Christopher Columbus Nash

Christopher Columbus Nash was a merchant and a Democratic sheriff in Grant Parish, Louisiana, who in 1873 led a company of white militiamen to regain control of the parish courthouse in Colfax, which had been seized by armed AfricanAmerican insurgents. Thereafter, the segregationist Nash formed the first contingent of the White League in the American South during the second half of Reconstruction.

Nash was born in Sabine Parish in western Louisiana, a son of Valentine Nash and the former Mary Anderson. He was married to the former Malinda Williams, a daughter of Richard B. Williams of Montgomery in northwestern Grant Parish. With the outbreak of the American Civil War, he volunteered with the Sabine Rifles and reached the rank of lieutenant in Company A, Second Louisiana Infantry in Virginia under General Stonewall Jackson. He fought at Antietam and Gettysburg until he was captured in November 1863 and spent the last eighteen months of the conflict as a prisoner of war on Johnsons Island in Sandusky Bay on the coast of Lake Erie.

Source: Wikipedia