerked convulsively--like this. At the second it jerked again in a great -twitch as he sank into himself and slumped forward, face down, his head -in the angle of the wall and his legs extended diagonally out into the -corridor. - -“It was not until after Weiss was dead that other bodyguards came up and -emptied their pistols into the fallen body. Meanwhile I caught a glimpse -of other armed men, state police and bodyguards, charging from the -[House chamber] end of the hall toward where the body was lying, and I -caught one flash of my father wrestling around with some of them because -he thought I was in trouble and he wanted to stop the shooting. I saw -the crowd down there and I went into the other cross hall [the one in -the direction of the Senate chamber] where there were stairs to the -basement, and asked the girl at the telegraph desk which way Huey had -gone, and she pointed down the stairs....” - -There is general agreement here that of the first two shots, by whomever -fired, the first one penetrated Long’s body, the second ripped Roden’s -watch from his wrist, and that the next two killed Dr. Weiss. The only -discrepancy between the accounts of Murphy Roden and Justice Fournet is -as to who fired these shots. According to Roden, the first two were -fired by Weiss, the third by himself and the fourth by someone else, -presumably Coleman. According to Justice Fournet, the first one was -fired by Weiss, who never fired again; while the second shot, the one -which according to both versions shot away Roden’s wrist watch, was -fired by Coleman, who thereafter also fired the two shots that took Dr. -Weiss’s life. - - * * * * * - -How does Sheriff Coleman’s account of what took place compare with these -two? There is one marked point of difference. It involves a blow with -the fist which no one else describes. Here, then, is that portion of -Coleman’s narrative of what took place: - -“... At this point a slight young fellow in a white linen suit stepped -forward and stretched out his hand with a gun in it and pressed it -against Huey’s right side and fired. Everything happened very fast then, -because the House had just adjourned, seemingly; anyway, people were -coming out. I reached the young man about the same time Roden did, and -hit him with my fist, knocking him down. He was trying to shoot and -Murphy was grappling with him, so that he fell on top of Murphy when I -hit him. I fired one shot. By that time Huey was gone, and I learned -later he had gone down the stairs and had been taken to the hospital. - -“The young man in the white linen suit, whom none of us knew at the -time, was dead, and the gun was lying on the floor several inches from -his hand. It was then that I saw why he had not fired again. A cartridge -was jammed in the ejector. After that a lot of things happened, and -there was a lot of shooting. - -“They called me into the governor’s office. Some fool had run in there, -and Allen said to me: ‘Coleman, I understand you hit that party. Huey -isn’t much hurt, he’s just shot through the arm.’ I said: ‘The hell he -is! The man couldn’t have missed him. He shot him in the belly, right -here.’ Allen said: ‘But they say you hit him and deflected the bullet.’ -And I said: ‘I never hit him till after he shot.’ All of this stuff -about a bullet from one of the bodyguards is a lot of ----! Those boys -all had .44s and .45s and if one of those bullets had gone through him -it would have made a great big hole. Anybody knows that. Besides, when -all the bodyguard shooting was going on, Huey was gone from that place -and on his way downstairs.” - - * * * * * - -This last is also borne out by Frampton, whose account of the actual -shooting includes the following observations: - -“While the conversation” (i.e., between Long and A. P. White about -making sure that all Long supporters would be present at the early -caucus and the morning House session) “was going on, this slight man I -did not know but who had been leaning against a column in the angle of -the marble wall, sort of sauntered over to him, and there was the sound -of a shot, a small sound, a sort of pop. Huey grabbed his side and gave -a sort of grunt, and I think he may have said ‘I’m shot!’ while running -toward the stairs. He disappeared by the time Murphy Roden materialized -out of somewhere--I never did see where he came from--and seized the -man’s hand. There were two shots and he crumpled forward, and fell with -his head on his arm against the pillar where he had been standing, and -his legs projected out into the hall. Huey had already disappeared -around the corner and, as I learned later, down the stairway. The small -automatic had slid out of Dr. Weiss’s hand and lay about four inches -from it on the floor by the time the other bodyguards came up, among -them Messina and McQuiston, and emptied their guns into the prostrate -figure.” - - * * * * * - -Meanwhile Jimmie O’Connor, with Huey’s Corona Belvedere cigars in the -breast pocket of his coat, jumped up as he heard a sound, muffled by the -heavy glass doors of the newly air-conditioned cafeteria, “like cannon -crackers going off.” - -“I started to walk out,” he recalls, “and as I opened the door I saw -Huey reeling like this, with his arms extended, coming down those steps -that were near the governor’s office. He was all by himself, and I ran -over to him and asked: ‘What’s the matter, Kingfish?’ He spit in my face -with blood as he gasped: ‘I’m shot!’ They put in the paper next day he -said: ‘Jimmie, my boy, I’m shot! Help me!’ but he never said a damn word -like that. All he said was ‘I’m shot,’ and he spit blood over me so that -I thought he had been shot in the mouth. - -“With that I grabbed him and I heard more shooting going on. They were -still shooting at the fallen body of Dr. Weiss, as I found out later. -But it shows how quickly it all happened. As fast as that. He had no -blood on his clothes at all at that time, other than what he had spit -out of his mouth. - -“So I half carried and half dragged him outside to the driveway. They -had a fellow out there with an old sort of a beat-up Ford automobile, -and I said: ‘Take me and this man over to the hospital.’ It was an -open-model car, not a sedan. Going over to the hospital Huey said not a -word, just slumped and slid in my arms. When we got over there, I opened -the car door and halfway got him out and got him on my shoulder, and -whoever was in the car just blew. They were gone. Right by the entrance -on the side they had a rolling table. I put him on that and rang the -bell. One of the sisters came down and cried: ‘Oh, oh! What is this?’ -and I said: ‘The Senator.’ - -“She said: ‘Wheel him into the elevator.’ I did that. She operated the -elevator and when we got out--I don’t remember what floor it was--she -and I wheeled him into the operating room, where an intern hurried over -to us. Huey was wearing a cream-colored double-breasted suit, -silky-looking, and I said to the intern: ‘He’s been shot in the mouth.’ -The intern pulled down the Senator’s mouth, swabbed it out, and said: -‘He’s not shot there, that’s just a little cut where he hit himself -against something.’ I suppose he stumbled up against the wall while -reeling around the turns going down the stairs. - -“Then the intern was beginning to open the Senator’s coat when Dr. -Vidrine popped in, and he and the intern opened the coat. There was very -little blood on the shirt, and when they opened that and pulled up the -undershirt we saw a very small hole right under the right nipple.... -While his shirt and coat were being cut off, he asked the Sister to pray -for him. ‘Sister, pray for me,’ he said, and she told him: ‘Pray _with_ -me.’” - -By this time frantic telephone calls to physicians in Baton Rouge and -New Orleans, to Seymour Weiss and Earle Christenberry, to the Long -family, to Adjutant General Fleming, and to a host of politicians had -jammed the switchboards. Both the big buildings facing one another -across the width of the old University Lake--the Sanitarium and the -State House--were swarming hives of confused activity. In the hospital -various officials and others in the top echelon of the Long organization -were crowding the hallways around the wounded Senator’s room, and later -even the operating room itself, while the constant arrival of more and -yet more cars clotted into an all but hopeless traffic snarl in the -Sanitarium’s small parking lot. - -Others made their way to the capitol building as word of the shooting -spread, but here General Louis F. Guerre, commandant of the Bureau of -Identification, and Colonel E. P. Roy, chief of the highway police, -acted promptly to restore some semblance of order. Part of the confusion -stemmed from the fact that up to that very moment no one had been able -to identify the body which later proved to be that of Dr. Weiss; almost -everyone who asked to see if he might perhaps recognize the slight -figure in the bloodstained white suit was admitted to the corridor where -the corpse remained until Coroner Thomas Bird arrived. As described by -Frampton---- - -“A number of people came around after the shooting stopped. Among them -were Helen Gilkison, the _Item_ and _Tribune_ Baton Rouge correspondent -and Colonel Roy. I remember that the Colonel took hold of the fallen -man’s head and lifted it so that the features were visible. He asked -first me and then Helen if we knew him. We did not. I had never seen him -before, as far as I knew then or know now. - -“Then I suddenly remembered that George Coad in New Orleans, who was -still on the phone line I had left open, must have heard the shooting -and was likely going mad. So I went in and picked up the phone and told -him Huey was shot, and the man who fired at him had been killed by the -bodyguards, but that the body had not yet been identified, so he had -better go with just that much for an extra. - -“I then ran back out into the hall and found that Dr. Tom Bird, the -coroner, was there. Colonel Roy and the state police were starting to -clear the corridor of everyone: spectators, newspaper people, -legislators, and all. But Dr. Bird deputized Helen as an assistant -coroner, and she was permitted to stay. I then followed Huey’s course -down the stairs by the route I was told he had taken, and learned for -the first time he really had been shot, because on the marble steps I -saw a few drops of blood. - -“I ran out the back door and was told he had been taken to the hospital -by Jimmie O’Connor, so I ran around the end of the lake all the way from -the capitol to Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, climbed the front steps, -went up to the top floor, where Huey was lying on one of those surgical -tables in the corridor outside of a room at the east end of the hallway. - -“Right away I thought of Urban Maes and Jim Rives, and asked Colonel -Roy, who had come there in the meantime, to get the airport lighted, as -I would try to get Maes and Rives to fly up with Harry Williams. I put -in calls for both of them and left messages about what had happened, and -for them to get hold of Harry Williams and fly to Baton Rouge, where the -airport had been lighted.... Actually, this had not yet been done, as I -learned later. Colonel Roy could not raise any airport attendant, so he -drove out there, kicked in a window, and turned on the lights himself.” - -By that time Dr. Maes and his associate, Dr. Rives, were already en -route to Baton Rouge by automobile. They had been called at once by -Seymour Weiss, who then jumped into his new Cadillac with Bob -Maestri--the latter lived at the Roosevelt--and together they ruined the -engine of the car by driving at top speed to Baton Rouge. - -At that time no one yet had given out any reasonably authoritative word -as to whether Long was the victim of a major or minor injury; whether -the prognosis was hopeful or a matter of doubt; whether his condition -could be described as undetermined, satisfactory, or critical. - -But so widespread was public interest in the Kingfish, who had -challenged Roosevelt, and who only a month before had said the New Deal -was at least cognizant of a plot to murder him, that newspapers in many -distant cities lost no time in dispatching special correspondents and -photographers to Baton Rouge to cover the day’s top news story. The -fight to save the Kingfish’s life was just beginning. - - - - -10 ---- SEPTEMBER 8-9: MIDNIGHT - - “_He that cuts off twenty years of life cuts off so many years of - fearing death._” - - ----SHAKESPEARE - - -Among the first of the Long hierarchs to reach the hospital to which -Jimmie O’Connor had rushed the fallen Kingfish were Dr. Vidrine, Justice -Fournet, and Acting Lieutenant Governor Noe. As a matter of fact, -O’Connor had not yet left the capitol’s porte-cochere when Fournet and -Noe reached it. - -“I heard Huey and Jimmie O’Connor talking before I saw them in the -darkness there,” Justice Fournet relates. “Jimmie asked: ‘Where did he -hit you?’ and Huey said: ‘Hell, man, take me to the hospital.’ I reached -them just as they got into the car of a man--his name was Starns, I -think--and I tried to get into the car with them, but it was just a -two-door affair, and I could not get in. By that time Jimmie Noe had -come down, so he and I managed to get to the hospital in another of the -cars around there. They had Huey sort of strapped to a wheeled table, an -operating table, I suppose, by the time we got there and found out what -floor he was on. - -“Dr. Vidrine was there, and starting to take off some of the Senator’s -clothes; but I took out my pocket knife and said: ‘Here, cut it off.’ He -slashed through the clothes and laid them back. I saw a very small -bluish puncture on the right side of Huey’s abdomen, and it was not -bloody. And I saw Dr. Vidrine lift up the right side of Huey’s back, but -he did not lift it very far. Dr. Vidrine put us in a room with a nurse, -then, and gave instructions to let no one else come in. - -“Meanwhile other doctors were taking his blood pressure and pulse rate. -Huey asked one of them what it was, and he told him. Naturally, I don’t -remember the figures, but I do remember Huey saying: ‘That’s bad, isn’t -it?’ and Vidrine or one of the others”--[it was Dr. Cecil -Lorio]--“answered him, saying: ‘Well, not _too_ bad, yet.’ Vidrine asked -him what doctors he wanted called, and he said Sanderson from -Shreveport, and Maes and Rives from New Orleans. While they were waiting -for their arrival, Joe Bates came in. He was allowed to come there so he -could tell Huey who had shot him. He said it was a young doctor named -Weiss. - -“‘What for?’ Huey asked. ‘I don’t even know him.’ - -“‘He’s a fanatic about you,’ Bates replied. ‘But he is friendly with a -lot of others in the administration.’” - -Pending the arrival of surgeons from New Orleans, some semblance of -order was being restored about the hospital. Highway motorcycle officers -unsnarled the traffic jam in the Sanitarium’s small parking lot, set up -guarded barriers, and thereafter admitted to the grounds no one who did -not have a special permit. - -It was during this interlude, too, that Ty Campbell finally brought -Murphy Roden from the capitol to the hospital for treatment. - -“One of the interns washed my eyes out first,” Roden remembers. “They -were smarting and there must have been some powder residue in them. -There were powder burns on the skin of my back, burns that had gone -through my coat, my shirt, and my undershirt. These were cleaned and -swabbed with antiseptic. But it was not until several weeks later, after -a place on my back kept festering, that I went to my family doctor in -Baton Rouge, and he finally removed a small fragment of the copper -jacketing of a bullet, from where it had lodged just under the skin. - -“After the interns finished with me, Ty went to the Istrouma Hotel and -brought me back some clothes, and I changed in the hospital. After that -we went back to the capitol with General Guerre, who took me to the -office of the governor’s executive counsel where General Ray Fleming, -head of the National Guard, had set up his headquarters, and we talked -nearly an hour or so, with me telling all I could recall. From there I -went to my quarters and to bed.” - -When he returned to the capitol with Roden, General Guerre had the State -House hallways cleared. - -“Once I satisfied myself that the Senator had been taken to the hospital -and was in the hands of physicians,” he explains, “I gave orders to my -men to clear the capitol’s lower floor as quickly as possible, and allow -no one else to come in without special authorization from me. I put -officers in charge to see that the body of the assassin was not touched -until the coroner got there. Even Dr. Bird did not know who the man was -till they removed his wallet and saw his identification there.” - - * * * * * - -Unaware of what had taken place in Baton Rouge, Earle Christenberry -reached his New Orleans home shortly after 9:30, having driven in from -the capitol without special haste. His neighbors, seeing the car turn -into the Christenberry driveway, flung open a window and told him -someone in Baton Rouge was trying to get in touch with him. His phone -had not answered, whereupon the caller secured from the telephone -company the number of the adjoining house, asking that when Earle -arrived he be requested to call back immediately. - -Then, adding a bit of news they had heard a short time earlier over the -radio, they told him Huey Long had been shot. - -Christenberry did not pause to call Baton Rouge. Without leaving his -car, he backed out of the driveway and headed for the capitol. He made -but one stop en route. That was at Lousteau’s combination sandwich -counter and automobile agency, where the Airline Highway cut across the -government’s newly completed Bonnet Carre Spillway over a bridge a mile -and an eighth long, spanning the dry channel through which the -Mississippi River’s flood waters could be diverted into Lake -Pontchartrain. Final inspection of the structure had not yet been made; -hence it was not open to general traffic. Wooden highway barriers -blocked entry to it. - -However, Christenberry directed the highway patrolman on duty there to -open the barriers for him, since this would save at least six miles on -the road to Baton Rouge. After ascertaining that Mrs. Long and the three -children had not yet passed this point, he instructed the motorcycle man -to remain on watch for their car, and open the barrier to let it pass -over the bridge too. - -Approximately seventy minutes after leaving his home, he parked at Our -Lady of the Lake Sanitarium. - - * * * * * - -Earlier that afternoon, in New Orleans, General Ray Fleming, Adjutant -General of Louisiana, had taken part at Jackson Barracks in a polo game -between teams representing the 108th Cavalry and the famed Washington -Artillery. During one of the late chuckers a hard-hit ball had banged -against the General’s left foot, inflicting an injury not in itself -serious, but so painful that before retiring for the night he borrowed a -pair of crutches from the post infirmary and secured a left shoe he -could cut to accommodate the swelling which had followed the mishap. - -“Hardly had I retired,” he relates, “than I received a phone call from -Governor Allen, who in a very excited voice said to me: ‘Huey has been -shot!’ Realizing that I must have certain information to deal with such -a situation, I demanded that the Governor stay on the telephone at -least long enough to answer one question before I took action. - -“The question was: ‘Is this an action involving many persons or is it -the act of just one individual?’ This I had to know in order to -determine what troops, if any, were needed to handle the situation. - -“Governor Allen immediately informed me that it was the spontaneous -action of just one individual. With this information in hand, I started -almost at once for Baton Rouge. In a remarkably short time I reached the -capitol, where I immediately set up headquarters in the office of the -executive counsel. From then until about 2 A.M. I talked to a great many -persons regarding events leading up to, during, and after the -assassination. - -“One of the reasons for this inquiry was that I had to make a decision -as to whether or not we were faced with the necessity of dealing with an -armed insurrection on the part of a considerable number of individuals.” - - * * * * * - -Early that Sunday night Judge Leche, still inclined to make light of his -conversation with Senator Long some hours before, was leaving Baptist -Hospital, where his physician, Dr. Wilkes Knolle, had just changed the -dressing of the airplane splint in which his left arm was immobilized. - -“Our chauffeur was driving Tonnie [Mrs. Leche] and me home from the -hospital,” his account of the day’s events continues, “and as we drew up -in front of my house in Metairie I could hear the phone ring. I tossed -my keys to the chauffeur and said: ‘Hurry up and answer it, and tell -whoever it is I’ll be there as soon as I can work my way out of the -car.’ He did so, and I got out awkwardly, my left arm being held rigidly -horizontal at shoulder height with the elbow bent, and when I got to the -phone it was Abe Shushan telling me Huey had just been shot. I called -out to the chauffeur not to leave, we were going to Baton Rouge right -away, and I told Tonnie I would send the car back for her and she could -come up the next day, if that seemed indicated. - -“I went directly to the governor’s office, and Oscar Allen was there, -very nervous and visibly shaken. He was talking on the telephone and -picked up a sheet of paper while holding the other hand over the -mouthpiece, and said: ‘This is what I am going to release to the press.’ -At the time I thought he said he had already released it. In brief, the -statement said for everyone to remain calm, this had been merely the -irresponsible act of one individual, and that it did not mean more than -just one individual’s crazed action. - -“I tore the paper up and handed the pieces back to him, saying: ‘Huey -has been charging in Louisiana and in Washington that there was a plot -on foot to kill him, and that he surrounded himself with bodyguards for -that reason. He conducted a formal investigation into a murder plot with -witnesses who said they had won their way into the confidence of the -plotters, and named them, and carried on an investigation in New Orleans -for days.... How in the world can you take it on yourself to proclaim -officially that this was all twaddle, and that only one individual was -responsible for what happened?’ - -“He said very excitedly: ‘You’re right, you’re right, you’re right!’ I -left, and was driven over to the hospital, but by that time the -operation was either over or in progress, so I did not see Huey. I -stayed in the hotel, and Tonnie joined me there the next day.” - - * * * * * - -The operation was begun at 11:22 P.M., but Drs. Maes and Rives were not -present. What happened is told by Dr. Rives in the following account: - -“Dr. Maes had been called, I have forgotten by whom, and he was asked to -fly to Baton Rouge as Huey Long had been shot; a chartered plane would -be waiting for him at the New Orleans airport, and a highway car at the -one in Baton Rouge. He asked me to go with him to assist him if he had -surgery to do, and I told him there was no sense in flying to Baton -Rouge, because I could drive him there in the time it would take to -drive out to the New Orleans airport, and then, after the flight, from -the Baton Rouge airfield to the hospital. This proved to be not right. - -“We were in my car and I was driving. The road then ran beside the old -O-K Interurban Line tracks, and just outside of Metairie an S-curve -crossed the tracks, a black-top road with graveled shoulders. Just -before we entered this S-curve another car, coming from the opposite -direction, swept through it and put its bright lights right into my -eyes. I was going about forty-five or fifty. I was not racing, in other -words, but I got my right wheel into the loose gravel of the shoulder, -and ended up skidding completely around and facing back in the direction -of New Orleans on the old gravel road beyond the S-curve. - -“My differential housing was caught on the high center of this old -gravel road, with only one rear wheel on the ground. We did no damage to -the car, but with only one wheel on the ground, a car is helpless. We -finally flagged someone driving back toward New Orleans and asked him to -send a wrecker to pull us back on the road. Actually they sent only a -truck, but it took us off the high center and then we went on. I should -say we lost not more than half an hour, but I think we would not have -reached Baton Rouge until after the operation even if we had not met -with this accident. - -“We did not have permission to use the completed but not yet opened -Airline Highway beyond Kenner, so I took the old River Road. As we -finally drove into Baton Rouge, there wasn’t a soul in sight, aside from -a policeman or two. No one was abroad on the streets; lights in the -houses, yes, but no people or cars on the streets. To outward -appearances, it was the most deserted community I ever saw, and going to -Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium we had to drive right through the center -of town. - -“At the hospital we were met by highway police, identified ourselves, -which was required, and then we were conducted to the entrance where -someone else took us up to the ward where Huey had been placed....” - - * * * * * - -Word of the shooting of Huey Long had spread through the capitol’s -corridors and offices with almost explosive speed. The minute she heard -the report, Lucille May Grace (Mrs. Fred Dent in private life), Register -of the State Land Office, tried to telephone Dr. Clarence Lorio, who, -though not Senator Long’s physician, was one of his closest friends in -the Baton Rouge area. Mrs. Dent (since deceased) was devoted to Huey -Long, for he had supported her father for re-election to the office of -Land Register, a post which he held for more than thirty years. Upon her -father’s death Long appointed her to serve in Mr. Grace’s stead for the -unexpired balance of his term, since she had been his principal -assistant almost from the very day she was graduated from Louisiana -State University. - -Since she had retained, and even added to, her father’s tremendous -personal following among the voters, Huey decided at the end of her term -of office in 1932 to put her name on the Allen slate, which would carry -his imprimatur as the “Complete-the-Work” ticket. Hoping to induce Long -to rescind this decision, one or another of the rival aspirants spread a -completely baseless rumor to the effect that Mrs. Dent’s ancestry was -tainted with a touch of Negro blood. - -Huey Long’s almost obsessive response to this sort of aspersion was a -matter of common knowledge; it is only because what ensued may have some -bearing on the motive behind the assassination that this particular -incident is worth giving in some detail. - -Though he had already consented to put the name of Lucille May Grace on -the slate that would carry his endorsement, he lost no time in -retracting this agreement, and made it crystal clear forthwith that -unless she could show to his complete satisfaction that the rumor which -had gained considerable circulation was without even the semblance of a -foundation, he would place another’s name on the ticket for the position -she, and before her her father, had held. - -Miss Grace, the niece of an Iberville parish priest, enlisted the -latter’s aid and that of the late John X. Wegmann, a universally -respected New Orleans insurance man and perhaps the foremost Catholic -layman in Louisiana at the time. Thus birth and baptismal records going -back for generations along the Grace family tree were produced, and they -conclusively demonstrated the utter falsity of the canard. Satisfied, -Long restored her name at once to his personally approved -“Complete-the-Work” ticket of candidates, headed by the name of Oscar K. -Allen for governor. - - * * * * * - -Miss Grace (she did not become Mrs. Dent until a year later) had -attended Louisiana State University with both Clarence and Cecil Lorio, -and knew how close the former’s friendship with Senator Long was. She -began at once to call him, but he was not at his farm in nearby Pointe -Coupee parish, and the telephone at his Baton Rouge residence was -apparently out of order. So she called his brother, Dr. Cecil Lorio. - -“Suppose you let me tell the whole story, exactly as I recall it,” the -latter began, when asked about his recollections of what took place in -the operating room of Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium when Huey Long was -admitted there as a patient that September night. Dr. Cecil Lorio and -Dr. Walter Cook were, at the time of this inquiry, the only surviving -physicians who were present throughout all the ensuing surgical -procedure. - -“When she failed to reach my brother Clarence,” Dr. Lorio continued, -“Lucille May Grace called me at my home, and I left at once for Our Lady -of the Lake Sanitarium. Huey’s clothing had been removed by the time I -got there, and he was in bed in his room at the east end of the -third-floor corridor. He was fully conscious and we talked quietly from -time to time during the next hour. He was particularly distressed by the -thought that he might now be unable to carry out his plan to screen -students for L.S.U., so as to make it possible for all exceptionally -bright high-school graduates, however needy their families, to receive -the advantages of college education. - -“I took his blood pressure and pulse every fifteen minutes; he had -evidently learned something about the significance of this, for when he -asked me what the readings were, and I told him his pulse rate was -getting faster and his blood pressure was dropping a bit, he said: -‘That’s not good, is it?’ and I answered him by saying: ‘No, but it -isn’t too bad yet, either.’ ‘It means there’s an internal hemorrhage?’ -he then asked. I said he was probably hemorrhaging some, but that the -relation between blood pressure and pulse rate was one that could also -be attributed to shock. He was very curious about who had shot him, -saying it was someone he had never seen before. - -“He had visibly a small blue puncture on the right side of his abdomen, -and another on the right side of his back where the bullet emerged. Both -were very small. But it was obvious some emergency surgery would have to -be performed sooner or later. I was told that Dr. Sanderson had been -summoned from Shreveport, and that Drs. Urban Maes and James Rives were -already en route from New Orleans. Dr. Maes had been appointed to the -chair of surgery at L.S.U.’s new medical college, of which Dr. Vidrine, -also present in Baton Rouge at the time, was dean, along with his -position as superintendent of Charity Hospital. He was in general charge -of the patient’s case. At some point in the proceedings word was brought -to us that a motoring accident had forced Dr. Rives’s car off the road, -and that they would be delayed some time by the difficulty of securing -service at that time of night to have their car dragged back to the -highway. When informed of this, Dr. Vidrine decided not to wait any -longer.” - -Huey’s very close friends, Seymour Weiss and Conservation Commissioner -Robert Maestri, had reached Baton Rouge some time prior to this. It is -Mr. Weiss’s clear recollection that the decision to wait no longer -before performing an emergency operation was reached “by all of us” -before word was received of the mischance encountered by Drs. Maes and -Rives. - -“As I recall the circumstances,” Seymour Weiss says, “Huey’s condition -was getting worse by the minute. Dr. Vidrine insisted that any further -delay was progressively lessening the Senator’s chances. The other -physicians present agreed that the outlook was not hopeful. Vidrine was -the physician in charge and the rest of us were laymen. The time came -when we either had to agree to let the operation be performed at once, -or take upon ourselves the risk of endangering the man’s life. Mrs. Long -and the children had not yet reached Baton Rouge, but in view of the -medical opinions, the rest of us--all being individuals who were close -to Huey--were just about unanimous in agreeing that the doctors should -proceed.” - - * * * * * - -Amid the almost inconceivable confusion in and out of the hospital, one -person seems to have kept her head, and that was Miss Mary Ann Woods, -now Mrs. Arthur Champagne, the supervisor of nurses. Assigning floor -nurses and trainees to duties so as to make the best possible -disposition of available personnel, she set out to provide four special -attendants for the critically injured Senator, two to serve at night and -two by day. - -The first one she called from the register was Theoda Carriere, who -responded at once, even though she had just come off a twelve-hour tour -of duty. The other three were Loretta Meade, Helen Selassie, and Mrs. -Hamilton Baudin. Miss Carriere was one of the first to reach the -hospital, as she lived nearby; and since by that time Senator Long had -been taken from his third-floor sickroom to the operating theater on the -floor above, she scrubbed up at once and reported for duty there. - -According to her recollection, Dr. Cook was working on the patient, who -was anesthetized by the time she arrived. Being short of stature, she -had difficulty in seeing the operating table, and therefore placed a -stool so that, by standing on it, she could look over the shoulders of -those surrounding the patient. - -Dr. Cook said to her: “This is a gunshot wound; get me some antitetanus -serum.” Miss Carriere left the room for the pharmacy section downstairs -where such supplies were stored, and when she returned with the desired -serum, and gave it to Dr. Cook, Dr. Vidrine was just entering the -operating room. - -“Dr. Cook looked up,” she relates, “and said: ‘Well, my relief has -arrived,’ and left the operating room. Dr. Ben Chamberlain assisted Dr. -Vidrine during the balance of the operation.” - -In this respect Miss Carriere’s recollections are in direct conflict -with those of every physician who was present, and with the operation -report attached to the hospital chart, as well as with the statement of -Dr. Cook himself, when he testified later that he assisted at the -operation. - -As operating procedure was begun in the Sanitarium, neighbors of Dr. -Clarence Lorio, seeing his car parked in front of his home, and -realizing that under normal circumstances he of all men would have been -at the hospital with his gravely wounded friend, managed to rouse him. - -“I had been working for thirteen hours straight,” he explained -subsequently, “and I was bone tired. When I got home I not only went to -bed, but took the telephone off the hook so as not to be disturbed. I -had come to the point where I simply had to rest. Naturally, when some -of my neighbors woke me and told me what had happened, I lost no time in -dressing and rushing off to the Sanitarium, but the operation was -already under way when I got there. - -“Let me say this about Arthur Vidrine: that man faced one of the -toughest decisions that night anybody ever confronted. If he sat idly -by, waiting for someone else to take over the case, while Huey bled to -death, his associates and Huey’s friends would never forgive him, and he -would never forgive himself, either. On the other hand, if he performed -an emergency operation, and it was discovered later that the critically -wounded patient would have had a better chance for recovery if some -other procedure had been followed, he would still be blamed for a great -man’s death. No one could confront a more harrowing choice.” - -On the other hand, it can be taken for granted that Arthur Vidrine must -at least momentarily have entertained the thought of the rewards and -renown that would be his portion if by timely, courageous, and skillful -surgery he, rather than others, saved the life of the Kingfish of -Louisiana. Be that as it may, the decision to operate at once was made; -when it was submitted to Senator Long, he concurred in it; in fact, -according to a monograph by Dr. Frank L. Loria of New Orleans, Huey -himself said: “Come on, let’s go be operated upon.” - -Dr. Cecil Lorio described the incident more prosaically in the following -terms: - -“Someone told him that it had been decided to operate and that Dr. -Vidrine would perform the operation if Huey had no objection. He -indicated that he was willing for this to be done. Dr. Vidrine selected -Dr. William Cook to assist him, and Dr. Henry McKeown as the -anesthetist. It was this latter choice that brought me back into the -operating room and kept me there, for I am a pediatrician, not a -surgeon. - -“Baton Rouge--in fact, all Louisiana--was bitterly divided into Long and -anti-Long factions at this time. One of the most violently partisan -anti-Long individuals in all Baton Rouge was Henry McKeown. He really -hated Huey, though he had many friends among the people who were close -to the Senator. - -“Only two or three nights earlier, he and I were both sitting in at a -poker game in the Elks’ Club, when someone said something or other about -Long--probably something in connection with the special session of the -legislature that might be called any day. Dr. McKeown said in jest, the -way any person might in the course of a sociable card game: ‘If ever he -has to have an operation, they better not let me give the anesthetic, -for I’ll guarantee he’d never get off that table.’ Let me say again, and -with emphasis, that this was not a threat, but a jest, something to -underscore the man’s uncompromising anti-Long partisanship. - -“Naturally, when within a matter of days he actually was summoned to -serve as anesthetist for an operation to be performed on Huey Long, he -demurred. He pointed out that Huey was a bad operative risk in any case, -and for all anyone knew to the contrary, might already be dying from a -wound which was in itself mortal. ‘If the man dies during the -operation,’ Dr. McKeown pointed out, ‘many of those who have heard me -pop off about him might actually think I killed him.’ No one who knew -Henry McKeown, of course, would think any such thing. Finally he agreed -to serve, provided I watched and checked every move he made. - -“I told him I would do so, but while I looked now and then across the -operating table to its head, where he was standing, and saw what he was -doing, I really paid no attention to it, nor did he stop to see whether -or not I was checking on him. - -“Later, while the operation was in progress, Dr. Clarence Lorio, my -brother, came in and stood beside Dr. McKeown to the end of the -operation. On the side of the table at Huey’s left stood Dr. Vidrine. -Opposite him was his assistant, Dr. Cook. Beside Dr. Vidrine at his -left, I stood, handing him instruments and materials as he called for -them. As I said, I am not a surgeon, but a pediatrician. - -“The operating room was a strange sight. All sorts of people, mostly -politicians, I assume, had crowded into the small room. It was not an -amphitheater, and they ranged themselves all along the walls, not even -being suited up. As Mother Henrietta, the head of the hospital, said -later, after she had vainly tried to keep all who were not physicians or -properly gowned out of the operating chamber, it was anything but normal -surgical procedure.” - -It is indeed a pity the original chart, such as it was, could not have -been preserved. But as in the case of most hospitals, the time came when -the absolute limit of storage capacity was exhausted, and the charts on -file were microfilmed. In making these microfilms it was customary in -many hospitals not to include the nurses’ bedside notes in the filmed -record. Hence these do not appear in the film of the chart of Huey Long -at Lady of the Lake. - -But even what does remain is fragmentary, and in many cases unsigned. As -Dr. Rives observed many years later: “The situation that night, even -after I arrived, which was after the operation was completed and Huey -was back in his room, could only be described as chaotic. Several -physicians seemed to be on hand, and in the case of a critically injured -patient, when no one of the attending doctors is actually in command and -giving the orders to the crew of which he is the captain ... well, all I -can say is that even during the four hours or so when I was there -between about 1 A.M. and the time I started back for New Orleans which I -reached at daybreak, the situation was nothing short of chaotic.” - -A transcript of the microfilm was made by Dr. Chester A. Williams, the -present coroner of East Baton Rouge parish. According to this document, -the admitting note, set down on a plain sheet of paper, is not even -signed; obviously the last two lines were added by someone else after -the operation was concluded. It is preceded on the record by a standard -summary form which reads: - - Hospital No. 24179. Sen. Huey P. Long, 42 yr.w.m. - - Admitted Sept. 8, 1935, to Dr. Vidrine. - - Diagnosis: Shot wound abdomen, perforation of colon, Room 325. - - Died Sept. 10, 1935. - -The unsigned “admitting note” on its plain sheet of paper, which follows -the foregoing summary, reads: - -“Pt. admitted to O.R. at 9:30 P.M. Dr. Vidrine present. Exam made by Dr. -Vidrine shows wound under ribs rt. side, clothes and body with blood. -Pulse volume weak and faint. Fully conscious, very nervous. Given -caffeine and sodium benzoate 2 cc by hypo. Dr. Cook present. Put to bed -in 314 at 9:45 P.M. Foot of bed elevated. M.S. gr. ¹⁄₆ by hypo for pain. -Asked for ice continuously. Dr. Cecil Lorio present. External heat, Pt. -in cold sweat. After consultation, patient to O.R. at 11:20, pulse weak -and fast, still asks for ice.” - -Then follow the words, obviously added after the operation: - -“Dr. Vidrine, C. A. Lorio, Cecil and Dr. Cook present, and put to bed in -325 at 12:40 A.M. Foot of bed elevated.” - -The Operating Room record of the chart reads: - - Surgeon: Dr. Vidrine. - - Anesthetist: Dr. McKeown. - - Assistants: Dr. Cook, Dr. C. A. Lorio, Dr. C. Lorio. - - Anesthesia: N₂O started at 10:51 P.M. ended 12:14 A.M. Pulse during - anesthesia 104-114 - - Operation begun 11:22 P.M., ended 12:25 A.M. - - What was done: Perforation--2--Transfer [_sic!_] colon. - - [Signature not decipherable] - -In the monograph previously referred to, Dr. Loria of New Orleans -compiled a more detailed technical description of the surgical -procedure. This was published in 1948 by the _International Abstracts of -Surgery_ (Volume 87) as a treatise dealing with 31,751 cases of -abdominal gunshot wounds admitted to Charity Hospital during the first -forty-two years of the present century. Dr. Loria appended to it a -series of reports on notable personages in American history who had -succumbed to such wounds, including President Garfield, President -McKinley, and Senator Long. Referring to the Senator’s case, he wrote in -part: - -“The bullet which struck Senator Long entered just below the border of -the right ribs anteriorly, somewhat lateral to the mid-clavicular line. -The missile perforated the victim’s body, making its exit just below the -ribs on the right side posteriorly and to the inner side of the -midscapular line, not far from the midline of the back. - -“... At the hospital, arrangements were made for an emergency laparotomy -with Vidrine in charge.... Under ether anesthesia the abdomen was opened -by an upper right rectus muscle splitting incision. Very little blood -was found in the peritoneal cavity. The liver, gall bladder and stomach -were free of injury. A small hematoma, about the size of a silver -dollar, was found in the mesentery of the small intestine. The only -intra-peritoneal damage found was a ‘small’ perforation of the hepatic -flexure, which accounted for a slight amount of soiling of the -peritoneum. Both the wounds of entry and of exit in the colon were -sutured and further spillage stopped. The abdomen was closed in layers -as usual.” - -About one o’clock that morning Drs. Maes and Rives arrived, and somewhat -later Dr. Russell Stone, another noted New Orleans surgeon. None of -these saw any part of the operative procedure, all surgery having been -completed before their arrival. But a sharp difference of opinion -between Dr. Vidrine and Dr. Stone was followed by the latter’s prompt -return to New Orleans without so much as looking at the patient. Dr. -Stone told some of his New Orleans associates and close friends that -Vidrine had given him the details of the abdominal operation and had -also said that the kidney was injured and was hemorrhaging. - -“Did you see the kidney?” he asked Vidrine, and added that the latter -replied: “No, but I felt it.” An acrimonious interchange followed and at -its climax Vidrine said something to the general effect of “Well, go on -in and examine him for yourself.” Stone replied: “Not I. This isn’t my -case and he isn’t my patient. Good night.” Thereupon he returned at once -to New Orleans. - -Dr. Rives’s account of his experiences clearly illustrates on what he -based his opinion that the procedure was “chaotic.” - -“Dr. Maes and I were taken into a room next to the one Huey was in,” he -related, “and there I stopped. Dr. Maes was taken on into the patient’s -room, while I got off into a corner, making myself inconspicuous. At -this time there was still no suggestion that anyone but Dr. Weiss had -shot or even could have shot Huey Long. Meanwhile, people were going in -and out of the sickroom, apparently at will. I did not know many of -them, and certainly most of them were not physicians. Finally someone, -and I think it was Abe Shushan, asked me had I been in the room where -Huey was, and I said no, I was only there to assist Dr. Maes in the -event there was any surgery he had to perform. He said: ‘In something -like this we want the benefit of every doctor’s advice,’ and led me in -there. - -“I did not see the wound of entrance, and I was told by one of the nuns -or one of the nurses that the wound of entrance was beneath the clean -dressing on his belly; and from the location of this dressing it was -clear to me that there was a good chance the bullet might have hit a -kidney. - -“I asked the nurses if there were any blood in his urine. That was the -only contribution I could make. Whoever it was, she said she did not -know. I said that if they did not know, he ought to be catheterized at -once. Later that night, some time before I left for New Orleans, I was -told he had been catheterized and that there was blood in his urine. -That was an absolute indication of injury to the kidney. It was not -necessarily a critical injury, or a hemorrhage that would not stop. But -it did mean that there was an injury, and that if hemorrhage continued, -that was the place to look for it.” - -Dr. Maes said there would be no further surgery, and hence while he -would stay through the day, Monday, there would be no need for Dr. Rives -to do so. The latter thereupon drove back to New Orleans. - -According to Dr. Loria’s monograph, the “postoperative course of the -case continued steadily on the downgrade. Evidence of shock and -hemorrhage appeared to become steadily worse ... the urine was found to -contain much blood. At this time [Dr. Russell] Stone’s opinion was that -another operation to arrest the kidney hemorrhage would certainly prove -fatal....” - -Whether it was Dr. Rives or Dr. Stone who first suggested -catheterization is immaterial. The fact remains that until one or the -other of these physicians, neither of whom was directly connected with -the case, proposed this procedure, nothing of the sort seems to have -been done; according to the progress notes on the microfilm chart, it -was not done until 6:45 A.M., almost nine hours after the shooting, and -six hours after the emergency operation had precluded the possibility of -further surgery. Even after it was discovered that the kidney hemorrhage -was massive and continuing, medical opinion was unanimous on the point -that additional surgery would unquestionably prove fatal. - -Control of such hemorrhage involved removal of the injured kidney, in -order to tie off the vessels supplying it with blood. This in turn would -mean the cutting of ribs to make room for the requisite mechanics of -kidney removal. Such an operation on a patient already in shock from a -bullet wound and from the major abdominal surgery which followed, would, -it was agreed by all, inevitably bring about the patient’s death. All -that remained was to hope for a miracle--and none manifested itself. In -the words of Dr. Cecil Lorio: - -“The patient never really recovered consciousness. He was in shock, and -under sedation, until he died. As the day [Monday] wore on, and Huey’s -blood pressure continued to fall, a transfusion was ordered. It may have -been earlier that the transfusion was given. The hospital records would -show.” - -Unfortunately, the hospital record shows only one transfusion, given at -8:15 Monday night, nearly twenty-four hours after the shooting. However, -it must be borne in mind that in those days, long before blood and -plasma banks had been established as standard hospital facilities, -transfusions were by no means the routine procedure they are today. In -the case of Huey Long, a chart note signed by Dr. Roy Theriot records -the fact that five hundred cubic centimeters of citrated blood were -given, that before transfusion approximately three hundred cubic -centimeters of normal saline solution were given intravenously at a -time when the pulse was very thready, and that the transfusion was -followed by a continuous intravenous drip of glucose in normal saline. -Even after this the patient’s blood pressure was only 114 over 84, while -the pulse rate was still a frightening “170-plus.” - -Almost as soon as Senator Long had been brought to the hospital, -volunteer blood donors were typed, and their blood cross-matched with -that of the patient. According to the laboratory report incorporated in -the hospital chart, J. A. Vitiano, Eddie Knoblock, Colonel Rougon, J. R. -Pollett, M. E. Bird, George Castigliola, and Paul Voitier were marked -“incompatible”; C. J. Campbell, John Kirsch, “no name,” Joe Bates, -Senator Noe, Bill Melton, and a Mr. Walker were found to be compatible. -In addition, “no name,” Bates, Noe, and Melton were also marked with an -“O.K.” - -Senator Noe was the first and apparently only donor, and it is my -recollection that we met in the Heidelberg Hotel elevator Monday night -when he told me he had “just given blood to Huey.” Mrs. Noe was with him -at the time, said she was sure Senator Long would recover, and expressed -the hope that future installments of the _Saturday Evening Post’s_ -biographical portrait would “do him proud.” - -A little after two o’clock that afternoon Dr. Maes had prescribed a -rectal instillation of laudanum, aspirin, brandy, and normal saline -solution. Once this was given, the chart notes: “Resp. less labored, -less cyanosis, P 148 Temp. 103⁴⁄₅ axilla. Quieter.” During the handling -that was incident to the instillation, Senator Long awoke and asked Dr. -Maes whether he would be able to take the stump in the approaching -campaigns. “It’s a little early to tell, yet,” the physician replied. As -before, the patient lapsed into drugged slumber the moment the handling -that had roused him came to an end. - -As concerns the one transfusion recorded on the hospital chart, Dr. -Cecil Lorio reports: - -“I recall clearly the fact that the young physician who was to give the -transfusion was so nervous, and his hands were shaking so, that he was -having difficulty placing the needle in the vein that was to receive the -blood; and my brother Clarence said to me, knowing that I frequently -gave transfusions to children: ‘Dr. Cecil, haven’t you your equipment -here so that you might assist in transfusing the Senator?’ I said I had, -and of course to me, accustomed to performing this with the small veins -of children, it was child’s play to place the needle in the large vein -of a man. A number of volunteers--everybody wanted to volunteer--had -already been typed, and one of those whose blood matched was State -Senator James A. Noe. He was the first donor. - -“But as the day wore on it became evident that the patient was losing -blood about as fast as we were transfusing it into him, and while there -were no external evidences of bleeding, the conclusion was that he must -be hemorrhaging from the apex of the right kidney. So Dr. T. Jorda Kahle -of New Orleans [head of the urology department of Louisiana State -University’s College of Medicine] was sent for. He got to Baton Rouge -Monday night and thrust a needle just under the skin of the kidney -region and drew out a syringeful of blood. That made it evident the -Senator’s case was hopeless, barring a miracle. The only way to stop -such a hemorrhage would have been to remove the kidney, and that would -certainly have killed him. - -“At the end, the dying man threshed wildly about the oxygen tent that -had been put over him. A little after four in the morning his breathing -stopped.” - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Long and the three children--Rose, Russell, and Palmer--did not -reach Baton Rouge until after the operation was over, in spite of the -fact that the Airline’s new bridge across the Bonnet Carre Spillway was -opened to the passage of their car, thanks to Earle Christenberry’s -directions to the highway guards at Lousteau’s. Since the Senator was -never really conscious after he left the operating room, the members of -his family had little or no communion with the man who to them was not -merely a public figure, but husband and father. - -They were given rooms directly across the hall from the one in which -physicians strove unremittingly to save Huey Long’s life. He had not -been a very devoted family man. He was away from home too much in the -pursuit of objectives it seemed impossible for him to share with the -Rose McConnell he had met when he was a brash young door-to-door -salesman of Cottolene. - -Those days were now so long in the past, the happy days of shared trial -when every penny had to be stretched to the uttermost. Success had come -so quickly--the big ornate home in Shreveport, the new Executive Mansion -at Baton Rouge of which Rose had been the first chatelaine, the -elaborate residence on Audubon Boulevard, the days of triumph and -rejoicing that followed the effort to impeach him.... - -All of it was now slipping away forever, while Huey Long’s blood seeped -slowly but relentlessly out of his body, with no possibility short of a -miracle of halting its ebb as some physician, now forever anonymous, -made on his hospital chart a final entry to the effect that even “the -oxygen tent discontinued as pt. grew very restless under it--delusions -of photographers, etc.” - -Once hope for the patient had been abandoned, it was Seymour Weiss who -was the nuncio bringing to the members of Huey’s family, in the room -across the hall, tidings of great grief. Himself emotionally shaken to -the depths of his being, he told Mrs. Long and the three children as -gently