1868 Congressional testimony shows extent of political violence in NWLA

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A Northwest Louisiana man, who was elected to U. S. Congress just after the end of the Civil War, later testified about political violence in Northwest Louisiana.

“There were frequent acts of violence committed on freedmen, on account of their political sentiments, and upon the bare supposition that they were Republicans. The bare fact of their being colored men subjected them to abuse, torture, and in some cases murder,” said W. Japser Blackburn of Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, when he testified before the 41st Congress’

Sub-Committee of Elections in Louisiana on May 12, 1869.

“The state of affairs was what I would call very overbearing and very tyrannical in a political sense, so much so that a person known as a Republican, or as being in favor of the adoption of the State constitution of Louisiana, could not with safety express his sentiments publicly or exercise the franchise. I am speaking now of…. The 1st of April, 1867, up to the presidential elect in November (1868).”

Blackburn had been sworn in to testify about post-Civil War violence. He said that several freedmen had asked him what they should do about voting.

“I advised them not to vote at all unless they could vote their choice,” testified Blackburn. “They informed me they had special orders that if they didn’t attend the election and vote the democratic ticket they would be killed, and to my personal knowledge numbers did so, and tendered the democratic ticket under such threats and in order to save their lives.”

Blackburn testified that he knew of families in his neighborhood that were kicked out of their churches in front of entire congregations because of their political affiliations.

“They had to take their wives and children and leave,” Blackburn testified. “…there were parties of persons who frequently rode over the country at night, and would shoot into the cabins of freedmen, and would take out (African American) men and whip them very severely, and in some cases it was reported by (African Americans) that white men came to them and required of them an oath… I have heard parties boast that they had obtained so many names of freedmen and had put them down on their blank books, and had made the democratic ticket. We had one loyal justice of the peace; (African American) men went to him and swore to these; facts and he issued warrants which were sent to the sheriff, who was also a loyal man; but he failed to make the arrests for the reason that he had not a sufficient force to do so.”

When asked to state what party the secret clans or organizations belonged to, Blackburn stated it plainly.

“It was reported that they had a secret organization called the Ku-Klux.”

Blackburn’s testimony was one of the eariest references to the Ku Klux Klan’s formation in Northwest Louisiana. He testified that most freedmen who were whipped and abused by clans were “freedmen who could read, or who were supposed to have some special influence with the colored people; they were Republicans…. My own paper was Republican.”

Blackburn then explained that his printing press was “torn up root and branch because I supported Grant and Colfax; because I was not a rebel in fact… The parties that destroyed my office were a class of men who could not be said to possess any well-defined political tenets…”

When asked to state how many persons were killed in Claiborne Parish within the period between September until the election in Nov. 1868, Blackburn’s response was shocking.

“There have been so many freedmen found dead in that country at different times, and no notice taken of it, some of them scarcely buried, that I could not give anything like a definite idea. Since the war there have been a great many freedmen killed. There have been a great many shot, and said to be in a dying condition, and a good many badly whipped and maimed, and others have been found dead in various places…,” said Blackburn.

Blackburn also documented the overwhelmingly violent culture that had evolved in Northwest Louisiana after the Civil War. He said the culture deemed it a very light thing to kill a freedman.

Blackburn also said that a white voter who voted for the Republican ticket was whipped nearly to death.

“Well, he came to the polls intending to vote the Republican ticket, but learning there was much danger, he started off to go home, when some democrats met him and brought him back, and said in a threatening manner that he should vote; that if he wanted to vote the Republican ticket, he should do it; that, damn him, he should not say he could not vote as he liked. They took him to the polls and he did vote, and ten nights afterwards he was taken out into the woods and received five hundred lashes.”

Blackburn said the voter’s name was August Teusch, then stated that if Teusch testified before the committee “it is likely he would be killed.” Blackburn described Teusch as a “very unsophisticated, ignorant, good-natured, inoffensive kind of man, a gunsmith by trade, and he is wandering about half crazy, and I think has not been doing anything ever since. I think he wishes to leave the country, but is afraid to do so.”

Blackburn said there were big differences between Republicans and Democrats in the late 1860s.

“There is this difference between us; they worshipped slavery, and I never believed in it, although I am a southern man. Although in many instances they are honorable, chivalrous gentlemen, they have their peculiar bias that slavery has imparted to them. They are not national in contradistinction to sectional; they love the South more than the North, and the State of Louisiana more than the United States. I have always loved my country and worshipped the star-spangled banner. When I have stood up in the parish and said I did, men have left the house. One preacher of the gospel said he would like to mash his fist in my face because I said I loved the government. He said, “I hate it.” That is the spirit that animates this people. It is a spirit of deviltry. They have no love of country and no national pride, and rejoince in anything that would tend to harm the United States. They are hoping for a war with England or France, so that they might join the enemies of this country; and when I say that the united States can whip the South and England together, they say they wish they had hanged me during the war.”

Blackburn then told the Congressional Committee about what happened to William Meadows.

“One freedman named Meadows, my colleague in the (Louisiana Constitutional) convention, was assassinated like a dog, and the guilty parties, conscience-stricken, became very much alarmed, and thinking, I suppose, that they ought to have something done to them, spread a report that there would be a general rising of the (African Americans), but I don’t think there was anything in it but a guilty conscience.”

Extremists didn’t kill Blackburn, but his printing press was attacked after he helped create the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1868.

The Planters’ Banner printed the following on July 18, 1868: “We regret to learn, from our city exchanges, that the office of the ‘Homer Iliad’ has lately been destroyed by a mob. Though the editor, W. Jasper Blackburn, has been a violent radical, a member of the black-and-tan convention, an enemy to our state and people, we think it bad policy to resort to violence as a remedy. No parish has been more imposed upon by scalawags than St. Mary, but we would regret to see our people so far lose their temper as to punish any of these political and moral reprobates in an unlawful manner. One murdered scalawag at the South is now worth twenty lives ones to the radicals of the North. One radical printing office destroyed at the South is worth to the radical party twenty of these infernal machines in full blast.”

Frank J. Wetta explained in ‘Bulldozing the Scalawags’ that terrorism and ostracism of white Republicans went hand in hand with racism and resentment of freedmen in the post-war South.

“Evidence indicates that throughout the Reconstruction era Southern white Republicans in Louisiana were subjected to both random and organized abuse, to intimidation, and to verbal and physical attack.”

W. Jasper Blackburn was certainly in those numbers.

At the end of his long career in Louisiana journalism, just before his death in Little Rock, Arkansas, Blackburn was interviewed by the Arkansas Press Association about his choices as a journalist and publisher before, during, and after the war between the states.

“I did this simply under a sense and feeling of patriotism—as one who loved his whole country dearer than any local section and dearer than life itself,” answered Blackburn.

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Sources:

41st Congress, 2nd session, House of Representatives, Mis. Doc. No. 154, Testimony taken by the Sub-Committee of Elections in Louisiana, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1870.

‘Bulldozing the Scalawags’: Some Examples of the Persecution of Southern White Republicans in Louisiana During Reconstruction, by Frank J. Wetta, published by Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter 1980.