Fierce denunciations ring through the country about office holding and
election matters in Louisiana, while every one of the Colfax miscreants
goes unwhipped of justice, and no way can be found in this boasted land
of civilization and Christianity to punish the perpetrators of this
bloody and monstrous crime.
Not unlike this was the massacre in August last. Several Northern young
men of capital and enterprise had started the little and flourishing
town of Coushatta. Some of them were Republicans and officeholders under
Kellogg. They were therefore doomed to death. Six of them were seized
and carried away from their homes and murdered in cold blood. No one has
been punished, and the conservative press of the State denounced all
efforts to that end and boldly justified the crime.
Many murders of a like character have been committed in individual
cases, which can not here be detailed. For example, T.S. Crawford,
judge, and P.H. Harris, district attorney, of the twelfth judicial
district of the State, on their way to court were shot from their horses
by men in ambush on the 8th of October, 1873; and the widow of the
former, in a communication to the Department of Justice, tells a piteous
tale of the persecutions of her husband because he was a Union man, and
of the efforts made to screen those who had committed a crime which, to
use her own language, "left two widows and nine orphans desolate.
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