Daniel Lindsay Russell (7 August 1845-14 May 1908) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-NC 3) from 4 March 1879 to 3 March 1881 (succeeding Alfred Moore Waddell and preceding John Williams Shackelford) and Governor of North Carolina from 12 January 1897 to 15 January 1901 (succeeding Elias Carr and preceding Charles Brantley Aycock).
Biography[]
Daniel Lindsay Russell was born in Wilmington, Brunswick County, North Carolina in 1845, and he served as a Confederate States Army captain during the American Civil War, despite sympathizing with the Union. He went on to serve in the House of Commons from 1862 to 1864, and he joined the Republican Party during Reconstruction. He served as a circuit court judge from 1868 to 1874, as a delegate to the 1876 Republican National Convention, in the US House of Representatives from 1879 to 1881, and as Governor from 1897 to 1901. He was elected to US Congress as a fusion candidate of the GOP and the Greenback Party, and he was backed by the Populist Party as Governor. Russell reduced property requirements for voters, enfranchising both poor whites and African-Americans. The Democratic Party reacted by accusing him of undermining "white supremacy" and fanning the flames of "negro rule", and Alfred Moore Waddell led an insurrection in Wilmington in 1898, destroying the only black-owned newspaper in the state and chasing 2,100 African-Americans out of the city. In 1899, the Democratic-controlled state legislature passed Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites, and Russell was the last Republican Governor of North Carolina until 1972. He died at his plantation near Wilmington in 1908.