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The Southern States of America
Chapter V - Modern Louisiana, 1876 - 1909


Significance of the Year 1876.

The year 1876 in the annals of Louisiana is one fraught with unusual significance. It is the year that marks the end of alien control of the state's political destinies. It is the year that marks the beginning of the period in which the state's best citizens reassumed their political heritage. To understand its importance one has but to review the events of the ten years preceding this date.

The armies of the North had come and gone but the followers and hangers-on that flock like wolves and vultures in the rear of advancing hosts remained behind to inflict the curse of the carpet-bagger upon the land. The disfranchisement of the native whites under the reconstruction constitution of 1868 and the elevation of the ignorant, easily manipulated, freedom-mad blacks to sudden citizenship gave political control to imported plunderers whose creed was greed, whose highest gratification was extortion and whose exultation was that of the thug and blackmailer, their hands being at the throat of a sovereign state and their victim being a time-honored commonwealth.

The Curse of Carpet-Baggery.

What Louisiana suffered at the hands of these corruptionists may be in part indicated by the following figures: In one year (1871) the legislative expenses for a short session were $626,000 or $6,150 for each member of the legislature. In four and a half years (1868-1872) the expenditures of the government amounted to $26,394,578 and in two years (1868-1870) the bonded debt of the state was increased from six to twenty-five million dollars. The total cost of carpet-bag misrule has been estimated at more than $106,000,000.

The provisions of the constitution of 1868 reeked with insult and injury to a people unusually high-tensioned with the pride of race. All who participated in the civil and military service of the late Confederate States of America were peremptorily disfranchised or forced to make most humiliating pledges and admissions. To accept office one had to swear specifically and formally to accept the civil and political equality of all men. All schools established exclusively for any one race were expressly prohibited.

Crushed by their late defeat, the best people of Louisiana could interpose little organized opposition even after the removal in part of their political disabilities. Appeals to the ballot box counted as naught. For them the right to vote was hedged about by discouraging and arbitrary conditions. Ballots cast were nullified by Returning Boards made up of partisan and unprincipled characters. For the natural guardians of the state's welfare there were few of the fruits of political victory, for when they endeavored to install their legally and duly elected state officers, usurpers backed by Federal bayonets barred the way.

The Wresting of the State from Alien Control. How then did the state come into its own and its citizens reestablish self-government? The answer to this question calls for the examination of three salient factors. The first of these was military and included the clash of battle; the second was political and it touches to this day the conscience of the nation at large at a most sensitive spot; the third was personal and before the personality of the leaders brought to the front during a time that applied supreme tests to courageous manhood, we stand, uncovered, in reverence and admiration.

Let us consider the first factor. When under the so-called Kellogg régime taxation became confiscation; when the New Orleans police force became a state military constabulary, responsible only to the governor himself; when rights and liberties guaranteed by the Federal constitution were outraged by unspeakable insolence entrenched in office, there came a time when men with red blood could no longer submit.

One fair day the people of New Orleans were called upon to assemble in mass meeting at the foot of the historic Henry Clay monument in Canal street. What was done on that occasion is known to all. Earnest and eloquent speakers addressed the assembly: grim determination steeled the hearts of the listeners. Immediately there was an arming of the citizens, a forming of companies, an uprising, not of an uncontrollable mob, but of free men whose part in the re-establishment of free government in Louisiana was as heroically played as was that of any Revolutionary patriot when this right to free government was first won. A battle took place at the head of Canal street between citizen commands and the "Metropolitan Police," the latter equipped with Gatling guns. Gen. Fred Ogden led the citizens. Gen. James Longstreet, who had become a Republican, commanded the Metropolitans. For the first time in his life, the Confederate general once so honored by his countrymen heard the old rebel yell given forth by forces opposed to him. The result of the battle was that the hirelings were scattered in every direction, fleeing to every conceivable place of concealment. Eleven of the citizens were slain, many wounded. No more sacred a spot in New Orleans, a city famous for its historic memories can be pointed out than Liberty Place where these martyrs fell and no more memorable a day can be found in the calendar of Louisiana's history than Sept. 14, 1874.

