by Edward Ball
Yves J. Lecorgne: white witnesses—A. Morse (to Joseph Fullerton), 13 Oct 1865, Letters and Telegrams, Freedmen’s Bureau, NARA microfilm M1027, roll 5.
Democratic Party activists: Frederick Ogden—Justin A. Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 60–61; “government of white people”—Platform of the Democratic Party of Louisiana, 1865, reprinted in Walter L. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. 1 (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1906), 229–30.
François Laizer: slaveholder—Slave Schedules, U.S. Census, 1850, NARA microfilm M432; indenture of Randall—F. J. Laizer, 3 Apr 1866, Indenture and Apprenticeship Records, 1865–72, Labor Contracts, New Orleans, Freedmen’s Bureau, NARA microfilm M1905, roll 8.
Origins and early years of Ku-klux: Letter, James Crowe to Walter Fleming, 22 May 1905, Walter L. Fleming papers, 1685–1932, MSS 1029, New York Public Library; Albion Winegar Tourgée, The Invisible Empire (Two Parts Complete in One Volume) (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1880), 385–500; L. M. Rose, The Ku Klux Klan; or, Invisible Empire (New Orleans: L. Graham, 1914), 18–24; Elaine Frantz Parsons, Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), chaps. 1–2.
CHAPTER 14
Fire companies: in Jefferson City—“Fire Department,” The Daily Picayune, 2 Mar 1865, and The New-Orleans Times, 26 Feb 1865; Home Hook & Ladder—Thomas O’Connor, History of the Fire Department of New Orleans, from the Earliest Days to the Present Time (New Orleans, 1895), 144; A History of the Proceedings in the City of New Orleans, On the Occasion of the Funeral Ceremonies in Honor of James Abram Garfield, Late President of the United States (New Orleans: A.W. Hyatt, 1881), 240–41; and The New-Orleans Times 1 Apr 1875; Home Hook & Ladder parades—The Daily Picayune, 2 Mar 1865, and The New-Orleans Times, 26 Mar 1867; Mardi Gras ball—The New-Orleans Times, 7 Feb 1865; banquets—“Fireman’s Ball,” The New-Orleans Times, 8 Feb 1866; truck house—“Obituary,” The New-Orleans Times, 2 Sep 1866; eighty-five volunteers—New Orleans Daily Crescent, 5 Mar 1866; Émile Chevalley on Lecorgne row—1851 and 1859 Tax Records, West Bouligny, Jefferson City, Louisiana Division, NOPL; firemen group photo—“The City,” The Daily Picayune, 19 Nov 1866; Theodore Lilienthal, photographer—Gary Van Zante, New Orleans 1867: Photographs by Theodore Lilienthal (New York: Merrell, 2008).
Yves Lecorgne, fiscal officer: “Y. J. Lecorgne to Council of the City of Jefferson,” City of Jefferson, Louisiana, Board of Aldermen, Minutes, vols. 3 & 4 (1861–68), and City of Jefferson, Louisiana, Treasurer, Journals of Accounts (1868–70), Louisiana Division, NOPL; Yves Lecorgne accused of malfeasance—“Grand Jury Report of the Parish of Jefferson,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, 11 Feb 1870.
Lecorgne households: Gardner’s New Orleans Directory for 1861, 272, and Gardner’s New Orleans Directory for 1866, 268.
Politics, 1865–66: Andrew Johnson veto—James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 405–13; concealed carry law—M. P. Hunnicutt to A. M. Jackson, 1 May 1866, box 11, Letters Received by the Provost Marshal General 1862, State of Louisiana, 1862–63, Military Installations, Record Group 393, NARA; Seymour Rapp, police officer—New Orleans Republican, 26 Mar 1874; assaults and killings—Michael G. Wade, “‘I Would Rather Be Among the Comanches’: The Military Occupation of Southwest Louisiana, 1865,” Louisiana History 39, no. 1 (winter 1998), 49, 60.
CHAPTER 15
Mechanics Institute massacre: New Orleans, First District Court, Grand Jury, Grand Jury Report, and the Evidence Taken by Them in Reference to the Great Riot in New Orleans, Louisiana, July 30th, 1866 (New Orleans, 1866); “Report of the Select Committee on the New Orleans Riots” and “Testimony,” U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, 39th Cong., 2nd sess., report no. 16 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867); “New Orleans Riots, Message from the President of the United States, in Answer to a Resolution of the House of the 12th Ultimo, Transmitting All Papers Relative to the New Orleans Riots,” U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, 39th Cong., 2nd sess., executive doc. no. 68, 1867; incidents and quotations—from “Report of the Select Committee,” 5, 17, 110; from “Message from the President,” 64, 70, 71; from “Testimony,” 3, 4, 13, 33, 38, 50, 78, 80, 87, 110, 180, 181, 446; testimony of Lucien Capla, 119–23; rebel song—“O I’m a good old rebel” (1861), Notated Music, Civil War Sheet Music Collection, Library of Congress.
