Year: 1859

Terrorism in Louisiana.


Louisiana seems to have grown thorough
y tired of the ordinary operations of the
law, and through an extensive district of that
State the ruling power is a body of gentle
men composing small, compact, and,
apparently irresistible Vigilance Committee.
More than month ago, it would appear
that robberies and murders were committed
in various parishes with such complete
impunity, so far as the regular officers OF the
law were concerned, that the robbers and
murderers, for the better pursuit of their
business, organized themselves into troop,
and did their work by wholesale. In pro-
cess of time, as is usual in such cases, the
nuisance became intoerable. Southerners
will bear with a good deal of violence and
marauding, but there is ipoint at which
their patience breaks down. A Vigilance
Committee was organized. The criminals,
nothing daunted, fortified themselves in log
huts, and awaited siege, and it was only
when the Committee came into the field with
artillery, that they surrendered. They were
brought out, and received the tavorite
punishment in those partS-that OF whipping
with greater or less severity, and then
dispersed:


The Vigilants, however, have not been
satisfied with their triumph. They took the
administration of the district into their
hands, and appear--if the accounts we have
received be even half true-to have estab.
lished genuine reign of terror. They have
since taken upon themselves to purify the
rbolo po.~hbovhoo1 hx, Irsvipr or
shooting everybody whom they suspect of
participation in crime or outrages, or even
OF sympathy with the criminals. A Justice
of the Peace has received severe whipping
| for issuing warrant against the captain of
the corps. Domiciliary visits are paid at all
hours OF the night and day-obnoxious
individuals are seized in the midst Of their
families, and either shot down on the spot
| or bapshed.


AS these proceedings are taken without
much preliminary enquiry--without the
examination OF witnesses, without hearing
the accused either in explanation or defence,
and doubtless in the majority of cases upon
the strength of vague rumor or malicious
denunciation--their effect upon the nerves
! of the peaceable inhabitants may be imag-
ined. Exposure to the attacks ofmarauders
was bad enough, but the restoration of order
seems to be still worse evil.


| By the last accounts the Governor had
| gone to the disturbed districts and inquired
into the matter, but his august presence does
not seem to have either awed or reassured
anybody, and he has, we believe, gone back
to Baton Rouge, with vague intentions of
calling the Vigilants to account. A mass
of details, some of them really horrible, and
all of them deplorable, are furnished about
the affair by the Louisiana papers, which it
is not necessary to repeat. They are the
usual incidents of anarchy and mob law.
1t this state OF things were reported of
the frontier or the mines we should hardly
think it necessary to comment upon it but
| it has arisen in one of the oldest and longest
settled districts in the country, and is one
more example of the inability of the law in
many portions of the Union to deal with
any extraordinary crisis. AS long as mur-
ders and outrages are committed singly, and
by individual criminals, nothing is done.
Every man trusts to his rifle for safety, and
when that fails him bis neighbors hear of his
overthrow with pious Indignation. 1t is
only where the thing begins to be done on
great scale, and assumes ihe shape and
proportions of an organized raid, that society
bestirs ITSELF But even then no one ever
thinks of availing himself of the machinery
provided by the law for the repression of
crime. The sheriff and the courts are thrown
aside as old lumber, and the law breakers
are put down by other law breakers, as
violent and INSCRIPTIONS in their means,
though in pursuit of more laudable ends.


There can hardly be question about the
existence of an alarming tendency all over
the Union to despise the legal modes of re-
dressing injuries, and to resort at once to
those which nature has placed within every.
bodys reach. Whether this is due to the
result OF the mal.administration of Justice,
and consequent loss of confidence in the
courts and their officers, it is not our pres.
ent purpose to discuss. Whatever the
cause, the thing itself is sign of the times
and worth attention. 1t has lost none of its
importance from being an old story. The
spectacle of cities ruled by rowdies, and of
whole districts administered by bands of
armed men, in times Of profound peace, is
something which VT had better avoid get
ting used to, as long as we can.--New York
Times.