Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — The President and Louisiana. [ARTICLE]

The President and Louisiana.

Military interferwoelnLauiritn* h«ait«v«r had and can never have but one justification or legal war rant, and that it to enable the state government to protect the weak, iaoffenaive, and maltreated colored people. It !• equally true that thoM state governments, thus upheld by the military force of the United States, have never protected the negroes, who have been continuously subjected to every species of cruelty and barbarity. It is claimed that tor eight years the blacks have been murdered In Louisiana, and made the victims of all manuer of atrocity; and, though the governor has had the appointment of all the sheriffs and local officers and the judges, not one arrest has over been made, nor one attempt to prosecute an assassin. Bven the men accused by Eliza Pinkston of the murder ot her husband and child, and ot the barbarous treatment of herself, though named by her, walked the streets of New Orleans unchallenged by the state authorities, who had the national troops to defend and aid them.

It is therefore an established and conceded fact that, though the national troops have been in Louisiana during eight years, the unfortunate negroes have never been protected, but have been left to the mercy of the White-Liners. Gov. Packard demands now that the troops shall remain there. For what purpose? He does not pretend that he will be able to protect the blacks or to punish their white assailants any more than Kellogg has done. Of what avail, then, will the troops be, farther than to protect Packard personally in his claim to be governor, he conceding that, so far as the exercise of any executive authority is concerned, he will be as impotent as the humblest negro in the state? There is a persistent effort made by the whole disappointed officeseeking and office-broking fraternity to misrepresent the president’s duty and his acts; and especially to misrepresent or oonoeal the great leading fact of the utter failure of the earpet-bag governments, 'supported by bayonets, to afford the least protection to the non-resistant, simple-minded freedmen. The truth is the amplest vindication of the president’s policy and of his actions. In the first place, the president was fully aware that the negroes were not protected, and he was advised by bis predecessor, who had used the military for eight years, that that policy had proved to be a signal failure. The president desired to establish peace, and law, and order. Civil government was essential in Louisiana, and he desired to have the question at issue in that state determined in a lawful way. The constitution of Louisiana makes the legislature of that statu the exclusive authority to declare whoisgovernor. There has been no legal legislature convened in that state since the last election. There have been two bodies, calling themselves legislatures, in session, but it is indisputable that neither of them was a legal body as a whole. The president has naturally sought to have the legal elements in these two opposing bodies unite, and thus constituting a legal legislature, make formal declaration of who is governor. That initial formality is required by the constitution of the state, and has never been complied with. The president has not and will not undertake to decide who is governor; that is a question to be decided by the legislature, and, when that decision is made, it will be accepted by the president, and he will let the governor and legislature ran the state government without armed interference of the United States, requiring of that government the protection of the lives, persons, and liberty of the whole people. That is the whole scheme of the president. Could he have done less? Has be ever tried or proposed to do more? Gen. Grant's plan, sustained by the republican party, was to enable the state governments to secure the safety of the colored people. He furnished the troops, but the car-pet-bag governments never performed their part of the plan. Hayes* ultimate object is the same as Grant’s, but Grant’s pl tn having proved a failure, he proposes to try a different plan. He seeks to establish conciliation and peace between "the blacks and the whites as a substitote for the use of troops to uphold imbecile carpet-baggers in office, who protect nothing but the plunder they can accumulate. Suppose the president should continue the troops at the St. Louis hotel, where Gov. Packard is fortified, until 1880, how will that protect the 450,000 colored people scattered over a state as large as Ohio or Kentucky? The troops protected Kellogg from 1872 to 1876, but the condition of the negroes was never so pitiable. Have tljey been by ihe use of troops protected since Packard assumed to be governor? How are the negroes to be protected after the Ist of Joly, should fhere bp a foilwe of an snpropria-

tion for the army, and the troops bo necessarily disbanded? If tne use of the troops be wholly inadequate to enable Packard’s government to govern the state, is it not time to try some other plan whereby the State oan be governed and the people protected?— Chicago Tribune.