as possible that the end was very near. They followed him across -the hall to the bed where the dying man, barely conscious, was drawing -in and expelling shallow, noisy breaths. He made no effort to speak; but -as each of the four laid a hand on the bed beside him, he managed weakly -to pat it in a final, caressing gesture of farewell. - -They returned to their room to await the end. Seymour Weiss accompanied -them, giving voice to whatever comforting phrases he could muster, and -then returned to the sickroom. One vital point remained to be cleared -up. - -“Huey, Huey, can you hear me?” he asked. - -There was a faint stir of response. - -“Huey, you are seriously hurt. Everything that can be done to help you -is being done, but no one can ever say how such things will turn out. -Now is the time to tell me where you put the papers and things that you -took out of the bank vault. Where did you put them? Tell me where they -are, Huey. Please don’t wait any longer.” - -Thus the final thoughts he carried with him out of his life concerned a -political campaign, his campaign for the presidency of the United -States. Hardly audible was the faint breath that whispered: - -“Later--I’ll--tell--you--later....” - -They were his last words. The secret of what became of the affidavits, -the other documents, and the campaign funds that were to provision his -presidential race was one he took with him to an elaborate tomb newly -constructed in the very center of the landscaped park around the capitol -he had built for Louisiana. - - - - -11 ---- THE AFTERMATH - - “_And this was all the harvest that I reap’d--I came like water and - like wind I go._” - - ----THE RUBÁIYÁT - - -A few hours after Huey Long had breathed his last, Dr. Weiss was buried -with requiem services at St. Joseph’s Church, where he and Yvonne had -gone to Mass only three days before. John M. Parker and J. Y. Sanders, -Sr., two former governors prominent among leaders of the political and -personal opposition to the Kingfish regime, attended the funeral, and -were bitterly assailed by Long partisans for doing so. Dr. McKeown, the -anesthetist during the emergency operation performed by Dr. Vidrine, was -one of the pallbearers. - -Yvonne’s uncle, Dr. Pavy, a member of the House of Representatives, had -been delegated by the Weiss family to act as their spokesman in meeting -with reporters who had swarmed into Baton Rouge from near and far. It -should be noted that at this time no one had as yet voiced the slightest -doubt about Dr. Weiss having fired the shot that ended Long’s reign. -Only the question of motive was the subject for argument and dispute. - -“There was absolutely nothing premeditated about what Carl did,” Dr. -Pavy told newsmen gathered at the little cottage he shared with Judge -Philip Gilbert when in Baton Rouge. “On Sunday, while his parents sat on -the beach of their camp with their baby grandchild, Carl and Yvonne -sported about the water. When he returned home, he bade his wife an -affectionate good-by, as he left about 7 P.M. for a professional call. -He even phoned the Lady of the Lake Sanitarium to make an appointment -for an operation Monday morning. - -“He was an earnest lad, and lived for humanity, but he was sorely -distressed about the suppressive form of government he felt existed in -Louisiana. He never talked much about it, and he certainly never -confided to his family or anyone else any plan to kill Long. Our only -explanation for his action is that this suppressive type of rule preyed -on his mind until it unhinged, and he suddenly felt himself a martyr, -giving his life to the people of Louisiana. He must have felt that way, -else how could he have left the wife and baby that he loved above -everything?” - -To a question as to whether the gerrymander that would oust his wife’s -father from the honorable office he had held for so many years could -have prompted the decision to shoot Long, Dr. Pavy replied: - -“In the first place, none of us would kill anyone over such a matter as -the loss of a public office. It is my understanding that while the bill -aimed at my brother’s judgeship was discussed at the Weiss’s dinner -table Sunday, it was treated lightly rather than otherwise.” - -The legislature of which Dr. Pavy was a member had remained in session. -“We’re going to pass every one of ol’ Huey’s bills the same as if he was -still here with us,” was the majority watchword. In addition to these, -the members also adopted a concurrent resolution authorizing the fallen -leader’s interment in the capitol grounds, and the construction there of -a proper tomb to receive the great bronze casket, this to be topped by a -monument later. They also adopted a concurrent resolution “recognizing -and commending and according due recognition” to the valued services and -help of the Senator’s bodyguards, mentioning by name specifically -George McQuiston, assistant superintendent of the state police, Warden -Louis Jones of the state penitentiary, and officers Murphy Roden, -Theophile Landry, Paul Voitier, and Joe Messina. - -During one of the interludes when the House was in session, I took -occasion to go to Dr. Pavy’s desk and ask whether he had reached any -conclusion as to Dr. Weiss’s motive other than the one he had mentioned -on the previous Monday. I had heard vague reports that it was felt in -some quarters Huey Long was planning to revive an old racial campaign -canard against Judge Pavy. This was the allegation made in 1908 by the -then Sheriff Swords to the effect that one of the Judge’s -relatives-in-law had an ancestor of other than purely Caucasian blood. - -The old slur had long since been forgotten by most persons, since it -dated back to 1907-8. In that era, though the quadroon ball had long -since lapsed from the quasi recognition once accorded it, Northern -magazines still published muckraking articles about miscegenation in the -South. On the other hand, memories of relatively recent carpetbag evils -were so vivid that the “taint of the tarbrush” was fatal to any -political aspirant. Thus the fact that in spite of Sheriff Swords’s -allegations in a milieu of that sort, Judge Pavy was not only elected, -but re-elected for five or six consecutive terms, testifies eloquently -to the universal disbelief this imputation encountered. - -Naturally, I did not spell all this out to Dr. Pavy. I merely made a -casual reference to the general spread of all sorts of rumors about Dr. -Weiss’s motives, and asked whether he had any information on this score -other than what he had told us on the morning after the shooting. - -“I tell you again,” he replied with profound conviction, “that this was -an act of pure patriotism on Carl’s part. He was ready to lay down his -life to save his state, and perhaps this entire nation, from the sort of -dictatorship which he felt Long had imposed on Louisiana.” - -None the less, in many minds--my own, for one--the feeling that there -might be some substance to the racial motive would not down. Many -Louisianians, for example, well knew that in his weekly, _American -Progress_, Long never referred to the scion of a certain socially -prominent family as anything but “Kinky” Soandso. - -Even more recent in public memory was his insistent conjunction of -Dudley LeBlanc with Negro officers in his “Coffin Club,” the outlawed -burial-insurance society. Moreover, the knowledge that a derogatory -allegation was untrue never deterred Huey Long from trumpeting it forth -at least by innuendo on every stump during a political campaign. For -example, an office seeker opposing the candidacy of a man Long had -endorsed was in the business of installing coin-activated devices for -jukeboxes and an early type of vending machine, but Long never referred -to him in his tirades as anything but Slot Machine Soandso. - -Amid a fog of conflicting rumors and surmises, the first note of doubt -that Carl Weiss, Jr., had even tried to kill Senator Long was sounded by -the young physician’s father, in a statement he made at an inquest into -the circumstances of his son’s death. Such as it was, this probe was -conducted by District Attorney John Fred Odom, one of the leaders of the -Square Deal Movement. It developed little more than one possible -explanation of the contusion, abrasion, or cut visible on Long’s lower -lip when he reached the hospital. - -“Was Senator Long bleeding from the mouth?” District Attorney Odom asked -Dr. William A. Cook, after the latter stated that he had assisted Dr. -Vidrine in the emergency operation on the mortally wounded patient. - -“Dr. Henry McKeown, who was administering the anesthetic,” responded -Dr. Cook, “called my attention to an abrasion on Senator Long’s lower -lip. It was an abrasion or brush burn. When it was wiped with an -antiseptic, it oozed a little.” - -“Did it appear to be a fresh abrasion?” - -“Yes.” - -Attorney General Porterie, a pro-Long leader, asked Dr. Cook: - -“A man having been shot as Senator Long was, and making his way down -four winding flights of stairs, could perhaps have struck against an -angle of marble or iron?” - -“Any contusion or trauma could have caused such a bruise,” was Dr. -Cook’s reply. - -Only one new development of any potential significance was brought out -by the inquiry. Sheriff Coleman testified that he struck twice with his -fist before firing on Weiss and that “the first time I missed him and -struck someone else, but the second time I hit him and knocked him down -when Roden was grappling with him.” Conceivably, the “someone else” of -the first blow could have been Huey Long, although none of the other -eyewitnesses mention such a blow. As for the remainder of the -investigation, only one brief moment of emotional tension marked its -course. That was when the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, a paid organizer of -the Share-Our-Wealth movement, took the stand. He had been dropping -hints here and there indicating his entire readiness to take over the -Huey Long movement as its new leader. The moment he reached the witness -stand he burst out dramatically to the effect that “my leader whom I -worshiped has been killed. He was my hero. I respect this court, but I -do not respect the district attorney, who was one of the co-plotters of -this assassination, and I shall refuse to answer any questions put by -him.” - -Mr. Odom said he had no questions to ask, adding: “I care nothing about -him or his statements, but merely wish to state that whoever says I -plotted to kill Huey Long is a willful, malicious, and deliberate liar.” - -Neither on this occasion, eight days after the event, nor for a long -time thereafter did anyone deny, or offer to deny, that Carl Weiss had -entered the capitol armed with a pistol and had fired it at Senator -Long. Even the bitter-enders among Long’s political foes came up with -nothing more in the way of exoneration for the young physician than the -suggestion that there had been two bullets, and that the second one, a -wild shot or a ricochet from the gun of one of the bodyguards during the -furious fusillade which followed the initial shot, had inflicted the -wound that proved mortal. - -True, Carl Weiss’s father, testifying at the inquest, had expressed the -opinion that his son was “too superbly happy with his wife and child, -and too much in love with them to want to end his life after such a -murder.” But this was generally accepted as a natural expression of -paternal love and grief, and therefore not to be taken as refuting the -uncontradicted testimony of eyewitnesses and physicians. - -The inquest conducted by Coroner Tom Bird into the death of Huey Long -occupied only a few minutes. The family had refused to authorize a -necropsy, the results of which might well have confirmed or silenced -proponents of the two-bullet theory. These still emphasize the fact that -no small-caliber bullet was ever found among the projectiles picked up -from the floor of the corridor where the shooting occurred. They argue -that if a small-caliber bullet were found to be still in Huey’s body, -the wound of exit must necessarily have been made by yet another -missile. - -Huey’s corpse was viewed by a coroner’s jury at the Rabenhorst Funeral -Home, where it was being prepared to be laid out in state in the -capitol’s memorial hall for two days before the funeral. Thomas M. -Davis, now a laboratory supervisor for an oil refinery, was one member -of that five-man panel. Speaking in the living room of his modest home -in the Goodwood subdivision, he recalls that---- - -“I was an L.S.U. freshman at the time. My daddy had come to Baton Rouge -from Alabama to work as a brickmason at the Standard Oil plant. Dr. Tom -Bird, the coroner, was a friend of ours, and knew I wasn’t too well -fixed, so for as long as I was in college, he would appoint me to these -coroner’s juries because he knew the two-dollar fee I got helped me to -stay in school. - -“The day of the inquest--it was a Tuesday and raining like -everything--we met at Rabenhorst’s and were taken out in back where -Long’s body lay under a sheet. The sheet was lifted and then Dr. Tom, he -raised up the right side of the body to show us the wound in the back. -It was so small I doubt we’d have even seen it had it not been pointed -out to us. But they wouldn’t let us get too close to the body, no more -than from here to the other side of the room [indicating a distance of -approximately twelve feet]. They never did let us feel around to see -could we get out another bullet. They did show us the little old Spanish -[_sic!_] automatic that belonged to Dr. Weiss, and then Dr. Tom filled -out the report and we all signed it, and went home through the rain that -was still pouring. That afternoon Dr. Weiss was buried.” - -Long was buried two days later. Throughout the day and night, Tuesday -and Wednesday, his body lay in state as thousands upon thousands filed -slowly past the casket in an apparently endless procession to look their -last upon him. From near and far came floral offerings: elaborate -professional set pieces of broken columns, gates ajar, open schoolbooks, -and the like, with ornately gold-lettered, broad ribbons of white or -lavender silk; but there were likewise many simple wreaths of garden -blossoms, plucked by the hands of those who revered ol’ Huey as the -avatar who had been put on earth to brighten and better the lot of the -common man. Large as it was, Memorial Hall could not begin to hold the -flowers. When they were set up outdoors in the landscaped capitol park, -they occupied literally acres of the grounds. - -Beginning with daybreak on Thursday, mourners began to stream into Baton -Rouge from all sections of the state; by special train from the cities, -by chartered bus, by glossy limousine and mud-spattered farm pickup. -Looking westward from the observation gallery atop the capitol’s -thirty-one-story central section, it is possible to see for nearly seven -miles along one of the state’s principal highways. No bridge had yet -been built to span the Mississippi at this point. Consequently, as far -as the eye could see from this lofty lookout platform, a solid line of -vehicles was stalled. They moved forward only a bit at a time, as the -Port Allen ferries, doing double duty, picked up deckload after deckload -for transfer to the east bank. - -Mrs. Long had asked Seymour Weiss to make all funeral arrangements, and -because Huey, though nominally a Baptist, was not a church member and -thought little of ministers as a class, the problem of selecting an -ordained churchman to conduct the services was a sticky one. Religious -prejudice was no part of Long’s make-up. He had known Dick Leche as a -close friend for years. Yet on the last day, when casting about for a -gubernatorial candidate, he did not even know whether this close friend -was or was not a Catholic. - -Looking back on what happened, and still chagrined by the memory of his -decision to select Gerald Smith as funeral chaplain, Seymour Weiss -relates that “I didn’t know what to do. If I picked a Catholic priest, a -Protestant minister, or a rabbi, I’d offend those that weren’t -represented; even if I picked all three for a sort of joint service, -those who felt that Huey was neither a Catholic nor a Jew might resent -their inclusion, and in addition, the funeral service would be dragged -out too long with three obituary sermons to deliver. Then I happened to -recall that Gerald Smith had severed his connection with a Shreveport -church of which he had been the pastor before being employed by the -Share-Our-Wealth movement as an exhorter. - -“So I went to him and said: ‘You’re a kind of free-lance preacher -without portfolio, and that’s why I’m going to give you the biggest -honor you’ve ever had. You’re going to conduct Huey’s funeral service’ -... and that was the worst mistake I ever made in all my life.” - -Not that anything untoward occurred to mar the service. Under direction -of highway-department engineers, special crews had labored around the -clock to have the vault ready. From the great bronze doors of the -capitol the cortege was led by Castro Carrazo and his Louisiana State -University student band. With drums muffled and the tempo of their march -reduced to slow-step they played “Every Man a King,” so artfully -transposed to a minor key that what was and still is essentially a -doggerel became an impressive and moving dirge. The service that -followed was simple and dignified. - -In Baltimore, Henry L. Mencken, ever ready to sacrifice fact for the -turn of a sparkling phrase, predicted that ere long Louisianians would -dynamite Huey’s ornate casket out of its crypt and erect an equestrian -statue of Dr. Weiss over the site. The truth is that a monument to the -fallen apostle of Share-Our-Wealth has been built above the vault, and -that elders still make worshipful pilgrimages to the spot. - -Indeed, there have been those who literally canonized the memory of the -man who once proclaimed himself Kingfish. Among the personal -advertisements in the daily newspapers of South Louisiana one finds -cards of thanks to this or to that favorite saint. “Thanks to St. Rita -and St. Jude for financial aid.” “Thanks to St. Anthony for successful -journey.” “Thanks to St. Joseph for recovery of father and husband.” And -among them have appeared such cards as this: “Thanks to St. Raymond, -St. Anthony, Sen. Huey P. Long for favor granted.” The last one cited -appeared in the New Orleans _Times-Picayune_ of June 