WAR, POLITICS AND RECONSTRUCTION

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Reconstruction

So much has been written about the Reconstruction of the State of louiSiana after the Civil War and of the men who participated in that historic process, and so many false and vicious stataDents have been made and published, that it seems appropriate that one of the remaining chief aaors should give a full and truthful narrative of the history of that exciting era and especially of the one man on whom the greatest responsibility rested.

Many of those who have written have hesitated at nothing; have strained their imaginations, and have stopped at no exaggeration or misrepresentation or falsehood which they thought would make their books or papers popular and salable. Everything was said that would disparage or discredit the officials. Nothing was said to explain, or justify their actS or their conduct. Pens were dipped deep intO ink to blacken the characters of the men who upheld the Flag and fought for their right to live on Louisiana soil as free men.

Lies, unmitigated lies, notorious and malicious lies, have been printed and broadcast, and willing and eager readers have been glad to believe them. For example, one Chambers (Henry E. Chambers, author of a school history of the United States), who pretended to write a history of Louisiana in three volumes, perpetrated on two pages, 665 and 666, Volume I, five distinct lies. He said:

Fmc: Warmoth was one of those who had been particularly successful in winning the confidence and blind devotion of the negroes.

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Second: It is said of him that he landed in Louisiana a handsome, upstanding young fellow of twenty·silt, comparatively penniless.

Third: And that ooe of the first of his tOIlPS successfully put tbtough in his eventful life was to persuade the blacks that they should have a special representative-lobbyist, we would call him today-in Wash· ingtoo, to conserve their rights, and that he was the very man for the place.

Fourth: And at every poll was an enra box in which each voter would deposit 50 cents as a contribution to Warmoth's expenses.

Fifth: Needless to say, quite a little SutD was thus realized by Wat· moth, and he secured such a hold upoo the blacks as-after they were in truth vested with the frUlchjse made him invincible when he ran for office.

Every one of these statements was in spirit, in intention, and in fact, false, and the man who put them in his history of Louisiana knew them to be false from beginning to end.

In the fust place, I did not land in Louisiana "comparatively penniless." I had plenty of money with which to begin my new life after I left the army; and I at once entered upon a lucrative practice of law in the United States Courts, before courtsmartial, military commissions, and governmental departments, which paid me large fees and a handsome income.

In the second place, I did not make an attempt to "win the blind devotion of the negroes."

In the third place, the Republican Party in Louisiana was formally organized in 1863, while I was fighting before Vicksburg, at Missionary Ridge, etc. It had a State Committee composed of twenty-six members, with the Hon. Thomas J. Durant as Chairman, which had been in existence for more than two years before it called a convention. The committee was composed almost exclusively of Union white men. There were but five colored men on the committee, only one of whom had ~er been a slave. Some of them had owned slaves by inheritance from their white fathers. They were nearly white, and all were men of wealth and education. Some of them had been educated

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in France, others in Spain, and still others in the New England States. They were all the descendants of ariStocratic white settlers (Canadians, French, and Spanish), pioneers of the province of Louisiana, and their free colored ancestors constituted one-tenth of the army that fought the British in ISIS at Otalmette under General Andrew Jackson, with credit to themselves and glory to the nation.

In the fourth place, this committee formally issued a call for a Convention which assembled in the city of New Orleans on the 27th day of September, Is6S. The Convention was composed of one hundred and eleven delegates, only twenty of whom were colored men and only one of whom had ever been a slave. The Convention held four different sessions, and adopted and published its platform of principles, which was in substance as follows:

It declared that it reaffirmed the platform adopted at Baltimore in June, 1864, by the Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johruoo.

That the Ordinance of Secession adopted by a Convention of the people of Louisiana was a declaration of war against the United States; that it disrupted, in faa though not in law, the relations existing between the general government and the people of this State.

That the &as of Congtess dcclaring the inhabitants of Louisiana to be in a state of insurrection constituted them in law as enemies of the United States. and unfitted them for the functions of a State in the Union until restored by the action of Congress.

That it would be unwise to admit the inhabitants of Louisiana at once into the Union as a State; that a preliminary system of local government should be established by Congress to endure so long as might be necessary to test the fidelity of the people to the United States and to accustom the inhabitants to exercise in harmony and peace the rights and duties of self-government.

That the system of slavery heretofore existing in Louisiana had ceased to exist; and that we would protest against lOy aod all attempts to substitute in its place a system of serfdom or forced labor in lOy shape.

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1bat die necessities of die government called die colored man inro die public service in die most honorable of all duties, that of die soldier lighting for die integrity of his country and die security of constitutional government; this, widl his loyalty, patience and prudence, was sufficient to assure Congress of die justice and safety of giving him a voce to protect his liberty.

The Convention provided for a voluntary election of a delegate to Congress to represent its view. In pursuance of this plan it nominated the Hon. Thomas J. Durant to represent the "Territory of Louisiana" in the Congress of the United StateS. Mr. Durant was obliged to decline the honor, and it was then, and not until then, that I was placed in nomination by the unanimous vote of the Convention.

In the fifth place, the falsehood as to my collecting a fund for my expenses was publicly denounced as false and malicious in eVery respect by a large mass meeting at the Orleans Theatre on November 14, 186S, which was presided over by Governor Benjamin F. Flanders, with one hundred vice-presidents on the platform. I paid my own expenses with the exception of $1,000, furnished me by the State Committee.

Everybody knew that an election was held on the 6th day of November, 186S; that I received nearly 20,000 votes; and that the Secretary of State, S. Wrotnowski, gave me a certificate with the Seal of the State affixed thereto, certifying to the fact, which I presented to the House of Representatives at Washington; and that I was welcomed by the Republican members of Congress and given the privileges of the floor of the House of Representatives.

I have gone thus minutely into all of these details, which were published in full in all of the newspapers of the time, with their comments, and consequently known to everybody, in order to show the reader the extxemes to which this lying historian of Louisiana and other writers like him have gone to discredit and bring into disrepute the men who honestly strove to protect the

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loyal people of the South, both white and black, after the Civil War.

I cannot hope to reach the minds or the heartS of the men who approved, justified, excused or palliated the massacre of the Union men in New Orleans on the 30th of July, 1866; the assassination of Colonel Pope and Judge Qase in St. Mary Parish; the assassination of Judge T. H. Crawford and his District Attorney in Franklin Parish; the massacre of Opelousas in 1868, or the revolting massaaes of Coushatta and Colfax. But I do hope to reach the minds and heans of all just men and women of the American Union.

For some time before and up to the beginning of the Civil War, General W. T. Sherman, the great Union soldier, was at the head of the Louisiana State Seminary, known later and now as the State University. In May, 1904, at the laying of the comer stone of the Alumni Memorial Hall (erected in honor of David French Boyd, the successor of General Sherman as executive of the State Seminary), Judge A. A. Gunby, of Monroe, Louisiana, delivered an address on the life and services of David French Boyd, from which the following extract is taken:

He [Col. Boyd] had trouble enough in 1866 and 1867, but in 1868 a still darker struggle confronted him. A new Constitution had been established in Louisiana under which mort Ihm IwO·lhirds of Ih, /'gis/lllo,s wer, n'g'o,s; and Article 135 of the Constitution provided that no separate school should be created for the races. This was the most malicious clause of that Constitution; it meant the complete ostracism of the Southern whites from the public schools of Louisiana. The problem that confronted Colonel Boyd was to preserve his school for the use and benefit of the young white men of the State, and yet to retain support from legislatures controlled by Carpet.baggers and negroes. To accomplish this delicate and yet tremendous wk, he found that he had to take part in organizing the public school system of Louisiana. In this enterprise he had a staunch and unfaltering friend in Governor Henry Oay Warmoth, and he often declared orally and in writing that the Seminary would have perished had it noc been for the friendship of Governor Warmoth, during each year

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of whose a.dministtatioo from 1868 to 1872 the support given to the institutioo wu unfailing, generous, and ample.

Judge Gunby did me simple justice when he said that I was the "staunch and unfaltering friend" of the State Seminary, but he was led to reiterate the common charge as to the Constitution of the State Legislature: that "more than two-thirds of the legislators were negroes." Our opponents in their speeches and newspapers always took great pains to elaborate the charge that our Legislature was "a nigger Legislature." This was far from the truth. There was never a majoriry of negroes in either House of the Legislature during my four years of service as Governor. The Legislature elected in 1868, at the same time I was elected Governor, had but six colored men in the Senate out of its thirty-six members; and though the House of Representatives had more colored men in it than did the Senate they never constituted more than one-third of the membership.

So it was in the general election of 1870. Only six out of the thirty-six members of the Senate were colored men, and there were fewer negroes in the House of Representatives than in the House elected in 1868. Whatever legislation may have been worthy of criticism during my administration was the work of white men, in which the negro members played but a modest part.

Autobiographical

It is difficult to write autobiography satisfactorily. Modesty nearly always influences the writer to repress factS of merit concerning his own life. A full and impartial view of the events and circumstances is therefore often obscured. Many years have elapsed since those dramatic events that constitute what are generally known as the history of Reconstruction. As previously stated, it was my privilege and honor to play at times a leading part in that history. A gracious Providence has spared to me a long and somewhat eventful life. I have thus been enabled

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through the passing years to reflect upon and analyze calmly and dispassionately the crowded events that occurred during that period.

Neither aspiration for office nor any ambition whatsoever for new achievements could furnish any motive for me at this far-advanced period of my life. And I trust that no motives could prompt me to undertake this task, save pure patriotism, honorable self-defense, and a desire to leave to my country, my family, and posterity the truth, the whole truth, about the part I played in that stirring epoch of our State's history.

The weight of advancing years admonishes me that I cannot remain a spectator on the scene much longer. But I hope to show in the following pages that some of the excellent history that has been made by the State, and is now in process of making, owes a part of its better impulse to the earnest and patriotic accomplishments of the period known as Reconstuction. I shall tell here as briefly as possible, and as fully as is consistent with modesty, the story of my life and something of the lives of my ancestors; of the part Qley played in helping to build up ow: Republic, and of their lives as honorable and patriotic American citizens. This, in brief, is my apology for undertaking to leave an impartial account of the history of the State while I was its Governor and while I was representing it in sundry official capacities.

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\VAR, POLITICS AND RECONSTRUCfION

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CHAPTER. I

My great-grandfather, Thaddeus Hartwidge Warmoth, was born in 1761 and died December 31, 1847, being eighty-six years of age. Thomas Warmoth's name is to be found in the fust census ever made in Virginia. In 1790 he had eight in his family.

When only seventeen years of age, Thaddeus enlisted in Captain Samuel Colston's Company of Colonel Thomas Gaskin's Virginia Regiment, and served through the War of the Revolution. Later he emigrated to Kentucky and settled in Garrard County, where he lived and died. His wife, Winny, our greatgrandmother, died after she was sixty-eight years old. Later, on October 13, 1839, he married Mary (Polly) Bonar, when he was seventy-eight years of age. On September 21, 1818, he applied to the United States for a pension, which was granted. After his death, his widow, on February 14, 1853, when fifty years of age, applied for a pension, which was granted. She received six dollars a month during her lifetime.

My great-grandfather had five sons-Thaddeus, Jr., Thomas, Githian, Henry, and John. Henry was my grandfather. He was born in Garrard County, Kentucky, and married Margaret Sanders, a Dutch girl, who came out to Kentucky from North Carolina with her two brothers. She wore wooden shoes and could not speak English until after she was twelve years of age.

After his marriage, my grandfather moved to Bedford County, (1]

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Tennessee, and settled on Duck River, eighteen miles from Shelbyville, where my father was born.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the gteat Confederate cavalry leader, was the son of a blacksmith by the name of William Forrest, a neighbor of my gtandfather on Duck River, and it is not unlikely that he was my gtandfather's blacksmith.

As a curiosity of the times, I have obtained a copy of the deed to forty acres of land to my gtandfather, dated April I, 1819, as follows:

ADREN ANGLE TO HENRY WORMOTH FOR 40 ACRES This Indenture made this first day in April in the year of our Lord One thousand Eight hundred and Nineteen Between Adren Angle of the County of Bedford and State of Tenncsscc of the first pan 8( Henry Wormath of the same Swe and County of the other pan. WilneJSelh, that the said Adren Angle for and in consideration of the sum of One Hundred and fifty Dollars, the Receipt Whereof is hereby acknowledged, Hath given granted bargained and sold and by these Presents doth give grant 8( Sell And Convey in fee Simple unto the said Henry Wormoth his heirs and assigns forever a Certain piacc or Parcel of Land Sinwe lying and being in the County of Bedford on the Waters of the North fork of Duck River and Bounded as fol· lows: Beginning at a hickory William Burne[[ North East Comer run· ning West Eighty four Poles To a Forked Ceder thence North fifty Eight Poles [0 Two Ceders in the South boundary line of a Survey in the Name of George Sanders Thence East With said line fifty one and half Poles to his South East Corner Thence North With his East boundary line forty Six Poles [0 a Hickory Thence East Thirty and a half Poles [0 a stake in Richard Trotters West boundary line thence South With said line [0 the Beginning Containing by Estimation forty Acres it being the Same more or Less, To Have And To Hold The aforesaid land and bargained Premises With all And Singular the rights Propcrty imolumenu and appcninanccs thereunto belonging or in any Wise appcrtaining Thereunto, To the only Propcr usc of him the said Henry Wormouth his heirs And Assigns forever 8( the said Adren Angle for himself his heirs Est And adm. doth Covenant and agree to and With the said Henry Warmoth his heirs 8( assigns [0 Warrant 8( forever defend The aforesaid Land 8( Bargain Premises

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Against The Lawfull Oaim or Claims of ail and every Person or Persons Whatsoever In Wimess Whereof the said Adren Angie Hath set his hand & aftixed his Seal the Day & year above Written.

Sign,tI Sea/ttl anti D,lifl",tI

In Presents of WM. BUIlNBTT ADuN ANGLE (SIAL)

(The name of Warmoth appears five times in this deed and is spelled correctly only once.)

STATE OF TENNESSEE BEDFORD COUNTY April Tum 1819

I James McKisick Oerk of the Courr of Pleas and quarter Sessioos of the County aforesaid do hereby Certify That the Execution of the Within deed of Conveyance From Adren Angie to Henry Wormoth for 40 Acres of Land was Acknowledged in open Courr by said Adren Angie And Ordered to be Certified for Registration Given under My hand If Office this 17t day of April 1819.

JAS McKwcx Clk Registered 25th June 1819. EDEN WADE lUg

STATE OF TENNESSEE BEDFORD COUNTY I, W. F. Bryant, Register of deeds for said County, do hereby certify thar the above and forgoing is true and correct copy of deed from· Adrea Angle to Henry Warmoth, as it appears of record, in Deed Book No. k. page 233 R. O. B. C.

Wimess my hand and seal of Office If Office in Shelbyville, Tennessee, this the 9th day of August, 1922. (Signetl) W. F. BI.YANT, lUgill" of B,tlfortl COlml,. (SIAL)

Later, my grandfather removed to Edwards County, lllinois, and settled on a farm seven miles north of Albion, where he lived and died.

My grandparents had two sons and four daughters: John; Isaac Sanders (my father); Polly, who married David Shelby; Lucinda. who married William M. Rogers; Judy, who married Greenberty Sanders (who was killed by an explosion on a

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steamboat near Dubuque, Iowa)-afterwards she married William Moore of Wabash County, Illinois; and Margaret Ann, who married John Howarton, who settled near Paducah, Kentucky, and later lived at Benton, Marshall County, Kentucky. Their granddaughter, Capitola S. Miller, is the wife of John Goodrum Miller, formerly a prominent lawyer of Kentucky and more recently a member of the New York Bar. Their greatgrandson, John Goodrum Miller, Junior, one time a member of the Kentucky Legislature, is at present an active practitioner at the New York Bar.

The Warmoths or Warmouths are undoubtedly of Dutch origin. A large settlement by the name figured conspicuously in the early history of the State of New York, and furnished a lot of soldiers for the War of the Revolution. Old Peter Warmouth lived in a large brick house at Cherry Valley, New York, and at least one of his children was a victim of the Indian Chief Brant, who was allied to the British cause. Christian Warmouth was a member of the First Regiment of the Line commanded by Colonel Goose Vanschaick; William Warmouth and Peter Warmouth served in the Second Regiment under Colonel Jacob Klock and General Nicholas Herkimer.

I am glad to record that the Warmoth family, whether in New York or in Virginia, were patriots and served their country then as they did in later years.

My father was in the Mexican War and crossed the Gulf of Mexico from New Orleans to Mexico on a ship with Colonel Jefferson Davis, commanding the 2nd Mississippi Volunteers.

We read in the International Encyclopedia, Volume 20, page 296, published in 1810, that there is found in the fresh-water lakes and streams of the North a fish that bears our name. It says:

Warmouth is a small goggle-eyed fresh-water fish closely related to rock-bass of the Eastern and Central United States. which is more elongate than the sunnsh, very variable in color and marking. and

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nO[ed for its large mouth and grear voracity. They grow to extreme weight of twenty pounds and are highly esteemed for food and are among the best, if nO[ among the very best, game fish of the United States.

Whether our family was given the name because we were thought to be fishy, or the fish was given our name because we were game and voracious, I do not know. I have never known any of our family to be goggle-eyed or fishy, but all were game to the backbone.

My father, Isaac Sanders Warmoth, was brought up on the farm until he was fifteen years old. He was then apprenticed to a saddler by the name of Mayo, living in the town of Albion, Illinois, to learn the trade. Mr. Mayo subsequently moved to Carlinsville in Magoupin County, lllinois. After my father had completed his apprenticeship he settled in McLeansboro, Hamilton County, where he opened a shop and made saddles and harness. Later in 1840 he married my mother, who was Miss Eleanor Lane, the daughter of State Senator Levin Lane, a prosperous farmer living near the village. The young people were so popular that the neighbors turned out and built for them a log-cabin on the Court House Square, intO which they moved and where I was born. Until a few years ago the house still stood facing the public square.

I was born on the 9th of May, 1842. Later my family removed to the village of Fairfield in Wayne County, some twenty-five miles distant from McLeansboro, where my father became one of the leading citizens. He was elected Justice of the Peace, and prospered in his business.

My father was, of course, the peace officer of the county. I remember that, when I was only a small boy, a bully by the name of Pea Hay attacked with his fist a respectable and quiet farmer by the name of Andrew Crews, in my father's presence. As it was my father's duty, he commanded the peace and he did it in this wise:

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"I command the peace-give him 'hell; Andy1 command the peace-give him 'hell; Andy-"

and Andy did give him "hell," He got his adversary down on the ground and pummeled him well; so well that when Hay was able to rise he shook himself and declared with an oath, "I have fought a hundred battles, but I have never won a victOry,"

My maternal grandfather, Levin Lane, was a member of a large family, the men being tall, broad-shouldered, vigorous and forceful. There were five brothers, allover six feet in height, and they were known for their strength and prowess, James Lane was the County Judge of Hamilton County for many years, MemDers of the family are still living in Hamilton County; among them James H, Lane, a leading attorney, He is the grandson of Lewis Lane, Thomas Lane was a Methodist preacher and settled in Peoria County, Illinois. Lemuel Lane settled somewhere in the West, and one of his sons became a prominent attorney in Missouri. My maternal grandmother was Lucinda Willis. In later years she lived with my mother and died in our home at Fairfield.

They were all Virginians, Kentuckians, or Tennesseans, and were Whigs in politics. My Grandfather Lane was on General Harrison's elecroral ticket in 1840. He was also in the Black Hawk War, and the powder hom, shot-pouch and charger he used are still in existence. Judge James Lane was in the Mexican War and lived to be ninety-one years of age.

My mother was a beautiful woman. She married my father at the age of eighteen, and died when she was only thirty years of age. She bore five children in the twelve years of her married life and died when the last one was born.

Two years later, my father was married the second time, to Miss Louisa Crews, the daughter of a farmer near Fairfield, on the 30th of August, 1856. Twelve children were born to this union, three of whom are still living.

When my mother died my father had an old friend by the name of Owen, living several miles out in the country, take me

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for the winter. I was only ten or eleven years old. They lived in a one-story log house which had an attic. I slept up in the attic. The snow often filtered through the roof and tickled my face. I had a dog and we supplied the family with rabbit meat all winter. I had a little yoke of oxen and a sled, and my duty was to bring in the family fuel from the woods.

These good old people lived alone, the wife doing her own cooking, washing, ironing, and milking-in fact all of her housework. And no cooking was ever better in the world-and the way I got away with the food! I remember that they would finish their meal and move their chairs around by the fire, leaving me at the table, and I don't believe I ever stopped eating until from very shame I quit. Looking back at that experience, seventy-five years ago, I do not believe I have ever had a better time in my life.

My education was limited to the schools of my village and the training I was able to get as a typesetter in the local printing office. In this way I learned to spell a great many words which I did not know how to spell before.

My father was for many years a Justice of the Peace. He had a number of law books in his library of which I availed myself, and by hard study I made some progress in mastering them.

I frequented all sessions of all the courts and witnessed the trials. My associates were among members of the Bar and they seemed to like me and inspired me with an ambition to become a member of their profession. I shall never forget B. B. Smith, a partner of General I. N. Haynie, for his devotion to me. Many hours we spent together, and often for nearly whole days at a time we tramped the woods together, making speeches to each other. I am sure the trees never before nor since heard such profound arguments, or such brilliant eloquence!

I left Illinois for Missouri on April 9, 1860. I lacked one month of being eighteen years of age. I left St. Louis, Missouri, in company with Isaac Hoskinson and two other gendemen, in

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a two-horse covered wagon for Springfield, Missouri. En route, running across a friend who had a farm twelve or fourteen miles from Lebanon, Missouri, I left the party and they went on. spent a week with James Talliaferro and his family most pleasandy. He took me in his buggy to Lebanon, Laclede County, on the top of the Ozark Mountains, where I expected to take the stage the next day for Springfield, Missouri.

