Nine years have
passed since Louisiana, wasted, ruined, and depraved by
slavery and by rebellion, came out from a contest in
which, had only the guilty suffered, it had been punished
not half so severely as it deserved. Its slave-traders had
forced it among the earliest into revolt. The very thought
of a limitation upon their dreadful traffic filled them
with unreflecting rage. The election of Lincoln seemed to
menace the slave-trade on the Mississippi; the
auction-blocks of New Orleans might no longer be supplied
from Kentucky and Tennessee with human chattels; and the
desperate leaders of the violent faction forced the small
yet wealthy community to rise in arms against the
government. With a population of perhaps seven hundred
thousand, more than half of whom were colored, all
Unionists in life and death, while of the whites it is not
probable that a majority were ready for the mad measures
of the slave-traders, the State soon felt the results of
its folly, and fell again into the hands of the
government. At the close of the rebellion Louisiana was
impoverished with an excess of poverty to which not even
South Carolina had reached. A large proportion of its
white population were paupers, maintained by the alms of
the national government. Its lucrative slave-trade was
stopped forever; its colored people were free. There was
no money to pay its taxes, no resources to maintain its
levees; not hope of rescue from its fallen condition
except the aid of the national government and the Northern
capitalists. Of this, so generously offered, the State
freely availed itself, and commerce once more began to
revisit the deserted wharves of New Orleans. So fertile is
its land, and so favorable the site of its metropolis,
that a few years of peace would soon impart to Louisiana
new elements of progress; and, as the center of Western
trade, and the home of Western merchants, New Orleans
might rise to a high rank among the sea-ports of the
world.
But this the
fallen rebels were resolved to prevent. Malice ruled in
their counsels of such a depth of depravity as could only
be born of the poisonous remnants of slavery. They formed
secret associations, not, as one might suppose, to restore
agriculture, to enlarge trade, to preserve good order, and
invite the commerce and emigration of the West, but to
insult and terrify honest Negro laborers, to drive off
white settlers who were Republicans, and at last murder
both; to hold the State in miserable poverty and force the
people to live still on the alms of the government. The
reports of the Ku-Klux Committee for 1871-1872 show how
successfully the White Leaguers of four or five years ago
overawed or ill-treated their miserable fellow-citizens;
how in 1868 scarcely a Republican ventured to vote in many
parishes, and what perpetual bankruptcy and poverty ruled
in the small community. Two thousand persons were murdered
by the White Leaguers in a population not much larger than
that of Brooklyn.
The fact that the
Ku-Klux or the White League began its reign of terror in
Louisiana immediately after the war, and has continued it
ever since, until it rose into the recent rebellion, or
that the Democratic leaders, M’Enery and Penn, owe all
their political strength to its prevalence, is what the
chiefs of the lawless faction in the State would now
willingly conceal. Having spread a deadly terror through
all the Republican population, they are now satisfied, and
they labor to hide from the Northern press and people by
all their arts the means by which they hope to control all
future elections. Yet it is plain to the whole Northern
public that it is not any misgovernment on the part of the
Kellogg rule that brought the White League into existence,
since it appeared at once upon the close of the rebellion;
nor is it the fault of the Federal officials that the
assassins have ravaged the State under the names of
Knights of the White Camellia or of a White Man’s Party
for the past nine years. It is not the State but the
Federal government against which the outrages have been
aimed. It was the lingering fires of rebellion that lazed
up anew in unlucky Louisiana; and it is certain that no
government favorable to the Union would satisfy these
supporters of M’Enery and Penn. They will have nothing
but an ascendancy of the rebel interests.
Our White
Leaguers who were only a few days ago urging that every
one who opposed their rule in New Orleans should be
"shot down like a dog," are now complaining of
"misrepresentation" and of the harsh
construction put upon their actions by the more observant
part of the Northern press. We think their actions are not
unworthy of their words, and that they are not unknown to
the history of the times. Never did so small a community
as Louisiana in so few years exhibit such a succession of
horrors. In 1868 we have the raids on the Negro voters
detailed in the Ku-Klux reports, when the White Camellias
dominated in the streets of New Orleans. In 1869-1871 fear
kept them in tolerable quiet. In 1872 they re-appear. In
1873 they burned or shot down sixty or seventy Negroes at
Grant Parish, and attempted an insurrection in New
Orleans. In 1874 they have murdered the United States
officials at Coushatta and a large number of Negroes; they
have risen in rebellion in New Orleans and shot thirty or
forty Unionists in a deadly contest. They are still
importing large quantities of arms, and are evidently
preparing for further massacres whenever the eye of the
law is withdrawn. That such men should complain that they
are "misrepresented" is an excess of effrontery;
that they should find any portion of the Northern
Democracy willing to believe any thing they choose to
affirm against the Republican government is not a little
remarkable. It is ridiculous to suppose that the murderers
and revolutionists of 1874 are in any way to be
disconnected from those of 1868 or 1873, or that M’Enery
and Penn are not the chiefs of a band of assassins and
outlaws of whom the white as well as the colored
population of Louisiana would rejoice to be able to rid
themselves.
There is
evidently a strong desire entertained by the people of the
whole country to bring back peace and prosperity to all
the Southern States that are still suffering from the
terrors of the White Man’s League or the lingering
penalties of the rebellion, and to lend aid to their
merchants and farmers to rise from their temporary
depression. They want capital and labor to extend their
means of internal communication, and a large immigrant
population to add to the value of their lands; they want
public schools and churches, a free press, and liberty of
speech and action to relieve them gradually from the
influence of their dangerous classes, to diffuse
knowledge, and increase the results of labor. But none of
these can they hope to obtain in the midst of their civil
convulsions. Insurrection is the most costly of political
measures, and Louisiana is the most unlucky of all the
States, because it has been tormented by a horde of
traitors. While Charleston flourishes in peace and has
become already an opulent sea-port, New Orleans is the
scene of a lamentable decay. Galveston and Mobile draw
away its commerce, and the Western merchants turn away in
alarm from the home of the White Man’s League. Even
Florida, where peace has been maintained and the Ku-Klux
apparently suppressed forever, has made a rapid progress,
while Savannah languishes and Georgia is losing its
population. If, therefore, the Northern and Western press
are desirous of aiding in developing the natural
advantages of the Southern States, it is plain that their
first duty is to point out the causes that have led to
their decay. Publicity and a perfect information of the
real condition of the country are the earliest steps in
its future advance. If there are outlaws in any of the
States, or any reign of disorder, the truest friends of
the South are those who expose and denounce them. Secrecy
only increases the evil, and bad men hide their ill deeds
in darkness.
The question is
now fairly before the people, how can life and liberty be
secured to all classes of our citizens in the Southern
States, and those enormities prevented in the future that
have made the name of Democracy in Tennessee and even
Kentucky, in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Arkansas,
odious to the instincts of civilization? Modern progress
abhors the notion of murder and of inhumanity, and it
would be well for our people to place the mark of their
disapprobation upon the party that hopes to profit by
these cruel measures at the South with so conclusive a
condemnation as shall show how deeply they detest them.
It is quite
certain that the Southern Democratic leaders have not
begun as yet an era of peace. Every part of their section
has shown traces of a war of intimidation against the
Union party. It is only a short time ago that the
Louisville papers related the outrages of the White Man’s
League almost in the suburbs of that city. Tennessee has
recently been the scene of frightful massacres. The
colored and white Republicans of the South, in many
districts, vote with the fear of death before them. Their
courage has been tested by nine years of perilous devotion
to good order and peace. Will their countrymen now desert
them? Eugene Lawrence. |