A correspondent of the New York
World, writing from New Orleans, gives the following account of the recent Yankee election in
Louisiana.
It is interesting both in its bearing upon the present and as a historical document:
The election has transpired, and the result has been what was determined upon beforehand.
Mr. Hahn is elected, and so would have been any other man who suited
Mr. Lincoln and his
Lieutenant.
He got all the votes which military necessity could compel to be , and though
Mr. Chase's candidate got a few of them, and the
Constitutional Unionists a few others, yet this was necessary to show that there was freedom of choice.
One thing was not free, and that was the privilege of not voting and of not taking the iron-clad oath to support
Mr. Lincoln's future as well as past proclamations.
You may possibly feel some doubt about this, and if so I will here transcribe for you an article which appeared, in all the glory of large type well leaded, in the
Government organ on Saturday, the day before the election:
The Duty of Voters.--We have frequently been asked whether it is required of everybody to vote, and what action will be taken against those who neglect or refuse.
In answer to the first, we would say that it is not only the privilege but the duty of every qualified voter to exercise his franchise.
In reply to the second query, we refer all those in doubt to the following extracts from General Orders, No. 23. "Open hostility cannot be permitted.
Indifference will be treated as crime and faction as treason.
Men who refuse to defend their country with the ballot box or cartridge box have no just claim to the benefits of liberty regulated by law. * * * Whoever is indifferent or hostile must choose between the liberty which foreign lands afford, the poverty of the rebel States, and the innumerable and inappreciable blessings which our Government confers upon its people." The safest way is to go up and vote.
It was hinted about that all the tickets were numbered, and that an investigation would be had as to how each man voted, but I do not believe that any such step was actually taken.
If it was I will try and ascertain it for you. But this hint and the well-known fact that their tickets were of a peculiar pattern enabled the
Government to spot every man who would vote against them, and was enough to determine every one who had any timidity about him in voting for "the
Government." It is true that
Flanders cut this up a little; but he represented a part of the
Government, and promised to protect those who went for him. --Money was lavishly used.
One young creole was offered five hundred dollars to use his influence for
Flanders, and it was not much.
If it was as liberally disbursed elsewhere, the votes which
Flanders got must have cost a very large sum.
Let us look at the men elected to fill the chief offices of the great
State of Louisiana.
Of
Mr. Hahn little used be said; he is a man certainly not inferior in intellectual, acquirements and capacity to the average of Governors, but the fact that he has been elected one may say, under the direct orders of
Mr. Lincoln, as a military commander, and that he will be expected to act in all respects as he may be directed at headquarters, must detract much from any expectation of his usefulness as a chief magistrate.
In case, however, of a possible change of Department Commanders, he might assert an independence which now appears to be in abeyance.
It might be well here to observe that notwithstanding that he was the "Free State candidate," or one of them; and not withstanding that the temporary writers for his paper and his other newspaper advocates used strong abolition language, it is generally believed that
Mr. Hahn would take the earliest opportunity, whenever this became a free State to white men, to repudiate all such sentiments.
All his early friends, all his early associates, and the great body of those who voted for him,
sotto voce, declare this; and the chief reason given why
Mr. Durant and his friends insisted on running
Flanders was that they did not believe that
Hahn's abolitionism was more than skin deep. --
Hahn, the people say, talks thus: "As we take the iron-clad with mental reservation, neither he nor we mean what we say, we do so to keep the
Yankees from driving us off, that they may take our property."
Mr. Wells, elected
Lieutenant-Governor, is a planter, who owned a large number of slaves.
He looks to the
Union to pay him for them, and his dignified position will enable him to push his claim.
As they are all in Confederate hands, he will present his claim, I presume, at an early day.
Dr. Belden, as State Treasurer, and
Mr. McNair, as
Superintendent of Education, are men of fair capacity.
The latter will be peculiarly well suited to seeing to the instruction of contraband in mathematics, they being especially confided to his care by
Gen Banks's
General Order No. 23.
While there is no doubt but that there has been polled in this election a considerable vote of the citizens of the
State, secured by fear, profuse expenditure of money, and all the appliances which, under martial law, can so easily be applied to compel it, even this will not account for more than two thousand of the vote polled.
Do you ask me upon what authority I make such an assertion?
