Includes bibliographical references (p. [157]-163) and index.

"In the summer of 1866, racial tensions ran high in Louisiana as a constitutional convention considered disenfranchising former Confederates and enfranchising blacks. On July 30, a procession of black suffrage supporters on their way to the convention pushed through an angry throng of whites. Words were exchanged, shots rang out, and within minutes a riot erupted with unrestrained fury. By the time the army intervened later that afternoon, at least forty-eight men - an overwhelming majority of them black - were dead and more than two hundred had been wounded. In An Absolute Massacre, James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., examines the events surrounding the confrontation and shows that no other riot in American history had a more profound or lasting effect on the country's political and social fabric." "Relying on voluminous testimony from over 250 witnesses, Hollandsworth asserts that the New Orleans riot was the single most important event to shape Congressional Reconstruction of the South. It contributed to the first successful attempt to impeach a U.S. president and set in motion a chain of events that established the politically cohesive Solid South that would endure for almost one hundred years."--BOOK JACKET.