by Edward Ball
Alcibiade DeBlanc rally: New Orleans Republican, 1 Mar 1873.
Raid on Precinct 7: The New-Orleans Times, 6 Mar 1873; “Capture of the Jefferson City Police Station by the Metropolitan Police,” The Daily Picayune, 6 Mar 1873; “The New Orleans Mob,” The New York Times, 7 Mar 1873.
Case chronicle: court papers—State of Louisiana v. Peter Duffy, et al., Indictment no. 5187 … 24 Mar 1873, and Witness’ Bond, Recorder’s Office … 12 Mar 1873, op. cit.; “The Citizens Captured” and “Dead,” The Daily Picayune, 7 Mar 1873; affidavit of Constant Lecorgne—“The Chandler Murder,” The Daily Picayune, 13 Mar 1873; “The City,” The Daily Picayune, 15 Mar 1873; “The Chandler Murder Case,” The Daily Picayune, 20 Mar 1873; “The Chandler Murder Case—Verdict of the Jury,” The Daily Picayune, 21 Mar 1873; “The Courts,” The Daily Picayune, 25 Mar 1873; New Orleans Republican, 21 and 25 Mar 1873.
CHAPTER 24
Roudanez family: Mark Roudané, St. Paul, MN, interviews (Apr 2018).
Suicides by Creoles: David C. Rankin, “The Impact of the Civil War on the Free Colored Community of New Orleans,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1977–78), 394–95, 400–407.
Louis Charles Roudanez in 1848: obituary, Paul Trévigne, “Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez,” The Crusader (New Orleans), 22 Mar 1890.
CHAPTER 25
Summer–fall, 1873: “superiority of the white race”—The Ouachita Telegraph (Monroe, LA), 21 Jun 1873; P.B.S. Pinchback in Washington—Dray, Capitol Men, 102–34; “desire to establish … caste”—Rep. James Rapier, speech, in Gienapp, The Civil War and Reconstruction, 362–63; Colored Men’s Convention—New Orleans Republican, 20 Nov 1873.
Lecorgnes on Tchoupitoulas: lease—Theodore Soniat Dufossat to P.C. Lecorgne, 9 Sep 1873, New Orleans Notarial Archives; Joseph Lecorgne, death—20 Nov 1873, Death Records, 1804–76, vol. 59, p. 865, Louisiana State Archives.
Winter–summer 1874: Ulysses Grant to The New York Herald, 20 Jan 1874, quoted in Gienapp, The Civil War and Reconstruction, 393–94; “not pretend to conceal our gratification”—The Shreveport Times, 10 Jul 1874; The Caucasian newspaper—prospectus, The Louisiana Democrat, 25 Mar 1874; Estelle Lecorgne, death—24 Apr 1874, Sacramental Records, Parish of St. Stephen, Funerals (whites), vol. 2.
The White League: formation—Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 279–84; Hogue, Uncivil War, 124–31; Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, 163–65; H. Oscar Lestage, “The White League in Louisiana and Its Participation in Reconstruction Riots,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 18 (Jul 1935), 617–95; C. H. Mouton, spellbound—The New Orleans Bulletin, 20 Jun 1874; “Courier passes into the hands of the White League”—The Opelousas Courier, 25 May 1874; La ligue blanche—“Political Chambords of Louisiana,” New Orleans Republican, 17 Jun 1874, masthead; “benefit of white men”—The New Orleans Bulletin, 20 Jun 1874; “white men in everything”—New Orleans Republican, 19 Jun 1874; Eagle Hall meeting—“Origin and Activities of the White League,” 533–35; White League manifesto, and ward clubs join White League—The Daily Picayune, 2 Jul 1874.
White League observed: “He must be starved”—Catholic Messenger, 14 Jun 1874; “assassination of negroes”—New Orleans Republican, 5 Aug 1874.
Coushatta massacre: Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 287–91; Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 76–77.
