So read a New York Times (pdf) headline of April 25, 1877. The article explained that on this day, April 24, 1877, at noon, “United States troops were removed from the State-house of Louisiana.” Thus ended the era of Reconstruction.
And thus began an era of unfettered white supremacy in Louisiana. The Grant administration had stationed federal troops in New Orleans (Baton Rouge would not become the permanent state capital for two more years) to insure that Louisiana’s Republican governor, Stephen Packard, would not be usurped by Francis Nicholls, a Democratic Redeemer, planter aristocrat, and former Confederate general.
Packard and Nicholls had squared off in the previous year’s gubernatorial election. Nicholls had received more votes. But the state’s Returning Board had overturned the outcome, basing its decision on a law that allowed it to invalidate votes in the event of intimidation or fraud. Which, given Louisiana’s recent history, wasn’t a hard case to make. As recently as 1872, two separate governments had claimed power in the state. Republican Governor William Kellogg had only seized control after federal troops had arrived to maintain order. Terrorist organizations, including the White League, had then formed, poised to intimidate freedpeople and suppress Republican votes. In the spring of 1873, for example, more than 100 African-Americans had been killed in the notorious Colfax Massacre, followed by countless other episodes in which black people had been beaten or killed by the de facto military arm of the state’s Democratic Party, including during the run-up to the 1876 election.
Following the Returning Board’s decision to overturn the popular vote, Democrats and Republicans, as they had in 1872, began organizing state governments. Early in the new year, two legislatures, one Democratic and the other Republican, selected, respectively, Nicholls and Packard as the state’s governors. From that point on, as the Compromise of 1877 played out behind closed doors in Washington, federal troops in New Orleans held the White League in check, guaranteeing Governor Packard control of the state house. Until, on this day in 1877, those troops withdrew. The Times reported that the White League “celebrat[ed] the victory by cannon firing and bell ringing.” Packard retired the next day, ceding control to Nicholls. Two years later, Governor Nicholls chaired the state convention that promulgated the Louisiana Constitution of 1879, disfranchising freedmen and some poor whites by embedding literacy and education tests in the law. The Redeemers had carried the day.
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April 25, 2008 at 6:25 am
When this grey world crumbles like a cake… « Blurred Productions
[...] Today also marked the end of Reconstruction. What a great day! « Soon! SOON! Crossing the Line: Salo or the 120 Days [...]
April 25, 2008 at 6:42 am
Kevin Levin
Hi Ari, — Thanks for the reminder. I would like to note, however, that we run the risk of simplifying the so-called “end of Reconstruction” if we remain tied to traditional dates. Here in Virginia one could argue that Reconstruction began and flourished between 1879 and 1883 under the leadership of William Mahone and the Readjuster which constituted the most successful bi-racial third party in Nineteenth-Century America. The broader point that Reconstruction did not signal a fundamental turn in racial politics is not mine, of course, but C. Van Woodward’s. I am rereading Harvard Sitkoff’s _The Struggle For Black Equality_ in preparation for my class today and he notes that between 1896 and 1900 black voter registration “plummeted” 96 percent in Louisiana. No doubt, the Redeemers achieved an important victory in 1877, but that did not reflect an abrupt end to black political action throughout the South. Of course, I am not telling you anything you don’t already know - just wanted to spice up the discussion a bit. Thanks again.
April 25, 2008 at 12:08 pm
ari
Kevin! Writing in from your hiatus! Anyway, thanks for a great comment, which is, of course, right. That said, while I’m sure that Sitkoff’s statistics are accurate, I still wonder about this: what percentage of the state’s African-American electorate in 1895 was located in New Orleans, where literacy and education tests, along with voter intimidation, may not have as severely curtailed voting at that point as such measures had already in other other parts of the state?
In other words, new Jim Crow laws, promulgated in 1895-96 (and later embedded in the Constitution of 1898), along with the impact of the Plessy decision, may have done for New Orleans what the 1879 Constitution had already done for the rest of the state. Without the numbers, though, I can’t be sure. Regardless, my point is this: having black registration “plummet” by 96 percent is obviously meaningful. But without knowing what the number of registered voters was before it plummeted, and also where the registered voters had lived, it’s hard to know exactly what to make of that statistic. If you see what I mean.
April 25, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Gene O'Grady
Mahone was the Confederate general from the Crater? Given what happened to the black troops in that battle (and I have no idea if Mahone had anything to do with that) I’m a little surprised to see him in that company.
Has anyone ever studied the post-Civil War careers of the Confederate generals? Longstreet and evidently Mahone seem to have been fairly respectable, some others (Gordon, for instance) much less so.
Is there any breakout correlating their reconstruction and later activities with religion, region, ethnic background, time their families were on this side of the water?
April 25, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Kevin Levin
Ari, — I hate to admit that I caved in terms of my blogging hiatus. You can expect a post or two from me each week. Your response is spot on and unfortunately I don’t have any additional information, though I assume it is easy enough to locate. I just happened to be reading Sitkoff as I was perusing a few blogs.
Gene, — I published an article on Mahone’s postwar political career if you are interested. The title is “William Mahone, the Lost Cause, and Civil War History” which appeared in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography back in 2005. Here is the abstract:
This essay examines the postwar political career of Confederate Major General William Mahone. By 1883, Mahone had become one of the most controversial and divisive politicians in the country. As the organizer and leader of the Readjuster Party, Mahone led the most successful independent coalition of black and white Republicans and white Democrats. The legislative agenda of the Readjusters and Mahone’s prominent role within the party and the U.S. Senate generated heated attacks in newspapers and more personal forms of communication. Similar to former Confederate general James Longstreet, Mahone incurred the wrath of a growing Lost Cause movement that in addition to rationalizing Confederate defeat sought to maintain Democratic Party solidarity by fostering white supremacy and states’ rights. Such Lost Cause advocates as Jubal Early and others assumed an aggressive posture against ex-Confederates like Mahone who threatened the conservative social and political agenda. That Mahone was not an outsider, but a successful Confederate general had to be dealt with severely, and they did so by attacking his war record, including his leadership at the battle of the Crater. A close look at Mahone’s postwar difficulties sheds light on the heated debates or “reputation war” surrounding the political limits to which the Confederate past could be utilized. Finally, it reminds us that James Longstreet was not the only target (perhaps not even the most important target) of the Lost Cause crowd’s wrath.