Louisiana Civil War History
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Louisiana Civil War History |
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Introduction Louisiana became the 18th
U.S. state on April 30, 1812, but on January 26, 1861, it severed ties with the Union to join the Confederate States
of America. Louisiana was inhabited
by Native Americans for many millennia prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century. Much of the state was formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous
deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp. These contain a rich southern biota; typical examples include birds such
as ibis and egrets. There are also many species of tree frogs, and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish. In more elevated
areas, fire is a natural process in the landscape, and has produced extensive areas of longleaf pine forest and wet savannas.
These support an exceptionally large number of plant species including many species of orchids and carnivorous plants. Some Louisiana urban environments
have a multicultural, multilingual heritage, being so strongly influenced by an admixture of 18th century French, Spanish,
Native American (Indian) and African cultures that they are considered to be somewhat exceptional in the U.S. Before the American
influx and statehood at the beginning of the 19th century, the territory of current Louisiana State had been a Spanish and
French colony. In addition, the pattern of development included importing numerous African slaves in the 18th century, with
many from the same region of West Africa, thus concentrating their culture. By
1860, 47% of the Louisiana population was enslaved. The state also had one of the largest free black populations in the United
States. Much of the white population, particularly in the cities, supported states’ rights and slavery, while pockets
of support for the Federal government existed in the more rural areas. When the Civil War began
in 1861, New Orleans, which is located by the mouth of the Mississippi River, was the 6th largest city in the U.S. and
single largest city of the newly formed Confederate States
of America. Significantly larger than Chicago according to the 1860 U.S. census, the populated coastal city would fall shortly after
becoming a major objective or target of the Union military. During the War of 1812, Louisiana witnessed the
lopsided American victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and, unlike every other state of the Union, the Bayou State was situated
closest to Mexico when the two neighboring nations fought from 1846 to 1848. In the two prior conflicts, Louisiana had
also acted as a mustering station for U.S. forces, but now found itself host to the strategic port locale of New
Orleans. Although the prized transportation hub capitulated in early 1862, Confederate forces would offer stiff resistance
throughout the remainder of the state for the duration of the war. Confederate Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, son of former
When the Louisiana Territory
was purchased for less than 4 cents an acre in 1803, it doubled the size of the United States. This massive land acquisition
was accomplished without war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of additional
territory. When the United States
won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary,
and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the Appalachian
Mountains provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce was to use a flatboat to float it
down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the port of New Orleans, from whence goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The
problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below Natchez. Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana
involved the creation of a new empire centered on the Caribbean sugar trade. By the terms of the Treaty of Amiens of 1800,
Great Britain returned ownership of the islands of Martinique and Guadaloupe to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana
as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to
conquer the important island of Santo Domingo and re-introduced slavery, which had been abolished in St. Domingue following
a slave revolt there in 1792-3, and the legal and constitutional abolition of slavery in French colonies in 1794. When the army led by Napoleon's
brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated by the forces opposed to the re-enslavement of most of the population of St. Domingue,
Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana. Thomas Jefferson, third
President of the United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in America. With the possession
of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized Robert R. Livingston,
U.S. Minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the City of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi,
and free navigation of the river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $2 million. An official transfer of
Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the
frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, Acting Intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of
Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from the United States. The closure of this vital port to
the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe that the
revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses of the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues
as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed James Monroe a
special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized
expenditure to $10 million. However, on April 11, 1803,
French Foreign Minister Talleyrand surprised Livingston by asking how much the United States was prepared to pay for the entirety
of Louisiana, not just New Orleans and the surrounding area (as Livingston's instructions covered). Monroe agreed with Livingston
that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain the desired New Orleans area),
and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately.