CHAPTER 26
September 1874: street battle—“War; The Uprising of the Citizens,” The Daily Picayune, 22 Sep 1874; September 14 narrated—Hogue, Uncivil War, 128–43; white supremacy restored—James Joseph Alcée Fortier, Carpet-Bag Misrule in Louisiana: The Tragedy of the Reconstruction Era Following the War Between the States … Louisiana’s Part in Maintaining White Supremacy in the South (New Orleans: T. J. Moran, 1938); coup d’état—misc. in White League Papers, LARC; “Redemption”—Stuart Omer Landry, The Battle of Liberty Place; The Overthrow of Carpet-Bag Rule in New Orleans, September 14, 1874, pamphlet (New Orleans: Pelican, 1955); and Nystrom, New Orleans After the Civil War, chap. 7, “The Redeemer’s Carnival.”
Constant Lecorgne joins the White League: Family tradition says he is in the middle of the fight. The September 1874 White League coup makes the 2,500-man guerrilla army into heroes among the white population. Sometime later, several units of the League assemble muster rolls, but the lists are unreliable, because many men outside the militias want to claim glory. Constant probably fights with a White League unit known as the First Louisiana Regiment. Prior to 1874, a piece of this group calls itself the McEnery Militia, and Constant, when he is arrested and charged with treason in March 1873, is tagged as a marauder with that particular gang. The McEnery Militia enters the White League and falls in with the First Louisiana Regiment, an infantry led by an ex-Confederate colonel named John G. Angell.
Aftermath of September 14: “Official Report of General Ogden,” The Daily Picayune, 2 Oct 1874; “minions of the terror,” “band of assassins,” “horde of traitors”—Harper’s Weekly, 17, 24, and 31 Oct 1874; “Vox Populi—The Procession in Honor of Louisiana’s Deliverance,” The Daily Picayune, 8 Nov 1874; Edwards Pierrepont to Gov. Adelbert Ames—quoted in Gienapp, The Civil War and Reconstruction, 406–407; “White men may have burned and killed”—The Shreveport Times, 24 Dec 1875, quoted in Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 313; “steeped in the blood”—Harper’s Weekly, 15 Jul 1876; Hogue, Uncivil War, 144–49.
Grant dossier: Congressional Record, 44th Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 5 (6 Dec 1876), 68ff.; Executive Documents, 44th Cong., 2nd sess., no. 30.
Their last child: Marie Constance Lecorgne—b. 16 Dec 1876, Sacramental records, Parish of St. Stephen, Baptisms, vol. 3, no. 327; dies, eleven months—d. 20 Nov 1877, Orleans Death Indices 1877–1895, vol. 70, 147, Louisiana State Archives.
1877 Carnival: the Aryan Race—Young, The Mystick Krewe, 141–44, 150, 222.
Tilden-Hayes compromise: W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 483–84; Foner, Reconstruction, 572–82; aftermath of Redemption—Hogue, Uncivil War, 177–94.
CHAPTER 27
1875 Civil Rights Act abrogated: Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
Alcibiade DeBlanc: life—Dictionary of Louisiana Biography (Louisiana Historical Association, 1988); death—The Louisiana Democrat, 14 Nov 1883; The Opelousas Courier, 17 Nov 1883.
Frederick Ogden: death—The Daily States (New Orleans), 27 May 1886; L’Abeille (New Orleans), 26 May 1886.
Polycarp Constant Lecorgne: death—New Orleans Health Department, Recorder of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, vol. 89; burial—Oct 1886, Lafayette Interment Records, vol. 8, 1873–96, Louisiana Division, NOPL.
Lynching: Lafourche Parish—Equal Justice Initiative, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” 3rd ed. (Montgomery, AL, 2017), https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/, accessed 24 Sep 2019; Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (New York, 1892).
Homer Plessy: Desdunes, Our People and Our History, 143–45; case—Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Gabrielle Lecorgne, pension: Gabrielle Marie Duchemin Lecorgne / Polycarpe Constant Lecorgne, 19 Nov 1903, Confederate Pension Applications, Louisiana State Archives.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers gave me a fellowship and a year in-house at the New York Public Library in 2015–16. Many thanks to the Cullman’s former director, Jean Strouse, and her colleagues. The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University offered a yearlong fellowship in 2016–17. I am grateful to Radcliffe’s former director, the late Judith Vichniac, the ex-dean Lizabeth Cohen, and Harvard comrades. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded me a much-appreciated Public Scholar Grant in 2015–16.