In twenty-four hours the usurping, self-elected government was swept away soon to be reinstated by Federal military authority. But the cause for which blood was shed was not lost. Great indeed must be the provocation to cause such uprising and such risk of life. The attention of other states was thus attracted to their suffering sister. Public sentiment all over the country expressed itself against arbitrarily directed Federal military interference in local governmental affairs. When the next contest of ballots two years thereafter took place, Federal bayonets were withheld and with the withholding there was sounded the death of carpet-baggery and alien misgovernment was at an end.

The Election of 1876.

It is doubtful, however, that the election of 1876 would have resulted in the restoration of democratic rule had not the outcome of the presidential campaign of that year depended so largely upon the result in Louisiana as one of the three states whose vote in the Electoral College became a subject of partisan excitement and heated dispute.

It is not intended to reflect upon honest and earnest men who to-day intelligently and conscientiously embrace the principles of the Republican party. But the Republican party of that day as organized in Louisiana was about as unsavory and condemnable a conglomeration as it is possible to conceive. This party nominated in a perfunctory manner for governor to succeed Kellogg, Stephen B. Packard, a Federal appointee and officeholder. It depended for success mainly upon a notoriously constituted Returning Board to counteract any possible defeat at the polls. The Democratic party nominated Francis T. Nicholls, ex-Confederate brigadier-general of Stonewall Jackson's legions. One-armed and one-legged he stumped the state inspiring courage and awakening enthusiasm. Both contestants claimed the election; both were inaugurated. And here the personality of General Nicholls figures. The grim warrior declared with iron-jawed firmness that he had been elected governor and by the eternal he would be seated as governor of Louisiana.

The legislature formed itself into two bodies one of which recognized Nicholls and the other Packard as having been duly elected. Neither body could boast of a quorum with which to do business. Finally three state senators and three members of the lower legislative house were won over from the Republican to the Democratic body thus completing a quorum. The Republicans made frantic appeals to the Federal government for the aid so readily bestowed in former years. But just then the threat of national conflict hung heavy over the National capital and the politicians had their attention focused upon the Tilden-Hayes political imbroglio. Peace was demanded at any price. The Electoral Commission was instituted and what followed is a matter of history. The electoral vote of Louisiana was accredited to the Republican candidate for President, but by tacit agreement and in order that a decision favorable to Hayes might not be jeopardized by any further investigation and stirring up of Louisiana's local political muddle, it was decided to let well enough alone and permit the people of Louisiana to determine for themselves as to which of the two governments should stand. The state officers elected upon the same ticket as the Tilden electors rejected by the Federal Commission, were quieted in the possession of their offices. Packard was mollified by the lucrative post of United States consul-general to Liverpool.

The Constitution of 1879.

With the installation of a Democratic state administration came the thought of a new state constitution. When a sovereign state changes its organic law the student of political science may read between the lines a record of conditions which have made the change necessary. Comparing successive constitutions when change has been comparatively frequent, as is the case with Louisiana, one may almost construct the political history of the state itself.

Thus in the constitution of 1879 which displaced that of 1868 it is stipulated emphatically that the military shall be subordinate to the civil power: that the executive, legislative, and judiciary powers of government shall be kept separated: that each law enacted must have but one object clearly stated in the title: and that to be eligible as members of the legislature one must have resided in the state at least five years.

These provisions were evidently intended as corrective. Military power had repeatedly usurped the civil; functions of government that according to the American idea should be differentiated in their control and exercise had been so blended and concentrated in the hands of individuals that Louisiana had become a veritable paradise for Poo Bah's; laws had been passed apparently meaning one thing only to be interpreted as covering something entirely different; the limit of residential eligibility had been fixed at one year simply to defer to the needs and desires of the carpet-bagger.

One may also see in the constitution of 1879 that an intense and deep-seated distrust of legislative action had arisen in the popular mind as a result of the people's experience with the nondescript and irresponsible legislative bodies under the preceding constitution. Its drastic provisions prohibiting the passing of any local or special law covering twenty-one carefully enumerated subjects; its cut of salaries of state officers, in some cases to less than one-half; and its fixing the maximum limit of taxation at six mills for the state and ten mills for the parish or county were reminders of the past.

To conserve the rights of property and the liberty of individuals and to serve more effectively check to improper legislative action, an elaborate judiciary system was provided consisting of a Supreme Court of five justices; five Circuit Courts of Appeal each presided over by two judges; District Courts at least twenty in number and thirty when deemed necessary; and local justices of the peace.

The Problem of White Supremacy.