Massacre aftermath: two hundred people killed—Ella Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana After 1868 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1918), 4; several hundred—Jean-Charles Houzeau, My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civil War Era, ed. David C. Rankin, trans. Gerard F. Denault (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1984), 128–33, 155–60; Andrew Johnson speeches—Walter L. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. 1, 226, 466–67; further on July 30, 1866, massacre—John Rose Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, ed. Pierce Butler (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1910), 146–79; Frank J. Wetta, The Louisiana Scalawags: Politics, Race and Terrorism During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2012), chap. 5; “none but the white man”—The New Orleans Crescent, 11 Jan 1867, 5.
CHAPTER 16
Capla family: descendants of Lucien Capla, New Orleans, interviews (Jul and Oct 2017, Mar 2018).
“I mention research steps”: Genealogists make family trees using birth and death records, marriage papers, census records, Social Security applications, wills, and other public notes about private lives; members of the Capla family confirm this research when they examine it.
Lucien Capla: whereabouts—Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants … in the City of New Orleans and Suburbs, for 1870 (New Orleans: Southern Publishing, 1869), 117; United States Census, 1870, New Orleans, Ward 6; in politics—“Comité Central Executif,” New Orleans Tribune, 14 Dec 1866.
Alfred Capla: tailor—U.S. Census, 1880, New Orleans; in politics—“Delegates to the Convention,” The Daily Picayune, 26 May 1872; “Republican Executive Committee,” New Orleans Republican, 13 May 1876; killing—“Adam Navarre Killed,” New Orleans Republican, 10 Jul 1873; “Another Tragedy,” The Daily Picayune, 10 Jul 1873; tailor’s pattern book, ca. 1890, private collection; death—Vital Records Indices, State of Louisiana, Division of Archives, Records, and History; children—U.S. Census, 1900, New Orleans, Ward 5, and U.S. Census, 1910, New Orleans, Ward 6.
Gombo or Creole dialect: “White man carries money”—Lafcadio Hearn, “Gombo zhèbes,” 25n.
Johnny St. Cyr: life—Johnny St. Cyr, recorded interview with Alan Lomax (New Orleans, Apr 1949), Alan Lomax Archive, Association for Cultural Equity, New York, culturalequity.org, accessed 12 Feb 2019; “Johnny St. Cyr,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed., ed. Barry Dean Kernfeld (New York: Grove, 2002); “Johnny St. Cyr,” in Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, eds., The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
CHAPTER 17
Carnival, 1867: firemen’s parade—The New-Orleans Times, 5 Mar 1867; masking and Ku-klux display—Elaine Frantz Parsons, “Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan,” Journal of American History 92, no. 3 (Dec 2005), 811–36.
Radical Reconstruction: overview—Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 228–71; First and Second Reconstruction Acts—Acts and Resolutions, 39th Cong., 2nd sess., 60, and Supplementary Reconstruction Act—Acts and Resolutions, 40th Cong., 1st sess., 260 (both Mar 1867); Third and Fourth Reconstruction Acts (Jul 1867, Mar 1868)—Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction (Arthur Clark, 1906), vol. 1, 415–19.
Alcibiade DeBlanc and Knights of the White Camellia: Alcibiade DeBlanc obituaries—The Times-Democrat (New Orleans), 10 Nov 1883; L’Observateur (St. Martinville, LA), 10 Nov 1883; Caucasian
Club—U.S. House of Representatives, House Miscellaneous Documents, 41st Cong., 1st sess., serial 1402, no. 12 (Washington, D.C., 1870), 517; genesis of KWC—James G. Dauphine, “The Knights of the White Camellia and the Election of 1868: Louisiana’s White Terrorists; A Benighting Legacy,” Louisiana History 30, no. 2 (spring 1989), 173–90; and similar militias—Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 162–77; “miscegenation and other degradations”—E. John Ellis Diary, E. P. Ellis and Family Papers, 1812–1914, Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Collections, quoted in Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 74.
CHAPTER 18
Lecorgnes and carpetbaggers: sales to carpetbaggers—Eliza Lecorgne Lagroue to Matthew Swords, 8 Sep 1866, Yves J. Lecorgne to William Kimball, 12 Sep 1866, Yves J. Lecorgne to Louis Andre, 26 Jul 1866, Louisiana Division, NOPL; Shrewsbury land sale—Eliza Lecorgne Lagroue to Adolphe Hotard, 27 Sep 1867, in Jefferson Parish conveyances, books I–J, record no. 958, Louisiana Division, NOPL.