We arrived on a Sunday moming, stopping at the country tavern. And while I was taking my dinner alone, a Strange gendeman came in and took a seat opposite me at the table. He was a man of about thirty-five years of age, large, well-built, with black hair and very black eyes. I noticed that he eyed me very closely and finally he begged my pardon and asked me where I was from. I told him that I was from Illinois, on my way to Springfield, Missouri. He asked me what my profession or business was. I told him that I was a lawyer. "Seeking a location, I suppose?" I replied in the affirmative. "Well," he said, "you don't want to go any farther, for this is the best opening right here of any place that I know of for a young, enterprising lawyer. We have only two lawyers here; one is also a doctor, and the other an opium fiend."

We talked through dinner and· for several hours afterwards. He introduced me to his wife and family, and all the leading citizens of the town. He told me that if I would stop at Lebanon he would furnish me an office without expense, with himself, and that he knew everybody in the county and would help me to get any amount of business. He was such an agreeable man and offered me such excellent inducements that I finally made up my mind to accept his proposition. His name was Dr. Joseph L. Moore, a practising physician in the town of Lebanon. I moved into his office, which was on the ground floor of the tavern building; put my meagre library on his shelves, hung out my sign, "H. C. Warmoth, Attorney and Counselor-at-Law." The sign was a big one, because I knew

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that I did not know much law and I thought to accomplish the same purpose by as much advertising as possible. I buckled down to hard work to study the rules of practice and court procedure of the State of Missouri, of which I was entirely ignorant. I had studied the elementary principles, and knew something of the common law. I found the Missouri Code of Practice much more simple in its procedure and jurisprudence than that of the Stare of Illinois. I fancied that in a little while I would be able to pass an enmioation and be admitted to the Bar of Missouri. I was just eighteen years old, though I had the appearance of a man of about twenty-one. I confess that I did not enlighten the community with the fact that I was under age. My financial condition was such that it was necessary for me to become a bread winner. I had only a twenty-doUar gold piece in my pocket, and did not scruple at allowing the community to deceive itself as to my age. Strange as it may seem, through the influence and friendship of Dr. Moore, I soon had a respectable practice before the County Court and Justices of the Peace.

A little time afterwards, I learned that the Circuit Court of the Eighteenth Judicial District, in which I lived, would begin at Hartville, in Texas County. There were eighteen counties in this district. The Hon. Patrick Edwards was the Judge. I had never met him, as he lived in Springfield, some fifty miles away.

I determined to attend court at Hartville. It was the practice of the Bar to make the entire circuit of the eighteen counties with the Judge. It was a great treat to do so, for there were a number of jolly, bright men at the Bar of that district, and it was great fun riding from county to county, spending a week at each place holding a term of court. The members of the Bar generally put up at the same tavern and rode in a regular cavalcade on horseback from place to place with the Judge.

I arrived at Hartville alone and introduced myself to Judge Edwards and dear old Jultan Frazier, the District Attorney.

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They were both very polite to me, and the next day in open court I applied to the Judge for a license to practise law. He appointed a committee, composed of Julian Frazier, John S. Waddell, and Jarvis M. Barker, to examine me as to my qualifications for the ptofession. But, owing to the heavy docket before the court and the occupation of the attorneys, it was several days before I could get the committee together to interrogate me. But, as luck would have it, one night about eight o'clock as I was walking along the street, I met all three of these lawyers cotning ftom a consultation.

Mr. Frazier remarked, "Here is Mr. Warmoth and we are all together-why not examine him right here?" It was at the comer of a block, a number of empty dry-goods boxes being piled upon the sidewalk. Mr. Frazier said, "Mr. Warmoth, get up on that box." And in the dark they stood around me and proceeded to examine me as to my qualifications.

I was fortunately able to answer a number of elementaty questions to their satisfaction. Then Mr. Frazier proposed to me a hypothetical case. "Now, suppose this, and suppose that, and suppose again, and suppose then, and then suppose and so on," until I had not the slightest idea of what the question was-the beginning of it, the middle, or the ending of it; and finally he closed by asking, "Now, to whom does the property of the defendant belong?" I promptly replied, "To the lawyers, of course." The Committee at once agreed, "You will do. We shall take great pleasure in certifying to your capabilities as an attorney."

They did so certify, and Judge Edwards issued me a license, declaring that, "having examined me as to my character, good standing, and my learning in the law, he thereby authorized me to practise law in all the courts of the State of Missouri."

Events progressed very rapidly with me ftom this time on. In our little county there were many vety nice people. There

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were a few slave-holders, but not many slaves. Only the valleys were fertile, and there were no rich people in the community. roomed with President White, from North Carolina, who was at the head of the local academy, and Dr. Thrailkill, a young physician, at the home of Mrs. Harrison, who owned the largest residence in the town. She was the widow of the most important man in Laclede County. She was a Pennsylvanian and had two nice daughters, one of whom married Robert Fyan, later district judge and still later a congressman.

She made for us a very comfortable home. We three occupied the largest room in the house. As I recall, it must have been twenty-five feet square, with a fireplace that would take a four-or five-foot log. We had three beds in the room, each bed being in a comer. Mrs. Harrison had a nice little farm JUSt outside of the village, and produced her own poultry. pigs. vegetables. and fruit. She had several slaves. among them an excellent cook. In my long life. I am sure that I have never had better living. The table actually groaned with good foodchicken. turkey. lamb. beef, pork, and bacon. Such bread, coffee. and tea as she served to us! Apples, peaches, pears, and all sorts of berries were in great profusion. She had our washing done for us, and furnished us with lamps and candles, fuel, and service, all for the princely sum of twO dollars and fifty cents per week. Her house servants, with the exception of Adeline, who was a white woman, were slaves. There were no railroads within seventy miles of us; the public roads were rough. We had no markets. no competition, everything was cheap then; the high cost of living was certainly unknown. We were all very happy, as young people must be when so well fed and cared for; and I look back on this era as one of the happiest of my life.

I had but few diversions to take me from my law studies. I worked hard, for I realized better than anyone how lirtle I knew, and was ambitious to succeed. A little later. I was

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appointed County Attorney by the County Court. I had one side of nearly every civil and aiminal case in the courts of the County.

But the Presidential election soon came on. The Union men supported Bell and Everett, the Liberal Democrats supported Stephen A. Douglas, and the Extreme Southern Democrats supported Breckinridge and Lane. There were no Republicans known as such in that section of the country. I took little part in politics at that time. My closest friend was Dr. Moore and he was a red-hot Breckinridge Democrat. He was elected to the Legislature from that County. The newspaper of the County, owned and edited by Alexander McF. Hudson, was bold and outspoken in its support of the Union and the Bell-Everett ticket.

All of my brilliant prospects came to an end abruptly, as a result of the national election when Mr. Lincoln was chosen President. Many people seemed to lose their reason. The Extreme Democrats took charge of everything. They began to organize militia companies all over Southwest Missouri, and barbecues and picnics were held at which the most extreme views were expressed. Mr. Lincoln was called a low, foulmouthed joker, a baboon, a monkey, and "negro-lover," and the audiences were asked if they wanted their daughters to take "niggers" for husbands, with the declaration that it would certainly come to pass if Lincoln and his negro-loving followers were allowed to control the Government. Dr. Wood announced in his speeches that the Union was only a rope of sand to be dissolved by a little water, or, if need be, a little blood. It was declared that one Southern man could whip a dozen Yankees; that the mudsills of the North would not fight; that all were low, groveling cowards. One of the most extreme and violent Secessionists in the community was a New Hampshire Yankee who had settled in Lebanon years before and married the daugh

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ter of a slave-holder. The little community seemed to have been turned upside-down within a night. All of the girls were singing Dixie, and cutting the acquaintance of those of us who were suspected of being friendly to the Union. We were denounced as Abolitionists and "negro-lovers." The Union men stood aghast. They were almost speechless. They prediaed that the hysteria might pass after a little time, but they were woefully mistaken. They did not begin to realize the situation until they saw the old starry Hag hauled down from the village staff, all the stars tom from it except one, and then raised again as .. the Hag of the Sovereign State of Missouri, and to hell with the Union!"

South Carolina seceded. The Legislature of Missouri ordered a State Convention with the purpose of following South Car0lina. Arms were distributed, with powder and shot. Camp Jackson was organized in the suburbs of St. Louis, with the intention of taking possession of the city. The loyal men of St. touis became aroused. They were organized secretly in the United States Arsenal by Captain Lyon, who marched out one day to Camp Jackson and captured the. entire force, thus opening the eyes of the people to a full realization of the question. Even before this, however, the Union men of Laclede County began to take notice. We organized six hundred Union men armed with shotguns and rifies, or any kind of weapon. A number of us had been notified to leave the County within ten days. We marched with the six hundred men into Lebanon one day, took down the Lone Star fiag of Missouri, raised Old Glory with its full constellation, and went into camp; and we held the fort until General Franz Siegel and his loyal Germans came to our rescue, and until after the battle of Wilson Creek, a few miles below Springfield, Missouri, where General Lyon was whipped and killed, and we had to fall back. Then we gathered up our people and withdrew to Rolla on the railroad, seventy miles away. We all had to surrender our farms, our homes, and

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everything to the advancing army of General Sterling Price and Governor Oaibome F. Jackson.

To the surprise of Governor Jackson and his secession Legislature, the Srate Convention which he called to follow South Carolina was composed of a majority of Union delegates, and when it convened at Jefferson City, Governor Jackson had already taken the field with General Sterling Price. The Con· vention at once proceeded to declare for the Union. It deposed Governor Jackson and chose Hamilton R. Gamble, an outstand· ing Union man, to be the Governor of the Srate. President Lin· coin promptly recognized Governor Gamble, and the sratus of Missouri was made dear and unequivocal. I had been appointed Circuit Attorney for the Eighteenth Judicial Distria on the first day of Februaty, 1861, and Hon. John S. Waddell had been appointed Judge of the Circuit Court; but war was on, and we did not attempt ro hold court in the Distria. The Governor appointed me on July 28, 1861, a Colonel of Militia; in October following he appointed me a Brigadier-General of Militia.

General Frank P. Blair was authorized by President Lincoln to organize a brigade of infantry. He gave me authority on August 2, 1861, to raise a regiment for his brigade to be num· bered the 36th Missouri Infantry. When I had enrolled seven hundred and sixty men at Rolla, we were ordered to St. Louis, where we were consolidated with another fragment and mustered into the service as the 32nd Missouri. Frank H. Manter, a soldier of some experience, was made Colonel, I was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, and A. J. Seay was appointed Major.

The derails of my service and experiences in the War are given in my daily journal.

On November 30, 1862, our regiment was mustered into the United Srates service for three years or during the War, at Benron Barracks in St. Louis.

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On December 16th following, without drill or even full equipment, we were ordered to the front, and on December 29th, less than thirty days after having been mustered into service, we were engaged in attacking the enemy, who was well intrenched behind Chickasaw Bayou, on General Joseph E. Johnson's plantation twenty miles up on the yazoo River, above Vicksburg, Mississippi; in which battle we were repulsed with heavy loss of life and some were taken prisoners. This was one of General William T. Sherman's battles for which he was mercilessly criticized. The press suggested that he was "crazy and ought to be put intO a lunatic asylum."

After this repulse, Major-General MtClernand arrived and, being Sherman's senior in rank, assumed the command of our defeated and dispirited Army. He took it up the Arkansas River, and captured Fort Hindman with General Olurchill and seven thousand Confederate prisoners, together with a lot of artillety and other war materials. After this brilliant victOry, General MtClernand returned down to the Mississippi River where he met General Grant, who assumed command at once. General Grant then organized his Army into three corps, assigning General MtClernand to the command of the 13th, General Sherman to the 15th, and General McPherson to the 17th. On January 29th, 1863, I was detached from my regiment and assigned to duty on the staff of Major-General MtClernand commanding the 13th Army Corps. The Army of General Grant . and the fleer of Admiral Porter were scattered along the Mississippi River from Young's Point opposite Vicksburg to Milliken's Bend. The object of the campaign was the capture of Vicksburg, which seemed to be impregnable, having been fortified by General Pemberton, a distinguished engineer of the Old Army. The country demanded the capture of Vicksburg and the opening of the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and incidentally the splitting of the Confederacy into two partS. General Grant found Vicksburg impregnable from the front.

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Admiral Porter from above and Admiral Farragut from below with their fleets were unable to silence the Vicksburg guns, or to pass up or down the river without certain destruction to their vessels.

General Grant then conceived the idea of digging a canal across Young's Point, out of range of the Vicksburg guns, large enough for the Navy and his transports to pass and repass. He spent nearly the whole winter in digging this canal, but finally had to give it up. He then determined to move his Army below Vicksburg through Louisiana, and to attempt to aoss it into the State of Mississippi under the protection of the Navy, and to take his chances of getting his gunboats and transports below by nmning by Vicksburg in the nighttime.

This movement was successful, though necessarily slow and tedious. The Louisiana side was flooded by the waters of the Mississippi River, and we had to move our troops on barges, flatboats, and skiffs. The 13th Army Corps, under General McCIemand, led the advance, and we had to supply the transportation and to move the troops. I was assigned to this special duty by General McClemand, and we got all of our troops and material down to a point opposite Bruinsburg, Mississippi, where we met the gunboats of Admiral Porter's fleer and the transports which had run the batteries of Vicksburg under the cover of night as planned by General Grant.

We at once aossed the troops of our Corps over the Mississippi at Bruinsburg, and rushed rapidly into the interior. We fought the first battle on May 1st, and captured Port Gibson. We then pushed forward and fought the battles of Champion Hills and Big Blaclc, and captured every foot of ground till we had invested Vicksburg in the rear on the 19th of May, 1863. Sherman and McPherson with their corps followed us, and after getting into line, General Grant attempted to storm Vicksburg on the 19th of May, but was repulsed with considerable loss.

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on the 22nd of May. General Shennan's Corps occupied the right of our line; General McPherson's Corps occupied the center; and our Corps, the 13th, occupied the left. The attaek was made at 10 A.M. all along the line. Our Corps captured one of the enemy forts with a number of prisoners, and we held it until 7 P.M.

General McClemand promptly reported his progress to General Grant at 11 A.M., and asked for a division of troops to reinforce him, saying that if he could get support at once he thought he could go into Vicksburg. The troops did not arrive till 7 P.M. In the meantime, as General Stephen D. Lee told me personally after the War, he had so strengthened his line on our front that when we attaeked late in the evening, he was able to repulse us. I was severely wounded in this attaCk.

After General Grant's failure on the 22nd of May, he found

it necessary to begin a siege of Vicksburg, which lasted from

May 22nd till July 4th-fotty-four days.

There was sore disappointment at the failure of General

Grant to support promptly General McClemand's call for rein

forcements on the 22nd of May. Because of General Shennan's

jealousy and hatred of General McClernand, and his influence

with General Grant, it finally resulted in General McClemand's

being relieved of his command and sent home but a few days

before the surrender of Vicksburg; and Major-General E. O. C.

Ord was placed in command of the 13th Army Corps. On

account of my wound, I was sent home to recover. My first

leave of absence was for twenty days. It became necessaty for

me to have my leave extended twice.

On my return to the Army I made a full report of my absence, enclosing with it surgeons' certificates approved by the Medical Director of the Department of Missouri, accounting for every day of my absence. General Ord returned my report with his endorsement, "entirely satisfactory." A few days after my return

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to duty, I .received an order from the War Department, "dishonorably dismissing me from the service for absence without leave, and for circulating false reportS ailout the Army with which I was setving." I at once called upon General Grant at his headquarters in Vicksbutg, and showed him the order. He told me to step across the hall to Major Bowers' office-that the Major would give me a copy of the papers. I did so, and asked Major Bowers for copies of the papers, which he offensively refused to give me. I stepped back to General Grant's table and reported to him the oonduct of Major Bowers; he at once arose from his table and walked with me over to Major Bowers and told him to give me copies of all of the papers in the matter, which he did.

On examining the papers, I found that Lt.-Col. J. H. Wilson, Aide-de-camp and Inspector on General Grant's staff, had made an official report that he had inspected the staff of the 13th Army Corps, and had found that Lt.-Col. H. C. Warmoth had been absent from duty three weeks without leave. On the back of this report General Grant had written, "This officer on receiving a slight wound on the 22nd of May immediately availed himself of a leave of absence, and while on his way north circulated the report that our losses at Vicksburg on the 22nd of May were from ten to twenty thousand, thereby producing undue excitement in the North and enoouraging the hopes of the enemy."

With this paper I at once proceeded to prepare my case. I did not ask any favors of General Grant, but went at once to Springfield, Illinois, and showed my order of dismissal to General McClemand. General McClemand gave me a letter to President Linooln, in which he gave a full history of my having been wounded by his side on the evening of the 22nd of May; of his giving me a leave of absence on the certittcate of the (]lief Surgeon of the 13th Army Corps; and of his entire satisfaction with my services as an officer on his staff; adding that my dis

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missal from the Anny was inspired by the hatted of General Grant and his clique for himself, General McClemand.

Now, fonunately for me, I had been among the first officers of the Anny to arrive at Cairo, Illinois, from the front, after *e battles around Vicksburg, and the two attacks on its works. I had found the air full of rumors of General Grant's defeat, and the greatest alarm prevailing over his disaster. Being an officer of a Missouri regiment, I had been sought out by the correspondents of The Repllbliean"and The Demorrat, the two leading papers of the city of St. Louis, to whom I gave elaborate interviews, which were published the following moming in both newspapers. In these I gave a full account of the brilliant campaign through Louisiana, of the crossing of our troops over the Mississippi River, of our campaign through Mississippi, and of the battles we fought, including the two assaults on the works of Vicksburg. I spoke of the confidence of the Anny that Vicksburg would soon be in our hands, I spoke of General Grant in most respectful terms. Now, aU of this fuIIf answered the charge that I had "exaggerated our losses and produced undue excitement in the North, and encouraged the hopes of the enemy."

With General McClemand's letter to the President, and copies of these two newspapers, together with a number of most complimentary letters from Division, Brigade, and Regimental Commanders in our Anny as to my services, I proceeded to Washington. I arrived in Washington on the night of August 29, 1863, stopping at Willard's Hotel.

I was a stranger in Washington. I knew nobody connected with the Government. But early the next moming, I went directly to the White House, and was told that the President would receive only cabinet officers and members of Congress until 3 P.M., when he would receive the public. I then took a stroll over the streets of the City, and put in my time until the hour I expected to be received by the President.

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August 30th, I called on the President and was received by him with the general public after 3 P.M. I was all alone. in disgrace and, as may be supposed, very much depressed. There must have been at least fifty men and women in the reception room waiting to see the President on all sorts of matters. I let everybody go in ahead of me, and when anybody else would come in I let him have my place. We were all drawn up in line and I determined to have my interview with the President alone. I heard several of the conversations between the different people and the President, and I found that there were several other officers of the Army in much the same predicament in which I found myself; and I heard the President say to each one who asked for a court-martial or a military commission to give him a chance to vindicate himself: "Now, my dear friend, we are in the midst of war and we cannot stop to hold courts-martial or military commissions now; but you come to me after the war is over and I will give you a court-martial or a military commission and every opWrtunity to vindicate yourself." You can well imagine my feelings when I heard what I supposed to be my death-knell repeated several times.

Finally everybody had been heard and had withdrawn, and I was there alone with the President. I began my conversation by saying, "Mr. President, I cannot wail IIntil the war is over for my vindication. I mllst have illstice now. I cannot stand being Pllt off." I told him who I was, that I was on General McC1ernand's staH; and I presented General McC1ernand's letter and handed him my other letters and papers. After paciendy looking over my letter from General McC1ernand, and some of the other papers, the President said to me, "Colonel, I cannot give you a court-martial or a military commission, but I'll tell you what I will d~Iwill refer your papers and your case to General Joseph Holt, the Judge-Advocate General of the Army, for his report, and I will aa on that." I told him that would be entirely satisfaaory to me.

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So he rook all of my papers, folded them up, and put them into a large envelope, wtote an endorsement referring the letters and papers to General Holt for report, and told me to take them to General Holt myself. I thanked him very much and rook the papers to the Judge-Advocate's office. I was introduced to Major William Winthrop (Assistant Judge-Advocate General to General Holt). He told me that General Holt was absent at that time and would be for some days; but that he would take up the matter himself, examine the case and have a report ready for General Holt on his rerum. In talking over the matter and in looking over the papers, I found that one important paper was missing. I told Major Winthrop that I must have left it on the President's table. I went immediately to the White House, and at the foot of the great stairs I met the President coming down. I told him that I must have left the paper on his desk. He said, "Was it a Missollri Repllbli(an?" I said "Yes, sir." And the President rumed around and walked up that great, long flight of Stairs with me to his room. He found the paper on his desk and handed it to me.

We then walked down the stairs together and I promised to bring the paper the next morning to the Judge-Advocate's office. I walked with the President down to the Treasury Department and through it to my hotel, the Willard. The President was in excellent humor. While we were walking together I said, "Mr. President, you know in the olden times the people used to go out on a great plain and select their tallest man for their leader. Don't you think I would have run you a pretty good race in those days and under those circumstances?" He replied, "Do you think so?" And with that he began to straighten up, and when he had gotten thoroughly straightened up I said, "No, no, Mr. President, I would not have stood any chance with you." He laughed heartily. It seemed to me that he rose seven feet high, as he towered so much above me with his tall hat. We passed into the Treasury Department Building and

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he left me, turning into a corridor and saying he was going to see Mr. Chase (the Secretary of the Treasury) and bade me goodday.

