by Edward Ball
CANDIDATE: I do.
COMMANDER: Will you take a solemn oath never to abstain from casting your vote at any election in which a candidate of the negro race shall be opposed to a white man attached to your principles?
CANDIDATE: I will.
COMMANDER: Are you opposed to allowing the control of the political affairs of this country to go in whole or in part, into the hands of the African race, and will you do everything in your power to prevent it?
CANDIDATE: Yes.
COMMANDER: Will you under all circumstance defend and protect persons of the white race in their lives, rights and property, against all encroachments or invasions from any inferior race, especially the African?
CANDIDATE: Yes.
There is no room for deviation in the script, no place where a person questions or shows doubt. It is a road to obedience. The candidate consents and raises his right hand in the oath:
I swear to maintain and defend the social and political superiority of the White Race on this Continent; always and in all places to observe a marked distinction between the White and African races;… and to protect and defend persons of the White Race, in their lives, rights and property, against the encroachments and aggressions of an inferior race.
When the meeting ends at Odd Fellows Hall, the gang of recruits walks out and fans into the night.
* * *
Random killings spread. According to a report of the Freedmen’s Bureau, in early June, after the White Camellia meeting, “a colored man, name unknown, is killed on the road by a Frenchman, cause unknown.”
Also in June, a white man named François Saleson “kills a colored man, name unknown.”
A man named John Sentinger shoots “through the body” a black man named Alexander Washington.
Matthias Vandervall, white, shoots a black man named Eli Brown, though “not fatally.”
Outside New Orleans, “a number of freedpeople are whipped and burned, and two women are ravished by four white men.”
Some of the people who carry out these assaults are named in reports of the Freedmen’s Bureau. They have surnames that are French Creole, German American, and Dutch. No perpetrators, as yet, appear to be Irish American or Italian American.
* * *
The violence grows in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and beyond.
In Washington, the White House is paralyzed. Andrew Johnson has been on trial in the Senate since March 7, and things move slowly. He is indifferent, anyway, to the growing attacks. Johnson is a Democrat, much liked by white Southerners. He has no desire to act. He is well liked because he wishes to keep the white South in charge of the black South.
On May 16, the Senate calls the trial to a halt and schedules a vote. Conviction requires a two-thirds majority. Thirty-five senators vote to remove Johnson, nineteen to acquit; the ballot falls short by one vote. Later in May, the Senate tries to convict Johnson on different charges. The outcome is the same, one vote short of conviction.
Johnson stays in office for the last five months of his term. Congress is split. Democrats, in the minority, support the president. The Republican majority despises him.
* * *
Gangs that use the name “Ku Klux Klan,” having appeared briefly in March, seem to disappear from the southern half of Louisiana and retreat to the northern part of the state. There they flourish. The Ku Klux Klan recruits thousands in the parishes of Caddo and Ouachita, Claiborne and Bienville, Tensas and Catahoula. Meanwhile, the Knights of the White Camellia carry the mission in the lower half of the state—in the Catholic parts, in the French parts. The White Camellia launches guerrilla cells in the parishes of Rapides and St. Landry, Terrebonne and Lafourche, St. Tammany and St. Bernard. Many in the White Camellia are Creole, and they are merciless.
White militias are strongest in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina. But they appear in all states that take part in the rebellion of the Civil War. In Mississippi, gangs call themselves “Ku-klux” in the northern and western parts of the state, the Red Shirts elsewhere, and the White Line in some counties. In Texas, the Ku-klux appears, and another group, the Knights of the Rising Sun. Virginia does not see as many rampant white militias, and Arkansas finds a way to dampen the night-riding gangs. Around the South, there are groups that call themselves the Red Hands (for blood?), the Black Horse Cavalry (after a rebel company people remember), and the Pale Faces, pointing with a smile at skin color. Some terror groups have no names. With closeness and understanding, whites call them “slickers.”
