(i.)

Laurenda did not like the look of those men, not at all. She had been hanging the washing up on the clothesline behind the cabin when she heard the tortured whinnying of horses driven too hard, and the whoops of men careless about their steeds. She dropped the children’s clothes in a heap upon the grass and hastened into the cabin.

“Alice!” she commanded her eldest daughter, “take the baby and hide behind the stove. Millie, find your sister and hide under the bed. You too, Butler!”

But Butler was a very little boy, and he wanted his mother. He seized the folds of her dress as she passed, and she half dragged him to the front window.

“Just keep quiet!” Laurenda shushed her son.

She peered out between the curtains. Her husband Jesse was standing with his tools next to the fence, talking with three white men on horseback. Another group of white men on horses were waiting back on the road from the bridge over the bayou. Her heart faltered. That was always the problem with Jesse, she thought, coming from Alabama like he did. Folks are too friendly there.

“What do you mean?” one of the white men was saying. “No corn at all?”

“Afraid not, master,” Jesse said, hooding his eyes with one hand against the glare of the sun with his other hand on his hip. Laurenda silently reproached her husband, for he had a perfectly good machete on the ground. Pick it up, she implored him.

“Well then what do you got?” The white man was growing impatient.

“I don’t have any food to spare.”

“We didn’t ask you for spare,” another of the white men growled.

“That’s all I can give you,” Jessie replied evenly.

“This n____ is a waste of time,” the first white man exclaimed. He pulled out a pistol and shot Jesse in the head.

Jesse collapsed to the ground at once. Laurenda bit her lower lip as hard as she could, and soon she could taste her blood.

“Mama?” whimpered Butler. She ducked under the window, covered his mouth with her hand, and decided to wait until she could hear the hoofbeats fade into the distance.

“Next farm’s about half a mile,” one called out to the other.

“You fetch that n____?” another called out.

“Yep,” one of the men laughed. “By God I got ‘em good!”

Laurenda crumpled to the floor and began to cry silently. Butler looked at her and his lower lip began to tremble.

“Mama?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

(ii.)

Two judges took the bench in the courtroom at the New Orleans Customs House at half-past eleven on an unusually cool Monday morning in mid-May. The Customs House, a vast granite temple to the taxation of imports, was one of the largest buildings in all the United States. A massive carved mahogany bar separated the observers from the counsel, and a dark wooden bench brooded omnipresently over the entirety of the courtroom. The two judges who ascended the bench were Judge William Woods — scarred from Shiloh and Vicksburg, with a well-cropped beard and moustache, his eyes either small or deeply set, it was difficult to tell — and the gnomish Joseph Bradley, a Justice of the Supreme Court hearing this case while riding circuit.

Equally marked as the contrast between the two judges was the divergence between the counsel table for the United States and the tables for the defense. The United States Attorney, James Beckwith, sat alone. He was a confident and handsome white fellow, with a high forehead, a walrus moustache, and a cleft chin. Twenty years ago, before the war, he had heard Frederick Douglass speak, and it inspired him first to become a man of God, but, upon further consultation with the deity, he became a man of the law instead, and resolved to make as fine a United States Attorney for Louisiana as Benjamin Bristow had been for Kentucky, to prosecute the rabble rousers of the Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, and the White League of Louisiana.

Beckwith stood and bowed.

“Ready for the United States.” As well he ought to be; the first trial of this matter had ended in the acquittal of one defendant and a hung jury for the rest.

“And for the defendants?” Woods proceeded. “I understand that there is a joint defense for” — here he read the indictment carefully — “Misters John Hadnot, William Cruikshank, William Irwin, Austin Gibbons, Clement Penn, Denis and Prudhomme Lemoine, and Thomas Hickman?”

At the names of the defendants, the courtroom resounded with muttered curses. Judge Woods, having denied the men bail following the mistrial of March, the defendants had been held at Orleans Parish prison for some time, eliciting widespread manifestations of sympathy and appeals for relief among the white men and women of New Orleans. Owing to this interest, the courtroom was crowded with witnesses and spectators, among them blacks who, in the opinion of New Orleans society, could hardly understand any of what was happening, dressed in gaudy and reckless attire that recalled a plantation holiday of olden times.

“Good morning, your Honor.” One lawyer rose amongst the eight defendants. “Robert Marr, for the defendants. With me at counsel table is Ezekiel John Ellis and William Whitaker.”

Marr and Ellis being the flower of the New Orleans bar, both were well known to Woods. Marr was a tall, cleanshaven man with short black hair who, to his great credit in the courtroom, looked not unlike a young Lincoln. Ellis, by contrast, had spent too much of the war in a Union prison and appeared shriveled and wan. Marr and Ellis being lawyers of the highly rhetorical variety, these counselors had asked Whitaker to devote his energies to the technical legal arguments and cross-examinations.

“Good morning, counsel,” said Woods. “I shall now ask the clerk to call upon those summoned to jury service.”

The voir dire revealed that many of the jurors were, upon examination, at least octoroons, to the dismay of many of the white ladies and gentlemen in the gallery. In a result that ever surprises lawyers, for whom pending legal matters overshadow all other news, few jurors had ever heard of the case or formed any opinion of it. After several hours, a jury was selected of nine white men and three colored men, predominately light-skinned mulattoes. Bradley then excused himself, announcing that he would handle other matters in another courtroom.

Beckwith rose and read the lengthy indictment to the jury, consisting of twenty-one counts.  He then laid that document aside and looked directly at the jury box.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” Beckwith said, “you shall soon hear some account of the infamous and deplorable violence that followed the contested election of ’seventy-two, in Colfax, in Grant Parish. The disputed results of that election seemed to have placed the population in a height of exasperation.”

Beckwith did not say that, while it was not hard to see that violence would result somewhere, that blood was shed in a parish named after Grant and a town named after his Vice President was God’s mocking admonishment.

“The defendants here are charged with conspiring together to break up a peaceful assembly of people with the intent to kill. Now by the term ‘conspiring together,’ the Government is not obliged to show that any distinct understanding had been made between the defendants — it is sufficient for us to show that the defendants acted together with a common cause and toward a common end. The Government is also under no obligation to show which defendant shot and killed the victims at Colfax — the act of one is considered the act of all, under the law, and all persons who participated in this killing, whether by firing the fatal shot or by failing to restrain the murderer, are all equally guilty.”

“Thank you, Mr. Beckwith,” said Woods. “You may call your first witness.”

Beckwith called Judge R.C. Register, a white man, to the stand, and that jurist was duly sworn.

“What was your position last March, sir?”

“I was the Republican judge of Grant Parish.”

“Were you permitted to assume your position?”

“No, sir. There were those with competing claims to my position who occupied the courthouse in Colfax.”

“Did there come a time that you and your allies were able to occupy the courthouse?”

“Yes, there was a morning that our rivals left the courthouse unguarded, and we took possession of the courthouse on March the twentieth.”

“Can you describe the courthouse?”

“It was not a courthouse like this one,” Register said. “It was only one story tall, and not even one hundred feet long. But it held the records of the people of the community, and it was important to them.”

“Did there come a time that you learned of efforts to retake the courthouse?”

“Yes. On approximately the thirty-first of March, the recorder of the parish advised me that an armed body of white men were coming into town with the intention of arresting the Republican leaders.”

“Objection,” cried Whitaker.

“I do not believe the testimony is being offered to prove the truth of the assertion,” said Woods, “but rather to illuminate the impression of the witness.  The jury shall consider it for that purpose only.”  Woods nodded sagely toward the jury box, and the jurors nodded back, equally sage and without comprehension.

“Did you take any action in response to this information?”

“I asked our sheriff, Mr. Shaw, to summon a posse of twenty men.”

“What happened next?”

“The next day a large number of armed white men, led by Mr. Hadnot” — here the witness pointed at one of the defendants — “rode into town. On the following day, I believe the fifth of April, there was a meeting between the Negroes, who at that time were approximately two hundred in number, and a party of white men.”

“Did that meeting result in any resolution?”

“I am afraid not.  We received word that Jesse McKinney had been killed, and the meeting ended disputatiously.”

“Who was Jesse McKinney?”

“A Negro, living near Colfax.”

“Did there come a time that shots were fired?”

“The next day. On the sixth of April, another body of white men rode toward Colfax.  We divided the Negroes into three companies. We became concerned that the white men would attack us, so we let out a volley — the white men answered with a volley and turned around and rode off.”

“Did any Negro, so far as you were aware, shoot to kill?”

“Not at all. We fired merely to show that we would not hesitate to defend ourselves.”

“What happened next?”

“We waited for some days. I decided to ride to New Orleans for assistance, and so I left on the ninth of April.”

“I see. Did you later return to Colfax?”

“Yes. The day after Easter Sunday.”

“What did you see when you returned to Colfax?”

“I found the courthouse burned down, and the bodies of many dead Negroes lying about.”

Beckwith allowed those words to linger in the air for a few moments.

“Your witness, sir.” Beckwith nodded to Whitaker.

Whitaker rose from his seat with a broad smile upon his face.

“Well, well, Judge Register! I must admit that as a lawyer, I have some hesitations about questioning a judge.” Whitaker commenced a thorough display of hitching his pants, buttoning his waistcoat, and straightening his necktie, much to the jury’s amusement.

“I try to do my duty.”

“Grant Parish must be fortunate to have a man so learned in the law!  You are learned in the law, Your Honor, are you not?”

“I am familiar with the laws of the State of Louisiana, yes.”

Whitaker chuckled. “Why, there is no need for false modesty here, sir. You must have studied law for many, many years.”

Register did not answer.

Whitaker began to pace before the jury box. “I have appeared before many judges, and I would estimate that ten years is necessary to master the law before one can properly assume the bench. So can we agree that you studied the law for ten years?”

“No.” Register turned his gaze away from Whitaker.

“You must have been a real quick study then, sir. Did you achieve mastery of the law in five years, then?”

“No.”

“Well now, you must have had a natural legal mind to have learned so much so soon.  Before becoming a Judge, did you study the law for three years?”

“No.”

Whitaker stopped pacing with a look of amazement upon his face. “Now, I thought I had heard everything, but a man who amassed the qualifications sufficient to become a judge in less than three years is a veritable Hammurabi or even Solomon. Tell me, sir — had you studied the law for even one year before you were made a judge?”

“No.”

“In fact,” Whitaker was speaking very rapidly now, “you had even not one day of legal training before the Republican Party made you a judge, is that not right?”

“That is correct.”

“Good heavens!” Whitaker threw up his hands. “Whatever did you do before you became a judge?”

“I was . . . a detective for some time.”

“A detective? What led you to become a detective?”

“Well, after my other business — was finished.”

“Was finished?” Whitaker exclaimed. “You mean failed, do you not? Your other business failed?”

“I would not use that term,” said Register, reddening.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Whitaker. “And what business was that?”

“A tannery.”

“You were a tanner! And so, the Republican Party decided that your experience in stripping the hides from dead animals qualified you to rule upon the legal affairs of men?”

“Objection!” cried Beckwith. “This has gone on long enough!”

“Sustained,” said Woods. “Please, Mr. Whitaker.”

But Whitaker did not openly acknowledge either the objection or the court’s ruling.

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” Whitaker continued.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are not from Louisiana, are you?”

“I live here.”

“Where were you born, sir?”

“Objection,” Beckwith groaned.

“What is the relevance of these questions?” Woods asked.

“Why, Your Honor,” said Whitaker in all innocence, “I would like to ascertain the full scope of the witness’s ability to navigate the geographical areas in which the events in question occurred.”

“Then he can ask the witness that question directly,” said Beckwith. “The question as it now stands carries with it the danger of undue prejudice.”

“Overruled,” said Woods. He bristled inwardly, because by objecting, Beckwith had now called attention to the answer that he obviously did not want the witness to deliver.

“Well then, Judge,” Whitaker said, with heavy emphasis upon the title, “where were you born?”

“Delaware.”

“Delaware?” Whitaker proclaimed, as Beckwith winced. “Why, that is very far away indeed.  How long did it take you to travel here from Delaware?”

“I would not know, sir.”

“And why not?”

“Because I did not travel here directly.”

“Oh, I see!” Whitaker said. “There were stops in-between! What were they?”

“Well, there were many. I do not think you would care to hear them all.”

“To the contrary, I am most interested.”

Register drew a deep breath. “Well,” he said slowly, “before coming here I lived in South Carolina, then Philadelphia, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Westchester, Peru, Chile, New Granada, Arkansas, then Anderson, Texas, and then Shreveport.  And then here.”

Whitaker, who had made a great show of counting the varied locations upon his fingers and running out of digits, let out a low whistle.

“And none of those places would keep you?”

“Objection!” Beckwith pounded the table.

“Sustained,” said Woods.

“Withdrawn,” said Whitaker, waving his hand.

The impression of the witness as a hated carpetbagger having been so convincingly created by Whitaker, it was not difficult to cast aspersions on the black men assembled in Colfax by asking Judge Register to speculate as to the number who were armed with Enfield rifles. The effect upon the jury was palpable, the men of the jury being unaware that while Register might have been from Delaware, Beckwith was from New York, Woods was from Ohio, and Whitaker himself was from Massachusetts.

Beckwith now called the United States Deputy Marshal who had been dispatched to the scene in response to the reports of violence.

“When did you arrive in Colfax?”

“Easter Monday.”

“What did you observe when you arrived in Colfax?”

“A battlefield,” the marshal replied. “By the time I arrived, the courthouse was still consumed in smoke. I observed several dead Negroes lying in the vicinity of the courthouse — some shot, some burned, some mutilated.”

“Did you find any wounded Negroes?”

“Yes. Among the dead we found the dying. We removed about twelve injured Negroes from the area and placed them under the care of physicians. I do not know how many survived.”

“Did you make an assessment of the number of unburied Negro bodies?”

“There were sixty men who had not been given a Christian burial — or any burial.”

“You mentioned that some of the dead Negroes had been mutilated. How so?”

“Some of the dead were wounded about their heads and the upper portion of their bodies, as if by the stroke of a sword. These wounds, although serious, did not cause considerable amounts of blood to be spilled. I deduced based upon the condition of these wounds that the men had already died, in many cases having bled to death from gunshot wounds and were then hacked with a knife or sword.”

