Louisiana in the American Civil War

State of Louisiana
Nickname(s): "The Pelican State"
Flag Coat of arms Map of the Confederate States
Capital	Baton Rouge
Largest city	New Orleans
Admitted to the Confederacy	March 21, 1861 (3rd)
Population	708,002 total  • 376,276 free  • 331,726 slave
Forces supplied	total  • 69,666 killed
Governor	Thomas Moore Henry Allen
Lieutenant Governor	Henry M. Hyams Benjamin W. Pearce
Senators	Thomas Jenkins Semmes Edward Sparrow
Representatives	List
Restored to the Union	July 9, 1868

Antebellum Louisiana was a slave state, where enslaved African Americans had comprised the majority of the population during the eighteenth century French and Spanish colonial period. By the time the United States acquired the territory (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812), the institution of slavery was entrenched. By 1860, 47% of the state's population were enslaved, though 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 southern states' rights and slavery, while pockets of support for the U.S. and its government existed in the more rural areas.

Louisiana declared that it had seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861. New Orleans, the largest city in the South, was strategically important as a port city due to its southernmost location on the Mississippi River and its access to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. War Department early on planned for its capture. The city was taken by U.S. Army forces on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the U.S. government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana then under U.S. 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 U.S. and the Confederacy recognized their own distinct Louisiana governors.

Politics and strategy in Louisiana

Secession

Main article: Louisiana secession

On January 8, 1861, Louisiana Governor Thomas Overton Moore ordered the Louisiana militia to occupy the U.S. arsenal at Baton Rouge and the U.S. forts guarding New Orleans, Fort Jackson and Fort 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 state's 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. Moore attempted to justify these actions, saying: "I do not think it comports with the honor and self-respect of Louisiana as a slave-holding state to live under the government of a Black Republican president", using an epithet for Republicans used by many Democrats at the time.

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 Britain to use its navy to intervene in protecting the new Confederacy. 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 U.S. naval and commercial ships, and at the same time 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 U.S. Navy. All of these strategies were failures.

In March 1861, George Williamson, the Louisianan state commissioner, addressed the Texan secession convention, where he called upon the slave states of the U.S. to declare secession from the Union in order to continue practicing slavery:

With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual ... Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery ...

— George Williamson, speech to the Texan secession convention, (March 1861).

One Louisianan artillery soldier gave his reasons for fighting for the Confederacy, stating that "I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free niggers ... now to suit me, let alone having four millions."

Union plans

Approaches to New Orleans, Department of the Gulf Map No. 5, February 14, 1863.

The Union's 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 taken back for the Union, and the Confederacy would be split in half. Lincoln moved rapidly to back Admiral David Dixon Porter's idea of a naval advance up the river to both capture New Orleans and maintain Lincoln's political support; by supplying cotton to northern textile manufacturers and renewing trade and exports from the port of New Orleans. The U.S. Navy would become both a formidable invasion force and a means of transporting Union forces, along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. This strategic vision would prove victorious in Louisiana.

Notable Civil War leaders from Louisiana

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. James B. Walton commanded the Washington Artillery and was the most successful artillery officer of the war, Antebellum Louisiana residents P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and Richard 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 closed.

Henry Watkins Allen led a brigade during the middle of the war before becoming the Confederate Governor of Louisiana from 1864 to 1865. Randall L. Gibson, another competent brigade commander, became a postbellum U.S. Senator as a Democrat. 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.

Governor Thomas Overton Moore, came held office from 1860 through early 1864. When war erupted, 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.

• 
  Gen.
  P.G.T. Beauregard
• 
  Gen.
  Braxton Bragg
• 
  Lt. Gen.
  Richard Taylor
• 
  Brig. Gen. and Gov.
  Henry W. Allen
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Albert G. Blanchard
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Randall L. Gibson
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Henry Gray
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Harry T. Hays
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  St. John Liddell
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Alfred Mouton
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Francis T. Nicholls
• 
  Brig. Gen.
  Leroy A. Stafford

Battles in Louisiana

Battles in Louisiana during the American Civil War.

Battles in Louisiana tended to be concentrated along the major waterways, like the Red River Campaign.