Louisiana sent into the Confederate army about thirty-five thousand men, nearly all voters, and the greater part of them taken from the lower part of the
State.
The young athletic firemen of this city are known to be Secessionists and registered enemies, who were not sent over the lines because they would be of service to
The wealthier citizens have left largely for
Europe and the
North, and some three thousand registered enemies are reported to have been sent over the lines in May last.
A great many have run the blockade and multitudes left with
Governor Moore.
Of the permanent residents remaining in the city, a large number are foreigners.
Add to them the staunch Union men, like Rozelins and
Rozier, who refused to take the "iron clads." and the staid and quiet men who are yet Secessionists in principle, who would not vote, and I do not believe that there were as many as two thousand voters under the
Constitution whose votes were cast on Monday.
By whom then were the ten thousand and upward of votes given?
You can obtain your answer in par by the votes polled at
Fort Jackson,
Fort Macomb, Fort Butler, and
Madisonville,
Franklin, and various other points where troops are stationed, and where all the original inhabitants have disappeared.
To day I am told that there are votes to come from
Pensacola, in Florida; a reserve which it was thought might be necessary, but which may now be dispensed with.
It was very easy to see who were the bulk of the voters here.
When "strangers." as
Mr. Hahn called them before he became a candidate for Governor, like Atoch,
Sullivan,
Hughes, the
Hills, and the like, were the prominent spokesmen and leaders, you could well judge who would be the most numerous among the followers.
The faces at the polls, except those of policemen, were mostly strange ones, and of the known ones most were those with whom we have become familiar as the officers of the army or persons temporarily quartered upon us as the incumbents of our civil offices.
Another indication as to whence come a large part of the vote in the city you will find in the New Orleans
Times, of the 23d, where an account is given of a convivial assemblage at the house of
Mr. Cuthbert Bullet, himself, indeed, an old citizen, and a supporter of the Hahn or Lincoln ticket.
He is
President of the
Pioneer Lincoln Club, and entertained it that night at his residence.
It is stated that this gentleman, who is an officer of the
Government, in the course of his remarks complimented the shipmasters and river men who had taken so prominent a part in the election, and closed by proposing a tender of the thanks of the club to them for their meritorious action in the campaign.
The motion was received with cheers and unanimously carried, after which the
President made some congratulatory remarks on the result of the election.
I counted not less than twenty five river steamboats, from the upper country, of the largest class, besides numerous small ones, and the vast quantity of Government transport ships must add largely to this source of supply for the polls.
But the most glaring misuse of the elective franchise was the casting of votes in this election, openly and unhesitatingly, by gentlemen wearing the uniform and decorations of field and staff officers of the army, who have as distinctly their residences and homes in
New England, New York, and elsewhere beyond the line of contention, as
Mr. Lincoln his in
Illinois, or
Mr. Chase his in
Ohio.
Said one of these gentlemen to a staunch old Union man — who has, temporarily at least, lost his all by a uniform adherence to principle, and who will not now sacrifice this, his only remaining possession, for the sake of the profits of confiscation and cotton speculation — said one of these officers to him: "I have just been to the polls and voted." "Indeed," was the reply, "I was not aware that you had given up your home in--." "Oh, no!
but you see I have resided here a year, and that entitles me to vote.
Have you voted?" The reply was a mournful, but a proud one. "No, sir; the
Constitution of
Louisiana requires that all votes shall be cast in the parish of the residence of the voter, from which I am debarred.
I for one will not east a fraudulent vote."
The effect of this election, conducted as it has been, and with the settled purpose of overturning and remodeling the institutions of the
State upon such plans as may be furnished by the wisdom of a Dostie or an Atocha, and consecrated by the piety of a Sullivan or a Hughes as its consequent, will do more to prevent the possibility of a willing return by the people of
Louisiana to the fold of the
Union than anything which could be done by the leaders of succession themselves.
It is for this reason more than any other that such men as and lews and
Barker, and the residue of those irreproachable Union men of the earliest and most approved standing, have done all they could to prevent these radical and altogether hurtful measures from being pushed through at this moment.
To-day we are told that the final triumph of the
Union cause cannot be delayed but a few months longer, and yet these schemes are put into action for the purpose of taking a snap judgment upon the great mass of the permanent and abiding people of the
State, the inhabitants of interior parishes of the
State.
