Christopher Columbus Nash 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 ) was a merchant and a Democratic sheriff in Grant Parish , Louisiana , who in 1873 led a company of white militia men to regain control of the parish courthouse in Colfax , which had been seized by armed African - American insurgents . Thereafter , the segregationist Nash formed the first contingent of the White League in the American South during the second half of Reconstruction . Biography . Nash was born in Sabine Parish in western Louisiana , a son of Valentine Nash and the former Mary Anderson . He was married to the former Malinda Williams , 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 . 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 African American civil rights . The riot occurred when the Republican Governor William Pitt Kellogg refused to recognize Nash as the legitimate " sheriff " of Grant Parish . Nearly 70 to 100 blacks were killed in the riot . A white man named Cruikshank was arrested and indicted for violating the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States . Ultimately , the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice Morrison Waite heard this case , " United States v . Cruikshank " . The court held there are two kinds of citizenship : state and national . Protection against murder and other crimes is not guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment , the court held , in effect stripping the Fourteenth Amendment and the Enforcement Acts of their power . This ruling empowered a landslide of white against black violence in the South , starting in Louisiana . 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 or Colfax Massacre , Nash led companies of white militia s in the formation of the first unit of the White League . The league defined its purpose as the defense of a " hereditary civilization and Christianity menaced by a stupid Africanization . " The White League intimidated , lynched , performed fraud against and killed black voters . Eventually , key members of the Colfax Massacre , which were indicted by James Beckwith for killing and lighting on fire black men , supported by the White League and white southerners gained powerful positions in Colfax and Grant Parish . Nash is interred at the historic American Cemetery in Natchitoches , Louisiana , the first cemetery in the Louisiana Purchase .