The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-12-19
HE loyal MILITIA" EXPERIMENT.

of the District of Columbia were responsible
for nothing, as 1T was merely "a place to ex-
pertinent in" The South for about four
years, has been, in more emphatic and sim
lister sense, simply a place to experiment in;
but its people have been refused the least de-
gree of exemption from responsibility for
mischiefs and misadventures incident to the
experimental conditions to which they have
been forcibly subjected. Whether they spew
up the vile nostrums with which they are
drugged, or writhe convulsiyely under their
intolerable effects, they are regarded as guilty
wretches, deserving execution at the hands of
the political quacks who have already SO
greatly tormented them. We used to be told
that this stupid and Ubiquitous process would
cease with the election of Grant But the
prospect of the desired change is very darkly
clouded by the bill which has passed both
houses of Congress, authorizing the organize
ton of the militia in the so-called recon-
structed States. Ordinarily, to be sure, moth
ing would be more natural and proper than
| for the governments of these States-Louisi-
ana, Alabama, Georgia and the rest-to exer-
else the prerogative Of employing the militia
for the enforcement of their authority. But
everybody knows the spurious origin of the
present governments; everybody knows that
they will not cease to be intrusive and usurpa-
tory, that they will continue to be shameless
counterfeits, frauds and impostures as long as
their existence can claim no more rightful
tenure than may be logically derived from
their origin. What Congress means, there
fore, by providing for the organization of the
militia in these States is not to be mistaken.
The militia which it is contemplated to arm
and equip, and, if need be, put in campaign
for bloody work, is to be "loyal,
Of course. That is to say, it is not to be
adulterated with an impartial admixture of the
"rebel element !" but, like Brownlow's mill
tia in Tennessee, and Clayton's militia in Ar
kansas, is to be composed, for the greatest
part, of the most vicious and brutal element
of the negro population, Offered by the few
exceptional carpet-baggers and scalawags who
are supposed to possess more courage than
those who have heretofore deserted their black
followers and fitted into inyisibility, at the |
first flash of gun or pistol. or the first CLEAN |
of cold steel. The practical working of this |
judged from the inglorious exploits of the |
loyal army with which disafected people in |
Arkansas have been dragoonaded, in order to
bring them to proper sense of the dignity, |
potency, wisdom, righteousness and benef- |
cence Of the sham government of that State.
The portions of the State visited by the semi
savage soldiery of the frenzied Clayton, have
been a scene of outrage and devastation such
as were nowhere suffered within its limits du-
ring the late war; Crops have been wasted;
provisions and stock have been appropriated
without compensation private arms and am
munition have been taken dwellings have
been ransacked for portable valuables stores
have been sacked citizens have been seized
at midnight in their homes and hurried off to
distant prisons and women have been vio-
lated, in the midst of their families, by rowing
squads of colored "bummers," who urged the
demands of lust with the threat of the torch
and the CLEAN of the bayonet. 1t was hui
manly impossible for such things to
go on without rousing the manhood
of the State to resistance; and il
now appears that, after having brought the
whole State to the verge of anarchy, and
warned by the discontinue of his militia at
Augusta and at other places, Gov. Clayton
has concluded to abandon his mad programme
and TO refer the Office of maintaining peace
between his bogus government and an indig-
nant people to the military power of the
United States. Well, there is nothing sur
prising in this. 1t is the impotent and des-
picable conclusion to which all the guberna-
nal bogi in the South must inevitably come
whenever their authority is reduced to its
Ultimate test. Congress, however, does not
yet seem to recognize the logical impossibility
If detaching these pretended authorities from
he military protection of the federal govern
nent, and of placing them on a self-sustain-
ng basis. And, if the Legislature. when it
assemblies here next January, shall labor
lnder the same error in this matter, we will
zee revived and enacted, perhaps, the most
'dious of the projects introduced in that
'ody last spring for organizing a "loyal
militia in this State, to serve Pacha War;
moth as body of faithful Mamelukes, ready
t every signal to lay waste a parish, burn
nd pillage town, or butcher an unarmed
axe warning in time. The attempt to exc
ute any such project will prove an
rganized failure. Warmoth himself, in
is letter to the President, asking for
roops, confessed that it would be ruinous to &
be State. 1t might not be utterly ruinous :
D the State, but it would certainly be ruin
us to all incarnate carpet-baggery and scala
Taggery within reach of popular vengeance.
his people will not bate their breath, aud
old their souls in fearfulness, and their homes 7
nd property in peril, before the staggering
+ carpet-baggery and scalawaggery insolent a
18th the fancied security derived either from "
colored police or colored soldiery of their
wn creation. This people will take every
ecessary step in the line of the subsection of :
conquered community to the conquering
over of the United States But they are not
repaired to become the slaves of pack of