The coming into power of a Democratic state administration did not of itself assure a continuance of white supremacy. The cloud of black domination was to hang threateningly over the heads of the people for a number of years yet to come. The negro vote in many parishes (counties) outnumbered the white, the proportion being in some cases approximately ten to one. If, therefore, local self-government in accord with genuine Democratic principles was permitted to prevail, communities would suffer and be misgoverned no matter how excellent was the state administration.

Two forces were brought into play to meet this contingency. The first of these was to lodge in the hands of the state's Chief Executive an inordinate appointive power. The governor named all local and state officials whose election by political suffrage was not specifically enjoined by the constitution. He appointed the members of the police jury of every parish, a body of select men upon whom devolved the levying of local taxes and the enacting of laws and ordinances affecting parish affairs and interests. The governor also appointed all school boards in the rural portions of the state, many of the judiciary, all executive boards, all boards of trustees of the many state institutions, and all registrars whose function was to pass upon and record the eligibility of voters. In time the wisdom of continuing this appointive system was to occasion much bitter political controversy, when as was charged, the application of the system was directed not so much to the state's welfare as to factional and partisan advantage.

The second of these counteracting forces was the persistent and effective discouragement of the black voter from taking any part in elections. The South had not yet solved the problem of disfranchising the illiterate ignorant negro by organic law non-violative of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Federal constitution. Until such solution was presented, other means were resorted to, — intimidation, subtle suggestion, persuasion, call it what one will. With the saturnalia of reconstruction days then fresh in mind, the end was held to justify the means. The negro either kept away from the polls on election day or complacently voted the Democratic ticket under the eyes of those whose good opinion at that particular time was of prime importance to him.

An Era of Factionalism.

In one sense, however, the result did not make for civic virtue or the public good. Louisiana became a one-party state, and factional issue took the place of partisanship. When the dominant party split, the negro vote of the state would be used as a club by one faction to beat the other into subjection or as threat of dire and possible consequences if the people did not rally to the support of those who arrogated to themselves the right and ability to save the state from a return to negro domination. Nominations to state offices was made by caucus and conventions. Representation in the councils and nominating conventions of the one political party in control were based upon population so that a handful of white voters in one of the black-belt parishes called for more as a determinating factor in the political affairs of the state than ten times their number in the so-called "White Parishes." Friction and discord were the results, and in the face of growing apathy of the people at large and of factional differences that repeatedly spelt possible disaster, a new Republican party arose composed of sugar planters and other men of substance commanding a certain meed of respect for their character and personality.

Despite the incubus of odium that must ever be associated with the name Republican in Louisiana, this newly constructed Republican party came so near to success in the election of 1896 that alarm was sounded. The demand went up for a return to true democratic principle. The governor must be shorn of much of his appointive power; the people must be given more voice in local and political affairs. Ballot reform must obtain. Elections must henceforth be fair.

The Constitution of 1898.

To achieve all this the negro as a voter must be eliminated. Mississippi had by this time pointed the way to successful elimination and one by one the other Southern states were patterning after her example. A constitutional convention was called for Louisiana and a new constitution — that of 1898 under which the state is now governed — was the result. While not all that Louisiana's most enlightened citizens might desire, as is evident by the number of amendments that have been voted on since its adoption, yet it marks a decided advance towards democracy, embodies many reforms and has removed the negro from the field of politics, giving the white people freer reign to grapple with newer and more vital problems.

The Louisiana Lottery.

Turn we now from the political to the moral progress of Louisiana and here we encounter a record in which any state may well take pride. The Latin races from which so large a proportion of the population of the state was originally drawn are preeminently prone to games of chance. Lotteries, raffles, wheels of fortune and other gambling devices appeal more strongly to them than to the more Northern and phlegmatic races and they have been the last to arrive — if arrive they have — at an understanding of the demoralization and immorality of risking and venturing upon the hazard of some throw and of idly hoping to win as gift from Fortune the bounty that should come of steady and sustained effort.

In 1868 a coterie of citizens with a farsightedness that might well have been enlisted in a better cause saw an opportunity for great profit in catering systematically to this frailty and weakness in human nature by organizing gambling on a large scale. They devised the so-called Louisiana State Lottery which was for twenty-five years to be a blot upon the fair escutcheon of the commonwealth and a curse upon thousands of humble homes.

