The Assembly during the two months of its existence passed 152 laws, many of which were local, many personal relief bills.[143] There was beginning to be apparent that tendency to vest autocratic power in the hands of the governor, which reached, as we shall see, such a culmination in the next session. In some instances, it is true, the propositions could not muster sufficient strength to pass the Assembly, but it is significant that such propositions could be offered as Ray’s amendment to the charter bill for New Orleans, which suggested vesting in the Governor power to appoint the first mayor and council until the election in 1872, and the amendment to the volunteer militia bill, which left to him large discretionary powers.[144] The act which prohibited the mayor of New Orleans from exercising any police duty or authority is equivalent to an enlargement of the governor’s powers, for the body with such control, the metropolitan police, was virtually his servant through his appointive power.[145] Quite as important was the negative action of the Assembly in refusing to force the governor to order elections in certain cases where for political reasons he was leaving vacancies.[146]
One group of laws attempted to deal with the race and labor questions. A vagrancy law, which finally overcame the hostile majority in the Senate, while not so severe as those of the “Black Code,” did still define rather narrowly and imposed heavy penalties.[147] This stringency arose, at least largely, from the need of labor and devotion to the crops to which economic conditions forced the planters.[148] A measure to organize a Bureau of Immigration was passed, appropriating $20,000 to secure a share in the foreign labor which they saw flooding the North. Unfortunately, this did not solve the labor problem, and dissatisfaction with the Bureau,[149] and especially with its carpet-bagger chief, J. O. Noyes, was loudly voiced in the session of 1870. Efforts to secure new workers by legislation continued throughout the next session. A bill to accord negroes equal civil rights had been up in the session of 1868 but had not been signed by the governor, who was forced to explain to a body of their race assembled en masse, February 4, 1869, his reasons for not doing so.[150] And Pinchback’s civil rights bill, which forbade common carriers and places of public resort to discriminate on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,[151] came up as unfinished business from the preceding session. As was to be expected, feeling ran high and lengthy discussion resulted, usually of a serious character. Twenty-six Senators were reported as desirous of speaking on the bill. Pinchback in debate made use of the expression “refused a drink of common whiskey in a common grog-shop,” which was seized on by the conservative press as a convenient whip. The cry of the Conservatives was that the colored people had too much sense to force themselves where they were not wanted, and this view was borne out by the negroes themselves. “I consider myself just as far above coming into company that does not want me, as they are above my coming into an elevation with them.... I do not believe that any sensible colored man upon this floor would wish to be in a private part of a public place without the consent of the owners of it. It is false; it is wholesale falsehood to say that we wish to force ourselves upon white people.” But he did insist that they receive equal accommodation.[152] The former set down the agitation to a political move to renew the strife.[153]
When the bill had passed both houses, the press took a more aggressive attitude in an effort to frighten the negroes from any attempt to claim their rights. “Will any negro, or gang of negroes, attempt to exercise the privilege it confers?” belligerently asked the Commercial Bulletin. “If they do, it will be at their peril.... He may be able to obtain a ticket of admission, but no New Orleans audience will ever permit him to take his seat except in the places allotted for colored persons.”[154] The Bee declared that if the governor dared to sign that bill after vetoing the former, “legal means would not be lacking to set aside this arbitrary law, this outrage to the law of propriety, and to individual liberty.”[155]
The civil rights bill was backed up by a measure intended to prevent the intimidation of negroes by punishing the bribery of witnesses or preventing a witness by force, threat, or intimidation from testifying in a criminal proceeding.[156] It is striking that a Ku-Klux bill—a bill “to prevent people from agoing abroad disguised”—was quickly referred and evidently died in committee.[157] Another effort in the next session to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons met no better fate.[158]
A measure allied to the above legislation, but of vastly greater importance because of its National character, was the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which was accepted perfunctorily by a vote of 18 to 3 in the Senate; 59[159] to 9 in the House, 36 Republicans refusing to vote.
Particularly confusing were the various measures which finally evolved into the slaughter house bill. Vigorous opposition and much ridicule manifested themselves at its first appearance in the House, but all amendments against the monopolistic features were voted down, debate choked off abruptly, all attempts at filibustering defeated, and the bill adopted by a large majority under the operation of the previous question.[160] Scanty indeed is the record of its history in the Senate. “After a short fight the bill was concurred in as a whole and the motion to reconsider tabled by a vote of 23 to 9.”[161] By it the slaughter of animals, except by the Crescent City Live Stock Landing and Slaughter House Company was prohibited within the city of New Orleans or the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Bernard after June 1, 1869. All animals destined for sale or slaughter must be landed at the live stock landings and yards of the company, occupying the levee from Common to Poydras streets, which naturally exacted a fee for each steamship and craft landing at its wharves.[162] The excessive haste with which the bill was rushed through was pretty generally believed to be due to the fact that legislators had bought stock with the privilege of paying at convenience.[163] A perfect hue and cry against monopoly and violation of private rights went up at the passage of this bill. Hear the Bee: “So the bill has passed, just as it came from the House, and with provisions so monstrously unjust that if it be not arrested by veto, and be subjected to an ordeal by the two Houses, in review, which it is believed it cannot survive, it will at least become a byword of reproach to all concerned in it.”[164] Or the Picayune: “Nay, monopolies have themselves such elements of corruption and are so odious in the land that they can and will be set aside. It may take time and a reformation of the polluted courts of justice to bring this about, but it will be done when the people awake to the necessity of driving the money-changers and the false Scribes and Pharisees from the temple.”[165]
As there were about one thousand persons employed in the business in the parishes concerned, the effect was broad-spread. The butchers held a meeting immediately to consult on the best plan to defeat the bill[166] and organized an association on July 21. Some hundreds of suits were brought in the various district courts on the one side or the other, sometimes in combinations, sometimes by individuals. The ground of this opposition was that the act created a monopoly and was a violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and of the Louisiana Bill of Rights. The Sixth District Court held the law unconstitutional, while in the Fifth, in which the new company had instituted suit against the association, the verdict was in favor of the company. Appeals from these several decisions came before the State Supreme Court by what is there known as “suspensive appeals,” but the decision was not rendered until April 11, 1870, when the rights of the new company were upheld. In course of time,[167] the cases came before the Supreme Court of the United States when the decision of the State court was sustained on the ground of police regulation, “a power incapable of any very exact definition or limitation.”[168]
FOOTNOTES:
[60] “The city of New Orleans will be what we intend to make it, and we intend to make this city bloom as the rose, and we intend to enhance and increase this city of New Orleans, and we intend to open every by-road, and this very bill is going to make the city bigger, and we are going to pass this act. We intend not only to legislate for the city of New Orleans, but to stamp our record upon the door of this House of Representatives, so it will remain a century of years,” etc. House Debates, 1869, 359-60; also, 415.
[61] House Debates, 1869, 110.