The remaining episode of the regular legislative session to which attention need be drawn relates to the calling of local elections throughout the State. A bill was passed over the gov. ernor's veto directing him to call an election of charter officers for the city of New Orleans on the second Monday in March. Two days later an act was passed, also over his veto, which "authorized and directed" him to call elections for the choice of parish officers throughout the State on the same day. The former direction he obeyed after some hesitation, but the latter he ignored; and on March 2 the legislature provided by act that parish elections should be held on the first Monday in May and that the governor should commission the officers then chosen. Thus the governor was at odds with the democrats in the legislature.

A simple reference to the record of Governor Wells as a political weathervane will be enough to obviate the necessity of harmonizing his position after the election of 1865 with his conduct in the spring of the same year, or of attempting to explain the change on any other than practical grounds. The conduct of the democrats in Louisiana was seen not to be pleasing to the dominant party in Washington. He himself sought to convey the impression that at the time of his nomination by the democrats in October, 1865, they already considered him so conservative that through him they might hope to win the consideration of the national Congress in spite of its radical tendencies. Certain it is that Mr. Flanders called him "loyal" in contrast with the others, and that the national conservative union party had so far forgiven the treatment it received at his home in the spring that it put his name at the head of its ticket. It is nowhere suggested that the inquiries which President Johnson at this time made into the affairs of the city were instigated by the democrats of the State, nor does it appear that the president suspected his motives in opposing with his veto the plan for a city election. On the contrary the president is said to have had confidence in him. up to a much later period. Even in New Orleans, if he was entirely out of harmony with the democratic leaders, he had not yet gone so far as to identify himself with the republicans openly and completely.

Two tickets were nominated in preparation for the city election in New Orleans on March 12, 1866, one by the "union" or city

hall party, and one by the democratic party, whose candidate, ex-Mayor Monroe, was the officer whom General Butler had deposed and banished in 1862. The canvass was very spirited. At one time the democratic party seemed to be fearful of defeat; and finally its candidate for mayor was elected by a rather narrow majority. Though no direct evidence was found, the circumstances suggest that it was the vain hope of Governor Wells that his friends would succeed, which led him to call the election in the city while refusing to call one in the country parishes, where his hold was now less strong.

After the result of the municipal election was known he and his co-worker, Military-Mayor Kennedy, sought to prevent the installation of the officers-elect; but they failed. General Canby, clearly acting upon a mutual understanding with the new officers, revoked the military order of May, 1862, by which the city had up to this time been governed, permitted the new officers to be installed and then suspended Mayor Monroe and one alderman until they could go to Washington and get special pardon from the president.*

The parish elections were held May 7. The democratic candidate for sheriff of New Orleans, ex-Brigadier-General Hays of the Confederate army, procured a special pardon from the president in advance of the election; for again the man whom this party chose to honor with high office had need of such a dispensation. The "union" party put his name at the head of its ticket, but he refused to accept such a nomination. To some of the minor offices, the candidates of the "union" party were elected. Victory, however, rested with the democrats. Of the elections in the country parishes, scarcely a mention was made in the local papers.

IV.

Thus the local government and most of the state offices except the higher were in the hands of the men who had controlled affairs before the coming of the Federal army, and who had conducted the war against the Union. It did not long remain in their control. Considering the temper of the leaders in Washington and throughout the North it could not have long remained

*New Orleans Times, passim.

so. In less than a year the inauguration of reconstruction had thrown the State affairs again under the control of a military governor. But one event may be added to show the last desperate effort which the local republican party made to secure control.*

