1873 Colfax Louisiana Courthouse Massacre Newspaper Article

This article is from THE NATION dated April 10th 1873 on the Colfax Louisiana Massacre/Riot. In 1873 there was a contested election for Governor and whites carrying weapons along with a small cannon overwhelmed freedmen and state militia attempting to run the parish courthouse. A majority of the freedmen were murdered after they give up, and almost 50 were killed afterward in the prisons after many hours. Educated guesses of the number of dead were wide-ranging. A military report to Congress in 1875 recognized the deaths of three white men and 105 black men, and also stated that 15-20 bodies of unidentified black men were found in the Red River.

There has been another horrible massacre, in Louisiana. at a place called Colfax, in Grant Parish, even worse than the New Orleans massacre of 1866, and a not unnatural consequence of the position in which Congress left the dispute between the two factions over the government of the State. The committee of the Senate made pretty clear in their report that the Kelloggites who were in possession of the government were usurpers; but, as the Administration at Washington had recognized them, and refused to repudiate them unless Congress passed a bill or resolution to that effect, it made no change in its policy. Consequently, the people of the State are left divided into two bodies, one of which has the authority of the Committee of the Senate for believing that its rights under the election have been disregarded, and the other the authority the Federal Government for believing that its rule cannot be shaken. A state of things better fitted to produce explosions
violence, particularly in view of the feeling of hostility prevailing between blacks and whites all over the cotton States, could hardly be imagined. Accordingly, when two persons, one black and the other white, claim the office of Sheriff in Grant Parish, the black, far from appealing to the court, takes possession of the courthouse with a hand of armed followers of his own color, South American fashion, throws up a rude entrenchment round the building, and bids his white competitor come on, hoping, as he has since confessed, that he would be able to hold out till the row drew the Federal troops to his assistance. Whereupon the white, nothing loth, collects his followers also, and besieges his rival, and, as a last resource, fires the court-house, and his men shoot the garrison down as they try to escape from the flames, until 150 have been slaughtered, with the less of one white man killed and one wounded, There is now a great outcry for the punishment of these “demons,” but there was no outcry, or at least no adequate outcry, over the disgraceful connivance at Washington at the state of things which has converted Louisiana into a South American republic, and destroyed all confidence on the part of all classes, not only in the law, but in a popular vote which produces the law. How can any people put any confidence in anything but rifles who see men like Casey and Packard not only kept in office, but put back into office when their term has expired; and the majority in Congress refusing to do their duty in the settlement of the local difference, and going calmly home with their pockets full of stolen money, without one word of rebuke or disapproval front the President’?

Above engraving from The Louisiana Murders—Gathering The Dead And Wounded" published in Harper's Weekly May 10, 1873, page 397.