By R.E. Powell
Raleigh, July 25—The state of North Carolina, through George H. Humber, special attorney for the state auditor, and ex-Judge E.K. Bryan of Wilmington, special attorney, will assist Solicitor Powers in prosecuting the forgery charges against Clerk of Court Sessoms in Sampson county beginning August 4. The indictments, several in number, grew out of fraud in the handling of pension warrants for the civil war veterans.
Judge Frank A. Daniels of Goldsboro is riding the sixth district and is expected to preside over the case, which, according to reports brought back by state investigators, will be hard fought. All efforts at a compromise have, so far, been rejected, and the inability of Sessoms, a Republican, to pay back a sum estimated at between $10,000 and $15,000 is said to have influenced the state in a determination to go to trial.
Sessoms will be defended by the entire Sampson county bar, Democrats and Republicans. The state’s assistance had to be secured out of the county, which is normally Republican by a large majority, and the auditor’s office, which issues the pension warrants, will also send Mr. Humber down.
According to clerks here in the office of the auditor and treasurer, it would require a canvass of every veteran and veteran’s family, or relatives, in Sampson to reach a closer estimate than $5,000 of the total money misappropriated by Sessoms. Many of the veterans whose names he is charged with having forged in order to cash and make personal use of the money, are dead. The instances in which the state feels certain it has “dead wood” on the clerk involve around $10,000.
State officials here who have been mildly interested in the politics of the indictment against the Sampson clerk and its probable effect do not look for it to turn Sampson Democratic by any means. Mr. Sessoms is extremely popular in his home county, as attested by the voluntary defense offered by all the lawyers. The only offer he has made in the way of a compromise is to resign his office. it is said by those who have been active in the case that he is financially unable to pay back the funds and the county, as a whole, apparently does not want to send him to jail.
Apparent unwillingness of Republican State Chairman Bramham to put federal office holders on the state executive committee or in any way connect them with the campaign is causing some resentment among those who are now enjoying the reward of faithful party service in the past.
For the most part, the Republicans are claiming the state this year only in the event of some rank political improbability—such as the defect of enough farmer-labor votes form the Democratic column to give them a “fighting chance.” |Right now the more conservative ones do not expect to get such a chance.
Furthermore, they do not expect to get as many Coolidge votes as they one time counted on paper. The Davis majority in North Carolina, it is rather freely predicted, will be about the same as the McLean majority.
If former Senator Marion Butler takes no part in the campaign, that means that his strength—which is vital to any home of Republican success—will sulk and the former senator is showing absolutely no interest now in the fall marathons. He was counted out in the convention here last August and there is mighty little chance for him to be counted in again.
Lack of any reference to legislation likely to be introduced at the special session of the general assembly marked the “moderately strong” resolutions adopted here Friday by the Farmers’ and Farm Women’s convention just before it elected O. Max Gardner, Shelby farmer, as next year’s president and then adjourned.
. . . .
From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, July 26, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn84020730/1924-07-26/ed-1/seq-1/#words=JULY+26%2C+1924
No comments:
Post a Comment