USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. III > Part 13
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544,500, grand total $91, 188,195. On this there was a total state tax of $466,476.
In February, 1857, the legislature passed the following pream- bles and resolution :
"WHEREAS, Our Senator in Congress, the Hon. J. P. Benjamin, has assumed a political and party position differing from that of his uniform political life, in the faith of which he was elected to a seat in the Senate of the United States ; and,
"WHEREAS, It is but proper and befitting that an authoritative public expression should be given to the popular sentiment and opinion of the state in regard to such change in such public serv- ant ; therefore,
"Resolved, That we approve and endorse with sentiments of highest admiration and esteem, the recently assumed political posi- tion and course of our Senator in Congress, the Hon. J. P. Ben- jamin ; that we view in that act of our public servant the noble triumph of the patriot over the partisan, in merging, as he did, all past party prejudices and antipathies in a superior devotion to his state's and his nation's good, and that we still recognize in him, though changed in his political relations, the true and faith- ful representative of the popular political opinions and sentiments of the state of Louisiana."
The general assembly of 1857 protested against the proposed removal of the existing protective duty on sugar established by the law of 1846 "until such time as all other articles are admitted free of duty." It incorporated the Washington Monument Asso- ciation of New Orleans; appropriated twenty thousand dollars for the New Orleans School of Medicine, upon condition that it should open a free dispensary on certain days and permit certain students free of charge to attend the course of lectures; appropriated fif - teen thousand dollars toward the cost of erecting the "obelisk" on the Chalmette battlefield, and incorporated the Baton Rouge & Clinton Railroad, the New Orleans, Shreveport & Kansas Railroad, the Grand Consistory of the Thirty-second Degree of Masonry, and several plank road and several educational asso- ciations.
In 1858 the assembly passed resolutions and acts urging con- gress to grant all government land in Louisiana to the state for public improvement ; appropriating ten thousand dollars for sup- porting certain militia companies and keeping the war material of the state in repair; urging congress to establish a navy yard at Baton Rouge, and incorporating several educational institu- tions.
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LOUISIANA, FROM 1852 TO 1860.
The legislature of 1859 passed acts to reapportion the repre- sentation in the general assembly; to require all water-crafts to have a free white person as captain ; to permit free persons of African descent to select their masters and become slaves for life ; to organize a board of public works and to divide the state into "Four Internal Improvement, Leveeing, Draining and Reclaim- ing Districts."
During the years from 1856 to 1860 all the various and moment- ous problems concerning slavery were thoroughly discussed in Louisiana. The Dred Scott decision was warmly approved by the pro-slavery partisans. The wild performance of John Brown at Harper's Ferry kindled wrath and indignation. The steady and constantly increasing assistance given to fugitive slaves in all quarters of the North inflamed the deadly hostility of the South- ern people. There arose two factions of the Democratic party- Nationals at the North, and States Rights at the South. As there was no such anomaly in Louisiana as the Republican party, an attempt to reorganize the American or Know-Knothing party was made in 1858, but resulted in failure. The narrow escape of the South in 1856 roused the most direful misgivings as to the future of slavery and the Union.
In 1857 General Walker was arrested upon the charge of taking part in a hostile movement against Nicaragua and Costa Rico; he employed Pierre Soule and Colonel Slatter to defend him.
On July 31, 1858, the Courier said, "It would be useless, even if it were advisable, for us of Louisiana and of the slave States generally, either to disguise or ignore the fact that the question of slavery is the great turning point in American politics. Imbe- cile politicians of a past age, surviving relics of the days when Federalism and protection were the cry of respectable mediocrity, may shrink from the 'Union at any price,' and deplore the degen- eracy of these times. Amiable fossils of the cockade school may cry, 'Peace, peace, when there is no peace.' But at last and after all shutting our eyes to the real dangers around us would be the simple ostrich policy of hiding our heads in the sand when the pursuers were close behind us. The question of slavery is no new thing."
