sed it to such effect that in two years
the State bonds had fallen from seventy or eighty to twenty-five, and
New Orleans city bonds from eighty or ninety to thirty or forty. In 1874
the Conservatives made a determined effort to carry the Legislature.
There was an organization called "The White League,"--a legitimate
political society, said one side;--a revival of the Ku-Klux spirit and
methods in a more guarded form, said the other side. Beyond question,
there was in Louisiana, at all stages of reconstruction, some degree of
terrorism, and occasional acts of cruelty and outrage. There was knavery
among the Radicals, and there was violence among the Conservatives. At
the 1874 election the Conservatives were successful at the polls; but
the State returning-board at once began to juggle with the returns so
palpably that the Conservative member protested and resigned. The
remainder of the board, after a month of diligent work, threw out a
number of districts, on the pretext of intimidation, and as to five
seats referred the question to the House itself. That body met,
organized in a hasty and irregular fashion, and awarded the five seats
to the Democratic claimants. But Governor Kellogg had the United States
troops at his disposal, and by his command General De Trobriand with a
file of soldiers entered the House and ejected the five
Democrats,--whereupon the Republicans organized the House anew.

But now the whole country took alarm. The President sent General
Sheridan in haste to New Orleans, and his first dispatch sustained
Kellogg, and threw the blame on the White League, to which Secretary of
War Belknap telegraphed his full approval. But the affair transcended
ordinary politics in its importance. New York spoke through Cooper
Institute, and Boston by Faneuil Hall. Such citizens as Bryant, Evarts,
and George T. Curtis led the protest. Congress rose above partisanship.
A committee of the House, including such Republicans as George F. Hoar,
William A. Wheeler, Charles Foster, William W. Phelps and William P.
Frye, with Clarkson N. Potter and Samuel S. Marshall for the Democrats,
visited New Orleans, and after full inquiry agreed that the
returning-board had "wrongfully applied an erroneous rule of law"; that
the five Democrats had been defrauded of their seats; and that the
Louisiana House should be advised--the national House having no
compulsory power--to "repair this great injustice." The two Democrats
went further, a