Five thousand members of the White League, a paramilitary organization made up largely of Confederate veterans, fought against the outnumbered racially integrated New Orleans Metropolitan Police and state militia.

This was the last major event of violence stemming from the disputed 1872 gubernatorial election, after which Democrat John McEnery and Republican William Pitt Kellogg both claimed victory.

A rival board endorsed Kellogg, who had charged election fraud because of the violence and intimidation that took place at and near the polls, as Democrats tried to suppress black voting.

In an earlier violent incident related to the disputed election, the Colfax massacre occurred at the courthouse in Grant Parish in April 1873, when a white militia attacked freedmen defending appointed Republican officeholders.

When former Confederate general James Longstreet, aligned with Kellogg and other Radical Republicans and in command of the government forces, was shot, possibly by a spent bullet, he fell or was pulled from his horse; some accounts have him being held prisoner by the insurrectionists afterwards, but this is unlikely.

In response to a call for a mass meeting to protest against the seizure of arms of private citizens, men gathered on Canal Street around 10:00 Monday morning and a committee consisting of Robert H. Marr (chairman), Jules Tuyes, Samuel Choppin, James B.

[5] About 4:00 in the afternoon, self-proclaimed Lieutenant Governor D. B. Penn made a proclamation calling on the militia of the state to assemble "for the purpose of driving the usurpers from power".

At 4 PM, a body of Metropolitan Police with cavalry and artillery, commanded by Longstreet, arrived at Canal Street and ordered the armed citizens to disperse.

A company of federal troops protected the custom house but was not involved in the initial conflict, while the White League held the portion of the city above the canal and massed around Jackson Square and the St. Louis Hotel.

Among the White Leaguers killed were E. A. Toledano, Frederick Moreman, Dick Lindsey, Captain J. M. West, Major J. K Gourdain, and journalist J. M. Cleet.

[5] The 22nd Infantry Regiment was ordered to proceed to New Orleans under General Irvin McDowell; the frigate Colorado and the gunboats Kansas and Shawmut were sent from their station in Key West under Admiral James Robert Madison Mullany.

In 1974, the rethinking of race relations after the Civil Rights Movement caused the city to add a marker near the monument explaining that the inscription did not express current philosophy.

After major construction work on Canal Street in 1989 required that the monument be temporarily removed, it was relocated to a less prominent location and the inscription was altered to say "in honor of those Americans on both sides of the conflict."