In 1858 the great speeches of Douglas and Lincoln in Illinois were read with intense attention and thoughtfulness. Many extracts from the speeches of each were published in the news- papers of the state and tersely commended upon. The Courier ridienled unstintedly Lincoln's speech delivered at the Republican convention of June 16. Generally the quarrel between Buchanan
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and Donglas was deplored, as it might lead, it was thought, to a dangerous division in the ranks of the Democracy, North and South. The Courier of August 5 said, "The principal field of contest at the present moment is the State of Illinois. There Douglas is waging mighty war against those who have combined to crush him and to set aside the principle of popular sovereignty as consecrated in his great bill of 1856, and there, too, unfortu- nately for the Democracy, their piebald opponents are tolerably well united while they themselves are divided. All opposi- tion to him at the present moment inures with frightful certainty to the benefit of the Black Republican candidate. . . Those Democrats in Illinois who fail to vote for him will be prac- tically aiders and abettors of Lincoln and the Black Republicans. A terrine battle is before us in 1860. We must soothe and not cherish divisions in our ranks." But in spite of all efforts to the contrary, the split in the ranks of the Democracy continued to grow, leading partly to the disaster of 1860 which placed Lincoln in the presidential chair.
But until the last moment the South continued to praise Senator Douglas. The Courier of October 29 said, "Each address is marked with the energy, directness, simplicity and power which have always characterized his oratory. Every speech is a political essay whose language is too plain and whose logic is too cogent to be misapprehended by his auditors or lost upon their under- standings. The question is not whether Mr. Douglas or another Democrat shall be returned to the Senate, but whether the Democrats of Illinois shall be victorious or be ground to powder under the feet of the odious and relentless sectionalists who oppose them. . What true Democrat will suffer his enmity to Douglas to go so far as to lead him to prefer a Black Republican victory with Lincoln to a Democratic triumph with Douglas?" When the news was received that Douglas had won the contest, the rejoicing was universal. The Courier said, "It is not necessary to express our gratification at this result-words could scarcely convey it. There is a future for Nortli- ern Democracy and hope for the continuance of the Federal Union beyond March, 1861."
In December, 1858, Douglas visited New Orleans and delivered a powerful speech in Odd Fellows hall. At this meeting Pierre Soulé presided and likewise delivered a speech of great eloquence and strength. The local newspapers published the speech of Mr. Douglas in full.
At the election of governor in 1859 Thomas O. Moore, Demo-
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LOUISIANA, FROM 1852 TO 1860.
crat, and Thomas J. Wells, Opposition, were the candidates. Moore received a total of 25,556 votes and Wells a total of 15,388, a majority unparalleled in the history of the state. The elections this year were attended with violence and blood-shed, as were the campaigns also. Bad blood and bad names prevailed. The Courier of November I said, "It would be difficult if not impos- sible to point to a phase in the political history of the country which has any resemblance to the present imbroglio of parties in New Orleans." What was called an Independent Democratic movement was pushed at New Orleans in the fall of 1859. The Courier supported it. It was an attempt to unite all factions of the Democracy and to defeat the united Americans, Whigs and Republicans, and succeeded.
In his message to the regular session of 1859, Governor Wick- liffe urged the appropriation of twenty-five thousand dollars to the State Seminary of Learning at Alexandria, where forty-eight young men, one for each parish, could be taught the art of war, besides which, he observed, "we will have teachers born and reared in our midst, identified in feeling and interest with our institutions, and not be, as we are now, dependent upon other States for public school teachers." He further observed that the state was overrun with Northern agents (meaning commercial travelers), who paid no license, yet monopolized the trade. He dwelt at length on the Federal relations, reviewed the attacks on slavery, and throughout his demand was for "the Constitution as framed by our fathers." He recommended the reorganization and equipment of the militia in every parish, and that a convention of the slave states to consider the state of the Union should be lieldl. He said :
"The North, its population considered, is a dependent section of the country ; it exports comparatively nothing of its own products and imports nearly everything. It trades on other people's capi- tal. It lives by the use of the products of the South-without the patronage of the South well nigh universal bankruptcy would ensue. The South, importing hardly anything, exports in fact three-fourths of the products of the country, which pay the debt of the country. If the cotton crop of the South were to fail for a single year there would not be a solvent bank capitalist, manufac- turer, or ship-owner in the entire North. No business man will controvert this proposition."
