Following the overthrow of Reconstruction Republican government, Louisiana, like most of the former Confederacy, established a Democratic-dominated but highly fraudulent political system[1] that would from 1890 be challenged by the rise of the Populist Party due to declining conditions for farmers. Both the Populists and the earlier Greenback Party — who shared key leaders like James B. Weaver — would be supported by the state Republican Party,[2] and in the 1896 gubernatorial election a fusion candidate was undoubtedly denied by the continued fraud.[3] Consequently, the state’s plantation elite radically rewrote the state’s constitution in the next gubernatorial term with a poll tax, literacy test, grandfather clause, and a secret ballot. The consequence was a reduction in the number of registered black voters by 96 percent,[4] and virtual elimination of black voting in Acadiana until the 1950s.[a]
Louisiana consequently became a one-party state dominated by the Democratic Party, as the now-moribund Republican party lacked any white base because Louisiana completely lacked upland or German refugee whites opposed to secession.[7] After 1900, not until 1964 would another Republican serve in the state legislature.[8]
Despite this absolute single-party dominance, non-partisan tendencies remained strong among wealthy sugar planters in Acadiana, within the business elite of New Orleans,[9] and even amongst the “lily-white” “National Republican” GOP faction who supported black disenfranchisement in an effort to become respectable amongst the white elite.[10] State politics became controlled by the Choctaw Club of Louisiana, generally called the “Old Regulars”. This political machine was based in New Orleans and united with Black Beltcotton planters.[11] Although white Republicans continued to work towards taking over Federal patronage from the “black and tans”, throughout most of the 1900s Louisiana politics was under firm Choctaw control as the Populist movement weakened with the disenfranchisement of many poor whites via the poll tax.[10]
With 88.5 percent of the popular vote, Louisiana would be Parker's third strongest victory in terms of percentage in the popular vote after South Carolina and neighboring Mississippi.[12]
Results
1904 United States presidential election in Louisiana[13]
^In the remainder of the state most blacks were already disenfranchised by intimidation[5] before the 1898 Constitution and few voted again until after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[6]
^ abcIn this parish where Debs ran second ahead of Roosevelt, margin given is Parker vote minus Debs vote and percentage margin Parker percentage minus Debs percentage.
References
^Hair, William Ivy (1969). Bourbonism and agrarian protest; Louisiana politics, 1877-1900. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 114–115. ISBN0807109088.
^Lewinson, Paul (1965). Race, class and party; a history of Negro suffrage and white politics in the South. New York City: Grosset & Dunlap. p. 81.
^See Howard, Perry H. (1954). "A New Look at Reconstruction". Political Tendencies in Louisiana, 1812-1952; An Ecological Analysis of Voting Behavior (Thesis). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. pp. 112–113. OCLC8115.
^Schott, Matthew J. (Summer 1979). "Progressives against Democracy: Electoral Reform in Louisiana, 1894-1921". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 20 (3): 247–260.
^ abHeersink, Boris; Jenkins, Jeffrey A. (March 19, 2020). Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865-1968. Cambridge University Press. pp. 265–266. ISBN978-1107158436.
^Wall, Bennett H.; Rodriguez, John C. (January 28, 2014). Louisiana: A History. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 274–275. ISBN978-1118619292.
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