“What else did you see?” Beckwith kept one eye upon the men of the jury. Their faces were solemn and attentive.

“I saw one dead man still upon his knees,” the marshal replied evenly, “as if in the act of supplicating for mercy.  He was set upon his haunches, his arms thrown back with his hands touching the ground. His face had been battered, with what I can only believe to have been several blows to the head.”

“Did you investigate the courthouse?”

“Yes. I observed trenches around the courthouse. We then entered the courthouse once it was safe to do so and found one body in the courthouse, burned beyond all recognition.”

“What did you do next?”

“We did our Christian duty, sir, and buried the dead in the trenches.”

As often occurs in the trial and prosecution of cases, however, the tide turned abruptly the next day. Having been advised that the defendants wished to present a motion, Bradley was called to return to the bench with Woods. Although annoyed that Bradley’s appearances were as the waxing and waning of the moon, Beckwith could do nothing about it.

“I believe you would like to make a motion?” Bradley asked Whitaker.

“Ought we not excuse the jury?” Woods whispered urgently to his colleague.

“This shall take but a moment,” Bradley snapped, and signaled Whitaker to proceed.

“My learned colleague Mr. Marr will present the motion,” said Whitaker.

“Your Honor,” said Marr, “on behalf of all defendants, we move to strike twenty-four counts of the indictment, leaving only eight of the counts.

“Our motion raises grave concerns relating to the constitutionality of that act of May 31, 1870, known as the Enforcement Act. That Act asserts the jurisdiction of the United States to protect the life and liberty of its citizens. Yet our Constitution never promised that the federal government should protect against the personal aggression of man against man — for that is left to the State of Louisiana. This point has been made very clearly in the Slaughter-House Cases, which sets forth quite distinctly those rights that are protected under federal law from those rights that are protected under state law.”

“You have raised some interesting points, Mr. Marr,” said Bradley, “and I will advise you tomorrow morning how I intend to address them.”

Whitaker clapped Marr on the back once Woods and Bradley left the bench.

“These charges might not be dismissed altogether, sure,” Whitaker whispered into Marr’s ear, “but the case might be substantially narrowed!”

 Beckwith, meanwhile, crossed his arms and scowled.

(iii.)

Early Friday morning, counsel were summoned to Judge Woods’s courtroom in New Orleans for Justice Bradley’s determination upon the defense motion to dismiss.

“The question involved,” Bradley opined, “is too grave to be passed upon without mature deliberation and consideration.”

Beckwith exhaled slowly.

“But, in the event that of any one of the accused is convicted, I will hold myself ready to come and sit with Judge Woods and rule upon the matter, should a motion be made to stay the judgment. If it becomes necessary, the matter can go to the United States Supreme Court.”

Here there was a flicker in Judge Woods’s eye that did not go unnoticed by Beckwith. Justice Bradley’s suggestion that this matter might proceed to the Supreme Court, Beckwith reasoned, could only mean that Bradley and Woods were not in agreement.

“At this juncture,” Bradley continued, “I must depart to sit circuit in Galveston. I shall leave the conduct of the remainder of the trial in the capable hands of Judge Woods.”

Bradley nodded at Woods, who did not nod back.  Bradley rose and departed from the courtroom. Beckwith could hear muted exultations from Whitaker, Marr, and Ellis. The possibility had occurred to them, as it did to Beckwith, that if the jury returned a verdict of guilty, Bradley might annul the verdict. Yet the prosecution could still rely on Judge Woods, who appeared to disagree with Justice Bradley.

“You may call your witness,” said Woods.

“The United States calls Laurenda McKinney.”

A black woman walked slowly to the stand, clutching a handkerchief. She was duly sworn.

“What is your name?” Beckwith asked.

“Laurenda McKinney.”

“Are you married?”

“No, sir. I have been widowed.”

“Who was your husband?”

“Jesse McKinney.”

“What were the circumstances of his death?”

She paused and began to weep.

“We were at home, sir — ”

“I beg your pardon for interrupting, Mrs. McKinney.  Where is your home?”

“Just outside Colfax.”

“Thank you. Please proceed.”

“A crowd of white men rode up.”

“Do you recognize any of those men here to-day?”

“I do, sir.”

“Where are they?”

Mrs. McKinney pointed out three of the men at the defense tables.

“Let the record reflect that Mrs. McKinney pointed to Mr. Hadnot, Mr. Lemoine, and Mr. Givens,” said Woods.

“What did those white men do?”

“Jesse was working on the fence, and some white men rode up on horses.  The white men said they needed to supply themselves from our farm, and Jesse, well, he refused. I heard a gunshot, and rushed to the window, and my Jesse, he fell and did not get up any more.”

“Did you do anything?”

“I did, sir. I rushed to him, my Jesse, and he was still breathing. But he was in awful pain. I brought him to Mirabeau’s plantation, and he died there that evening.”

“Did you see exactly who shot him?”

“No, but it was one of the white men.”

“What happened next?”

“They rode away.”

“Did you hear them say anything as they rode away?”

“Objection to hearsay, Your Honor!” Whitaker exclaimed.

Judge Woods brushed the objection aside.

“I did. One man asked, ‘Did you fetch him?’ and another said, ‘Yes, by God, I got ‘em!’ ”

“Your witness,” Beckwith said.

The task of cross-examining a grieving widow requiring the utmost delicacy, Whitaker proceeded slowly at first, and with a show of respect and gentility. He lightly challenged Mrs. McKinney’s recollection on a few small points before striking at his main theme.

“Now, Laurenda, your husband had been up at Colfax the day before his most untimely passing, is that not right?”

“Yes.”

“Laurenda,” Whitaker paused, “he went to Colfax for the purpose of fighting the white folks there, did he not?”

“I believe so.”

“You have no idea, Laurenda, whether your husband shot at any white folks up at Colfax?”

“Objection!”

“I am merely asking the witness whether she knows if something is true or not,” said Whitaker placidly.

“Overruled,” Woods said.

“I do not know.”

“Very well. And you have no idea whether your husband had fled from Colfax before the white folks he might have shot at had any opportunity to return fire?”

“Objection!”

“Please, Mr. Whitaker,” Woods warned.

“Yes, your Honor,” Whitaker bowed. His point, after all, was to raise the implication merely by posing the question. “One more thing, Laurenda — no white men harmed any of the women and children at Mirabeau’s plantation in Colfax, did they?”

“They didn’t.”

“And that is because they never took up arms against the white man, isn’t that right?”

“Objection!” cried Beckwith. “The question is outrageous.”

“It is indeed,” said Woods, looking gravely at Whitaker. “I believe you are finished, sir.”

“I believe I am, your Honor,” said Whitaker.

The stage having been set for the incident at Colfax, Beckwith now presented the witnesses to the awful events of that day.

“The United States calls Baptiste Elsey.”

A black man took the stand and was duly sworn.

“Sir, were you present in Colfax on Easter morning?”

“Yes.”

“How did you come to be there?”

“I was working in a field about a mile away and a man came by and said they needed deputy sheriffs.”

“Did you go with him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you bring anything with you?”

“My gun.”

“Where did you go?”

“We all gathered at some fellow’s house.”

“What do you mean by ‘we,’ Mr. Elsey?”

“There were about twenty-one men.”