By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of 828,000 square miles for 60 million
Francs (approximately $15 million). Part of this sum was used to forgive debts owed by France to the United States. The payment
was made in United States bonds, which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope and Company, and the British
banking house of Baring, at a discount of 87½ per each $100 unit. As a result, France received only $8,831,250 in cash for
Louisiana. Dutiful English banker Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick
up the bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money – which Napoleon used to wage war against
Baring's own country. When news of the purchase
reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10 million for a port city, and
instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15 million on a land package which would double the size of
the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued that the Louisiana Purchase was a worthless desert,
and that the Constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the
Senate. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory,
strengthening Western and Southern interests in Congress, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in
national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for
the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803. A transfer ceremony was
held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French,
the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day, General James Wilkinson accepted possession
of New Orleans for the United States. A similar ceremony was held in St. Louis on March 9, 1804, when a French tricolor was
raised near the river, replacing the Spanish national flag. The following day, Captain Amos Stoddard of the First U.S. Artillery
marched his troops into town and had the American flag run up the fort's flagpole. The Louisiana territory was officially
transferred to the United States government, represented by Meriwether Lewis.
When France sold the Louisiana
territory to the United States in 1803, it was soon accepted that enslaved Africans could be brought there as easily as they
were brought to neighboring Mississippi though it violated U.S. law to do so. Though Louisiana was, at the start of the 19th
century, a small producer of sugar with a relatively small number of slaves, it soon became a big sugar producer after plantation
owners purchased enslaved people who had been transported from Africa and then to South Carolina before being sold in Louisiana
where plantation owners forced the captive labor to work at no pay on their growing sugar cane plantations. Despite demands
by United States Rep. James Hillhouse and by the pamphleteer Thomas Paine to enforce existing Federal law against slavery
in the newly acquired territory, slavery prevailed because it was the source of great profits and the lowest cost labor. The
last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote that "Truly, it is impossible for lower Louisiana to get along without
slaves" and with the use of slaves, the colony had been "making great strides toward prosperity and wealth." Forced slave
labor was needed, said William C. C. Claiborne, Louisiana's first United States governor, because unforced white laborers
"cannot be had in this unhealthy climate." Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of trafficking
in human beings where he was charged with doing so in Louisiana.
Secession Louisiana seceded from
the Union on January 26, 1861. Sentiment statewide in
Louisiana, especially in New Orleans, opposed secession as expressed in the popular vote in November 1860. However, when Lincoln,
a northern Republican, was elected, the state’s attitudes changed. Influenced
by South Carolina, voters elected delegates to a secession convention in January 1861, where secession was declared. On January 8, 1861, Louisiana
Governor Thomas Overton Moore ordered the Louisiana militia to occupy the Federal arsenal at Baton Rouge and the Union forts
guarding New Orleans, Jackson and St. Philip. A wealthy planter and slave holder, Moore acted aggressively to engineer the
secession of Louisiana from the Union by a convention on January 23. Only five percent of the public were represented in the
convention, and the states military actions were ordered before secession had been established, in defiance of the state constitution
which called for a popular referendum to establish a convention. These actions were justified by Moore's statement: "I do
not think it comports with the honor and self-respect of Louisiana as a slaveholding state to live under the government of
a Black Republican president." The strategies advanced to defend Louisiana and the other gulf states of the Confederacy were
first, the idea of King Cotton, that an unofficial embargo of cotton to Europe would force England to use their navy to intervene
in protecting the new Confederate nation. The second was a privateer fleet established by the issue of letters of marque and
reprisal by President Jefferson Davis, which would sweep the sea clear of Federal naval and commercial ships, and in concert
sustain Louisiana's booming port economy. The third was a reliance on the ring of pre-war masonry forts of the Third System
of American coastal defense, combined with a fleet of revolutionary new ironclads, to safeguard the mouth of the Mississippi
from the Federal navy. All of these strategies were failures. The Federal response to
Moore's leveraged secession was embodied in U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's realization that the Mississippi river was the
"backbone of the Rebellion." If control of the river were accomplished, the largest city in the Confederacy would be retaken
for the Union, and the Confederacy would be split in half. Lincoln would move rapidly to back Admiral David Dixon Porter's
idea of a naval advance up the Mississippi to both capture New Orleans and maintain his political supporters by supplying
cotton to northeastern textile industries and renewing trade and exports from the Mississippi. The Union navy would become
both a formidable invasion force, and a means of transporting Union armies along the Mississippi and its tributaries. This
strategic vision would prove victorious in Louisiana. Civil War According to the 1860 U.S.
