Confederate "Heritage" Month 2022, April 28: More on L.Q.C. Lamar

I posted about LQC Lamar back in the 2005 edition of this Confederate "Heritage" Month series and his active role in the overthrow of the democratic Reconstruction government of Mississippi headed by Republican Gov. Adelbert Ames.

Richard Nelson Current described Lamar's role in 1875 in supporting the anti-democracy "Redeemer" movement in Those Terrible Carpetbaggers (1988). Ames tried to raise a state militia consisting of both black and white citizens to defend the elected democratic government against, 2which Lamar polemically called "negro regiments." Here is how Lamar, who is still credited by Britannica Online as having had a "moderating influence during Reconstruction" responded:

[Various compromise measure agreed to by Gov. Ames and the Republicans] did nothing to appease the Democrats. They were infuriated by other legislation that Ames secured - a law authorizing him to reorganize the militia and to purchase rapid-fire, multiple barrel Catling guns - which they denounced as the "Gatling Gun Bill." The anti-Republican Brandon Republican [newspaper] advised "Mr. Adelbert Ames to pack his carpet bag and take his wife and babies to Massachusetts before he issues an order to his 'melish' to turn his Gatling guns on the white people of Mississippi." Regarding Ames and his prospective "negro regiments," the Mississippi congressman Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar wrote to his own wife: "He will get them killed up, and then Grant will take possession for him." Lamar was to mastermind the strategy by which the Democrats, having learned their lesson from events in Vicksburg, would get enough blacks killed to carry the state election in the fall - and would do it in such a way as to keep Grant from taking possession for Ames." (my emphasis)

The "events in Vicksburg" to which Current refers are known as the Vicksburg Massacre of December 7, 1874.

And Lamar was remembered as a moderate!

President Grover Cleveland, the most reactionary Democratic President since before the Civil War, appointed Lamar as a Justice of the Supreme Court.

As Joseph Angelillo noted last year, "rather than a lauded leader in the advance toward national reunion, Lamar should be regarded as central in the retreat from Reconstruction." (The “Unrepentant Secessionist”: The Nomination of L.Q.C. Lamar and the Retreat from Reconstruction Journal of Supreme Court History 05/10/2021)