CNN Anchor and Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash joins for a discussion of her book, America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History, which explores the little-known story of election violence in 1872 Louisiana, which nearly pushed American democracy to its breaking point, and what we can learn from it today. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Dana Bash is CNN’s chief political correspondent, anchor of Inside Politics with Dana Bash, and the anchor and host of Sunday morning’s State of the Union, serving as the network’s lead reporter covering campaigns and Congress. She regularly acts as a moderator for CNN’s political town hall specials and debates, including CNN’s first debate of the 2020 election cycle in Detroit, as well as the last Democratic Presidential Debate of the cycle held in Washington, D.C. Bash played a key role in CNN’s 2016 presidential primary debates, serving as a questioner in six of the network’s seven primetime primary debates on both sides of the aisle. Bash also serves as a co-anchor on set in the CNN Election Center for all election night specials.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Dana Bash & David Fisher, America's Deadliest Election: The Shocking True Story of the Election that Changed American History―Uncover the Roots of America's Political Divide (2024)
- Colfax Massacre Reports, Teaching American History
- The Slaughter-House Cases (1873)
- United States v. Cruikshank (1875)
Excerpt from interview: Dana Bash highlights how the 1872 Louisiana election fraud and Colfax Massacre paved the way for Jim Crow laws.
Dana Bash: Henry Mormon pushed for the Democratic candidate for governor in the 1872 election. He helped to put people in place who were very comfortable with literally stealing the election from black voters. All of the things that we know happened throughout 100 years of Jim Crow, but this is pre Jim Crow. They took ballot boxes from black communities. They made the black men come up with things that they couldn't possibly come up with in order to vote. There was a lot of physical, violent intimidation of these black men. And the reason I kind of buried this important point, but this is really the key here, is because of how he won so quickly the election before knowing that the power that black men had at the ballot box was so unique, it could change the political landscape. What the Democrats learned was, we have to stop them at the ballot box, and this is how we're going to do it. And through intimidation and just full out fraud. And he was part of that. And what happened was the election was such a mess, and nobody knew where the votes were coming from. Nobody knew who. Who really won and who really didn't.
That there was violence, There was total fracture in who was in charge to the point where nobody would concede. And it ended up that there were two governors inaugurated. I do that in air quotes. There were two legislatures inaugurated or sworn in. There were multiple slates of judges, and nobody knew who was in charge. And Grant was the president. He, a couple of different times, sent federal troops down to try to keep the peace. And eventually Congress kind of tried to ask them, okay, or tell them, okay, this is the deal, the Republican one, and this is the way it's going to be. But nobody really sort of believed that. And the violence got so bad, not just in the streets of New Orleans, but elsewhere in the state of Louisiana, that there was an outright massacre called the Colfax Massacre. And Jeffrey, you probably knew about the Colfax massacre. Again, as a girl who went to public school in New Jersey, I didn't learn about the Colfax massacre. And by the way, a lot of the kids who go to school in Louisiana, they don't learn the real story about the Colfax Massacre.
And effectively what happened was you had hundreds of black men holed up in a voting center saying, we're not going anywhere. We want our votes to be counted. And the white men who did not want that to happen came in and there was a pitch battle. And the white men literally set the place on fire. And the black men who were there, many of them burned to death. Those who didn't burn or were trying to escape were shot in their tracks. The savagery with which a lot of these men were killed was just beyond. And following that massacre, there was a desire to find justice for the black men who were killed. But because the federal government understood that there was no way that white people being tried for the death of black people in Louisiana were going to get a pair of trial on a local level, they took it into the federal courts and they prosecuted, not on the murder, but on the notion it was, I think, one of the first times that they were prosecuted, on the notion that it was their civil rights were not upheld because they couldn't vote. And it went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court ruled, no, this is a state matter, this isn't a federal matter. And that led the way for states rights to be paramount in federal elections. And most importantly, it led the way and paved the way for the Jim Crow laws for 100 years. It was that election in 1872, the violence that came as part of the election, which was so messed up in 1872, and the true desire to find justice for those black men that got everything into the courts and effectively backfired and made society even More just absolutely segregated. And the people in the north, who fought so hard for all the things that they fought for in the south, just kind of gave up because they totally screwed up Reconstruction, which I've talked about for a while, so you can ask me about 1876 next. But that was really the final nail in the coffin of Reconstruction. Jim Crow and that decision was one, but the next one was even worse.
Excerpt from interview: Dana Bash highlights Grant's struggle with Reconstruction, leading to a 1876 deal that removed federal troops from the South, cementing Jim Crow laws.
Dana Bash: He was in political trouble. People were, you know, not. Not thrilled with his stewardship. It was. I don't think it was entirely clear that his abilities on the battlefield translated to his abilities in politics. And he was having trouble finding his way. His popularity was definitely in taking hits Left and right. And there's no question that. And also his kind of toing and froing about I'm going to send troops, federal troops down to help and then I'm not going to send them. And some of his reluctance to send federal troops really allowed things to explode. But on that note, I mean, the whole question of federal troops and Grant's lack of popularity and the lack of confidence that people had, obviously in the south they didn't like him, but even more so in the north. He really wanted Reconstruction to work and he really wanted the idea of rebuilding in the south to take hold. He wasn't the only one. And it just, we didn't get too far into the sort of nuts and bolts of how Reconstruction works. So maybe you know more about this than I do, but it wasn't executed properly.
It was not executed properly at all. Which is why if you fast forward to 1876 when there had to be a deal, because the problems that we described in Louisiana, in Louisiana in 1872, spread to three other states to the point where when the election results got to Washington for the election certification in the House, they had to throw out four states, including Louisiana, because it was just impossible for them to know who really won the elections in those states. Which led to an electoral tie, which led to a commission, because that's what Washington did even back then. They came up with commissions and the commission was made up in a way that you had balance, but then you had the tiebreaker, which was effectively the guy who decided the election. There was a backroom deal and it was, okay, Hayes, you can be president, you're the Republican, but you gotta pull a federal truce out of the South. And so as much as the Colfax massacre really laid the groundwork for Jim Crow, it was pulling those federal troops out of the south that did it. That cemented the notion of Jim crow against until 1964 and then really 1965.
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