Alexandre Etienne de Clouet (June 9, 1812 – June 26, 1890), also known as Alexandre Etienne de Clouet, Sr., was an American politician and sugar planter who was active in Louisiana politics both before and after the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. During

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

, he violently opposed Black suffrage, becoming a leader of the violent

White League The White League, also known as the White Man's League, was a white paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing. Its f ...

that attacked

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...

who attempted to vote.

Biography

Alexandre Etienne de Clouet — often rendered "DeClouet" in contemporary documents — was born on June 9, 1812, in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. Before the Civil War, he was a Whig, serving as the party's candidate for governor in 1849. He also served in both houses of the

Louisiana legislature The Louisiana State Legislature (french: Législature d'État de Louisiane) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is a bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives with 105 representa ...

. He was one of the state's largest slaveholders, enslaving 226 people in 1860. In 1860, he was elected by St. Martin Parish to the state's secession convention as a strong advocate for leaving the union. Later, he served as a deputy to the

Provisional Congress of the Confederate States The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States, also known as the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, was a congress of Deputy (legislator), deputies and Delegate (American politics), delegates called together from th ...

from 1861 to 1862 and was a signer of the

Constitution of the Confederate States The Constitution of the Confederate States was the supreme law of the Confederate States of America. It was adopted on March 11, 1861, and was in effect from February 22, 1862, to the conclusion of the American Civil War (May 1865). The Confede ...

. After the Confederacy's defeat, de Clouet worked to take away the rights, most prominently suffrage, granted to freed slaves during Reconstruction. In 1874, he became one of the first leaders of the

, a violent paramilitary group formed to prevent freedmen from voting, including through an insurrection that temporarily overthrew the state's governor at the Battle of Liberty Place. De Clouet described the league's goal as "consolidating the white race in another effort to restore our state to its rightful rulers" and taking power away from the "unscrupulous adventurers, knaves, and office-seekers" that influenced the "blind and ignorant negro voters." In August 1874, he was voted president of the "White People's Convention," a White League effort to nominate a whites-only ticket of candidates outside the Democratic Party. That same month, de Clouet led an armed mob of 200 to the St. Martin Parish tax collector's office, accusing him without evidence of favoring black voters in the collection of the poll tax. The mob, grown to 1,000 people, later drove the tax collector out of the parish. By October, the state of mob rule in St. Martin led the federal government to send armed forces into the parish, arresting de Clouet and several other leaders of what one newspaper called "the DeClouet rebellion." Witnesses testified to a Congressional committee that de Clouet's White Leaguers had run "many colored men...into the swamp" and lynched at least one black man in the lead-up to the November election: "White Republicans did not dare to go out unless with a soldier; no colored man could have registered or voted had not troops been there; a commissioner could not obtain a posse to assist him."

References

External links

Alexandre Etienne de Clouet
at

The Political Graveyard The Political Graveyard is a website and database that catalogues information on more than 277,000 American political figures and political families, along with other information. The name comes from the website's inclusion of burial locations o ...

De Clouet Family Papers
at the

University of Louisiana at Lafayette The University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette, University of Louisiana, ULL, or UL) is a public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana. It has the largest enrollment within the nine-campus University of Louisiana System and the s ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clouet, Alexandre Etienne du 1812 births 1890 deaths 19th-century American legislators Burials in Louisiana Deputies and delegates to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States Louisiana state senators Members of the Louisiana House of Representatives People from St. Martin Parish, Louisiana People of Louisiana in the American Civil War Signers of the Confederate States Constitution Signers of the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States American slave owners White League 19th-century Louisiana politicians