From the time of the accession of General Banks to 1876, the history of Louisiana becomes a turmoil of struggle, centering around the brother in black.[100] It is no longer romance; it is grim war, and the colored man is the struggle, not the cause of it. Political parties in 1862 were many and various. The Free State party was in favor of abolishing slavery, but wanted representation based altogether on the white population. This was opposed by the Union Democrat party, which repudiated secession, but wished slavery continued or rather revived, believing that emancipation was only a war measure, and that after cessation of hostilities, slavery could be reestablished. But the plans of both parties fell to the ground.[101] The colored man became more and more of a political factor from day to day.
Cognomens here too proved to be another difficulty. Louisiana had two classes of colored men, freedmen and free men, a delicate, but carefully guarded distinction, the latter distinctly aristocratic. In 1863, the free men of color held a meeting and appealed to Governor Shepley for permission to register and vote. In the address to him, they reviewed their services to the United States from the time of General Jackson through the Civil War, and stated that they were then paying taxes on over $9,000,000. Several petitions of this sort failed to move General Banks,[102] for he thought it unfeasible to draw the line between free men of color and the recently emancipated Negroes.
The war of Reconstruction in Louisiana was fairly well launched in the Constitutional Convention of 1864. The issue on which this body divided was what treatment should be accorded the freedmen. The two parties had much difficulty in reaching an agreement.[103] P. M. Tourne was sent to Washington to see President Lincoln. He had already suggested the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation and the education of the colored youth.[104] In a letter congratulating the recently elected Governor Hahn on his election as the "first free-state governor of Louisiana" in 1864, Lincoln suggested suffrage for the more intelligent Negroes, and those who had served the country in the capacity of soldiers. This letter of Lincoln's, says Blaine, was the first proposition from any authentic source to endow the Negro with the right of suffrage.[105] In his last public utterance on April 11, 1865, Lincoln again touched the subject of suffrage in Louisiana, repeating that he held it better to extend to the more intelligent colored men the elective franchise, giving the recently emancipated a prize to work for in obtaining property and education.[106] The Convention tried in vain to declare what constituted a Negro, giving it up in disgust. It did abolish slavery in general; granted suffrage to those whites who were loyal to the government; and to colored men according to educational and property qualifications. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and the body adjourned.
The culmination of the fight between the Democrat and the Radical was in the struggle over the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in July, 1866. An attempt was made to re-open the Constitutional Convention of 1864.[107] The delegates, who favored the reopening of the convention, formed in the streets of New Orleans, and proceeded to march to the famous Mechanics Hall, the scene of almost every political riot in the history of the city. The paraders became involved in a brawl with the white spectators; the police were called in; and the colored members of the convention and their white sympathizers fled to the hall where they attempted to barricade themselves. A general fight ensued, and over two hundred were killed.[108] The effect of this riot was electrical, not only in Louisiana but in the North, where it was construed as a deliberate massacre, and an uprising against the United States Government by the unreconstructed Louisianians.[109]
Efforts were made to bring about changes satisfactory to all. In 1867, Sheridan, in charge of the department of Louisiana, dismissed the board of aldermen of New Orleans, on the ground that they impeded the work of reconstruction and kept the government of the city in a disorganized condition. He appointed a new board of aldermen, some of whom were men of color, and in the next month this council appointed four assistant recorders, three of whom were colored, and two colored city physicians. In this month, September, 1867, the first legal voting of the colored man under the United States Government was recorded, that being their voting for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1868.[110]
This body proved to be an assemblage of ardent fighters for the rights of the factions they represented. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback proposed the adoption of the Civil Rights Bill, and the abolition of separate schools. In the convention were proposed the most stringent of all suffrage laws which would practically disfranchise many whites. Mr. Pinchback voted against this. He saved the day for the Republican party by opposing Wickliffe and other demagogues who wished to use the vote of the colored man by promising a majority of the offices to Negroes. Pinchback maintained that offices should be awarded with reference not to race, but to education and general ability.[111] In this he was fiercely opposed by many who were anxious for office, but not for the good of the State.[112]
Louisiana did not long delay in returning to the Union. On the same day on which she voted for the constitution which restored her to the Union, H. C. Warmoth was elected governor, and Oscar J. Dunn, a colored man, Lieutenant-Governor. Pinchback was then a State senator.[113] When the State legislature met in New Orleans in 1868, more than half of the members were colored men. Dunn was President of the Senate, and the temporary chairman of the lower house was R. H. Isabelle, a colored man. The first act of the new legislature was to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.[114]
And then ensued another halcyon period for the colored man in Louisiana, a period about which the average historian has little but sneers. Government in Louisiana by the colored man was different from that in other Southern States. There the average man who was interested in politics had wealth and generations of education and culture back of him. He was actuated by sincerest patriotism, and while the more ignorant of the recently emancipated were too evidently under the control of the unscrupulous carpetbagger, there were not wanting more conservative men to restrain them.
The period following the meeting of the State legislature in 1868 was a stirring one. The Louisiana free people of color had a larger share in their government than that class had in any other Southern State. Among their representatives were Lieut.-Governor Oscar J. Dunn, State Treasurer Antoine Dubuclet, State Superintendent of Education Wm. G. Brown, Division Superintendent of Education Gen. T. Morris Chester, a Pennsylvanian by birth, congressmen, William Nash, and J. Willis Menard, the first colored representative elected, although he was not seated. Col. Lewis became Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police, following his service as Collector of the Port. Upon the death of Dunn, C. C. Antoine, who had served his country as a captain in the famous Seventh Louisiana, and then in the State Senate, succeeded him. Antoine was Lieutenant-Governor for eight years, first under Governor Kellogg, and then re-elected to serve under Governor Packard.
But the most thrilling part of the whole period centers about the person of that redoubtable fighter, Pinchback. He was nominated for Governor, and to save his party accepted a compromise on the Kellogg ticket. In 1872 he ran the great railroad race with Governor Warmoth, being Lieutenant-Governor and Acting Governor in the absence of the Governor from the State. His object was to reach the capital and sign two acts of the legislature, which involved the control of the State and possibly the national government.[115] It was a desperate undertaking, and the story of the race, as told by Governor Pinchback himself, reads like a romance. By a clever trick and the courage to stay up and fight in the senate all night, he saved the senate to the Republicans and perpetuated their rule four years longer in Louisiana than it would have continued.[116]