The onset of the Civil War was a matter of considerable concern for Vicario and it proved him right. Only his foresight and preparations allowed him to retain what control he did when the city was captured by the Union a year later. Shortly after the temporary transfer of the capital to Opelouses, a childe of Orlando named Callough Motley arrived in the city with his brood to attempt to seize control for the Camarilla. The Brujah socialist moved to take advantage of a growing population which both Vicario and the Serpents had, for the most part, ignored -- Irish and German laborers. Establishing himself and his brood took much less time than the Lasombra could have anticipated. With the Acadians embroiled in fighting Union troops near Lafayette and the Serpents scrambling to hold onto their power base as the delicate caste system of the city was sundered, there was little anyone could do to stop them.
Thus, kindred politics began to mirror mortal affairs before the war, with the city divided between the primarily Creole Sabbat and the largely American Camarilla. The occupation and Reconstruction were a time of outright war between the two factions, with corruption rampant as both groups fought to try and control the new carpetbagger politicians or overthrow it entirely. The traitor Lafitte was able to leverage the struggle into strengthening his control of gulf shipping interests by using the newly acquired Brujah influence over the docks. By the end of Reconstruction, both sides were dug in and had resigned themselves to a long view of affairs. Callough began to concentrate his attention on the growing Populist movement while Vicario tried to rebuild his influence, even asking his sire, Malena, for assistance. The struggle over the city faded into the background, to manifest only as a deep seated corruption.
Shortly before the turn of the century, the Serpents also decided to change their strategy. Noting the loss of voodoo's relevance with the end of slavery, Legba withdrew Marie from public life and embraced her, so to set her to a new task. Continuing to take advantage of the underclass closest to the seat of power, she became the unseen patron of the newly established Storyville and its notorious prostitutes. At the same time, Paris began to gather his influence over the now freed, but disenfranchised blacks whose brief taste of power under the carpetbaggers was slowly robbed from them by Jim Crow laws and Democratic corruption. Voodoo, while ceasing to be the focus of their attention, still lingered in the background as their primary recruiting ground.
Meanwhile, the Lasombra were able to help quash the Populists through encouragement of corruption and violent intimidation of the People's Party, particularly as the discovery of oil deposits gave them the economic lever they needed to regain some of the political power they'd lost during Reconstruction. Their allies, the Serpents, also were able to re-establish themselves, despite Storyville being shut down by Naval Authorities in 1917. As the end of the Great War neared, it seemed like the Sabbat had gathered the strength to retake the city from their enemy, the Camarilla.