A more palpable outrage upon the lawful powers of a "State" could hardly have been conceived. The Judge had not a scintilla of authority upon which to rest his proceeding. It is claimed that he was drunk when he made the order. But this can hardly have been true, that is he could not have been any more than ordinarily drunk, since the order was not withdrawn when he became ostensibly sober again, but was made the basis of a proceeding which lasted through many days, and the results of which were the counting in of Kellogg and of a Republican legislature by the Lynch Board, the immediate instalment of the Lynch Board legislature, the almost immediate impeachment of Warmoth by it and his removal from the governorship, the installation of the Lieutenant-Governor, the negro Pinchback, in his seat, the recognition of the Lynch Board legislature and of Pinchback by the President of the United States as the lawful legislature and executive of Louisiana, and the inauguration of Kellogg as Governor at the end of the Warmoth-Pinchback term. If this was all the work of a drunken spree, it must have been a very long one, and there must have been many participants in it besides the Judge.
The Warmoth Board Governor and legislature undertook to set up government also, sustained as they undoubtedly were both by the law, and by public opinion in Louisiana and probably throughout the country, and partially organized a militia force. It was the fighting between this militia and the metropolitan police in the streets of New Orleans which occasioned the suppression of the McEnery government at last by United States soldiers.
For two years more now the government of the adventurers, based on negro support, continued in the "States" south of the Tennessee line,
The downward
course between
1872 and 1874.
The elections
of 1874.
Moreover, three more of the Southern "States" freed themselves, at this time, from "Black Republican" rule. In Alabama, the respectable whites
The change in Alabama,
Arkansas and Texas.
Even South Carolina very nearly escaped her thraldom, and came near to electing a white Democrat Governor. As it was, she got a moderate