| Robert Burns Lindsay | |
| Order: | 22nd Governor of Alabama |
| Lieutenant: | Edward H. Moren |
| Term Start: | November 26, 1870 |
| Term End: | November 17, 1872 |
| Predecessor: | William Hugh Smith |
| Successor: | David P. Lewis |
| Birth Date: | 4 July 1824 |
| Birth Place: | Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, Scotland |
| Death Place: | Tuscumbia, Alabama, U.S. |
| Party: | Democratic |
| Spouse: | Sarah Miller Winston |
| Alma Mater: | –University of St Andrews |
| Signature: | Signature of Robert Burns Lindsay (1824–1902).png |
Robert Burns Lindsay (July 4, 1824 – February 13, 1902) was a Scots-American politician, elected as the 22nd Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama during Reconstruction, and serving one term from 1870 to 1872.[1]
Robert B. Lindsay was born in Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on July 4, 1824. He studied at the University of St Andrews before emigrating to the United States in 1844.[2] He served in the Alabama House of Representatives in 1853 and the Alabama Senate in 1857, 1865, and 1870.[3]
A Democrat, Lindsay was elected governor in 1870, following a year of white terrorism against black people: violence, including murders, and intimidation of black and white Republicans and freedmen supporters. For example, five Republicans, four black and one white, were lynched in Calhoun County; three black people (two who were Republican politicians) were murdered in Greene County, in March and October; the white Republican County Solicitor was murdered there in March; and on October 25, a Republican rally of 2,000 black people was disrupted by a mob of whites, who killed four black people and wounded 54 in the Eutaw riot.[4] Black people were intimidated and stayed home from the polls, with Democratic white voters in Greene County and elsewhere taking the state for Lindsay.[5]
He died in Tuscumbia, Alabama on February 13, 1902.[2]
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