Scope and Content Note
The papers of Aaron Burton Levisee (1821-1907) span the years 1847-1992 and consist mainly of diaries Levisee kept between 1847 and 1895. In 1881 Levisee wrote a lengthy summary of his life and activities beginning with 1840. It commences on page ninety seven of volume four. The summary, termed "The Annals" by Levisee, was transcribed by his great-granddaughter, Marion Levisee Cotter.
The diaries document Levisee's life and career in several states and regions. Born and raised in Ohio and educated at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he moved to the South before the Civil War, teaching school in Alabama and practicing law in Louisiana. He continued his law practice in Shreveport, Louisiana, early in the war, later serving in the Confederate army on the staff of the inspector general in the Trans-Mississippi Department.
During the Reconstruction era, he was elected successively as a judge and state legislator from the district that includes Shreveport. Levisee presided over the trial of Ku Klux Klan members who murdered a Black man for casting a vote for Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 presidential election. He assumed his duties as a legislator in 1874 at the height of an armed conflict between Republican supporters and the White League over control of the state legislature.
Levisee, a Republican elector for Louisiana during the 1876 presidential contest, later pursued careers as an Internal Revenue Service agent, rancher, farmer, and lawyer in the Pacific Northwest, California, and South Dakota.