"and as if to goad you to desperation, private arms are seized"

Stirring Proclamation by the Lieutenant Governor
and Acting Governor of Louisiana,

   An extra issued from the Bulletin office at 4 p.m., contains the following

PROCLAMATION:

   To the People of Louisiana: For two years you have borne with patience and fortitude a great wrong through fraud and violence. The government of your choice has been overthrown and its power usurped. Protest after protest, appeal after appeal to the President of the United States and to Congress have failed to give you the relief you had a right under the Constitution to demand. The wrong has not been repaired. On the contrary, through the instrumentality of partisan judges, you are debarred from all legal remedy. Day by day taxation has been increasing, with costs and penalties amounting to confiscation of your property. Your substance squandered, your credit ruined, resulting in failure and bankruptcy of your valued institutions. The right of suffrage is virtually taken from you by the enactment of skillfully devised registration and election laws. The judicial branch of your government has been stricken down by the conversion of the legal posse comitatus of the Sheriff, to the use of the usurper for the purpose of defeating the decrees of the courts, his defiance of law leading him to use this very force for the arrest of the Sheriff, while engaged in the execution of processes of the court. To these may be added a corrupt and vicious Legislature, enacting laws in violation of the constitution, for the purpose of guarding and perpetuating their usurped authority. A metropolitan police, paid by the city, under the control of the usurper, is quartered upon you to overawe and keep you in subjection. Every public right has been denied, and as if to goad you to desperation, private arms are seized and individuals arrested. To such extremities are you driven that manhood revolts at further submission. Constrained from a sense of duty, as the legally elected Lieutenant Governor, acting Governor in the absence of Gov. McEnery, I do hereby issue this my proclamation, calling upon the militia of the State, embracing all persons between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, without regard to color or previous condition, to arm and assemble under their respective officers, for the purposes of driving the usurpers from the State.

Given under my hand and seal the 14th day of September, 1874. D.P. Penn,
Lieut Gov. and Act'g Gov.
GENERAL ORDER SO. 1
Executive Department,               }
state of Louisiana,                        }
New Orleans, Sept. 14th, 1874. }

I. Gen. Frederick M. Ogden is hereby appointed provisional General of the Louisiana State Militia, and will assume command and organize into companies, regiments and battalions.
II. Gen. Ogden will report the names of the staff, regimental and company officers to this department forthwith to be commissioned.
By command.      D.P. Penn.
Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor,
aud Commander in Chief of Louisiana
State Militia.

Address to the Colored People.

To the colored people of the State of Louisiana:

   In the grand movement now on foot against the enormities of the rule of Kellogg's usurpation, rest assured that no harm is meant towards you, your property or your rights. Pursue your usual avocations and you will not be molested. We war against the thieves, plunderers and spoilers of the State, who are involving your race and ours in common ruin. The rights of the colored as well as of the white race, we are determined to uphold and defend.
D.P. PENN
Lieut. Gov., Acting Governor and Commander-in-Chief
of Louisiana State Militia.

- Nashville Union and American, Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, September 15, 1874. New Series--No. 1,881. Pg. 1.