The so-called republican party in the State had taken on a new form meanwhile. Indeed few characteristics of the former party remained except the name, the fact of a continuous history, and the heritage of support which the party had now come to receive from the republicans of the North. The predominating element in its present membership was a fraction of the old free-state party grown rabidly radical. The "conquered territory" doctrine was no longer preached. The party had even given up the idea of having a new constitutional convention, one initiated by military authority and based on restricted white and universal negro suffrage. Instead it was proposed to resurrect the old free-state convention of 1864 which, for reasons that were good at the time but had long since become invalid, had adjourned "subject to the call of the president." Some of the leading republicans opposed the idea in vain. General Sheridan peremptorily refused to give it military aid; but his duties called him to Texas and the second in command, General Baird, unfortunately threatened to interfere with the police if they interfered with the free assembling of any orderly body of citizens. The republicans at Washington showed some sympathy but gave no specific endorsement. Governor Well endorsed the movement; and it was LieutenantGovernor Voorhies and Mayor Monroe who carried on the fatally inconclusive negotiations with General Baird. The president of the convention, Judge Durell, though classed as a republican, refused to act; but Judge Howell, the president pro tem, consented. A secret meeting on June 26 and Judge Howell's public call on July 8 for the reassembling of the convention marked the progress of the republicans from deliberation to action. But the attitude of General Baird prevented the civil authorities from interfering by legal process. On July 30 twentyfive out of the original ninety-eight members assembled in con

*New Orleans Times, passim; Appleton's Ann. Cyclopædia, 1866, 1867; XXXIXth Cong., 2d Sess., House Report No. 16, House Ex. Doc. No. 68, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 6.

vention and adjourned for lack of a quorum after the usual formalities. The troops were in their barracks below the city; the city police were in their quarters; the sheriff had sworn in no deputies. The streets about the place of meeting were well filled; a procession of negroes led by a drum or two approached and entered the building just as the convention was adjourning. A negro began to harangue a near-by crowd; a white boy baited some negroes—and the riot was under way. The police joined in. The negroes and conventionists were arrested or driven from the from streets; thirty to forty were killed; one hundred and sixty or seventy were injured, including several policemen; and the fury of the mob had well nigh exhausted itself when the troops arrived. The conventionists made no further efforts to meet. Investigations were made and partisan reports have erected a perpetual monument to the melancholy event. Incendiarism and other kinds of lawlessness abounded for some weeks. Then things settled down somewhat, but drifted on in the same turgid stream as before; and a dispute was pending between Governor Wells and the city authorities over the holding of a regular municipal election when General Sheridan received the anticipated orders and took charge under authority of the Reconstruction Act which Congress had just passed. So, in the closing days of March, 1867, ingloriously ended the presidential effort to reconstruct Louisiana. Who was to blame? The selfishness and passion of men or the weakness of human nature?

The Reconstruction of Southern Literary

Thought

BY PROFESSOR HENRY N. SNYDER, M. A.

The phrase "New South," which used to be dinned into our ears with such wearisome persistency, we seldom or never hear now. If it is living at all, it is on the tongues of schoolboys as they shout forth in their declamation exercises such speeches as those of the late Henry W. Grady,-speeches which, in a way, thrilled us all at one time because they voiced the very natural emotions of a particular period in the history of the South. This period came in the early seventies when, closely following the actual pain of the fracture in southern life due to the war and the passing of the immediate peril of Reconstruction, there were seen the beginnings of that industrial revolution which has so largely transformed the South. The phrase, then, became the key-note of the new times, and was resonant both of the spirit of adaptation to them, and of the hopes which we were then realizing. Of course, in it there was not a little of the sounding brass of mere clap-trap public speaking; but after making even a generous allowance for this, we must insist that it was the perfectly genuine expression of the transition period from the agricultural South to that South whose entire commercial and industrial system has been transformed into something other than it was. Furthermore, we do not hear this phrase now because it has served its use, and that of which it was the rather noisy expression has already been brought about.

This economic reconstruction is the most obvious thing about Southern life to-day. Turn where we may, and the factory and the mill are its concrete witnesses, and on hearing even in South Carolina, for example, nothing but "factory-talk," one must feel that the reconstruction has gone astonishingly far, that one finds himself literally in a strange new world, in which the term "Commercial Democracy" has a taking effect. It is evident, then, that these new conditions are necessarily modifying our political and social thinking. Shout as we may of the political faith of our fathers, of the principles of Jefferson and of Jackson-things