<x-flowed>         Election Law List afficianados will recognize that the Charlotte Observer is wrong to state that the 1898 Wilmington Massacre was the only violent overthrow of a government in U.S. history.  There were lots during Reconstruction, most notably the Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana, in which a paramilitary group, led by the defeated Democratic candidate for sheriff, overthrew the elected government and killed perhaps 105 African-Americans, about 40 of whom were shot after they had surrendered on Easter Sunday, 1873.  The federal district attorney prosecuted 9 men, a southern jury convicted them, and the Supreme Court, in one of its most shameful manipulations of the law to preserve white supremacy, let them go.  The case is U.S. v. Cruickshank (1876).  I have a long unpublished discussion of the case in a review of Robert Goldman's book on the subject, which I'll be happy to send anyone who's interested.
Morgan

Prof. of History and Social Science, Caltech
snail mail:  228-77 Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125
phone 626-395-4080
fax 626-405-9841
home page:  <http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~kousser/Kousser.html>
to order Colorblind Injustice:  http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-388.html
          "Peace if possible, Justice at any rate" -- Wendell Phillips


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