“What happened at the house?”

“They swore us all in as deputy sheriffs.”

“What did you do next?”

“We marched to the courthouse at Colfax.”

Beckwith paused. His experience with Elsey in the first trial had convinced him that Elsey was not a particularly articulate man, and the strain of eliciting testimony would weigh upon him.

“What did you do once you reached the courthouse?”

“We fortified it. We dug a trench in front of it.”

“Why?”

“To defend ourselves.”

“Defend yourselves from whom?”

“From the white men we knew was coming.”

“And what was your understanding as to why the white men were coming?”

“To take the courthouse.”

“And why did the white men want the courthouse?”

Elsey took a very long time to respond.

“Well, the white men said that they was in charge of this here Grant Parish. But we voted, and we voted that we would be in charge of Grant Parish. And they were trying to steal that away from us.”

“What happened after you fortified the courthouse?”

“I took a nap.”

There was an outbreak of mirth at the defense table, and among those of the spectators inclined to favor the defense. Woods raised one hand to silence them.

“Did there come a time that a fight broke out at Colfax?”

“Oh yes. It was Easter morning. April thirteen.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I saw a band of men come up the road.”

“Did you see whether anyone was leading them?”

“That man,” Elsey pointed at Hadnot, seated beside Whitaker at the defense table.

“What happened next?”

“They started firing real fast. There were bullets flying all over my head. It was real loud. The man next to me tried to jump up and run into the courthouse, but they shot him.  He jumped up on the ground, and like that, that, that, that” — here Elsey struck his hand repeatedly upon the witness-box — “he was shot in the back, and he fell down. I ran into the courthouse.”

“What happened next?”

“The white men called out to ask for surrender.”

“Did you surrender?”

“They gave us fifteen minutes to think about it, and it wasn’t going too well, so we surrendered.”

“How?”

“Shack White tore off his white shirt and waved it around.”

“Were you wounded?”

“In my shoulder here, and in my legs.  They shot me seven times.”

“What happened once you surrendered?”

“They rounded us up and tied rope around our hands and put us all in a line and separated us. Wounded on the one side, and the strong men on the other.”

“How many men all together?”

“About thirty-five, I’d say.”

“Where did they take you?”

“Beneath the pecan tree.”

“What happened to the wounded men?”

“They took us and laid us down on the ground and told us not to move. After a while the sun went down, and then it was raining.”

“Did you see any of the men die from their wounds?”

Elsey swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“What happened after it started raining?”

“There had been more of the white men coming, and they were real angry. One of them said, he said, ‘We’d better kill them n_____s.’”

“Obje — ”

“Overruled.” Woods was listening closely.  “I suppose Mr. Beckwith will say he is not offering the statement for its truth, but rather to explain a sequence of events.”

“Precisely, your Honor,” said Beckwith. “Mr. Elsey, what happened after you heard those words?”

 “They took the strong men out to the field and made them all kneel in a line.”

“And then what?”

“Well.” Elsey paused. “The white men lined up behind them and shot them all in the back of their heads.”

“Did you know any of those men, Mr. Elsey?”

“I did.” Elsey began to sob.

“Did you hear any of them cry out for mercy?”

“My brother, Etienne, he called.”

“What happened to Etienne?”

“Master Penn over there shot him in the head.”

The courtroom was silent for a few moments.

“Thank you, Mr. Elsey,” Beckwith said.  “Do you see any of the other white men here to-day?”

“Yes. That man.” Elsey again pointed at Hadnot.

“Thank you, Mr. Elsey.  Your witness, Mr. Whitaker.”

Beckwith took his seat and exhaled deeply and quietly.

Whitaker rose and took the podium. He stared for a moment at Elsey, who was still standing in the witness box pointing at Hadnot. He shuffled his notes, pretended to consult with Marr, then crossed his arms and looked quizzically at Elsey.

“Why the Devil you still pointing, boy?”

An explosion of raucous laughter from the gallery shamed poor Elsey.

“Order!” Woods demanded. “I apologize, Mr. Elsey. That was entirely my fault. Please proceed with a legitimate question, Mr. Whitaker.”

“I sure will, Your Honor,” said Whitaker. “That was a mighty fine story you told, wasn’t it, Baptiste Elsey?”

“Yes.” Elsey’s face immediately betrayed utter misery.

“That was the story the government wanted you to tell, wasn’t it?”

“Objection,” Beckwith said.

“It is fair cross-examination,” said Woods. “Overruled.”

“That means you answer, Baptiste,” said Whitaker. “The government wanted you to tell that story, didn’t they?”

“I guess so.”

Whitaker crossed his arms. “Do you know what perjury is, Baptiste?”

“Perjury?

“That was my question, Baptiste.  What — is — perjury?”

Elsey thought for a moment.

“Perjury is when the judge tells you to tell the truth, and you lie instead,” he said at last.

Whitaker smiled. “That is an excellent definition of perjury, Baptiste. An excellent definition.”  He stared at Elsey for several moments.

“Objection,” said Beckwith. “This is mere insinuation.”

“Insinuation is a part of cross-examination,” Woods ventured, “but I would caution Mr. Whitaker to restrain himself. Do you have a question, counsel?”

“I do, Judge. You say you were wounded, Baptiste?”

“Yes sir. By the white men.”

“The white men?  Meaning the white men you were shooting at? So, you were surprised when the white men you were shooting at had the temerity to shoot back at you?”

“Sir?”

“Now,” Whitaker thought a moment, “one of the other Negroes set fire to the courthouse, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. Pinckney did.”

“Now if the courthouse is on fire, there is no way the white folks can take it, right?”

Elsey struggled to answer. “I guess not.”

“You guess not!” Whitaker scratched his head. “There were still Negroes holed up in the courthouse, weren’t there?”

“Yes.”

“How many Negroes were in the courthouse when one of the other Negroes set it on fire?”

“Maybe a dozen?”

“A dozen n_____s all set on fire! Did any of them run out of the courthouse?”

“They couldn’t, sir.”

“So, a dozen of your Negroes, Baptiste, are stuck in the courthouse, and another one of your Negroes sets it on fire, and then you are just lying there on the ground, am I right?”

“Well . . . I guess, sir.”

Whitaker glared in disgust. “I am just done with this witness, your Honor.”

Beckwith rose sharply. “Re-direct, your Honor.”

“Very well.”

Beckwith glared at Whitaker as he approached the podium. Whitaker merely shrugged his shoulders.

“Mr. Elsey, why did another Negro set fire to the courthouse?”

“One of the white men pointed a gun at him. He said, ‘Now light that up, boy, or there’s a bullet for you.’”

“How did that Negro react?”

“He started crying.”

“What happened next?”

“The white man shot his gun in the air.”

Elsey looked down at his hands.

“Mr. Elsey, did the Negro man then set fire to the courthouse?”

“He did.”

“Can you describe the conditions in the courthouse once the fire was lit?”

“Oh, I felt I was a d____d soul in Hell.” Elsey shook his head. Now he was crying freely. “The burning roof began to fall on us, and everyone was praying and shrieking and singing and calling on God to have mercy. I could smell it. The hair burnt off our heads, and clothes burned, and our skin roasted.”

(iv.)

