“THIS IS A WHITE MAN’S GOVERNMENT … We regard the (so-called) Reconstruction Acts of Congress as usurpations, unconstitutional, revolutionary and void. —Democratic platform. Cartoon by Thomas Nast, published in Harper’s Weekly, September 1868.
Library of Congress
In September 1868, a dispute over a column published in a partisan newspaper in Opelousas, Louisiana sparked one of the bloodiest incidents of racial violence in the Reconstruction era. The attackers’ goal: to reverse the spectacular political gains made by black citizens after the Civil War, intimidate them from exercising their newly recognized rights, and restore the racial hierarchy of the era of slavery.
The Opelousas massacre remains one of the harshest examples of African American voter suppression in U.S. history, with death estimates ranging from several dozen to several hundred. Coming in the run-up to the 1868 presidential election, which pitted conservative Democrat Horatio Seymour against Republican war hero Ulysses S. Grant, the murders also underscored the importance of partisan media in shaping political discourse for ‘after war.
Throughout American history, political parties have used partisan newspapers to influence the electorate, starting with the Federalist Party. United States Gazette, founded in 1789. (Currency: “Whoever is not for us is against us. “) After the upheaval of the Civil War, newspapers became a hotly contested space for Democrats and Republicans to communicate their competing visions on the political, economic and social future of some 4 million people previously enslaved. Republicans were using their newspapers to advocate for expanding Black Rights and Privileges, Democratic newspapers aligned themselves with the slogan of their party’s presidential candidate, Seymour: “This is a white man’s government,” a government that hoped to keep black Americans in perpetual slavery – or at least perpetual servitude.
In Opelousas, headquarters of the parish of Saint-Landry in Louisiana, St. Landry’s Progress served as the official organ of the local Republican Party – one of the state’s 73 Republican newspapers. And in the fall of 1868, a heavily edited editorial written by a precocious young editor sparked a firestorm.
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In the South, post-war politics were based on the rights of former slaves
This year hadn’t been a good year for the Louisiana Democrats. The state’s white plantation class, beset by labor shortages and repeated crop failures, suffered financially. Politically, their world order was crumbling as the former slaves acquired new rights. In April, the new Louisiana state constitution, one of the most ambitious pieces of radical reconstruction legislation, adopted the force of support from black Republicans, granting full citizenship to black men with civil rights. and equal policies, while banning segregation in public schools and on public transport. In July, the Fourteenth Amendment gave African Americans equal status under federal law.
“The April election returns left white leaders fully aware of the electoral strength of radical blacks and the future implications of that strength for the Democratic Party,” wrote Carolyn DeLatte, one of the earliest historians of the Opelousas massacre.
But while black voters immediately after the Civil War were largely Republicans, they were not a monolithic group. Some have joined the Democratic Party – a fact which in St. Landry Parish has aroused anger on both sides. In early September 1868, a rumor circulated among local Democrats that black Republicans were going to demand black Democrats for the party, if they were to do so “at the point of a bayonet.”
These rumors led to an essentially peaceful standoff on September 13, 1868 between black Republicans and white Democrats, where leaders of each party gave speeches and negotiated a peace deal between the two sides that banned guns at rallies. The publisher of the Progress of Saint-Landry, Emerson Bentley, to refrain from making “inflammatory” comments about Democrats in the newspaper or in speeches.
An 18-year-old Ohio native Bentley also served as secretary of the local Radical Republican Party and taught at a Methodist school for black students. Viewed by local Democrats as a “mocker,” a derogatory term used for northerners who came to the South after the war to profit economically or politically, Bentley regularly received threats. But he himself expressed a religious motivation for his policies, attributing his “Christian spirit and his desire to do something for the general good.”
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?
“They’re killing Mr. Bentley!”
On September 19, 1868, Bentley broke the truce by lambasting the Democrats in a Progress editorial. “The assembly of armed men from all parts of the parish did not indicate peaceful intentions, but total blindness to the interests of the people,” he wrote. Declaring some moral authority over Democrats, Bentley added that Republicans “don’t plot in the dark; we do not murder or threaten harmless citizens; we are not looking for the lives of political opponents; we are not trying to pit one class against another; but we intend to defend our just rights at all risks. In the article, he called on black Democrats to join the party that did not seek to intimidate them with violence.
On September 28, Bentley was teaching at the Methodist Church on the outskirts of Opelousas when three Seymour Knights, the local branch of the white supremacist organization, came to confront him about his “inflammatory” article.
“You published a report which is both false and malicious,” said one of the Seymour Knights, according to an account in the New Orleans lawyer.
“Are you saying that I lied in this report?” Bentley asked.
Knight Seymour replied, “Yes sir, God damn you I want it”, then started hitting Bentley with a cane on his back and shoulders.
“They’re killing Mr. Bentley!” shouted black children running from school.
Before leaving, the Seymour Knights forced Bentley to sign a retraction of history. When word spread about the attack, Republicans, fearing for their lives, gathered at Opelousas. Rumors spread among white citizens that armed black residents were planning an uprising. After signing an affidavit with legal authorities about the attack, then hiding overnight in a barn behind the Progress office, Bentley left town. Fleeing a white crowd with the help of many Republican Party shelters, he eventually made his way to New Orleans.
READ MORE: How the 1876 election tested the Constitution and effectively ended reconstruction
The ultimate goal: destroy the Republican Party
African-American men voting in the south during reconstruction, in an 1867 illustration from Harper’s Weekly. That year, in the Reconstruction States, 703,000 black Americans voted against 627,000 white citizens in a political imbalance that sparked reactionary violence.
Hulton Archives / Getty Images
As Bentley fled, white mobs began a murderous rampage that lasted for several weeks, targeting the black citizens of Opelousas – ostensibly to prevent them from organizing. “Colored men were not allowed to stand in groups on the sidewalks”, according to the New Orleans lawyer. “Every day new victims fell.” In the parish of St. Landry, dozens of black bodies were found scattered in shallow graves. The Republican Party estimated the death toll between 200 and 300, while Democrats put it between 25 and 30. An army survey cited 233.
Over time, the true demolition program of the Republic Party of the Parish of St. Landry has become clear. Several white party leaders were hunted down and killed, with a corpse on display outside the local pharmacy as a warning. The crowds destroyed the Progress office press and ransacked the Methodist school. “The negroes of the whole parish were disarmed and set to work at full speed,” declared the Franklin Planter Banner, a Democratic Party newspaper. “Their Loyal League clubs were dismantled, the scalawags became Democrats… and their carpet press… was destroyed.
Republicans who were not killed fled or changed parties.
In April 1868, when they voted to ratify the state’s new constitution, Bentley and a very active local black Republican party had enthusiastically contemplated the November presidential election, when they would support Ulysses S. Grant over the white supremacist Horatio Seymour. But they were never able to vote. The former Union army general did not receive a single vote in the parish of St. Landry.
“I am fully convinced that no man on that day could have voted other than the Democratic ticket,” said the parish’s voter registration officer, “and not have been killed any less. 24 hours.