The next morning I called at the Judge-Advocate General's office, and gave Major Winthrop the paper I had left on the President's table. Major Winthrop, who was a highly educated, sincere and earnest man, took great interest in my case. General Holt did not return for several days, but in the meantime Major Winthrop had examined the whole matter and prepared an elaborate report fully vindicating me and ending his report with the following recommendation:

It is believed that fevl young men in the service an present a fairer or more honorable record, and in vievl of the manifest injustice which has been done Lt. Colonel Warmoth, and of his evident value to the service, it is recommended that the special order dismissing him from the service be at once revoked 50 that he be placed as to pay, and rank, etc., in precisely the position which he would have occupied had he not been dismissed.

General Holt, after signing my report, congratulated me on my vindication. He handed me the report and asked me to take it to the President, which I lost no time in doing. I gave it to Colonel John Hay, the President's private secretary; he laid it on the desk of the President, who a little later approved it and ordered my restoration; and he pertnitted me ro take it to the War Department with a note of introduction from Colonel Hay. The next day I received the order restoring me to my rank, and departed at once for my regiment, which was still stationed at Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In passing down the river, September 26th, at a point a little below Helena, Arkansas, I passed a fleet of steamboats with troOps, on one of which I recognized my regiment. I signaled the next steamer and was transferred in a skiff to the steamer "John J. Roe," having the Fourth Iowa Infantry, Colonel Wil

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Jiamson, on board. The next day we arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, and I at once repOrted to General Otades R. Woods for duty; he put me in command of my regiment, Colonel Manter having been killed. General Osterhouse commanded our Division. We were headed for Otattanooga, Tennessee, to aid General Grant in capturing Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and to secure Otattanooga as a base of operations.

After a long march over awful roads, and with some skirmishing but no heavy fighting, we reached the valley facing Lookout Mountain on November 23rd. General Joe Hooker with the 11th Corps held the right wing of the .Army. He passed us down on the left of his line. I met General Hooker, who told me that the attack had been delayed for our arrival, that the enemy was all packed and ready to go, and that we would attack the next morning. We made the assault and captured Lookout Mountain without much fighting. It was a spectacular affair. My regiment was the extreme left of Hooker's line. The next day our Army moved by the left flank, which put my command in the lead. We crossed the valley and assaulted Rossville Gap, forcing our way through k to the left and rear of Bragg's Army, and were soon fighting on the top of Missionary Ridge, which we captured in fine style. It was a brilliant performance, resulting in the occupation of Otattanooga and all of that parr of Tennessee.

We were a little later ordered back to Stephenson, Alabama, and were soon put into winter quarrers. On December 8th I was detailed with a few officers of my regiment to go to Missouri to recruit for our regiment. Our efforts to obtain recruits failed, for about everybody was in the Army on one side or the other. On closing my recruiting station at Louisiana, Missouri, on January 28, 1864, I went to Springfield, Illinois, to calion myoid commander, General McClemand, who had just been restored to the command of his 13th Army Corps, then in

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the Depamnent of the Gulf with headquaners at New Orleans, Louisiana. General McClernand was glad to see me and urged me to go with him again on his staff. I went at once to St. Louis, Missouri, to close my accounts, and found General Grant in the city visiting friends. I called on him at his family residence and told him that General McClemand wanted me to accompany him south as a member of his staff. He seemed to be surprised at General McClemand's restoration to his command, and asked me a number of questions about it; and finally told me that I might go with General McClemand, and that my order of detail would follow me to New Orleans.

We arrived in New Orleans on February 15th, and reported to Major-General Banks, commanding the Depamnent of the Gulf.

On March 8th, we found ourselves at Matagorda Bay in command of the troops along the Texas coast to Brownsville. We held this command until April 17th when we received orders from General Banks to reinforce him speedily after his fatal battle at Mansfield, Louisiana, where he was badly whipped. We immediately loaded our transports and arrived at Alexander on the 26th of April. We reinforced General Banks none too soon, for his .Army was vety much discouraged and needed our help. On the 28th of April, I was sent to New Orleans to gather and hurty up all of our scattered trOOps. I was on this duty until General Banks came out of the Red River with his .Army. General McClernand arrived in New Orleans on May 16th, dreadfully ill. We first took him to a hospital, but later to a private residence, and obtained the services of the eminent Dr. D. C. Holliday, who saved his life after a protraaed illness.

On May 31st General McClemand, still being ill, received a letter from General Banks, asking that I might be ordered to report to him to serve as Judge of the Provost Court for the Depamnent of the Gulf at New Orleans. General McClemand, having found it necessary to rerum home on account of his

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exueme illness, and after conferring with me, consented to the detail, and on June 1st ordered me to repon to General Banks for duty. On June 8th, General McClernand depaned for his home in Springfield, Illinois, and did no funher service during the War. I served as Judge of this Coun for some time, during which I became acquainted with all the members of the Bar and a great many of the residents of the city of New Orleans, and established a fondness for it and them which I have since maintained.

I later asked for and received orders to return to my regiment then at Olattanooga, Tennessee. When I arrived at Louisville, Kentucky, on November 15th, I found that my regiment had become so decimated that it was necessary to consolidate it with two or three other Missouri regiments, and I, being absent at the time and there being other field officers present, had been left out in the consolidation. This ended my military service. I then returned to the city of New Orleans, and opened a law office early in 1865. It was not long before I had a lucrative practice before couns-manial, military commissions and government departments, and in the United States Couns.

I was in the city of Washington on imponant legal business, and witnessed the second inauguration of President Lincoln on March 4th, 1865. I attended the President's reception at the White House and stood near Mr. Lincoln during the whole ceremony.

Through the influence of my friend, James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior in Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, I was given, together with a gentleman by the name of Herben, a young lawyer of the city of Washington, a pass to visit the city of Richmond. We left Washington on the government boat "Dictator" at 3 P.M. on April 5th. The only other passengers were VicePresident Andrew Johnson and Ex-Senator Preston King of New York. We four were together all evening, and spent the whole time discussing the War and public affairs. Mr. Johnson

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was very bitter against the rebel leaders, and declared that they should be severely punished. My friend, Herbert, made bold to say that he did not believe Mr. Lincoln would punish the chief leaders of the Rebellion. Mr. Johnson rebuked Mr. Herbert severely for expressing such an opinion. In a tone almost angry he told Mr. Herbert that he should not talk that way, that that was the way public opinion was made. He should say that every one of the rebel leaders should be severely punished, and that "ueason must be made odious."

At the Spottswoode House in Richmond, we met Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, with whom Mr. Johnson had an earnest conversation, an account of which Mr. Dana prints in his book entided Re(o/Je(tions of the Civil War. He says on page 269:

"One day, after the meeting of this Committee, I was in the large room downstairs in the Spottswoode Hotel, when my name was called, and I turned around to see Andrew Johnson, the new Vice-President of the United States. He took me aside and spoke with great earnestness about the necessity of not taking the Confederates back without some conditions or without some punishment. He insisted that their sins had been enormous, and that if they were let back into the Union without any punishment the effect would be very bad. He said they might be very dangerous in the future. The Vice-President talked to me in this suain for fully twenty minutes, I should think-an impassioned, earnest speech on the subject of punishing rebels. Finally, when he paused, and I got a chance to reply, I said:

.. 'Why, Mr. Johnson, I have no power in this case. Your

remarks are very Striking, very impressive, and certainly worthy

of the most serious consideration, but it does not seem to me

necessary that they should be addressed to me. They ought

to be addressed to the President and to the Members of Con

gress, to those who have authority in the case and who will

finally have to decide this question which you raise:

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"'Mr. Dana,' said he, 'I feel it to be my duty to say these things to every man whom 1 meet, whom I know to have any influence. Any man whose thoughts are considered by others, or whose judgment is going to weigh in the case, I must speak to, so that the weight of opinion in favor of the view of the question which I offer may possibly become preponderating and decisive:

"That was in April. When Mr. Johnson became President, not long after, he soon came to take entirely the view which he condemned so earnestly in this conversation with me."

After spending a few days in Richmond with old Anny friends, 1 returned to Washington and was there when General Lee surrendered his Anny, with eighty-two Generals and about 35,000 men. I heard Mr. Lincoln's speech from the upper window of the White House on the night of April 11th. I met General Grant in the lunchroom of the Hotel Willard on the night of April 14th, upon his arrival after the surrender, shook hands with him and congratulated him upon his grand success. That same night Mr. Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. I attended a meeting called by Senator Yates of Illinois to make arrangements for the funeral of the President, participated in all the ceremonies, and accompanied the funeral cortege as far as New York City.

I was present in the parlor of the Kirkwood Hotel when Olief Justice Olase administered to Mr. Johnson the oath of office as President of the United States. There were not more than a dozen people present; my friend, General Dwight, afterwards for many years a Judge at Auburn, N. Y., being one of them.

Of course everything was delayed for a time in Washington. 1did not conclude my business and return to New Orleans until May 6th, but was successful in what had called me to Washington, and for which 1received a large fee.

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CHAPTER. II

As related before, Richmond surrendered on April 3, 1865. General Lee surrendered his Anny on the 9th of April; Johnston on April 26th; and Jefferson Davis was captured on the 10th day of May. General Sterling Price surrendered the Western Anny on the 25th day of May, and the War was at an end so far as fighting in the field was concerned.

The Confederate soldiers soon began to return in great numbers to their homes in New Orleans and the State of Louisiana. They were a seedy lot of fellows, much worn by long and hard service. They appeared to be delighted that the War was over, that they could be with their loved ones again, and were free from the rigors of military discipline and the hardships of war. They surely did enjoy new and clean clothes and good food, not to say something good to drink. They had not had much of any of these for four years. It was before the day of artificial ice, and I doubt if the Confederate soldier had seen commercial ice during his whole term of service. Sugar and coffee were almost equally scarce, and it was a delight to' see the rebel boys revel in the good things at Moreau's, Victor'S, Antoine's, and Madame Pelerine's restaurants.

The ex-Union soldiers located in New Orleans (there were many of us here then) received the "Johnnies" with open arms. Many were the good dinners, lunches, and breakfasts that we served to them-our late enemies but newly made friends. Long and delightful were the reminiscences of the march, the campaigning, and the battles in which we had been engaged on opposite sides in different sections of the South.

My regiment fought Colonel Bill Forrest, brother of General

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Forrest, at Decatur, Alabama, and one of my men shot hlm through the hips. He spent some time in New Orleans after the War and he well remembered our conteses and the incidenes of the battles which we fought. There was a pretty girl living near Oterokee Station. We fought and drove each other to and fro by this girl's home day after day for a week. She said that Colonel Forrest was her "Rebel Sweetheart" and that I was her "Yankee Sweetheart." She sang for us and played the piano; she gave me a pretty handkerchief. It was a great pleasure to tell her that I had won her, because we had shot her "Rebel Sweetheart" at Decatur, Alabama. But I guess the Colonel won her at last, for I have not seen nor heard of her since that campaign.

I remember well General James Longstreet, General Dick Taylor, E. D. White, Frank B. Jonas, Captain C. H. Slocumb, General Harry T. Hayes, General Frank B. Armstrong, Major Peon Mason, Governor P. O. Hebert, General Dan Adams, Colonel W. J. Behan, Major Andrew S. Herron, Colonel J. D. Hill, Frank Zachary, Captain H. Dudley Coleman, J. O. Nixon, Colonel J. B. Walton, Eugene Waggaman, General Stephen D. Lee, E. John Ellis, Frank H . Hatch, General Gibson, General

M. J. Thompson, General G. T . Beauregard, Colonel Davidson

B. Peon, Colonel Jack Wharton, dear old Colonel Dan Wilson,

J. B. Eustis, Tom Ocheltree, C. C. Duson, Captain J. B. Donnelly, Tom Bynum, C. C. Cordill, and a host of others who returned at the end of the War. I can see them now after sixtycwo years have elapsed: fine, spirited, handsome fellows with crowns of glory for duty eamesdy and gallandy performed. We lent some of them money and helped many of them in many ways. Later I appointed a number of them to office while Governor of the State.

The returned Confederates found a lot of Union officers and soldiers located, or locating, in their beloved city and State. General Frank P. Blair, myoid brigade, division, and corps com

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mander, engaged in cotton-planting in Madison Parish. It will be recalled that General Blair was the Democratic candidate for Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with Governor Horatio Seymour of New York, in 1868, against General Grant and Schuyler Colfax.

My friend, Whitelaw Reid, afterwards Editor of The New York Tribune, and later Ambassador of the United States to Great Britain, engaged in a similar enterprise in Madison Parish. Captain Hiram R. Steele, Captain Edward N. Whimey and Captain Abram N. Gould engaged in cotton-planting in Tensas Parish; John Foose, Lewis Clarke, James Barnett, Daniel Thompson and ]. B. Lyon engaged in sugar-planting in St. Mary Parish; General Lionel Sheldon, Colonel Don A. Pardee, Major William Grant, Major W. W . Howe and Major J. D. Rouse took to the law; while General W. L. McMillan, General

J. Hale Sypher, Captain George A. Sheridan, Colonel William Pitt Kellogg, John Lynch, General Frank J. Herron, General

W. B. Benton, Captain Charles W. Lowell, John F. Deane,

C. W. Keating, D. A. Reese, Captain A. S. Badger, General Cyrus Bussey, Captain Thomas A. Woodward, Pearl Wight, Colonel Jack Williamson, H. C. Dibble, Dr. M. A. Southworth, Captain S. B. Packard, Colonel James F. Casey, General James

B. Steedman, General James McCleary, Colonel Otarles B. Dillingham, L. J. Higby, Colonel H. H. Pope, and hundreds, if not thousands, of other ex-Union soldiers and northern friends scattered themselves over the State.

Some were cotton planters; some sugar planters; some merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, and speculators; while others held important Federal offices. All of us were soon up to our eyes in politics, made so by conditions which none of us could control.

I regret to have to say that it was not very long after the end of the War until the enthusiastic, cordial and even affectionate relations which had sprung up between the ex-Union and the

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returned Confederate soldiers began to show evidences of cooling off. The Union men here were generally men of means. They were successful in business and usually prosperous. They stood well with the officers and men in the Army of Occupation. They had money and good credit in the North, and but few of the Confederates had either.

Many things occurred to esuange these newly made friends: the assassination of President Lincoln, for instance, and the attempt of President Johnson to connect the Southern leaders with the crime. President Johnson offered large rewards for the arrest of Jefferson Davis and other leaders, directly charging them with the crime of killing President Lincoln. On May the 2nd, within seventeen days after his accession to the Presidency, he officially charged "Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, Oement C. Oay, Beverly Tutker, George M. Sanders, William

C. Oeary and other rebels and uaitors against the Government of the United States" with the murder of Mr. Lincoln. He offered "$100,000 reward for the arrest of Jefferson Davis, $25,000 for the arrest of Oement C. Oay, $25,000 for the arrest of Jacob Thompson, $25,000 for the arrest of George

M. Sanders, $25,000 for the arrest of Beverly Tucker, and '10,000 for the arrest of Willjam C. Oeary, late clerk of Oement C. Oay."

Then there were other acts of the national administration

which were deemed harsh; among them the order to shackle

and closely confine Jefferson Davis in Forness Monroe, and the

arrest and detention of many other Confederate leaders. There

were reportS of uprisings of freedmen against the whites in

many localities. The atmosphere became charged with rumors,

suspicions and individual acts which tended to keep the people

in a state of the wildest suspicion and excitement.

The insolence of a refractory house servant was repotted in

the press and charged "to the ouuage of freeing the slaves,"

and all sortS of things were predicted from "this revolutionary

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aa of Mr. Lincoln." The newly freed population realized the great change that had taken place in their relation to their old masters, and some of them were not slow in showing it. It might be said that they "felt their oats," and the returned Confederates declared that their "niggers were putting on airs," all of which was intolerable to the high-spirited Southerners.

Three colored men, said to be natives of San Domingo, published a daily newspaper in New Orleans, The New Orleans Tribune, which held out to the colored people the hope of making Louisiana a "Negro State." There were also many free negroes in the State who had immigrated from the North.

In Charles Gayarre's History of Louisiana, he calls attention to the annual message of Governor Robert C. Wickliffe to the Legislature in 1857. He says (speaking of Governor Wickliffe) :

He also informed the Legislature that the immigration of free negroes from other States of the Union into Louisiana had been steadily increasing for years; that it was a source of great evil, and demanded legislative action. "Public policy dictates," he observed, "the interest of the people requires, that immediate steps should be taken at this time to remove all free negroes who are now in the State, when such removal can be effected without violation of law. Their example and associations have a most pernicious effect upon our slave population."

Many Confederates had real or fancied grievances against the Yankees which soon developed in their hearts. General Buder and his administration became a theme of discussion: his supposed brutality; his "wanton imprisonment" of citizens who had remained within his lines and who had shown hostility to the Union Army. The organization of negro troops was bitterly condemned, also his celebrated woman order; and hundreds of other acts of Union soldiers were recalled by the returned Confederates.

It was not long before the reaction carne, and the men who had been civil and even cordial at the end of the War were passe32]

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ing each ocher in the staeeu with a bare recognition, and later on with "dead cuts." No more dinn.." 00 more breakfast500 more convivial intercourse. The cocjal dubs dosed their doors in our faces. Young ladies of the city, who had been happy to receive us before, passed us on the SUeets without recognition, or were "OOt in" when we called. I was personally insulted and driven from the door of a gentleman with whom I had formerly been on most intimate temlS.

The Union people who remained at home and fraternized with the Union AmIy, who attended the balls and receptions of the military commanders and participated in the cOOal life of the times, were especial objeas of the resenanent of the returned Coofedetates. Especially were the families of those men who had entered the Union Army subjected to ostracism and persecution. Five thousand Lonisiana wlute men had enlisted in the Union Army.

GeneraI Buder's administration was thought to be harsh. It is probable that he had to do some harsh things, as the mob of New Orleans assaulted Union men, tore down the United States Sag, and offered him and his troops t:lfery insult possible. Some women aaually spat in the faces of Union officers and emptied filth on soldiers and sailors from the windows as they paraded in the saeets. A mao by the name of Mumford led a mob and tore down the Union flag over the United States Mint, placed there by Admiral Farragut.

General Buder felt obliged, in order to proteCt his officers and men from insult, to issue the foUowing order:

Headquarters, Dept. of the Gulf, New Orleans, May 15th, 1862. General Order No. 28.

As the O/ficas and Soldiers of the Uni~ Swes have been subject to repeated imulrs from the women (ailing tban...lves Ladies) of New Orleans, in rerum for the most scrupulous DOIl·interference and courtesy OIl our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female sbaII by word, gesture. or movanent, insult or show Q)Qtempt for

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any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as & woman of the town plying her vocation. By (ommtITIJ of MAJOR-GENERAL BUTLER. GEORGE C. STRONG, A. G., Chi,f of Staff.

It is said that no further insults were offered officers and soldiers by women after the publication of this order. General Butler arrested and tried Mumford for his crime by a military commission which found him guilty, and he hanged him right under the staff of the flag he had pulled down in front of the United States Mint. From that day New Orleans was the most peaceable city in the nation.

General Banks soon afterwards succeeded General Butler in command, and tried to restore good will; he tried to induce the people to resume their peaceful vocations, encouraged them to reopen their factories and renew the cultivation of their farms and their sugar, rice, and cotton plantations. He organized the colored labor and induced them to remain at their homes and cultivate their fields. He fixed a low rate of wages for plantation hands; fixed the hours of field work; and provided that the laborers should have three good meals each day, and that half of the wages should be retained by the employer until the end of the crops, in order to encourage the laborers to remain on their plantations. He held an election for Congressmen. Michael Hahn and Benjamin F. Flanders were elected from the First and Second Distrias of New Orleans, and they were seated in the House of Representatives.

He put everybody to work who wanted work, and he fed the poor and helpless men, women and children out of the supplies of his Army. Lacer, he thought to turn the civil government over to the people of the State. He ordered an election for a Civil Governor and State Officers under the old State Constitution. This election was held on the 22nd of February, 1864, and Michael Hahn, a native of the State, was chosen Governor, and James Madison Wells, a large cotton planter of Rapides

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Parish, also a native of the State, Lieutenant-Governor, with a full complement of State Officers and a Legislature, all of whom were natives or life-long citizens of the State. Only free white males over twenty-one years of age were allowed to vote at this election or participate in the Government.

General Banks' plan was not approved by all of the Union men of the State, and many abstained from participation in it. The Civil War was in full blast and General Banks' plan was regarded by many Union men in the State as premature. Thomas Jefferson Durant, Benjamin F. Flanders, Rufus Waples, and a large number of other prominent Union men opposed the movement on that account. The result was that but a very small vote was polled at the election. Nevertheless, Governor Hahn with his State Government was inaugurated in Lafayette Square in New Orleans on the 4th day of March, 1864, with great pomp and splendor, amid the firing of cannon, the singing of patriotic songs, and the gteat applause of the assembled multitude. I witnessed the inauguration as a soldier of the United States.

It should not be forgotten that a majority of the people of the State of Louisiana were not in favor of secession. This was shown by the vote at the presidential election in 1860 . .Although not one single vote was polled for Mr. Lincoln, Breckinridge and Lane, the extreme Democratic candidates, received but 22,680 votes; while Bell and Everett, the avowed Union candidates, received 20,204 votes, and Douglas and Johnson received 7,625 votes. It is well known that there wete no more earnest Union men than the Douglas Democrats. It is therefore safe to say that these 27,829 voters, or a majority of 5,148, who cast their votes for Bell and Douglas were opposed to secession.

It is further shown by the fact that 17,296 votes were cast against secession at the election of delegates to the secession convention, while only 20,448 votes were cast for the secession delegates. The majority for secession in the dty of New

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Orleans was only 400. The Parish of St. James, which elected ex-Governor Roman a delegate to the Convention, cast but 73 votes for secession and gave 509 votes against it. (FomerVol. 4, page 23.)

