PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



739 



In mnnv Utilities the Federal troops were detained 

 :'i.i.-r the marshals and deputy-manthaU, 

 ii-id not only made many arrests immediately before 

 tin.- rlrctin, Lilt tin- reports that they were coining to 

 I'urtieular neighborhoods about tin- time of the elec- 

 tion, tor the purpose of making sued iirrests, served, 

 as the Conservatives claimed, to intimidate and some- 

 times even to produce a 8tampedo amon^ tin- whitu 

 voters. How duferently the two parties look uini 



iino faet will appear from the testimony of Mr. 

 l.'iddle. II. WHS u Tinted States Commissioner in tlio 



> of Iberia. Shortly before the election, upn 

 tin- :i | .pi i. -.it ion of colored persons, he issued a large 

 number of warrants, lie considered it his duty, upon 

 tin- rre-t of the persons charged, to requfro (mil 



Mireties who possessed landed estates within 

 ii-a to by the assessor of the parUh 

 I sutlieient value, and of which the title was 

 approval l>y tin- Register of Deeds. This rule neces- 

 sarily produced delay in procuring bail for the per- 

 sons anv-t. d. mill he was waited on in one case by a 



-ion of eiii/.ens, who offered him a bond signed 



TV 111:111 in the procession. This he regarded 

 as in derision of hit* proceedings, and refused to re- 



r iie bond. II.' was called as a witness to prove 

 the intimidation that existed in that parish. lie had 

 himself no knowledge of any act of the kind except 

 this procession, which he thought was calculated to 

 intimidate the colored voters. Ho had no idea that 

 the arrests made upon his warrants and the proceed- 

 ings under them nad any effect in interfering with 



"(iservative voters. On the other hand, the 

 Conservatives in that neighborhood thought about 

 this just the reverse. Indeed, the reports of the 

 military officers in command of the forces of the 

 United State-* in the country, though generally indicat- 

 ing " condition of quiet and order, take sometimes an 

 entirely different view of the situation. On the other 

 luinl, it was in evidence that the blacks who sought 

 to act with the Conservative party were, on their part, 

 sometimes exposed to enmity and abuse. In the in- 

 terior one colored man was shot for making a Con- 

 servative speech, and in New Orleans it appeared 

 from the testimony that colored men who sought to 

 cooperate with the Conservatives were subject to so 

 much abuse from the police and otherwise that an 

 association of lawyers volunteered to protect them, 

 but with little effect. 



The general condition of affairs in the State of 

 Louisiana seems to be as follows: The conviction 

 has been general among the whites since 1872 that 

 the Kellogg government was a usurpation. This con- 

 viction among them has been strengthened by the acts 

 of the Kellogg Legislature abolishing existing courts 

 a_nd judges and substituting others presided over by 

 judges appointed by Kellogg, having extraordinary 

 and exclusive jurisdiction over political questions. 

 By changes in the law centralizing in the Governor 

 every form of political control, including the suspen- 

 sion of elections ; by continuing the Returning Board 

 with absolute power over the returns of elections: 

