Too Poor For Public Life

Charles Edward Broyles’ money woes followed him from the last days of the Civil War to the early days of Reconstruction.

At first, that lack of funds didn’t seem to curb his determination to follow his perceived lifelong mandate from his father to pursue “the glories of victories won upon the arena of public life.”

Given his endeavors up to this point hardly qualified as victories, perhaps Charles keenly felt the need of something to balance the tally. Not long after his return home to Dalton, Georgia, Charles was back in that public arena, according to a news report issued on September 26, 1866, in the Macon, Georgia, Telegraph. You may notice a couple familiar names in this excerpt.

            …a large and respectable portion of the citizens of North Georgia, assembled at Dalton on Saturday the 15^th instant, for the purpose of taking action upon the proceedings of the late Constitutional Union Convention, held in Philadelphia on the 12^th of August.

            On motion of Col. J. A Glenn, Col. H. L. Sims was chosen President of the day…

            On motion of the Rev. J. M. Richardson, a committee of five, consisting of the Rev. J. M. Richardson, Col. C. E. Broyles, Col. R. W. Jones, Rev. H. C. Carter and H. McHan, were appointed to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of the meeting.

            The committee retired and during a portion of their absence the meeting was addressed by Cols. J. A Glenn and C. E. Broyles, upon the political issues of the day, strongly denouncing all hostility to the President as dangerous to our Republican institutions, sectional in their character, and in the end calculated to widen, instead of healing, the wounds of the Union.

Given the indefatigable political drive of our subject, it is no surprise to learn that, penniless though he may have been after the war, he would not let that lack present any barrier to his continued participation in the political process. I’ll let Charles explain his involvement of the next few years in his own words below and in tomorrow’s post. Then we’ll go back and revisit this episode from the lens of newspaper reports around the state of Georgia from that same time period. You know there will always be at least two sides to every story.

In 1868 I borrowed money to go as a delegate to the reconstruction convention in Atlanta. I made the 2^nd ratification speech in favor of R. B. Bullock for Governor and he came up to me at the time and promised me that if he was elected Governor “he would remember me.” That fall the Republican Convention to nominate a candidate for Congress was unanimously for me. I had the nomination but declined it because I was too poor to make the canvas. I was then appointed Solicitor General of the Circuit. I preferred it to the Judgeship. And with this office which I filled four years, I relieved my family of much of their want and suffering. My term ended in 1872. And I assumed my profession.