April 13, 1873: The Colfax Massacre

April 13, 1873: The Colfax Massacre takes place in Colfax, Louisiana. Historian Eric Foner, whose specialty is the post-Civil War era, called it "The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era."

In 1872, Louisiana was set to elect a new Governor. As part of Reconstruction, William Pitt Kellogg, a Vermont native, had been appointed U.S. Senator for the State, and was the Republican Party's nominee for Governor. The Democratic Party nominated John McEnery, a Confederate officer in the American Civil War. With newly freed black voters acting under the new 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Pitt won 56.9 percent of the vote.

But a rival board of elections certified McEnery as Governor. Both men had someone swear them in on January 13, 1873, and both men had an Inaugural Parades and Inaugural Balls. A U.S. Senate committee reported that the entire Louisiana 1872 election had been unfair, and that both State governments were illegal. It recommended that a new election be held under federal supervision.

President Ulysses S. Grant ignored the Senate committee recommendation, and chose to put the force of the U.S. Army behind Kellogg's machine, perhaps because Grant's own brother-in-law, James Casey, was part of the machine. Casey also held the lucrative post of New Orleans Customs Collector, to which Grant reappointed him in March 1873.

Louisiana calls its Counties "Parishes." After the Civil War, Grant Parish was carved out of Winn Parish. It was named for the President, and its seat was named for his Vice President, Schuyler Colfax. earful that the Democrats might try to control the 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 3 weeks.

On March 28, 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 began to recruit armed Black men to defend the courthouse.

Black Republicans raided the homes of the opposition leaders. 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. 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.

William Ward, the commanding officer of Company A, 6th Infantry Regiment, Louisiana State Militia, headquartered in Grant Parish, had been elected State Representative from the parish on the Republican ticket. He wrote to Governor Kellogg, seeking U.S. troops for reinforcement and gave the letter to William Smith Calhoun for delivery. Calhoun took the steamboat LaBelle down the Red River, but was captured by men who 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.

On April 13, Easter Sunday, Christopher Columbus Nash, Sheriff of the Parish, commanding some 300 white men, ordered the defenders of the courthouse to leave. When that failed, Nash gave women and children camped outside the courthouse 30 minutes to leave. After they left, the shooting began. The fighting continued for several hours with few casualties.

When Nash's paramilitary maneuvered the cannon behind the building, some of the defenders panicked and left the courthouse. An estimated 62 to 153 Black militia men were murdered while surrendering. Three white men also died during the confrontation.

Various government forces spent weeks trying to round up members of the White paramilitaries, and a total of 97 men were indicted. In the end, U.S. Attorney James R. Beckwith charged 9 men, and brought them to trial for violations of the Enforcement Act of 1870. But Beckwith was unable to secure a conviction: One man was acquitted, and a mistrial was declared in the cases of the others. In the end, no white militiaman was convicted of murdering a single black person.

In January 1875, even President Grant admitted that Louisiana's 1872 election "was a gigantic fraud, and there are no reliable returns of its result."

In February 1876, Kellogg was impeached by the Louisiana House of Representatives. The Senate did not convict him, however, and he remained in office until 1877, when he was returned to the U.S. Senate. He lived until 1918. McEnery never served in public office again, and died in 1891.

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April 13, 1873 was a Sunday, Easter. The fact that it was a Sunday, and the fact that it was a holiday, did not matter for the only professional sports league in North America: The National Association hadn't yet started its season, anyway.