Louisiana Bourbons

The term Bourbon refers to the white rulers throughout the South at the end of the Reconstruction period. The Bourbons were democrats who ruled Louisiana until well into the 20th century. After 1877 cotton and sugar planters along with wealthy New Orleans businessmen reigned over the state; many of them were sons or grandsons of those that ruled before the Civil War. The Bourbon Democrats of Louisiana quickly realized that they would not be able to completely return to the plantation South of 1860, so they slowly entered into modern times by securing monetary investments from the North and overseas, which brought industrial capitalism to Bourbon Louisiana. When it came to maintaining white supremacy and maintaining a conservative fiscal and tax policy, the Bourbons were firmly planted in their antebellum ways. They believed that even though the institution of slavery was now deemed illegal, they still held their beliefs that blacks should remain subordinate because they were mentally and morally inferior. The Bourbons also believed that "cheap, docile black labor was essential," in the "period before the advent of mechanized agriculture." The Bourbons believed that the Government's main concern should be with the protection of life and private property, thus reducing budgeting for public schools and other institutions. Mayor Jastremski of Baton Rouge, and Henry J. Hearsey the editor-publisher of the New Orleans Daily States, were both "strident reactionaries." They lived in the past and hated the North immensely. Conservative Democrats in Bourbon Louisiana believed that the white voters were "susceptible to racial appeals, and would tolerate all manners of fraud when committed in the name of white solidarity." In 1878, a Kentucky man by the name of Edward A. Burke, became the state treasurer. Burke represented Louisiana's whites when the 1876 presidential election came into dispute. The Compromise of 1877 solved the issue involving the allocation of Louisiana's