Robert Cwiklik, guest author, describes how, by 1874, the Crescent City White League, an armed vigilante group, emerged to violently intimidate Republican officials and Black voters in Louisiana. Their aggression was fueled by a circuit judge's opinion su

Robert Cwiklik, guest author, describes how, by 1874, the Crescent City White League, an armed vigilante group, emerged to violently intimidate Republican officials and Black voters in Louisiana. Their aggression was fueled by a circuit judge's opinion suggesting that federal Enforcement Acts might be unconstitutional, which white Southerners interpreted as a "green light" for resistance. In September 1874, the White League engaged in the Battle of Liberty Place, a full-scale rebellion involving over 8,000 armed men. They confronted the state militia and Metropolitan Policeled by former Confederate General James Longstreet, who was wounded in the fray. The White League successfully drove Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg out of New Orleans and briefly seized control of the government. Although Grant eventually sent federal troops to restore Kellogg, the event signaled a reassertion of Confederate-style rebellion that the thin federal military presence in the South struggled to permanently suppress. Sheridan's Secret Mission: How the South Won the War After the Civil War (4)