was the youngest state governor, elected at 24.) Elected with Warmoth was Oscar Dunn as lieutenant governor, an African-American leader in the Prince Hall Freemasons. He had a wide network in New Orleans, where he was a painting contractor. When Dunn died suddenly in office in 1871, he was succeeded by P.B.S. Pinchback, a person of color who was President of the State Senate. Turbulence and some violence marred the April 1868 election. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan over the summer worsened the disorder. By fall, night-riding, murder, and intimidation were common. The number of Republicans killed for political reasons may have approached 800. Large riots in outlying parishes and Democratic white paramilitary forces in New Orleans kept thousands of blacks from voting in the fall 1868 presidential election. As a result, Democratic candidate for President Horatio Seymour carried Louisiana, although his Republican opponent Ulysses S. Grant carried the country. Because of the reported fraud and coercion, Warmoth created a State Returning Board, to certify future elections. All election returns were reported to the State Returning Board for validity and approval. At the same time, the governor augmented the military forces at his command: a 5000-man state militia and a Metropolitan Police force, with authority over the greater New Orleans area where the state government was then based. Warmoth also sought to broaden the Republican Party to include a larger share of the propertied white class. He supported government aid for railroad construction and levee repair, called for and got a constitutional amendment limiting the state's ability to go into debt, and vetoed pork barrel bills. At his recommendation, the voters removed the provisions in the Reconstruction constitution that had temporarily disenfranchised a portion of the former Confederates. Warmoth appointed some former Confederates to office, notably General James Longstreet. When he had a choice, Warmoth chose white applicants over black ones. Warmoth's 1868 inaugural address expressed his support for the recently passed Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, pledging "equality before the law and the enjoyment of every political right of all the citizens of the state, regardless of race, color, or previous condition." He argued for the amendments to be supported by legislation that had popular as well as legislative support: only when this grand distinctive feature of the new constitution shall be stamped on every act of legislation, and when such legislation shall find approval and support in