In New Orleans, Tulane University’s Center for the Gulf South gave timely support, while Tulane’s retreat for artists, A Studio in the Woods, offered many weeks of housing. Thank you to Rebecca Snedeker and Ama Rogan of those university branches
.
I appreciate the support of family in Louisiana, especially those named Rowley (Ann, Cissy, Edward, George, Judy, Renée). Thanks to the Lecorgne cousins Jennifer Fagan, Laura Lecorgne, and Parker Lecorgne. Greg Osborne of the New Orleans Public Library and the genealogists Jay Schexnaydre and Katy Shannon brought facts to the surface from court cases, property and tax filings, sacramental records, and other submerged reefs of family history. Appreciation to the researcher Agnès Renault for similar work in the city of Santiago, Cuba. In Connecticut, Lily Walton drew the Lecorgne family tree. Pembroke Kyle of Picture Research Consultants, in Massachusetts, retrieved many images and permission to publish them.
Others in Louisiana helped this book: Theodore Ball, Augusta Elmwood, Roberta Gratz, Erin Greenwald, Jari Honora, Andy Horowitz, Norman and Sand Marmillion, Peter Patout, Sally Reeves, and S. Fred Starr. John Bardes, graduate student in history at Tulane University, has the most gratitude. Without the research of John Bardes, who contributed much of the factual texture of the story, the book would have lacked a thousand pieces and might not have come together. I am grateful to Janel Santiago Marsalis, Joann St. Cyr, Alice Richard, Ricardo Coleman, and others in the latter-day family of Alfred Capla, in New Orleans, who shared their family story like a gift. The same thanks to members of the Roudanez family, formerly of Louisiana, especially Mark Roudané, in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Gratitude to Saidiya Hartman, who read chapters of the manuscript in draft form. Friends and historians Claire Potter, Beverly Gage, and Paul Sabin read early parts of the text and removed some of its unattractive clothing. Much appreciation to the Louisiana historian Larry Powell, who read the book when it was done and gave advice.
Thank you to my agent, Andrew Wylie, who put the book in front of many eyes. I appreciate the generosity of Penguin Press: the Penguin editor Scott Moyers initially acquired the book, and the company was gracious enough to hand it to another publisher when I made the request. Gratitude to Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, who more than twenty years ago published my first book, Slaves in the Family, and who acquired this one, number six. And many thanks to Alex Star, editor at FSG, the most sensitive of prose readers, whose pencil raised the educational attainment of every page.
I acknowledge that my partner, Candace Skorupa, is part author of this story: when the Klansman made me go away, mentally or physically, she asked me to return, and held the door. Thank you, and love, to her.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Here Frontispiece: Carte de visite, 1871 Klansman—Private collection / Picture Research Consultants and Archives
Here Lecorgne family tree: design and calligraphy by Lily S. Walton
Here Seven Oaks plantation, Westwego, Louisiana, photograph, ca. 1925, private collection
Here Obituary, Maud Lecorgne, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 15 Dec 1965
Here Plan of New Orleans and Environs / ca. 1855, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Here Polycarp Constant Lecorgne, private collection
Here State of Louisiana v. Peter Duffy, et al., Indictment no. 5187, 24 Mar 1873, First District Court, Orleans Parish, New Orleans Public Library, Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections
Here Plan of the city and suburbs of New Orleans from an actual survey made in 1815, by J. Tanesse, City Surveyor, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Here Norman’s chart of the lower Mississippi River (New Orleans: B.M. Norman, 1858), Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
Here Notebook of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, with illustration of drums played at Congo Square, New Orleans, 1819, Picture Art Collection / Alamy Photo
Here “Fourteenth Appearance in This Country of the Celebrated New Orleans Ethiopian Serenaders,” lithograph, 1847, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Here Norman’s plan of New Orleans & environs, 1845 / by Henry Moellhausen, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
Here “Plan of One Lot of Ground Situated in Suburb Bouligny, New Orleans, 5 December 1845,” Plan Books, New Orleans Notarial Archives, Orleans Parish Civil District Court, New Orleans, Louisiana