He suggested a discriminating license or duty on the goods of the North, if legal, and predicted that the result would be to
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make "New Orleans the largest importing, as she is now the largest exporting; city on the continent."
In his message to the legislature, January 23, 1860, Gov. Thomas O. Moore stated that up to that time not a dollar had been spent for a geological survey of the state. At this time the banking system was under the inspection of the Board of Cur- rency. The New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad was completed as far as Canton, Miss. ; the New Orleans & Opel- ousas as far as Berwick Bay; the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Texas as far as twenty miles west of Vicksburg, and the Baton Rouge & Grosse Tete had reached Grosse Tete bayou. In regard to the political questions then agitating the whole country, the governor said :
"I cannot contemplate without the most serious alarm the con- dition to which the Southern States will be reduced, if a political party, organized only in one section of the country, and without followers or sympathizers in the other, should obtain possession of the Government, when the only foundation on which that party rests, is detestation of slavery, and when the minority slave sec- tion will be without the power to protect itself through the instru- mentality of Federal authority. When that time arrives the Southern States will be practically without representation in the Federal Government and the South will occupy the position of subjugated States. The Union can not last without a recognition of the vital principles of the Constitution, that our States are equal in the confederacy. Every State must be permitted to determine her own social institutions and left to the enjoyment of them in peace ; and the Territories, the common property of the States, must be freely opened to settlement by the people of the con- federated equals. The insulting demand that there shall be no more slave States must be abandoned, because it not only tends to make us politically inferior, but because it brands as a disgrace an institution which we prize as a blessing. So a like offense is offered and wrong inflicted on the South by the heresy of popular sovereignty, by which slaveholders are to be excluded from the Territories by the unfriendly legislation of the Territorial gov- ernments. The Supreme Court of the United States has settled the principle that must rule: Neither Congress nor the Terri- torial governments can constitutionally exclude slavery from the Territories. A Southern man can therefore rightfully take his slaves into the Territories. . . Louisiana does not wish to sce these States severed from their present political connection. But no man who has watched the course of the public mind can
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LOUISIANA, FROM 1852 TO 1860.
fail to have observed that in Louisiana, as in the other Southern States, the progress of disunion feeling has been marked and rapid."
The legislature of January, 1860, incorporated the Louisiana Ilistorical Society, approved the course of the Louisiana delega- tion in congress during the late contest for speaker, and incor- porated several educational institutions.
The legislature which convened in December, 1860, created a military board to buy arms and other war munitions, to put the state in a condition of defense, to organize volunteer companies, to arm and equip them, and to report a plan for a military bureau, and appropriated five hundred thousand dollars to carry these meas- nres into effect ; authorized the governor to communicate with the other governors of the Southern states in regard to the condi- tion of the country; called a state convention to consider the interest and welfare of Louisiana; ordered an election of dele- gates to such convention to be held on January 7, 1861 ; fixed January 23 as the date of such convention to assemble, and appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars to cover the expenses thereof. After the convention which adopted the ordnance of secession, the legislature approved the act of Governor Moore in taking possession of the forts and arsenals within the state; thanked the military board for the "able, efficient and highly sat- isfactory manner in which they had discharged their important duties ;" repealed the act of 1859 organizing a board of public works; established a normal department in the New Orleans schools; transferred five hundred thousand dollars from the Levee fund to the Defense fund ; authorized the governor to bor- row three hundred thousand dollars from the Louisiana State Bank ; asked the state of Mississippi to cede to Louisiana Bunch's Island, which, by the change of the river bed, had become attached to the latter state, and incorporated several companies and institutions.
