Marshall Harvey Twitchell (29 February 1840-21 August 1905) was a Republican state senator in Louisiana from 1870 to 1877.
Biography[]
Marshall Harvey Twitchell was born in Townsend, Vermont in 1840, and he served in the 4th Vermont Infantry Regiment at the start of the American Civil War before serving in the 109th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness, being shot through the head and narrowly surviving. He went on to become a Freedmen's Bureau agent in Louisiana during Reconstruction, purchasing a cotton plantation on Lake Bistineau in the lawless Red River valley. He married a Louisiana woman who had warned him of her brother's intent to murder him, and he became the manager of two plantations and cofounded the town of Coushatta. He won Black support for his championing of freedmen's causes, and he later created Red River Parish with Coushatta as the parish seat. He became president of the police jury in 1871, and he appointed relatives and political supporters to key positions and organized segregated schools to educate his Black supporters. He was targeted several times by assassins, and his brother and two brothers-in-law were killed during the 1874 Coushatta massacre. Twitchell was shot six times in 1876, and he lost both of his arms to amputation as a result. His survival ensured that the Redeemer Democrats would not be able to seize a majority in the state senate, but his property came to be abandoned or seized. He relocated to Indianapolis, Indiana on Reconstruction's end, and he served as US consul in Kingston, Ontario froom 1878 until his death in 1905.