The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-04-21
REACHED A CRISIS.
STRUGGLE OVER NEGRO VOTES IN
LOUISIANA.
BIoodshed Can Hardly Be Averted
Today, as Both Sides Seems to Be
in Deadly Earnest.

OPELOUSAS, La, April 20.-At this
parties are on the move and des-
perate conflict is expected at any
time.
Over $50 regulars, armed with Win
chesters, have surrounded the town
and their ostensible object is the cap
ture of the court house. On the vote
of the Opelousas ward depends their
success or defeat in the parish, and
they are concentrating their efforts
here.
They realize that if a full vote is
polled the combine will win. The re-
port came to this place early today
that the regulars were assembling at
the Belleview bridge, three miles south
of town.
At 10 o'clock arrivals from the coun-
try reported that 200 men on horseback
and armed with Winchesters, shotguns
and pistols, were gathered there and
were planning an invasion Of the
town. Upon the report of this news
the combined people, Or anti-regula-
tors, began to assemble around the
court house square, armed to the
teeth and prepared to
RESIST THE INVASION.
The sheriff was in town when the
news first arrived, but ne did not at
tempt to go and disband the armed
body of men.
District Judge W. C. Perrault rode
out to the camp of the regulators and
endeavored by persuasion to get them
to disband but his efforts availed
nothing. This afternoon Diomedes
Durio, a leading planter; c. N. Thomp
son, clerk of the district court, and five
or six friends were in front of Du-
rios house.
Il was under a tree with my children
near me-" said Mr.. Durio, when sud-
denly thirty regulators, led by one
Reed, passed my house. They stopped
behind clump of trees and I went out
in the field 20 see what they were do
shots at me. My friends came to my
assistance and we returned ten or
twelve shots. We then laid down, and
the regulators fired fully fifty shots at
US, shooting my horse in two places.
Half of them then ran away. The
others remained behind in a group and
appeared to be helping someone on a
horse. 1 don't know whether we hurt
any of them or not. We sent word to
town for reinforcements, but when the
boys came the regulat tors were out of
sight,
Mr. Thompson corroborated Mr.. Durio's
story.
1t is rumored that two regulators were
shot and one killed Impossible to verify
the rumors.
AT 1850 TONIGHT
the town is quiet. Armed squads are on
duty at every road entering the place and
the court house is perfect arsenal. The
Washington, Louisiana, boys, thirty
strong, who came down to fight with the
citizens against the regulators, have hur-
ried home A courier brings the news
that the regulators are creating conster-
nation among the inhabitants of Bellaire
Cave. All day long there has not been
a state or parish officer, not even con-
stable, in town. 1t is impossible for
town to be in a more martial state. 1t
is believed now that the regulators will
not come into town until morning. There
are $50 armed men waiting for them. The
district attorney has sent in word that
his regulators will enter town tomorrow
and that he has twenty Winchesters at
his back to say. mo negro shall vote
The anti-regulators declare they will
hold the court house if it's
HALL RUNS WITH BLOOD.
The regulators have moved back a mile
or two in the country from King Bridge
The trouble in Opelousas grew out of
an effort on the part Of white Democrats
to prevent registration of the negroes A
militia company was sent there and the
negroes all registered. They are in the
majority and the movement of the regu-
lators or white supremacy crowd now is
intended to prevent the negroes from vot-
ing tomorrow.
A CRISIS
Later-The struggle over the question of
negro ballots has reached a crisis. Two
hundred armed and mounted men sur
round this place with the avowed pur-
pose of taking the town, while almost as
many are camped about the court house
determined to resist. Bloodshed can
hardly be averted tomorrow, and already
in the exchange of shots one man is said
to have been killed.