Lindsey Wofford (1836 - 1899) was a Confederate States Army officer and the founder and leader of the white supremacist Louisiana Raiders paramilitary force and a War Criminal.
Biography[]
Lindsey Wofford was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1836, and he served in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. During the war, he founded the "Louisiana Raiders", a militia unit whose members fought as bushwhackers against the Union. Following the war's end, Wofford took advantage of widespread local support to continue the Raiders' existence as a white supremacist paramilitary group in Reconstruction-era Louisiana, resisting the Republican administration and the US Army's occupation of the state. Even after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the Raiders recruited disillusioned young men and Confederate veterans to engage in robbery, murder, and other violent acts with the goal of establishing the "Free State of Louisiana". The Raiders became increasingly unpopular among Louisianans, as they came to represent the same tyranny which they claimed to be fighting against. In 1899, the gang carried out a spate of assassinations of state legislators with the goal of overthrowing the US government. NOPD chief Benjamin Lambert issued a $100 bounty for Wofford's capture, and the outlaw Arthur Morgan accepted the task and tracked him down to Fort Brennand in Arkansas. There, he killed several Raiders in a massive shootout and lassoed Wofford from the battlements, hogtying him and riding off with him. He later shot three bounty hunters dead when they tried to intercept him and take Wofford for themselves, and he successfully delivered him to the NOPD station and threw him behind bars. Within three days, Wofford had been found guilty of murder, robbery, arms dealing, and countless atrocities against lawmen and state officials. He was executed in a public hanging.
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