It was now generally proclaimed throughout the North that the rebel chieftains had repossessed themselves of the reconstructed "State" governments and were making use of "State" powers to re-enslave the freedmen. It was also proclaimed that the life and property of Union men, of whatever race, at the South were utterly insecure, and that at least a thousand men had been murdered in that section within a year's time, without any considerable number of the {92} murderers having been brought to justice. And it was asserted that the President of the United States had deserted the party of the Union, the party which had elevated him to the chief magistracy of the land, and was now conspiring with his old party friends, the Democrats, in both the North and the South, to drive the Republican party from power and restore the régime of the Democracy of 1860. [Sidenote: The New Orleans riot.] At this moment a horrible tragedy was enacted in New Orleans which seemed to give verification to some, if not all, of these statements. It seems that the late Confederate leaders resident in Louisiana, having received pardon from the President of the United States upon fulfilling the conditions of the President's amnesty proclamation, had got possession in 1864 of the reconstructed "State" government of Louisiana, with the exception of the governorship and some of the judicial offices. The constitution of 1864, made by sincere Union men, did not exactly suit them, and the legislature in the spring of 1866 took into consideration a bill for calling another convention together for the purpose of framing a new constitution, but the Administration at Washington frowned upon the movement and the legislature abandoned it. In like manner, the men who formed and established the constitution of 1864 were displeased with the fact that the "State" government under it had been captured at the polls by the old electorate of Louisiana, reinstated through the President's amnesty. They also wanted to change the constitution, to so change it as to create an electorate which would bring them back into power again. This meant negro suffrage. Just before the convention of 1864 adjourned, it passed a resolution vesting in the presiding officer of the convention the power, and imposing on him the duty, of reconvoking the {93} convention in case the constitution framed by it should not be ratified at the polls, or for any other necessary reason, for the purpose of taking such measures as might be needful for forming civil government in Louisiana.