I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. – Kurt Vonnegut
The Election Massacre of 1874, or Coup of 1874, took place on election day, November 3, 1874, near Eufaula, Alabama in Barbour County. Freedmen comprised a majority of the population and had been electing Republican candidates to office. Members of an Alabama chapter of the White League, a paramilitary group supporting the Democratic Party’s drive to regain political power in the county and state, used firearms to ambush black Republicans at the polls.
In Eufaula, members of the White League killed an estimated fifteen to forty black voters and wounded seventy, while driving away more than one thousand (1000) unarmed black people at the polls. In attacking the polling place in Spring Hill, the League effectively hijacked the elections. They turned all Republicans out of office and Democratic candidates took a majority of offices up for election.
The White League had formed in 1874 as an insurgent, white Democratic paramilitary group in Grant Parish and nearby parishes on the Red River of the South in Louisiana. The League was founded by members of the white militia who had committed the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana in 1873, killing numerous black people in order to turn out Republicans from parish offices as part of the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election. Historians such as George Rabe consider groups such as the White League and Red Shirts as a “military arm” of the Democratic Party. Their members worked openly to disrupt Republican meetings, and attacked and intimidated voters to suppress black voting. They courted press attention rather than operating secretly, as had the Ku Klux Klan.
Chapters spread to Alabama and other states in the Deep South. A similar paramilitary group was the Red Shirts, which originated in Mississippi and became active in the Carolinas. Both paramilitary groups contributed to the Democrats’ regaining control in the state legislatures in the late 1870s. The Red Shirts were still active in the 1890s and were implicated in the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 in North Carolina.
Events
On election day, November 3, 1874, an Alabama chapter of the White League repeated actions taken earlier that year in Vicksburg, Mississippi. They invaded Eufaula and with firearms ambushed Black voters as they marched down Broad Street, killing an estimated 15-40 black Republicans, injuring at least 70 more, and driving off more than 1,000 unarmed Republicans from the polls. The group moved on to Spring Hill, where members stormed the polling place, destroying the ballot box, and killing the 16-year-old son of a white Republican judge in their shooting.
The White League refused to count any Republican votes cast. [“Stop The Steal!”] But, Republican voters reflected the black majority in the county, as well as white supporters. They outnumbered Democratic voters by a margin greater than two to one. The League declared the Democratic candidates victorious, forced Republican politicians out of office, and seized every county office in Barbour County in a kind of coup d’état.
Such actions were repeated in other parts of the South in the 1870s, as Democrats sought to regain political dominance in states with black majorities and numerous Republican officials. In Barbour County, the Democrats auctioned off as “slaves” (for a maximum cost of $2 per month), or otherwise silenced all Republican witnesses to the events. They were intimidated from testifying to the coup if the case went to federal court.
Due to the actual and threatened violence by the White League, black voters began to stay away from the polls in Barbour County. They no longer voted in sufficient number to retain a majority of Republican officeholders. White conservative Democrats continued to intimidate black voters through the late 19th century, especially after a Populist-Republican alliance elected some Fusion candidates in the Deep South, as well as local Republican officials in many states.
In 1875, Mississippi Democrats also used widespread intimidation to control local elections, which became known as the Mississippi Plan. Such violence was adopted by chapters in other cities and counties. Democrats regained control of Alabama and other state legislatures. Reconstruction ended with the withdrawal of federal troops as part of a compromise to elect Rutherford B Hayes.
Historian Dan T. Carter concludes that “the triumph of white supremacy came at great cost, not only to the defeated Republican Party, but to the processes of government. Violence, already endemic in southern society, became institutionalized, and community leaders transformed the willful corruption and manipulation of elections into a patriotic virtue.”
In 1901 the Democratic-dominated state legislature in Alabama, like other southern states, followed Mississippi’s lead to end such election-related violence by passing a new constitution that effectively disenfranchised most black people by such measures as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries. Poll taxes and literacy tests also disfranchised tens of thousands of poor whites in Alabama. Although the Democratic legislature had promised whites would not be affected by the new measures, politicians wanted to preclude poor whites allying with black people in Populist-Republican coalitions. With disfranchisement achieved, the legislature passed laws imposing racial segregation and other elements of Jim Crow, a system that lasted well into the 1960s.
The gains of the Civil Rights Movement led to Congressional passage of legislation in the mid-1960s that prohibited segregation. The Federal government began to enforce the constitutional rights of minorities for equal protection under the law.
Laws and protections which a half-century later seem about to disappear.
But, hey, nobody could’ve seen it coming.
Freedom is settled law, right?
In 1979, the state erected a “historical” marker located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 82 and Barbour County Road 49 near Comer, Alabama. The marker effectively blurred events – and their significance – in which the 1874 election supervisor Elias Kiels was assaulted and his son, Willie, was murdered while they were counting votes. The marker makes no connection to the murderous ambush on the same day in Eufala, a few miles away.
At Old Spring Hill, the terrorist mob, intent on disrupting the counting of ballots, was led by rich landowners Wallace Comer and his brother Braxton Bragg Comer. In the subsequent 1876 presidential election, “only ten black Republicans went to the polls in Eufala.” And three decades later, Braxton Bragg Comer, would benefit from the exclusion of Black voters in Jim Crow Alabama, being elected governor of the state.
