Ulysses S. Grant: Special Message to the Senate on Unrest in Louisiana

Glossary

• bloody riots of 1866 and 1868 two uprisings in New Orleans to protest the Reconstruction Acts
• brought suit upon the equity side reference to the fact that under common law, modeled on the English system, regular lawsuits had to conform to very specific guidelines, whereas suits in equity allowed more freedom
• circuit court federal courts of appeals, which received their name in frontier days, when judges would “ride the circuit,” or move from town to town, administering judgment
• Colfax reference to the Colfax massacre (or Colfax riot) on April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, when disputes over the results of the state gubernatorial elections resulted in an outbreak of violence that claimed more than one hundred lives
• Coushatta a Louisiana town that in August 1874 saw an outbreak of violence by the White Leagues, resulting in some two dozen deaths
• domestic violence here referring to local terrorism
• election of 1872 a scandalous incident in which the Louisiana governor Henry Clay Warmoth attempted to use his power to force the election of his handpicked successor
• elective franchise the right to vote
• fifteenth amendment … under the second section the first section of the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870 and guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude,” and the second section, providing Congress with power to enforce the amendment
• Judge Woods William Burnham Woods, a former Union officer appointed by Grant as the first judge of the newly reorganized Fifth Circuit, which included several former Confederate states
• Justice Strong William Strong, who served on the Supreme Court from 1870 to 1880
• Levi Nelson one of two African American men whose civil rights were allegedly violated by William Cruikshank and the Colfax mob and who was thus identified in United States v. Cruikshank
• McEnery John McEnery, Kellogg’s Democratic opponent for the Louisiana governorship in 1872
• militia a military force composed of citizens rather than full-time professional soldiers
• obtained possession of the returns illegally gained control of the ballots
• parish the equivalent of counties under Louisiana law
• praying calling for a court to make a ruling at a later time
• previous condition of servitude the situation of having formerly been a slave
• reconstruction acts four laws passed by Congress in 1867 and 1868 to reorganize the governments of the former Confederate states
• restraining order a court order demanding that one party stop bringing harm to another
• section 4, Article IV the constitutional guarantee that the states must have a republican government, or government by freely elected officials
• suffrage the vote
• their attempted protection by colored persons “their” referring to the judge and sheriff, not the people attempting to drive them from office
• thirteenth amendment the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, officially abolishing slavery in the United States
• United States v. Cruikshank an 1875 case, which resulted from the Colfax massacre and in which the Supreme Court addressed the question of extending Bill of Rights protections to the states
• Warmoth Henry Clay Warmoth, governor of Louisiana who, though he was a Republican, opposed Grant and therefore supported the Democrat John McEnery in the 1872 election
• White Leagues paramilitary groups, composed of white males opposed to Reconstruction, that operated in Louisiana from 1874 to the restoration of Democratic power in that state
• William P. Kellogg William Pitt Kellogg, whose tenure as governor of Louisiana (1873–1877) marked the last time a Republican held that office prior to 1980