Each party considered the other the aggressor. The Republicans of the North viewed the massacre as a new rebellion, while the amnestied Southerners considered the riot the result of a justified resistance to an attempt to force negro suffrage and then negro rule upon them. It is very nearly certain that the first shot was fired by a negro, but this would not justify the wholesale massacre executed by the police. It could, therefore, be held by the Republicans with a great show of truth that the public authorities of the reconstructed "State" government of Louisiana not only would not extend the equal protection of the laws to all persons, but would themselves deprive persons even of life without due process of law.
[Sidenote: The issue of Reconstruction in the campaign of 1866.]
The issue of the campaign of 1866 was thus made up. It was simply whether Congress should reconstruct the President's reconstructed "States," or rather should pronounce the President's Reconstruction, and the Reconstruction effected by the amnestied Southerners, null and void, and proceed to do the work _de novo_, with the purpose of creating adequate guarantee for life and property and for the equal protection of the laws to all.
Although it was not a Presidential year, the election of the members of the House of Representatives with such a problem to deal with, and the election of "State" legislatures which would consider the question of adopting the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, made the canvass of 1866 a truly national { 99} one. Four National Conventions were held during the summer and early autumn, two of each party.
[Sidenote: The National Conventions of the summer of 1866.]
The Administration party led off with their great meeting in Philadelphia on the 14th of August. There were a few prominent Republicans among the delegates, such as Montgomery Blair, Raymond, Dix, Cowan, Doolittle and Browning, but the vast majority of them were Democrats. All of the Southern delegates were such. The larger number of the Northern Democrats were conservative men of the stamp and style of R. C. Winthrop, W. B. Lawrence, S. J. Tilden, J. P. Stockton, J. E. English and Reverdy Johnson, but there were also present men of more radical anti-national creed, like Fernando Wood, J. G. Sinclair, and James Campbell. Even Clement L. Vallandigham, presented himself as a delegate. There were many, however, who objected to his presence and he withdrew. The doctrines put forward at this meeting were simply those of the President's Reconstruction policy, the doctrines that the "States" in our Federal system are indestructible and immaculate, and under submission to national authority always possessed of the rights of local self-government and of representation in the National Government. These doctrines were developed into such extreme forms of statement, and such extreme results were boldly accepted as their logical consequences, that the cause of the Administration was damaged rather than helped at the North by the work and experiences of the convention.