the officers.

This instruction was given before anybody had been killed, and the only
evidence that Charles was a desperate man lay in the fact that he had
refused to be beaten over the head by Officer Mora for sitting on a step
quietly conversing with a friend. Charles resisted an absolutely unlawful
attack, and a gun fight followed. Both Mora and Charles were shot, but
because Mora was white and Charles was black, Charles was at once declared
to be a desperado, made an outlaw, and subsequently a price put upon his
head and the mob authorized to shoot him like a dog, on sight.

The New Orleans _Picayune_ of Wednesday morning said:

But he has gone, perhaps to the swamps, and the disappointment of the
bluecoats in not getting the murderer is expressed in their curses, each
man swearing that the signal to halt that will be offered Charles will
be a shot.

In that same column of the _Picayune_ it was said:

Hundreds of policemen were about; each corner was guarded by a squad,
commanded either by a sergeant or a corporal, and every man had the word
to shoot the Negro as soon as he was sighted. He was a desperate black
and would be given no chance to take more life.

Legal sanction was given to the mob or any man of the mob to kill Charles
at sight by the Mayor of New Orleans, who publicly proclaimed a reward of
two hundred and fifty dollars, not for the arrest of Charles, not at all,
but the reward was offered for Charles's body, "dead or alive." The
advertisement was as follows: