"MASS-MEETING"
"All good citizens are invited to attend a mass-meeting to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock at Clay Statue, to take steps to remedy the failure of justice in the Donnelly case. Come prepared for action."
It was signed by the fifty well-known men who had been appointed to represent the people. That incredible verdict had caused a great excitement; but this bold and threatening appeal brought the city up standing. It caused men who had been loudly cursing the jury to halt and measure the true depth of their indignation. There was no other topic of conversation that night; and when the same call appeared in the morning papers, together with a ringing column headed,
"AWAKE! ARISE!"
it stirred a swift and mighty public sentiment. Never, perhaps, in any public press had so sanguinary an appeal been issued.
"Citizens of New Orleans," it read in part, "when murder overrides law and justice, when juries are bribed and suborners go unwhipped, it is time to resort to your own indefeasible right of self-preservation. Alien bands of oath-bound assassins have set the blot of a martyr's blood upon your civilization. Your laws, in the very Temple of Justice, have been bought, suborners have loosed upon your streets the midnight murderers of an officer in whose grave lies the majesty of American law.
"Rise in your might, people of New Orleans! Rise!"
A similar note was struck by editorials, many of them couched in language even stronger and more suited to fan the public rage. The recent trial was called an outrageous travesty on justice; attention was directed to the damnable vagaries of recent juries which had been impaneled to try red-handed Italian murderers.
"Our city is become the haven of blackmailers and assassins, the safe vantage-ground for Sicilian stilletto bands who slay our legal officers, who buy jurors, and corrupt sworn witnesses under the hooded eyes of Justice. How much longer will this outrage be permitted?" So read a heavily typed article in the leading journal.
A wave of fierce determination ran through the whole community.