On the sunny morning of November 4, 1872, the citizens of Louisiana headed to the polls to cast their ballots in the state’s 19th gubernatorial election. In one column they saw the name of Republican William Pitt Kellogg, a Vermont-born U.S. senator and Union Army veteran whom Abraham Lincoln had earlier appointed customs collector for the port of New Orleans. In the other, Democrat John McEnery, a Tulane-educated lawyer and proud son of the South who’d risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army.
Voting appeared to transpire without issue. “There never was a more peaceful, free or fair campaign and election held in the state of Louisiana,” said the outgoing governor, Henry Warmoth, a recently converted Democrat and influential McEnery backer. “There were no riots or disturbances of any kind anywhere in the state.” Kellogg agreed. He described the process—at least as it unfolded in New Orleans—as “the fullest and fairest election that ever occurred in the city, so far as any immunity from violence or unjust interference was concerned.”
In truth, the Louisiana governor’s race of 1872 was anything but honest. And the resultant violence cemented its place in history as America’s deadliest election, a distinction captured in the title of a new book by Dana Bash, CNN’s chief political correspondent. Her meticulous re-creation of the confrontation, written with the prolific author David Fisher, couldn’t be more well timed. “There are direct quotes on these pages, statements made more than a hundred fifty years ago, that easily could have been spoken by today’s politicians,” Bash writes in the introduction. “Democracy has often been referred to as an experiment. This is the story of what happened—and what can happen again—when that experiment fails.”
It’s a complex and messy saga, so here’s the CliffsNotes version: Rampant fraud among both parties made it “impossible to determine the actual winner.” Republicans had the support of the U.S. government, which enforced a Kellogg victory. Warmoth, backed by a militia, controlled a state board responsible for validating election returns. His board declared McEnery governor. An opposing board was created, siding with the federally backed Kellogg. On January 14, 1873, each candidate was inaugurated by his own state legislature. “If this be Republicanism,” London’s Morning Post suggested of the internationally newsworthy fiasco, “what is Imperialism?”
“Democracy is an experiment. This is the story of what happened—and what can happen again—when that experiment fails.”
America’s Deadliest Election is not exactly a work of novelistic nonfiction. It reads more like a fast-paced history lesson—one that can be difficult to follow at times, though perhaps through no fault of the storytelling or research. (My disappointment in the absence of source notes was tempered by unexpected cameos from Edgar Allan Poe and P. T. Barnum.)
The book follows a chain reaction that flowed from the civic chaos of November 1872, set against a backdrop of racism, states’ rights, and Southern resistance to Reconstruction. With the Democrats’ fight for control of Louisiana came assassination attempts, coup plots, armed street battles, and unconscionable slaughters, the most horrific of which took place in the town of Colfax on April 13, 1873. “No one was able to make an accurate account of the number of black men killed that day,” the authors write. “It was agreed, though, that what was already beginning to be called the Colfax Massacre was the largest racial killing in American history.”
Uprisings roiled the countryside, instigated by the Ku Klux Klan–adjacent White League. Eventually, the unrest spread to New Orleans, where thousands of anti-Republican insurrectionists waged their final bloody attack in September 1874, only to stand down in the face of troops dispatched by President Grant. “We neither have the power nor the inclination to resist the government of the United States,” McEnery conceded.
Modern-day parallels abound, from politically motivated impeachments and fake electors to an 1873 New Orleans version of January 6. Plotwise, McEnery is the Donald Trump of this tale, inciting the faithful in his refusal to accept defeat. But it is Warmoth—as thirsty a power broker as they come—who augurs the Trumpian archetype. “Warmoth never saw a reporter’s notebook he didn’t like”; “Warmoth didn’t believe the rules applied to him”; “There had never been a politician quite like Warmoth. He was an outsider who had succeeded by gaining the support of other outsiders.... He told them what they wanted to hear. He made them feel good about themselves.... And if he wasn’t always truthful or even accurate, his supporters didn’t seem to care.”
You should read this book if you crave historical insight into the chaos that enveloped the United States following Trump’s loss in 2020. You might also consider reading it if you fear what may come in the months and years ahead. If nothing else, it will remind you that American Democracy has fought for its life before—and, at least for now, it’s still here.
Joe Pompeo is a former senior correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime