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CHAPTER VIII
The Civil War Period
T HE views of Louisiana on the question of slavery were crys- talized in 1820 by the congressional debates on the Missouri compromise. The state promptly sided with the South in order to protect her private institutions, and in congress her delegation fought for non-intervention and for the admission of a slave state whenever the admission of a free state was proposed. The won- derful growth of abolition societies throughout the North in the decade of the thirties was stoutly denounced by the Louisiana legislature and generally by the people at large. The annexa- tion of Texas was desired partly to increase slave territory. The annexation of Cuba was favored for the same purpose, and therefore Louisiana covertly supported the ill-fated Lopez expe- dition. The Wilmot proviso kindled the indignation of the state. In the compromise measures of 1850, the state delegation in con- gress fought for the interests of the South. To the many mem- orials and petitions addressed to the South by Northern mass meetings and legislatures on the question of the abolition of slavery, Louisiana made positive reply that no interference what- ever with her private institutions would for a moment be consid- ered or tolerated. The Kansas-Nebraska debates in congress led the Louisiana legislature to publicly endorse the course of Mr. Douglas and the passage of the bill. The election of Mr. Buchanan as against Fremont was accompanied with the con- gratulations of the Louisiana assembly. John Brown's fanatical . and revolutionary stroke at slavery was denounced in unmeas- ured terms. Repeatedly, the North was warned that interfer- ence with slavery meant the dissolution of the Union, dearly as it was loved by the South, and by none more than by Louisiana.
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LOUISIANA, THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD.
The decision of the supreme court of the United States in the Dred Scott case received the warmest endorsement of Louisiana, because it was thought to nationalize slavery-was thought to settle the question that any slaveholder could take his slaves into the free states and there maintain them, and that the territories were open to settlement by slaveholders. The speeches of Mr. Lincoln in 1858 proved to the South two years later that lie would object to any increase in slave territory ; in other words, that he would endeavor to secure a reversal of the decision in the Dred Scott case by reorganizing the United States supreme court. Then succeeded the great war.
Probably the most important convention in the history of the state was the one which adopted the ordinance of secession on January 26, 1861. On December 12, 1860, the assembly had pro- vided for this convention, owing to the disturbed state of affairs on the political horizon. The convention assembled at Baton Rouge in the hall of the house of representatives at 12 o'clock M. January 23, 1861. Effingham Lawrence called the convention . to order, and John Perkins, Jr., was made temporary chairman. On the same date Alexander Mouton was made permanent presi- dent and J. T. Wheat permanent secretary. Pursuant to a reso- lution adopted, the president appointed a committee of fifteen to draft an ordinance of secession from the Union. This commit- tee was as follows: John Perkins, A. De Clouet, A. B. Roman, Edward Sparrow, Isaiah Garrett, Thomas J. Semmes, L. J. Dupre, A. Provosty, W. R. Miles, J. L. Lewis, A. Talbot, W. R. Barrow, J. K. Elgee, Christian Roselius and G. M. Wil- liamson. Mr. Perkins, chairman of this committee, reported the ordinance on January 26. It was debated, some of the strongest speakers of the state opposing its adoption for one reason or another. Finally, it was adopted by a vote of 112 yeas to 17 nays. Both Roman and Roselins voted against it. The presi- dent of the convention was permitted to cast his vote in the affirmative, raising the yeas to 113. The president thereupon made the following solemn pronunciamento: "In virtue of the vote just announced, I now declare the connection between the State of Louisiana and the Federal Union dissolved, and that she is a free, sovereign, and independent power." The convention thereupon adjourned to meet in the city hall in New Orleans on January 29.
It appears that the convention concluded not to adjourn sine die for some time, for as late as February It, it adopted the "National Flag of Louisiana," succeeding which a salute of
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THE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
twenty-one guns was fired. This convention, before it adjourned sine die, took up the state constitution of 1852, made such changes in it as would accord with the new order of things, and on March 23 adjourned without day. Had the Confederacy suc- ceeded in winning its independence, all this would have been of the greatest import to the state; but as it failed the proceed- ings are slowly passing from the recollections of the few partici- pants yet living. It should be said in this connection that the secession movement was far from being unanimous in Louisiana. This was shown when the question of holding the secession con- vention was submitted to the people, the vote being as follows: For secession 20,448, for co-operation 17,296, the secession ma- jority being 3,152. This vote by parishes may be seen in the Daily Delta of March 28, 1861.
