n an exceedingly sensitive spot. The so-called "bread-and-butter
brigade" was looked down upon with a contempt that could hardly be
expressed in words.

_Killing of Negroes at Memphis and New Orleans_

But there were more serious things to inflame the temper of the North.
The Southern whites again proved themselves their own worst enemies.
Early in May news came from Memphis of riots in which twenty-four
negroes were killed and one white man was wounded. The conclusion lay
near and was generally accepted that the whites had been the aggressors
and the negroes the victims. In the last days of July more portentous
tidings arrived from New Orleans. An attempt was made by Union men to
revive the constitutional convention of 1864 for the purpose of
remodeling the constitution of the State. The attempt was of
questionable legality, but, if wrong, it could easily have been foiled
by legal and peaceable means. The municipal government of New Orleans
was in possession of the ex-Confederates. It resolved that the meeting
of the remnant of the convention should not be held. When it did meet,
the police, consisting in an overwhelming majority of ex-Confederate
soldiers, aided by a white mob, broke into the hall and fired upon those
assembled there. The result was thirty-seven negroes killed and one
hundred and nineteen wounded, and three of the white Union men killed
and seventeen wounded, against one of the assailants killed and ten
wounded. General Sheridan, the commander of the Department, telegraphed
to General Grant: "It was no riot; it was an absolute massacre by the
police which was not excelled in murderous cruelty by that of Fort
Pillow. It was a murder which the Mayor and the police of this city
perpetrated without the shadow of necessity." A tremor of horror and
rage ran over the North. People asked one another: "Does this mean that
the rebellion is to begin again?" I heard the question often.

The Administration felt the blow, and to neutralize its effects a
national convention of its adherents, North and South, planned by
Thurlow Weed and Secretary Seward, was to serve as the principal means.
This "National Union Convention" met in Philadelphia on August 14th. It
was respectably attended in point of character as well as of numbers. It
opened its proceedings with a spectacular performance which under
different conditions might have struck the popular imagination
favorably. The delegates marched into the Convention H