These facts show that the people of Louisiana were dragooned into secession by the extreme Democratic politicians of that day. This condition existed at the time General Buder and Admiral Farragut arrived in the city of New Orleans. The forces of the United States were received with cordiality by the Union men and women, although the streets were filled with a hostile, howling mob of thugs and ruffians, led by Mayor John

T. Monroe of New Orleans and his murderous police.

On March 28th following, Governor Hahn's Legislature ordered an election for delegates to a Constitutional Convention "to revise and amend" the State Constitution, but it proceeded to form a new Constitution for the State, which it submitted to the people for the ratification. II did nol enfranchise any colored citizen, although Mr. Lincoln suggested it.

President Lincoln wrote Governor Hahn a personal letter as follows:

I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the rolored people may not be let in ; as, for instance, the very intelligent, and those who have fought gaIlandy in our ranks. . . . But this is only a suggestion, not for the public, but to you alone.

A. LINCOLN.

The newly formed constitution received but 4,684 votes, while 789 votes were cast against its ratification. Nevertheless President Lincoln, on the advice of General Banks, recognized the new State Government, and it proceeded to administer the laws. The Legislature that was chosen met on October 3, 1864, and a full Civil Government was in power in all of that pan of the State within the lines of the Union Army, but it was only a small pan of the State.

Exactly one year later the legislature elected Governor

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Michael Hahn to the United States Senate, whereupon he resigned as Governor on March 4, 1865, and Lieutenant-Govemor James Madison Wells became Governor of the State. One month later (April 14) Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, and VicePresident Johnson became President of the United States. Richmond, the Capital of the Confederacy, had already been captured, and General Lee had surrendered his Army at Appomattox to General Grant on the 9th of April, 1865.

The Confederate Armies having surrendered, the War, so far as fighting was concerned, was at an end. Reconsuuaion became the all-engrossing question for the nation. A new Congress had just been eleaed to serve for two years. A conflia arose at once between President Johnson and Congress as to the terms and conditions on which the rebellious States were to be allowed to resume their political relations with the Union.

Congress assumed the position that the Constitution of the United States should be amended in several particulars: among others things, that slavery should be abolished; that Confederate War claims should never be paid; that no discrimination should be made against citizens on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; and that none of the rebellious States should be admitted to representation in Congress until they should ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Certainly the State of Louisiana had formally withdrawn from the Union, as the Ordinance * adopted by a convention of the people on January 28, 1861, will show.

The Congress of the United States had solemnly declared that the inhabitants of the Confederate States were in a state of insurrection against the authority of the United States. This declaration was approved by President Lincoln, and the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate had unani

• See Appendix A. [37 )

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mously declared that the two Senators, Hahn and Cutler, claiming seats from Louisiana under the General Banks program of 1864, could not be admitted to seats in that body "till some joint action of both houses shall, by some recognition of the existing State Government acting in harmony with the Government of the United States and recognizing its authority, should be adopted." This report was signed by all of the members of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, including the great Democratic Senators Reverdy Johnson of Matyland and Thomas C. Hendricks of Indiana.

Therefore, the appointment of provisional Governors by President Johnson to reorganize the rebellious States under their old Constitutions was a gross usurpation by the President, and it was resented by an ovetwhelming majority of the people of the loyal States, as shown by the Congressional Election of 1866.

The attitude of the President was so in conflict with the opinions of Congress that the fiercest political struggle in the history of the nation occurred. Mr. Johnson was totally devoid of tact, and as stubborn and as arbitrary as he was tactless. He reasoned that he had four years to serve, and he was induced to believe that "his policy," as he called it, would be crystallized and completed in that rime, and that the people of the nation, when they should come to elect the new Congress, would be obliged to accept "his policy." So he proceeded to "reorganize" the rebellious States along the lines that he had laid down. Notwithstanding all of these facts, and within two months after the surrender of the Confederate Armies, President Johnson appointed Provisional Governors in each of the rebellious States without consulting CongteSS, and authorized these Provisional Governors to order elections for State Officers, Legislatures, and Members of Congress in their respective States under their old State Constitutions. In the State of Louisiana the President found that J. Madison Wells was acting Governor of that State

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under the election ordered by General Banks, but which had been specifically and unanimously repudiated by the United States Senate in refusing to seat the Senators elected by its Legislature.

Governor Wells visited the President at Washington and declared himself in favor of Mr. Johnson·s "policy," and the President recognized him as Governor like the other Provisional Governors appointed by him. The Governor at once ordered an election for State, Parish, and Congressional Offices, and also for Members of the Legislature.

There were at this rime three political parries in the State of Louisiana: the "National Republican Party," headed by the Hon. Thomas J. Durant, ex-Governor B. F. Flanders, Rufus Waples, Clarles P. Horner, and others; the "Conservative Union Party," headed by Governor J. Madison Wells, Judge James G. Taliaferro, George S. Lacey, Cuthben Bullett, and others, all Union men; and the "Democratic Party," headed by Judge H. D. Ogden, ex-Governor Robert C. Wickliffe, Alben Voorhies, James B. Eustis, Andrew S. Herron, and others, all returned Confederates.

The Democratic Party held a State Convention in the city of New Orleans and adopted a platform of principles from which the following is extracted:

First, Resolved, That we emphatically approve of the views of President Johnson with regard to the reorganizatioo of the State Governments of the South.

Resolved, That we hold this to be a Government of White People, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive political benefit of the White Race, and in accordance with the constant adjudication of the United States Supreme Court, that the people of African descent cannot be COIlsidered as citizens of the United States, and that there can in no event nor under any circumstances be any equality between the White and other Races.

The Democratic Convention nominated J. Madison Wells as

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.. .-..:.~-.----~~.

its candidate for Governor, and Albert Voorhies, who declared himself "to be still a Rebel," for Lieutenant-Governor. The Conservative Union Party, also, nominated J. Madison Wells for Governor with James G. Taliaferro, a staunch old Union man, for Lieutenant-Governor. Each party filled its ticket with its own members. The Conservative Union Party was overwhelmed everywhere at the election, and the Confederate (or Democratic) State and Legislative ticket was elected by an immense majority. The Legislature was almost unanimously made up of ex-Confederates.

The Republican Party formally refused to participate in the reorganization scheme of President Johnson, and therefore put no State, Congressional, or other ticket in the field.

At the First Session of the Legislature, and within a few days of its first meeting, it adopted a resolution declaring that the Constitution of 1864 under which Governor Wells held office was the "creation of fraud, violence, and corruption, and did not in any manner represent the people of the Srate of Louisiana." The Legislature also adopted a resolution protesting against the seating in the United States Senate of Michael Hahn and

R. K. Cutler, who was elected by the former Legislature and whose credentials were signed by Governor J. Madison Wells. The spirit shown by this Legislature was one of intense and violent hostility to everything that had been done in Louisiana by Union men during the War.

Encouraged by President Johnson, matters proceeded very rapidly. Impatient to possess themselves of all power and all offices of the State, the Legislature passed a bill providing for the election of a mayor and muncipal officers for the city of New Orleans.

This bill was vetoed by Governor Wells,. who claimed that

further guarantees and amendments to the city charter, with

• See Appendix B for an atraCt from his vew:'

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a radical revision of the registry and election laws, should firSt be adopted.

For confirmation of Governor Wells's statement regarding pre-War conditions in Louisiana, I would call attention to such records as the veto message of Governor Paul O. Hebert in ISS6, the message of Governor Robert C. Wickliffe to the Legislature in ISS7, and the New Orleans Della of May 6, 186()all describing the amazing orgies of lawlessness and the anarchy prevailing at that period; a reign of "force and fraud, of the knife, of the sling-shot and brass knuckles"-while orderly and decent government was paralyzed and frostrate.·

But the bill for a city election was passed over the Governor's veto, and became a law. The New Orleans city election was held under it, and John T. Monroe was elected Mayor. It was this same John T. Monroe who was the master spirit of these "Know-Nothing" murders; who led the mobs of ruffians in ISS4 and again in lSS6; who had taken possession of the StreetS of New Orleans on election day; whose violences and murders and outrages had been the subject of the messages to the Legislature by two different Governors of the State, and of the editorial JUSt referred to (see Appendices C, D, E) ; and whom General Buder was obliged to confine in Fort Jackson and later to expel from the Union lines. .After his election as Mayor, he at once proceeded to restore his old gang of thugs, ruffians, and murderers to power in New Orleans.

Being now possessed of all power in the State, and in all the Parish and Municipal Governments throughout the State, the returned Confederate politicians lost no opportunity to show their aversion and hostility to all classes of Union men, and especially to the recently emancipated negro population .

.All Union men were made to feel the heavy hand politically,

• See exuaca in Appendices C. D, aocI B. [41 )

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commercially, and socially. The old Union men were denounced as "renegades, scallawags, and traitors to the South" during the Civil War. The thousands who had remained loyal to the Union were insulted and assaulted on every occasion, and were made to feel that they were outcasts in their own homes. The new men, ex-officers and soldiers of the Union Army and many Northern citizens who had settled in the States were called "Yankees," "Carpet-baggers," and "Adventurers," and subjected to all sorts of ostracism and indignities.

It looked as if all of these classes of Union citizens were to be compelled either to surrender their self-respect and give up everything and leave, or to organize and to fight for their rights to live in the State. We young men proposed to fight, and we accepted any and all legitimate allies.

Organized violence was common throughout the State. Personal difficulties growing out of the issues were common everywhere. The greatest sufferers of all, however, were the newly emancipated slaves. They were whipped and scourged and killed mercilessly. No one was punished for killing negroes. Ingenious laws, ordinances and rules were at once adopted by the new Legislature and by local authorities, which praaically restored slavery.

Any reader doubting this statement-that virtual re-establishment of slavery by State law and municipal regulation was attempted in Louisiana-may refer to copies of the ordinances of the towns of Opelousas and Franklin, and of the Aa of the Legislature of Louisiana within fifteen days after it convened in 1865, and of extracts from slighdy later Aas at the same session.* Not only did these laws violate the constitutional provision prohibiting slavery or involuntary servitude, and arbitrarily discriminate against colored people generally: they forbade the negro to sell or barter personal propetty or even to

• See Appendices p. G. H. and I.

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reside in certain towns, and gave the mayors thereof the power to dictate how the negro should worship God therein.

.All of these acts of the Legislature and municipal regulations meant the practical re-establishment of slavery in the State of Louisiana. The ActS were passed within the first fifteen days of its first session. This legislation and the various instances of widespread wanton violence and ostracism aroused the Union men of the State and the nation, and they determined to organize for their own protection and for the protection of the freedmen and the old free negroes before the War.

On September 27, 1865, a Convention of the Republican Party was held in New Orleans, over which the Hon. Thomas Jefferson Durant presided. Mr. Durant was one of the eminent lawyers of the State and a leading Douglas Democrat before the War. He had been United States District Attorney for Louisiana, under President Polk.

A State Committee was formed, which proceeded to organize the Union Republican Party of the State of Louisiana. I participated in this Convention and was made the corresponding secretary of the State Committee. There was a small number of intelligent old-time free men of color in this Convention, and several of them were placed on the State Committee. They had never been slaves; some of them were slave-holders; most of them were nearly white. They were large property-owners and among our best citizens. Their colored ancestors had been soldiers under Governor Oaibome, and under General Jackson in 1815. They paid taxes on over fifteen million dollars' worth of property in the city of New Orleans.

The Convention adopted the following resolutions as the party platform, and issued an address to the people of the State:

(1) Resolfled-That this body shall be sryled the Convention of the Republican Party in Louisiana, and does hereby rea1lirm the platform

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of principles adopred at Baltimore, in June, 1864, by the Cooventioo which nominated Abraham Lincoln and Andrew JobnSOl1.

(2)

R'IO/fI"I-That the Ordinance of Secessioo adopted by a Cooventioo of the people of Louisiana, called by an Aa of the Legislature, was a declaratioo of war against the United States; it disrupted in faa though not in law the relations existing between the General Government and the people of this State, and rendered the latter incapable of exercising the privileges of citizens of the United States.

(3)

Relo/flet/-In addition, that the acts of Congress of the United States, declaring the inhabitants of Louisiana to be in a state of insurrection, constituted them, in law, enemies of the United Stares, and un.6tted them for the functions of a State in the Union until restored by the actioo of Coogress.

(4)

Relo/flet/-1'har loraI State Governments are essential to the Government of the United States, without which it can not operate; that the rebellioo was carried 00 by insurgent States, therefore it is the duty of the United States, at the earliest possible motnent coosistent with the general welfare to establish by aa of Congress a Republican Government in Louisiana.

(5)

R'IO/fI,t/-That this duty is imposed by the Constitution on "the United States," and not on any military commander or Executive officer; but must be performed by the United States, represented by the President and both houses of Congress.

(6)

Reso/fI,t/-That the system of slavery hererofore existing in Louisiana, and the laws and ordinances passed frotn time to time to suppott it, have ceased to exist; and we protest against any and all attempts to substitute in their place a system of serfdom, or forced labor in any shape.

(7)

R'IO/fI,t/-That the necessities of the nation called the colored men into the public service in the m05t honorable of all duties that of the soldier fighting for the integrity; of his country and the security of the Coostitutiooal Government; this, with his loyalty, patience and prudence, is sufficient to assure Congress of the justice and safety of giving him a vote to protect his liberty.

(8)

Reso/fI,t/-1'har it would be unwise to admit the inhabitants of Louisiana at ooce into the Union as a State. A preliminary system of local government should be established by Congress to endure so long as may be necessary, to test the fidelity of the people to the United States, and to accustom the inhabitants to exercise in harmony and peace the rights and duties of self-government.

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(9)

R,soJ",J-That this Convention reaffirms the principles set forth in the Declaration of American Independence: in 1776:-1'har all men were created equal, and thar republican and just governments require the consent of the governed; and deem this a fitting occasion to repeat and reaffirm our conviaions in these greai truths, from the peculiar circumstances in which our loyal fellow-citizens of African descent are placed, though equal in numbers to the white race; denied all political rights and governed without their consent; aubjeaed to taXation without representation, and subjected to trials by courts and juries; and denied all participation in their organization and administration.

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RIJOJ",J-1'hat this convention adopts, as the basis of its political organization, universal suffrage, liberty and the equality of all men before the Jaw.

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RtsoJ",J-1'har under existing cirOlmstances, this Convention considers it inexpedient to nominate candidates for State Officers.

In order to represent the views of the Union men of Louisiana to Congress, it was determined to hold a voluntary election for a delegate to represent the ''Territory'' of Louisiana in Congress. The Hon. Thomas ]. Durant was nominated by acclamation, but he declined the honor; after which I was nominated by the Convention as such delegate, and a voluntary election was held on the 6th of November, 186~. I received 19,396 votes in thirteen Parishes of the State. My credentials were signed by the Secretary of the State, with the seal of the State attached.

I spent several months in Washington during the next session of Congress_ I was accorded a seat on the floor of the House of Representatives, while the Senators and Representatives elected by the Johnson-Wells State Government had to be contented with seats in the Galleries.

The Legislature proposed to take the sense of the people on the 7th day of April, 1866, on the question of calling a Convention to make a new Constitution for the State. Governor Wells vetoed the Bill. The Legislature in the meantime, and among its first acts, adopted a joint resolution protesting against the

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seating of Michael Hahn . and R. King Cuder, who were in Washington claiming seats as Senators elected by the fonner Legislature with credentials signed by Governor Wells. It proceeded to elect two others as such Senators, the Hon. Randall Hunt and the Hon. Henry Boyce.

The proposed Act of the Legislature providing for a Convention to make a new constitution in the place of the Constitution of 1864, under which Governor Wells had been first elected, declared that said Constitution of 1864 was "the creature of fraud, violence, and corruption, and did not in any manner represent the people of the State." But before taking final action on the Governor's veto, the Speaker of the House-the Hon. Duncan S. Cage-and Hons. James B. Eustis and W. E. Eagan, Members of the House, were sent to Washington to confer with President Johnson. Mter their conference with the President, these gendemen united in a telegram to the Legislature advising against the calling of the Convention, for the reason "that it might seriously embatrass the President's Reconstruction Policy." The telegram read as follows:

Washington, March sth, IS66

To Hon. Alberr Voorhies, President of the Senate,

and Hon. J. B. Elam, Speaker pro lem. House of Representatives:

We have had a long and agreeable interview with the President

today, which was evidently pleasing to him likewise. Our coming here was opportune, and may averr great embarrassment. We also had an interesting interview with the Secretary of the State, and are to have another interview with the President on Saturday, by appointment.

(Signed) W. E. EAGAN

D. S. CAGE

J. B. EUSTIS

The following telegram was also sent to a Member of the House of Representatives:

Washington, March sth, Is66 To Hon. A. L. Tucker, House of Representatives: Mer interviews with the President and Secretary Seward, we are

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thoroughly convinced that further agitatioo of the Convention questioo will seriously embarrass the President's reconsuuaiOD policy. (Signld) D. S. yas

J. B. EuSTIS

W. E.EAGAN

So the Bill for the Convention was laid aside. These events and this condition in Louisiana and in Washington produced a bitter feud between Governor Wells and his newly made friends, the exueme Democratic politicians, who controlled the State Legislature of Louisiana and the municipality of the city of New Orleans.

Governor Wells became desperate, and denounced his late supporters as being guilty of the greatest ingratitude; he expressed his regtet at having been the means of bringing them into power, and sought for any opportunity to overthrow them.

It appears that before adjournment of the Constitutional Convention of 1864, it had, by resolution, authorized the President of the Convention "for any reason he might think proper" to reconvene the Convention.

Notwithstanding the Convention had been dead for over two years, Governor Wells in his desperation conceived the plan to have this Convention reconvene, and he induced a membcrthough not the President of the Convention-as required by the resolution, to issue a call for its reassembling, and in furtherance of the scheme, Governor Wells issued a proclamation authorizing the election of delegates to fill vacancies in the Convention that might have taken place since the adjournment. The election was fixed for the third of September following, but the first meeting of the Convention was fixed for the 30th of July.

According to the call, the Convention was to meet on the 30th of July, 1866. Governor Wells called on me and · asked for my co-operation in this movement. But our friends toolt the ground that the Convention of 1864 was dead and could not be

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revived, and that Congress only could control the situation. We strenuously opposed President Johnson's plan of ReconstruCtion as well as Governor Wells' program.

But it appears that the movement had the approval of ex-Govemor and Senator-elect Hahn, and the men who participated with him in the organization of the State Govemment of 1864. This is shown by the fact that a mass meeting was held in the city of New Orleans soon after the call for the Convention had been issued, over which ex-Govemor Hahn presided and at which he made a speech favoring the call. Dr. Dostse and others made violent speeches which tended ro increase the bittemess of the factions.

Mayor Monroe, who had but recently been elected and installed Mayor of the city of New Orleans, announced his determination to break up the Convention if it attempted to hold a session. He wrote a letter to General Baird, commanding the United States Army, dated July 2~, 1866, in which he repeated his determination to break up the Convention "unless it was supported by United States troOps." General Baird replied protesting against any resort to violence.

Only a small number of members answered the call-not nearly enough to constitute a quorum-and if they had been left alone the whole proceedings would have been regarded as a farce. But the spirit of tumult and violence was still in the hearts of the Confederate politicians and they did not hesitate to resort to violence and bloodshed to carry out their purposes.

The night before the date fixed for the meeting of the Convention, Mayor Monroe armed his police and a large number of his followers and sympathizers with the purpose of carrying out his threat to break up the Convention. I StoOd on the gallety of a friend's house on Canal Street and saw the police and mob gather. The police were in uniform, but the mob was distinguished by shirt sleeves and white handkerchiefs around their necks.

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A signal shot was fired and the mob deployed across the head of Dryades Stteet, moved upon the State House, and shot down the people who were in the hall. Fony-eight were killed outtight, sixty-eight were severely wounded, and ninety-eight slightly wounded in the hall and on the stteets. Mayor Monroe's threat to break up the Convention succeeded completely and, but for the appearance of General Baird with United States troops later, the killing would undoubtedly have been much greater than it was.

After this affair, a number of Union men left the State never to return, among them being the Hon. Thomas J. Durant, the leader of the Republican Party in Louisiana. His residence was at the corner of Canal Street and University Place, and he and his family had been obliged to wimess the massacre of the Union men on that day. It was more than they could endure.

Conditions in the South became such that Southern loyalists felt it necessary to call a Convention to meet in Philadelphia on the 3rd of September, 1866. Every Southern and "Border" State was largely represented, except South Carolina. The delegates were all white men with two exceptions and these were from Louisiana.

This Convention presented to the people of the nation all the facts and demanded that Congress should take measures to protect the Union men of the South against the organized Confederate elements. I was Olairman of the Committee on Reconstruction and read the report. The report concluded with these words:

There can be no safety for the country against the fell spirit of slavery, now organized in the form of serfdom, unless the Government by national and appropriate legislation, enforced by national authority, shall confer on every citizen in the States we represent the American binhri&ht of impartial suffrage and equality before the law.

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In discussing the question of Negro Sulfrage in the South, Governor Wm. G. Brownlow of Tennessee said:

Some geodemen, from a mistaken view of my character, said they were afraid of Negro Suffrage, and wanted to dOdge it. I have never dodged any subject, nor have I ever been found on both sides of any subject. While I am satisfied with everything done here, I would go further. I am an advocate of Negro Suffrage, and impartial suffrage. I would rather be ·elected by loyal Negroes than by disloyal white men. I would rather associate with loyal Negroes than with disloyal white men. I would rather be buried in a Negro graveyard than in a Rebel graveyard; and after death I would sooner go to a Negro heaven than a White Rebel·, hell.

