Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana's Florida Parishes, 1810-1899

by Hyde, Samuel C., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780807122709
• ISBN10: 080712270X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-03-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

In the nineteenth-century South, there existed numerous local pockets where cultures and values different from those of the dominant planter class prevailed. One such area was the Florida parishes of southeastern Louisiana, where peculiar conditions combined to create an enclave of white yeomen. In the years after the Civil War, levels of violence among these men escalated to create a state of chronic anarchy, producing an enduring legacy of bitterness and suspicion. In Samuel C. Hyde's careful and original study of a society that degenerated into utter chaos, he illuminates the factors that allowed these conditions to arise and triumph. In Pistols and Politics, Hyde gives serious scrutiny to a region heretofore largely neglected by historians, integrating its anomalies into the history of Louisiana and the wider South. He reassesses the prevailing myth of poverty in the piney woods, portrays the conscious methods of the ruling planter elite to manipulate the common people, and demonstrates the destructive possibilities inherent in the area's political traditions as well as the complex mores, values, and dynamics of a society that produced some of the fiercest and most enduring feuds in American history.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(16)
1 A Brief Moment of Stability	17	(29)
2 Government Far Behind the Times: The Seeds of Chaos	46	(56)
3 An Education in Violence	102	(37)
4 Opportunity Lost: Incipient Chaos Delayed	139	(41)
5 Organized Lawlessness: Chaos Ascendant	180	(47)
6 War Without Honor: Chaos Ensconced	227	(36)
Bibliography	263	(18)
Index	281