11, 1937. - -Even those who make up a younger generation to whom Huey Long’s name -already has become as impersonal as that of, let us say, Millard -Fillmore, still visit the statue, much as they would pause to look at -any other historical monument in their travels. - -Within twenty-four hours of the most elaborate funeral ever held in -Louisiana, attended by approximately 150,000 participants in the solemn -rites of lamentation, Huey’s Praetorian Guard were up in arms against -one another. Ready to yield instant obedience to their Kingfish, they -were one and all determined never to render such homage to anyone of -their own subordinate rank. - -The climax came about three o’clock one morning, when Gerald Smith not -only proclaimed himself the new head of the Share-Our-Wealth movement, -but announced the ticket which he and his followers had endorsed and -would back in the forthcoming January primary. None of the names Huey -had been considering appeared thereon. It was headed by the names of -State Senator Noe for governor and Public Service Commissioner Wade O. -Martin, Sr., for United States senator. - -Reverend Smith issued his pronouncement from the Roosevelt Hotel, but -was incautious enough to tell such people as Ray Daniell of the New York -_Times_, Allen Raymond of the New York _Herald Tribune_, and myself that -the Huey Long organization would move forward with even greater strides -as soon as it had rid itself of the Jews in it. - -The reaction was so immediate it must have shocked even him. The first -obstacle he encountered was the announcement by Earle Christenberry that -no one not specifically authorized to do so by himself as copyright -owner, could use either Share-Our-Wealth or Share-the-Wealth as party -designations, and that he proposed to turn over the only membership -rolls of that organization to Mrs. Long. - -The next came when the other Long bigwigs, realizing the ominous -implications of Smith’s bid for the scepter, submerged all their -intramural antagonisms in order to prevail on Judge Leche, as the -candidate the late Kingfish himself had tapped, to head an “official” -Long organization ticket. By way of making this ticket’s status all the -more authentic, it also carried the names of Earl Long as candidate for -lieutenant governor, Oscar Allen as nominee to serve out Huey’s -unexpired term in the Senate, and Allen Ellender as candidate for the -ensuing full six-year term, for which Huey himself would have run as -curtain raiser to his bid for the presidency. - -In addition, Russell Long, then only seventeen years old, was enlisted -as one of the speakers who would campaign on behalf of the official -ticket. This was to be his initial bid for political recognition; he was -put on the first team, campaigning right alongside his uncle and Judge -Leche. Gerald Smith, on the other hand, was relegated to obviously -subordinate rank. Realizing the hopelessness of a maverick’s lone foray -against such odds, to say nothing of his inability to secure funds from -the Share-Our-Wealth organization, he returned to the fold, and was -assigned to address rural meetings in small country churches and the -like. - -By and large the platform of the authorized Long ticket was simple: from -the stump and in circulars, over the radio and in newspaper advertising, -the anti-Long slate was branded the “Assassination Ticket.” - -Its backers were additionally handicapped by having Congressman -Cleveland Dear, an Alexandria attorney and a very inept campaigner, as -their candidate. His insistence that he headed a “Home Rule Ticket” -which proposed to return to individual communities those rights of -self-government which dictatorship had usurped, fell upon deaf ears. -Even had Dear and his fellows been skilled and adroit campaigners, their -prowess would have availed little against the hysterical determination -of the great mass of voters to express by their ballots how deeply they -disapproved of assassination--especially of the assassination of their -idolized ol’ Huey. - -There was actually a pathetic overtone to Cleveland Dear’s declaration -that the hotel conference “was attended by about 300 of as fine men as -can be found, who registered openly at the hotel desk, conducted their -conversations openly in rooms and in hallways and not behind locked -doors. There was hardly a meeting at that time where the possibility of -bloodshed was not mentioned, but I heard no discussion of it at that -hotel conference. - -“Yet the governor is going around this state preaching hatred, and -charging that the murder plot was hatched there. If he believes that, he -should have me arrested. I challenge him to have me arrested!” - -This sort of defensive jeremiad fell very flat when in country-school -assembly halls, in churches, in fraternal-lodge rooms and other small -rural meeting places, administration speakers became emotional over -basins of red dye, lifting the fluid in cupped hands and letting it -trickle back in the lamplight while declaiming: “Here it is, like the -blood Huey Long shed for you, the blood that stained the floor as it -poured from his body. Are you going to vote for those who planned this -deed and carried it into execution?” - -It soon became obvious to even the most optimistic leaders of the -self-styled Home Rule faction that something must be done to stem the -“assassination” tide. The climax was reached when Mayor Walmsley was -booed to the echo by the throng that had come to see the first bridge -ever built across the Mississippi at New Orleans formally dedicated and -opened to traffic. The official name of the structure, and so marked on -War Department maps: the Huey P. Long Bridge. The chorus of boos drowned -out every word that Mayor Walmsley uttered at the dedication, and was -maintained until he resumed his seat. - -Whether or not this incident precipitated the final effort of the Home -Rulers to escape the assassination onus in that cheerless campaign no -one can say at this late date. But a charge by Dear in his next address -before a large meeting gave birth to the bodyguard-bullet story, or at -least brought about its acceptance as factual in many circles to this -day. - -“Isn’t it true that one of Huey Long’s bodyguards is in a mental -institution this very minute?” he cried dramatically. “Is he not -muttering to himself over and over again: ‘I’ve killed my best friend! -I’ve killed my best friend! I’ve killed my best friend!’?” - -This was not true. Dear did not name the bodyguard supposedly thus -afflicted, and the newspapers thought so little of his outburst, or were -so reluctant to risk a libel suit, that they did not even include the -quotation in their accounts of the rally. But for some reason which now -escapes the memory of those who recall the incident, it was taken for -granted that the candidate had referred to Joe Messina. - -Marching steadily toward a landslide victory by a larger majority than -had ever been cast for any other Louisiana candidate for governor--even -for the Kingfish himself--Judge Leche was asked whether he knew anything -about the basis, if any, of the Dear statement; specifically, whether -Joe Messina was then or had been confined recently to a mental -institution. - -“I’d say yes to that,” he replied. “At least, he is one of the -doorkeepers at the executive mansion, and whenever I think of how crazy -I am to give up a quiet, peaceful, dignified place on the appeals bench -for a chance to live in that mansion four long years, I’d definitely -class it as a madhouse.” - -None the less, the charge--a countercharge, really--that the bullet -which ended Huey Long’s life came from the gun of one of his bodyguards -was repeated so often thereafter, and with so many elaborations, that it -was permanently embedded in the twentieth-century folklore of Louisiana. - -The Long machine, for the moment an invincible political juggernaut, -rolled on to total victory; but without Huey’s genius for organization, -for expelling undesirables and recruiting replacements, and above all -for having his absolute authority accepted by those serving under him, -it ground to a halt and collapsed within three years. - -Beyond doubt another factor in the swiftness with which a monolithic -organization of incipiently national scope crumbled into nothingness was -the realization that its treasury had disappeared. Naturally, every -effort was made to trace this hoard of dollars and documents. In -November of 1936, while the Long estate was still under probate, the -safety-deposit box which the Riggs National Bank at Washington still -held in the late Senator’s name was opened in the presence of Mrs. Long, -the deputy Register of Wills, Earle Christenberry, a bank official, and -a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. It was found empty, -stripped of the trove which Long told Seymour Weiss he had removed to -another and secret place of concealment. - -With no clue to the new depository to which the contents of this vault -had been transferred, the search for it was as prolonged as it was -bootless. Every key on the ring turned over to Mrs. Long by the Lady of -the Lake Sanitarium after her husband’s demise was examined. Only one of -them proved to have any possible relation to safety-deposit boxes. On -August 11, 1936, Earle Christenberry made a tracing or rubbing of this -key, and sent it to the Yale and Towne Company at Stamford, Connecticut. - -Four days later W. W. Herrgen of that firm replied: “The key which you -sent to me ... is for one of our No. 3401-C safety deposit locks, and a -search of our files shows that this key could be for use in a lock at -the Whitney National Bank of New Orleans.” - -The Whitney, largest and most independent bank in New Orleans at the -time, was for that very reason the last one Huey Long would have been -likely to select. In any case, its officials reported that the key in -question was not for any of the boxes in their vault. Of the money, -aggregating what may well have been several million dollars--enough to -finance an entire presidential campaign on the lavish scale to which -Huey Long was accustomed--no trace has ever been found. - -Even the sale of _My First Days in the White House_ was pitifully small -compared to what it would have been had its author lived to issue it as -a campaign document. - -Up to this day no one has been able to hazard a guess as to what was -done with this accumulation of currency. Long had always levied a -political tribute of two per cent on the salaries of all state -employees. No effort was made to conceal this. Indeed, the Kingfish -boasted that his support came from the people in small, regular -individual contributions, and not in huge individual gifts from the -swollen corporations, the money barons, and something called “the -interests.” - -From 1919 to 1946 Elmer L. Irey was chief of the Treasury Department’s -Intelligence and Enforcement Division. Among other and perhaps lesser -achievements, he had directed the investigation that finally landed Al -Capone behind bars for income-tax evasion. In a 1948 book by Irey, “as -told to William J. Slocum,” one chapter deals with the Roosevelt -administration’s efforts to secure a thorough investigation of the -income-tax returns filed (or not filed) by Huey Long, his top aides, and -even some of their subordinates. - -“We decided that the technique that had put Al Capone and his gang in -jail would be reasonably applicable to Huey Long and his gang,” the -Irey book avers in telling of the investigation that Treasury Secretary -Morgenthau ordered within three days after he took office. - -Evidence was gathered against the smaller fry first, and with former -Governor Dan Moody of Texas as counsel for the Treasury Department, one -of these lesser lights was convicted and sentenced to Atlanta in April -1935. - -By autumn more evidence had been gathered against Long himself. -According to Irey’s memoir, it “convinced Moody. ‘I will go before the -grand jury when it meets next month and ask for an indictment against -Long,’ Moody told us.... That conversation was held on September 7.” - -This was the very day on which, in the course of a round of golf, Huey -Long confided to Seymour Weiss not only that enough cash and other -campaign material was in hand to finance his presidential race, but that -all this accumulation had been removed from the safety-deposit box -he--Long--had rented under his own name in the Riggs National Bank in -Washington. - -It must not be forgotten that Long too had a highly proficient -intelligence service, and that therefore he was beyond question well -aware that the T-men were busily seeking evidence to be used against -him. He knew who their operatives in Louisiana were, where their -headquarters office in the Masonic Temple Building was, and in general, -exactly how the Irey unit functioned. He had no illusions about their -knowledge of his Riggs Bank safety-deposit box. He knew how they had -traced such depositories in other cases, and also that, in the past, -variations of “this money does not belong to me, it is merely the -political campaign (etc., etc.) fund of our association” had proved to -be no valid defense. - -Whether or not that is why he stripped the Riggs Bank box of its -contents no one can say. But it is certain that if Long had lived, and -Dan Moody had impounded the contents of this box for evidence of -unreported income, he would have made a water haul.... The T-men brought -to trial only one other of the indictments pending against Long bigwigs; -they considered it their strongest case, but the jurors found the -defendant “not guilty.” It was not until the government filed charges of -using the mails to defraud that convictions were obtained some three or -four years later. - -What it all came down to is this: the apparently impregnable political -structure created by Huey Long, and the hard-and-fast line of cleavage -that separated Long from anti-Long while the Kingfish was present to -maintain his dictatorial hold on all phases of his organization, began -to disintegrate at 4:06 A.M. of September 10, 1935. As is almost -invariably the case, the dictatorship died with the dictator. After the -Leche landslide majority of 1936 the governor-designate epitomized the -result rather ruefully by observing: - -“They didn’t vote for or against a live governor; only for or against a -dead senator.” - -Today the Long faction, what there is of it, is just another loosely -knit political coalition. The number of those who still recall the -self-anointed Kingfish of the Lodge becomes smaller with each passing -day.... In the spring of 1962 Johnny Carson, then a television -quizmaster, asked a couple of contestants on his “Who Do You Trust?” -program this question: - -“What statesman who was elected governor in 1928, was assassinated at -Baton Rouge in 1935?” - -The two contestants, who had otherwise proved themselves reasonably well -informed, simply looked blank. Neither of them could give the answer. - -Before many more years have gone by, Huey Pierce Long will be just -another vague figure out of a history text, and there will no longer be -any disputes about the architect of his assassination, the manner in -which it was carried out, or the motives that prompted it. But in the -meantime---- - - - - -12 ---- SUMMATION - - “_One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels._” - - ----WOODROW WILSON - - -The various versions of “what really happened” during the assassination -of Huey Long can be grouped into four general classes under some such -headings as the following: - - Dr. Weiss, unarmed, entered the capitol and merely struck at Long, - being gunned down at once by the bodyguards, one of whose wild shots - inflicted a mortal wound on the man they were seeking to defend. - - Dr. Weiss was armed, did fire one shot which missed its target. In the - ensuing fusillade which riddled the young physician’s body, a wild - shot inflicted on Long a wound which proved fatal. - - The small-caliber bullet from Weiss’s weapon did not pass completely - through its victim’s body, and was never found, being buried with him. - The fatal bullet, a ricochet or stray shot from the gun of a - bodyguard, was the missile that emerged from Long’s body in the back, - creasing the kidney in its passage and initiating what later proved to - be a fatal hemorrhage. - - Dr. Weiss’s small-caliber weapon fired the only shot which struck Huey - Long, passing through the right side of the abdomen, and injuring the - right kidney just before emerging at the back. It is possible that - surgery to remove this kidney, rather than the frontal laparotomy - which was performed, might have halted the fatal hemorrhage and thus - have saved Long’s life. - -Taking these up individually and in sequence, it becomes a relatively -simple matter to dispose of the first assumption. This rests on the -undeniable fact that Senator Long’s lower lip bore an abrasion on its -outer surface, and a small cut inside of his mouth; also on the -statement of one nurse who is quoted as saying she heard the patient say -in the hospital: “He hit me.” - -But there is abundant evidence to support the belief that if this bruise -was the result of a blow, it was not struck by Dr. Weiss. There is, for -one thing, the testimony of Sheriff Coleman, that he struck at Senator -Long’s assailant twice, that the first blow missed the assassin and -struck someone else, and that the second felled Weiss, who by that time -was grappling with Murphy Roden. - -There is likewise the statement of the first physician to examine the -gravely wounded man at the hospital, when Judge O’Connor voiced the -belief that Long had been shot in the mouth because of the bloody -spittle that stained his clothing. After an examination the young doctor -declared “that is just where he hit himself against something.” - -There is the unanimous testimony of Justice Fournet, Sheriff Coleman, -and Murphy Roden that the assailant later identified as Dr. Weiss did -have “a small black pistol” and did fire it, as well as the testimony of -Frampton, Justice Fournet, and Coleman that this pistol was lying a few -inches from Dr. Weiss’s lifeless hand immediately after the shooting. - -But above all, the belief that the young physician was unarmed and -merely struck Long with his fist is proved fallacious by one -circumstance: the identity of the bullet-riddled body on the floor of -the corridor where the shooting took place was