NARRATOR
In the spring of 1876, Marshall Twitchell risked a brief visit to Coushatta to tend to some business.

TUNNELL
On May 1st, he goes into Coushatta and finds an unusual number of prominent Democrats in town. Some kind of pow-wow is clearly going on. He asks one of them (it's late in the day), "What's everybody doing around here so late in the day? It's almost dark." And he's informed that an issue of long standing is being decided. And only afterwards will the meaning of that reply become apparent.

MARSTON
Twitchell has to be done away with. And maybe that will end it. Because we're at war now.

NARRATOR
The following day, Twitchell left his plantation for a meeting in town. With him was his only surviving brother-in-law, George King. They took the ferry across the river to Coushatta.

TUNNELL
Early that morning, a strangely clad man had ridden into Coushatta. He was wearing a long oilcloth coat, green eye goggles, a hat pulled down low over his face, and possibly false whiskers. He goes to the blacksmith's shop, and there he waits.

NARRATOR
As the ferry approached, the man made his way to the riverbank in full view of townspeople.

TUNNELL
Twitchell was sitting in the ferry, reading a newspaper. He looks up, sees this man pull the rifle from underneath his coat. And he screams out, "Down in the boat." Twitchell moves fast. But he gets hit in the leg before he can get over the side of the boat. His brother-in-law, George King, pulls a pistol and gets off a shot, and the rifleman above shoots him in the head and he pitches back in the boat, dead. Twitchell 's got one arm up over the gunwale of the boat. The rifleman above is a good shot and he puts two bullets in that arm. Twitchell uses his other arm. The rifleman puts two bullets in that arm. The rifleman above empties the rifle, throws it aside, pulls out a big pistol, and blazes away with that. Twitchell (he's been shot six times), he whispers to the ferryman, "Tell him I am dead." And he turns and floats face down in the water, drifting with the current. A black servant woman approaches the rifleman. She asks him if he was shooting at an alligator. And he says, "Yes, a damned black alligator."

NARRATOR
The assassin's identity was never revealed.

MARSTON
There's some speculation as to it being my great-grandfather. He was the kind of man that could have done it. If it had to be done, he would have done it.

NARRATOR
Amazingly, Twitchell survived the shooting. He was taken to a house a few miles from Coushatta, where both his arms were amputated.

V/O Marshall Twitchell
I turned my face to the window, watching the sun as it disappeared behind the trees, reviewing my past life, and trying to imagine what would be my future in the world.

NARRATOR
A delegation of local black ministers came to pay their respects.

TUNNELL
The concern of these ministers was not simply for Twitchell himself, but for all he represented. He represented this dream of a truly biracial society in which black people would be treated with respect and dignity. And he's almost a corpse now, and he becomes a metaphor for their own broken dreams.

NARRATOR
The White League in Coushatta had a very different reaction. "Our people rejoiced at it," B.W. Marston recalled, "as much as they would at the killing of any tyrant in the world."

MARSTON
Everyone was very happy that Twitchell was gone. We're still happy today that he's gone.