The proceedings that Saturday in New Orleans had been so arranged by Beckwith as to provide the gentlemen of the jury with much to reflect upon during church the next day.

“Where were you born?” Beckwith asked Levi Nelson, a powerfully built black man who appeared unfazed by the pressure upon him.

“Here, sir.”

“Were you born free?”

“No.”

“When did you become free?”

“When Abraham Lincoln emancipated me.”

“Were you present at the county courthouse in Colfax on the morning of April thirteenth?”

“I was. There was a fight between the black men defending the courthouse and an army of white men who were trying to take it.”

“Were you one of the men defending the courthouse?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe the course of the hostilities?”

“I was in the trench when the bullets started firing.”

“Were you hit?”

“Yes. Once through my hat and once in the shoulder.”

“Did your line hold?”

“No. We retreated into the courthouse and shot from the windows. By this time the two groups of white men had rejoined, sir, and they had caught some stragglers.”

“Who did they catch?”

“Pinckney Chambers.”

“What happened to Mr. Chambers?”

“I saw one white man place a gun to his head and tell him to light the courthouse on fire with us in it.”

“Did Mr. Chambers do that?”

“He did.”

“Can you describe the situation in the courthouse?”

Here Nelson drew a long breath.

“It was awful hot very fast. Men were crying out. Some were on fire. In the middle of the fire and screaming, there were loud blows upon the door. A white man came in, and some of the black folk in the courthouse got scared and shot him right away. That made the white folks real angry, so they opened fire all over again. I saw many men shot as they tried to get out of the courthouse.”

“What did you do?”

“I crawled under the floorboards. But they found us and drew us all out of the courthouse. They told me to march out to the field, and so I did. Then they lined us up, and shot us point-blank in the head, one by one.”

“Were you shot in the head?”

“Yes.”  Here Nelson bowed his head to reveal a scar behind his ear.

“Who shot you?”

“Bill Cruikshank — that man sitting right there.”

Cruikshank eyed Nelson coldly from the counsel table, as if Nelson were doing him a grave injustice.

“What happened after Mister Cruikshank shot you?”

“I fell down and played possum. I saw that the man next to me cried out, and they plugged him another six times to make sure he was dead.”

“Did you see Mister Cruikshank shoot anyone else?”

“Yes. Alexander Tillman ran, and I saw Cruikshank and some other men chase him.  They caught him and shot him again and again.”

“Who were the men who chased and killed Alexander Tillman?”

“Those men sitting right there.”

“Can you identify them, please?”

Beckwith, having great confidence in Nelson as a witness, had planned what was to happen next, but for the rest of the parties, not to mention the spectators in the courtroom, Nelson’s next actions came as a surprise. He slowly and with deliberation left the witness-box and strode to the table behind which defense counsel and the defendants sat. Nelson looked each man in the eye. Then he slowly walked behind the table. Beckwith and Woods could see the defendants trembling.

“This man.”

Nelson laid one hand upon Cruikshank’s shoulder, who shrank from his touch.

“This man.”

Nelson walked to a few steps to Hadnot and laid a hand on his shoulder. Hadnot did not waver but stared straight ahead.

“And this man.”

Nelson rested his hand on the shoulder of Prudhomme Lemoine, who scowled.

“Thank you, Mr. Nelson,” said Beckwith. “You may return to the witness-box.”

Having little to counteract the dramatic climax to Nelson’s testimony, the defense had no choice but to respond with tedium.  Ellis proceeded to cross-examine Nelson with a profusion of repetitive yet subtly different queries, and, upon generating slightly different shades of the same truth, bore down upon him with force and declared Nelson to be a liar.  Few men remember their comings and goings with the exactitude demanded by the cross-examiner, and the witness is frequently reduced to tears of frustration and anger. Not Nelson. To the contrary, it was Ellis who became frustrated.

“Was it two weeks or three weeks?” Ellis demanded, with flagrant vexation. “You seem incapable of remembering anything about the whys and wherefores of your arrival at Colfax!”

“I remember the whys very well,” replied Nelson. “The reason I went to Colfax is because I was sworn to protect the United States, and we had an election under the laws of the United States, and in that election, there were men appointed as Judge and Sheriff of our parish, and it seemed to me that those men were in danger of being hanged. I thought it my duty to protect those men, and that courthouse, and these United States.”

The testimony of Levi Nelson had the anticipated effect upon the jury. As best as Beckwith could tell, the men of the jury listened with care to his account, which confirmed the testimony of the previous witnesses in all relevant particulars. Whitaker, Ellis, and Marr could gnaw at the witnesses like rats — a majestic truth was being woven by countless individual threads of testimony.

The day proceeded in a beneficial manner for the prosecution. Benjamin Brim now took the stand, a capable fellow, almost sixty years old, able to recount the exchange of fire, the retreat to the courthouse, the burning of the courthouse, and the execution of the prisoners. Yet the chief value of his appearance to the prosecution was that one of the white men had shot Brim in the face. One of Brim’s eyes was missing entirely.

“What happened when you were led away from the pecan tree?” Beckwith asked, after eliciting from Brim the long story of the tragic day.

“They led us across the field toward the sugar house. They lined us up.  Some of the men they told to kneel and some they told to stand.”

Brim blew out his cheeks. “By this time there were some womenfolk who had come out to try to find their men.  And some of them found their men, and some of them did not. And some of them did find their men or their sons, and they were dead. And so, the womenfolk were crying and wailing, like Rachel in the Bible for her children.”

Brim paused a moment.

“And then some of the womenfolk were searching out in the field, and so they were a few dozen yards away from us, and they knew what was going to happen, sir, maybe before we did.”

“What happened next, Mr. Brim?”

“The white men started laughing, and complaining, but in a funny way, when they saw the women.  They said, ‘Listen to the cows crying over their dead bulls!’”

“Was it your understanding, Mr. Brim, that the white men called your womenfolk cows and your menfolk bulls?”

“Beeves, they called us.”

“ ‘Beeves,’ meaning cattle?”

“Oh, yes. ‘Have you got your beeves fixed?’ they said. ‘We’ll make good work of this mess of beeves.’”

“What happened to you?”

“They hit me with something in the back of my head, and I fell down and thought I should just play possum. I was on the ground for a long while, until all the shooting stopped.  Then I heard a man walking up to me. He kicked me in the side. I tried not to move. I heard him say, ‘What am I going to do with these d___n n_____s — I cannot kill them all.’”

“Did that man do anything to you?”

“Yes. My nose was bloodied and so I was having a right hard time breathing, and I suppose it made a noise.  They heard me.”

“So, what happened?”

“I heard a pistol cocked, sir, and I thought it was the end.  Then it fired, and a burning pain in my eye. They shot it right out.”

“And is that the reason,” Beckwith paused, “that you have the injury you do?”

“Yes sir,” said Brim. “But I am glad with the Lord to be alive.  And that eye saw enough of this world already.”

If the object of the first week of prosecution had been to provide the jurors with a narrative of the events, the object of the second week was to drive the point home, through extended corroboration from a number of witnesses, so that the strength of the narrative and the guilt of the defendants could not possibly remain in question, and their guilt would be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Beckwith began on Monday with Pinckney Chambers, the poor fellow who had been induced to set the courthouse on fire, who had been captured in the fields while the siege of the courthouse occurred. Chambers did not know who apprehended him, but that man told Chambers he would blow his brains out unless he cooperated.  Chambers was then led to the white militia around the courthouse and brought to Bill Cruikshank.