not established until -long after the weapon was found, in fact, not until the coroner arrived -and examined the contents of the dead man’s wallet. - -It goes without saying that if Dr. Weiss came unarmed to the capitol, -some other person must have brought his gun there from the car where his -father testified he carried it. The argument is advanced that this was -done by a bodyguard, a highway patrolman, or an officer of the state -bureau of identification, to direct suspicion away from the “fact” that -a wild shot from one of the bodyguards was the only missile that -inflicted a mortal wound on Long. - -But this presupposes that those who could not identify a riddled body on -the marble floor of a capitol corridor were none the less able to pick -out the slain man’s automobile from among the hundreds, possibly -thousands, of cars parked on the capitol grounds and along every nearby -street, search it for a weapon, and place that weapon surreptitiously -where it was picked up by the authorities moments after the shooting. -This so far transcends even the most remote possibility, that any -version based on the assumption that Weiss, unarmed, merely struck at -Long with his fist, can be discarded out of hand. - -The second category includes all versions of the proposition that Carl -Weiss did fire one shot, but missed. There is even one account which -holds that, at the time, Long was wearing a bullet-proof vest which -Weiss’s small-caliber bullet could not penetrate. - -Everyone who knew Huey Long well, who traveled with him on his campaign -tours, stopped at the same hotels with him, and so on, can testify to -the fact that he was never known to wear a bullet-proof vest. He -surrounded himself with armed guards wherever he went; a cadre of -militiamen in full uniform, with steel helmets and side arms, -accompanied him to the washroom in what is now the building of the -National Bank of Commerce while he was conducting one of his murder-plot -probes there. But he wore no armor. - -Of my own knowledge I can testify that I have seen him in his suites at -the Roosevelt and at the Heidelberg when, after breakfast, he bathed and -dressed for the street, that I have traveled with him during his -campaigns through Louisiana and through Arkansas, that I have been with -him in his home on Audubon Boulevard, and that never, from the day I -first met him in 1919 to the day of his death in 1935, have I known him -to wear anything that remotely resembled a bullet-proof vest. - -But to make assurance doubly sure, I checked this point with Earle -Christenberry and with Seymour Weiss, his two closest friends. - -“I can’t imagine how that story got about,” Christenberry said, “but I -know exactly on what it must be based. About six months before Huey died -I got the bright idea that it would be a smart thing for him, when he -went out stumping the country in the approaching presidential campaign, -to wear a bullet-proof vest. So without saying a word to him about it, I -wrote to Elliott Wisbrod in Chicago, a manufacturer of such equipment, -and asked that a vest of this type be sent to me for the Senator’s -approval. - -“The thing was delivered in due course, and I put it on and went to his -room and showed it to him, and suggested that on occasion it might be -wise to wear it as a protection against some unpredictable attack. He -told me to send the damn thing back, adding ‘it would be ridiculous for -me to wear it. I don’t need no goddam bullet-proof vest.’ So I sent it -back and that was the end of it. - -“I have never spoken about this incident from that day to this. I didn’t -think another soul knew about it. But evidently the story must have -leaked out somewhere; from the manufacturers, I suppose. At any rate, I -was the one that wore the bullet-proof vest, one day for a few minutes. -He never did in all his life.” - -Seymour Weiss, the sartorial mentor who weaned Long away from the flashy -clothes in which he first came to public notice, put it more succinctly. - -“Huey wouldn’t have known what a bullet-proof vest looked like,” he -said. - -Other aspects of the available evidence cover not merely the category of -stories about Weiss’s bullet missing its target, being deflected by a -bullet-proof vest, etc., but the next category as well. This embraces -what is far and away the most widely believed and oft repeated version -of what took place. It holds that a bullet from the gun of a bodyguard -inflicted the mortal wound of whose effects Huey Long died, even though -Dr. Weiss’s small-caliber missile likewise struck him. - -Three points are the ones most frequently stressed by those who cling to -this theory. - -The first is that “no small-caliber bullet was ever found.” This has -been interpreted to mean that the Weiss bullet was still in Long’s body -and, no autopsy being authorized, was buried with him. There is general -agreement on one point. The fatal injury was sustained near the wound of -exit, in the region of the right kidney. It was there that a continuing -hemorrhage was the immediate cause of death. - -The argument runs that Weiss’s bullet of small caliber never having been -found, and therefore remaining in the body of the victim, the wound of -exit must have been made by some other bullet. No other bullet was fired -by anyone except the bodyguards, who discharged a wild barrage of pistol -fire which left the body of Dr. Weiss riddled with wounds, and pocked -the marble walls of the corridor with bullet scars which for years -official guides pointed out to visitors touring the capitol. The injury -near the point of exit was the only demonstrably fatal one; ergo, a -bodyguard’s bullet killed Long. - -The view that the Kingfish perished from the effects of a bullet-wound -inflicted by one of his own guards also had a certain superficial -plausibility that appealed strongly to dedicated leaders of anti-Long -factionalism and their followers. It carried with it an overtone of -Matthew’s “All-they-that-take-the-sword-shall-perish-with-the-sword” -retributive justice. Finally it was labored in season and out by the -Home Rule campaign speakers who sought to rid themselves of the -Assassination Ticket stigma by proving that Long had died at the hands -of one of his own men. - -It would be difficult to overestimate the fashion in which all this -tended to perpetuate what began as a campaign legend. For example, Elmer -Irey, whose career as postal inspector and finally chief of the Treasury -Department’s Intelligence Division spanned more than a generation, -assuredly must be accounted a professional in the realm of gathering, -sifting, and assaying evidence. Yet in his book he reports that---- - -“Weiss had a .22 calibre pistol in his hand when Long’s bodyguards mowed -him down. Long died as the result of a single bullet wound made by a .45 -calibre slug. Nobody has explained that yet.” - -To cite still another instance, I happened to meet both Isaac Don Levine -(author of, among other works, _The Mind of an Assassin_) and Dr. Alton -Ochsner at a medical gathering some years ago, not long after Dr. -Vidrine’s death. The talk turned on the events of the night when Huey -Long died. - -“Why, I always thought it was a bodyguard, not Dr. Weiss, who killed -Long!” exclaimed Levine. When I spoke of some of the contradictions to -which this view was open, Dr. Ochsner expressed amazed disbelief that -any presumably informed person could entertain the slightest doubt that -Long’s death was due to a bodyguard’s bullet or bullets. - -And yet the weight of all real evidence is wholly against this -hypothesis; so much so, in fact, that it is difficult to select a point -of approach to it. For a beginning, then, one must take into account the -“small, blue punctures” a bullet left on Huey Long’s body as the mark of -its passage. Only one photograph of Dr. Weiss’s body was ever taken. The -official photographer of the State Bureau of Identification made this -picture, which has never before been published. It shows the great -gaping wounds left on his torso by the .44- and .45-caliber bullets of -those who fired into his already lifeless body. Most of the -large-caliber cartridges also carried hollow-point bullets, which have a -mushrooming effect. (Cf. Murphy Roden’s “I saw the flesh open up,” when -he fired into Weiss’s throat as they were locked in a fierce struggle on -the corridor floor.) - -Granted that a wildly ricocheting bullet from one of these guns could -have entered into the same wound made by Dr. Weiss’s small-caliber -bullet, unlikely as this may seem, it could by no stretch of the long -arm of coincidence have made its exit as a small bluish puncture. Even -if it alone caused the wound of exit, leaving a small bullet still in -the body of its victim, the point at which it plowed its way out of -Long’s back would have been a gaping orifice and not, as Thomas Davis -graphically described it, “so small I doubt we’d have seen it had it not -been pointed out to us.” - -Another fact not to be overlooked is that the moment Dr. Rives saw the -clean dressing that had been placed over the wound and the operational -incision in the anterior wall of Long’s abdomen, he came to the -conclusion that any bullet entering at that point in the manner -described, most probably emerged in the area of the kidney, and was -likely to have damaged that organ. It was for this reason that he asked -whether any blood had been found in the patient’s urine, learning to his -astonishment that the critically wounded man had not even been -catheterized to determine the existence and extent of kidney damage. - -The visible abdominal trauma disclosed by the Vidrine operation was -small; so small that only a small-caliber bullet could have caused it. -Two holes had been left in the large bowel at the bend where it turns -horizontally across the abdomen from right to left. These holes were so -small that there was “very little soilage.” Reports that when the -abdomen was opened by Vidrine it was “a mass of blood and fecal matter” -were simply fabrications into which a minute fragment of fact was -expanded, like some of Huey Long’s murder-plot charges. - -Finally, the available evidence is conclusive in one respect: By the -time the bodyguard fusillade began, Huey Long had fled the corridor -where the shooting took place. Coleman, Frampton, and Fournet are -unanimous on that point. Roden, blinded by the searing muzzle blasts of -his comrades’ guns, could no longer see what was going on, but testifies -that the other guards waited until he had struggled to his knees from -beneath the lifeless body of Carl Weiss, before they started their -volley. O’Connor describes how the firing was still audible after Huey -had reeled down four short flights of steps and was being led out of a -ground-floor door into the porte-cochere. - -In sum, every item of credible evidence--surgical, circumstantial, and -the testimony of eyewitnesses--indicates that Huey Long could not have -been struck by a bullet from the gun of one of his bodyguards. That -leaves but one other conceivable hypothesis, namely: Huey Long died of -the effects of a bullet wound inflicted by Carl Weiss and no one else. - -Disregarding the physical circumstances, an intangible consideration -virtually compels the acceptance of this view. We have in the testimony -of all the eyewitnesses a substantial agreement on what took place. -Roden, Fournet, and Coleman saw the gun in Weiss’s hand and saw him fire -it. Frampton, Coleman, and Fournet saw and describe Long’s flight before -the crashing salvo by the other bodyguards began. - -Their stories differ in detail. Frampton says Huey gave “a sort of a -grunt” when he was shot; Justice Fournet describes it as “a hoot.” He -also says the first shot was fired by Weiss, the next three by Coleman; -Roden says the first two shots were fired by Weiss, the third by -himself, and the fourth by someone else (obviously Coleman). Coleman -says Huey was attended by Roden, McQuiston, and himself on his final -visit to the House chamber, Fournet says he was accompanied by Messina, -and Frampton reports that Messina answered the telephone in the office -of the sergeant at arms, which opens off the Speaker’s rostrum and is -entirely separate from the House chamber. - -These discrepancies are natural; only the absence of such variations -would lay the testimony of witnesses to a violent incident open to the -suspicion, nay the certainty, of collusion. Take for example the three -mutually contradictory versions of what happened when the two -principals, Roden and Weiss, locked in literally a life-and-death -grapple, fell struggling to the floor. Roden says his hard heels slipped -on the marble paving; Justice Fournet says he threw out his hands in a -gesture that overbalanced the two; Coleman says a blow of his fist -felled Weiss, who, clasped in Roden’s grip, pulled the latter down -beneath him. - -But on the main point--namely, that the two fell to the floor, and that -Weiss was not killed until after they were down--all are in complete -agreement. If it is assumed that this is a concocted story, made up to -divert suspicion from one or more of the bodyguards as having fired so -wildly that one of their bullets brought about their leader’s death, the -following must likewise be accepted as true: - -Somewhere and sometime before the first of these four witnesses told -what he saw, all of them would have had to agree on the specific -untruths they would tell. - -But at no time was there any opportunity during those initial frantic -moments for the four to have met, either to concoct and agree on a false -story or for any other purpose. Indeed, Frampton was already telephoning -his first story of what had occurred, while the others are all accounted -for elsewhere: Coleman describing to Governor Allen what he had seen, -Justice Fournet in the hospital, Roden out of action and temporarily -blinded until taken to the hospital himself by Ty Campbell. - -Furthermore, after treatment, and not having spoken to any others in the -meantime, Roden gave his statement that night to General Guerre, and -later to General Fleming. These accounts agreed in almost every detail -with one another and with the one he gave me, twenty-four years later, -in the presence of Generals Fleming and Guerre, who verified that this -statement differed in no essential respect from what he had told them at -the scene when questioned by them on the night of September 8, 1935. - -Except for one detail, it also agrees with the testimony he gave on -September 16 of that same year, at the Odom inquest. It was his belief -at first that Dr. Weiss fired but once. However, mulling the violent -images of that night over in his mind, he later came to the conclusion -that the doctor fired twice; this, incidentally, is the only conclusion -that would square with the two minor injuries he sustained on his right -hand and left wrist. - -In any case, the possibility of conspiratorial collusion among these -four in time to have agreed on a falsified account of what took place -before their eyes, would appear to be ruled out in its entirety. The -inevitable corollary of such a proposition is that the otherwise -uncontradicted testimony of these four witnesses is a factual account -of what took place. - -None the less, one cannot dismiss out of hand the possibility, however -remote, that evidence can be framed, as it has been in documented -cases--Sacco-Vanzetti, Tom Moony, Leo M. Frank; and that circumstantial -evidence, even where no single link in the chain appears weak, leads now -and then to false conclusions. But it can be said that in this instance -the overwhelming weight of available evidence indicates that Weiss’s -bullet was the cause of Huey Long’s death, and that no bullet from the -guns of one or another of his bodyguards was a contributing factor in -putting an end to his career. - -The available evidence likewise appears to indicate beyond a reasonable -doubt that the emergency operation was a contributing cause of death in -the following respect: - -Had a decision to perform a frontal laparotomy been deferred, and had in -its stead a removal of the damaged right kidney made possible the tying -off of the blood vessels supplying this organ to halt the hemorrhage -that was draining off the victim’s life blood, Huey Long might none the -less have died of peritonitis, from “soilage” into the abdominal cavity -by the two small punctures of the large bowel. - -But once the decision to operate from the front was carried into effect, -the only door to possible--by no means “certain,” but possible--recovery -was irrevocably closed. Even Dr. Vidrine realized that a second -operation to halt the kidney hemorrhage was something his patient could -not survive. - -By way of conclusion it is logical to say that on the basis of available -testimony and with due regard for the imminence of human error, the -following facts appear to be established by the overwhelming -preponderance of evidence: - -Dr. Weiss was armed when he went into the capitol building on the night -of September 8, 1935, carrying with him the small-caliber Belgian -automatic he had brought back from France and which he customarily took -with him in his car on night calls. - -According to the integrated testimony of four eyewitnesses who had no -opportunity for collusion prior to giving their accounts of what they -saw, he held the gun in one hand, concealing it with the straw hat he -held in the other, so that it was virtually impossible for him to have -struck a blow with his fist. - -Every trustworthy piece of testimony appears to make it clear that only -four shots were fired while Huey Long was on the scene: two by Weiss, -one each by Roden and Coleman; that by the time the general bodyguard -fusillade began, the Senator was already on his way down a flight of -stairs opposite the Western Union office, which is around a corner from -the site of the shooting; and that the fusillade was still in progress -while Long was being led out of the building by Judge O’Connor. - -Medical testimony is unanimous on the point that only one bullet, and -that one of small caliber, traversed Long’s abdomen, leaving small blue -punctures at the points of entry and exit; that the primarily fatal -injury was caused when, just prior to its exit, the bullet damaged the -victim’s right kidney at a point where only removal of the maimed organ -could have halted the ensuing and ultimately fatal hemorrhage. - -Granted then, if only for the sake of argument, that there no longer is -either mystery or even reasonable doubt concerning _who_ killed Huey -Long, one big, crucial question remains unanswered. It is this: - -“_Why?