Pistols And Politics

Pistols And Politics PDF Author: Samuel C. Hyde, Jr.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807122709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In the nineteenth-century South, there existed numerous local pockets where cultures and values different from those of the dominant planter class prevailed. One such area was the Florida parishes of southeastern Louisiana, where peculiar conditions combined to create an enclave of white yeomen. In the years after the Civil War, levels of violence among these men escalated to create a state of chronic anarchy, producing an enduring legacy of bitterness and suspicion. In Samuel C. Hyde's careful and original study of a society that degenerated into utter chaos, he illuminates the factors that allowed these conditions to arise and triumph. Early in the century, the Florida parishes were characterized by an exceptional level of social and political turmoil. Stability emerged as the cotton economy expanded into the piney-woods parishes during the 1820s and 1830s, bringing with it slaves and prosperity -- but also bringing increasing dominance of the region by a powerful planter elite that shaped state government to suit its purposes. By the early 1840s, Jacksonian political rhetoric inspired a newfound assertiveness among the common folk. With the construction of a railroad through the piney-woods region at the close of the antebellum period and the collapse of the planter class at the end of the Civil War, the plain folk were finally able to reject the planters' authority. Traditional patterns of political and economic stability were permanently disrupted, and the residents -- their Jeffersonian traditions now corrupted by the brutal war and Reconstruction periods -- rejected all governance and resorted increasingly to violence as the primary solution to conflict. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, the Florida Parishes had some of the highest murder rates in the country. In Pistols and Politics, Hyde gives serious scrutiny to a region heretofore largely neglected by historians, integrating the anomalies of one area of Louisiana into the history of the state and the wider South. He reassesses the prevailing myth of poverty in the piney woods, portrays the conscious methods of the ruling planter elite to manipulate the common people, and demonstrates the destructive possibilities inherent in the area's political traditions as well as the complex mores, values, and dynamics of a society that produced some of the fiercest and most enduring feuds in American history.

Pistols And Politics

Pistols And Politics PDF Author: Samuel C. Hyde, Jr.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807122709
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the nineteenth-century South, there existed numerous local pockets where cultures and values different from those of the dominant planter class prevailed. One such area was the Florida parishes of southeastern Louisiana, where peculiar conditions combined to create an enclave of white yeomen. In the years after the Civil War, levels of violence among these men escalated to create a state of chronic anarchy, producing an enduring legacy of bitterness and suspicion. In Samuel C. Hyde's careful and original study of a society that degenerated into utter chaos, he illuminates the factors that allowed these conditions to arise and triumph. Early in the century, the Florida parishes were characterized by an exceptional level of social and political turmoil. Stability emerged as the cotton economy expanded into the piney-woods parishes during the 1820s and 1830s, bringing with it slaves and prosperity -- but also bringing increasing dominance of the region by a powerful planter elite that shaped state government to suit its purposes. By the early 1840s, Jacksonian political rhetoric inspired a newfound assertiveness among the common folk. With the construction of a railroad through the piney-woods region at the close of the antebellum period and the collapse of the planter class at the end of the Civil War, the plain folk were finally able to reject the planters' authority. Traditional patterns of political and economic stability were permanently disrupted, and the residents -- their Jeffersonian traditions now corrupted by the brutal war and Reconstruction periods -- rejected all governance and resorted increasingly to violence as the primary solution to conflict. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, the Florida Parishes had some of the highest murder rates in the country. In Pistols and Politics, Hyde gives serious scrutiny to a region heretofore largely neglected by historians, integrating the anomalies of one area of Louisiana into the history of the state and the wider South. He reassesses the prevailing myth of poverty in the piney woods, portrays the conscious methods of the ruling planter elite to manipulate the common people, and demonstrates the destructive possibilities inherent in the area's political traditions as well as the complex mores, values, and dynamics of a society that produced some of the fiercest and most enduring feuds in American history.