“Is that the same Bill Cruikshank as the man seated in this courtroom?” Beckwith asked.

“It is.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, sir, Mister Cruikshank says sir, ‘Pink, you’re a good n____, aren’t you?’ I say, ‘Yes sir.’ He says, ‘I heard you were forced into this fight, Pink, and I can get you out of this. You want out of this, Pink, don’t you?’ I says, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“What did he ask you to do?”

Chambers said nothing for some time.

“Well, it was another white man that told me to do it.”

“Do what?”

“He asked me to take a mop and put it on fire, sir,” Chambers said quietly.

“Did you do that?”

Chambers did not answer, and it was evident that he could not suppress his agony much longer.

“Mr. Chambers?” Woods interjected.

“Yes, Judge?” Chambers turned to the judge. Great tears began to roll from his vast brown eyes.

“You can tell me, Mr. Chambers. What happened?”

“Well, Judge,” Chambers sighed, “they told me to take the mop, light it on fire, and set the courthouse on fire. And Lord have mercy on me, Judge, Lord have mercy on me.”

“Did you do that, Mr. Chambers?”

“I did, Judge.”

“Why?”

“They was going to shoot me, Judge, if I didn’t.”

The cross-examination being of a very delicate character, Whitaker carefully proceeded to elicit only a few essential facts: that Chambers had participated in the uprising; that he had fled from the scene; that his flight was without success; that he had willingly been led back to Cruikshank; that Cruikshank never harmed him; and then when faced with a choice between endangering his own life against the lives of dozens of men, he had chosen himself.

By the time Beckwith reached his fifth witness on Tuesday morning, one Wade Ross, the lawyers for the defendants were increasingly aggrieved.  Ellis decided to make an example of Ross who, being younger and less educated than several of the other witnesses, was easily led to confuse the course of events. The extended cross-examination of Ross had the additional benefit of delaying the testimony of other witnesses, perhaps indefinitely.  Beckwith sat seething as Ellis languidly led Ross to muddle one point after another and demanded the opportunity for re-direct.

“You may,” said Woods. “But please make it brief; I perceive there will be many more witnesses ahead of us to-day.”

“There are, Judge!” Beckwith groused. Woods cast a stern look upon Beckwith, but the latter was consumed with his notes.

“Mr. Ross!”

The young black man on the stand fairly jumped.

“Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Ross, you testified previously that you heard a man cry out, ‘Halt! Godd___n you!’ correct?”

“Yes.”

“Objection!” cried Ellis. “He is leading the witness.”

“The witness has answered already,” said Woods, “but Mr. Beckwith, please try to avoid leading.”

“Very well!” said Beckwith. “Who said those words?”

“Mr. Lemoine, sir.”

“Where is Mr. Lemoine now?”

“Sitting in this courtroom, sir.”

“What happened next?”

“I ran to the courthouse.”

“Who did you see before you reached the courthouse?”

“Mr. Hadnot, sir.”

“What did he do?”

“He seized one of the boys I was running with, sir.”

“And did Mr. Hadnot say anything to him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘Godd___n you. I told you what I would to do you if I caught you here.’ ”

“You remember those words?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because Mr. Hadnot’s words were the last words that boy ever heard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because Mr. Hadnot over there shot that boy’s head clean off — ”

“Objection! Leading!” Ellis was on his feet.

“Well,” Beckwith threw up his hands, “I must proceed in this manner after you did the most beastly cross-examination that I have ever listened to — ”

“Mr. Beckwith! What was that, counsel?” Ellis demanded. “You will please repeat that remark of yours. I did not quite hear you.”

“I was expressing my disapproval of your mode of examining witnesses.”

Now Marr jumped to his feet. “He used the word, ‘beastly.’ That is what it was — ‘beastly.’ ”

“Did you, Mr. Beckwith,” Ellis demanded, “apply the term ‘beastly’ to my cross-examination?”

Beckwith scowled. Of all the epithets uttered in the course of the trial — indeed, in the past hour — the word “beastly” might not have been suspected to offend the sensibilities of reasonable gentlemen. But Beckwith had lived in New Orleans for a time sufficient to understand the gravity of the insult to Southern manners, and to perceive where his best interests, not to mention the best interests of the case, lay.

“It was rather a hard term, I’ll confess,” Beckwith said at last. “I did not mean it.”

“I asked you, sir,” Ellis repeated, “if you applied the term ‘beastly’ to my cross-examination?”

Beckwith bit his tongue until his ire subsided.

“I retract it,” Beckwith said, turning directly to Ellis. “I did indeed make use of the word. I was angry when I said it. Had I not been angry, I would not have used it. I try in all cases to treat opposing counsel as gentlemen should be treated.”

Beckwith stood staring at Ellis for some time, as Ellis indulged in the glow of the abject apology. Conscious that the length of Beckwith’s subjugation was essential to his necessary humiliation, but eager to proceed with the trial, Woods let silence prevail for another few seconds.

“This controversy must go no further,” he said at last. “I will allow the witness to step down, and we will take a brief recess.”

Having called more than seventy witnesses, many for only a few minutes, Beckwith rested the government’s case on Thursday, the tenth day of proceedings. It was now Whitaker’s turn, to tear down the edifice of evidence that Beckwith had constructed. He stood up and with a flourish addressed the jury.

“These accused,” Whitaker said, “are charged with banding and conspiring together to accomplish a certain purpose — murder. To find these men guilty you must have proof that they banded and conspired together for the precise objects set forth in the indictment.

“Here is what the defense proposes to prove to you, and in setting forth these matters I must begin six months prior to the events of Easter Sunday. As you no doubt know, the election of 1872 remained contested in our great state, and thus there were two men who believed themselves to be Judge of Grant Parish, and two men who believed themselves to be Sheriff of Grant Parish. What you have already heard is that the man who believed himself to be Judge, and the man who believed himself to be Sheriff, decided to leave nothing to chance, and sent an army of Negroes to occupy the courthouse. Having so incited that mob, they slunk away in the night. Members of the jury, what were the forces of law and order to do under those circumstances but seek to take the courthouse back, so that the matter could be resolved not by force, but by law?

“We will demonstrate that the Negroes were given every opportunity to surrender, and that one white man was shot down under a flag of truce. We will further prove to you, by witnesses of unimpeachable character, that many of these men were not in Colfax at all on the day of the fight. As for the men who were present at the time, Bill Cruikshank was in Colfax for but a short time — to save the life of the Negro Pinckney Chambers. In the same way, Johnny Hadnot and Bill Irwin were in the fight but left well before the unfortunate incident with the prisoners.

“To the extent these men were involved at all, gentlemen of the jury,” Whitaker concluded, “it was for the lawful purpose of suppressing an organized band of men who were inciting and aiding a riot in Grant Parish!”

Long-suppressed murmurs of outrage arose from the gallery, where a sizable contingent of sympathizers for the defendants had accumulated. But those who arrived to court expecting a full-throated defense of the rights of the white man, in response to aggression from the population of former slaves, were to be disappointed. For nearly six days, witness after witness, black and white, man and woman, marched on and off the stand principally to attest to the claim that a defendant alleged by the Government to have been in the vicinity of Colfax was in fact somewhere else at the time.