_” - - - - -13 ---- THE MOTIVE - - “_Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient - premises._” - - ----SAMUEL BUTLER - - -The difficulty encountered when seeking to rationalize the assassination -of Huey Long is implicit in two circumstances. The first is the total -absence of fact or testimony about the motive for it, so that -conclusions are necessarily based on surmise. - -The second is the apparently irreconcilable disparity between the known -nature of Carl Weiss, the man, and the obvious nature of his act. Why -would someone whose closest personal and professional associates -unhesitatingly declare him to have been incapable of any dark deed of -violence commit a murder by shooting down an unsuspecting victim as if -from ambush? What could conceivably account for the metamorphosis of a -mild, retiring young man, happily married and fulfilled in the birth of -a dearly beloved son, into an indomitably resolute killer, ready to -sacrifice his own life, rich with promise, in order to take the life of -another? - -In this instance the problem is not merely one of drawing sufficient -conclusions from insufficient premises. Conclusions must be drawn from -_two_ mutually contradictory sets of insufficient premises. - -Barry O’Meara, the Irish ship’s surgeon aboard the vessel that brought -Napoleon to St. Helena, volunteered to remain there with him, but was -one of the first to be deported when Sir Hudson Lowe subsequently took -over the governorship of the island. He was one of the fallen emperor’s -few confidants during the desolate days of that terminal exile. In his -memoirs of their association he quoted Napoleon as saying: - -“A man is known by his conduct to his wife, to his family, and to those -under him.” - -The members of Carl Weiss’s family are still not convinced, or at least -are still unwilling to admit, that he took Long’s life. The nurses who -were his principal subordinates, and many of whom still survive, looked -on him not merely as a physician, but as a teacher. To this day they -agree he could not have done what all available evidence conclusively -proves that he did. - -Miss Theoda Carriere, the first registered nurse called to attend -Senator Long after the shooting, now lives in a piny woods retreat near -Amite. “Dr. Weiss just wasn’t the kind of person who would do a thing -like that,” she insists. “He taught us chemistry when we were in -training, and every girl in our class looked on him as one of the -gentlest and kindest of men. None of us believe he was the one who shot -Long.” - -Admittedly, Dr. Chester A. Williams, Jr., the present coroner of East -Baton Rouge parish, cannot be regarded as a Long partisan. It was he who -pronounced Earl Long insane in 1959 while the latter was still governor, -and committed him to a mental institution. Yet he set down the following -restrained obiter dictum after transcribing and studying the microfilmed -hospital chart of Huey Long’s final hours: - -“Most of the doctors who lived in Baton Rouge and are still living do -not feel that Dr. Weiss shot Long.” - -In a strictly technical sense, only Carl Weiss himself, his lips -irrevocably sealed within seconds after he did what “his family and -those under him,” not to mention his professional associates, still -regard him as incapable of doing, could have given a conclusive solution -to this paradox. - -Since that is out of the question, the best that can now be done is to -list the various possible motives which either have been or could be -considered as impelling Dr. Weiss to sacrifice his own life in order to -put an end to that of Huey Long. From the roster thus compiled, the -obviously impossible and then the logically infirm assumptions can be -eliminated one by one, to see whether any hypothesis which might fit -such of the facts as are ascertainable will withstand searching -scrutiny. - -Four motives have been or can be imputed to Dr. Weiss in connection with -the shooting of Long. They are: - - The young physician was the executioner chosen by a group of plotters - in a cabal of which he was a member, to carry out the death sentence - there secretly decreed against an otherwise invincible political - oppressor. - - The assassination was an act of reprisal for the gerrymander which - would bring to an abrupt end the twenty-eight-year judicial career of - Yvonne Weiss’s father through a fraudulent mockery of legislative - procedure deliberately rigged to deny the parish of St. Landry the - free exercise of home rule. - - An abstract idealism inspired a quixotic young patriot to sacrifice - himself on the altar of the common weal by destroying a dictatorship - through the death of the autocrat who stood at its head. - - Haunted by anxiety born of a suspicion that, in campaigning against - Judge Pavy, Long would raise the specter of an all-but-forgotten and - long since refuted racial slur against the Pavy family, Dr. Weiss paid - with his life for the assurance that libelous words resurrecting the - false stigma would never be uttered. - -The first of these four propositions can be given short shrift. The -Senate speech in which Long sought to implicate the Roosevelt -administration, and in effect President Roosevelt himself, in a “plan of -robbery, murder, blackmail, or theft” was the latest of several -revelations charging others with plotting his murder. It happened also -to be the last one because within a month after making this charge in -the Senate, he was assassinated. - -But significant factors must not be overlooked. The first is that after -none of these spectacular accusations of murder plots was anyone ever -formally charged before any court with conspiracy to commit murder. - -The second is the undeniable fact that the so-called murder conference -in the De Soto Hotel was neither more nor less than a political caucus -of the type customarily held behind closed doors in order to facilitate -full freedom of discussion about personalities, political prospects, and -the like. - -The third is that when all the verbiage about patronage plums and job -distribution and endorsement of candidacies is sifted for substance, a -pitiably small modicum of grain is recovered from a mountain of chaff. -Here are the only specific references to the infliction of bodily harm -by those hotel conferees actually quoted by Long in his Senate speech: - -Oscar Whilden is reported as saying: “I am out to murder, bulldoze, -steal, or anything else to win this election.” An unidentified voice -said: “I would draw in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would only -take one man, one gun, one bullet.” Another unidentified voice said: “I -haven’t the slightest doubt but that Roosevelt would pardon anyone who -killed Long.” And still another unidentified voice said: “The best way -would be to just hang around Washington and kill him in the Senate.” - -These four remarks were sandwiched in among two days of political -discussion about an approaching state campaign, the selection of -candidates, the use of federal patronage, and matters of that sort! By -way of illustration, a remark in a recent magazine article about another -Louisiana representative, Congressman Otto Passman, would offer a much -firmer foundation for a conspiracy charge along the lines followed by -Long. - -Passman has dedicated himself, in season and out, to opposing and -reducing foreign-aid appropriations, and President Kennedy is quoted as -asking at the signing ceremony of one of these bills: “What am I going -to do about Passman?” - -“Mr. President,” a bystander is reported as replying, “you’re surrounded -by a lot of well-armed Secret Service Men. Why don’t you have one of -them shoot him--by accident, of course? In fact, Mr. President, if you -promise me immunity, I’ll do it myself.” - -No one who read that statement took it in its literal sense; no one -regarded it as a serious proposal to authorize, commit, and condone the -murder of a legislator. Yet that is precisely the construction Huey Long -put on four similar remarks made at intervals during a two-day caucus in -a New Orleans hotel. - -All this would tend to cast doubts upon the complicity of Carl Weiss in -a murder conspiracy, even had he been the sort of person to whom a deed -involving assassination would normally have been possible. However, what -removes the assumption that he was the chosen executioner of a political -camarilla from serious consideration is this: - -Carl Weiss was virtually unknown outside of his immediate professional, -social, and familial circle. Not one of the leading supposed “plotters” -of the hotel conference spoke of him during that meeting, none of the -leaders who were asked about him later could recall having heard of him, -although his wife’s father and uncle were known to virtually all of -them. - -In sum, the hotel meeting of which Long sought to make great capital -was not a murder conference, and no one dreamed of bringing to book on -charges of criminal conspiracy any of those who took part in it; and -even had it been such a conspiracy, the name of Carl Weiss was not even -remotely connected with it. - -The second proposition would have it that Carl Weiss assassinated Long -in reprisal for what the latter was doing to Yvonne’s father by having -him gerrymandered out of office, and virtually out of public life. There -are those who go so far as to say that Yvonne goaded her young husband -into exacting satisfaction from the despot who was persecuting her -family, who had brought about the dismissal of her uncle Paul from a -school superintendency, and of her sister Marie from a position as -teacher, and who was now implacably going to any lengths to close her -father’s long and honorable career as judge. - -The whole idea of such a reprisal motive runs directly counter to every -fact known about the way the Weiss families passed that last Sunday: the -young couple leaving the baby with their elders while they attended -Mass, the family dinner at which the gerrymander was indeed the topic of -conversation, but in a light, rather jocular vein; the young couple -“sporting in the water” at the elders’ camp in the afternoon, while the -latter fondled their precious grandson, the domestic routine that -preceded Carl’s departure for a professional call.... - -As nearly as anything human can be certain, it is sure that neither Dr. -Weiss nor any of the Pavy clan would ever have dreamed of taking upon -their consciences the killing of a fellow being, even in the heat of -passion, over such a matter as the loss of a public office, a -development they had discussed almost jocularly only a few hours before. - -Only two theoretical assumptions thus remain as to the motive of Dr. -Weiss in committing a violent act contrary to all that was known of his -nature. One is the idea advanced by Yvonne’s uncle, Dr. Pavy, that this -was “an act of pure patriotism.” In 1935, when Dr. Pavy served as -spokesman for the Weiss family, he felt that his niece’s husband was -deeply troubled by “the suppressive type of government” that had been -imposed on Louisiana; that he brooded over this until “his mind -unhinged,” and he determined to put an end to the dictatorship even at -the cost of his life. - -Supporting this view are certain plausible factors. Carl Weiss was -indeed an idealist of the type who might voluntarily have sacrificed his -life in the furtherance of any noble cause, such as the liberation of -his community from the thralldom imposed upon it by a ruthless -authoritarian. Negating this view, however, is the fact that he took no -active part in politics, though at that time Baton Rouge, his home, was -the focal point of fiercely contested Long and anti-Long rivalry. - -It is simply not conceivable, in the general sense of that word, that -anyone so deeply and earnestly concerned with “pure patriotism” should -not have been known to a single member of the press gallery at the -capitol, to a single member of the State Bureau of Identification, to so -well known a leader of the anti-Long movement in Baton Rouge as Dr. Tom -Bird--a fellow physician--and above all, to Huey Long himself, a man -whose memory for names and faces was truly phenomenal. - -While Carl Weiss could well have been a crusader for any idealistic -cause, it is difficult to accept unreservedly the proposition that one -who had so very much to live for, whose happiness was so nearly -complete, the best and most rewarding years of whose life still lay in -the future, would give up all this and burden his conscience with two -mortal sins--murder and what was tantamount to self-destruction--for an -abstract concept of the general good. - -It would seem almost self-evident that no man would voluntarily make -such a sacrifice except in seeking to protect from harm those whom he -held dear. - -And there must have been some such motive in the haunting suspicion -that, while campaigning against Judge Pavy, Huey Long would revive that -long-buried, long-refuted tarbrush bugaboo which had been brought up -unsuccessfully as involving one of Judge Pavy’s relatives-in-law thirty -years before. - -In view of Long’s past obsession with racial issues of this sort, Carl -Weiss had good grounds for apprehension on that score. In past campaigns -and polemics Long had never hesitated to use such innuendos, as when he -referred to a prominent Orleanian as “Kinky” Soandso in issue after -issue of his weekly newspaper, _The American Progress_. Nor had he -hesitated to make direct attacks on this front, as in his campaigns -against Dudley LeBlanc in the matter of the latter’s Negro fellow -officers of his burial-insurance society. - -In his fancy the young physician could readily imagine Long’s insistence -that “this isn’t what I’m saying; I’m not even a-saying it’s so. All I’m -telling you is this is what Sheriff Swords said time after time....” - -If Long, true to form, had made up his mind to drag this rejected canard -back into the open, there was one sure way in which Dr. Weiss could keep -him from his purpose and prevent a single syllable of that baseless and -forgotten slander from being uttered. True, he could accomplish this -only at the cost of his life. Surrounded as the Kingfish was by heavily -armed guards, anyone who attacked him, even though he cut him down with -the first shot, was sure to die himself, in the next instant, under a -rain of bullets. Carl Weiss “just wasn’t the sort of person that would -ever do a thing like that,” for any ordinary motive. But to shield the -wife he adored and the infant son he idolized from a slander, groundless -though it be, that would impute to them by innuendo a remote trace of -Negro blood, he could--and in the opinion of many he did--lay down his -life. - -In that case, the real tragedy inherent in his act was not the sacrifice -of his own future, so rich with promise, nor even the extinction of Huey -Long, one of the most notable, challenging, and controversial figures in -the public life of his era. Unschooled in the labyrinthine windings and -turnings of politics in general and more particularly the ins and outs -of Louisiana’s politics during that hectic era, Dr. Weiss had no -intimation of the fact that nothing could have been farther from Huey -Long’s plans than raising any racial issue at this time. - -He did not know that Long was preparing to challenge Franklin -Roosevelt’s bid for re-election by running against him for the -presidency; that he was no longer campaigning merely in the Deep South -where Negroes, disfranchised ever since the final rout of carpetbaggery -in the 1870s, were kept from the polls first by force, then by the -Grandfather Clause, and after that by the Understanding Clause, but -above all by the one-party device of settling campaigns not at a general -election but in a Democratic (i.e., white) primary. - -Running for office as the nominee of what in all likelihood would have -been a new coalition party--the Share-Our-Wealthers?