The Party Is Over

The Party Is Over PDF Author: Christie L. Maloyed
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807176990
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
For decades, the Louisiana political scene has been a source of interest and intrigue for scholars and casual observers alike. In recent years, the state’s political, economic, and environmental challenges have drawn sustained attention from regional and national media. Observers have typically focused on Louisiana’s distinctive political culture, including jungle primaries, colorful candidates, and tolerance for scandal. However, recent shifts have eroded the state’s unique political character, aligning it with national political trends of partisan realignment, political polarization, and outside influence in state and local elections. The Party Is Over brings together top scholars, journalists, and policy analysts to investigate these recent shifts in institutions, politics, and policy and situate them in the context of national politics. Both accessible and thorough, the volume offers an informed and reliable foundation for those new to Louisiana’s political culture and for long-time observers seeking new insights into recent developments. Contributors recognize the challenges posed by the new politics and point toward opportunities to leverage the state’s cultural and economic strengths to build a better Louisiana.

The Know Nothings in Louisiana

The Know Nothings in Louisiana PDF Author: Marius M. Carriere Jr.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496816870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In the 1850s, a startling new political party appeared on the American scene. Both its members and its critics called the new party by various names, but to most it was known as the Know Nothing Party. It reignited political fires over nativism and anti-immigration sentiments. At a time of political uncertainty, with the Whig party on the verge of collapse, the Know Nothings seemed destined to replace them and perhaps become a political fixture. Historian Marius M. Carriere Jr. tracks the rise and fall of the Know Nothing movement in Louisiana, outlining not only the history of the party as it is usually known, but also explaining how the party's unique permeation in Louisiana contrasted with the Know Nothings' expansion nationally and elsewhere in the South. For example, many Roman Catholics in the state joined the Know Nothings, even though the party was nationally known as anti-Catholic. While historians have largely concentrated on the Know Nothings' success in the North, Carriere furnishes a new context for the evolution of a national political movement at odds with its Louisiana constituents. Through statistics on various elections and demographics of Louisiana politicians, Carriere forms a detailed account of Louisiana's Know Nothing Party. The national and rapidly changing Louisiana political landscape yielded surprising, credible leverage for the Know Nothing movement. Slavery, Carriere argues, also played a crucial difference between southern and northern Know Nothing ideals. Carriere delineates the eventual downfall of the Know Nothing Party, while offering new perspectives on a nativist movement, which has appeared once again in a changing, divided country.

The Louisiana State Constitution

The Louisiana State Constitution PDF Author: The late W. Lee Hargrave
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199877947
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In The Louisiana State Constitution, Lee Hargrave provides a compehensive history and provision-by-provision commentary of the state's current constitution. Descriptive analysis provides readers with important information about the origins of the constitutional provisions, as well as ways in which the courts and other governmental bodies have interpreted them. Previously published by Greenwood, this title has been brought back in to circulation by Oxford University Press with new verve. Re-printed with standardization of content organization in order to facilitate research across the series, this title, as with all titles in the series, is set to join the dynamic revision cycle of The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States. The Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States is an important series that reflects a renewed international interest in constitutional history and provides expert insight into each of the 50 state constitutions. Each volume in this innovative series contains a historical overview of the state's constitutional development, a section-by-section analysis of its current constitution, and a comprehensive guide to further research. Under the expert editorship of Professor G. Alan Tarr, Director of the Center on State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University, this series provides essential reference tools for understanding state constitutional law. Books in the series can be purchased individually or as part of a complete set, giving readers unmatched access to these important political documents.