Two principal conclusions emerged from this stream of witnesses. The first was that Gibbons, Penn, the Lemoines, and Hickman all had a large number of acquaintances for whom friendship was more dear than the oath; the testimony of these witnesses was akin to the old story of the Irishman who, when confronted with six witnesses at trial who swore they saw him steal a shirt from a hedge, promised to bring six honester witnesses who would claim they saw nothing of the sort. But the second, and more curious, conclusion was that either Cruikshank, Irwin, and Hadnot either had no such friends, or the fact of their involvement was irrefutable. No one testified that these men were anywhere other than Colfax at the infamous hour.

The courtroom was entirely full on Friday for the closing arguments. The jury appeared fresher and more alert than in many days, but it had been an exceedingly difficult month for Beckwith. He had, entirely on his own, elicited testimony from several dozen witnesses, and then cross-examined several dozen more. He was nearly fainting of exhaustion, yet into this address to the jury he poured all of his anger and vexation.

“Suppose these Negroes had collected illegally,” Beckwith argued, “although you should not for one moment credit that assumption. Suppose even that they were committing crimes, even robbing and stealing. Well, no body of men, not even the Sheriff, could attack and murder them. They could only be punished by due process of law, as our Constitution declares. If the Negroes at Colfax were a peaceable assembly, then these white men had no right to attack them. If they were not a peaceable assembly, then they should have been lawfully dispersed, not massacred.”

After a few hours of similar argument, Beckwith finally sat down, bathed in sweat.

Marr opened for the defense and reintroduced the primary theme that the cowardly white pretenders, to protect their offices and commissions, had induced a band of ignorant black men to lay down their lives.

“The blood of the murdered Negroes lies not upon the heads of these men!” Marr declared, presenting the defendants. “Their blood lies upon the heads of men like Judge Register, so anxious for his position that he broke into the courthouse, summoned these Negroes from miles away, then with cowardly haste fled from Colfax in the night-time, leaving their victims to fight for ‘the United States.’ The United States! For what principle of patriotism did these men fight and die? For none at all!

“And yet we hear,” Marr turned toward Beckwith, who stared impassively back at him, “that the white men ought to have let the unlawful assembly alone. Well, if they had, the rioters would still be there to-day!

“Look closely at the indictment. Each count is permeated with absurdity. Was there any attempt to prevent these Negroes from peaceably assembling? There was not. Was there any attempt to prevent them from bearing arms? If only there had been! Was there any attempt to prevent them from voting? You have heard nothing of the sort. And finally, the prisoners are charged with murder without due process of law. Well, I say to you that you are bound to reject this charge. Why is the charge of murder before you, here in federal court? Is that the law now? The murder of a white man is prosecuted in the courts of Louisiana, but the murder of a Negro is prosecuted in the courts of the United States?”

Ellis’s closing oration said little of substance but appeared entirely to inflame the jury. The sentiments of the spectators could no longer be restrained, and there were several bouts of applause. At the first of these Woods scowled, but after additional outbursts he grew increasingly vexed.

“We shall have order in this Court,” Woods warned, “and I direct all spectators to refrain from any demonstrations, whether in support or opposition.”

Yet the applause continued in furtive ripples. And when Ellis concluded, his supporters could no longer contain their approbation, and a vast wave swept over the courtroom.

“Order! Order!” cried Woods. “The Deputy Sheriff shall bring before me any man or woman responsible for that breach of decorum!”

This was an unenviable task; many of the ladies, in particular, appeared severely guilty. After some time, one gentleman was deemed by the Deputy Sheriff to be sufficiently culpable, arrested on the spot, and found by Judge Woods to be in contempt.

There was no applause during Beckwith’s rebuttal.

Woods instructed the jury, and on the nineteenth day of trial, deliberations finally began.

Beckwith walked numbly from the courtroom back to his offices, where upon his desk the New Orleans Bulletin from the preceding Friday excoriated him for the prosecution of the Colfax defendants. D_____d if I do, d_____d if I don’t, Beckwith thought. The curdled cream of New Orleans society despised him for this case, while that fool Williams had denied Beckwith’s requests for more money. There were prosecutions that could not be made, or prosecutions that could not succeed, and so the lawless element persisted in violence.

(v.)

It was almost dark on Wednesday evening when the jury sent out a note that it had reached a verdict. The lawyers shook off their astonishment — once a jury retires to deliberate, counsel enter a state of suspended animation and are as vaguely surprised when the jury disrupts this quiescence as a mosquito embalmed in amber must be when found by a naturalist. Judge Woods, who had resorted to playing euchre with the Governor to pass the time, was equally surprised that the confusion sowed by the defendants’ legal arguments, which Bradley had permitted to be heard before the jury, had not unduly prolonged the jury’s deliberations.

The lawyers and Judge Woods speedily assembled in the courtroom as the bailiff lit the gas jets to fend off the evening. The prisoners were taken from their beds in the jail, decidedly the worse for wear, with various chills and fevers. Barely a dozen spectators were present, having learned only accidentally that a verdict had been reached. The absence of a crowd lent the proceedings a decidedly informal air, as if the judge and lawyers were simply wrapping up loose ends at the conclusion of a long day of trial.

The eyes of Beckwith, Whitaker, Marr, and Ellis followed every motion of every juror, every glance as the men entered the room, in the lawyerly dogma that a juror will not look a man in the eye after deciding to condemn him. These jurors, however, looked this way and that, and it was impossible to tell whether their consciences were at rest or troubled. The act of condemning another man causes no small discomposure for a juror, but in the circumstances of this case, the possibility could not be excluded that the agitation arose from holding white men to account for the death of Negroes.  They took their places in the jury-box.

“Have you reached a verdict?” Woods asked.

“We have, your Honor,” the foreman replied, in a wavering voice.

Beckwith bit his lip. This was no mistrial; he had either succeeded or failed utterly.

The foreman adjusted his spectacles, but his hands trembled as he held the verdict paper.

“Judge, I cannot read this — but if one of the other jurors can, I ask him to read it for me.”

“Of course.”

It was impossible to tell, in the dim courtroom, whether the distress of the foreman was a good omen for the prosecution. The foreman passed the verdict paper to another juror, who cleared his throat and read it in a strong, firm voice.

“We the jury find William Cruikshank, John Hadnot, and William Irwin guilty of conspiracy to murder on the first sixteen counts, and we recommend them to the mercy of the court. We find Denis Lemoine, Prudhomme Lemoine, Austin Gibbons, Thomas Hickman, and Clement Penn not guilty. We find all defendants not guilty of murder.”

There was confusion at the defense table — some of the men were now ruined, while others had a great weight lifted from their shoulders. None were able to control their emotions at first, but, under the guidance of Whitaker, Marr, and Ellis, the five men who were found not guilty soon formed a protective ring around the three who were now condemned. Beckwith did not look at the defense table. A split verdict was disappointing, to be sure, and the acquittal of all of the men on charges of murder was perplexing, but he had obtained convictions on the conspiracy charges. Some form of justice had prevailed.

