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I hope the second section—which pronounces “valid and binding” contracts made in the United States or “in a foreign country” for the term of “five years”—is not intended as a Coollie enterprise.
The seventh and last act—“to punish in certain cases the employees of laborers or apprentices”—is intended to revive the old slavery regulation that colored persons shall carry “written certificates” or “passes,” and to punish such “Yankees” as may dare to employ any negro who has not obtained a written discharge from his rebel employer.
I have thus hastily called your attention to only such leading points in these laws as have struck my eye in a cursory glance over them. A careful analysis of these acts would convince any man of their true intent, which is to keep up a sort of slavery in spite of the new constitutional amendment. To a man who has lived in the South, and seen the workings of the “institution,” the connection of one sentence or word with another, and the practical operation of the various provisions of these laws, when administered by pro-slavery officials, are seen at a glance. I assure you, they are precisely what Mr. T. W. Conway, lately assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, &c., in Louisiana, called the ordinance relative to the police for colored persons within the corporate limits of the town of Franklin, La., “slavery in substance.” The more you examine them, the more you become convinced of their enormity. But you will not be surprised at their unjust and wicked provisions when you are informed of their authorship.
Ducan F. Kenner, of Ascension Parish, La., is their worthy parent. No liberal action from him towards the poor colored persons he had so long held in bondage was to be expected. He knows no merit about a negro, except as a beast of burden that may serve the heavy planting interests. For many years before the war he was a “big” planter, and on one occasion, while a member of the Legislature, he modestly and repeatedly voted for himself for United States Senator against that other Confederate worthy, John Slidell. He was elected a delegate to the Montgomery Convention by the Louisiana Convention which adopted the infamous ordinance of secession. He helped to frame the Confederate Constitution, and was then elected to the Confederate Congress. He remained a member of that rebel body until General Grant extinguished the Confederacy, when he availed himself of an early opportunity to visit Washington and seek, not a “last ditch,” but a pardon. Armed with his pardon he hurried to Louisiana, dismissed the officers of the Freedman’s Bureau from a further preservation of his property, and now instead of going to work like a good farmer (in imitation of Reagan) and repenting, he immediately procures an election to the State Senate, and there becomes the author and advocate of the new slave laws.
With such material in the Southern Legislatures, what good can be expected? If “reconstruction” is to be entrusted to such “intelligent and influential rebels,” what can we hope to achieve for the good of the country? It is under the lead of such men that all the vicious, disloyal, and disgraceful legislation for which the present Legislature of Louisiana is so notorious, has been effected.
As to the disloyal character of the Legislature, I will let the published declarations of others speak.
Colonel A. P. Field, of New Orleans, writing to Senator James W. Grimes, says that at the election of November last, the “rebels” succeeded in electing “the entire Legislature—but one single Union man elected to the lower house, and none to the Senate.”