A charter was obtained from the legislature granting the company the monopoly of conducting lotteries in consideration that it pay $40,000 annually to the support of public education in the state. Masking themselves behind the philanthropic motives of keeping the money at home that was then being sent to Havana, Madrid, and other places where other gigantic gambling institutions of the kind had long been entrenched, and of contributing to so sacred a cause as that of education, the owners basked in the smiles of high society while their employees in den-like policy shops to be found in every neighborhood filched from passing servant girls petty sums embezzled from market and grocery money and drew with the lure of a held-out hope the humble daily savings of the neighborhood's poor.

Soon the concern grew to gigantic octopus-like proportions fastening itself upon the body-politic of the state and reaching its tentacles to every part of the Union. Its monthly and semi-annual drawings independent of its daily policy-shop drawings, with capital prizes of thirty and one-hundred thousand dollars, drew millions to its coffers every month. It debauched legislators, muzzled the press, made and unmade government officials, poisoned every channel of civic righteousness, waxed fat and became almost greater in its subtle exercise of power than the state government itself.

In 1879 the legislature repealed the charter. The constitutional convention of the same year revived it, however, by adopting a clause authorizing the General Assembly to grant lottery licenses provided each lottery company licensed paid not less than $40,000 per annum, but all lottery licenses should expire Jan. 1, 1895. The Louisiana State Lottery Company was permitted to continue in business until that date provided it renounced the monopolistic feature of the original charter granted it in 1868, which it did.
To hold its own and to prevent rival concerns poaching upon its rich preserves it became a very active factor in politics. In 1892 when its charter had three years yet to run, strenuous preparation was made to secure a renewal. Politicians, public speakers, and editorial writers in formidable numbers were retained by the company to influence public opinion.

A Great Moral Victory.

But public sentiment had made wonderful advance along moral lines. Lotteries mean gambling; gambling is a vice; a vice should be suppressed, and not countenanced and authorized by a sovereign state. Thus reasoned the anti-lottery crusaders, a gallant' band of Louisiana's best citizens whom no promise of preferment or threat of business disaster could deter. Seeing defeat staring it in the face the Lottery Company offered to the people of Louisiana the magnificent bribe of $1,200,000 per annum for a twenty-five years' extension of the charter, a sum sufficient to sustain the state government in all its functions without having to call upon the citizens for one cent of taxation.

The state was in an impoverished condition. It needed money for its levees, for its schools, for its yet unpensioned Confederate veterans, for its every activity conservative of the public good. The temptation to accept the tender of this tremendous bounty was a terrible one. Material self-interest dictated acceptance, ethics and the voice of conscience pronounced against it. The state was wrought up to a pitch of intense excitement over the great moral question of lottery charter renewal. The dominant party split into pro and anti lotterites. The Farmers' Alliance of the state — a powerful organization — threw its weight into the balance and decided the result. The Lottery cause went down to defeat and Louisiana's heroic renunciation received the applause of every on-looking state of the Union. Then the United States withdrew the privileges of the mail from the concern which proved a body blow. After vain attempts to conduct its business through express companies, it retreated to Central America where it dragged out a perfunctory existence until recently.

Nor has the state halted in its progress towards public morality. The movements for temperance and prohibition, for Sabbath observance and for the discouragement of vice and crime have made marked advance within recent years. The saloon and liquor interests have been on the defensive for some time promising and acceding to all kinds of reform. New Orleans, once the paradise of race track gamblers with three race courses and numbers of pool rooms giving racing and betting opportunities every day of the year, has only recently been purged of the evil to the satisfaction of those whose chief desire is in the well being of their community.

The Public School System.

In the development of its school systems and in the growth of its educational institutions the state has made wonderful progress. Time was when public schools in Louisiana were regarded as one remove from charitable institutions not to be patronized except by those too poor to pay for private instruction. This idea has been eradicated and all classes now send their children to the public schools, because these schools on the whole offer the best instruction.

Perhaps no single factor has contributed more largely to the advancement of education in Louisiana than a body of choice spirits who organized themselves into the Louisiana State Educational Association and began a propaganda in 1883. This body comprised eminent representatives of the bench, bar, pulpit, rostrum and school-room, the bond of fellowship being patriotic desire to advance the educational good of the state.

The Association met successively in annual session at various points in the state. Its meetings commanded attention and its proceedings were listened to with profound respect. It stirred up interest in public education, awakened desire for better school facilities and inspired a general determination to place Louisiana on a par with other states in such matters.