--Louisiana’s -Kingfish would need all the minority-group votes he could attract to his -standard. Primarily this meant the heavy Negro vote of Harlem in New -York, Chicago’s black-and-tan belt, and other such concentrations in -Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, and so on. - -Looking forward, planning far ahead, he had already begun to rid himself -of the “racist” label customarily applied to every far-Southern -politician. As an initial step he abolished the poll tax in Louisiana, -issuing poll certificates free to all applicants, regardless of color, -provided they could meet the age and residential requirements. - -True, this was quite meaningless insofar as enfranchising the Louisiana -Negroes went. The law provided that no one would be permitted to -register or to vote unless he could show poll-tax receipts (or later, -free poll certificates) for each of the two years directly preceding any -given election. Its intent was primarily to keep floaters from being -brought into the state from Mississippi or other adjacent areas, on -election day. But this was by no means the only prerequisite for voting. -One must also be registered, each parish registrar being the sole -arbiter as to whether the applicant had correctly interpreted a section -of the state or federal constitutions. - -In theory the Democratic Party was a private organization, like the -Fifth Ward Athletic Guild, and could thus choose its members at -pleasure, excluding whom it wished not to admit. Coupled with this was -an unwritten agreement to settle political differences not between -parties, but between factions of the Democratic Party, with all hands -pledged to support the Democratic nominee in the ensuing general -election, even if that nominee “happens to be a yellow dog!” - -Abolition of the poll tax did nothing to alter this situation, which -obtained until the Supreme Court invalidated it, many years after Long’s -death. None the less, Negroes queued up by the thousands and treasured -the essentially worthless but to them invaluable slips of paper -officially issued to them. - -The next step was Huey’s Share-Our-Wealth promise that this movement -would recognize no racial bars of any sort, that the division of shared -wealth would include black as well as white on equal terms. “Five -thousand a year and a span of mules,” the poor and underprivileged of -both races told one another ecstatically. “With what I’m making now and -the five thousand Huey Long’s going to give us, we’ll be in high cotton -for true!” - -The final step would have been some sort of a second Emancipation -Proclamation, issued as a campaign document to a mammoth 1936 -Share-Our-Wealth convention to be held in Detroit, or possibly St. -Louis. The unmistakable augury of this was Huey Long’s published apology -during the summer of 1935 for having used the word _nigger_ in the -course of a national network broadcast. A “race” tabloid, referring to -the word he had used as “the epithet n----r,” sent a reporter to him in -his suite at the New Yorker Hotel, and published the ensuing interview -under a two-column headline on its front page. In his statement Long -made it plain his use of “the epithet n----r” was a slip of the tongue, -and was not meant to be derogatory in a racial sense; also that he would -exercise due care not to use the epithet again in either public or -private speech. - -It is all but impossible to convey to non-Southerners how radical a -departure from the _mores_ of Winn parish in central Louisiana was this -sort of retraction. Efforts were made to use the interview as an -anti-Long campaign document. Facsimiles of the front page of the Negro -tabloid were printed by some of the rural weeklies, but it didn’t work. -The Negro Share-Our-Wealthers throughout the land rejoiced. The whites -in the organization shrugged it aside as fabricated anti-Long propaganda -inspired by “the interests” or passed it off with: “As long as I get my -five thousand a year, what difference does it make who else gets it -too?” - -It should not be overlooked that in the case of Judge Pavy, Long needed -no resort to ancient libels to accomplish his longtime opponent’s -defeat. The gerrymander would make it impossible for Ben Pavy to be -re-elected. Long would take the stump against him, of course, in order -to claim the foreordained victory as another personal triumph; but once -St. Landry parish was put into the same judicial district with Acadia, -Lafayette, and Vermillion parishes, even the slightest possibility of a -Pavy election was precluded. Huey Long would no more have gone to -needless lengths to win an already certain victory at the risk of -alienating any large section of the prospective Negro presidential vote -than he would have belabored a dying horse at an S.P.C.A. picnic in an -effort to make the animal run. - -Taking all the foregoing into account, it would seem clearly impossible -to accept either the hypothesis that Carl Weiss, Jr., was the chosen -instrument of a political murder cabal to whose membership he was almost -wholly unknown, or the proposition that his was a nature sufficiently -ruthless to take the life of a fellow being in reprisal for the loss of -a long-held political office by his wife’s father. - -As concerns the idea that Dr. Weiss was motivated by the “pure -patriotism” ascribed to him by his wife’s uncle, Dr. Pavy, there can be -little doubt that this was possible. But it is also not to be doubted -that there is a basis beyond parental affection for the elder Dr. -Weiss’s statement at the inquest into his son’s death that “my son was -too superbly happy with his wife and child, too much in love with them -to want to end his life after such a murder.” - -On the other hand, no such contradiction is an integral part of the -hypothesis that he made this sacrifice to shield his wife and his son -from exposure to groundless odium. This would appear to be the only -assumption in full accord with all the known circumstances, even though -Dr. Weiss’s belief that Huey Long would exhume a long-buried slander -reflecting on his loved ones was tragically erroneous. - -On the basis of the situation as he saw and understood it, the only way -to safeguard them was to silence Long before he could utter the libel. -If the only price at which this assurance could be purchased was the -forfeit of his own life, the compulsive paternal urge to protect his -beloved baby son might well be strong enough to overcome every -inhibition that was normally part of his character and background. He -took no one into his confidence, realizing that anyone to whom he -confided would inevitably thwart his plan. Thus we may picture him -leaving to his family the happy memory of an afternoon of carefree -affection, and departing alone to weigh in solitude one factor of the -situation against another, as he understood them. - -Should he thereupon have decided that “this man will never slander my -son as he has slandered others in the past if I can silence him,” we can -only surmise that it was with this thought in mind that he entered the -marble-walled corridor where he died to make certain that some words -Huey Long never intended to utter would remain unsaid. - - - - -EPILOGUE - - “_Finality is not the language of politics._” - - ----DISRAELI - - -To the Huey Long murder case the preceding chapters offer a solution -which fits every determinate fact of what took place in Baton Rouge on -September 8, 1935, everything pertinent that led up to the climactic -moment of violence, and what followed. Yet it goes without saying that -many will reject this rationalization of available evidence. The -arguments will go on and on. - -We are prone to cherish certain myths. As though in wish-fulfillment we -still tell our children Parson Weems’s absurd fable of the boy -Washington, the cherry tree, and “I did it with my little hatchet.” -Similarly, the myth of the bodyguard’s bullet, product of a compulsive -necessity for political escape from the onus of assassination, will -retain adherents and win fresh believers, despite the obvious fact that -wherever else the truth may lie, the bodyguard-bullet hypothesis is -false. - -Paradox remains a continuing footnote to Huey Long’s career. Surrounded -by fanatically loyal bodyguards, he was none the less done to death by a -shy, retiring young stranger in whom neither he nor his myrmidons -recognized any trace of menace. His injuries were critical and might in -any case have proved fatal; but it was a decision on the part of the -same Arthur Vidrine whom Huey Long had elevated to high command which -sealed the Kingfish’s doom. True, the alternative Dr. Vidrine chose was -one many another physician, confronted by the same circumstances, might -have selected inasmuch as mere delay in taking action could have proved -fatal. - -On the other hand, it is not to be disputed that Dr. Vidrine’s decision -to operate by a frontal incision made it impossible for him or any one -else thereafter to save Huey Long’s life. In consequence, he fell under -the ban of the Long faction’s permanent and extreme displeasure. As soon -as he took office in 1936, Governor Leche appointed Dr. George Bel to -the superintendency of Charity Hospital, thus automatically displacing -Vidrine from that position. Within the year, Dr. James Monroe Smith, -president of the State University, speaking for its Board of -Supervisors, notified him that Dr. Rigney D’Aunoy had been made acting -dean of the medical school but that he--Dr. Vidrine--might retain a -place on the faculty as professor of gynecology. - -Rather than accept such a demotion he resigned in August of 1937. -Returning to Ville Platte, he founded a private hospital there, and -maintained it until his retirement in ill health from active practice in -1950. Five years later he died. - -Death also thwarted Long’s design to place the Pavy gerrymander at the -head of what became his last demonstration of dictatorship as the -legislature’s Act Number One. It became Act Number Three, since the -first two were concurrent resolutions, one expressing the grief of House -and Senate over the leader’s untimely end, the other creating a -committee to select a burial place on the capitol grounds for what -remained of his physical presence among them. - - * * * * * - -As for the gerrymander, it never really took effect, though it -automatically became law twenty days after the legislature adjourned. To -be sure, it did provide for an additional judge in a newly enlarged -judicial district, he to be chosen some fourteen months later at the -time of the Congressional election of November 1936. - -But a new legislature, meeting in May 1936, adopted another statute, -superseding this law and reshuffling Louisiana’s judicial districts once -more to add a new one--the twenty-seventh--consisting of St. Landry -parish alone. This act, a constitutional amendment, would not become -operative until ratified by popular vote at the November elections. That -obviously made it impossible to elect a judge at the same time, so the -new bill provided that within thirty days after its ratification, the -governor should _appoint_ a judge for the new district, his term not to -end until that of the judges _elected_ in 1936 should have run its -course. In other words, the appointee would serve for six years. - -Needless to say, the appointee was not Benjamin Pavy. - - * * * * * - -Another facet of the Long paradox is presented by the saint-or-sinner -image which his contemporaries and their successors yet seek to -preserve. Until the Kingfish’s name has lost all popular significance, -debates will be waged over the issue of whether the man was an -uninhibited genius, or merely a conscienceless opportunist endowed with -exceptional mental agility. On this point the testimony of one of the -three brothers Huey so heartily disliked might well shed some light. - -Some days after the fallen leader’s funeral, and while the legislature -was still in session, a number of the Long satraps were gathered in -Governor Allen’s office, lamenting the confusion into which a virtually -leaderless assembly (in the sense of having too many leaders) had -fallen. - -The leitmotiv of the parley held that things weren’t like that in the -good old days when the Kingfish was around to issue orders and see to it -that they were carried out. The conversation finally veered to what a -remarkable thing it was for a little bit of an old town like Winnfield -to have produced a superman like ol’ Huey, especially when you realized -it had never given to the world anyone else of comparable stature. - -Earl Long, himself one of the thus disprized other products of -Winnfield, listened in morose silence for a time to these observations. -Finally he got up, moved to the door, paused, and said: - -“You folks are right, of course. Huey was the only smart one from -Winnfield. No manner of doubt about it.” He scratched his chin -meditatively and then added: “But I’m still here!” - - * * * * * - -On the other hand, those who casually dismiss Long as a conscienceless -political gangster overlook the number of respects in which he was far, -far ahead of his time. It is only since the mid-century’s turn, for -example, that clamor has become general to provide special advanced -training for school children with well-above-normal mentality. Long -proposed a program of this sort for Louisiana State University in his -last broadcast, delivered two nights before he was shot. One of his last -rational statements, expressed only moments before he lapsed into the -drugged stupor from which he never really returned to consciousness, was -a lament that he would be unable to carry out this project. - -He enormously increased Louisiana’s public debt with what proved to be a -remarkably sound system of funding dedicated revenues into bonds, in -order to give the state a highway network geared to the impending -expansion of motorized traffic. In the 1960s the federal government -followed the same line by laying out and constructing a vast system of -interstate super-highways. - -Almost without formal education himself--he never finished high -school--he was like one possessed in his determination to put schooling -within the reach of all by providing free textbooks, free -transportation, free lunches, and the like. The medical school he -founded at Louisiana State University, as though merely to spite Tulane -for not conferring upon him at least one honorary degree, has won a -recognized place as a great center of research and instruction; it fills -what admittedly became a genuine need ... and while today’s income and -inheritance levies do not set arbitrary limits like those proposed by -Long in the early 1930s, the underlying principle of decentralization of -wealth by heavy upper-bracket taxes is basically what he advocated. - -None of this mitigates the heritage of corruption in public life that he -bequeathed to Louisiana, or his ruthlessness, vindictiveness, and other -reprehensible qualities. But he was very far from being merely another -gangster. - - * * * * * - -The fact that the sons of both men whose lives ended so abruptly in -September 1935 followed brilliantly in their fathers’ footsteps may well -be part of this same pattern of paradox. - -Russell Long, only sixteen at the time of his father’s death, enlisted -in the Navy as a seaman during World War II, serving with distinction in -the invasions of Africa, Sicily, and Italy (at Anzio), and advancing -through promotion until he was a lieutenant at the time of his -demobilization in 1945. In the election of January 1948 he supported the -successful gubernatorial race of his uncle, Earl K. Long. In September -of that same year, when Senator John H. Overton died with two years of -his term yet to run, Governor Long supported his nephew for election to -the vacancy. - -He barely won by the slimmest sort of majority. The city of New Orleans -cast a majority of twenty-five thousand votes against him. But he -received much more ponderable support when he ran for the full Senate -term two years later, and a more impressive vote still when he was -re-elected in 1956. Finally, he was swept back into office in 1962 by a -veritable landslide, receiving some 84 per cent of the votes cast. - -In part this was a response to his generally independent stand on both -local and national issues. In 1952, for example, he supported one of his -father’s uncompromising opponents, T. Hale Boggs, for governor against -the candidate backed by his uncle Earl, then nearing the end of his -first term as governor. But four years later he vigorously supported -Earl against Mayor deLesseps Morrison of New Orleans when the latter -made the first of two unsuccessful races for the governorship. - -Beyond doubt, at least part of Russell’s steadily growing strength was -also due to the unmistakable fashion in which he proved himself an -exceptionally able member of the Senate, being one of the first ranking -figures in United States officialdom to recognize in Castro’s rise to -power a sinister portent, and to advocate immediate revision by this -country of the sugar quota to counter the _Fidelista_ drive toward -Communist affiliation. - -Following his sweeping victory in the late summer of 1962, he issued a -modest victory statement in which he said in part: - -“The most striking feature of my [re-election] was the majority recorded -for me in New Orleans. In some of the wards where I had been defeated by -a margin of seven to one fourteen years ago I was given a majority of as -much as six to one. This could never have happened without a lot of -people casting their first vote for a man who bears my family name.... I -shall always appreciate those tolerant and generous persons who have -seen fit to endorse me as the first member of my family to enjoy their -support.” - -Dr. Carl Austin Weiss III, who was but three months old at the time of -his father’s death, was taken to New York by his mother when she left -Louisiana to make her home in the East. He was graduated from Columbia -in 1958, and set out to make general surgery his field of medical -practice. He was a full-time resident at St. Vincent’s hospital for two -years, but in July 1961 decided to specialize in orthopedic surgery, and -entered the same hospital--Bellevue--where his father had been chief of -clinic thirty years before. - -He was married in 1961, and early in 1962 was called to active military -service, being assigned as an air-force surgeon with the rank of captain -to duty at Barksdale Field. This base is in Bossier parish, Louisiana, -directly across the Red River from Shreveport, the city where Huey Long -was married and where Russell Long was born. Thus the son of Carl Weiss -was practicing medicine in Louisiana at the time the son of Huey Long -won an overwhelming victory there in a campaign for the Senate seat -formerly held by his father. - - * * * * * - -Long’s presidential aspirations left his friend and secretary, Earle -Christenberry an embarrassing $28,000 debt to pay. - -“It is my firm belief now, and was my belief then,” Christenberry -asserts, “that Huey would not have been a candidate for president -himself prior to 1940. He told me in 1935 that he intended to stump the -country, sounding out sentiment before deciding whom he would support -_against_ Roosevelt. - -“To that end he had me purchase from Graybar one sound truck which was -the last word in mobile loud-speaker installations. It came in a day or -two before his death, and I sweated it out for many a month, raising -some $28,000 to pay for it. Graybar looked to me for payment because I -had placed the order. My recollection is that the money was not -forthcoming until late in the Leche campaign, for I would not let them -use the truck until it was paid for.” - - * * * * * - -In retrospect, two predictions about Huey Long hold a certain interest. -One, by Elmer Irey, is merely academic, since it deals with what -_would_ have happened. In closing his chapter on “The Gentleman from -Louisiana” Mr. Irey notes that to him the “important thing about the -Huey Long gang’s downfall” is the following: - -“I hope this story will destroy for all time one of the blackest libels -ever made against the American system of democracy. This libel states -that had not Dr. Weiss (or somebody) assassinated Huey Long, our country -might well have been taken over by the Kingfish as dictator. The -inference is clear. Our country was no match for Huey’s genius and -ruthlessness. - -“I would suggest that the bullet that killed Huey ... merely saved Huey -from going to jail.... Huey had broken the law and was to be indicted -for it when he was killed.” - -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. 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