The city of New Orleans, often tempted to appeal from bad law to anarchy, was in the spring of 1891 swept off its feet by such a temptation. Chief of Police David C. Hennessy was one night ambushed and shot to death near his home by members of the Sicilian “Mafia,” a secret, oath-bound body of murderous blackmailers whom he was hunting to earth. When at the trial of the culprits the jury, in face of cogent evidence, acquitted six and disagreed as to the rest, red fury succeeded white amazement. A huge mob encircled the jail, crushed in its barricaded doors, and shot or hung the trembling Italians within.
An episode of the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. The citizens breaking down the door of the parish prison with the beam brought there the night before for that purpose.
Old Parish Jail, New Orleans, La.
Canal Street, New Orleans La.
Italy forthwith sent her protest to Mr. Blaine, who expressed his horror at the deed, and urged Governor Nicholls to see the guilty brought to justice. The Italian consul at New Orleans averred that, while the victims included bad men, many of the charges against them were without foundation; that the violence was foreseen and avoidable; that he had in vain besought military protection for the prisoners, and had himself, with his secretary, been assaulted and mobbed.
The Marquis di Rudini insisted on indemnity for the murdered men’s families and on the instant punishment of the assassins. Secretary Blaine, not refusing indemnity in this instance, denied the right to demand the same, still more the propriety of insisting upon the instant punishment of the offenders, since the utmost that could be done at once was to institute judicial proceedings, which was the exclusive function of the State of Louisiana. The Italian public thought this equivocation, mean truckling to the American prejudice against Italians. Baron Fava, Italian Minister at Washington, was ordered to “affirm the inutility of his presence near a government that had no power to guarantee such justice as in Italy is administered equally in favor of citizens of all nationalities.” “I do not,” replied Mr. Blaine, “recognize the right of any government to tell the United States what it shall do; we have never received orders from any foreign power and shall not begin now. It is to me,” he said, “a matter of indifference what persons in Italy think of our institutions. I cannot change them, still less violate them.”