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana

Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana PDF Author: Mary Gorton McBride
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807135720
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana offers the first biography of one of Louisiana's most intriguing nineteenth-century politicians and a founder of Tulane University. Gibson (1832--1892) grew up on his family's sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish and was educated at Yale University before studying law at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He purchased a sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish in 1858 and became heavily involved in the pro-secession faction of the Democratic Party. Elected colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana Volunteer Regiment at the start of the Civil War, he commanded a brigade in the Battle of Shiloh and fought in all of the subsequent campaigns of the Army of Tennessee, concluding in 1865 with the Battle of Spanish Fort. As Gibson struggled to establish a law practice in postwar New Orleans, he experienced a profound change in his thinking and came to believe that the elimination of slavery was the one good outcome of the South's defeat. Joining Louisiana's Conservative political faction, he advocated for a postwar unification government that included African Americans. Elected to Congress in 1874, Gibson was directly involved in the creation of the Electoral Commission that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and peacefully solved the disputed 1876 presidential election. He crafted legislation for the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which eventually resulted in millions of federal dollars for flood control. Gibson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 and became Louisiana's leading "minister of reconciliation" with his northern colleagues and its chief political spokesman during the highly volatile Gilded Age. He deplored the growing gap between the rich and the poor and embraced a reformist agenda that included federal funding for public schools and legislation for levee construction, income taxes, and the direct election of senators. This progressive stance made Gibson one of the last patrician Democrats whose noblesse oblige politics sought common middle ground between the extreme political and social positions of his era. At the request of wealthy New Orleans merchant Paul Tulane, Gibson took charge of Tulane's educational endowment and helped design the university that bears Tulane's name, serving as the founding president of the board of administrators. Highly readable and thoroughly researched, Mary Gorton McBride's absorbing biography illuminates in dramatic fashion the life and times of a unique Louisianan.

Earl K. Long

Earl K. Long PDF Author: Michael L. Kurtz
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080711765X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
In a region famous for its flamboyant politicians, Earl K. Long was one of the most flamboyant of them all. This first full-scale biography of the former Louisiana governor explores his controversial life-style and his strong family ties, his raw humor and his political savvy, his abuse of power and his accomplishments in the areas of civil rights and public services. Michael L. Kurtz and Morgan D. Peoples provide new information from recently declassified FBI files concerning Earl's ties with organized crime figures, give the first comprehensive account of his stays in mental institutions in 1959, and offer factual information about his notorious relationship with the stripper Blaze Star. Based on more than two decades of research in a variety of sources, this important biography fills a serious gap in the history of modern Louisiana politics.

Protest at Selma

Protest at Selma PDF Author: David J. Garrow
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504011546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
A thorough and insightful account of the historic 1965 civil rights protest at Selma, Alabama, from the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography Bearing the Cross Vivid descriptions of violence and courageous acts fill David Garrow’s account of the momentous 1965 protest at Selma, Alabama, in which the author illuminates the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in organizing the demonstrations that led to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Beyond a mere narration of events, Garrow provides an in-depth look at the political strategy of King and of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He explains how King’s awareness of media coverage of the protests—especially reports of white violence against peaceful African American protestors—would elicit sympathy for the cause and lead to dramatic legislative change. Garrow’s analysis of these tactics and of the news reports surrounding these events provides a deeper understanding of how civil rights activists utilized a nonviolent approach to achieve success in the face of great opposition and ultimately effected monumental political change.

MLK: An American Legacy

MLK: An American Legacy PDF Author: David J. Garrow
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504038924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1040

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Book Description
Three meticulously researched works—including Pulitzer Prize winner Bearing the Cross—spanning the life of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. This collection from professor and historian David J. Garrow provides a multidimensional and fascinating portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., and his mission to upend deeply entrenched prejudices in society, and enact legal change that would achieve equality for African Americans one hundred years after their emancipation from slavery. Bearing the Cross traces King’s evolution from the young pastor who spearheaded the 1955–56 bus boycott in Montgomery to the inspirational leader of America’s civil rights movement, focusing on King’s crucial role at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Garrow captures King’s charisma, his moral obligation to lead a nonviolent crusade against racism and inequality—and the toll this calling took on his life. Garrow delves deeper into one of the civil rights movement’s most decisive moments in Protest at Selma. These demonstrations led to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 that, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, remains a key aspect of King’s legacy. Garrow analyzes King’s political strategy and understanding of how media coverage—especially reports of white violence against peaceful African American protestors—elicited sympathy for the cause. King’s fierce determination to overturn the status quo of racial relations antagonized FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. follows Hoover’s personal obsession to destroy the civil rights leader. In an unprecedented abuse of governmental power, Hoover led one of the most invasive surveillance operations in American history, desperately trying to mar King’s image. As a collection, these utterly engrossing books are a key to understanding King’s inner life, his public persona, and his legacy, and are a testament to his impact in forcing America to confront intolerance and bigotry at a critical time in the nation’s history.

