In March 1865, Unionist planter
James Madison Wells became governor of Louisiana. As the Democratic-dominated legislature passed
Black Codes that restricted rights of
freedmen, Wells began to favor allowing Black people to vote and temporarily
disenfranchising ex-Confederates. To accomplish this, he scheduled a constitutional convention for July 30, 1866. It was postponed because of the
New Orleans massacre that day, in which armed Southern White Democrats attacked Black Americans who had a parade in support of the convention. Anticipating trouble, the mayor of New Orleans had asked the local military commander to police the city and protect the convention. The US Army failed to respond promptly to the mayor's request, and a group of White residents attacked numerous unarmed Black residents, resulting in 38 deaths (34 Black and four White) and more than 40 wounded, most of them Black folks. When President
Andrew Johnson blamed the massacre on Republican agitation, a popular national reaction against Johnson's policies resulted in national voters electing a majority Republican Congress in 1866. It passed the
Civil Rights Act of 1866 despite Andrew Johnson's veto. Earlier, the Freedmen's Bureau and the occupation armies had prevented Southern
Black Codes, which had limited the rights of freedmen and other Black people (including their choices of work and living locations), from becoming effective. On July 16, 1866, Congress extended the life of the
Freedmen's Bureau, despite Johnson's veto. On March 2, 1867, they passed the
Reconstruction Act, over Johnson's veto, which required that Black men be given the franchise—in Southern states but not in Northern states—and that reconstructed Southern states ratify the
Fourteenth Amendment before admission to the Union. By April 1868, a biracial coalition in Louisiana had elected a Republican-majority state legislature, but violence increased before the fall election. Almost all of the victims were Black and some White Republicans who were protecting the Black Republican freedmen. Insurgents also attacked people physically or burned their homes to discourage them from voting. President Johnson, a Democrat, prevented the Republican governor of Louisiana from using either the state militia or US forces to suppress the insurgent groups, such as the
Knights of the White Camelia.
Grant Parish The
Red River area of
Winn and
Rapides parishes was a combination of large
plantations and
subsistence farmers; before the war, African Americans had worked as slaves on the plantations. William Smith Calhoun, a major
planter, had inherited a plantation in the area from his father
Meredith Calhoun. A former slaveholder, he lived with a
mixed-race woman as his common-law wife and had come to favor Black political equality, encouraging the political organization of the local African American-based Republican party. On election day in November 1868, Calhoun led a group of freedmen to vote. The ballot box was originally at a store owned by John Hooe, who had threatened to whip freedmen "if they voted Republican". Calhoun arranged for the ballot box to be moved to a plantation store owned by a Republican. In addition, he oversaw the submission of 150 Black votes from freedmen on his plantation land. The Republicans received 318 votes, and the Democrats received 49. A group of Whites threw the ballot box into the Red River, and Democrats arrested Calhoun, alleging election fraud. With the original ballot box gone, Democrat Michael Ryan went on to claim a landslide victory. The election was also marked by violence. Election commissioner Hal Frazier, a Black Republican, was murdered by Whites. After this, Calhoun drafted a bill to create
Grant Parish out of parts of Winn and Rapides parishes, which passed the Republican legislature; as a major planter, Calhoun thought he would have more political influence in the new parish, which had a Black majority. Other new parishes were created by the Republican state legislature to try to develop areas of Republican political control.
Enforcement against the Klan According to Lane, after
Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869, he "lobbied hard for the
Fifteenth Amendment" (ratified February 3, 1870), which guaranteed that Black men, most of whom were newly freed slaves, would have the right to vote. However, the
Ku Klux Klan continued violent attacks and killed scores of Black residents in
Arkansas,
South Carolina,
Georgia,
Mississippi and elsewhere. In response, on May 31, 1870, Congress passed an
Enforcement Act which prohibited groups of people from banding together to violate citizens' constitutional rights. Soon afterwards on April 20, 1871, Congress passed the
Ku Klux Klan Act, which Grant used to suspend the writ of
habeas corpus and sent federal troops to South Carolina, a state with particularly egregious Klan activity.
State militia Governor
Henry Clay Warmoth struggled to maintain political balance in Louisiana. Among his appointments, he installed William Ward, a Black
Union veteran, as commanding officer of Company A, 6th Infantry Regiment, Louisiana State Militia, a new unit to be based in Grant Parish to help control the violence there and in other Red River parishes. Ward, born a slave in 1840 in
Charleston, South Carolina, had learned to read and write as a valet to a master in
Richmond, Virginia. In 1864 he escaped and went to
Fortress Monroe, where he joined the
Union Army and served until after General
Robert E. Lee's surrender. About 1870 he came to Grant Parish, where he had a friend. He quickly became active among local Black Republican Party members. After his appointment to the militia, Ward recruited other freedmen for his forces, several of whom were veterans of the war.
