The question which lay at the bottom of the agitation was that of negro suffrage; but the negroes were not entitled to vote under the constitution as its stood, nor could they vote upon an amendment to the constitution conferring the right of suffrage upon them.

Whatever the convention might do, therefore, would be ineffectual until approved by a majority of the white men of the State.

It obviously followed that the men who violently resisted the assembling of the convention could not justify themselves by the declaration that negro suffrage was about to be imposed upon them.

Their position practically was that a majority of the white population should not exercise the right of giving suffrage to the negro.
When the convention attempted to assemble against the desire and remonstrance of their political opponents, a bloody riot ensued--not a riot precipitated by the ordinary material that makes up the mobs of cities, but one sustained by the obvious sympathy and the indirect support of the municipal authorities of New Orleans, and by the leading rebels of the State.

General Absalom Baird, an able and prudent officer of the regular army, was in command of the district, but was purposely deceived by the municipal authorities, to the end that troops might not be at hand to quell the riot and stop the assassination which had been planned with diabolical ingenuity.