Either as a collective body as expressed through its deliberative proceedings or as individuals taking the initiative, the Association and its members are to be credited with the origination and carrying out of some of the most determinant ideas in the educational uplift of the state. Among these were the establishment of the Louisiana State Normal School for the training of teachers, one of the best of its kind in the whole country; the holding of teachers' institutes and summer schools of instruction for teachers; the organization of a State Association of Parish Superintendents of Education, convening annually for the purpose of unifying and improving methods and matters of school administration; the requiring of professional qualifications of any one entrusted with the directing of school affairs from the state superintendent down; the change from a school system supported wholly by apportionment from the state treasury, affording on an average barely three month's schooling per annum to the children of the state, to one supported partly by state appropriation and mainly by local taxation affording full school terms of eight and nine months; the establishment of the Louisiana State Chautauqua which for fifteen years has contributed most significantly to the culture and intellectual activity of the state.

To-day Louisiana has a perfected school system, thoroughly organized and unusually vital in all its parts. At the head of its administration stand the governor and state superintendent, counselled and advised by a State Board of Education. On the staff of the state superintendent are a state institute conductor, a state inspector of high schools, and a state organizer of public school improvement leagues. These are in the field constantly visiting every part of the state. In each parish (county) is a professionally trained superintendent of schools and a parish school board. Many rural schools are graded. High schools under state inspection and supervision are multiplying. Two State Industrial Institutes and a State Normal school largely attended give practical and technical training. At the head of Louisiana's magnificent school system stand Louisiana's two great universities — The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College at Baton Rouge, and the Tulane University of Louisiana at New Orleans.

Industrial Development.

A soil of unparalled richness, nature's alluvial bounty drawn for ages from the broad extent of the Mississippi valley and deposited along its lower margin very largely determines the chief occupation of Louisiana's inhabitants. The state is preeminently an agricultural one. It leads the Union in the production of two great staples, sugar and rice.  It is among the leaders in the production of cotton. The development of its sugar and rice industries has advanced most remarkably within recent years. First the Federal sugar bounty, then the tariff, stimulated and encouraged the Louisiana sugar planters. Then the perfection of the methods of developing by scientific cultivation and of extracting by improved milling and diffusion processes the saccharine substance of the cane has made Louisiana acres devoted to sugar cultivation veritable gold mines.

The story of the rice industry in Louisiana reads like a romance. For many years rice cultivation was confined to narrow strips along the Mississippi and the various bayous. Gated sluice-ways cut through levees afforded irrigation but invited calamity as points of weakness in the protective levee's structure. Soon these sluice-ways were prohibited by law and gave way to the more expensive method of pumping water over the levees by machinery. The industry, in consequence, languished for a period.

In the southwestern section of the state extended vast level and sparsely settled prairies cut and intersected by sluggish flowing streams and bayous and merging gradually into the sea-marsh that skirts the southern shore of the state. Exiled Acadians from Nova Scotia a hundred and fifty years ago had come to this region and taken up their abode, and the few "Cajun" settlements and hamlets of their descendants marked the extent of human habitation up to the period of which we write. The land was given up to grazing and few recognized its agricultural possibilities until it came to the knowledge of some enterprising Iowans. Here was a rich soil in a genial climate and land in abundance to be had at one or two dollars per acre. This was in the early eighties. An influx of immigrants from the states of the Northwest set in, infusing new blood, vim and energy. Railroad stations sprouted into populous towns with mushroom-like rapidity; schools, churches, public buildings and all concrete evidences of prosperity sprang up where once were silent stretches and wilderness.

The new comers were from a land that knew nothing of sugar and cotton cultivation. With them farming meant grain raising. In such an area and with such natural conditions rice was the one grain to be thought of. Rice in its growing requires not only an adequate water supply to cover the fields of growing grain but the water must be applied and withheld at exactly the right time to produce the best results. The new comers saw their opportunity. The level prairie with little elevation above the surface of intersecting streams suggested one of the most economical irrigation plans yet devised. Instead of having to excavate, by slow and laborious process, ditches from which to lift the water up to the level of the fields when needed, all that was required was to run two parallel lines of embankment extending across a given stretch of country and starting at some convenient stream. The material for these embankments was plowed and scraped from the land surface nearby, mule power doing most of the work. When water was turned in between the parallel ridges thus constructed a canal would be the result, but a superimposed canal whose surface level was several feet above the level of the land. To feed a vast network of smaller irrigating ditches was simply a matter of letting the force of gravity do its work, the water flowing from the higher level of the canal to the lower level of the fields. The rapid construction of these canals might have presented at the time a Marsian-like landscape to the hypothetical observer located some distance from the earth.

