An Organized Menace: Insurgency in Reconstruction Louisiana

This thesis contends that white supremacists’ strategy, operations, and tactics demonstrate that their organizations in 1868 Louisiana constituted a complex insurgency—a resistance movement united by aim, motivation, and adversary rather than an orthodox hierarchy. Establishing the precise functions performed by the often-violent groups that operated in 1868 Louisiana, this thesis illuminates the Democratic clubs as the modular core of an insurgent movement guided by the Knights of the White Camellia and organized through the Democratic Party. Influenced by the Knights’ strategy, these clubs sought to restore white rule by employing techniques ranging from ostensibly peaceful demonstrations to organized mass murder. Across the state, these tactics fostered ubiquitous fear that repelled would-be Republican voters from the polls in November 1868. This systematic terror allowed white supremacists to carry the election for the Democratic Party in Louisiana, underscoring that white violence, which was fundamentally political, was anything but disorganized and arbitrary.