census, Louisiana had a free population of 376,276 and an additional slave population of 331,726. During the American Civil
War (1861-1865), more than 24,000 blacks from Louisiana joined the Union army, the largest black contingent from any state. During
the conflict, 56,000 Louisianians served in the Confederate army and fought in practically every major battle of the war,
and the state was host to numerous skirmishes, campaigns and major battles. A compilation made from the official rosters
of the Confederate Armies as they stood at various battles, and at various dates covering the entire period of the war, shows
that Louisiana kept the following number of regimental organizations in almost continuous
service in the field: 34 regiments, and 10 battalions of infantry; 2 regiments, and 1 battalion of cavalry; 1 regiment of
partisan rangers; 2 regiments of heavy artillery; and 26 batteries of light artillery. In the course of the Civil War, Louisiana
suffered at least 7,000 killed and several thousands more wounded. A number of notable leaders
were associated with Louisiana during the Civil War, including some of the Confederate Army's senior ranking generals, as
well as several men who led brigades and divisions. Antebellum Louisiana residents P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and Richard
Taylor (son of former President Zachary Taylor) all commanded significant independent armies during the war. Taylor's forces
were among the last active Confederate armies in the field when the war concluded. Henry
Watkins Allen led a brigade during the middle of the war before becoming the Confederate Governor of Louisiana from 1864–65.
Randall L. Gibson, another competent brigade commander, would later become a U.S. Senator. Other brigadiers of note included
Alfred Mouton (killed at the Battle of Mansfield), Harry T. Hays, Chatham Roberdeau Wheat (commander of the celebrated "Louisiana
Tigers" of the Army of Northern Virginia), and Francis T. Nicholls (commander of the "Pelican Brigade" until he lost his left
foot at Chancellorsville). St. John Lidell was a prominent brigade commander in the Army of Tennessee. Henry Gray, a wealthy plantation owner from Bienville Parish, was a brigadier
general under Richard Taylor before being elected to the Second Confederate Congress late in the war. Leroy A. Stafford was
among a handful of Louisiana generals to be killed during the war. Albert Gallatin Blanchard was a rarity—a Confederate
general born in Massachusetts.
New Orleans, Louisiana,
the largest city in the entire South, was strategically important as a port city due to its location along the Mississippi
River and its access to the Gulf of Mexico, thus the United States War Department planned on its capture. It was captured
by Federal troops on April 25, 1862. Because a portion of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests),
the Federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana then under Federal control as a state within
the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress. For the latter part of the war, both the Union and the
Confederacy recognized their own distinct Louisiana governors. Louisiana Governor Thomas
Overton Moore held office from 1860 through early 1864. When war broke out in 1861, he unsuccessfully lobbied the Confederate
government in Richmond for a strong defense of New Orleans. Two days before the city surrendered in April 1862, Moore and
the legislature abandoned Baton Rouge as the state capital, relocating to Opelousas in May. Thomas Moore organized military
resistance at the state level, ordered the burning of cotton, cessation of trade with the Union forces, and heavily recruited
troops for the state militia. Since New Orleans was recognized
as a major manufacturing and strategic center, it became an early military target and was captured by Union forces in 1862.
Admiral David Farragut captured Forts Jackson and St. Philip down the river from New Orleans. The gentlewomen of New Orleans
reacted violently to the military occupation of their city by Union troops. Many of them displayed their defiance by wearing
emblems on their clothing showing support for the Confederacy. Some verbally abused and hurled objects at Union soldiers.
Finally, when the contents of a chamber pot were dumped from a balcony and onto the head of Admiral Farragut, Union General
Benjamin Butler issued "Order Number 28," which promised to treat the women "as a woman of the town plying her avocation."
