in a
moment when the nation was startled on the 30th of July, two days after
the adjournment of Congress, by a massacre at New Orleans, which had
not the pretense of justification or even or provocation.

The circumstances that led to it may be briefly stated. The convention
which formed the free constitution of the State in 1864 was ordered to
re-assemble by its president, upon authority which, he held, was
conferred upon him by the convention at the time the constitution was
formed. Apprehending that some measures were to be taken hostile to
the re-establishment of rebel power in the State of Louisiana, it was
resolved by the opponents of the Republican party that the members of
the convention should not be allowed to come together and organize.
Threats were insufficient to effect this end. Intimidation of every
character had been tried in vain. The men who thought they had the
right, as American citizens, to meet for conference refused to be
bullied out of their plain privileges under the guarantees of the
National Constitution. There was a dispute as to their legal right to
take any action touching the constitution of the State--a dispute
altogether proper for judicial inquiry. Even if they had assembled
and proceeded to amend the constitution, their action could have had
no binding effect until approved by the vote of the people. The
question which lay at the bottom of the agitation was that of negro
suffrage; but the negroes were not entitled to vote under the
constitution as its stood, nor could they vote upon an amendment to
the constitution conferring the right of suffrage upon them. Whatever
the convention might do, therefore, would be ineffectual until approved
by a majority of the white men of the State. It obviously followed
that the men who violently resisted the assembling of the convention
could not justify themselves by the declaration that negro suffrage was
about to be imposed upon them. Their position practically was that a
majority of the white population should not exercise the right of
giving suffrage to the negro.

When the convention attempted to assemble against the desire and
remonstrance of their political opponents, a bloody riot ensued--not a
riot precipitated by the ordinary material that makes up the mobs of
cities, but one sustained by the obvious sympathy and the indirect
support of the municipal authorities of New Orleans, and by the leading
rebels of the State. General Ab