Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana's Florida Parishes, 1810–1901

5 Organized Lawlessness: Chaos Ascendant

5 ORGANIZED LAWLESSNESS: CHAOS ASCENDANT Oh God! Grant us rest from this weariness. —Abigail Amacker, Diary The Democratic campaign to promote contempt for the Republicans and their supporters strengthened the position of the old elite. Conservative leaders effectively manipulated events in support of their own goal to resecure power.By encouraging the belief that Republican officials systematicallylooted the state of its wealth, the Democrats produced a near hysterical demand for their ouster. The planters naturally assumed that with the Republicans eliminated, they would dominate regional politics in the post-Reconstruction period. But the means the elite promoted to destroy the Republicans, violence and contempt for governance, created conditions beyond their ability to control. Following the collapse of the Republican government, the planters would find themselves victims of their own success. The unprecedented publicitysurrounding cases of Republican fraud and improprietydemonstrated just how corrupt government could be, thus augmenting the plain folk's suspicion of authority. Many pineywoods residents recalled the failure of government to address their needs in the antebellum period, and an enlightened few recognized that their own desires had always been subsumedby the grand strategyof the planter elite. Each time assertiveness or discontent had surfaced among the plain folk, the elite had circumvented their intentions with appeals for unity in the face of a common threat. The Spanish colonial government, abolitionists, Federal troops, and carpetbagger government had all served as the common enemy against which to rally the forces, and throughout, racial unity served as the foundation for their appeals. In the post-Reconstruction period no apparent common enemy would emerge. Blacks, no longer enslaved or politically independent, would pose far less of a threat. With these threats removed, contempt for the old elite ORGANIZED LAWLESSNESS • 181 quickly manifested itself in the piney woods. In the first major post-Reconstruction election, voters in Tangipahoa Parish, the scene of the fiercest latenineteenth -century disorders, decisively voted down the old elite in favor of independent candidates. The results from Tangipahoa during the state election of 1879 startled members of the old elite as well as the Democratic party. In particular, the defeat of judicial candidates O. P. Amacker and J. M. Thompson, both members of the prewar elite and conservative leaders during Reconstruction, indicated the changing political climate. Although the Democrats ran strong in all the towns excepting the village of Tangipahoa, they generally did poorly at all rural precincts.1 In the late nineteenth century the Florida parishes served as a microcosm for examining the South as a whole. In the Felicianas and East Baton Rouge, stability returned as the old elite, augmented by some new faces, effectively returned to power. In the piney woods, however, a continuing cycle of social and political instability predominated. The rejection of planter leadership in the piney woods produced a corresponding vacuum in governance. The planter elite had so thoroughly dominated social, political, and economic development in the region that the plain folk, unaccustomed to power, proved incapable of governing themselves. The piney-woods republican tradition, as manifested in eastern Louisiana, virtually demanded defiance of governance. At least thirty years of suspect government had amply reinforced latent suspicions of authority. Leadership failed primarily both because of its inability to overcome the powerful factions that rapidly emerged and because of its failure to cope with the incredible levels of violence. Suspicions that the Republicans practiced electoral fraud seemed confirmed in 1872 when the Republican-dominated Returning Board seated the regular Republican William Pitt Kellogg as governor over John McEnery, who ran as a Fusion candidate endorsed by both the Democrats and the minority Warmoth faction of the Republican party. Thereafter, conservative Louisianians ceased to regard the state government as legitimate. By 1873 most of the country parishes were in open revolt against the government. Local political contests dramatically aggravated the prevailing hostility. In the Florida parishes, where local judges exercised enormous influence, judicial races provoked the greatest controversy. For the remainder of the century, the dominant regional party or faction could often be identified by those seated at the parish and district judicial benches. i. Amite City Independent, December 6, 1879. 182 • PISTOLS AND POLITICS In a hotly contested 1873 race in the Sixth Judicial District, comprising the piney-woods region of the Florida parishes, Democratic incumbent E. P. Ellis faced challenges from Regular Republican Ashford Addison and Independent Republican William B. Kemp. Despite some irregularities, far less violence characterized this election than...