John Dimitry , A. M., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.1, Louisiana
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[4] respectable and wealthy party back of it—the first response came through a call, published in the papers, for a Bell and Everett ratification meeting to be held on May 30th. This call was signed by an imposing number of citizens, prominent in every branch of the public interest. Among the names subscribed were found those of Randell Hunt and Christian Roselius, eminent members of the bar; Moses Greenwood, banker; John R. Conway, afterward mayor; W. H. C. King, journalist; I. G. Seymour, editor of the Bulletin; Thomas Sloo, merchant; F. A. Lumsden, editor of the Picayune; W. O. Denegre, lawyer; E. T. Parker, sheriff of Orleans parish; and, to conclude with a war name, J. B. Walton, to be veteran major of the Washington Artillery when the bugle should sound for battle, and the gallant colonel of that superb battalion on fields not less hard-fought than glorious.

At this meeting, with all their voices for Bell and Everett, appeared for the first time the ‘Young Bell Ringers.’ These were a gallant band of marchers; young men, stepping jauntily and jesting while they stepped; evidently musically inclined, since in their bands, with a pleasantly conceived jeu d'esprit on their principal candidate's name, each bore and zealously rang a bell, great or small, with note sharp or mellow, as the need was. The ‘Young Bell Ringers’ presented the picturesque element in the presidential campaign of 1860. Opposed to them in the canvass, equally light in step, equally witty in tongue, equally proud in their candidates, came, sweeping along in their processions in pride of hopeful youth, the ‘Young Men's Breckinridge and Lane Club.’ Less wealthy than their rivals, they did not spring from darkness into sudden light. Their growth from a small beginning had been slow—from darkness into half tone. At first the ‘Young Men's Breckinridge and Lane Club’ showed twelve members, as aggressive in speeches as they were sturdy in spirit