Louisiana election of 1872 Warmoth defected to the
Liberal Republicans (a group that opposed President Grant's
Reconstruction policies) in 1872. Warmoth previously supported a constitutional amendment that allowed former Confederates, who had been denied the right to vote, to be re-enfranchised. A "
Fusionist" coalition of Liberal Republicans and Democrats nominated ex-Confederate battalion commander and Democrat
John McEnery to succeed him as governor. In return, Democrats and Liberal Republicans were to appoint Warmoth as a US Senator. Opposing McEnery was Republican
William Pitt Kellogg, one of Louisiana's US Senators. Voting on November 4, 1872, resulted in dual governments, as a Fusionist (Liberal Republicans and Democrat)-dominated returning board declared McEnery the winner while a faction of the board proclaimed Kellogg the winner. Both administrations held inaugural ceremonies and certified their lists of local candidates. After failing to win their case in state court, the Kellogg forces appealed to federal judge Edward Durell in
New Orleans to intervene and order that Kellogg and the Stalwart Republican-majority legislature were to be seated, and for Grant to authorize US Army troops to protect Kellogg's government. This action was widely criticized across the nation by Democrats and both factions of the Republican Party because it was considered to be a violation of the rights of states to manage their own (non-federal-office) elections. Thus, investigating committees of both chambers of the federal Congress in Washington were critical of the Kellogg choice. The House majority ruled Durell's action illegal and the Senate majority concluded that the Kellogg regime was "not much better than a successful conspiracy". In 1874 a House investigating committee in Washington recommended that Durell be impeached for corruption and illegally interfering in the Louisiana 1872 state elections, but Durell resigned in order to avoid impeachment. McEnery's faction tried to take control of the state arsenal at
Jackson Square, but Kellogg had the state militia seize dozens of leaders of McEnery's faction and control New Orleans, where the state government was located. Warmoth was subsequently impeached by the state legislature due to a bribery scandal resulting from his actions in the 1872 election. Warmoth appointed Democrats as parish registrars, and they ensured the voter rolls included as many Whites and as few freedmen as possible. A number of registrars changed the registration site without notifying Black residents. They also required Black voters to prove they were over 21, while knowing that former slaves did not have birth certificates. In Grant Parish, one plantation owner threatened to expel Black people from homes they rented on his land if they voted Republican. Fusionists also tampered with ballot boxes on election day. One was found with a hole in it, apparently used for stuffing the ballot box. As a result, Grant Parish Fusionists claimed a landslide victory, even though Black voters outnumbered Whites by 776 to 630. Warmoth issued commissions to Fusionist Democrats Alphonse Cazabat and
Christopher Columbus Nash, elected parish judge and sheriff, respectively. Like many White men in the South, Nash was a Confederate veteran (as an officer, he had been held for a year and a half as a
prisoner of war at
Johnson's Island in
Ohio). Cazabat and Nash took their oaths of office in the Colfax courthouse on January 2, 1873. They dispatched the documents to Governor McEnery in New Orleans. Kellogg issued commissions to the Republican slate for Grant Parish on January 17 and 18. By then Nash and Cazabat controlled the small, primitive courthouse. Republican Robert C. Register insisted that he, not Cazabat, was the parish judge and that Republican Daniel Wesley Shaw, not Nash, was to be the sheriff. On the night of March 25, the Republicans seized the empty courthouse and took their oaths of office. They sent their oaths to the Kellogg administration in New Orleans. Grant Parish was one of a number of new parishes created by the Republican government in an effort to increase local control in the state. Both the land and its people were originally associated with the Calhoun family, whose plantation had covered more than the borders of the new parish. The freedmen had been slaves of the plantation. The parish also included the less-developed hill country. The total population had a narrow majority of 2,400 freedmen, who mostly voted Republican, and 2,200 Whites, who voted as Democrats. Statewide political tensions were represented in the rumors going around each community, often about White fears of attacks or outrage from Black people, which added to local tensions.
Colfax courthouse conflict Fearful that the Democrats might try to control the local parish government, Black people started to create trenches around the courthouse and drilled to keep alert. The Republican officeholders stayed there overnight. They held the town for three weeks. On March 28, Nash, Cazabat, Hadnot, and other White Fusionists called for armed Whites to retake the courthouse on April 1. Whites were recruited from nearby Winn and surrounding parishes to join their effort. The Republicans Shaw, Register, and Flowers and others began to recruit armed Black men to defend the courthouse. Black Republicans Lewis Meekins and state militia captain William Ward, a Black Union veteran, raided the homes of the opposition leaders: Judge William R. Rutland, Bill Cruikshank, and Jim Hadnot. Gunfire erupted between White and Black militias on April 2 and again on April 5, but the shotguns were too inaccurate to do any harm. The two sides arranged for peace negotiations. Peace ended when a White man shot and killed a Black bystander named Jesse McKinney. Another armed conflict on April 6 ended with the White militia fleeing from armed Black militia. With the threat of violence in the community, Black women and children joined the men at the courthouse for protection. Ward had been elected
state representative from the parish on the Republican ticket. He wrote to Kellogg seeking US troops for reinforcement and gave the letter to Calhoun for delivery. Calhoun took the steamboat
LaBelle down the Red River but was captured by Hooe, Hadnot, and Cruikshank. They ordered Calhoun to tell the Black community members to leave the courthouse. The Black defenders refused to leave although threatened by parties of armed Whites commanded by Nash. To recruit men during the rising political tensions, Nash had contributed to lurid rumors that Black men were preparing to kill all the White men and take the White women as their own. On April 8 the anti-Republican
Daily Picayune newspaper of New Orleans inflamed tensions and distorted events by the following headline: Such news attracted more Whites from the region to Grant Parish to join Nash; all were experienced Confederate veterans. They acquired a four-pound cannon that could fire iron slugs. As Klansman Dave Paul said, "Boys, this is a struggle for
White supremacy." On April 11 Ward took a steamboat downriver to New Orleans to seek armed help directly from Kellogg. He was not there for the following events. ==Massacre==