Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 - (Page 73)

many of them had received in the United States Army. The time is past, if ever it existed, when a handful of whites could frighten a regiment of colored men.” Fortified by their faith in their rights as citizens, blacks in Colfax girded for the fight. Whites made their own preparations, taking advantage of their control of the countryside surrounding Colfax to steal horses and mules from undefended black households. Creating army-style squadrons under the leadership of subsequent court testimony, the captain of the John T. Moore would insist that the gun had been removed by force. In fact, Captain Billy Boardman’s conservative politics were well-known on the Red River, where his was the only boat bold enough to fly the Confederate flag. Lashing the cannon to a wagon bed (from which the front wheels would later be removed for maneuverability), Dunn and his crew drove it 20 miles overland toward Colfax, somehow managing to cross Bayou Darrow, where white saboteurs “The colored population seemed to have reached a high height of exasperation and resolved to obtain a redress of the wrongs they had suffered ” —from the New Orleans Republican, 1873 selected men, the whites assembled a version of a cavalry outfit. The white paramilitary patrolled constantly, assessing the strength of black defenses and scouting for the arrival of new recruits. By Easter Sunday, according to their own estimate, the white line consisted of 140 men and teenage boys. The arrival of a genuine artillery piece on Saturday night bolstered the preparedness of the white combatants. Captain C.C. Dunn of Natchitoches — who earlier had rented out his livery stable to provide mounts — coordinated the transfer of the 4-inch cannon from the deck of the steamship John T. Moore, a newly commissioned craft constructed in New Orleans by a wartime supplier for the United States Navy. In had demolished the only bridge earlier in the week, and stashed it in the Calhoun sugar house. In the morning, a designated artillery crew would push the cannon to a hidden spot in readiness for battle. Despite the intensity of the buildup on both sides, Easter Sunday started slowly in Colfax. A handful of lost stalwarts departed the radical camp in the morning. A prominent African American from Rock Island came to town to implore the men to surrender the fight. No formal observance of the holiday could be discerned. A bustle of activity, in contrast, occupied the white force as it prepared to move in concert from its network of campsites around the town. Riding to a designated spot on Bayou Darrow, the Willie Calhoun, a white man sympathetic to the black militia at Colfax, attempted to covertly deliver a message to Governor William Pitt Kellogg. Apprehended aboard a steamboat, Calhoun was delivered to a large crowd of white men on the riverbank at Pineville who seized the letter but spared Calhoun’s life. Winter 2008-09/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 73

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 Contents Friends Editor's Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Prospect.1 New Orleans The Historic New Orleans Collection The Enduring Performance of Michael P. Smith Jazz Notes Louisiana Foodways Birds of a Feather: Windfowl Carvings in Southeast Louisiana Louisiana Association of Museums Louisiana Architecture O. Winston Link in Louisiana The Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Colfax Massacre Louisiana State Museum Unlocking the History of Greek Key Architecture Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

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