New Orleans, 1867–68: courthouse shoot-out—The New-Orleans Times, 29 Sep, 1 and 2 Oct 1867; 1868 constitutional convention—Richard L. Hume and Jerry B. Gough, Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: The Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2008), chap. 6; constitution vote—Donald W. Davis, “Ratification of the Constitution of 1868: Record of Votes,” Louisiana History 6, no. 3 (1965), 301–305; “Africanize … the country”—Andrew Johnson, Message to Congress, 3 Dec 1867, quoted in William E. Gienapp, The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 352–54; Andrew Johnson indictment—Articles of Impeachment, in Fleming, ed., Documentary History of Reconstruction, vol. 1, 458–70; “Untutored African,” The New-Orleans Times, 4 Mar 1868.
Militias emerge: “queer name of the ‘Ku Klux Klan’”—The New Orleans Crescent, 12 Mar 1868; Ku-klux advertisement—The Daily Picayune, 17 Mar 1868; “Ku Klux and the Why of It,” The Daily Picayune, 18 Apr 1868; “Ku Klux is a mysterious association,” The Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge), 27 Mar 1868; Knights of the White Camellia—Louisiana General Assembly, Supplemental Report of Joint Committee of the General Assembly of Louisiana on the Conduct of the Late Elections, and the Condition of Peace and Good Order in the State (New Orleans: A. L. Lee, 1869), 211–21, 262–66; Dauphine, “The Knights of the White Camellia and the Election of 1868,” 182–85; Ku-klux verses—The Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria), 29 Apr 1868; The South-Western (Shreveport, LA), 6 May 1868; Tri-Weekly Advocate (Baton Rouge), 13 Nov 1868; Ku-klux musical—New-Orleans Commercial Bulletin, 2 Jun 1868, advertisement.
CHAPTER 19
Knights of the White Camellia (KWC): constitution and rites published—New Orleans Republican, 2 Dec 1868; “Constitution and Ritual of the Knights of the White Camellia, Adopted at a General Convention Held in New Orleans, June 4, 1868,” pamphlet (1904), in Papers of Walter L. Fleming, New York Public Library; “Constitution and Ritual of the Knights of the White Camellia,” in Walter L. Fleming, ed., Documents Relating to Reconstruction (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1905).
White militias: around the South—Foner, Reconstruction, 412–44; “Ku-kluxery”—Philip Dray, Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), 77–102; spread of Klan—Parsons, Ku-Klux, introduction.
State response: Metropolitan Police—Report of the Metropolitan Police, 1869–70 (New Orleans, 1871), John Minor Wisdom Collection, LARC, 5–14; “ten thousand torches”—The New York Times, 6 Sep 1868; “nigger insurrection”—Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, 22.
KWC: councils in New Orleans—Louisiana General Assembly, Supplemental Report, 211–13; “When a man is to be killed”—Supplemental Report, 217–18.
Constant Lecorgne and the Knights of the White Camellia: The claim that Constant Lecorgne falls in with the Knights of the White Camellia and marauds with the sometimes-costumed gangs of family friend Alcibiade DeBlanc grows from circumstantial evidence, which is extensive, and from oral tradition. A secretive cult with many semiliterate actors, the KWC (probably) did not keep paper files. Or, if they did, records do not survive. I use these methods to tell the story of Constant and the White Camellia: deduction from clues, inference from symptoms, and reasonable projection from trace evidence.
“murder of negroes is a daily occurrence”: Louisiana atrocities—“Desperate Attack on a Freedman’s House,” New Orleans Republican, 15 Jul 1868; “List of Murders and Outrages,” in Louisiana General Assembly, Supplemental Report, 258–75; U.S. Congress, Report on the Alleged Outrages in the Southern States by the Select Committee of the Senate (1871).
Ku-klux costume: J. C. Lester and D. L. Wilson, Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth, and Disbandment, published 1884 (reprint ed., New York: Neale Publishing, 1905), 58; photographs—a handful of photos survive of Ku-klux and KWC marauders in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee (pages 251, 263, and 275).
CHAPTER 20
Henry Warmoth letter: Warmoth to Andrew Johnson, 1 Aug 1868, printed in The Bossier Banner (Bellevue, LA), 15 Aug 1868.
Ward clubs: The New-Orleans Times, 6 and 8 Aug 1868; New Orleans Republican, 22 Aug 1868; New Orleans Daily Crescent, 12 Aug and 4 Oct 1868.
Election of 1868: context—Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 161–73; incitement—“Radical Negro Mob in Jefferson,” The Daily Picayune, 13 Aug 1868; Frederick Ogden observed—“Origin and Activities of the White League in New Orleans (Reminiscences of a Participant in the Movement),” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1940), 523–38; mobbing—“Mass Meeting at Congo Square,” The New Orleans Crescent, 18 Oct 18.
