The Opelousas Massacre of September 1868 was a multi-day event in which scores of African Americans and white Republicans were attacked, beaten, kidnapped, and killed. Alternatively called the “St. Landry Massacre,” the Democratic Press referred to it as the “Opelousas Riots.”
The Franklin Planter’s Banner, a Democratic newspaper tied to the Knights of the White Camellia, estimated that 100 blacks were killed during the massacre. Republican estimates placed the black death toll at 200 to 400. Estimates of the number of white Democrats killed range from one to four.
New York Tribune
Monday, Oct 12, 1868
New York, NY
Vol: XXVIII
Issue: 8583
Page: 4
The initial precipitant of the killings was an article written by Emerson Bentley, a young man writing for the St. Landry Progress, a Republican paper owned by Black shareholders. Bentley was an Ohio transplant who taught school for local Blacks. He was the frequent target of threats by the local terrorist groups. In early September a note was attached to his schoolhouse door saying “E.B. Beware! K.K.K.”
Stepped up white violence was followed by blacks bringing weapons to their own meetings. Deaths were already occurring, and the fact that many people on both sides were apparently going about armed led to fears of open warfare. On September 19, 1868 a “peace treaty” was signed between the two sides.
On the same day as the peace treaty was signed, Bentley published an article on a meeting of African Americans that took place the week before during which mounted and conspicuously armed Democrats in the Seymour Guards were described as trying to intimidate black voters. Democrats were particularly angry that Bentley wrote that Republicans “do not plot in the dark; we do not assassinate inoffensive citizens or threaten to do so; we do not seek the lives of political opponents…” [The 1868 St. Landry Massacre: Reconstruction’s Deadliest Episode of Violence by Matthew Christensen p. 48]
Democrats viewed Bentley’s article as containing “incendiary” language, which was prohibited by the peace treaty. On the morning of Sept. 28, three armed Seymour Guards, including a constable, went to Bentley’s freedman’s school and caned him with thirty blows and required him to sign a retraction of his article. The children at the school fled and spread word that Bentley had been assaulted and might have been killed. Local blacks rushed to his assistance. Bentley went into hiding near his office initially. Blacks then hid him in various safe houses and over the course of three weeks the pursued man was able to escape to New Orleans. The Seymour Guards were named after the Democrats’ 1868 presidential candidate. (Id. pp. 48-50)
When word spread that Bentley had apparently been killed, the Seymour Knights and the Knights of the White Camellia mobilized their men to suppress any attempt by African Americans or their white allies to organize protests. Democrats discussed the likelihood of a Black uprising in reaction to the rumored killing. When white riders went to a plantation south of the city, they encountered armed workers on the plantation whom they ordered to surrender. The blacks refused and opened fire rather than be taken prisoner. After one black man was killed, the workers surrendered, and eight were taken prisoner. Apart from this one encounter, the Democrats did not meet any other organized armed black opposition during the massacre. (Id. pp. 50-52)
During the day, members of various white groups had gathered in the city, many coming from the surrounding countryside. Patrols were sent out to disarm the black population. The patrols found that far from the black population being on the verge of an insurrection, many blacks had fled for their lives. (Id. p. 52)
A couple of dozen prisoners were collected into the jail. On the night of September 29 a group of whites took the priosners from the jail and executed many of them. (Id. p. 54)
Bentley’s newspaper was destroyed and his school was ransacked. Three days after the killings began, the body of C.E. Durand, who edited the French-language articles in Bentley’s paper paper, was put on display in the city. (Id. p. 55)
The Lake Charles Echo, a conservative newspaper, described the sudden decline in Black voting following the violence that caused it.
Lake Charles Echo
Saturday, Oct 10, 1868
Lake Charles, LA
Vol: 1
Page: 4
Here is the description of the death toll from the Democratic paper The Franklin Planter’s Banner:
Quoted in
Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association
Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter, 1976) p. 48.
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