Here New and improved map of Louisiana / compiled from the latest and most authentic surveys, both public & private, by G. W. R. Bayley, 1853, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Here Detail of overleaf in Josiah Clark Nott et al., Indigenous Races of the Earth; or, New Chapters of Ethnological Inquiry; Including Monographs on Special Departments … Presenting Fresh Investigations, Documents, and Materials (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1857)
Here Daguerreotype, “Jem, Gullah,” Joseph T. Zealy / Louis Agassiz, ca. 1850, Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, PM 35-5-10/53046
Here Signature of Polycarp Constant Lecorgne in a court case, Valmont Soniat Dufossat v. Claudine Claude, 7 Nov 1861, Third District Court, Orleans Parish, case no. 16372, New Orleans Public Library, Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections Louisiana Division
Here Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez / daguerreotype portrait, ca. 1857, The Historic New Orleans Collection, gift of Mark Charles Roudané
Here Camp Chase (Columbus, Ohio), ca. 1864, photograph by Manfred Griswold, National Archives and Records Administration, Civil War Talks
Here Mounted Klansman, woodcut, in Albion Winegar Tourgée, The Invisible Empire (Two Parts Complete in One Volume) (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1880)
Here Jefferson Steam Engine Company no. 22, photograph by Theodore Lilienthal, 1867, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans
Here Mechanics Institute, New Orleans, ca. 1864, photograph by W. D. McPherson, Marshall Dunham Photograph Album, Louisiana State University Libraries, Special Collections, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Here “The riot in New Orleans—murdering negroes in the rear of Mechanics Institute,” engraving, Harper’s Weekly, 25 Aug 1866, Library of Congress
Here Edward Capla, pencil drawing on photograph, ca. 1900, private collection
Here Janel Santiago Marsalis with portrait of her great-grandmother, Melanie Gardner, photograph by author, 2018
Here Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five, publicity photograph, ca. 1925, Album / Alamy Photo
Here Frontispiece from William T. Richardson et al., Historic Pulaski, Birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan (Nashville: Methodist Publishing, 1913)
Here “Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Tuesday, March 6, Procession of the ‘Mystick Krewe of Comus,’” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 6 Apr 1867, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Here Intersection of Felicity and Polymnia Streets, photograph by Jay Dearborn Edwards, ca. 1857–60, The Historic New Orleans Collection
Here Klansman on horse, photograph, ca. 1868, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville
Here Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Mississippi, 1871, Album / Alamy Photo, image i.d. R262KB
Here Lynching cartoon, The Independent Monitor (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1 Sep 1868, Library of Congress
Here Carte de visite, Huntsville, Alabama, 1868, Pictorial Press, Ltd., Alamy Photo
Here Gorilla costume design from Mistick Krewe of Comus 1873 parade (theme: “Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species … by Comus”), New Orleans, 1873, Tulane University, Louisiana Research Collection
Here Edgar Degas, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, oil on canvas, 1873, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, France
Here Aimée Potens, grandmother of Louis Charles Roudanez, daguerreotype, Louisiana, ca. 1844, private collection
Here Mark Roudané and his father, New Orleans, photograph, 1954, private collection
Here Mark Roudané with protest sign, 2016, private collection
Here City of New Orleans and the Mississ
ippi, Currier and Ives, 1885, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Here The Caucasian newspaper (Alexandria, Louisiana), 4 Apr 1874, Library of Congress
Here Pamphlet about the White League, 1875, White League Papers, Tulane University, Louisiana Research Collection
Here “The Louisiana Outrages—Attack upon the Police in the Streets of New Orleans,” Harper’s Weekly, 3 Oct 1874, Library of Congress
Here Thomas Nast, “The Union as It Was,” Harper’s Weekly, 24 Oct 1874, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Here Polycarp Constant Lecorgne, private collection
Here White League monument, and the author, New Orleans, 2016, photograph by Claire Bangser
ALSO BY EDWARD BALL
Slaves in the Family
The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South
Peninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love
The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA
The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Ball is the author of six books, including The Inventor and the Tycoon, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. He is also the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can sign up for email updates here.