A Congressional election was to be held in November following. Together with ex-Govemor A. J. Hamilton of Texas and a number of other delegates, I made a canvass of the Northern States. We spoke in the New England States, New York, Ohio, and Indiana, and ended at Sptingfield, illinois, only a few days before the election. The Congressional election went overwhelmingly for the Union Republican Party.

The newly elected Congress repudiated President Johnson's policy of Reconstruaion. It proposed the 14th and nth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. It adopted measures for the Reconstruaion of the ex-Confederate States. It provided that there should be no discrimination of VOters on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It disfranchised certain classes of Confederates, and put the details of Reconstruaion in the hands of General Grant. President Johnson vetoed all of these measures, but Congress passed them over his head.

Ma;or-General P. H. Sheridan was appointed in command of the Fifth Military District, in which was the State of Louisiana. His headquarters were at New Orleans. He first ordered a registration of all legal voters. Later he called a Convention to form a State Constitution, which prepated and

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sul:mitted to the people a constitution for their ratification; an election was ordered for State Congressional, Parish and Legislative Officers to take place at the same time.

About this time we began the organization of the Grand .AmJ.y of the Republic in Louisiana. At an encampment held at the Mechanic's Institute at 7 P. M., on January 11, 1868, the following officers were IInanimously elected:

Grand Commander, General H. C. Warmo!h. Senior Vice·Com· mander, Captain L. A. Soaer. Junior Vice-Commander, Captain S. B. Packard. Asst. Adj. General, Colonel George E. Yarrington. Quarter. master·General, Major W. W. Howe. Council of Administration: General L. A. Sheldon, Captain George Gresham, Captain J. B. Cooper, Sergeant J. A. Heall and Captain J. A. Raynal. Delegates to Phil· adelphia Grand kmy: General L. A. Sheldon, Captain S. B. Packard, Dr. J. B. Cooper, and Captain J. A. Rayna1.

The following resolution was adopted:

RESOLVED: That !he Grand kmy of the Republic of Louisiana stand by and supporr !he plan of Reconstruction proposed by the Congress of !he United Swes.

After the Convention had fonned a new Constitution and General Sheridan had ordered an election, the Republican State Committee called a Convention to meet in the city of New Orleans on January 14, 1868, to nominate a State ticket.

At this time there were cwo distina factions in the State Republican Party in the State of Louisiana,. One of them called itself the "Pure Radicals" and was led by three San Domingo negroes who owned and published the New Orleans Tribllnl, and who urged the negroes of Louisiana to assert themselves and follow Hayti, San Domingo, and Uberia, and to make Louisiana an African State.

The "Pure Radicals," led by-the New Orleans Tribllne, began

their campaign to Africanize the State as· early as Oaober

23, 1867.

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On October 23, 1867, this paper published an editorial on the coming Constitutional Convention. It said:

This Convention, elected by a mass of 80,000 voters among whom there were not 8,000 white men, will be composed of a small majoricy of Caucasian delegatcs--showing thereby that no selfish design, no exclusive view, guided the colored masses.

There will be in that Convention cwo parties, the "Puce Radicals" and the "Compromising Republicans." Efforts will be made by parties outside of the Convention to secure the ascendency of the compromising section. But such efforts are doomed to fail.

On Oaober 30, 1867, this paper published an article entitled "The White Man's Party and the Radical Party," in which it said:

There will be in the coming Convention a "White Man's Parcy" which is already organizing in the vain hope of conuolling the furore Government of the Stare. . . . We are in a situation to be just to ourselves and to elect our fellow-men. Let us do it.

But [white men) must understand how the time has changed. We now have the ballot, to use it in our own behalf. We have more than the ballot: we compose a majoricy in the State, and with the help of ollr RAJiraJ white friends, we compose a majoricy in the Convention . . . the colored masses are the masters of the field. Everything depends on the colored vote.

These extracts from the editorials of this influential newspaper among the colored people clearly indicate the purpose of those leaders. Encouraged by the protection that they expected from the United States Army, and realizing the helplessness of the fonnerly ruling white people, they thought to establish an Ajrkan State Government.

This is more clearly indicated by an editorial in the Tribune under date of December 26, 1867, in which it said:

There are by this day three Governments among civilized nationS entirely in the hands of men of the African race. There are the Dominican Republic, Hayti, and Liberia. .All of these are Republican in form. Liberia, though the youngest of the three, has taken the lead as

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far as true Republican institutions and indusuial development are concerned. That little Republic was created like a new territory in the United States on a virgin soil, whereon the fabric of sociery could be built according to the will and pattern of the founders. The hindrance of an old and cumbering state of things was not met there. None of the prejudices left by monarchical rule was encountered on thar new soil. Liberia was free from the sense of inequaliry and the love of social distinctions which Hayti inherited from French monarchical rule and from the teachings of the Roman Church.

Even as early as October 2S, 1867, this paper published an article entitled "Political Bearing," which urged the colored men of the Convention that each and every choice to be made by the Convention for its officers should be dictated by racial considerations. It said:

From the President down to the doorkeeper, and from the clerk and the chief reporter down to the printer, the choices should be made so as to convince the people of the State that the supremacy of a privileged class will be no longer fostered and the time has come when the representatives of the colored race can find favor as well as white men. It is to be demonstrated that long services and unfaltering devotion to the cause of Radicalism shall obtain the reward, irrespective of color or race, and to that effect it is important to choose officers from among both populations.

But there is something more. It is important to show that the oppressed race will not be overlooked; that from this time forward the rights of the neglected race will be recognized, to share in all departments of our State Government. The Convention will have many things to do to break the spell under which we were laboring. The choice of officers will, therefore, have a political bearing, and cannot be dictated by fitness only.

The Convention will. meet un~er v.ery pec:uI!':f, ~rcumstances-<ircumsrances of originaiity· .w{ gr~eu1.: -·11: will ~,-the first constitutional assembly, the firSt: oHiciaI bofly, 'eWi <oiIveiled in the United States without distincti~·of ~e 1)( w\Or, : It ~1l-be the first mixed assemblage, clothed W!th a public i:hata,t:Itir~ '.:~: s~"ch this Convention has ro take a position in immediate conttadiction with the old assemblies of the whill man'J gOflll"nmml. They will have to show that a new order will succeed the former order of things, and that

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the Img-neglected nee will, It last, e1Jeaually share in the Government of the State. • . • Let our friends be bold and go to the point, as far as the application of the principle of equal rights and equal share is coocemed.

When the time came to nominate candidates for Governor and other State officers, this "Pure Radical" faction insisted that the candidate of the Republican Party for the office of Govemor should be a negro.

The other faction, named by the Tribune and its Pure Radical faction the "Compromising, or White Republicans" faction, was composed of the mass of white and colored Republicans who saw the danger of following the extreme views of the New Orleans Tribune, and its Pure Radicals.

When the Convention came to select its candidate for Governor, five gentlemen were proposed by their respective friends. Major Francis E. Dumas, colored, was proposed by the Pure Radicals as their candidate. Mr. P. B. S. Pinchback, colored, was also proposed, but Mr. Pinchback withdrew his name, declaring that he "did not believe it to be a wise thing to Dominate a colored man for the office of Governor at this time." Major Dumas' name was not withdrawn.

The contest was a spirited one, and it resulted in the success of the so-cal.I.ed "Compromising" faction by a dose vote on the second ballot, H. C. Warmoth receiving 45, and F. E. Dumas 43 votes. Major Dumas was tendered the nomination for Lieutenant-Govemor by a vote of 57 as against W. J. Blackburn, an old white Union man, who received 27 votes. But Major Dumas declined the nomination on our ticket the next

day in the follo~S1~~:::: .. :: ... :. : : ::: :

: : : ...... NeW <irlei.DS,: f:a:, January 14, 1868

To The Honorab¥-.~~~·of:~~ 'eJlubl(~·<:onvention.r-tl_em-. .. ..... .... .... .... .. .. e. :

w : " "

ug.J, ~. • .. "" .... .. .. ...." .."

With the expression of my tbanks for the honor conferred upon me by the Nominating Convention for Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana, I beg leave to state that I decline being placed in that

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capacity on the Radical Republican Ticket. I authorized no one to bring my name forward for that position in the Nominating Con· ventioo.

I retnain, Gendemen,

Your obedient servant,

(Sig,,,,J) FltANOS B. DuMAS

On motion of Colonel Don A. Pardee, the resignation was accepted and the Convention proceeded to the selection of a candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Govemor.

Pirs' Ballo'

Whole number of votes cast .• •.. . . ..... . .. . .•...• 88 Necessaty for a choice ........... . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . • 45 O. J. Dunn received ........... ...... ..........• 38 W. J. Blackburn . . ................. . ....... . ..• 23 L. A. Snaer ••.•••••.•••••• ••..••. ••••••••••• .• 13 C. C. Antoine .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 G. W. Reagan ....................... ........ .. 3

SuomJ Ballo'

O. J. Dunn Received ......... . ....... .. .. ... .. . . 54

W. J. Blackburn ......•..............•...•...... 27

The nomination of Mr. Dunn was made unanimous. The Convention proceeded to nominate Antoine Dubuclet for Treasurer; George E. Bovee for Secretary of State; George

M. Wickllife for Auditor; Simeon Beldon for Attomey-General. and T. W. Conway for Superintendent of Education. Five white men and two colored men constituted the ticket.

Resolutions were adopted. among which was the following: RESOLVED: That we believe in and shall endeavor to carry out the great and immutable principles of equa1 rights for all men, irrespective of race, color, or previous condition. (Signed) JAMES H. INGIlAHAW, Chllimun

J. V. NOBLB

L. A. SNAEll

DoN A. PAllDBB Adjourned sine die.

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The Republican Convention that nominated me for Govemor, together with a full State ticket, was composed mainly of delegates to the Constitutional Convention who were elected by the people under the Act of Congress of 1867.

These delegates were oomposed of several different elements of our people. There were, first, many of the old original Union white men of the State who had remained loyal during the War. Then there was a small number of ex-officers of the Union Army and Navy, together with a number of other Nonhern business men who had settled in Louisiana during or immediately after the end of the War. Also there was a number of free men of oolor who were descendants of the original French, Spanish, and Canadian immigrants who had cohabited with their slave women, some of whom, at least, had been educated in France or Spain, and who at the death of their white fathers inherited a part, if not all, of their fathers' estates. This element was important on the arrival of Governor Claiborne in 1803; so much so that their recognition by him and his organization of them into the Territorial Militia was the cause of serious criticism and controversy by the ancient Louisianians, who had no good feeling for Governor Oaiborne or General Wilkinson, or, in fact, for the United States, until some time after the Battle of New Orleans.

General Jackson recognized this mulatto or free-men-of-color corps. He encouraged it; he inspected it; he issued an address to it; he flattered it for its good soldierly appearance, and at the end of the War he complimented it most highly for its gallant and useful service in the battle of the 27th of December, 1814, and the great battle of the 8th of January, 1815.

This element of colored people had greatly increased in numbers, wealth, intelligence, and importance by 1867. Many of them were owners of slaves, and some of them were actually in the Confederate Army, but not registered as negroes. On November 23, 1861, the Confederate Grand Parade took place

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in New Orleans, and it was estimated to be seven miles long. One feature of this review was a regiment of free men of color, 1,400 in number. The P;(al,me speaks as follows of another review on February 9, 1862:

We must pay deserved compliment to the companies of free men of color, all well·dressed. well·drilled. and comfortably uniformed. Most of these companies have provided themselves with arms unaided by the adminisuation.

They were planters. merchants, brokers, and mechanics of various trades. They paid taxes on over $1:5,000,000 of property in New Orleans alone.

As related before, there were a number of free negroes who had come to Louisiana from the North before the War. They were the subject of a message. as formerly stated, to the State Legislature by Governor R. C. Wickliffe in 18,6, who said that they had been steadily increasing for years, and that this was a source of great evil and demanded legislative action. He demanded that all free negroes be removed from the State.

So the reader will see that the race question obtruded itself early in our Republican politics. There was a class of colored people in Louisiana who really hoped and believed that the change in affairs would result in the Mrianization of the State. These three San Domingo refugees (colored) by the names of Roudanez, who had located in the State of Louisiana, had brought with them their Dominican and Haytian predilections. One of these men was a physician of eminence; all of them were men of intelligence. They were the publishers of the daily newspaper in the city of New Orleans already referred to, called the New Orleans Tribune. They led in the insistence that the Republican Convention should nominate a colored man for Governor. They were responsible for the naming of F. E. Dumas as this nominee. Mr. Dumas was a vety respectable and wealthy colored man, and I was nominated over him by only two votes' majority. These men were so dissatisfied with their

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failure to nominate a colored man for Governor that they would not allow Major Dumas to accept the nomination on our ticket for Lieutenant-Governor. They forced him to decline our nomination.

So dissatisfied were these Pure Radicals with our ticket that they brought forward an opposition ticket headed by Judge Taliaferro for Governor, with Major Francis E. Dumas for Lieutenant-Governor, making a full ticket mostly composed of members of the Constitutional Convention. But the great mass of people supported our ticket. In fact, out of 86 Republican members of the Constitutional Convention 78 members signed a declaration declaring themselves in favor of our ticket, notwithstanding that Judge Taliaferro, the President of the Constitutional Convention, was the candidate of the bolters for Governor. Only four white delegateS of the Constitutional Convention followed Judge Taliaferro in the bolt, all of whom were candidates on his State Ticket. The Pure Radical or bolting ticket was wholly inspired by the faction led by the New O,leans r,ib,me, which was sorely disappointed by their failure to nominate a negro candidate for Governor.

The State Executive Committee, composed of 140 members, with the greatest unanimity adopted on January 23rd the following resolutions:

(1)

RESOLVED: That we cordially endorse and earnesdy support the candidate nominated by the Radical Republican State Convention, headed by the General Henry C. Warmoth.

(2)

RESOLVED: That we condemn and denounce any effort to get up another ticket as an attetnpt to defeat our party and defeat Reconstruction and the success of our principles.

(3)

All members of the Central Executive Committee of the Radical Republican Party of Louisiana, who oppose the nomination of the State Convention of our party, shall be regarded as disorganizers and their seats be declared vacant.

(4)

WHEREAS, Tht N,w O,ltanl Trib,lnt has ceased to represent

the principles and views of the Republican Party of Louisiana: (:5) THEREFORE, RESOLVED, That we hereby repudiate it as

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the organ of the party and of this Committee. and appoint Th, New Orlems R'PliblittUI the organ of our party. (Signed) SBTH W. LBWIS, President St4l, Cmtrill Committee. (Signed) Ww. VIGBRS. S""t""

S. B. PACKARD. ChairmtUl, Cllt1Ipaign Committee

DBNNIS BUIUlBL. Serret"". Under the second resolution, Cbas. Smith, O. Voiche. L. Rodriguez,

J. S. Soude. W. R. Crane. J. L. Moothieu, and three others were unanimously expelled.

The canvass and election passed off quietly. It was conducted by officers of election, selected by General Sheridan. The Pure Radical ticket. headed by Judge Taliaferro and Major Dumas and supported by the New O,leans Tribune, received 38.046 votes. while our ticket received 64.941 votes. a majority of

26.895. Ex-Governor Henry W . .Allen. late Confederate Governor. received 9.000 votes. although he was a refugee in the City of Mexico at the rime.

I was regarded as leading the Conservative or Compromise element. as it was termed by the radical New O,leans T,ibune, and Judge Taliaferro and Major Dumas were regarded as the leaders of the Pure Radical or Extreme Paction.

I have reason to believe that a large number of conservative white men of the State supported me. while only the extreme radicals. or "negro factions." supported Judge Taliaferro and the New O,leans T,ibune.

I was inaugurated in the State House in the city of New Orleans on July 13th, 1868. at a rime when the whole South was in a state of turmoil. The extreme political leaders of both parties exerted every influence to inflame the people. and to embarrass. hamper. and destroy the new Government.

The following is my inaugural address:

Mr. President and Gendemen of the Senate and House of Representatives: I am deeply impressed with the grave and peculiar significance of this occasion. and the magnitude of the responsibility which I am this

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day to assume. I uust the hearts of all of us are moved and pervaded by a realizing sense of the new and serious duties we have been called upon to discharge. Belore me is the first Legislature as an equal member of the American Union, mar has sat for seven years, so full of stanling and wonderful as well as painful and terrible eventsso pregnant with momentous issues, so productive of great and glorious results. Nor do I deem it expedient at this time to trace the chain of causes which led to these events and produced these results, or to discuss the questions of who have been most culpable and responsible for whatever has been wrong or mistaken in the past, and who are most deserving of credit for whatever is good in the present. We have here met not to speculate upon the pur, nor to Mood and quarrel over its ashes, but rather to meet the great living issues of the present, and the duties which it imposes upon us. We s!and amid the ruins of an old order of things; it should be ours to work wisely and manfully for the establishment of a new and better order of things upon the foundation which even seven years have establisbed. So long as time is spent in futile and irritating discussions upon the realness and probable permanency of those foundations, or persistent and perhaps turbulent efforts to unsettle and upheave them, so long will the public peace, order, and tranquillity refuse to be restored, and so long will the restoration and development of all the great interests of the State be delayed and endangered.

Gendemen, the comer-stone of these foundations laid and fixed forever by a great war, sealed as I firmly believe by the hand of God Himself, and recognized by that organic law under which we have assembled, and which I am here to swear to support and defend, is the equality before the law and the enjoyment of every political right of all the citizens of the Stare, regardless of race, color, or previous condition; and only when this grand distinctive feature of the new Constitution shall be stamped on every act of legislation, and when such legislation shall find approval and support in mar general public sentiment which gives to law its vitality, will our State fairly enter upon that career of greatness and prosperity which the Almighty designed for her. It would be idle to deny that while a large majority of our people have testified in the strongest manner to their approval of that feature of the Constitution of which I have spoken, there is still a minority, not wanting in intelligence and virtue, who are strenuously opposed to it. Much is to be hoped from the good sense, the discretion and inherent love of justice of the American people for the

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gradual wearing-away of the prejudices upon which alone this opposition is founded. Meantime, let our course, while resolute and manly, be also moderate and discreet. Let legislation be kept as much as possible in harmony with the sentiments of the whole people. It is better that the course of legislation should rather fall behind than to outsuip the populat wishes and demands. Let everything CODsistent with right and justice be done to bring back the era of good feeling, and to wash from the memories of all everything that tends to alienate one class or one party from another.

I refrain at this time from entering into any discussion of measures which I may deem of importance. In future I will divh.rge the duty imposed upon me by giving to the General Assembly information respecting the condition of the State, and recommending to its consideration such legislation as may seem expedient. I venture, however, to urge immediate measures for the repression of lawlessness and disorder now rife in many patU of the State. From many patishes we have almost daily accounts of violence and ouuage-in many cases most brutal and revolting murders-without any effort on the pat[ of the people to prevent or punish them.

We want peace and order; without it we can have no prosperity. Such measures must be adopted to secure life and property as may be necessary. If the raxpayers prefer ro support a suong constabulary force to doing their duty as citizens by helping the officen-yes, by making the officers of the law keep the peace and protect the life of every man, however poor-then the responsibility will be upon them, and not the State adminisuation. Everybody knows that the suong men, the property-holders, and those who claim and command the respect of their parishes, could make it as peaceable and safe throughout the State as in any part of the Union.

The hands of the courts must be strengthened and upheld-the peace officers must do their duty-the good people must rise up and vindicate the law. The press, too vindictive and pattisan, should unite with the government in denouncing aime, and aid in the establishment of a healthy public sentiment which of itself would protect the peace by its frowns upon evil-doers. You should drive those drones upon society who ear but do not work, who consume ,and produce nothing, more dangerous ro peace and prosperity than fatnine or pestilence, to go to work or lind another country than this to curse.

I appeat before you today not as a pattisan, but to take the oath of office prescribed for those who are chosen by the people to dis

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charge the duties of the office of Governor of our State. My objea will be to enforce the law, protea the people and aid in advancing the social, material, and political interests of the whole people. I believe the epoch has the smiles of Providence. Cursed for our sins with war, sa>urged with the epidemic, our crops blighted for a succession of years, our fair State ovedlowed by the torrents of the Mississippi, commerce paralyzed, the people impoverished-the event of my inauguration is welcomed by the full restOration of civil govetnmt:nt and readmission into the Union, the fairest prospea for crops, receding floods, and improving credit. Let us vie with each othet in seeing who of us shall receive most blessings for good and faithful services rendered the State.

Referring to my inauguration, the New Orleans Times said:

Governor Warmoth, in his inaugural address yesterday, assumed a tone far more moderate and conciliatory than had been expected. He expresses a determination to perform the duties of his office, not as a partisan, bur as the chief magistrate of the State and people. Though we are well aware that lip service is cheap, yet we cannot withhold our approval of the recommendation that "legislation be kept as much as possible in harmony with the sentiments of the whole people." While recognizing the rights of a "minority not wanting in intelligence and virtue," the Governor thinks that "the course of legislation should ramet fall behind than outstrip the popular wishes and demands." Though we are not without prejudices against the man who utters those fine sentiments, yet our invariable rule is to give even the devil his due. If Governor Warmoth keeps up to the promise of the progratnme which he has marked out for himself he will greatly improve his reputation atnong us, and we may add that he will disappoint a great many,-not only of his political friends, but of his political enemies. (July 14, 1868.)

The Crestent had the following to say:

Governor Warmoth's Inaugural The inaugural delivered yestetday by Governor Warmoth is in some respeas a remarkable documenr. In point of compendiousness and brevity it is almost a model. Many of our citizens will be surprised at its well-pondered and carefully guarded phraseology, and at its stUdiously moderate and conciliatory tone. Ir a1fords evidence that

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Govemor Warmoth does nor wish ro be classed with the rash and headlong men of his party; that he is penetrated with some wholesome convictions regarding the exigencies of the situation; and char he has nor been indifferent ro the advice of the C "scent and ocher conservative papers that he should address himself frankly ro tbe interests of the Swe and ro the common good of all her people, if he would improve his own position and prospects, either as a political. leader or as a private citizen.