The order greatly insulted the
citizens of New Orleans, and, in fact, drew a worldwide reaction—mostly condemning Butler's bold action. But, after
the order was issued, most of the insults and displays of hatred and contempt were halted. One of the more significant Civil
War sites in Louisiana is Port Hudson, which surrendered on July 9, 1863, severing the last link between the eastern part
of the Confederacy and the Trans-Mississippi. From May 23 to July 9, 1863, Confederate soldiers held off a Union force twice
its strength during the longest siege in American military history. The Battle of Port Hudson was one of the first battles
in which freed blacks serving as soldiers engaged in combat on the side of the Union. During the Civil War, more than 24,000
blacks from Louisiana joined the Union army, the largest black contingent from any state. The 1st Regiment Louisiana Native
Guard, organized in September 1862, was the first black regiment in the U. S. Army. Louisiana's black soldiers distinguished
themselves in several battles, particularly at Port Hudson and Milliken's Bend. Seven Medals of Honor were awarded to white
and black Louisianans who fought for the Union. The publicized Red River Campaign, or Red River Expedition, consisted
of a series of skirmishes and battles fought along the Red River in Louisiana from March 10 to May 22, 1864. The campaign
was a Union initiative, fought between approximately 30,000 Union troops under the command of Major General Nathaniel P. Banks,
and Confederate troops under the command of Lieutenant General Richard Taylor, whose strength varied from 6,000 to 15,000.
The campaign was primarily the plan of Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, and a diversion from Lieutenant General Ulysses
S. Grant's plan to surround the main Confederate armies by using Banks's Army of the Gulf to capture Mobile, Alabama. It was
a Union failure, characterized by poor planning and mismanagement, in which not a single objective was fully accomplished.
Taylor successfully defended the Red River Valley with a smaller force. Reconstruction New Orleans remained an important
port city during Reconstruction, but it faced an ever-increasing threat from the railroads. Louisiana sugar planters, unable
to pay wartime debts, lost much of their land to Northern investors. Though some of the land was redistributed to former slaves,
the plantation system largely persisted. By the end of the war,
Louisiana was deeply divided due to the areas that had been occupied by the Union army. In
some of these areas, residents wanted to follow a policy of conciliation. However, others had lost family and friends in the
Confederate army, and also resisted changes in race relations brought by emancipation. The
Federal government began experiments in Reconstruction policies earlier in Louisiana, further dividing citizens about the
future of the state. The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did
not apply to Union occupied territory in Louisiana. In 1864, however, Louisiana
responded to a call from President Lincoln for Southern states to rejoin the Union. The
state rewrote its constitution to abolish slavery, but to prohibit African Americans from voting.
Louisiana 10% electorate
plan President Abraham Lincoln desired
a speedy restoration of the Confederate states to the Union after the Civil War. In 1863, President Lincoln had proposed a
moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate State of Louisiana. The plan granted amnesty to Rebels who
took an oath of loyalty to the Union. Black Freedmen workers would labor on plantations for one year at $10 a month pay. Only
10% of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath in order for the state to be readmitted into U.S. Congress. The
state was required to abolish slavery in its new constitution. Identical Reconstruction plans would be adopted in Arkansas
and Tennessee. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction had been enacted in Louisiana and the legislature sent
two Senators and five Representatives to take their seats in Washington. However, Congress refused to count any of the votes
from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, in essence rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan. Congress, at this time
controlled by the Radicals, proposed the Wade–Davis Bill that required a majority of the state electorates to take the
oath of loyalty to be admitted to Congress. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill and the rift widened between the moderates, who
wanted to save the Union and win the war, and the Radicals, who wanted to effect a more complete change within Southern society.
Frederick Douglass denounced Lincoln's 10% electorate plan undemocratic since state admission and loyalty only depended on
a minority vote. Because of the early capitulation
of New Orleans and Lincoln's subsequent 10% plan, numerous Northerners moved to Louisiana during Reconstruction. Known as
carpetbaggers, the Northerners profited handsomely during Reconstruction, thus fueling deadly feuds that would last for decades.
Scalawags, white Southerners who supported Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, also caused resentment among the state's
majority, which at times turned deadly.
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