The new governor of Louisiana, Henry Warmoth, is a young and magnetic Republican. A former Union officer, Warmoth is a lawyer raised in Illinois who appears in New Orleans with the occupation. He is a carpetbagger. Most whites in the state dislike Warmoth. Most blacks like him. It is black men who vote him in.
Reports grow of White Camellia attacks. Governor Warmoth does not believe the New Orleans police force can be trusted. They are five hundred officers, all of them white. With votes from the new state assembly, now one-third black, and mostly Republican, Warmoth creates a new unit of lawmen, the Metropolitan Police. The new “Metropolitans” are seven hundred men in New Orleans and Jefferson City. A third are blacks or Creoles of color, two-thirds are white. The Metropolitans become the police who push for Reconstruction, the cops who try, at least some of the time, to make a difference for African Americans.
Black politicians have power for the first time. Of 20 Republican state senators, 7 are black. Of 101 members of the Louisiana House, 56 are Republicans, nearly half of them black. The 45 Democrats are all white. One Republican senator has a pleasing name, Pinckney Pinchback. A thirty-year-old from the second electoral district of New Orleans, Pinchback uses one of his first speeches, to a joint session of the legislature, to denounce the White Camellia.
“The next outrage of the kind which they commit will be the signal for the dawn of retribution, of which they have not yet dreamed,” Pinchback says. He denounces the reports of whippings carried out by gangs at night. Another episode of this kind, and “it will be a signal that will cause ten thousand torches to be applied to this city. Patience will then have ceased to be a virtue and this city will be reduced to ashes.”
The black politician makes a threat of arson, no less. Pinchback is called to order by the president of the senate and forced to sit down. He is a Creole of color trying to be heard. He knows the torch is a weapon that frightens whites. The torch is a sign of “nigger insurrection.”
Two newspapers support Reconstruction, Roudanez’s Tribune and the Republican, a new daily set up by the Republican Party. The two report atrocities against blacks. Meanwhile, the half-dozen newspapers that call for white rule are silent about the violence. Often the white newspapers say such stories are invented—they are fake news. Writers in all the papers use “KWC” and “Ku-klux” interchangeably, sometimes in a single paragraph, as though they are one and the same. The KWC spreads from Louisiana into Mississippi. The Ku-klux grows from Tennessee and bleeds into Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas. In Louisiana, where the Ku-klux rides at night, a branch of the White Camellia cannot be found. Where the KWC has a gang, there is no Ku-klux. Sometimes the papers use “Ku-klux” as a generic term to designate all white-on-black violence, no matter who the perpetrator.
In New Orleans, the White Camellia recruits fifteen gangs, or “councils,” and assigns each to a meeting hall.
KWC Council No. 14 holds meetings at Magazine and Philip streets.
Council No. 13 does business from a hall at the Fair Grounds horse track.
No. 11 plans its strikes at a theater on the corner of Poydras and Carondelet streets.
No. 10 operates out of the University of Louisiana’s School of Medicine, on Common Street.
No. 9 has its own clubhouse, Eagle Hall, on Prytania and Felicity Streets.
No. 8 plans actions at the corner of Canal and Rampart streets.
No. 4 meets at a private house at the corner of Bienville Street a
nd Exchange Alley, in the French Quarter.
And so on.
The KWC clubhouse closest to Home Hook & Ladder is Eagle Hall, on Prytania and Felicity streets. This must be the place where Constant mimes the secret greeting to gain entry and shows his face indoors.
From a photograph of three night riders wearing typical costume of the Knights of the White Camellia
A Grand Council of three men directs all the White Camellia gangs. Alcibiade DeBlanc acts as chief. He is the principal snakehead on the Medusa.
The KWC keeps no membership rolls. They wish to torment without making a list of tormentors. But some talk. A couple of years later, during an investigation by Congress into the white rampages in the South, a few guerrillas break the code of silence to testify about how they do things. The men claim anonymity and do not use their names, but they allow Congress to record their testimony. I imagine a deal of some kind. You caught me; give me immunity and namelessness, then I talk.