The “historical” marker – as you can plainly see above – reads:
Near here is Old Spring Hill, the site of one of the polling places for the November 3, 1874 local, state and national elections. Elias M. Keils, scalawag and Judge of the City Court of Eufaula, was United States supervisor at the Spring Hill ballot box. William, his 16 year-old son, was with him. After the polls closed, a mob broke into the building, extinguished the lights, destroyed the poll box and began shooting. During the riot, Willie Keils was mortally wounded. The resulting Congressional investigation received national attention. This bloody episode marked the end of the Republican domination in Barbour County. – Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, 1979.
I am betting things are different there now.
At least in name.
White League
The White League, also known as the White Man’s League, was a white paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing. Its first chapter was formed in Grant Parish, Louisiana, and neighboring parishes and was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the Colfax massacre in April 1873. Chapters were soon founded in New Orleans and other areas of the state.
Members of the White League were absorbed into the state militias and the National Guard.
Oh, swell.
Harpers Weekly, 1867.
History
Although sometimes linked to the secret vigilante groups, think Ku Klux Klan and Knights of the White Camelia, the White League and other paramilitary groups of the later 1870s marked a significant change. They operated openly in communities, solicited coverage from newspapers, and the men’s identities were generally known. Similar paramilitary groups were chapters of the Red Shirts, started in Mississippi in 1875 and active also in North and South Carolina. They had explicit political goals to overthrow the Reconstruction government. They directed their activities toward intimidation and removal of Northern and African-American Republican candidates and officeholders. Made up of well-armed Confederate veterans, they worked to turn Republicans out of office, disrupt their political organizing, and use force to intimidate and terrorize freedmen to keep them from the polls. Backers helped finance purchases of up-to-date arms: Winchester rifles, Colt revolvers and Prussian needle guns.
Some sources charge the White League with culpability for the Colfax Massacre of 1873, but the organization was not established under that name until March 1874. Christopher Columbus Nash, a Confederate veteran, former prisoner of war at Johnson’s Island in Ohio, and the former sheriff of Grant Parish, led companies of white militia at Colfax to oust Republican officeholders and African Americans defending the courthouse; his forces killed up to 150 African Americans in the Colfax Massacre, an event in which three white men were killed, one possibly by friendly fire.
The first unit of the White League, founded in 1874, was composed of members of Nash’s force, mostly Confederate veterans who had participated in the Colfax Massacre. It expressed its purpose to defend a “hereditary civilization and Christianity menaced by a stupid Africanization.”
In 1874, White League members murdered Julie Hayden, a 17-year-old African American girl who was working as a schoolteacher in Hartsville, Tennessee.
Something about an educated black woman just seems to set these people off.
In his December 1874 State of the Union address, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant expressed disdain over the White League’s activities, condemning them for their violence and for violating the civil rights of freedmen:
I regret to say that with preparations for the late election decided indications appeared in some localities in the Southern States of a determination, by acts of violence and intimidation, to deprive citizens of the freedom of the ballot because of their political opinions. Bands of men, masked and armed, made their appearance; White Leagues and other societies were formed; large quantities of arms and ammunition were imported and distributed to these organizations; military drills, with menacing demonstrations, were held, and with all these murders enough were committed to spread terror among those whose political action was to be suppressed, if possible, by these intolerant and criminal proceedings.
— Ulysses S. Grant, State of the Union address, December 7, 1874.
The Coushatta massacre occurred in another Red River parish: the local White League forced six Republican officeholders to resign and promise to leave the state. The League assassinated the men before they left the parish, together with between five and twenty freedmen (sources differ) who were witnesses. Generally in remote areas, the White League’s show of force and outright murders always overcame opposition. They were Confederate veterans, experienced and well armed.
Later in 1874, the New Orleans Metropolitan Police, established as a state militia by the Republican governor, attempted to intercept a shipment of arms to the League. The League had entered the city to try to take over state government, in the aftermath of the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election. In the subsequent Battle of Liberty Place on September 14, 1874, 5,000 members of the White League routed 3,500 police and state militia to turn out the Republican governor. They demanded the resignation of Governor William Pitt Kellogg in favor of John McEnery, the Democratic candidate. Kellogg refused and the White League briefly fought a battle resulting in 100 casualties. They took over and controlled the State House, City Hall and arsenal for three days, withdrawing just ahead of Federal troops and ships’ arriving to reinforce the government. Kellogg had requested aid from U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant; once the troops arrived, he was restored to office.
President Grant sent additional troops within a month in another effort to try to pacify the Red River valley in northern Louisiana. It had been plagued by violence, including the massacres at Colfax in 1873 and Coushatta in 1874. The White League was effective; voting by Republicans decreased and Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1876.
“One side of the monument erected to race prejudice. New Orleans, Louisiana”.
Legacy
The anti-democratic coup occurred in 1874.
The Battle of Liberty Place Monument was erected in New Orleans in 1891.
Those words you see above were not chiseled until 1932.
One hundred and twenty-five years after install, in December 2016, the city council voted to remove the monument.
Not everybody in town was happy.
The monument’s removal was upheld by a federal appeals court in March 2017.
The obelisk and plinth are alleged today to be in storage.
Just waiting to be erected again.
Source: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. You should donate.