No more profitable an agricultural industry, taking cost of investment into consideration, has ever been devised than rice farming as practiced in southwest Louisiana. And with the growing of vast crops came the development of a gigantic rice-milling industry to hull, clean, polish and put the grain upon the market.

Louisiana's Two Literatures.

Northern writers and critics who see only the surface of things have at various times decried the South for its comparative backwardness in literary productiveness, ignoring the fact that its culture and intellectual activities found ample and more satisfactory vehicles of expression in oratory, in statesmanship and in epistolary correspondence unintended for public perusal. Such criticisms, however, lose their sting as far as Louisiana is concerned.

Having two distinct elements of population — the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon — two literatures have developed within her confines in either of which the state may well take pride. In the ante-bellum period, at the time when New England authorship was just beginning to arrogate to itself supremacy in American Letters, the French writers of Louisiana in the domains of history, poetry, fiction and the drama had developed a literature of marked richness of expression and of many volumes. The briefest account of this literature which included the works of Villeneuve, De Bouchel, Remy, Dufour, Lusson, the Roquette brothers, Canonge, Mercier, Roman, Delery, Desommes, Martin, Delpit, Gayarré, Fortier and a host of others would of itself fill a good-sized volume.

The fact that the English phase of Louisiana's literary development is of such recent growth makes the further fact remarkable that the state has already furnished so many stars to the literary firmament. Lafcadio Hearn, George W. Cable, Ruth Mc-Enery Stuart, Mrs. M. E. M. Davis, Grace King, Mrs. 0. V. Jamison, Mrs. Kate Chopin, Mrs. Marie Bushnell Williams, Alcée Fortier and Charles E. A. Gayaré, the inspirer and guide of George Bancroft, the American historian, are only a few of the many names which might be mentioned whose works have commanded the attention and admiration of the country at large.

Louisiana's Contribution to the American Progress.

A state that has given to the world Audubon, the greatest American-born naturalist; Richardson, the most distinctive architect native to American soil; Gottschalk, the first of America's few musical virtuosi who have attained world-wide fame; Paul Morphy, the master for all time in the domain of chess; Judah P. Benjamin, the brightest legal light of his century, who, at an age when the life work of most men is rounding to a close, entered single-handed the forum of the English bar to become at once its highest authority; Beauregard, the military engineer of superb achievement, who in defensive operations has never been surpassed; Zachary Taylor, President of the United States, without whose rough and ready courage, victory would have been only half written across the page of the War with Mexico; above all, when degrees of civilization are marked by man's varying attitude towards woman, a state that has given to the American continent its first statue commemorative of noble though humble womanhood, that of Margaret Haughery, such a state may smile at cavilers, may proudly wear her heritage of honorable achievement, may face her sisters without blush or apology for the gifts she brings as offerings upon the altar of American progress.

Bibliography.— Andrews, E. Benjamin: History of the Last Quarter Century in the United States; Chambers, Henry E.: Introduction to the Study of Louisiana History (Lectures delivered before the Louisiana State Chautauqua) and The Louisiana State Educational Association and Its Relation to the Educational History of the State (Annual address of the President); Ficklin and King: History of Louisiana; Fortier, Alcée: History of Louisiana (Vol. IV.) and Louisiana Studies; Hinsdale and Ficklin: Civil Government of Louisiana; Morris, Agnes: Lessons on the Civil Government of Louisiana; Phelps, Albert: Louisiana (American Commonwealths Series); Poore, Ben Perley: Federal and State Constitutions (Vol. I., pp. 755-772, Louisiana Constitution of 1868); Wilson, Woodrow: Division and Reunion (Epochs of American History Series); Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Louisiana.

For a detailed history of this period ample material may be found in the department of archives, New Orleans, where complete files of daily newspapers are preserved in bound form subject to public inspection.

Henry Edward Chambers,
Professor of English, New Orleans Boys' High School; author of An Introduction to Louisiana History, A School History of the United States, A Higher History of the United States, etc.


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