Coushatta massacre

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The Coushatta massacre (1874), which claimed the lives of 60 freed blacks, was part of a larger attempt on the part of Southern whites to drive the Radical Republicans out of Louisiana during Reconstruction.

In the period after the American Civil War, Marshall Twitchell, the idealistic northern Louisiana leader of the Radical Republicans, had led a campaign in the Red River Parish to extend public representation and civil rights to the blacks of the troubled region.

But the White League, whose stated purpose was "the extermination of the carpetbag element," had staged a number of random attacks on blacks intended to unstitch Twitchell's efforts. They publicly accused the Twitchell and his colleagues of inciting what they termed "a black rebellion."

One night in August, 1874, while Marshall Twitchell was out of town, six northern men, public officials of the Red River Parish, together with twenty of their black allies, were forcibly rounded up and made to sign a statement saying they would immediately leave Louisiana. This the group proceeded to do, heading for Texas carrying only a few personal valuables.

But just outside of the city of Coushatta, Louisiana, they were ridden down by about 40 men and executed. Their bodies were interred in shallow graves. One of the victims was Homer Twitchell, Marshall's brother.

Although twenty-five people were arrested for the massacre, owing to a lack of evidence they were never brought to trial.

As a result of the killings, President Ulysses S. Grant decided to send federal troops to the area to quell what he termed an "insurrection" and allay the fears of the local blacks, a decision which was to prove wildly unpopular even in the North.