 by the extraordinary provisions, enacted for the trial 

 of titles and claims to office : by the conversion of the 

 police force, maintained at the expense of the city of 

 New Orleans, into an armed brigade of State militia, 

 subject to the command of the Governor; by the 

 creation, in some places, of monopolies in markets, 

 gas-making, water- works, and ferries, cleaning vaults, 

 removing tilth, and doing work as wharfingers ; by 

 the abolition of courts with election judges, and the 

 substitution of other courts with judges, appointed 

 by Kellogg, in evasion of the constitution of the 

 State ; by enactments punishing criminally all per- 

 sons who attempted to till official positions unless re- 

 turned by the Returning Board ; by unlimited appro- 

 priations for the payment of militia expenses, ana for 

 the payment of legislative warrants, vouchers, and 

 cheeks" issued during the years 1870 to 1872; bylaws 

 declaring that no person, in arrears for taxes after de- 

 fault published shall bring any suit in any court of 



the State, or be allowed to be * witneu in bis own 

 behalf; measures which, when coupled with the ex- 

 traordinary burden* of taxation, have served to vest, 

 in the language of Governor Kellogg** counsel, 'a 

 degree of power in the Governor of a 8ute scarcely 

 exercised by any sovereign in the world." With 

 this conviction is a general want of confidence in the 

 integrity of the existing State and local officials, a 

 want of confidence equally in their persons and in 

 their pernonnd, which u accompanied by the paraly- 

 zation of business and destruction of values. The 

 most hopeful witness produced by the Kellogg party, 

 while he declared that business was in a sounder 

 condition than ever before, because there was leu 

 credit, has since declared that there was no prosperi- 

 ty. The securities of the State have fallen, in two 

 years, from 70 or 80 to 25, of the city of New Orleans 

 from 80 or 90 to 80 or 40; while the fall in bank- 

 shares, railroad-shares, city and other corporate com- 

 panies, has in a degree corresponded. 



Throughout the rural districts of the State the 

 negroes reared in habits of reliance upon their mas- 

 ters for support, and a community in which the mem- 

 bers are always ready to divide the necessaries of 

 life with each other, not regarding such action as very 

 evil, and having immunity from punishment from the 

 nature of the local officials, had come to filching 

 and stealing fruit, vegetables, and poultry so general- 

 ly, as Bishop Wilmer stated without contradiction 

 from any source, that the raising of these articles had 

 to be entirely abandoned, to the great distress of the 

 white people ; while, within the parishes as well as 

 in New Orleans, the taxation had been carried almost 

 literally to the extent of confiscation. In New Or- 

 leans the assessors are paid a commission on the 

 amount appraised, and houses and stores are to be 

 had there for the taxes. In Natchitoches Parish the 

 taxation reached about 8 per cent of the assessed 

 value on property. In many parishes all the white 

 Republicans and all the office-holders belong to a sin- 

 gle family. There are five of the Greens in office in 

 Lincoln Parish, and there are seven of the Boults in 

 office in the parish of Natchitoches. As the people 

 saw taxation increase and prosperity diminish, as they 

 grew poor while the officials grew rich, they became 

 naturally sore. That they loved their rulers cannot 

 be pretended. The Kellogg government claims to 

 have reduced taxation. This has been effected in 

 part by establishing a board to fund the debt of the 

 State, at 60 per cent, of its face value. This measure 

 aroused great hostility, not so much because of the 

 reduction of its acknowledged debt, as because it 

 gave to the Funding Board, whose powers seem to 

 be absolute and without review, discretionary author- 

 ity to admit to be funded some $(5,000,000 of debt 

 alleged to be fraudulent, so that under the guise of 

 reducing the acknowledged debt it gave opportunity 

 to swell the fraudulent debt against the State. This 

 nominal reduction of the State taxes has been ac- 

 companied by a provision that the parish tax shall 

 not exceed the State. But parishes have, notwith- 

 standing, created liabilities. Judgments having been 

 received, on them, the courts have directed taxes to 

 be levied for their payment, and thus the actual 

 taxes have been carried far beyond the authorized 

 rates. Rings have been formed in parishes com- 

 posed of the parish officers, their relatives, and of 

 cooperating Democrats, who would buy up these ob- 

 ligations, put them in judgment, and cause them to 

 be enforced, to the great distress of the neighborhood 

 a distress so groat that the sales of lands for taxes 

 have become almost absolutely impossible. But the 

 reduction of wages, the non-fulfillment of personal or 

 political pledges, the malfeasance of home and local 

 officials, disputes among the leading colored persons, 

 in other localities, of the loss and embezzlement in 

 some cases of the school-funds, and the failure of the 

 Freedmen's Bank all combined to divide the views 

 of colored voters during the late campaign. An ef- 

 fort was accordingly made by the Conservatives to 



