BLACKS RIOT IN NEW ORLEANS
$225.00
50446-1
Fine content A.L.S. "R.B. Campbell", 4pp, 8vo., New Orleans, July 31, 1866, to a Sullivan, Ohio, relative. In part, "...We are all well here but some of us are frightened out of our wits- not so with myself however for I saw the most of it & never got a Scratch- I have sent you all the papers... Such scene of Blood Shed is beyond description. I hope to God Almighty every white man in any way had anything to do towards inciting the negros on to riot and had anything to do with the Rump Convention first killed & then I want to see ever[y] negro that had anything to do with the Rump Convention killed next... The city is now under martial law...". Fine condition. Campbell's eyewitness account reference to a "rump" convention refers to the New Orleans Radical Republicans' 1866 Constitutional Convention, held despite martial law, to protest the newly instated Black Codes in Louisiana; Campbell's point of view is decidedly anti-reform and pro-Black Codes. The riots were a pivotal moment in the rise of Radical Reconstruction as a national policy over President Andrew Johnson's policies.