One morning we were interrupted at lunch by a message that Mr. Durant had called with the party for whom he had made the engagement yesterday. Remembering that Mr. Durant had promised to bring around some of the “ancient freedmen,” as they were called—that, is the free negroes of French descent—I went out a few moments afterward to witness the interview. A group of gentlemen stood about Mr. Chase in the library, and one, a bald-headed, gray-bearded, vivacious, youngish-old man was making an animated little address. I felt sure that here was a mistake. Imagining that some other party had got into the library by accident—some delegation of Rebel lawyers, perhaps, to remonstrate against the test oath—I turned into the parlors to hunt up Mr. Durant and his French negroes. But they were nowhere to be found; and returning to the library, I saw in the furthest corner Mr. Durant himself, listening to the talk of the bald-headed old spokesman. Even then it was hard to realize that these quiet, well-bred gentlemen, scarcely one darker than Mr. Durant himself—many of them several shades whiter—were negroes, to be seen walking with whom on the streets of New Orleans was social disgrace. Before their call was concluded, old Mr. Jacob Barker was shown into the parlor. The eminently respectable and conservative old banker looked more like a negro, in point of complexion, than any one out of the twelve or fifteen in Mr. Durant’s party. Every man of them was well educated. All spoke French fluently; the English of all was passable, of some perfect. Some of them were comparatively wealthy, and all were in easy circumstances. They simply asked the Chief Justice to represent to the President, in their behalf, that they paid heavy taxes to support schools for the whites, and could get none for themselves; that they paid heavy taxes to support city and State governments, and were without voice in either; and that they desired to ask whether this accorded with Mr. Johnson’s well-known ideas of genuine democracy? They had been citizens of an Empire; when the Republic bought Louisiana they were disfranchised. Now that the Republic was beginning a new life, could it longer refuse them such rights as the Empire had accorded? What answer can legislators give who profess to believe the Declaration of Independence, and who cheerfully confirm a full-blooded Indian in a conspicuous position on the staff of their Lieutenant General?