• Battle of the Head of Passes
• Battle of Baton Rouge
• Battle of Bayou Bourbeux (aka Grand Coteau)
• Battle of Blair's Landing
• Battle of Calcasieu Pass
• Battle of Donaldsonville I
• Battle of Donaldsonville II
• Battle of Fort Bisland
• Battle of Fort De Russy
• Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip
• Battle of Georgia Landing
• Battle of Goodrich's Landing
• Battle of Irish Bend
• Battle of Kock's Plantation
• Battle of LaFourche Crossing
• Battle of Mansfield (aka Sabine Cross-Roads)
• Battle of Mansura
• Battle of Milliken's Bend
• Battle of Monett's Ferry
• Capture of New Orleans
• Battle of Plains Store
• Battle of Pleasant Hill
• Siege of Port Hudson
• Battle of Stirling's Plantation
• Battle of Vermillion Bayou
• Battle of Yellow Bayou
• Battle of Henderson's Hill

Restoration to Union

After meeting the requirements of Reconstruction, including ratifying amendments to the US Constitution to abolish slavery and grant citizenship to former slaves, Louisiana's representatives were readmitted to Congress. The state was fully restored to the United States on July 9, 1868.

As part of the Compromise of 1877, under which Southern Democrats acknowledged Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president, there was the understanding that the Republicans would meet certain demands. One affecting Louisiana was the removal of all U.S. military forces from the former Confederate states. At the time, U.S. troops remained in only Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, but the Compromise saw their complete withdrawal from the region.

See also

• Confederate States of America - animated map of state secession and confederacy
• List of Louisiana Confederate Civil War units, a list of Confederate Civil War units from Louisiana.
• List of Louisiana Union Civil War units, a list of Union Civil War units from Louisiana.

Notes

Abbreviations used in these notes

Official atlas: Atlas to accompany the official records of the Union and Confederate armies.

ORA (Official records, armies): War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

ORN (Official records, navies): Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion.

Further reading

• Ayres, Thomas. Dark and Bloody Ground: The Battle of Mansfield and the Forgotten Civil War in Louisiana (2001)
• Campbell, Anne (2007). Louisiana: The History of an American State. Clairmont Press. ISBN 978-1567331356.
• Dew, Charles B. "Who Won the Secession Election in Louisiana?." Journal of Southern History (1970): 18-32. in JSTOR
• Dew, Charles B. "The Long Lost Returns: The Candidates and Their Totals in Louisiana's Secession Election." Louisiana History (1969): 353-369. in JSTOR
• Dimitry, John. Confederate Military History of Louisiana: Louisiana in the Civil War, 1861–1865 (2007)
• Dufrene, Dennis J. Civil War Baton Rouge, Port Hudson and Bayou Sara: Capturing the Mississippi. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2012. ISBN 9781609493516.
• Hearn, Chester G. (1995). The Capture of New Orleans 1862. Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-1945-8.
• Hollandsworth Jr, James G. The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War (LSU Press, 1995)
• Johnson, Ludwell H. Red River Campaign, Politics & Cotton in the Civil War Kent State University Press (1993). ISBN 0-87338-486-5.
• Lathrop, Barnes F. "The Lafourche District in 1861–1862: A Problem in Local Defense." Louisiana History (1960) 1#2 pp: 99-129. in JSTOR
• McCrary, Peyton. Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction: The Louisiana Experiment (1979)
• Peña, Christopher G. Touched by War: Battles Fought in the Lafourche District. Thibodaux, Louisiana: C.G.P. Press, 1998.
• Peña, Christopher G. Scarred By War: Civil War in Southeast Louisiana (2004)
• Pierson, Michael D. Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2008)
• Ripley, C. Peter. Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (1976)
• Sledge, Christopher L. "The Union's Naval War in Louisiana, 1861–1863" (Army Command and General Staff College, 2006) online
• Winters, John D. The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963. ISBN 0-8071-0834-0.
• Wooster, Ralph. "The Louisiana Secession Convention." Louisiana Historical Quarterly (1951) 34#1 pp: 103-133.
• Winters, John D. (1963). The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-0834-0.

External links

• First hand accounts of the Civil War in Louisiana.
• National Park Service map of Civil War sites in Louisiana