The Slaughterhouse Cases: Regulation, Reconstruction, and the Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, sought to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves; but its first important test did not arise until five years later. That test centered on a vitriolic dispute among the white butchers of mid-Reconstruction New Orleans.

The rough-and-tumble world of nineteenth-century New Orleans was a sanitation nightmare, with the city’s slaughterhouses dumping animal remains into local backwaters. When Louisiana authorized a monopoly sla...