Henry Clay Warmoth (May 9, 1842 – September 30, 1931) was an American attorney and veteran Civil War officer in the Union Army who was elected governor and state representative of Louisiana.

Facing strong criticism from some Republican leaders for weakening civil rights legislation and for endorsing a Democratic/Fusionist ticket in the 1872 election, Warmoth ended his term under state legislature's impeachment proceedings and was suspended from office.

He commanded at the Battle of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, took part in Sherman's Atlanta campaign, and reinforced General Nathaniel Banks at the Red Cedar retreat.

[2] In November 1865, Warmoth ran for territorial delegate as a Republican in an unauthorized election, in which black Louisianians cast over 19,000 votes, nearly as many as were won among whites by the victorious Democratic candidate for governor.

[3] Because of continuing violence in the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 and the New Orleans Massacre of 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act to create five military districts to oversee changes in the former Confederate states.

Louisiana and Texas were put under the Fifth Military District, and the US Army was assigned to oversee the process by which a new constitutional convention could be called, with delegates to be voted for by both blacks and whites alike.

When the convention had finished its work, a ratification election was called and the Republican Party chose a state ticket.

He faced a Democrat and Louisiana Supreme Court Justice James G. Taliaferro, a planter and wartime Unionist backed by the True Radical faction, which was composed mostly of black Republicans.

Elected with Warmoth was Oscar Dunn as lieutenant governor, an African-American leader in the Prince Hall Freemasons.

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.

Because of the reported fraud and coercion, Warmoth created a State Returning Board, to certify future elections.

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.

[5] 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."

[7] Historian Francis Byers Harris thought his veto of the public accommodations bill was crucial in eroding his political base.

Harris wrote in 1947, "Negroes had their hearts set on this law, and Warmoth sowed a seed of distrust which grew into enmity for the man they had helped elect.

Although Warmoth had helped William Pitt Kellogg gain legislative election as a US Senator, he became allied with Packard, as did Oscar Dunn, lieutenant governor and African-American leader of many Republican ward clubs in New Orleans.

That winter, the governor seized control of the statehouse from his opponents by using the state militia forces outfitted with bayonets for protection.

Only 35 days before the end of his term, he was suspended from office, as called for by Louisiana law for impeached officials, pending the outcome of a state senate trial.

Warmoth helped establish a sugar refinery and get a railroad constructed along the west bank of the Mississippi, which contributed to the development of the area.

In 1884, Warmoth traveled to France and Germany to study their sugar industries, and he developed an experimental station at his plantation afterward.

In 1889, the white Democrat-dominated legislature passed a constitutional amendment incorporating a "grandfather clause", which effectively disenfranchised most blacks in the state.