In the days before the November 1868 presidential election, armed white Democrats launched coordinated violence against Black voters throughout St. Bernard Parish. Freedmen were dragged from their homes and murdered. Others fled into the cane fields to hide.
The suppression was total. Ulysses S. Grant received exactly one vote from the entire parish despite a Republican voter majority. The reported number of freedmen killed varies from 35 to 135. Two white men died; one was killed in an attempt to help the victims.
Five years earlier, Abraham Lincoln had specifically named St. Bernard Parish in the Emancipation Proclamation as an area not in rebellion against the Union. The massacre was part of a broader wave of Reconstruction-era political violence across Louisiana in 1868. A Seymour victory over Grant would have meant the end of Reconstruction and the return of Louisiana to home rule.
No specific memorial marks the site. The story is preserved in Congressional testimony and parish records.
- ·In the days before the November 1868 presidential election, armed white Democrats launched coordinated violence against Black voters throughout St. Bernard Parish.
- ·Freedmen were dragged from their homes, murdered, or driven into the cane fields to hide.
- ·The suppression was total: Ulysses S. Grant received exactly one vote from the entire parish despite a Republican voter majority.
- ·Abraham Lincoln had specifically named St. Bernard Parish in the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) as an area not in rebellion against the Union.
- ·The massacre was part of a broader wave of Reconstruction-era political violence across Louisiana in 1868.
- ·No specific memorial marks the site. The story is preserved in Congressional testimony and parish records.
Memories
Editorial content compiled with AI assistance. Place details verified against public records.