Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-08-01
The Massacre of New Orleans.


The Massacre of New Orleans.
The accounts which reach us from the
fearful massacre at New Orleans on the
3Oth of July are very vague and indefinite.
Thew are. moreover, tinstured with rebel
spite and malice 10 the last degree, and,
as far as they car, they hide the fact that
the outbreak was caused by the brutal
and deliberate determination OF the New
Orleans mob, acquiesced in by the rebel
mayor and police of the city, that the
Convention of 1864 should be prevented
from reassembling, by blood-shed and
riot. Whatever the immediate pretext
for the disturbances, whatever the cock
and-bull stories told by the telegraph
about negro professions, negroes armed
with clubs and all manner Of weapons,
negroes assaulting police officers, and the
like. the fact remains that the rebel mob
ofNew Orleans had made up their minds
to crush the convention by violence, and
to catch at any opportunity for so doing.
That convention was made up of Union
and radical men, men in favor of equal
suffrage and opposed tc the johnson pol
lev now so popular among the New Or
leans rebels. 1t assembled for peaceful
and legal purposes. But the rebels of the
CITY were determined that it should not
meet. aloud threats are made by the
rebels to break up the session says the
telegraph of the preceding day. And
again: aMembers of the convention are
openly threatened with the lamp-post.
Meantime the rebel mayor of the city
installed in power by the order Of Pres
ident johnson himself, made every effort
to suppress the convention by military
power, and, that falling, issued a prOcla-
nation, ostensibly to dissuade from, but
obviously exciting and stimulating to, vio-
lence and outbreak. TrRnsgressing all
official propriety, he went so far as to
stigmatize the convention as "the Extinc-
ton Convention and as 1.-THE enemies Of
the reconstruction policy of President
johnson" to declare that its deliberations
twill receive no -countenanee from the
President and to %enjoin upon all citizens
to refrain from attending it. The rebel
Sheriff, General Henry Hayes of the Con-
federate army, was meantime busily en-
gagged in organizing a posse of deputies
with the express object of preventing the
Convention from assembling. The police
of the city were in full sympathy with the
mob and anxious for a chance at The Con-
vention.
Under such circumstances, with such
surroundings, the devoted Convention,
lists, the representatives of the party who
put down the rebellion and control the
Government, assembled. They might
better have charged up the slope of Fred
ericksburg against the rebels of Lee, than
thus have placed themselves at the tender
mercy of the rebels Of New Orleans. The
threats of the mob were but too certainly
and terribly fulfilled. What matter what
seufle between negro and white was made
the pretext? The mob needed no pre-
text, no occasion In an hour the build
ing where the Convention had met is sur
rounded by armed rebels, bowling for
the lives of those within, and by police,
surprising the mob in their furious vim
d%ictiveness. Every visible head is fired
upon. DR.. Dostie, a well known Repub-
lican leader, is brought out dead and car
ried home in a cart. Our rebel telegraph
er cody informs US that at is doubtful if
many of them'-the members OF the Con-
vention-"are gotten ont alive" While
this wholesale murder of the Republican
statesmen of Louisiana is being carried on
by the mob, melted and abetted by rebel
police, the slaughter of negroes goes on
in every street. Who commenced this
slaughter, and who carried it on, is best
told by the dispatch which VIC find in an
other column, announcing that but one
was killed in the streets, and he by
accident; "the others killed are neqroesr
Such arc the outlines, sketched BIZ the
hands of rebel sympathizers, of this fear
full massacre. When its full details come
% DO fairly told, if they ever are, what
scenes of atrocity Will not be unfolded !
The dark and bloody tragedy of Memphis
has been re-enacted on a larger field, and
ten-fold more horrors. The scene
ltfords a sad commentary upon the recent
threat of the National I~ateuigeaeer that a
Union Convention would not be permit
ed to meet in any Southern city. The
experiment. has been tried in the areeon-
tructed' city of New Orleans, and has
esulted in the wholesale slaughter of the
members of the Convention. This is the
lower of President Johnson's policy. We
vait patiently to see what its full fruit win
e.