It is ro be regretted char Governor Warmoth did nOlI take this occasion ro join the friends of universal amnesty and the removal of all political disabilities for political causes. While expressing his earnest wish for the revival of prosperity and of a healthy public sentiment, he should not have forgotten how much a policy of political vindic· tiveness and proscription makes against both of those objeas.

"We want peace and order; without it we can have no prosperity," says Govemor Warmoth. He may be assured char there is not one in the one hundred thousand of those to whom he is politically opposed who is nor prepared ro second him heartily in any measures which will unite the uue conditions of peace and order and prosperity, security of life and property and substantial service to the Swe. "Lee legislation be kept in harmony as much as possible with the sentiments of the whole people." Will the partisan majority in the Legislarure have the wisdom or the liberality to act upon this advice?

In its issue of July 15, 1868, The BIIJJelin had the following to say:

Whatever may be our opinion of the mode in which this government has been adopted, it is our duty to extract from it as much public good as possible. It professes in every deparanent the most conservative intentions. Why should they not be carried into dea? The Governor and Legislarure have been eleaed against the opposition of those who hold most of the property in the city and country. These aurhorities cannot be displaced. It is narural they should wish to conciliate the opposition. The aedit of the Swe, the payment of rues, the social peace of the Swe, may depend on the confidence of the capital and enterprise among the minority in numbers. The colored people are content with the extraordinary stride made in their political rights.

They	are	nor	vindictive. They		are	satisfied and do nor impel the
aurhorities		ro	go further.
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We draw these inferences of moderation from the message of Governor Warmoth, which is eminendy conservative. He says:

"Let our course, while resolute and manly, be also moderate and discreet. Let legislation be kept as much as possible in harmony. with the sentiments of the whole people. It is better that the course of legislation should rather faIl behind than outstrip the popular wishes and demands. Let everything consistent with right and justice be done to bring back the era of good feeling, and to wash from the memories of all everything chat tends to alienate one c1ass or one party from another."

His object is declared to be "to enforce the law, protect the people, and aid in advancing the social, material and political interests of the whole people."

From these declarations comes, as a corollary, thar he does not wish to see the exasperation of forcing social amalgamation in the schools or elsewhere. But if there were any doubt upon this special subject, the Republican organ, speaking of his speech to the colored people made after his inauguration, says:

"It was to a large group of these chat Governor Warmoth, in the course of proceedings in his room, addressed himself as follows: 'My friends, this is a gtear day for the colored men of Louisiana. It is full of good for you if my hopes and expectations in your favor are well founded. If you are honest, industrious and peaceable, you will have millions of friends who will stand by you, and see chat you are protected in all the political rights which they themselves enjoy. You do not wish to intrude yourselves socially upon those who do not want your society, any more than you want other people to obtrude themselves upon you without your consent. The contest from which we are emerging has not been for social equality, but for civil and political equality. This last you now have, and it will be my duty to see chat you are protected in it, and, if I am not mistaken in my opinion of your race, it will be cheetfully accotded to you very soon by everybody; and remember thar the roads thar lead to prosperity for evety man, whether white or blacIc, are those of virrue and education, of honesty and sobriety, of industry and obedience to law: "

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CHAPTER III

UNFORTUNATELY for our State government, which was inaugurated in July, we were confronted by the Presidential election of November, 1868. The new government had less than five months in which to organize the machinery for conducting the election and to demonstrate its capacity to conduct the Commonwealth. Both national parties made Reconstruction the paramount issue of the campaign. The Republican Parry denounced President Johnson and his policy of Reconstruction, and the Democratic Parry denounced the Congressional policy of Reconstruction, and organized to overthrow it. There never was such bitterness displayed before or since by political parties anywhere in the nation. It was believed by both parties that the whole question of Reconstruction was to be settled by the result of this Presidential election.

General U. S. Grant, the hero of the War, was nominated by the Republicans for President, and Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was nominated for Vice-President. Governor Horatio Seymour of New York was nominated by the Democrats for President, and my personal friend and former brigade, division and corps commander, General Frank

P. Blair of Missouri, was nominated for Vice-President.

The whole South was in a blaze of tumultuous excitement. Every Confederate sympathizer put on his armor. Tremendous and frequent meetings were held in evety city and parish in the State of Louisiana; nobody talked of anything but politics and what was to happen to the South as the result of the election. It is a mild statement to make that the Republican Parry in Louisiana was paralyzed by the violence of the opposition demonstrated in this campaign. Semi-military organizations

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(mosdy secret) sprang up everywhere. Republican meetings and processions in the city of New Orleans were broken up by rioters. Republican clubrooms were raided and destroyed and threats of violence appalled the people.

The opposition were told, and believed, that if they oould elect Seymour and Blair President and Vice-President, with a majority in Congress, they would be able to overthrow Reoonstruction and establish their party in power for a lifetime. President Johnson and his administration strongly supported their ticket. We believed that if Grant and Colfax should win, with a Republican majority in Congress, we would be able to maintain our Government and that peace and prosperity would ultimately follow. It was, therefore, a life-and-death struggle, and the opposition had the better of us if they resorted to violence, which they did to the very limit.

The Democratic State Committee began its campaign with an address, or circular letter, which was printed by the press. It ended with the following words:

aRCULAR OF THE DEMOCRATIC CENTRAL COMMITTEE And we would earnestly declare to our fellow<itizens our OpiniOll that even the most implaable and ill-disposed of the Negro population, those who show the worst spirit toward the White people, are not half as much deserving our aversion and nOll-intercourse with them as the debased Whites who encourage and aid them, and who become through their votes the office-holding oppressors of the people. Whatever resentment you have should be felt toward the latter, and not against the colored men; but in no case should you permit this resentment to go further than to withdraw from them all cOllnl""",,,, tlJSOcitllion, and ptIlronag', and thwart every dlort they may make to maintain a business and social foothold amoog you. (Signed) THOMAS L . MACON,

Pres. Stat, CmlraJ Committee

J. E. AuSTIN

A. B. BACON

THBO. F. THBlNBYAN

I. H. HALsJIy

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On September 28, 1868, a riOt occurred in the Parish of St. Landry, one of the largest and most populous parishes of the State. It was brought about by an assault on Mr. Emerson Bendey, an ex-Union soldier and the editor of a Republican newspaper called The SI. und" Progress. Judge James R. Dickinson, with twO other prominent Democrats, committed the assault. Mr. Bendey was very badly beaten up; the assailants said it was because of an article published in his newspaper. In the excitement, the report went out that Mr. Bendey had been killed; and the Republicans, white and colored, rushed to town, and of course the Democrats rushed to town, and the result was that 3,000 Democrats killed and wounded over 200 Republicans. They jailed eight Republicans who later at night were taken out of jail and killed.

Mr. Bendey escaped through the swamps to New Orleans. He was twenty days accomplishing it. His printing press was destroyed and St. Landry Parish, which gave me 2,200 votes for Governor in April, did not give Grant and Colfax one single vote in November. .As an evidence of the tone of the opposition press at this period, I give below a few extractS from a paper published at Franklin in the Parish of St. Mary, one of the richest and most progressive parishes of the State. This paper was edited by a New Hampshire Yankee who had settled in this parish as a school-teacher some thirty years before the War. His name was Daniel Dennett.

In his issue of August IS, 1868, he said:

Old Thad Stevens Dead The prayers of the righteous have at last removed the Congressional cuneI May old Brownlow, Buder, and all such political monsters, sooo follow the example of their illustrious predecessor! May his new iron works wean him from earth, and may the fires of his new furnace never go out! The Devil will get on • big bender now. With Thad Stevens in his Cabinet, and Buder in Washingron, he can m.n.~ things in both Kingdoms ro his liking. Lucky Devil!

A little later, on September 12, 1868, Mr. Dennett said:

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We are opposed to running alter Negroes, to talk to them. If they join the Democrats honesdy, let us rtear them with the uanost kindness and fairness. But to those who prefet the sneaking, thieving Carpetbagger to an honest Southern man, we say "Stay where you are, and follow those miserable rascals to your ruin. If you want the honest white men of the South as your enemies, follow our enemies, and we will put a mark on you as distina as thar which was stamped on

Cain."

Another article:

If the Government refuses protection against the depredations of unconviaed criminals and unhung convias, Vigilance Cnmmittee thugs, Klu-Kluxes, and assassins will spring up all avet the South and take the law into their own hands.

Again on October 10, 1868:

We hear nothing from St. Landry. The negroes all over the Parish have been disarmed, and have gone to work briskly. Their loyal league dubs have been broken up, the sca1lawags have turned Democrats, and the carpet-baggets have run olf, and their carpet-bag press and type and office have been desrtoyed. St. Landry is quiet for the first time since the War.

Again in the same issue:

The people generally are well satisfied with the result of the St. Landry riOt, only they regret thar the Carpet-Baggers escaped. The editor escaped; and a hundred dead negroes, and perhaps a hundred more wounded and crippled, a dead white Radical, a dead Democrat, and three or four wounded DemocratS are the upshot of the business.

Later, on October 17, 1868, he said:

The recent disasters of the Radicals in St. Landry have had a terrible elfea on the litde rat Pope [the sheriff of the Parish and but lately a Colonel of a Regiment in the Union Army}. He has a complication of diseases, his liver don't act, he has the colic, the toothache, and the yellow jaundice, and don't feel very well himself. If he dies, the shell of an English walnut would make a good sarcophagus in which to convey his precious remains to his Northern friends, . . . and be buried at low-water mark when the tide ebbs and lIows in twenty-four hours.

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On the night of this last issue of Mr. Dennett's Planters Banner, five men disguised themselves in a saloon nearby and proceeded to O'Neill's Hotel in the town of Franklin, where Colonel H. H. Pope and his wife resided. On the gallery of the hotel they found Colonel Pope and Judge Olase in conversation. They killed Colonel Pope in the presence of his wife, and also Judge Olase, using both pistols and knives under the most shocking circumstances.

Judge Olase was an old citizen of the Parish and a Union man. He was connected with some of the very best people of the Parish, and was an excellent citizen. His only offense was that he was a Union man and had been elected to the office of Parish Judge by the Republicans.

Colonel Henry H. Pope was a native of Ogdensburg, New York. He was a school-teacher. He enlisted in the United States Army on the 16th day of August, 1861, and was mustered into the service as Captain of Company D of the 33rd Illinois Volunteer Infantry for a period of three years, on the 28th of August, 1861. He was promoted to Major on October 26, 1864, and Lieutenant-Colonel on November 24, 1865, at Vicksburg, Mississippi.

After the War Colonel Pope settled in the Parish of St. Mary and was elected sheriff of the Parish by the Republicans. On October 31, only a few days before the Presidential Elec

tion, The Planter's Banner had this to say: Since the shocking event of the night of the 17th, all parts of our Parish have been diligenrly pauolled by anned police every night. We have reporu that the colored people are settling down quietly to business and labor, and becoming thoroughly disgusted with the men who have been humbugging them with lying promises and deceitful words. Most of the negroes now show a disposition to vote the Democratic ticket, and live on friendly terms with the while people of the Parish.

In the same issue, it printed the following:

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The Last Chance Next Tuesday let US take a Democratic Ticket in one hand, and a Radical Ticket in the other, and say to each negro voter, "Choose today whether you take the Southern White Man or the Carpetbagger for your furure friend. If you choose the men who have been raising the devil in this Parish since the War, look for no more favors from us. We allow you to vote for our enemies but you must be treated as our enemies if you vote for men whose aim is to rob and

ruin us."

These anicles demonstrate the charaaer and spirit with which the Presidential campaign was carried on throughout the State of Louisiana by the Democratic Party, when General Grant was eleaed President of the United States.

The city pteSS of New Orleans, especially The Commercial Blilletin, The Cres(ent and The Bee, was equally violent. The N«hito(hes VintJkator, edited by 1. H. Cosgrove; The Shrefleport Times, edited by H. 1. Hersey; The Monroe Telegraph, edited by Geo. W. McCrany, and other country papers, were, if possible, more violent and extreme in their assault upon the Republicans.

The consequence was that secret Democratic organizations were formed, and all armed. We had "The Knights of the White Camellia," "The Ku-Klux Klan," and an Italian organization called "The Innocents," who nighdy paraded the streets of New Orleans and the roads in the country Parishes, producing terror among the Republicans.

Our dear old friend, Captain 1ames Dinkins of New Orleans, now eighty-six years of age, is still in buoyant health and spirits; he and his darling wife are favorites of the people of the South. Captain Dinkins was one of the dashing leaders of General N .

B. Forrest's Confederate cavalry during the Gvil War. He loves to tell how the Ku-Klux Klan originated, and he has lately published a lener over his own signature from which I exrraa the following:

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"In the midst of the distress in the South, there was a frolic

"by four young men who had been officers in Forrest'., Cavalry. Captain John W. Monon, chief of Forrest's Artillery; Sam Donaldson and William Forrest, Jr., members of the General's Staff; and Willjam Rains, who had commanded the ProVOSt Guard of Chalmers's Division. They were attending school at Pulaski, Tennessee, to prepare themselves for entering college. After study hours, on a sultry August night, Sam Donaldson proposed that they go out and have some fun. It was agreed, and they used the sheetS of their beds to wrap around themselves. They sallied forth and marched into a meeting in a negro church. The preacher had been exhorting his congregation to repent, and announced that some dreadful punishment would be sent upon them unless they did. Just at this time, the four 'ghosts' entered the church. The congregation climbed out of the windows and the back: door.

"A few days afterwards, Captain Motton visited Memphis, and related the incident to General Forrest, and then and there the Ku-K1ux Klan saw the light. General Forrest summoned a number of his former soldiers to Memphis, and they returned to their homes with instructions to organise K1ans for the invincible Army.

"The Order grew throughout the South, and proved to be the most successful Army that ever entered the field. The queer costumes, the great secrecy, and the weird mystery operated upon the minds of the igoorant and vicious negroes and the undesirable whites.

"The Ku-K1ux Klan was composed of the best citizens of our Country. Their mission was to protect the weak and oppressed, negroes as well as the whites.

. "The writer of these lines was the Grand Monk of Klan Number 14 of Madison County, Mississippi, and is the sole survivor of that Klan. We went forth always after midnight; our horses were covered with white canvas; the robes we wore

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were black with a red aoss on the breast and a white circle around the eyehole. Negroes often said, 'De horses is bigger dan sho' nuf horses, and I seed dem folks drink three bucketS of water at one time:

"The history of the Ku-Klux Klan is a priceless heritage. It was a creation born of necessitous times, of pure and patriotic impulses. It was organized to protect the women of the South, who were the noblest, loveliest, best women in the world. And although the ladies made the robes, there never was one who ever mentioned it.

"The Ku-Klux Klan preserved the Union. The carpet-baggers were as much alarmed as the negroes."

Such is the story of the creation of the Ku-Klux Klan, as told by one who knows. The Klan extended over the entire South.

A. record of the conduct and the doings of that patriotic organization, so loudly praised by our good friend Captain Dinkins, is to be found in the Congressional ReportS, made after full investigation; it will live for future generations to read.

It was not DIaries Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens and Ben Buder that gave the emancipated slaves the ballot; it was our own Southern brothers who made it necessary to save the negroes from extermination.

The Ku-Klux Klan seemed to enjoy reading of their antics in the newspapers, as exemplified in The Planters Banner of May 23, 1868:

MIl. EDITOR : There is much excitement among the negroes, and even some of the white folks allover Attakapas. about the Ku·Kluxes that have lately appeared in this country. I am not superstitious, and will not [ell you what I believe about these strange. ghostly appearances, but will give you some general items and rumors.

The negroes have entirely deserted one prairie in Attakapas. The negroes of Lafayette Parish were larely nearly all of them preparing to leave. the K.K.K:s having frightened them every night. and carried off a carpet.bagger from Illinois. One negro. a big-ta1king radi

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cal somewhere in the Parish of St. Martin, was lmly carried off by these Confederate ghosts ar night, and has never been heard of since.

A night traveler called ar the negro quaners, somewhere in Attakapas, and asked for Wiler. After he had drunk three buckets full of good cistern-warer, at which the negro was much astonished, he thanked the colored man and told him he was very thirsty, that he had travelled nearly a thousand miles in twenty.fout hours, and that was the besr drink of water he had had since he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. The negro dropped the bucket, rumbled over two chairs and a table, escaped through a badt window; and has not been heard from since. He was a radical negro.

White men on white horses have lately been sailing through the air at midnight ar Pattersonville, Jeanerette, and various places all over the IOI1thern part of this state. If negroes attempt to run away from the K.K.K.'s, these spirits always follow them and catch them, and no living man ever hears from them again.

The leader of this new order is said to be perfccdy terrible. He is ten feet high, and his horse is fifteen. He carries a lance and a shield like those of Goliath of the Philistines. The last troop of the Confederate spirits informed a friendly negro that they had left Nashville about twelve hours before, and when they returned they were going to evaporate old Brownlow. They would have done it before, but the Devil was not prepared to receive the Governor of Tennessee and Thad Stevens, so they had to wait.

Some suppose the mysterious appearances in Atta1tapas to be the spirits of the Federal dead thar have lately been unearthed by the Government grave-diggers all through this country; but thar cannot be, since they are all friendly to the white people of this countty, particularly to the women and children and good negroes. Only one Federal spirit has been discovered since the excitement began. At midnight, by the grave of a Federal soldier who had been a convia before he left the North, and who had done many wrongs to the people of the South, his bones having been boxed up and sent North by the grave-diggers, the spirit sat and in moumful strains sang the following:

"Who burst the barriers of my peaceful grave?

Ah! cruel death, that could no longer save,

But grudged me e'en that narrow, dark abode,

And thrust me out into the wrath of God;

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Where shrieks and eblin.,

And all the dreadful eloquence of pains,

My ooIy SOIlg, black, fierce, malignant light,

The sole refreshment of my blasted sight!"

A few nights ago a K.K.K. alighted in froot of some cabin, and gave four raps 00 the door. The colored head of the family made his appearance.

"Any carpet.baggers in this neighborhood?" said the frowning ghost.

"No, sah," said the negro.

"Any yellow tickets in this cabin?"

"No, sah," was the reply.

Taking off his head, and handing it to the colored gendeman, he said: "Please hold my head while I tighten this cork leg; I lost one leg when I was killed at Shiloh."

The negro fainted, and has not yet come to his senses!

One of the K.K.K.'s lately dismounted at the door of a clubroom where some carpet.baggers were giving bad advice to a houseful of negroes. Rapping loudly at the door with the butt ·of his whip, he was admitted. The carpet-baggers were patalyzed. "Hold on a minute," said the ghost, "till I turn this screw and let a little more power into this steam arm, and I will clean out these white devils who are giving you black people bad advice, and will not leave a bone unbroken in their bodies." The carpet-baggers went out like chimney-swallows, and scaled the fences like chicken-thieves.

(Signed) K.K.K.'s. Attakapas, May 20, 1868

Our Democratic friends in the Presidential campaign had great fun importing a big black negro down to Louisiana from Mississippi to make speeches for the Seymour-and-Blair ticket. His name was Willis Rollins and he made many Democratic speeches during his campaign. He told a lot of good stories and not a few bad ones. He abused me for being a carpetbagger, and said he had known me for many years and that I was a bad lot. I can't recall his speeches, but I remember that our Democratic friends enjoyed them immensely. He was spied on Canal Street one day by a bunch of colored people and they ran into a Democratic clubroom, where an immense crowd of

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colored people soon assembled to hoot and jeer at him. He was afraid to come out or show himself. The clubroom was just around in Canal Street from the State House, and Colonel

J. B. Walton and Major Ned Austin, twO leading Democrats, fearing a riot, came to the State House to get me to go out and See if I could not protect their colored orator. I readily consented and found Canal Street full of colored people, shouting and hooting at Rollins. They wanted to lynch him, and I fear they would have done so but for my timely arrival at the scene of excitement.

Messrs. Walton and Austin took me up into the rooms of this club, and as soon as I appeared in the gallery a big shout and cheers went up for me. After the cheering I spoke as follows:

FBLLOW CmzBNS: 1 know you will stand by me in protecting this black man in his right to be a Dcmocrar, as we want him and these white gendemen to protect us in our right to be Republicans. I have enjoyed reading the spccchcs of this black Democrat very much because I know that all of our Democratic friends have been delighted with them. He has been quite severe in his criticism of General Grant and espccially so as ro my public and private charaaer. But he has been no worse than some of his white associates. I will try to bear his funny speeches with equanimity.

But I have come here to impress upon you, my colored fellowcitizens, that this man has a perfea right to be a Democrat if he wants to be one, the same as you and I have a right to be Republicans. We don·t care what his motives arei that is none of our business. I only wish that our Democratic friends could find it in their hearts to be more generous to your race and to make it to your interest for more of you to be members of their political party. Race conBiets are sure to ensue if party lines are based on race. Your safety and the safety of the white people and their prosperity depend largely on the willingness of the white race to accord you equa1ity of rights with themselves. The more negroes becoming Democrats will bring more white men into the Republican Party and in that is the safety of the Republic and the prosperity of the people.

So, my dear Republican friends, I urge you all to go peaceably to

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your homes and let out Democratic friends enjoy the oratory of their black companion. (Loud cheets, and the street was sooo deat.)

All the newsboys that evening sold lots of papers. They cried out, "Here is the evening Timesl" "Here is the evening Cres(enlf' "Here is the evening Pkall1ne-aJ1 abolll Governor Warmolh's great Demo(fati( spe"h!"

