assistants, having reduced the financial credit of New Orleans to a

disordered condition, and also having made efforts--and being then

engaged in such--to hamper the execution of the Reconstruction laws.

This action settled matters in the city, but subsequently I had to

remove some officials in the parishes--among them a justice of the

peace and a sheriff in the parish of Rapides; the justice for

refusing to permit negro witnesses to testify in a certain murder

case, and for allowing the murderer, who had foully killed a colored