New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1866-09-15

ding the six or seven hundred special policemen
sworn in for the occasion, the presence of the
mayor during the tumult the deception practiced
by the lieutenant governor TO keep troops outof
the eity-all clearly prove that the bloody tragedy
was. as General Sheridan states, "premedltated
ma saere.o -r 9
And from the brutal manner in which four hun
dred Onion men were killed and wounded; from
the fact that not single policeman or partici-
pant in the murderous affair has been arrested !;
/ from the fact that the same men whose hands are
yet red with the blood of the patriot soldiers of
the republic, and crimsoned anew in that of the
martyrs of the 3Qth Of July, are still retained in
office and power in that city it is clear that there
is security For the lives, the liberty or the pro-
perty of loyal citizens.
1t is part of the history of this massacre that
indictments were found by The grand jury of the
| parish, composed of ex-rebel soldiers and their
sympathizers, against the survivors of the con-
| venti0n for having disturbed the peace of the
community; and that to-day many of them are un-
der heavy bonds to appear and answer the charge.
Nor did this seem to satisfy the Judge of the
criminal court, fer the grand jury was brought
| before him the following day and instructed to
find bills of Indictment against the members of
| the convention and spectators, charging them
with murder-giying the principle law, and APP
plying it to this case, that whoever is engaged in
an unlawful proceeding from which death ensues
to a human being, is guilty of murder; and alleg
| ing that as the convention had no right to meet
and the police had killed many men on the day of
its meeting, the survivors were therefore guilty of
murder.
The state of affairs which led to this massacrei is
believed to be the legitimate result of the recon
struction policy of Andrew johnson. For it is an
indisputable fact that, upon the reception of
General Baird's reply to Mayor Monroe, a delega-
ton was sent to Washington to confer with the
President of the United States, and that, immedi-
ately after the conference with that functonary,
dispatch was sent to New Orleans informing the
mayor that he would be sustained by the Presi-
dent in his determination to suppress the coayeu-
ton
The President, ignoring the provision of tie
Constitution which authorizes the executive of the
nation to suppress insuTreeton in a State only
when called upon by the legislature of said State
or in case of its not being in session. by the exc
Gutire of said State. ignoring the governor and all
rules of official intercourse between the State and
national governments. sent a dispatch in which he
used the following language to Andrew S. Herron
attorney general of Louisiana, on the day of the
massacre:
u You will call on Gen. Sheridan, or whoever
else may be i'll command for sufficient force to
sustain the civil authorities in suppressng all lille
gal OF unlawful assemblies"
Ihis placed Gen. Sheridan and the.Unttte daStates
troops under the command of an attorney genera. I
OF non-Teconstructed State, whose greatest
merit may be said to consist in the fact that he
had served four years as an officer of high rank in
the rebel army giving him the power which The
governor himself could not exercise, and allowing
nm to say whether a convention of LOYAL citizens
was unlawful, and compelling Gen. Sheridan to
Interpretation. It might nave been pleaded t at
first With some show Of plausibiity, in the Presi-
dents defense, that he was misnformed as to the
real status Of the convention, and the ac-
tual facts of its bloody dispersion; but after
weeks have elapsed after General Sheridans 1
full report chafacterizing the so-called riot
as ''premedtated massacre" after the report
Of the military commission appointed by Cen
Baird to investigate the affair, after the exodus of
so many well known Unionsts of Louisiana on
account Of the total want of government and pro
lection, this plea can no longer be urged and
when it is, moreover remembered that not single
arrest of the guilty parties has been made, and
that the same ,pardoned periured mayor, with his
murderous rebel police, has been permitted to
continue the exercise of the power he has so
greatly abused, can it be claimed, even by the
most credulous or the most charitable that the
that day?