wanted, and this view was borne out by the negroes themselves. “I consider myself just as far above coming into company that does not want me, as they are above my coming into an elevation with them.... I do not believe that any sensible colored man upon this floor would wish to be in a private part of a public place without the consent of the owners of it. It is false; it is wholesale falsehood to say that we wish to force ourselves upon white people.” But he did insist that they receive equal accommodation.[152] The former set down the agitation to a political move to renew the strife.[153] When the bill had passed both houses, the press took a more aggressive attitude in an effort to frighten the negroes from any attempt to claim their rights. “Will any negro, or gang of negroes, attempt to exercise the privilege it confers?” belligerently asked the _Commercial Bulletin_. “If they do, it will be at their peril.... He may be able to obtain a ticket of admission, but no New Orleans audience will ever permit him to take his seat except in the places allotted for colored persons.”[154] The _Bee_ declared that if the governor dared to sign that bill after vetoing the former, “legal means would not be lacking to set aside this arbitrary law, this outrage to the law of propriety, and to individual liberty.”[155] The civil rights bill was backed up by a measure intended to prevent the intimidation of negroes by punishing the bribery of witnesses or preventing a witness by force, threat, or intimidation from testifying in a criminal proceeding.[156] It is striking that a Ku-Klux bill--a bill “to prevent people from agoing abroad disguised”--was quickly referred and evidently died in committee.[157] Another effort in the next session to prevent the carrying of concealed weapons met no better fate.[158] A measure allied to the above legislation, but of vastly greater importance because of its National character, was the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which was accepted perfunctorily by a vote of 18 to 3 in the Senate; 59[159] to 9 in the House, 36 Republicans refusing to vote.