Year: 1872

seems probable IN Now Oriean6 although
contest between estate Rights and '.cen-
tralzation" looms up out of this fight
between mere politicians. The federal bayo-
nets still glistened around the building used
as State House, and the war was being car
ried on in the Courts. The Returning Board,
in the hands of Kellogg and Casey, promul-
gated yesterday return of the members said
to have been elected which gives republican
majority of forty-fve in the House and twenty
in the Senate The return promulgated on
Thursday last by the Governors Board
OF course gives quite another political
complexion to the Legislature. We are fur
ther informed that this pleasant result for the
Custom House people was achieved through
the process of counting in some thousands of
votes belonging to negroes alleged TO have
been refused registration in their districts
This performance, which would give the Custom
House faction all it desires-and it desires
everything-from the United States Senator
and Governor down to every particle of State
and federal patronage within the confines of
Louisiana meets with determined opposition
from Warmoth and his party. Their intent
is announced to be calling of the Legisla-
ture, as announced by the Governors Board,
and it seems likely that we shall witness the
disgraceful scenes of two rival bodies, each
claiming to represent the unfortunate Com
monwealth, each anxious to plunder it as
| much as possible, and neither possessing
clear title to existence Such is the deplorable
picture which carpet-baggism has sketched in
one of its widest freaks.


For the sake Of present peacefulness it is
well indeed that the majority Of the popula-


ton look on either in apathy or disgust at this
demon dance of the plunderers. But with the


threatening phase of this difficulty removed,
the immobility Of the respectable masses will
become reproach they will do well to wipe
out at an early day. The leaven Of corrup-
ton will rise more quickly and continuously
than any other, and will pervade the whole
mass of society until nothing short of the
scorching heat of revolution will kill it. As
the extent Of the corruption is greater or lesser
so must be the means Of eradicating it
History has recorded that even the
overwhelming violence Of an outraged
people swamping it in torrents of blood, has
not succeeded wholly in the object The
sword, the axe and the guillotine may kill
corruptionists; but if the contagion itself
has not been grappled with and made
moral as well as physical horror, society is
nothing bettered, for the executioners, with
power in their hands, will become corrup-
tonists in turn. On the miserable, plum
dered and outraged past Of Louisiana, since
carpet-bag ascendancy we shall not now
speak in detail. 1t is needless to state that
those from the North who undertook the task
Of ruling the conquered but yet seeth-
ing South were men requiring but
little incentive to become the most un-
principled scoundrels civilization with
its haf-teachings could produce. The
well-to-do, the patient and the honest,


who might have left the South in few years
as contented with their lot as sense of humil-
iation would permit, betrayed no inclination
to leave their quiet comfort for the after risks
of the war For the carpet-baggers to enlist
the negroes on their side was no hard work.


and to make them abettors and sharers in their
knavish schemes scarcely more difficult. The
worst feature was yet to come-namely the
absorption of much Of the white Southern
element into the ranks Of the scramblers for
plunder. The material benefits of political
immortality once palpable, its pursuit, regard
less of all consequences, became far more
wide than many at the North suppose As if
all the malign influences were conspiring TO
make the wounds of the South less curable,
the hot-headed masqueraders Of the Ku Klux


with their fantastic deeds Of inane bloodthirsti-
ness came upon the scene. Giving as they
did spurious crown Of martyrdom to the
carpet-baggers, they only succeeded in fasten-
| ing them more firmly in their midst
| strongly radical Congress took the opportunity
Of disciplining the South with bayonets, and


the foolish fellows of the midnight mask,


the pistol and the whip found that arbitra-
ment by force was more than ever out of the
question When the Ku Klux excesses had
failed, as they deserved, of their object there
began the no less dangerous era of COM
promise. With the birth of the liberal move
ment at Cincinnati it was fully put under way
In many States of the South-North and
South Carolina and Louisiana for instance
the indecency of the plunderers had excited
tardy remonstrance from the Executive circles
i'll Washington as they had aroused indignation
everywhere else The fight for the spoils had
split up the carpet-baggers themselves into
bitter factions, and wherever an attempt was
made for a choice between them at
Washington, it resulted in sending the re-
jected faction with unreal shibboeths of re-
form over to the democracy. Warmoth, the
present Governor of Louisiana, was one of
these converts to reform Snubbed, as he
was at Cincinnati, by the honest and
earnest of the experimental party, he possessed
SO much real power in his State that the
! democracy fell into the snare and helped him