New Orleans riots, 1866 - Historum

**Patito de Hule** · March 15th, 2012, 10:22 AM

I have a question about this, but first a little background from

:

Quote:

The New Orleans Riot, which occurred on July 30, 1866, was a violent conflict outside of the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans during the reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Radical Republicans in Louisiana, who reconvened the Constitutional Convention, were angered by the enactment of the Black Codes in Louisiana and by the legislature's refusal to give black men the vote. The reconvened convention was illegally formed and its intended purpose was to use the popular Republican swing in Washington, D.C. to attempt to take control of the state government. The riot itself "stemmed from deeply rooted political, social, and economic causes," and took place in part because of the battle "between two opposing factions for power and office

and further down:

Quote:

The reaction to the New Orleans riot and a similar incident (Memphis Riots of 1866) was one of distaste for the present Reconstruction strategy and a change of leadership. In the 1866 House of Representatives and Senate elections, the Republicans won in a landslide winning 77% of congress. A Reconstruction Bill was accordingly passed over the President's veto, early in 1867. Under act, Louisiana was put into the Fifth Military District. The effect in Louisiana was a removal of every political member associated with the riot and the ordering of the right to vote by all citizens except ex-Confederates.

What caught my attention was a passage in chapter 11 of W.E.B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction.

Quote:

There was an unusual moral aftermath to this inexcusable slaughter, in that it helped to turn the election of 1866 overwhelmingly against Andrew Johnson.

I haven't yet read any of the histories of Louisiana or Civil War and Reconstruction in Louisiana (there are three of them in my current reading stack), and that has given me some difficulty in following DuBois' development in this chapter. I wonder if anyone would care to comment on that one statement by DuBois. Andrew Johnson had made some political blunders that helped lead to his defeat, but was this really a major turning point?

**tjadams** · March 15th, 2012, 10:32 AM

I see it as the bad event, being taken and offered up by the Republicans to use in
pulling down Johnson. Politics is about taking an event that can be used, spun, re-molded
and dislocated from the truth, and used by certain parties, to cloud the truth.
Pile up enough negative information & soon a superstructure of a certain imagery is created.

bmben · March 15th, 2012, 10:37 AM

Love DuBois (a buddy of mine lives in his Philadelphia house) but this seems like reaching. I haven't read Black Reconstruction, but I've been warned off from it. Not due to his interpretations, but due to overt errors.

bmben · March 15th, 2012, 10:53 AM

Hold on a second, there wasn't a Presidential election in 1866, so if DuBois is referring to the Senate (which should have added Democrats with the readmittion of Southern states, still lacking votes for freedmen) he might have a point. Though most gains by Repubs were due to the loss of the Unionist party.

The House was going to swing Republican regardless.

40th_United_States_Congress

**Patito de Hule** · March 15th, 2012, 11:12 AM

Thanks, TJ. That's the sort of comment I'm looking for whether I decide to agree or disagree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmben

Love DuBois (a buddy of mine lives in his Philadelphia house) but this seems like reaching. I haven't read Black Reconstruction, but I've been warned off from it. Not due to his interpretations, but due to overt errors.

If you love DuBois, you should read Black Reconstruction. I regard it as his magnum opus, the real DuBois in action. The Souls of Black Folk is just a sappy collection of fifteen essays--the last 14 expanding on the first. It's worth a read, but not as good as Black Reconstruction, where he truly develops a theme.

As to overt errors, he was writing revisionist history at a time when all the scholarly works were from the Dunning school. All were Southerners and clearly opposed to Congressional Reconstruction. DuBois' historiography is peculiar, but more in line with modern historiography than the Dunning school was.

To me, the biggest problem is getting through DuBois' openly Marxist perspective, which turns off a lot of people. It is necessary to remember that DuBois sees history as progressing toward a proletarian democracy (the dictatorship of the proletariat), and the Civil War as an epoch-making struggle in that "revolution." He views the results of Emancipation Proclamation as a massive strike by the slaves that deprived the South of their free labor and provided much of that labor to support the North. He regards that "strike" as the turning point of the war.

Typical of the "overt" errors I've seen is that he quotes

James_Shepherd_Pike

as "a violent hater of Negroes." Obviously he's taken Pike's The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Rule as history rather than the anti-Grant/pro-Greeley political tract it was. It was pretty vituperative, and to me demonstrates Pike's lack of principle.

**Patito de Hule** · March 15th, 2012, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmben

Hold on a second, there wasn't a Presidential election in 1866, so if DuBois is referring to the Senate (which should have added Democrats with the readmittion of Southern states, still lacking votes for freedmen) he might have a point. Though most gains by Repubs were due to the loss of the Unionist party.

The House was going to swing Republican regardless.

40th United States Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's right. The 1866 congressional election was a sound defeat of Johnson and led to his impeachment.

bmben · March 15th, 2012, 11:22 AM

I'll give it a whirl, especially due to the anti-Dunning perspective. The only DuBois I have read is The Philadelphia Negro which he wrote in a house I have been drunk in. Woot! Without a positivist approach, though, I have been avoiding historiography, mostly due to the fact that I am writing fiction, and would prefer the detailed accounts rather than the overviews.

Adding it to my Kindle now. If you find out more about the 1866 election, please post.

betgo · March 15th, 2012, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmben

Hold on a second, there wasn't a Presidential election in 1866, so if DuBois is referring to the Senate (which should have added Democrats with the readmittion of Southern states, still lacking votes for freedmen) he might have a point. Though most gains by Repubs were due to the loss of the Unionist party.

The House was going to swing Republican regardless.

40th United States Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only Tennessee of the fromer Confederate states voted in the election of 1866. The South was strongly Republican in the election of 1868.

bmben · March 15th, 2012, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by betgo

Only Tennessee of the fromer Confederate states voted in the election of 1866. The South was strongly Republican in the election of 1868.

I stand corrected. I believe I read that the 14th amendment was ratified at gun point.

Then I really don't understand DuBois' point. Far greater a scandal to his administration were the (reportedly) drunken speeches (violent arguments with crowds) he gave to rally support.

**Patito de Hule** · March 15th, 2012, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmben

I'll give it a whirl, especially due to the anti-Dunning perspective. The only DuBois I have read is The Philadelphia Negro which he wrote in a house I have been drunk in. Woot! Without a positivist approach, though, I have been avoiding historiography, mostly due to the fact that I am writing fiction, and would prefer the detailed accounts rather than the overviews.

Adding it to my Kindle now. If you find out more about the 1866 election, please post.

Well, if you're writing fiction, it behooves you to read all perspectives. Even Warmoth's War, Politics, and Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana. First hand stuff there.

I would also read fiction. I'm reading Albion Tourgee's Bricks without Straw, A Fool's Errand, and Invisible Empire. All of these (incl. Warmoth's book) are excellent to get the perspective of a living, breathing carpetbagger.

I also just bought for $13.00 a copy of Thomas Dixon's Reconstruction Trilogy. Dixon's idealized his uncle, a KKK chief in SC. The second book of the trilogy, The Clansman, was made into a movie on 1915, The Birth of a Nation. The novel and movie were credited with the revival of the Klan in 1915 through the 20's. I posted the movie in one of these threads recently, but I bought a better copy from Barnes and Noble on DVD.

If you want to write, I recommend all of these and hope you're a faster reader than I. Would you like to get a discussion going of A Fool's Errand?