The Louisiana Scalawags

The Louisiana Scalawags PDF Author: Frank J. Wetta
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807147486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the pejorative term "scalawag" referred to white southerners loyal to the Republican Party. With the onset of the federal occupation of New Orleans in 1862, scalawags challenged the restoration of the antebellum political and social orders. Derided as opportunists, uneducated "poor white trash," Union sympathizers, and race traitors, scalawags remain largely misunderstood even today. In The Louisiana Scalawags, Frank J. Wetta offers the first in-depth analysis of these men and their struggle over the future of Louisiana. A significant assessment of the interplay of politics, race, and terrorism during Reconstruction, this study answers an array of questions about the origin and demise of the scalawags, and debunks much of the negative mythology surrounding them. Contrary to popular thought, the southern white Republicans counted among their ranks men of genuine accomplishment and talent. They worked in fields as varied as law, business, medicine, journalism, and planting, and many held government positions as city officials, judges, parish officeholders, and state legislators in the antebellum years. Wetta demonstrates that a strong sense of nationalism often motivated the men, no matter their origins. Louisiana's scalawags grew most active and influential during the early stages of Reconstruction, when they led in founding the state's Republican Party. The vast majority of white Louisianans, however, rejected the scalawags' appeal to form an alliance with the freedmen in a biracial political party. Eventually, the influence of the scalawags succumbed to persistent terrorism, corruption, and competition from the white carpetbaggers and their black Republican allies. By then, the state's Republican Party consisted of white political leaders without any significant white constituency. According to Wetta, these weaknesses, as well as ineffective federal intervention in response to a Democratic Party insurgency, caused the Republican Party to collapse and Reconstruction to fail in Louisiana.

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes PDF Author: Pamela Tyler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes is a narrative history of organized, politically active white women in twentieth-century New Orleans. Viewing their involvement as a link between pre-1920s progressivism and 1960s feminism. Pamela Tyler tells how these upper- and middle-class women sought and exercised power at the state and local levels through lobbying, fund-raising, endorsements, watchdog activities, volunteer work, voting, and candidacy. Beginning with an overview of New Orleans politics in the early twentieth century, Tyler looks at the presuffrage political activities of New Orleans women and discusses the relatively dormant state of women's political life in New Orleans in the 1920s. From there she traces, in the careers of the city's women leaders, a shift away from humanitarian, social justice issues toward politics. Subsequent chapters focus on Hilda Phelps Hammond and the Louisiana Women's Committee's crusade against Huey Long's political machine in the 1930s, Martha Gilmore Robinson and the nonpartisan activities of the Woman Citizens' Union and the League of Women Voters in the 1930s and 1940s, and the partisanship and direct political influence of the Independent Women's Organization in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters consider Martha Gilmore Robinson's unsuccessful bid for a seat on the New Orleans city council in 1954 and the civil rights activities in the 1950s and 1960s of Urban League stalwart Rosa Freeman Keller, now judged to be the most effective white liberal of her time in New Orleans. Throughout, Tyler places her subjects and their stories in the context of such national trends and events as the Depression. World War II, McCarthyism, and the civil rightsmovement. She discusses, for example, the New Orleans League of Women Voters' purge of suspected Communist sympathizers in 1947-48 and the involvement of a coterie of women's organizations in community efforts during the public school integration crisis from 1959 to 1961. Tyler also discusses the insularity of New Orleans society, the limiting effects of race- and class-consciousness on many of her subjects, and the postwar decline in the domination by elites of the women's political scene in New Orleans. Though they considered themselves to be neither liberals nor feminists, the women Tyler portrays worked within existing social norms and political frameworks to challenge male hegemony in public life and embrace greater individual freedom and participation in government. Filled with previously untold, or only partially told, stories about some of Louisiana's most memorable political figures - female and male - Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes will broaden our views on southern activism.