Christopher Columbus Nash

(Confederate soldier and Louisiana sheriff in the "Colfax Riot")

* * *

Born |  July 1, 1838
Sabine Parish, Louisiana, USA​

Resident of Colfax in Grant Parish

Died |  June 29, 1922 (aged 83)
Political Party |  Democrat
Spouse |  Malinda Annette Williams Nash

Six children:
Mary Nash Stuart (1882-1972)
Elva Victoria Nash Bond
(1884-1951)
Linda Annette Nash Davis (1888-1974)
Nettie Ida Nash Mazurette (1889-1974)
Saidee M. Nash Watson
(1891-1970)
Richard Nash
Parents:
William Valentine and Mary Anderson Hodges Nash

Religion |  Baptist

Christopher Columbus Nash (July 1, 1838 - June 29, 1922; still living in 1922, when he applied for a Confederate pension through the state of Louisiana)[1][2] was a merchant and sheriff of Grant Parish, Louisiana.[3] In 1873, he led a company of white militia seeking to regain control of the parish courthouse in Colfax, which had been seized by armed African-American insurgents. Thereafter, Nash, a segregationist Democrat, formed the first contingent of the White League in the American South during the second half of Reconstruction.

## Background[edit]

Nash was born in Sabine Parish in western Louisiana, a son of William Valentine Nash (1796-1894) and the former Mary Anderson Hodges (1807-1880). He was married to the former Malinda Annette Williams (1857-1920), a daughter of Richard B. Williams of Montgomery in northwestern Grant Parish. With the outbreak of the American Civil War, he volunteered with the Sabine Rifles and reached the rank of lieutenant in Company A, Second Louisiana Infantry in Virginia under General Stonewall Jackson. He fought at Antietam and Gettysburg until he was captured in November 1863 and spent the last eighteen months of the conflict as a prisoner of war on Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay on the coast of Lake Erie.[3]

## Political life[edit]

After the war, Nash apparently spent some time in New Orleans before his arrival in Grant Parish. He directed the events in Colfax on Easter, April 13, 1873, to regain control of the courthouse, an event known as the "Colfax Riot" on the southern historical marker, but called the "Colfax massacre" or "The Day Freedom Died" by Union sympathizers or northerners concerned with civil rights for African American.[4] The riot occurred when Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg refused to recognize Nash as the legitimate "sheriff" of Grant Parish. Nearly seventy to one hundred blacks were killed in the riot. A white man named Cruikshank was arrested and indicted for violating the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Morrison Waite heard the case, United States v. Cruikshank. The court held that there are two kinds of citizenship: state and national. The Fourteenth Amendment, said the court, does not protect against murder and other crimes, in effect gutting the authority of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Acts. The white supremacists felt they had precedent for the repent-less killing of African Americans. Home rule hence returned to the American South, a process completed by 1877, with removal of the last of the federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina on order of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.

After the Colfax Riot, Nash led companies of white militias in the formation of the first unit of the White League, which defined its purpose as the defense of a "hereditary civilization and Christianity menaced by a stupid Africanization."[5] The league intimidated, lynched, performed fraud against, and killed black voters. Eventually, key members of the Colfax Riot were indicted for killing and setting fire to black men.[6]

Nash died at the age of eighty-three and is interred at the historic American Cemetery in Natchitoches, Louisiana, alongside his wife who predeceased him by two years.[7]

## References[edit]

1. ↑ Louisiana battles. Militaryhistoryonline.com. Retrieved on December 15, 2010.
2. ↑ The Fourteenth Amendment forbids the payment of pensions or other emoluments to those involved in armed insurrection against the United States, but the various former Confederate States of America did provide such assistance to veterans and their widows.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Nash, Christopher Columbus. A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography: Louisiana Historical Association. Retrieved on April 27, 2020.
4. ↑ A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, in its article on Nash, uses these sources: Milton Dunn, Christopher Columbus Nash (1925), Mabel Fletcher Harrison and Lavinia McGuire McNeely, Grant Parish, Louisiana: A History (1969), and Manie White Johnson, "The Colfax Riot of April, 1873," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, Vol. XIII (1930).
5. ↑ Adolph Reed, Jr., "The battle of Liberty Monument - New Orleans, Louisiana white supremacist statue," The Progressive, June 1993.
6. ↑ James K. Hogue, The Battle of Colfax: Paramilitarism and Counterrevolution in Louisiana, June 2006, p. 21.
7. ↑ Capt. Christopher Columbus Nash. Findagrave.com. Retrieved on April 27, 2020.