Louisiana became a particular focus of the resistance to Black equality. A December, 1868 report from the Louisiana legislature said that the “history of the last twelve months presents a frightful record” during which “great numbers of colored men and white Republicans were slaughtered.” The source of the violence was, according to the report, “a fixed predetermination on the part of…the white people…to resist…impartial suffrage.”
In addition to masked night riders committing acts of terror against Blacks, there were also “mobbings.” These were organized uprisings by armed whites against Black communities. One was the October St. Bernard Parish Massacre. Shortly before the election, word leaked out that the local Democrats planned to assassinate a prominent Republican landowner named Thomas Ong, as well as former Union General Albert Lindley Lee and Mike Curtis, a police officer. The Seymour Infantus and the Seymour Innocents, Democratic paramilitary organizations from New Orleans, came to St. Bernard on October 25 to reinforce the gatherings of local armed Democrats.
During a march from a Catholic church, the armed groups came upon a freedman and insisted that he cheer for Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour. When he refused, they killed him. The man who shot the African American, Valvey Veillon, announced that he was “ready to kill twenty more damned n@ggers.” The Democrats next came across an elderly freedman working in the fields. His throat was cut, though he survived the attack. Jane Ackus, a freedwoman, was the next victim. She was beaten and kicked. As they came upon other freedpeople, the armed men ordered them to “hurrah for Seymour and Blair,” or else face assault. When they encountered white police officer Mike Curtis they chanted “Death to the Police” and killed him. Curtis, a Union veteran, had been a favorite of the black community. Later some Blacks later tried to bury Curtis, but they were shot, one fatally.
The newspapers created a panic in New Orleans by claiming that a caravan of up to 2,000 armed blacks were marching from St. Bernard’s towards the city, burning and killing along the way. In fact, by the time the alarmist articles appeared, many freedpeople had fled to the swamps to evade the bands of mounted and armed whites marauding through the region.
On October 26, the white mob grew larger and more violent. Groups of men went to the old slave quarters of plantations and looted them and assaulted or killed the blacks they found there. Where the first day of attacks targeted political opponents, the second day involved indiscriminate attacks on anyone who was black. Freedmen who were captured were taken to a coffee shop, where they were imprisoned. When Federal troops arrived in the parish, some of the captives were executed by the conservatives.
A similar massacre had taken place a month earlier in St. Landry Parish. A Freedmen’s Bureau report estimated that over 200 people were killed, including two dozen Black men who were taken prisoner by the whites and later executed in cold blood by them.
While Grant was elected president that November, the violence in Louisiana succeeded in preventing a Black Republican majority from being recorded in that state. The dry numbers of the census and voting records reveal dimensions of the terrorist success story.