William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

In Kellogg's list of fifty-three adherents, twenty-eight are Negroes. Nearly all these Negroes have been slaves-labourers in the rice-ground and the cotton-field. A few can read print, and scratch their names; not many can do either; while only three or four can express their meaning in decent English words. Most of them are so poor and ignorant, so vain and shifty, that Kellogg dares not trust them in the streets and grog-shops. New Orleans, a gay and rattling town, is rich in drinking-bars and galling hells-places in which men like Pinchback serve apprenticeships. These bars and hells have dangerous fascinations for Mose and Pete, Negroes fresh from the cotton-fields, and eager to enjoy their freedom in a great metropolis. Spies bring in news to the State House, that clever and unscrupulous men are dealing with the Negro senators. Cousins, the Negro member for St. Tammany, is said to have been kidnapped — in the street and carried to a distant part. His vote is lost-a set-off to the one false Conservative. Other Negroes are said to be spending their dollars and getting drunk.

Kellogg perceives that he must act.