“I thank the jury for their service,” said Woods. “I hereby order the men found guilty to jail pending sentencing, and those acquitted to remain in custody, as there are other indictments against them.”

The two Lemoines, Gibbons, Hickman, and Penn cried out as one.

“Your Honor!” shouted Ellis.

“Mr. Ellis,” replied Woods coolly, “you are free to ask the government to stipulate to their release. But it is now almost ten o’clock at night, and unless you can reach immediate agreement upon a bond for each defendant, which I hardly think will be possible given the lateness of the hour, there is no security for any of these men to answer the other indictment. I shall see you all tomorrow morning. We are adjourned.”

The indignation that Judge Woods’s actions inspired amongst the defendants had increased considerably by the next morning. Several newspapers condemned the verdict and printed the names of the jurors, in the event that upstanding citizens might be inclined to remonstrate with them as they saw fit. Yet the majority of the ill feelings in the community was directed at Judge Woods. The next morning the courtroom was crowded once again, and the principal subject of comment among the spectators was the bias of the jurist.

 “Woods has exhibited nothing but venom and hate toward these unfortunate men,” whispered one man to another.

“He is a partisan of the deepest dye.”

“Why the sympathies of this judicial officer should be so thoroughly enlisted on behalf of these Negroes of Grant Parish, why all of his rulings should be in their favor — ”

“ — and manifestly unjust to the prisoners — ”

“ — I am at a loss to understand.”

“It is proof,” said another man, “that the lives of Southern men weigh nothing in the scales with Negroes.”

“The constitutional amendments were born of fraud!”

“The work of carpetbaggers and Negroes, supported by United States soldiery!”

“And yet we are told that we are blessed with a beneficent government!”

These comments were silenced by the disapproving bailiff, who ordered the spectators to rise upon Judge Woods’s entrance. Some in the gallery refused.

“Counsel, what matters shall we take up this morning?”

“Your Honor,” said Beckwith, “the Government has reached a stipulation with the defense to release upon their own recognizance the defendants who were acquitted yesterday, subject to being recalled to answer to other indictments.”

“So ordered.” Woods signed the stipulation. The five men were unshackled and embraced their counsel. Whitaker placed one hand upon Cruikshank’s shoulder.

“Your Honor,” said Whitaker, “I should like to make a motion for a new trial and request a copy of the charge the Court gave to the jury, which I believe may have prejudiced the jury unduly.”

“I shall supply you with a copy.”

“While I am confident in the success of my motion,” Whitaker continued, “I am constrained to request that, in the event that my motion is denied, I am afforded an opportunity to move that the judgment of conviction be stayed.  I believe Justice Bradley expressed some interest in that motion.”

“Well,” Woods began, after a slight pause, “I have telegraphed to Justice Bradley the verdict, and I believe that he will not attend again. I understand that he may send us a written opinion.”

“Your Honor,” said Marr, rising, “it was my understanding that Justice Bradley had pledged himself to return, and the defense strongly feels that his presence would be most desirable.”

“We shall see. I shall make a prompt decision on the motion, and if Justice Bradley feels so inclined, he shall appear.”

Beckwith could lodge no objection to proceeding in this manner. It had been an ill-starred hour when Bradley appeared at the New Orleans Customs House to meddle with the trial, and his presence was to Beckwith a nightmare every moment he remained. The fact that Beckwith had secured any convictions at all was a great victory. Yet it was imperative that the convictions stick, Beckwith resolved, for any other result would foment lawlessness all over the South.

Two weeks later, June was turning to July, and the courtroom was unbearably hot and crowded.

Judge Woods read a lengthy and detailed opinion rejecting the defense motion for a new trial. The result was unsurprising; it is an uncommon thing for a judge to find fault with his own management of a trial.

“And so, for these reasons,” he concluded, “the motion for a new trial is denied.” He paused. “Justice Bradley will now rule on the motion to stay the judgment of conviction.”

Now Justice Bradley ascended the bench and proceeded to read his opinion, in a most businesslike fashion. He assayed the general provisions of the indictment and then turned to the question of whether the Act of 1870 was the appropriate mode of enforcing the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment’s assurances of equal protection, and the Fifteenth Amendment’s protections for voting.

Beckwith sank his head upon his chest, for dread had enveloped him. Bradley’s opinion had not begun with the facts of the case, as was customary. And why should Bradley set forth the facts of the case? Beckwith thought bitterly. Having been absent from the majority of the trial, Bradley had but the most attenuated notion of what the facts were, and appeared to have spent a considerable portion of his railway journey elucidating esoteric notions of constitutional law, not reviewing the record of the trial. It seemed that Bradley had never apprised himself of the evidence but instead had taken some person’s third-hand account of its substance.

At the defense table, meanwhile, it was clear where Bradley was headed, and into the minds of Whitaker, Ellis, and Marr all entertained the same notion that a barbecue to raise funds for the defense of their clients might occupy a pleasantly lucrative afternoon.

“The war of race,” Bradley explained, “is subject to the jurisdiction of the government of the United States; and when any atrocity is committed, it may be punished by the laws and in the courts of the United States; but any outrages, atrocities, or conspiracies which spring from the ordinary felonious or criminal intent which prompts such unlawful acts are within the sole jurisdiction of the states.”

Here, Bradley noticed an error in his manuscript and motioned for Woods to hand him an inkpot. Wordlessly, but with a slight flash of indignation, Woods did so. Bradley dipped in his quill and made the correction.

“The power conferred by these amendments, therefore, does not authorize Congress to pass laws for the punishment of ordinary crimes and offenses against persons of the colored race or any other race. That power belongs to the state government alone. All ordinary murders, robberies, assaults, thefts, and offenses whatsoever can be prosecuted only in the state courts.”

At this there was general nodding and murmuring of approvals among the spectators whose sympathies lay with the defendants. Beckwith, on the other hand, sat seething. The hostilities had certainly seemed a war of race to the dozens of men whose dead bodies lay abandoned in a field to greet Easter Monday.

“The first count in the indictment,” Bradley went on, “for conspiracy to interfere with the right of peaceable assembly, is guaranteed in the First Amendment, but against government, not private persons.  The second count of the indictment, which alleges an infringement of the right to bear arms, suffers from the same defect. The third count charges a conspiracy to deprive certain citizens of African descent of their lives and liberties without due process of law.  But every murderer and robber does this. The indictment must be dismissed in its entirety.”

“The judges not being in agreement,” Bradley concluded, with a sidelong glare at Woods, who stared straight ahead, “the motion to stay the judgment and release the prisoners shall be granted, and the case certified to the Supreme Court.”

There was a powerful whooping in the courtroom, which the bailiff made futile effort to contain.

“A Daniel come to judgment!” cried one particularly gleeful damsel of New Orleans. The defendants began to weep with happiness as Whitaker, Ellis, and Marr clapped them on their backs.

“I, of course, regard your opinion with deference,” Woods muttered to Bradley, as the courtroom resounded with jubilation. “But the indictment was valid. I hope that our disagreement will permit your colleagues on the Supreme Court to give this matter its complete consideration.”

“They shall agree with me, I assure you,” Bradley muttered back. “And I expect they shall do so unanimously. Mr. Beckwith shall merely waste his time, and ours.”