One witness at Congress explains the method in assassinations—
“When a member wants a man killed he will say to the Grand Commander in council, ‘I want ___ attended to,’ and give the reason. It is voted, and if a majority of votes are in favor, it is done.
“When a man is to be killed in a different district, word is sent to the council adjacent, and from there a member is sent to do the work, giving the members in the district where the victim lives due notice of the time it is to take place.”
In other words, guerrillas travel to places they do not know, kill one or several people, and travel back out.
It is not the same as during the Civil War. Most men in the KWC, veterans, remember the sound of artillery in the distance, the screaming charge, the rifle shots when you see the outline of a figure. This is different. The night-riding and whippings and beatings—and sometimes, the killings—are more consuming work. They are close fights, and personal. A man has a relationship with his victim, something like a liaison. The victim is terrified, he shrieks and he pleads. His wife weeps, begging for her husband’s life. The liaison lasts for thirty minutes, usually not more.
“Every man who has a white heart is a walking arsenal,” one of the KWC tells Congress. “And it is the determination of whites to remain united until the last Radical and the last nigger are out of office.”
* * *
By September, the White Camellia claims a membership of fifteen thousand men in New Orleans and the near parishes—Jefferson, Chalmette, St. Bernard, and Orleans. I imagine the figure is overstatement. At this time, the white male adult population in New Orleans is thirty-two thousand. To exaggerate their scale is part of the method of the Ku-klux. Still, the number of guerrillas is large, and they are busy.
* * *
It is fall 1868, and the biggest election since the war is set for November. The race for president puts General Ulysses Grant against Governor Horatio Seymour. Grant is a Republican. He is a war hero in the North, with both whites and blacks; in the South, he is a hero to blacks only. Horatio Seymour is a Democrat, the ex-governor of New York State and an antagonist of Reconstruction. Grant is for black rights, Seymour against.
Someone among the Democrats writes a campaign song for the party’s candidate, Horatio Seymour. It has a catchy title: “The White Man’s Banner.” The party sends out sheet music with the song’s memorable chorus—
Let, then, all free-born patriots join,
With a brave intent,
To vindicate our Father’s choice,
A white-man’s government.
The White Camellia and the Ku-klux decide they will do anything to defeat Grant and elect Seymour.
The KWC launches its campaign. Near New Orleans, on July 7 at 10:00 p.m., according to an investigation, “a party of men in disguise” rides up to a cabin on a plantation owned by a man named Maurice Richard. These are raiders who probably mask at Carnival. Tonight they mask for a killing. On Richard’s plantation, the gang makes its way to the house of the farmworker Spencer Stewart, “colored.” They surround the house and shoot into its windows and doors. Inside, Stewart is hit in the arm and shoulder; his wife is hit in the chest and killed. His granddaughter, age ten, is also shot. She dies at the house. Witnesses identify the masked Camellias as fifteen men. Their names are Gardner, Louney, Meche, Moore, others. The name Lecorgne is not on the list.
Outside the city, a state report says, “Bob Owens, colored, is hung by persons unknown. A coroner’s jury examines the case, but are unable to obtain any facts.” Elsewhere, “Tom Ford, colored, is shot and killed by one Howell Rayburn. A warrant is issued, but no arrest made.”
The White Camellia raids black villages and houses. Guerrillas torment women by humiliating them in front of their partners, sometimes whipping them, sometimes raping them.
The stories are raw. Yet they are our stories. Not only are they our family stories, and as vile as any can be. They are tribal stories.
In St. Landry Parish, “A colored boy is whipped to death with a double-stranded rawhide and another large whip.” Alcibiade DeBlanc is in St. Landry Parish during this particular killing. He gives a speech on the steps of the courthouse, and his remarks appear in the local paper.
“I fought four years in the Confederate army and I am ready to fight in six months—or now, if you say so, boys!” DeBlanc tells his crowd. “Why do you not kill these carpetbaggers? There are only five or six in every parish. We are a hundred to one!” Later the same night, near the town, the teenage boy is whipped to death.
