Warmoth met this by a move which was equally a _coup de surprise_. The legislature had at its last session passed a law vesting the power to select the members of the Returning Board in the senate. The Governor had not signed this bill, and probably never intended to sign it, since it proposed to take the control of the Board out of his hands, but it now seemed to furnish him a way of escape from Durell's order. He hastily signed the bill and promulgated it as law, and as the senate was not in session, proceeded to appoint the members of the new Board himself, under the power of the Governor to make temporary appointments {271} to office when the senate was not in session. He appointed one Dr. Feriet chairman of the Board, and put the election returns in his hands. This Board declared that McEnery had been elected Governor and that the Greeley electors had been chosen. The Governor published these decisions officially on the 5th day of December, and the affair seemed to have been closed. But to the surprise of everyone concerned, and of the whole country, in the middle of the night following, Judge Durell issued an order to the United States Marshal, S. B. Packard, to take possession of the capitol and hold it at the pleasure of the Judge against all unlawful bodies attempting to convene therein. The Judge claimed that Warmoth had committed a contempt against his court in the Returning Board proceeding, and he declared that the Lynch Board was the legal body. His order furthermore required the commander of the United States troops to furnish a detachment of soldiers to sustain the United States marshal in taking possession of the capitol, and in enforcing the Lynch Board's canvass and decision. A more palpable outrage upon the lawful powers of a "State" could hardly have been conceived. The Judge had not a scintilla of authority upon which to rest his proceeding. It is claimed that he was drunk when he made the order. But this can hardly have been true, that is he could not have been any more than ordinarily drunk, since the order was not withdrawn when he became ostensibly sober again, but was made the basis of a proceeding which lasted through many days, and the results of which were the counting in of Kellogg and of a Republican legislature by the Lynch Board, the immediate instalment of the Lynch Board legislature, the almost immediate impeachment of Warmoth by it and his removal from the governorship, the installation of the {272} Lieutenant-Governor, the negro Pinchback, in his seat, the recognition of the Lynch Board legislature and of Pinchback by the President of the United States as the lawful legislature and executive of Louisiana, and the inauguration of Kellogg as Governor at the end of the Warmoth-Pinchback term. If this was all the work of a drunken spree, it must have been a very long one, and there must have been many participants in it besides the Judge.