Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1962 The Agrarian Protest in Louisiana, 1877-1900. William Ivy Hair Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Hair, William Ivy, "The Agrarian Protest in Louisiana, 1877-1900." (1962). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 722. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/722 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dissertation has been 62-3648 microfilmed exactly as received HAIR, William Ivy, 1930- THE AGRARIAN PROTEST IN LOUISIANA, 1877-1900. Louisiana State University, Ph.D., 1962 History, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE AGRARIAN PROTEST IN LOUISIANA 1877-1900 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by William Ivy Hair B.A., Louisiana State University, 1952 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1953 January, 1962 ACKNOWLEDGMENT _ Many individuals have given generous aid and counsel during the course of my research and writing. A special debt should be acknowledged to Professors Burl Noggle, Edwin A. Davis, and John L. Loos of Louisiana State University, whose professional help and understanding proved vital to the completion of the dissertation. Credit is also due to Professor Weymoth T. Jordan of Florida State University, to Dr. Roger Shugg of the University of Chicago Press, and to Professor Bennett H. Wall of the University of Kentucky, for their encouragement and advice. The archival and library personnel at Louisiana State University, notably Archivist V. L. Bedsole, offered useful assistance, as did the library personnel at Florida State University, Tulane University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, and the Library of Congress. Nor would an expression of appreciation be complete without mention of the aid and moral . support offered to me over the years by my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ivy Hair of Baton Rouge, and my sister, June Hair. Especially valuable was my father's personal knowledge of Louisiana politics and history. Most demanding, however, were the sacrifices required of my wife, Emily Karolyn Hair. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENT............................ i . ii. ABSTRACT .............................................. iv INTRODUCTION................... vii Chapter I. POLITICS OF THE NEW DEPARTURE ....... 1 II. LAND AND LABOR IN THE WAKE OF RECONSTRUCTION 43 III. THE AGRARIAN BETRAYAL ............ 89 IV. "EXODUSTERS" AND THE CONSTITUTION OF 1879 . 132 V. BOURBON DEMOCRACY . ............... 157 VI. THE LOUISIANA FARMERS1 UNION .... 208 VII. NEGRO AGRARIANISM .......................... 251 VIII. THE POPULISTS ....................... .. 287 IX. BOURBONISM TRIUMPHANT................. ....... 337 MAPS ........... 395 BIBLIOGRAPHY................... 408 VITA ................................................... 428 iii ABSTRACT Economic and. political unrest among rank-and-file people of the rural South reached an unprecedented level during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Between 1877 and 1900, white farmers and sharecroppers became dis­ illusioned with the conservative Democratic regimes which had been established at the end of Reconstruction; Negro agriculturists, in these same years, were grossly exploited by their employers and by the political elite which ruled the states of the late Confederacy. The Greenback party, the Farmers' Alliance, and, finally, the People's party, attempted to unite in mutual action the disadvantaged rural population of both races. A number of historians have already examined the pattern of post-Reconstruction agrarian protest in most southern states. However, a comprehensive study of the subject in Louisiana has hitherto not been attempted. To understand the nature of agrarian protest.in Louisiana, the basis for its grievances, and the causes of its ultimate failure, a broad-gauged examination of the social, economic, and political conditions prevalent in the state in the 1877-1900 period was mandatory. Louisiana newspapers, both urban and rural, furnished key insights. iv The private letters of leading citizens which related to political and economic matters revealed much about upper class attitudes. Legislative records, combined with regis­ tration and election figures and United States census reports, provided extensive documentation of the undemo­ cratic methods and the conscious social neglect prevalent in Louisiana in the years under discussion. To provide a flavor of contemporary life and emotions, and to avoid mis­ interpretations, the narrative of this study has been inter­ spersed with expressions of opinion by those persons who were directly involved in shaping Louisiana's destiny during the years after Reconstruction. The Populist, or People’s, party, organized nationally in 1891, was supported in Louisiana by the same rural elements which also furnished the bulwark of Populist strength in other agricultural states of the South and West. But in no other state, the evidence suggests, was the Popu­ list cause so hopeless. Even though sixty per cent or more of Louisiana's voting population supported the Populist- Republican state ticket in 1896, the conservative Democratic regime refused to bow to the wishes of the majority; the customary methods of vote fraud, economic coercion, and out­ right violence were intensified. Leaders of the poor whites threatened the planter-merchant oligarchy with class war, but the threat was not carried out. Louisiana agrarianism had been dealt a mortal blow. In the years following 1896, vi lower class whites became increasingly apathetic toward politics; their Negro allies, meanwhile, were disfranchised through legislative action and constitutional revision. The attempt to unite poor white and poor Negroes under the Populist banner in Louisiana was paralleled in other southern states, but the biracial agrarian efforts in the Pelican State had certain distinctive facets. By 1898, when Populist leaders in other southern commonwealths had generally concluded that the Negro-poor white alliance was hopeless, and that disfranchisement of the blacks would benefit the white agrarians, Louisiana’s state Populist platform spoke up for civil rights and bitterly opposed the movement to eliminate Negroes from the registration rolls. It is concluded that the severity of conservative Democratic methods in Louisiana aroused a biracial class consciousness in that state, temporary though it was, which is unequaled in southern history. INTRODUCTION Louisiana's colorful but often tragic history gives her a unique place among American commonwealths. A strain of irony seems to course through everything associated with the Pelican State; it is fitting that'two of Louisiana's leading products are sugar and salt, and that two of her culinary delights are pecan pralines and hot peppers. Certainly the years from the end of Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century illustrate the irony of the state's history. In 1876 the disputed election returns from Louisiana provoked violent controversy on the national level because the outcome of the presidential campaign hinged upon those returns, yet registration and election figures indi­ cate that the Hayes-Tilden returns, though rife with fraud, more honestly represented public opinion than the official totals announced in any state contest for the remainder of the century. In 1876 both sides stole votes. Afterward, this prerogative rested solely with the triumphant Bourbon Democracy. That the Pelican State was exploited byvenal poli­ ticians during the Reconstruction years few would deny; even historians of such diverse opinions as E. Merton Coulter and vii viii W. E. B. DuBois agree that the Louisiana Carpetbaggers were a corrupt lot. But after 1876 Bourbon misrule replaced Radical misrule. Spectacular stealings at both the ballot box and the State House continued, and no state in the post- Reconstruc.tion South permitted so disastrous a neglect of schools and other public institutions as did Louisiana. Ruling in the name of home rule and white supremacy, Gover­ nors Nicholls, Wiltz, McEnery, and Foster were either unable or unwilling to curb the more repressive and brutal elements among the dominant oligarchy, and the disadvantaged majority of people, both white and black, were economically exploited and politically ignored. Bourbon repression naturally provoked unrest among the lower classes. First in 1878, and then again with the People's party of the 1890's, agrarian reformers came forth to challenge the state Democratic regime. Yet Louisiana posed special and exasperating problems for any reform movement. Lower class interests were not only divided by the racial antipathies common to all southern states, but the ethnic, religious, and even language differences between the poor whites of northern and southern Louisiana posed formidable obstacles to any statewide effort of protest. Moreover, the Democratic oligarchy, militant and shrewd, dealt