ED. FLOOD, Chairman.
PAUL WATERMAN.
H. J. RIVET.
Attest:
J. H. HARDY, Ass’t Sec. Parish Committee.
These were the certificates given to negroes who voted the democratic ticket, that they might present them to save their lives when attacked by the men commonly known as Ku-Klux or white-leaguers in that country; and we are told that there is no intimidation in the State of Louisiana!
Our friend from Georgia [Mr. Gordon] has been very profuse in his declamation as to the civility and good order and good bearing of the people of Louisiana and the other Southern States. But, sir, this intimidation continued up to the election. After the election, it was necessary for the governor of that State to proceed in some manner best calculated to preserve the peace and order of the country.
Now, Mr. President, I want to ask candid, honest, fair-minded men, after reading the report of General Sheridan showing the murder, not for gain, not for plunder, but for political opinions in the last few years of thirty-five hundred persons in the State of Louisiana, all of them republicans, not one of them a democrat—I want to ask if they can stand here before this country and defend the democratic party of Louisiana? I put this question to them for they have been here for days crying against the wrongs upon the democracy of Louisiana. I want any one of them to tell me if he is prepared to defend the democracy of Louisiana. What is your democracy of Louisiana? You are excited, your extreme wrath is aroused at General Sheridan because he called your White Leagues down there “banditti.” I ask you if the murder of thirty-five hundred men in a short time for political purposes by a band of men banded together for the purpose of murder does not make them banditti, what it does make them? Does it make them democrats? It certainly does not make them republicans. Does it make them honest men? It certainly does not. Does it make them law-abiding men? It certainly does not. Does it make them peaceable citizens? It certainly does not. But what does it make them? A band of men banded together and perpetrating murder in their own State? Webster says a bandit is “a lawless or desperate fellow; a robber; a brigand,” and “banditti” are men banded together for plunder and murder; and what are your White Leagues banded together for if the result proves that they are banded together for murder for political purposes?
O, what a crime it was in Sheridan to say that these men were banditti! He is a wretch. From the papers he ought to be hanged to a lamp-post; from the Senators he is not fit to breathe the free air of heaven or of this free Republic; but your murderers of thirty-five hundred people for political offenses are fit to breathe the air of this country and are defended on this floor to-day, and they are defended here by the democratic party, and you cannot avoid or escape the proposition. You have denounced republicans for trying to keep the peace in Louisiana; you have denounced the Administration for trying to suppress bloodshed in Louisiana; you have denounced all for the same purpose; but not one word has fallen from the lips of a solitary democratic Senator denouncing these wholesale murders in Louisiana. You have said, “I am sorry these things are done,” but you have defended the White Leagues; you have defended Penn; you have defended rebellion; and you stand here to-day the apologists of murder, of rebellion, and of treason in that State.