148 A HISTORY OF AMERICA IN 100 MAPS
Well before the end of the Civil War, congressional
Republicans and President Lincoln began to
anticipate reunification. Lincoln argued that the
Confederate states ought to be swiftly restored to
the Union once each abolished slavery by ratifying
the Thirteenth Amendment. Many Republicans in
Congress balked at this, believing that the severity of
the rebellion and the human cost of the war gave the
government latitude to reconstruct the defeated slave
states before readmitting them to the Union.
At bottom, the debate over Reconstruction was
a referendum on the war itself. Beyond the end of
slavery, what did victory mean? Should the rebel
states be brought back in as they were, or was it
necessary to dismantle the power structure that led
this insurrection? What punishment—if any—would
Confederates face for taking up arms against the
Union? Such questions were especially critical for
the freedmen, since there were no guarantees that
Southern states would respect their civil rights.
These and other questions bedeviled Congress and
the president long before General Lee conceded
defeat in April 1865.
Congress passed a Republican plan of
Reconstruction in 1867, though it was weakened
by intraparty disagreement and Southern white
intransigence. Former Confederates chafed at the
federal government’s continued occupation of the
South, not to mention the imposition of political
reforms. Many Southern Democrats also objected
to the federal government’s grant of citizenship
privileges to the freedmen, such as the right to vote
enshrined in the Fifteenth Amendment. In short,
from 1867 to 1877 Reconstruction involved a series
of overlapping and often violent power struggles
between the national government and the states,
North and South, Republicans and Democrats.
Confused and enraged by emancipation, and
stung by military defeat, many Southern whites
turned their opposition to Reconstruction into
outright resistance. The “Battle of New Orleans” was
one such act of Southern defiance that drew national
attention. It began after Republican William Pitt
Kellogg was elected governor of Louisiana in 1872.
Kellogg had moved south from Vermont after the war,
a “carpetbagger” sympathetic to Reconstruction.
Democrats opposed to Kellogg coalesced around the
White League, a paramilitary organization dedicated
THE DEFEAT OF RECONSTRUCTION
T. S. Hardee, “Battle of New Orleans for
Freedom,” 1874
to preserving and restoring white rule in Louisiana.
In rural parishes, the White League regularly
threatened and assassinated Republicans in order
to intimidate voters and undermine Reconstruction.
In the summer of 1874 the League quickly
recruited 1,500 men to overturn Kellogg’s
administration, conducting armed drills around the
city to demonstrate their strength. On September
12 the police sealed off the levee after learning that
these men were expecting a large shipment of arms.
Incensed White Leaguers converged on the Clay
Statue on Canal Street to erect several barricades
along Poydras Street. The police prepared for battle,
while the newly elected governor retreated to the
Custom House after commissioning the former
Confederate General James Longstreet to defend the
government and protect the city.
Thousands watched as the White League routed
the police along Canal Street, driving them back
along lines of “retreat” that are identified on the map.
The League immediately declared victory, installed
their own governor, and demanded that Kellogg
resign. This map was made at that moment by the city
surveyor and White League supporter T. S. Hardee,
who framed the conflict as a battle for “freedom,” an
American “revolution” against Reconstruction. He
described a revolt of “plain citizens” who heroically
resisted a tyrannical and arrogant Republican
government, martyrs for a noble cause rather than
vigilantes. Hardee made no mention of the thirteen
policemen killed by the White League on that day.
Within days President Grant restored Kellogg as
governor, but the momentum behind Reconstruction
had already begun to wane. Just as Kellogg lost the
Battle of New Orleans, the Republicans lost the larger
war over Reconstruction. After the highly contested
1876 election, the Republican president Rutherford
Hayes agreed to withdraw the remaining federal
troops from the South. White “Redeemer” Democrats
swiftly returned to office and began to restrict
black civil and voting rights. In state after state,
armed resistance, intimidation, and violence ended
Reconstruction. In Louisiana, the White League even
served as the state militia.
This map of a single street fight captures the open,
violent, and extralegal opposition to Reconstruction
across the South in the 1870s. The Battle of New
Orleans was celebrated for decades, and in 1891 the
city even erected a statue to commemorate what
locals considered a proper act of defiance. That
monument to white supremacy remained for over a
century before Governor Mitch Landrieu ordered its
removal in the spring of 2017.