The New Orleans Daily Democrat

THE SENATORSHIP
The propriety of an early adjournment of the Legislature, and the election of a Senator, are now being actively discussed both by the members of the Legislature and their constituencies—the people. We are content to leave the question of adjournment to the discretion of our representatives; but the rumors abroad, that there is a disposition on the part of some of the senators and representatives to elect a Radical to the United States Senate, demands serious consideration.
The people throughout the State have very clearly expressed their opposition to any such action, and we do not hesitate to say that the democratic senator or representative who should vote for any man, for the United States Senate, who is not in full political accord with the principles upon which the last canvass in this State was fought and won, would betray the trust confided to his hands by the people who elected him.
The President asks no degrading price for the justice he has promised to accord us, and deep have we sunk in cowardice and degradation, if we are prepared to confer one of the highest honors Louisiana can bestow, upon any one of the creatures who have been, in the last eight years, identified with the rule which has been our ruin and our disgrace, or upon any one who at all times, and under all circumstances, has not been in direct and pronounced opposition to that rule.
Mr. Hayes has not asked us to degrade ourselves by perpetrating a bald fraud upon our State and upon the United States Senate. But, if there are any members of the Louisiana Legislature (and, thank Heaven, we do not believe there are any such,) who are so craven in spirit that they are ready to elect a Senator at the dictation of the President, we would say to them that they can best subserve the wishes of that official by electing a straight-out Democrat.
If Mr. Hayes in truth means to carry out his Southern policy, he must prefer, to the election to the United States Senate, from this and other Southern States, of Radicals, the election of honorable Democrats. It is the interest of Southern Democrats—especially Louisiana Democrats—to sustain the President in his Southern policy, while on the other hand, it is to the interest of every Radical in the South to defeat that policy. There is no Radical in Louisiana who could give President Hayes any influence or support if elected to the Senate, and there is not a straight-out Democrat who has been mentioned in connection with this high office who would not be a tower of strength to him there, so long as he proved true to his pledges to protect and rehabilitate the South.
Are Louisianians more craven in spirit; are they fonder of degradation than the South Carolinians? Have we become in the last eight years constitutional dirt-eaters, that we talk of electing to the highest places in our gift some one of the wretches who for years have tramped us in the dust and rifled our pockets? We trust not. But if we have, men who respect themselves had better begin to make their arrangements to leave the State.
Gov. Hampton emancipated South Carolina by his firm and uncompromising attitude. He refused to defile his soul by having any political associations with any of the thieves and rascallions who have scourged his people.
We have no idea that the Legislature will for a moment entertain the thought of making a Louisiana Radical a United States Senator. We know that the Democracy of the State have not elected to the Legislature a set of men who would give such an indorsement to the past eight years of misrule and plunder, and such a refutation of all the charges we have made against the Kelloggs the Packards and their kind.
Yet rumors to this effect are abroad and we have thought it proper to set the Legislature right before the public.