the merits and demerits of the
men who figured in that awful drama belong to the present generation.
The unstable Reconstruction regime was overthrown in 1874 and the
whites, eliminating the freedmen and free people of color from the
government, established what they are pleased to call "home rule." The
Negroes, who had served the State, however, deserved well of their
constituents. It should be said to the credit of these black men that
upon an investigation of the Treasurer's office which had for years
been held by Antoine Dubuclet, a man of color, the committee of which
Chief Justice Edward D. White of the United States Supreme Court was
then chairman, made a report practically exonerating him. Although
making some criticisms as to irregularities and minor illegalities,
the committee had to report that "the Treasurer certainly by a
comparison deserves commendation for having accounted for all moneys
coming into his hands, being in this particular a remarkable
exception." A minority report signed by C. W. Keeting and T. T.
Allain[118] thoroughly exonerated him. The expected impeachment
proceedings which were to follow this investigation did not
materialize.[119]

More about the people of color in Louisiana might be written. It is a
theme too large to be treated save by a master hand. It is interwoven
with the poetry, the romance, the glamour, the commercial prosperity,
the financial ruin, the rise and fall of the State. It is hung about
with garlands, like the garlands of the cemeteries on All Saints Day;
it may be celebrated in song, or jeered at in charivaris. Some day,
the proper historian will tell the story. There is no State in the
Union, hardly any spot of like size on the globe, where the man of
color has lived so intensely, made so much progress, been of such
historical importance and yet about whom so comparatively little is
known. His history is like the Mardi Gras of the city of New Orleans,
beautiful and mysterious and wonderful, but with a serious thought
underlying it all. May it be better known to the world some day.

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Rose, "Life of Napoleon I," 333-336.

[51] As to the ability of a man of color to rise in this territory,
the life of one man, recorded by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society,
will furnish a good example. James Derham was originally a slave in
Philadelphia, sold by his master to a physician, who employed him