man’s face ready to blow his brains out if he moved.  The other colored man, Charles, was made the victim of a savage attack by Officer Mora, who used a billet and then drew a gun and tried to kill Charles.  Charles drew his gun nearly as quickly as the policeman, and began a duel in the street, in which both participants were shot.  The policeman got the worst of the duel, and fell helpless to the sidewalk.  Charles made his escape.  Cantrelle took Pierce, his captive, to the police station, to which place Mora, the wounded officer, was also taken, and a man hunt at once instituted for Charles, the wounded fugitive.

In any law-abiding community Charles would have been justified in delivering himself up immediately to the properly constituted authorities and asking a trial by a jury of his peers.  He could have been certain that in resisting an unwarranted arrest he had a right to defend his life, even to the point of taking one in that defense, but Charles knew that his arrest in New Orleans, even for defending his life, meant nothing short of a long term in the penitentiary, and still more probable death by lynching at the hands of a cowardly mob.  He very bravely determined to protect his life as long as he had breath in his body and strength to draw a hair trigger on his would-be murderers.  How well he was justified in that belief is well shown by the newspaper accounts which were given of this transaction.  Without a single line of evidence to justify the assertion, the New Orleans daily papers at once declared that both Pierce and Charles were desperadoes, that they were contemplating a burglary and that they began the assault upon the policemen.  It is interesting to note how the two leading papers of New Orleans, the Picayune and the Times-Democrat, exert themselves to justify the policemen in the absolutely unprovoked attack upon the two colored men.  As these two papers did all in their power to give an excuse for the action of the policemen, it is interesting to note their versions.  The Times-Democrat of Tuesday morning, the twenty-fifth, says: 

Two blacks, who are desperate men, and no doubt will be proven burglars, made it interesting and dangerous for three bluecoats on Dryades street, between Washington Avenue and Sixth Street, the Negroes using pistols first and dropping Patrolman Mora.  But the desperate darkies did not go free, for the taller of the two, Robinson, is badly wounded and under cover, while Leonard Pierce is in jail.

For a long time that particular neighborhood has been troubled with bad Negroes, and the neighbors were complaining to the Sixth Precinct police about them.  But of late Pierce and Robinson had been camping on a door step on the street, and the people regarded their actions as suspicious.  It got to such a point that some of the residents were afraid to go to bed, and last night this was told Sergeant Aucoin, who was rounding up his men.  He had