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The Reconstruction era, the period in American history that lasted from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War (1861–65), marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States. Reconstruction ended the remnants of Confederate secession and abolished slavery, making the newly freed slaves citizens with civil rights ostensibly guaranteed by three new constitutional amendments. Reconstruction also refers to the attempt to transform the 11 Southern former Confederate states, as directed by Congress, and the role of the Union states in that transformation.
Camilla is a city in Mitchell County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 5,360.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, operated as a U.S. government agency from 1865 to 1872, after the American Civil War, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel ... for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children".
In the history of the United States, carpetbagger was a derogatory term applied by former Confederates to Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War; they were perceived as exploiting the local populace. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics, and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger was often applied to any Northerner who was present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1863–1877). The term is closely associated with "scalawag", a similarly pejorative word used to describe native White Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.
The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to by the euphemism Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the seat of Grant Parish, where an estimated 62-153 black men were murdered by white Southerners who had formed a militia. Three white men died in the confrontation, with at least one said to have been shot by his own ally.
In United States history, the Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They generally were led by the rich former planters, businessmen, and professionals, and they dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.
The Coushatta massacre (1874) was the result of an attack by the White League, a paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats, on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.
The New Orleans Massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederacy, to a full-scale massacre. The violence erupted outside the Mechanics Institute, site of a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Republican Party of Louisiana had called for the Convention, as they were angered by the legislature's enactment of the Black Codes and refusal to extend voting rights to black men. White conservative Democrats considered the reconvened convention to be illegal and were hostile towards Republican attempts to gain increased political power in the state. The massacre "stemmed from deeply rooted political, social, and economic causes," and took place in part because of the battle "between two opposing factions for power and office." According to the official report, a total of 38 were killed and 146 wounded, with 34 of the dead and 119 of the wounded black. Unofficial estimates were higher. Gilles Vandal estimated 40 to 50 blacks dead and more than 150 wounded. In addition, three white convention attendees were killed, as was one white protester.
The Pulaski riot was a race riot that occurred in Pulaski, Tennessee on January 7, 1868. While the riot appeared to be based in a trade dispute of the previous summer between Calvin Lamberth, a white man, and Calvin Carter, an African American, it was provoked when Lamberth shot a friend of Carter's over rumored comments about the former's black mistress.
James M. Hinds represented Arkansas in the United States House of Representatives for the 2nd congressional district from June 24, 1868 until his assassination four months later by a Klansman. Hinds was an advocate of civil rights for former slaves.
At the end of the American Civil War, the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage, the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery, and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop, cotton, fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865, while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop, often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
Edward Eugene "Eugene" or "Goober" Cox served as a US Representative from Georgia for nearly 28 years. A conservative Democrat who supported racial segregation and opposed US President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," Cox became the most senior Democrat on the House Committee on Rules.
The Memphis massacre of 1866 was a series of violent events that occurred from May 1 to 3, 1866 in Memphis, Tennessee. The racial violence was ignited by political, social, and racial tensions following the American Civil War, in the early stages of Reconstruction. After a shooting altercation between white policemen and black veterans recently mustered out of the Union Army, mobs of white residents and policemen rampaged through black neighbourhoods and the houses of freedmen, attacking and killing black soldiers and civilians and committing many acts of robbery and arson.
The Camilla massacre took place in Camilla, Georgia, on Saturday, September 19, 1868. It followed the expulsion of the Original 33 black members of the Georgia General Assembly earlier that month. Among those expelled was southwest Georgia representative Philip Joiner. On September 19, Joiner led a twenty-five-mile march of several hundred blacks (freedmen), and a few whites, from Albany, Georgia, to Camilla, the Mitchell County seat, to attend a Republican political rally on the courthouse square. Estimates of the number of participants range from 150 to 300.
The United States Senate elections of 1868 and 1869 were elections which had the Republican Party maintain their majority in the United States Senate. However, six former Confederate states were also readmitted separately from the regular election, each electing two Republicans. This increased the Republicans' already overwhelming majority to the largest proportion of seats ever controlled by the party.
The Meridian race riot of 1871 was a race riot in Meridian, Mississippi in March 1871. It followed the arrest of freedmen accused of inciting riot in a downtown fire, and blacks' organizing for self-defense. Although the local Ku Klux Klan (KKK) chapter had attacked freedmen since the end of the Civil War, generally without punishment, the first local arrest under the 1870 act to suppress the Klan was of a freedman. This angered the black community. During the trial of black leaders, the presiding judge was shot in the courtroom, and a gunfight erupted that killed several people. In the ensuing mob violence, whites killed as many as 30 blacks over the next few days. Democrats drove the Republican mayor from office, and no person was charged or tried in the freedmen's deaths.
The Opelousas massacre occurred on September 28, 1868 in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, United States. Beginning with the execution of 27 black prisoners, whites conducted widespread attacks of African Americans in the vicinity, and are believed to have killed in total up to 200-250 from September 28 until November 3. At the time, whites referred to events as the Opelousas Riot, as if caused by an outbreak of violence by blacks, and a minority of historians continue to refer to it by this name.
Alexander Boyd was notable as the Republican County Solicitor and Register in Chancery of Greene County, Alabama in 1870 during Reconstruction who was murdered by a lynching party of Ku Klux Klan members. He was fatally shot on March 31, 1870 in Eutaw, the county seat. The Klan members apparently intended to hang him in the square in a public lynching, to demonstrate their power during this period and their threat to Republicans.
The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly who were elected to office in 1868, during the Reconstruction era. They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States. Twenty-four of the members were ministers.
The Freedmen massacres were a series of attacks on African-Americans which occurred in the states of the defeated Confederacy during Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Many of these incidents were the result of a struggle over political power after emancipated slaves were given the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
References
- ↑ Spritzer, Lorraine Nelson; Bergmark, Jean B. (1 February 2009). Grace Towns Hamilton and the Politics of Southern Change. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820333878 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Affidavit of Philip Joiner: Albany, Georgia, 1868 September 23
- ↑ "The Camilla Massacre".