These K.K.K. Democratic organizations rook possession of the State and city. They destroyed Republican newspaper offices; attacked Republican processions; broke up Republican meetings; raided and destroyed Republican clubrooms and inaugurated a reign of terror everywhere. Sixteen Republicans were killed in the streets of New Orleans the week before the election.

Affairs became so desperate that I was forced to address the following letter to Major-General Rousseau:

Executive Department, Scate of Louisiana, Oct. 2', 1868. Major·Generai 1. H. Rousseau, Commanding Deparanent of Louisiana.

General :-The evidence is conclusive that the civil authorities in the Patishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernatd ate unable to preserve order and protect lives and property of the people.

The Act of Congress prohibiting the organization of Militia in this State sUips me of all power to sustain them in the discharge of their duties, and I am compelled to appeal to you to take charge of the peace of these Parishes and to use your forces to that end.

If you respond favorably to my request, I will at once order the sheriffs and police forces to report to you for orders. Very respectfully your obedient servant,

H. C. WAllMOTH Governor of Louisiana.

In doing this, I had no intention of avoiding responSibility but I was determined that no question of authority should be raised by the Military Commandant. General Rousseau telegraphed my letter to the Secretary of War, endorsing what I stated, and received the following reply:

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War Department, Washington, Oct. 26, 1868. Brevet-Major General L. H. Rousseau, Commanding Department of Louisiana, New Orleans:

Your despatch of the 26ch, forwarding a message from the Governor of Louisiana and asking insuuctions, has been received. You are authorized and expected to take such action as may be necessary to preserve the peace and good order, and to protect the lives and prosperity of citizens.

(Signed) J. M. ScHOFIELD

Secretary of War

Upon receipt of this order from the Secretary of War, and with my consent, General Rousseau selected General J. B. Steedman (a distinguished ex-Union officer from Ohio, though a Democrat, who happened to be stationed at New Orleans by President Johnson, as Collector of Internal Revenue) for Superintendent of Police for the Metropolitan Distria, comprising the Parishes of Orleans, St. Bernard, and Jefferson.

General Rousseau thereupon issued the following address to the people of New Orleans:

Headquarters Department of Louisiana (States of Louisiana and Arkansas) New Orleans, La., October 28, 1868 To the People of New Orleans:

Fellow-Citizens, I have received insuuctions from the authorities at Washington to take such action as may be necessary to preserve peace and good order and to protect the lives and property of citizens. As the City is quiet to-day, I think it a proper time to make the above announcement, and to call upon all law-abiding citizens to aid me hereafter in cartying our these insuuctions, and to that end they are earnesdy w/lleJled to refrain from assembling in large bodies on the streets, to avoid exciting conversation and other causes of irritation and excitement, and to pursue their ordinary vocations as usual. The police force of the City has been reorganized, and indlicient members have been dropped from the rolls and others appointed in their places; and General J. B. Steedman is appointed Chief of Police, pro tempore, by the Board of Police Uwnmissioners. General Steedman and his police force will be supported by, the Military; and assurance is given

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alike to the peaceful and the lawless that everything at my command and to the utmost of my ability will be used in the endeavor to obey these instructions.

For the present, political processions and patrolling the streets by atmed men is ptohibited. LoVBLL H. RoussllAu Brevet·Major General U. S. A., Oxnmanding Department

General Rousseau was a fine fellow, and a brilliant solelier in the Union Army during the Civil War; but he was also a Kentucky Democrat, with all of the prejuelices against Reconsuuction, and a supporter of President Johnson's policy. He was sent to Louisiana to help carry the State for Seymour and Blair, and the result was as President Johnson liked it.

General Rousseau, being a Democrat, was taken up by the leaders of the Democratic Party upon his arrival in New Orleans; and it is said that he actually visited and made a speech at one of the Democratic clubs.

I believe that General Steedman honesdy tried to preserve order, but he soon found that he could not do it even with General Rousseau and his troops at his back, and he resigned his post two days before the election. The result was that Republican clubrooms and processions were again raided, and Seymour and Blair received 88,225 votes, while Grant and Colfax received but 34,859 in the State. But 276 Republican votes were polled in the city of New Orleans out of a Republican registration of 21,000 voters.

By contrasting the vote polled not quite six months before, for the Republican State ticket and the ratification of the State Constitution with the vote for General Grant, it may be seen with what absolutism the Democratic Party ruled the election in November. Out of 48 Parishes in the State, seven, to-wit: De Soto, Lafayette, St. Landry, Vertnillion, Franklin, Jackson, and Washington, polled for me, as Governor, 4,707 votes in April, but they elid not give General Grant a single vote. Eight

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other Parishes, to-wit: Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Oaibome, Morehouse, Union, St. Bernard, and Sabine, gave me 5,520 votes in April, but cast only ten votes for General Grant in November. Twenty-one Parishes, casting 26,814 votes in April for the Republican State ticket and the new Constitution, gave General Grant only 501 votes in November; and the whole State, polling 61,152 votes for the Republican State ticket, or a majority of 17,413, in April, gave General Grant only 34,859 votes. Seymour and Blair were given 88,225 votes, but Grant and Colfax received 214 votes in the ElectOral College while Seymour and Blair received but 80 votes.

I was but twenty-six years of age and was conscious of my want of experience and fimess for the tremendous responsibility that I was to assume. I found the State and the city of New Orleans bankrupt. Interest on the State and City bonds had been in default for years; the assessed property taxable in the State had fallen in value from $470,164,963.00 in 1860 to $250,063,359.63 in 1870; taxes for the years 1860, 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866, and 1867 were in arrears. The City and State were flooded with State and City shinplasters, which had been issued to meet current expenses. Among the first acts of the new Legislature was one to postpone the collection of all back taxes, and later they were postponed indefinitely.

Our public roads were mere mud trails; there was not a hardsurfaced road in the whole state. There was but one canal, that from the center of the city of New Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain, six miles long. There were no telephones then, and the telegraph was very limited. The United States mails were generally carried on horse or mule-back. The city of New Orleans had but four paved streets, and they were made of large blocks of stone imported before the Civil War from Belgium at enormous COSt. The rest of the streets were at times

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impassable. There were no cottOnmills nor other indusuies in the State or city.

New Orleans had no wharves, a few warehouses, and but two hospitals. It had but few lines of street railway, and the street cars were drawn by small single mules, with a little tinkling bell. The only drainage consisted of open ditches. Our best mechanics worked for from $2.00 to $2.50 a day. Our field hands got only 5~ to 75~ a day. One of the richest and most progressive men in the State of Louisiana to-day rut cane on my Magnolia plantation in 1877 for 75~ a day.

The amount of the State and City debt was unlmown, the serurities for which were selling at from 22~ to 25~ on the dollar. There was no money in either treasury. The people drank either water caught in cisterns from the dirty roofs of their houses or the dirty unfiltered water of the Mississippi River. Epidemics of yellow and malarial fevers prevailed nearly every year. Houses were unscreened and mosquitoes were as common as the flies that filled the air.

The slaughter-houses were so located that all of their offal and filth were poured into the Mississippi River, just above the mains that supplied the people with their drinkingwater.

New Orleans was a dirty, impoverished, and hopeless city, with a mixed, ignorant, corrupt, and bloodthirsty gang in control. It was Booded with lotteries, gambling dens, and licensed brothels. Many of the city officials, as well as the police force, were thugs and murderers. Violence was rampant, and hardly a day passed that some one was not shot, out under the Oaks, in defense of his honor.

The levees of the Mississippi, Ouachita, and Atchafalaya rivers were in a deplorable condition, having been rut in many plact'S by both .Armies for military purposes, and neglected for the past fin years, Booding great areas of the State.

The sugar, cottOn, and rice planters were without money or

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credit, and their lands and buildings, having been neglected for four years, were in a state of dilapidation; their labor was disorganized; their mules and horses were gone, and implements scattered. The people were almost without hope.

Before the War there had been only four short pieces of railroad in the whole State. The Opelousas Railroad from New Orleans to Morgan City was but sixty miles in length, and the New Orleans and Great Jackson Railroad but fifty miles in length; while the short road from Baton Rouge to Grosset&e and another short road from Vicksburg to Monroe were practically destroyed by the War and by the recurring waters from the broken levees, and abandoned.

Here was a situation; conditions that required most capable and earnest consideration. I needed the advice, help, and friendly co-operation of the ablest men of the State. I looked around to find them. I did not want politicians seeking for power and place, but men of affairs and experience in business. I found them in Dr. W. Newton Mercer, Joseph H. Oglesby, General Richard Taylor, Duncan F. Kenner, and John G. Gaines. They advised with me and helped me as no other men in the State did at that time.

There was a demand by the progressive business men of

Louisiana for more railroads. Everybody joined in a move

ment to get more transportation, especially from the city of

New Orleans, to connect at Shreveport with Houston, Texas,

and the Northwest.

A company was formed in the city of New York, headed by

ex-Governor E. D. Morgan; ex-Governor Griswold; the great

bankers Morton-Bliss & Company and Seligman Brothersj and

the great builders of the Pacific Railroad (Oakes Ames & Com

pany of Boston) and other capitalists, who applied to our Legis

lature for a charter to build a railroad from the city of Mobile,

Alabama, through New Orleans to Houston, Texas, with a

branch to Shreveport. The press of the city of New Orleans,

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the Otamber of Commerce, and aU other commercial bodies united in favor of the enterprise.

The charter was granted by the Legislature, together with State aid in large amounts to expedite the construction. The State aid was most liberal, possibly too liberal. But when we remember that hitherto every railroad in this State had been built by the issuance of State and City bonds, also by direct taxes on the people; when we know that the Stare of Illinois gave millions of acres of land to aid the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad; that the United States Government gave tnillions of acres of land-in faa, almost an empirein aid of the construction of the great Pacific railroads; and that the people of Cincinnati had but recendy voted ten millions of dollars for a railroad to Otattanooga, Tennessee, we may regard as insignificant the aid which we gave this railroad, in view of its transcending importance. When we bear in mind the great advantages which were to accrue to the people of Louisiana and especially to the city of New Orleans by the construction of this great artery of transportation, we can but express our surprise that there should have been any criticism of our legislation.

We aided the reconstruction of the shon railroad from Vicksburg to Monroe, which was speedily rebuilt.

Of course, our political enemies howled at these "extravagances" and condemned me, but they would not have failed to do this if I had induced the Legislature to pass a bill to re-enaa the Ten Commandments or the Lord's Prayer.

We struggled through the first two sessions of this legislature, which at its end had possibly done some unwise things, but certainly had enaaed much good and necessary legislation as well.

But no sooner had the Legislature adopted measures to construa the great railroad from New Orleans to Houston, Texas, and to Shrevepon in northwest Louisiana, and granted a subsidy and subscription to its srock, than a great war was begun

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by a rival railroad and steamship corporation headed by Charles Morgan of New York.

Mr. Charles Morgan had recendy become the owner of the shon line of railroad-sixty miles long-which connected the city of New Orleans with Morgan City. Mr. Morgan owned and operated a line of steamships from Morgan City to Galveston and other Texas ports. He held a complete monopoly of this trade. and wanted no rival; so he Set to work to embarrass the newly chanered company and to destroy its credit. One of his weapons was the attempt to show that the State of Louisiana was bankrupt and would not be able to meet the obligations it had granted to this competing railroad enterprise. To this end he had his lawyer prepare the following circular:

TO THE PUBUC New Orleans. March 18th. 1871. The undersigned property-owners and taxpayers of the city of New Orleans, satislied thar the State Legislarure has, at its late session, exceeded its power in the loans, endorsements and other obligatiom and grants authorized OIl the part of the State, the total amount of which is limited, by the recent amendment of the Comtirution, to S25,000,000 (already incurred), as shown by the annexed official statement of the Auditor, take this early opportunity of notifying bankers, brokers, and dealers in securities, of this country and Europe, that they consider all such loans, endorsements, and pledges as null and of no value; thar they will sustain the authorities in resisting their issue, and, if issued, will by every legal means endeavor to prevent the payment of any interest or principal, or of any tax levied for thar purpose. They only recognize the State debt proper as amounting to S25,021,734.40, as shown by the accompanying exhibit of the Auditor, and they class the "accruing debt" with the illegal legislation previously referred to.

This paper was signed by several hundred names; it was printed in French. German and English. and copies were sent abroad and to New York. and distributed in every bankinghouse in this country and Europe.

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A syndicate had already been formed in Frankfort, Germany, to take the whole issue of this Railroad Company-the first mortgage, the second mortgage bonds, and the State bonds-but this circular stopped all negotiations; and finally the syndicate withdrew its proposition, the negotiations failed, and the work ceased. It was too heavy a load even for this wealthy corporation to carry, in addition to the seven millions that they had already spent on the road from Mobile to the city of New Orleans.

The result in the end was that Mr. Otarles Morgan forced the new company to take him in, and after going through the throes of the worst panic ever known in the country, the road was finally built after a delay of nearly four years.

So urgent were the people for railroads that the Democratic Legislature of 1878, ten years later, passed a bill granting $2,000,000 of bonds to aid in the building of a branch road to Shreveport, Louisiana. This bill was signed by Governor Francis T. Nichols ten years after the legislation which I approved and for which I was so much criticized.

As stated before, when I was inaugurated, we found the finances of the State in a woeful condition. Taxes had been collected only in that part of the State which was within the lines of the Federal Army, and but imperfectly thete. The Hahn-Wells State Government, set up by General Banks, recognized the situation by Act No. 12 of the Legislature, approved April 4th, 1865, by extending the time for the payment of taxes of the years 1861, 1862, 1863. The city of New Orleans had to issue bonds to the amount of $3,000,000 to take up what was known as City Notes. The State had to borrow money to pay the interest on its bonded debt (Act 48, 1869). By Act No.1, approved January 4th, 1869, tax-collectOrs were required to receive, in payment of taxes due the State, warrants issued by the Auditor of Public Accounts, which were then selling at twenty cents on the dollar.

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By Act 41 of 1870, taxes due for the years 186:5 to 1868 were extended without interest or penalty. We were obliged to issue $3,000,000 of bonds to take up the Boating debt and unpaid coupons (March 16th, 1870). Taxes of 1862, 1863, and 1864 were inde.6.nitely postponed by Act 101, approved December 30, 1870.

The payment of taxes in Auditor's warrants and back coupons left the treasury empty of cash, and we had to struggle along the best way we could.

Early in 1869, the State Auditor (George M. Wickliffe) was detected in reselling on the market Auditor's warrants and coupons that had been paid into the treasury for taxes, and when the Chairman of the State Senate Committee on Finance accused him of his crimes and showed him the proof, he admitted his guilt. I at once suspended him from his office and appointed in his place a competent and highly respected old citizen of New Orleans.

The grand jury submitted fourteen indictments against the Auditor. He was tried before a jury of the city of New Orleans, which degenerated into a political campaign. The opposition press and the Auditor's friends and his attorneys ignored the facts, and claimed that the prosecution by Governor Warmoth was merely a personal controversy, and that Warmoth merely wanted to get possession of the Auditor's office for his own purposes; strange to say, the jury took the same view and acquitted the defendant. A few days later Wickliffe was tried again before another jury for a second offense, for which he had been indicted, and he was again acquitted. But the act of the jury was so outrageous that the Judge of the Court (Edmund Abell) dismissed the jury with a reprimand.

I called upon the Judge and District Attorney and urged them to continue trying the Auditor on the other twelve indictments that the grand jury had found against him. But the Democratic District Attorney declared that it was useless to

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involve the State in further expense and that public opinion was entirely in sympathy with the Auditor; he proceeded to enter a nolle pros on all of the other twelve indictments, and I was obliged to put this thieving scoundrel back into his office.

As soon as the Legislature met I sent a message detailing the offenses of the Auditor. The House of Representatives appointed a Committee to investigate the charges and promptly preferred articles of impeachment against him. He was arraigned before the Senate, the Olief Justice of the State presiding, and he was tried and convicted by a unanimous vote of the Senate. He tried to resign, but the Senate ignored his resignation and convicted him, so he could not hold another office in the State of Louisiana. He left the State and was never heard of again.

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CHAPtER IV

APTEa the dreadful experiences of the Presidential election of 1868, Captain S. B. Packard, Otainnan of the Republican State Committee, concluded to ask the Legislature to change the old election and registration laws; it seemed to be necessary. So the committee proposed a new registration and election law which they thought would protect the voters from a repetition of the recent outrages. The new law, approved March 16, 1870, conferred great power and responsibility on the Executive of the State. The Governor was authorized to appoint a chief election officer who should condua a full registration and all elections. He was authorized to 'appoint the registrar of voters in each of the parishes on the recommendation of the chief election officer. The parish registrars were empowered to fix the polling places in each parish for each election, to appoint the commissioners of election at each poll, and to provide for the election and make the returns of the result to the Governor of the State.

The law also provided for a Returning Board before which the Governor was required to lay all of the election returns, and this board was authorized to examine all reports or protests of election as to violence, irregularities or frauds; and the board was authorized to throw out any poll, precina, or parish that might appear to have been carried by violence or fraud.

The Returning Board provided by the law was composed of the Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Secretary of State, and the two State Senators named in the law-Senator Thomas

C. Anderson and Senator John Lynch. This was an extraordinary law-it was a dangerous law; for

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if the Governor and Returning Board should abuse their powers and act in a partisan spirit they could control absolutely any election held in the State.

But the violence and outrages of the Presidential election of 1868 were pointed to as the reaso~r the excuse, at least-for this legislation. Of course, it met with the most violent opposition from the Democratic Party, and the Governor of the State had to stand the most vituperative denunciations for having approved it. There was no limit to the language used by the opposition.

In the meantime, I was exerting all of my power to develop the State, encourage the people, harmonize the races, and advance their material interests, and at the same time to hold down expenditures as far as possible. I sought to bring about me the beSt men in the State. I had many appointments of officers to make. I sought the most representative and capable men I could find. I did not confine my appointments to my own political party, but in the appointments of judges of the courts and district attorneys, I consulted the Bar; and in appointing parish officers I consulted the taxpayers and the leading conservative citizens. I did not ignore colored men, and when I could find respectable and competent persons of color I gave them the fullest consideration.

For the appointment of men of color I was denounced by the opposition as trying to Mricanize the State; and for the appointment of conservative white men I was denounced by the "Pure Radicals" as trying to sell out the Republican Party to the Democrats.

Mter nearly two years, when I began to feel that I had gotten my government into fairly good shape and the people had begun to settle down and accept the situation, it was discovered that we had a serious factional controversy in our own party.

I had tried to administer the government on the conservative

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lines laid down in my inaugural address, which were so cordially approved of by the leaders of my party and by the press of the city of New Orleans at that time.

I had antagonized the colored Lieutenant-Governor, the radical New Orleans Tribtme, and many of their supporters, by making a number of appointments of conservative white men to office, all of whom they declared to be Democrats. The spirit of "San Domingo" showed itself. They criticised my personal associates and alleged that I was trying to get into "high society."

For example, a dinner was given for me by Doctor W. Newton Mercer, who was perhaps the first man in social life in the city of New Orleans, and whose palatial residence of that rime is now the Boston Oub. There were twenty-five or thirty of the leading men of the State present, including General Richard Taylor (son of Zachary Taylor, once a citizen of Louisiana and President of the United States, and brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis), ex-Governor P. O. Hebert, General Dan Adams, Mr.

S. H. Kennedy, Honorable Duncan F. Kenner, Alexander Walker, Effingham Lawrence, Christian Roselius, Cuthbert H. Slocumb, Albert Baldwin, Thomas J. Semmes, J. H. Oglesby, and others. The dinner was purely personal and social. I had known Dr. Mercer for some time while I was stationed in New Orleans in the Army. This dinner seemed to be most offensive to the colored Lieutenant-Governor and the radical white men who affiliated with him, many of whom I had been obliged to offend or disappoint in various ways, especially in vetoing bills passed by the Legislature in which they had large financial interests.

Among the first appointments of General Grant after he became President-in fact, in the month of his inaugurationwas that of his (or rather, Mrs. Grant's) brother-in-law, James

F. Casey, to be Collector of Customs at the port of New Orleans. This appointment was offensive to the colored Lieutenant-Gov

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ernor, O. J. Dunn, to W. P. Kellogg and John S. Harris, who represented Louisiana in the United States Senate, and to several members of Congress from the State; and through them a movement was inaugurated by the Lieutenant-Governor and Captain S. B. Packard, Chairman of the Republican State Committee, to defeat Collector Casey's confirmation by the Senate. But it failed, and he was eventually confirmed.

Some months later, a much stronger movement was inaugurated in Louisiana to force General Grant to remove his brotherin-law. It likewise was headed by Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, Chairman Packard, Speaker Charles W. Lowell, and the two United States Senators-Kellogg and Harris. They charged that Casey did not make appointments in the Custom House to suit them; he was too slow in changing his employees, and he had "ignored negroes."

I was not consulted by these gentlemen, and knew nothing of the movement to remove Collector Casey until one night I was visited at my residence by Collector Casey and his chief deputy, State Senator P. F. Herwig, who told me of it, and said it had become so strong that they feared that it would succeed, unless they could get my help. The result of the interview was that I wrote a friendly letter to the President in Collector Casey's behalf.

When the Senators and Congressmen made their final visit to the President, he asked them whether the Republican leaders in Louisiana were a unit in favor of Casey's removal. They assured the President that every Republican leader in Louisiana desired his removal. The President then asked them, "How does Governor Warmoth stand in the matter?" They assured him that Governor Warmoth, more than any other of the leaders, desired the removal; whereupon the President opened a drawer and put my letter in their hands. The result was that these gentlemen left the President without Collector Casey's scalp, but with "red blood in their eyes for Governor War

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moth." Lieutenant-Governor Dunn and Chairman Packard never forgave me.

