Alfred Moore Waddell

Alfred Moore Waddell

Alfred Moore Waddell (born September 16, 1834 in Hillsborough , North Carolina , †  March 17, 1912 in Wilmington , North Carolina) was an American politician . Between 1871 and 1879 he represented the state of North Carolina in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Alfred Waddell attended Bingham's School and the Caldwell Institute in Hillsborough and then studied until 1853 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . After a subsequent law degree and his admission as a lawyer in 1855, he began to work in Wilmington in this profession. Between 1858 and 1861 he was also employed as a court usher. At the time, Waddell was a member of the American Party and an opponent of secession. In 1860 he was a delegate at the Constitutional Union Party's nomination convention in Baltimore . In 1860 and 1861 he published a daily newspaper in Wilmington. Despite its originally loyal attitude to the Union Waddell took as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army on the civil war in part. He served in a cavalry unit from North Carolina.

Waddell later became a member of the Democratic Party . In the congressional election of 1870 he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the third constituency of North Carolina , where he succeeded Oliver H. Dockery on March 4, 1871 . After three re-elections, he was able to complete four legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1879 . From 1877 he was chairman of the postal committee. In 1878 he lost to Daniel Lindsay Russell from the short-lived Greenback Party .

After leaving the US House of Representatives, Alfred Waddell practiced law again. He was also active in literature; in addition he published a newspaper in 1881 and 1882. In the years 1880 and 1896 he was a delegate to the respective Democratic National Conventions . On November 10, 1898, Waddell led a mob of approximately 1,500 racists to drive out the democratically elected Wilmington City government, which they succeeded. This operation is the only successful coup in US history, known as the Wilmington massacre of 1898. Approximately 10-100 black people were murdered. Over 2,100 black people fled the city, changing the ethnic composition in favor of the whites. The US government did not send any aid to the elected government. From 1898 to 1904 Waddell served as Mayor of Wilmington City. He died there on March 17, 1912. He was married three times and had a son.

additional

The lawyer Alfred Moore was Waddell's great-grandfather.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Umfleet, LeRae .: 1898 Wilmington race riot report. North Carolina Digital Collections, May 31, 2006, accessed August 3, 2020 . 
2. ↑ The 1898 Wilmington Massacre Is an Essential Lesson in How State Violence Has Targeted Black Americans. Retrieved August 3, 2020 . 
3. ^ North Carolina History Project: Alfred Moore Waddell (1834-1912) biography at www.northcarolinahistory.org

Web links

• Alfred Moore Waddell in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Alfred Moore Waddell in the database of Find a Grave (English)