The convention declared the right of a state to secede from the Union under the constitution and announced that an attempt at coercion would be viewed as a hostile act to be resisted to the utmost extent. It provided for the organization of the military force of the state, and authorized the governor to transfer this whole force to the provisional government of the Confederate states, and further authorized the governor to turn over to the same power all the arms and ammunition acquired from "the late United States," or so much thereof as he might deem proper.
Many important events occurred in December, 1860, and Janu- ary and February, 1861. In the legislature which assembled in December, 1860, were men who opposed armed resistance to the United States. The delegates to the secession convention were divided, the friends of Louisiana independence being called "Southern Rights Candidates." The vote for president in 1860 was as follows: Breckenridge 22,681, Bell 20,204, Douglas 7.625. Lincoln - But this opposition to secession was luke- warm, and was easily overborne, because it was due as much to love for the Union as to a desire not to see the state independent. In many of the districts the secession delegates to the convention were defeated. The result of the election of delegates was no sooner known than it was also known that a secession ordinance would pass. The secession movement was thus all-powerful. Active operations in all directions were begun without further delay. The seizure of the revenue cutters, Lewis Cass and MeClelland, followed. The mint containing one hundred eighteen thonsand three hundred and eleven dollars and the sub- treasury containing four hundred eighty-three thousand nine hun- tired and eighty-four dollars were taken possession of. A draft of the United States for three hundred thousand dollars was
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LOUISIANA, THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD.
dishonored by the sub-treasurer. In the demands of the United States for possession of the revenue cutters occurred the meni- orable order of General Dix : "If any one attempts to hanl down the American flag, shoot him on the spot."
The secession convention made it a penal offense for pilots to conduct vessels of war of the United States over the bar at Balize. The house of representatives considered a joint resolu- tion inviting Southern Indiana and Southern Illinois, which had polled majorities against Mr. Lincoln, to form an independent state government and join the Confederacy. The state conven- tion which reassembled on March 4, entertained General Twiggs, and directed the Louisiana delegates to the Confederate congress not to cede any part of the public lands within Louisiana to the Confederacy. A resolution to submit the constitution of the Con- federate states to a vote of the people was rejected, ayes 26, noes 74. The permanent constitution of the state was adopted by 101 ayes to 71 noes. A resolution to amend the ordinance rati- fying the state constitution by reserving to Louisiana the right to withdraw from the Confederacy at some future time was ciefeated by 92 ayes to II noes. A resolution to open free trade with all the Western states, free or slave, was carried. All of the government property was transferred to the Confederacy. Important banking ordinances were promulgated. The state promptly met every requisition of the Confederacy for troops. By June 1, Louisiana had raised and armed about 16,000 men. In September the banks, upon the request of the governor, sus- pended specie payments, the measure being deemed necessary to sustain the Confederate treasury notes. In November the gov- ernor reported that the state had expended of the war fund seven hundred sixty-eight thousand four hundred and forty-six dollars, and in addition six hundred forty-six thousand seven hundred and sixty-one dollars that had been borrowed from the banks. Two-thirds of the current tax was delinquent.
In February, 1861, congress passed a resolution giving its assent to any proceeding of Arkansas, Louisiana or Texas, "hav- ing for its object the improvement of the navigation of Red river by the removal of the raft therefrom." Any company that should remove the raft was permitted to charge toll for the period of thirty years, "but nothing herein contained shall authorize the said company to impair the navigation of Red Bayou." It was further provided that the government at the end of ten years could take possession of the improvements by paying to the com- pany the cost of construction with seven per cent interest. Con- gress, by act of August 5, 1861, laid a direct tax of three hun-
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THIE PROVINCE AND THE STATES.
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