Election violence: lynching—The Weekly Advocate (Baton Rouge), 31 Oct 1868; beatings and killings—Register of Murders and Outrages, May–Dec 1868, and Miscellaneous Reports and Lists, Mar 1867–Nov 1868, State of Louisiana, Freedmen’s Bureau, NARA microfilm M1027, reel 34; U.S. Congress, Testimony Taken by the Sub-committee of Elections in Louisiana, serial 1435, H. misc. doc. 154 (1870), 200+ references to KWC, several hundred to assaults and murders, in 1,500 pp.; Coroner’s Office, Record of Inquests and Views, 1868–70, Louisiana Division, NOPL.
Election aftermath: The Daily Picayune, 4 Nov 1868; “Address of the State Campaign Committee of the Republican Party of Louisiana, New Orleans, 10 Nov 1868,” pamphlet (New Orleans: J. E. Stephens, 1868); Report of the Senate Committee on Elections in the Case of W.B. Gray v. A.B. Bacon (1869), pamphlet, John Minor Wisdom Collection, box 13, folder 22, LARC.
CHAPTER 21
“Unconscious causes”: couplet—Richard Blackmore, Creation: A Philosophical Poem, in Seven Books (1712), III.
Saint Mark, the baby: Honorius St. Mark Lecorgne, b. 16 Dec 1868, Sacramental records, Parish of St. Stephen, Baptisms, vol. 2, no. 162.
CHAPTER 22
Lecorgne households: Gardner’s New Orleans Directory for 1869 (New Orleans, 1868); Edwards’ Annual Directory to the Inhabitants, Institutions … etc. in the City of New Orleans, for 1872 (New Orleans: Southern Publishing, 1871); United States Census, 1870.
Slaughterhouse Cases: Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, 42–44; Charles Lane, The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), 110–26; case law—Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872).
Terror goes dormant: Nathan Bedford Forrest—“How Grant Broke Old Ku Klux,” The New York Times, 17 Aug 1924; cold politics—Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 173–83; “mongrel mulattoes”—The Daily Picayune, 22 Sep 1868; no massacres—Report of the Metropolitan Police, 1869–70 (New Orleans, 1871), John Minor Wisdom Collection, LARC, 5–14.
Jefferson City, 1869: municipal coup—City of Jefferson, Board of Aldermen, Minutes, vol. 4 (1868–70), Louisiana Division, NOPL; militia—Testimony Taken by the Sub-committee of Elections in Louisiana, 246, 469–71; May 1869 battle—The Daily Picayune, 19, 20, and 21 May 1869, 1 Aug 1869; The New York Times, 23 May 1869, 1 Aug 1869; New Orleans Republican, 23 May 1869
; The Opelousas Courier, 29 May 1869.
1870–72 Enforcement Acts: summarized—Dray, Capitol Men, 88–98; narrated—Xi Wang, “The Making of Federal Enforcement Laws, 1870–72,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 70, no. 3 (Apr 1995), 1013–58; statutes—Act of 31 May 1870, ch. 114, 16 Stat. 140 (enforcing voting rights); Act of 14 Jul 1870, ch. 254, 16 Stat. 254 (on naturalization); Act of 28 Feb 1871, ch. 99, 16 Stat. 433 (expanding law of May 1870); Act of 20 Apr 1871, ch. 22, 17 Stat. 13 (enforcing Fourteenth Amendment); and Act of 10 Jun 1872, ch. 415, 17 Stat. 347 (appropriation to pay for legislation).
Encyclopedia of terror—U.S. Congress, Joint Select Committee on the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, 13 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872).
CHAPTER 23
1872–73: Ku-klux parade float—“First Celebration of Mardi Gras in Memphis,” The Memphis Daily Appeal, 14 Feb 1872, 4; “Worshipful Chief, K.K.K.”—Nathan Bedford Forrest, “A Letter of Advice: To the Grand Order–the K.K. Klan–throughout the U. States and Territories of America” (1872), Library Broadside Collection, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville; 1872 campaign and election—New Orleans Republican, 26 Jul and 13 Aug 1872; Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 230–52; Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 120–38; Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana, 167–204; Grant’s message to Congress—New Orleans Republican, 26 Feb 1873.
Edgar Degas, Krewe of Comus: Christopher E. G. Benfey, Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable (New York: Knopf, 1997), 164, 184–85; “Missing Links” Carnival theme—Perry Young, The Mystick Krewe: Chronicles of Comus and His Kin (New Orleans: Carnival Press, 1931), 118; Reid Mitchell, All on a Mardi Gras Day: Episodes in the History of New Orleans Carnival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 65–66.