Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005 - (Page 38)

HIS TORI C NE W ORLEANS COL LECTION above: Portrait of Henry Clay Warmoth, October 15, 1929; print by Charles Richards. right: Daniel C. Byerly tomb in Greenwood Cemetery, ca. 1981, from Survey of Historic New Orleans Cemeteries. Henry Clay Warmoth and the death of Daniel C. Byerly A former governor of Louisiana jailed on a charge of murder! Is this some fresh scandal? No, on December 26, 1874, Daniel C. Byerly, manager of the New Orleans Daily Bulletin, an evening newspaper whose goal was to repudiate every pledge or activity forwarded by the Liberal, Democratic, and Reform parties, attacked ex-governor and staunch Reconstruction Republican Henry Clay Warmoth with a cane on Canal Street. Byerly then threw Warmoth down on the pavement and continued to pummel him. Although stunned, Warmoth managed to reach his pocket knife, open it, and plunge it into his attacker several times, mortally wounding him. Police immediately arrested the former governor who, according to his memoirs, spent the next five days in the old Parish Prison on Orleans Street in a cell with a gambler named Sam Williams sentenced to be hanged for killing a woman. This attack occurred mere months following the Battle of Liberty Place, a bloody street riot between the White League, a paramilitary white supremacist group, and a combined force of the Metropolitan Police and black militia representing the Republican regime in the city. Tempers and passions over the new order were high, pervading the atmosphere of Reconstruction-era New Orleans. The riot on September 14, 1874, took place in and around the foot of Canal Street, and although little was seemingly accomplished by either side, 32 persons were killed and 79 wounded. Over the ensuing decades, white Southerners transformed the event into a memory of heroic struggle for their rights. Warmoth, born on May 9, 1842, in Illinois, was admitted to the Missouri bar in 1860, and served in the Civil War as a lieutenant colonel in the Union Army. He was a judge of the provost court of the Department of the Gulf, New Orleans, in 1864, and established his own law practice there in 1865, entering the political arena soon after. He was elected the first Reconstruction governor of the state for the term 1868-1872. Warmoth, 32 at the time of the Byerly attack, was tall, handsome, and had profited by his easy ability to make friends with influential men of diverse views and backgrounds. Byerly, about 49 at his death, was evi- 38 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Fall 2005

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005 Contents Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina and Rita Tabasco: Edmund McIlhenny and the Birth of a Louisiana Pepper Sauce Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans’ Coffee Connection No Man’s Land Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by Roy Blount, Jr. )

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005

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