The negroes, who had begun to learn their freedom, were not only subjected to laws of practical re-enslavement, but to a treatment whose brutality could not have been foreseen.

It was estimated that before the adjournment of Congress more than a thousand negroes and many white Unionists had been murdered in the South, without even the slightest attempt at prosecuting the murderers.

Though the aggregate number of victims was so great, they were scattered over so vast a territory that it was difficult to impress the public mind of the North with the real magnitude of the slaughter.

But this incredulity vanished in a moment when the nation was startled on the 30th of July, two days after the adjournment of Congress, by a massacre at New Orleans, which had not the pretense of justification or even or provocation.
The circumstances that led to it may be briefly stated.

The convention which formed the free constitution of the State in 1864 was ordered to re-assemble by its president, upon authority which, he held, was conferred upon him by the convention at the time the constitution was formed.