In the meantime, I had been obliged to suspend the Secretary of State, George E. Bovee, for having published in the newspapers (but not in the official journal) a pretended Aa of the Legislature which took from the city of New Orleans its waterworks and gave them into the hands of a private corporation; it bore his official signature and had the seal of the State affixed, certifying that the Aa had become a law, even without my signature and merely through the lapse of time, although in faa he knew that the bill was in my safe and that I was going to veto it at the next meeting of the Legislature. This, of course, caused a row.

My friend, the Chairman of the Republican State Committee, Captain S. B. Packard, the United States Marshal for the Eastern Distria of Louisiana, became offended with me because I felt obliged to veto a bill which he had passed through the Legislature, providing for the paving of St. Charles Avenue (New Orleans) with wooden blocks under the Nicholson patent, and appropriating $1,500,000 of the State's money to pay for it.

I had offended Speaker Lowell, also a member of the Republican State Committee, because I had vetoed his Ship Island Canal Bill, which proposed to take away from the city of New Orleans the control of its drainage system, and give it to' a corporation, in which he was largely interested financially.

I had been obliged to veto more than thirty-nine bills that were passed by the Legislature, so I had piled up against me a lot of active enemies by this time.

The Legislature of 1869 passed an Aa entitled: "An Aa to enforce the Thirteenth Article of the State Constitution and to regulate licenses mentioned in said Thirteenth Article." This Aa was intended to enforce the Article, which provided that all people, without regard to race or color, should have equal

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rights in all licensed business; and to secure to admittance of colored people to all railway cars, street cars, steamboats, Stagecoaches, omnibuses or other vehicles.

Section 2 was intended to secure the free admittance of colored people to all places of entertainment and amusement, all public inns, hotels, or places of resort within the State. A refusal subjected the proprietor to a forfeiture of his license and the closure of his place of business, as well as to a suit for damages by the party aggrieved.

This Act I signed, as it was strictly in accord with the State Constitution, and it became a law on the 23rd of February, 1869. The law, of course, was a dead letter; colored men and women never attempted to avail themselves of its provisions. Public sentiment was strongly opposed to it, and the colored people were too wise to undertake to force themselves upon white people who did not want them. But the "Pure Radical" politicians held me responsible for not enforcing the law.

Later on, at the session of 1870, some colored and white Radical politicians determined to "put me in a hole," as they termed it, and thus to consolidate the entire colored race against me. So they passed a bill through both houses of the Legislature which made it a O'iminaloffense for any person to refuse accommodations to a colored person on a railroad, steamboat, or street car, or in a hotel, theatre, or any other place of entertainment; and it went so far as to require the police to arrest the offender, and to direct the courts to fine and imprison him.

The bill came to me near the end of the session of 1870 and I had, under the Constitution, until the beginning of the next session of the Legislature, January 1, 1871, to act on it. But it was well undersrood that I would veto the bill, as I finally did. (See Journal of the House. my Veto Message and the vote sustaining the veto, especially that of the colored members.)

The Constitution provided that all residents of the State should be admitted to all public schools, colleges, and semi

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naries, of whatever nature soever, whether literary, legal, medial, theologial, or industrial, authorized by the Legislature and under the control of the State, without distinction of race, color, or previous condition.

No attempt was made to enforce this article of the State Con· stitution. The white people were opposed to mixed schools. The masses of the colored people loved their children and knew too well what would happen to them if any of them should attempt to force themselves into white schools. But the "Pure Radial" or Dunn·Packard Custom·House Faction used this non.enforcement for all it was worth to prejudice me in the eyes of the colored people. They held me responsible for the non·enforcement of the law.

But the matter that aroused the most hostility against me and the most bitter resentment among these "Pure Radial" gendemen was that the Legislature had, with the unanimous vote of both houses, submitted an amendment to the State Constitution, striking out .Article 50, which made the Governor ineligible to election for a succeeding term. These "Pure Radi· al" politicians could not stand this. It was too much. It "broke the camel's back."

So, when the time came for the meeting of a Republican State Convention in August, 1870, to nominate candidates to fill the offices of Auditor (made vacant by the impeachment and removal of G. M. Wickllife) and of the State Treasurer (whose term would expire under the Constitution) together with a new Legislature; the Mayor and city government of the city of New Orleans; five congressmen and all of the officers of all of the Parishes of the State, and to act on this constitutional amend· ment-by this time there had developed quite an opposition to me personally in my own party.

The Legislature at its January session of 1870 proposed four amendments to the State Constitution to be voted on at the November election following:

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FIRST: To make any defaulting tax collector ineligible to office until all of his defalcations should be made good to the State.

Second: Limiting the State debt to '25,000,000.

Third: Enftanchising all Confederates who had been disfranchised by the Constitution.

Fourth: Striking out Article 50 of the State Constitution, which made the Governor ineligible to reelection for a succeeding term (this last amendment submiaed by the Legislature with a unanimous vote of both houses) .

As may be expected, the fourth amendment met with fierce opposition from a number of ambitious Republican politicians, each of whom aspired to be my successor. The colored Lieutenant-Governor, Oscar J. Dunn, was one of these aspirants. Captain S. B. Packard, Olairman of the Republican State Committee and United States Marshal, was another aspirant, and it is safe to say that the woods were full of other aspirants who would have liked to succeed me.

As stated before, the Republican Stare Convention was called to meet in August. Neither my political friend and ally at this time, Collector Casey, nor I paid any particular attention to the selection of delegates to this Convention, althougb I was sent as a delegate from my district; and when it assembled we found to our surprise that over four-fifths of the Convention was composed of negroes. When it came to the organization of the Convention, both my name and that of the black LieutenantGovernor were proposed for the presidency; the LieutenantGovernor was elected. He received 54 votes to my 43. All of the officers of the Convention were negroes, and so were a large majority of the members of all of the committees appointed by the President. It was certainly a negro convention. The "Pure Radicals" had been on the job.

During the session a resolution was introduced censuring me for not having signed the Negro Civil Rights Bill, which had been passed by the late Legislature. This provoked a long and bitter debate. But after I had spoken and shown the unwis

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dom of the proposed legislation. the resolution was withdrawn. It was clear to everybody that it had been introduced for the sole purpose of injuring me in the estimation of the colored people. and to malte sure of the defeat of the proposed amendment to the Constitution malting me eligible to re-ele(tion as Governor.

The negro President of the Convention was given authority to appoint a large part of the State Committee. In doing so he did not appoint a single friend of either .Collector Casey or me. Collector Casey asked for a place on the State Committee but was refused. But the President of the Convention was made a member of the State Committee by special resolution, and the Convention by direct vote refused to allow "any increase in the membership of the Committee" under any circumstances.

Aside from this evident hostility to Collector Casey and me. all was harmonious in the Convention. Both Collector Casey and I. as well as all of our friends. united in the cordial support of the nominees of the Convention for State officers. There was no bolting ticket. but it was clear to Collector Casey and me that we had a fight on our hands to ratify the Constitutional Amendment making the Goveroor eligible for re-election. And having been ignored by the President of the Convention in the appointment of any of our friends on the State Committee. Collector Casey and I concluded to organize an Auxiliary Committee to aid in the conduct of the State campaign and the election of the ticket. and to which our pecuniary contributions could be made.

Lieutenant-Governor Dunn and Olairman S. . B. Packard pretended to take great umbrage at the organization of this Auxiliary Committee. and harped upon their grievances ever afterward. They did everything they could to defeat the proposed amendment to the Constitution. making the Governor eligible for a succeeding term.

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General George A. Sheridan and I took the stump and canvassed the State in favor of all of the nominees of the Republican Party and also the ratification of the four amendments to the Constitution submitted by the Legislature. We had immense meetings through the State. Our enemies oontrolling the Dem0cratic press were most abusive in their criticisms of my administration and of me especially. They advised their people "to remain at home and protect their property from these twO 'carpet-baggers; Warmoth and Sheridan, who were liable to steal everything we had if we should give them a chance." The effect of these diatribes was to give us most valuable advertising-so much so that it seemed to us that everybody was aruacted to our meetings. Wherever we went we invited leading local attorneys and oonspicuous men to join us in a discussion of the political issues, and nearly everywhere we found ambitious gendemen anxious to meet us.

I would usually speak first and explain the situation and the issues to the people, and tell them what I had already accomplished for the people and what I hoped to do in the future. I showed them that I wanted to limit the State debt to $25,000,000, that I wanted to keep every tax oollecror who might be a defaulter from holding any office until he made good his defalcation, that I wanted to enfranchise every ex-Rebel in the State, and that I desired, if my administration should be so satisfactory to the people as to cause them to wish to retain my services as. Governor of the State, that they should not be debarred from that great privilege by any Constitutional provision limiting them in their right. Mter I finished my speech, the ambitious Democrat would follow me; and while he criticised me for many things, real or imaginaty, he could not but approve of every one of the four constitutional amendments proposed by the Legislature, the ratification of which I advocated; and he generally ended with some complimentaty remarks about the strange young man who had so recendy settled in

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their State and had attained such high official position. Then my friend General Sheridan, who was, I believe, one of the most accomplished orators I have ever known, followed him. He never failed to convulse his audience with his wit and irony, or bring tears to their eyes by his pathos and sympathy.

After canvassing northern Louisiana and ending in Oaibome Parish, one morning just at daylight we reached the Red River, opposite the city of Shreveport. We drove our carriage on to the ferry boat and crossed the river; and in passing up to the hotel we noticed that every window and gallery of the houses we passed was hung in black. We had read the Shreveport newspapers during our campaign and were prepared for almost any hostile demonstration, but this seemed to be quite unusualbeyond anything we had encountered, and we looked at each other inquiringly. So when we got to the hotel and registered our names and were sent up to our rooms with a little black boy who carried our bags, we closed the door and whisperingly inquired of him as to what all of this meant. He said in reply, "Didn't you know that General Lee died last night?" Sheridan looked at me, and I looked at Sheridan, and we both felt great regret at the death of General Lee; but we were much relieved

to find that it was "not our funeral."

After breakfast, General McCleary, our candidate for Congress in that district, and a number of other friends, called upon us. They told us that they had arranged to hold our meeting out about two miles from the city. We told General McCleary and the committee that we would not go out of the town to speak; that we came there to talk to all of the people and that they must find some way of holding the meeting in the city of Shreveport. As it happened, an old friend, Dr. Joseph L. Moore, called on me. I had known Dr. Moore at Lebanon, Laclede County, Missouri, before the Civil War; in fact, it was he who had induced me to locate in his county, and who had been my earliest and best friend, but from whom I had been

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obliged to separate on the breaking Out of the War; he joining the Confederate Army and going South, and 1 joining the Union Army and fighting on the other side .

.At the end of the War he became a resident of Shreveport. We had a most cordial and affectionate reunion. 1 later told him of our difficulty about finding aplace to hold our meeting. "Why," he said, "I will arrange all of that for you. We have a great big platfonn in front of the market house where we hold our political meetings, and 1 will get that for you:· .And he did.

Our friends could not get a brass band in town to play for us, but it happened that old John Robinson of Cincinnati was holding a circus in Shreveport at the time, and our friends gave him $500 to postpone his circus that day and let us have his brass band of seven or eight pieces.

1 think 1 never saw such a big place in my life. There must have been two hundred chairs on the platfonn, and every one was empty except those occupied by the brass band, General McCleary, General Sheridan, and myself. There were certainly three thousand people Standing in front of us. .Away over to the left was a little bunch of colored men who did not seem to have spirit enough to declare that their souls were their own. But right in the midst of the great audience-in front of the speakers-was myoId friend, Dr. Moore, looking up at me with the kindliest eyes. 1 spoke for an hour and had most respectful artention. 1 began my speech my saying:

You have in your midst a highly respected citizen who can tell you a great deal about me and my early life in Missouri. He was the grearest friend I ever had in my life. I shall never forget that April Sunday in 1860 when I, a boy not yet eighteen years of age, landed in the little village of Lebanon, Laclede County, Missouri, with a small box of law books, a much smaller hag of clothing, and only $20 in my pocket, when I made the acquaintance of your fellow·citizen, Dr. Joseph L. Moore. In answer to inquiries I told him I was a lawyer from the State of lliinois en route to Springfield, Missouri, to prac·

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rise law. I never shall forget how he literally rook me in his arms and forced me to stop right there and locate in LebanOll; how he took me into his office and did nO( ask for rent; how he put my books OIl his shelves; and how he encouraged and praised III1d helped me. How, when from burning the midnight oil and working myself to death to master my professiOll, I simply collapsed from overwork, he doctored me, nursed me day and night and brought me back to vigorous health. I shall never forget how he induced his friends to employ me as their anomey and how he put me on my feer and made a man of me before I was fit to shed my school books. I see him here in the audience today. (Ch"fI.)

I shall never forget the day we paned after the electiOll of Mr. Lincoln, and he felt it his duty to come South and I felt it my duty to join the UniOll Army-we b«h shed tears, for neither of us ever expected to see the ()(ber again. But we mer here today and we had a great reunion. He is the same deat friend he was in 1860 and he can call on me for my life's blood if it will serve him. (Ch."I.)

I told the people that I had no doubt but they had all heard of me through the newspapers and the grand speeches delivered from that platform. I told them that if half of the lies the newspapers had told about me were true, I ought to be in the penitentiary for life, thereby depriving them of the services of the best Governor the State had ever had in its history. I told them that my great-grandfather was born in Virginia, and that my father was born in Tennessee, that I commanded a Missouri Regiment in the Civil War, and that every drop of my blood was Southern.

I apologized to them for my Demoaatic political friends and told them that they knew how hard it was for those gendemen who were so hostile to me to be deprived of the flesh-pots of Egypt; that they had so long lived on the fatted calf that now to be deprived of the loaves and fishes was more than they could stand.

I begged them to remember that it was the Demoaatic Party that brought on the War, and that, although a majority of the people of Louisiana were against Secession, the Demoaarlc

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Governor forced the issue, seized all of the fortS and arsenals in the State, paroled all of the United States soldiers, and set up a secessionist government before actual war was declared. They lost the War; they lost their sons and brothers; they lost their fathers, by the thousands; they lost their offices. I told the people that these politicians could stand losing the War; they could stand losing their sons and brothers; they could stand losing their fathers, and their slaves; but when it came to losing their offices, it was more than they could bear. So that if the boys resorted to vituperation and slander, and even downright lying against the officers of the State Government, they ought to take pity on them and help them to bear their sorrow. (Everybody laughed heartily. )

I told the people how our Legislature had extended the time for paying their back cues. I told them what we had done to restore their public schools, and that I had not forced the race issue upon them. I told them what we had done to repair and rebuild their levees. I told them that I could promise them a railroad to New Orleans and to Houston, Texas, within three years. I told them that we proposed, by an Amendment to the Constitution which was to be voted on at the coming election, to strike the shackles from the limbs of every ex-Confederate in the State.

I told them that I had appointed Lieutenant-General James Longstreet (one of the great heroes of the Confederate Army) my Adjutant-Genetal of Militia; that I had appointed Major Penn Mason, once an officer on General Robert E. Lee's staff, a Major-General of Militia; that I have appointed MajorGeneral M. Jeff. Thompson, once a Major-General of the Confederate Army, my Chief State Engineer, and that I had organized twenty-five hundred young Rebels into the State Militia.

I told them that I spoke for General Grant, the President of the United States, as well as for myself when I said that we

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wanted every old "Rebel" and every young "Rebel" to come in and join the Republican Party. (Applause.)

After I had finished my speech, our circus band played some of the national airs, including Dixie, and then General McCleary introduced General Sheridan to the audience.

General Sheridan began his speech by a most beautiful, eloquent, and pathetic tribute to General Robert E. Lee, who had just died, as a man and as a soldier. He said that he spoke as a soldier tor a soldier. In less than five minuteS every man in that great audience was shedding tears like a child. Within fifteen minutes every chair on that big platform was filled, and men were hanging on to the sides wherever they could get a hold. Every sentence of General Sheridan was cheered to the echo, ,and when he finished his magnificent speech the great audience rushed to shake our hands, and they placed the brass band at the head of the procession and escorted us in a body to our hotel, where we had to speak again. I never witnessed such a demonstration before or since in my long life. The result was that we carried the Parish of Caddo by an overwhelming majority, and the State by over 22,000 majority. I never forgot those people.

It was admitted by everybody in the State that the election of 1870 was the quietest and fairest election ever held in the State of Louisiana up to that time. The Returning Board did not throw out or reverse a single poll in any Parish of the State, and Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, as a member of the Returning Board, signed all of the returns without ptotest.

We elected the Republican State ticket; we elected every Republican candidate for CongteSS; and we elected a good working majority in both houses of the State Legislature.

We elected as Mayor the Republican candidate, ex-Govemor

B. F. Flanders, and all of the administrators for the City Govern

ment of New Orleans. We adopted, by large majorities, all four of the proposed con

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stitutional amendments, including the one making me eligible for re-election, and it would seem that my triumph was complete.

Mter the election of November, 1870, I visited General Grant in Washington. He received me most cordially, and asked me to dine with him in the White House. It was a simple family dinner, there being present only Mrs. Grant, Miss Nellie, one or two of the boys, and old Mr. Dent, Mrs. Grant's father. We had a pleasant time talking of old times and old friends. Mter dinner, the President and I retired to his library and talked until eleven o'clock.

General Grant congratulated me heartily on our victory of November. He strongly approved of the liberal policy which I had pursued in our State. He himself had appointed General Longstreet to an imponant Federal office. He especially expressed his approval of the amendment to our Constitution striking out Article 99, which had disfranchised a large number of ex-Rebels. He approved of my policy in appointing friendly conservatives to office, and he was plain in his views against making Louisiana an Mrican State. He agreed with me that we should protect the colored people in all of their political and civil rights, provide them with schools, give them appointments to offices whose duties they were capable of discharging, and encourage them in every way possible; but he did not purpose to make the white people of the South feel that they were not a pan of this Republic.

When I left General Grant, I felt that I had reached a complete understanding with him; and that he would suppon me cordially in my policy of liberality to the people who had opposed us, but who now showed a disposition to accept fully the results of the War and Reconstruction, and to co-operate with us in building up the State and Union.

Everything went well with me until the new Legislature met on January 1, 1871, only two months later. Up to this time

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Collector Casey and his friends were in entire accord with me. He was a member of our "Auxiliary State Committee," so bitterly condemned by Lieutenant-Govemor Dunn, Olairman Packard, and their Radical followers. He was a large contributor to our campaign fund, and Senator Herwig, his chief deputy, was its treasurer.

The new Legislature was largely Republican in both houses. It was organized by the election of Mr. Mortimer Carr, a former speaker of the House of Representatives. LieutenantGovernor Dunn, of course, presided over the Senate.

I extraa the following from my message:

State of Louisiana, Executive Department, New Orleans, January 11, 1871. Gendemen of the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Louisiana: I congratulate you upon the favorable auspices under which you assemble....

A growing spirit of harmony and good will between the different classes of our people has been strikingly evinced during the last year. It has been seen in a stroIlgly pronounced disposition on the part of all good citizens in most parts of the State, without respect to partisan differences, to preserve order, enforce the laws, and render obedience to all constituted authority. The devices and machinations of evilly disposed demagogues and resdess and irrepressible parties, who seek to profit by times of alarm and violence, have been set aside by the good people of the State, who are most deeply interested in its peace and prosperity. The result has been that this disposition, aided by salutary laws passed by the General Assembly and by Congress have secured, during the last fall, the most quier, peaceable, and orderly election the State has witnessed for many years. In former elections, even within two years, New Orleans and the State have been the scenes of violence, riots, and bloodshed which have disgraced their names and gready injured all their interests. This fall an important and exciting election was held without any conBict or disturbance and with scarcely an arrest. Such a thing was never known in New Orleans before. I feel especially graceful to be able to lay this before you as a matter of record; because the last General

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Assembly, deeply impressed by the alarming and increasing violence and lawlessness displayed in our elections, and their lamentable effects upon every interest of the State, had, with a view to remedying these evils, enaaed srringent penalries against such offences, and for their more certain enforcement had clothed the Executive with ample powers. I have endeavored to use these powers with moderation and impartiality, but with firmness, and with the simple aim to preserve the peace and to secure to all men, irrespective of party, race and color, the free exercise of all their rights as citizens. That I have been able to do so without arraigning against the law any class or parry, may be accepted as a proof that the laws were wholesome and wise, and that the people, as a whole, have been sarisfied that their Executive was faithful and impartial.

I cannot pass from this subject to other details, in justice, without calling your attention to the general and peaceable acquiescence of our people in the results of the Reconstruction policy of the general Government. Their acceptance of it as a finality has been much more sarisfactory in Louisiana than in any other State in the South. This must be attributed to the patriotism and wisdom of our people and to those features of State policy which have led to this great and desir· able result. It has always been my sincere conviction that it is safe to trust to the good sense, the honor, and the sober second thought of the people. This conviction has determined my course in matters of Scate policy, even in matters where I was forced, for a short time, to differ from many of my political friends. The peaceable character of the late election and the favorable condirion of Louisiana as compared with many other Southern States, have, I think, convinced both friends and foes that I was right. I have refrained from any severe and arbi· trary measures or recourse to mere force, appealing on all occasions and in all localities to the justice and discretion of the people them· selves. Under all circumstances, however, I have held myself in readi· ness to employ all the resources at my command, both civil and mili· tary, to enforce the laws, and preserve order, and protect any citizen in his rights so far as authority of the execurive could be lawfully used. The good results of this spirit of harmony on all sides, upon the prosperity of the Scare, cannot be estimated.

It has been my pleasant fortune, during the past season, to visit a good portion of the State, in answer to repeated and cordial invita· tions from many of my fellow-citizens, which were extended to me by gendemen of all political parties. I had been led to believe, from