By midsummer, “the murder of negroes is a daily occurrence,” says a report to the legislature.
* * *
People like to hear about the disguises of the Ku-klux. They like stories of the masked and robed men. I cannot put my hands on eyewitness accounts of White Camellia disguises, but there is little doubt these night riders wear masks and camouflage. They mask like Carnival revelers to protect their identity, and they mask like minstrel players, who sometimes dress as ghosts onstage.
For their night rides in the northern parishes, Ku-klux guerrillas wear red or white robes. On the head, they wear a hood, sometimes with a grimace mask affixed to it. The origin of the hood seems to me to lie in the minstrel shows. Some performers in minstrel acts wear painted meal sacks over their heads while performing skits in which they pretend to be ghosts.
Closer to New Orleans, the Knights of the White Camellia wear decorated jackets, sometimes robes. Sometimes the armed horsemen of the KWC wear no robes, and instead, they black up, painting themselves with blackface, using grease or burned cork, because the important thing is to cover the face. It is common for night riders to smut their faces. Sometimes they wear black masks. Carnival is a good source of masks and disguises. The tradition contains a deep catalog.
A man called John C. Lester is a member of the first cell of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. In 1884, Lester publishes a memoir about his life with the Ku-klux. It contains a description of the costume that raiders wear in the state of Mississippi, next to Louisiana. I am sure the White Camellia uses a similar visual repertoire.
Each member provides himself with the following outfit: a white mask for the face, with orifices for the eyes and nose; a tall, fantastic cardboard hat, so constructed as to increase the wearer’s apparent height; a gown or robe, of sufficient length to cover the entire person. No particular color or material is prescribed … each selects what in his judgment will be the most hideous and fantastic.… The robes, of different colors, add vastly to the grotesque appearance of the assembled Klan.
A newspaper cartoon that promises lynching for carpetbaggers
The variety in costume has several motives. Anonymity is most important. During acts of sadism and cruelty, guerrillas do not wish to be recognized. Constant Lecorgne, on a ride into a black village, is not a man who wants to be identified by witnesses. Another reason for costume is theater. Men on rampage add the enjoyment of performance to their attack. A third purpose is to spread fear. The Ku-klux
are in the business of terror. Cloaks and faceless hoods are the pretend costumes of death. Fear generated by the act of torment has high value to the tormentor. To magnify the fear in victims and in witnesses is an important aim of those who violate other people. Fear is the ingredient that permits us to call the Ku-klux the first American terrorists.
The blood chronicle continues.
“A man named John Sentinger shoots and nearly kills a black man called Solomon Wilson, without cause,” testimony says. That is all I can say about Solomon Wilson. Single shootings are common enough to yield just one sentence of a report.
I do not know, and I come to the conclusion that it is impossible to learn, what specific atrocities Constant participates in—probably participates in—with the White Camellia and with family friend Alcibiade DeBlanc during the summer and fall of 1868. The evidence is not there, or it does not survive. And family tradition does not say. My aunt Maud, late carrier of the story, does not say. I doubt that she knew, when she was alive.
In cases of mob violence, absence of individual evidence is not evidence of individual absence. I do not know—there is no testimony—whether Constant wears a homemade disguise of robe and mask. Probably he has something like this in hand. I cannot say whether Gabrielle, at home with the children in the rented house, and a person who is good with a needle and thread, stitches together a robe with appliqués, like demons or snakes. I do not know whether she makes her husband a hood with the blank face of death. Many upon many women do this sort of thing for their men in the Ku-klux. They are women who know what their men want.
20
Grand Commander Alcibiade DeBlanc, using coded channels, makes an announcement. All White Camellias who want firearms may go to a particular gun store in downtown New Orleans. Its owner is one of the Knights. Fighters can take what weapons they want, and the Grand Commander himself will pay for them.