“The testimony before him on Saturday, however, in the case of a man named David O’Keefe, was such as to induce him to commit the accused for trial before the Criminal Court. One of the witnesses testified positively that she heard him make his children shout for Lincoln; another, that the accused said, ‘I am an Abolitionist,’ &c. The witnesses, neighbors of the accused, gave their evidence reluctantly, saying they had warned him of the folly and danger of his conduct. O’Keefe says he has been a United States soldier, and came here from St. Louis and Kansas.
“John White was arraigned before Recorder Emerson on Saturday for uttering incendiary language while travelling in the baggage car of a train of the New Orleans, Ohio and Great Western Railroad, intimating that the decapitator of Jefferson Davis would get $10,000 for his trouble, and the last man of us would be whipped like dogs by the Lincolnites. He was held under bonds of $500 to answer the charge on the 8th of June.
“Nicholas Gento, charged with declaring himself an Abolitionist, and acting very much like he was one by harboring a runaway slave, was sent to prison, in default of bail, to await an examination before the Recorder.”
Such is “freedom of speech” in Louisiana! But in Texas the machinery for the production of “unanimity” is less complicated, and there are no insulting legal formalities connected with the working of the simple appliances which a primitive agricultural people have devised for their own purposes. Hear the Texan correspondent of one of the journals of this city on the subject. “It is to us astonishing,” he says,
“That such unmitigated lies as those Northern papers disseminate as anarchy and disorder here in Texas, dissension among ourselves, and especially from our German, &c., population, with dangers and anxieties from the fear of insurrection among the negroes, &c., should be deemed anywhere South worthy of a moment’s thought. It is surely notorious enough that in no part of the South are Abolitionists or other disturbers of the public peace so very unsafe as in Texas. The lasso is so very convenient!"
Here is an excellent method of preventing dissension described by a stroke of the pen; and, as such, an ingenious people are not likely to lose sight of the uses of a revolution in developing peculiar principles to their own advantage, repudiation of debts to the North has been proclaimed and acted on. One gentleman has found it convenient to inform Major Anderson that he does not intend to meet certain bills which he had given the Major for some slaves. Another declares he won’t pay anybody at all, as he has discovered it is immoral and contrary to the laws of nations to do so. A third feels himself bound to obey the commands of the Governor of his State, who has ordered that debts due to the North shall not be liquidated. As a naive specimen of the way in which the whole case is treated, take this article and the correspondence of “one of the most prominent mercantile houses of New Orleans:”
SOUTHERN DEBTS TO THE NORTH.
“The Cincinnati Gazette copies the following paragraph from The New York Evening Post:
“‘BAD FAITH.—The bad faith of the Southern merchants in their transactions with their Northern correspondents is becoming more evident daily. We have heard of several recent cases where parties in this city, retired from active business, have, nevertheless, stepped forward to protect the credit of their Southern friends. They are now coolly informed that they cannot be reimbursed for these advances until the war is over. We know of a retired merchant who in this way has lost $100,000.’—and adds:
“‘The same here. Men who have done most for the South are the chief sufferers. Debts are coolly repudiated by the Southern merchants, who have heretofore enjoyed a first-class reputation. Men who have grown rich upon the trade furnished by the West are among the first to pocket the money of their correspondents, asking, with all the impudence and assurance of a highwayman, “What are you going to do about it?” There is honor among thieves, it is said, but there is not a spark of honor among these repudiating merchants. People who have aided and trusted them to the last moment are the greatest losers. There is a future, however. This war will be over, and the Southern merchants will desire a resumption of their connections with the West. As the repudiators—such as Goodrich & Co. of New Orleans—will be spurned, there will be a grand opening for honest men.