Scarred by War: Civil War in Southeast Louisiana

By Christopher G. Peña

Excluding the capture of New Orleans, the military affairs in southeast Louisiana during the American Civil War have long been viewed by scholars and historians has having no strategic importance during the war. As such, no such serious effort to chronicle the war in that portion of the state has been attempted, except Peas earlier book, Touched By War: Battles Fought in the Lafourche District (1998). That book covered the military affairs in southeast Louisiana that led to the five major battles fought in that region between fall 1862 and summer 1863. Beyond that point, little is chronicled, until now.

In this thoroughly researched and authoritative book, Scarred By War: Civil War in Southeast Louisiana, Christopher Pea has revised and updated his earlier work and expanded the scope to include a study of the remaining two years of the war, a period filled with intense Confederate guerilla warfare. The literary result is a book that recounts the political, social, military, and economic aspects of the war as they played out in southeast Louisianas bayou country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 22, 2004
• ISBN: 9781418455446

Christopher G. Peña

CHRISTOPHER G. PEÑA is a retired Associate Professor of Nursing with a Bachelor’s degree in History. Though a registered nurse by profession, Peña is an avid reader of American Civil War history, and is the author of four books and countless articles that chronicle the war in Louisiana, his native state. Peña’s interest in history eventually drew him to his paternal roots in Mexico and the events that eventually lead to the family’s relocation to the United States. Peña lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with his wife, Linda.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction-The Lafourche District: The Land And Its People

Chapter One: 1860-The Year Of Decision

Chapter Two: A Prepation For War

Chapter Three: Yankee Infiltration

Chapter Four: Weitzel’s Invasion

Chapter Five: Confederates Converge Upon Lafourche

Chapter Six: Battle At Lafourche Crossing

Chapter Seven: Battle At Brashear City

Chapter Eight: Desperate Valor-The Battle Of Fort Butler

Chapter Nine: Mississippi River Warfare-Confederate Blockade

Chapter Ten: The Last Hurrah-Battle Of Kock’s Plantation

Chapter Eleven: Prelude To Guerrilla

Chapter Twelve: Guerrilla War In Earnest

Chapter Thirteen: Closing Months Of War-1865

Articles, Booklets, Chapters, Card Collections, And Printed Text Of Speeches

For Fort Butler Foundation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From the beginning of my studies to chronicle the Civil War in southeast Louisiana, no organization has given more moral support to me than the Fort Butler Foundation, a non-profit corporation based out of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. Its president, Andrew Capone, a historian in his own right, has always championed my writing efforts and has been a tireless community leader himself in spreading the word about prominent citizens and historical events that have transpired to make our community along the banks of Bayou Lafourche unique. In 1996, I was therefore honored when Andrew and other members of the foundation asked me to serve on the board of directors. When I decided to revise my first book, Touched By War: Battles Fought in the Lafourche District and expand its content to include the last two years of the war, Andrew and other fellow board members offered me a grant in order to fund the editing and production cost associated with bringing this book to market, a process ultimately contracted through AuthorHouse in Bloomington, Indiana. Without this grant money, Scarred By War: Civil War in Southeast Louisiana would not have been possible. Because of the enthusiasm of my fellow Fort Butler Foundation board members, in particular Andrew Capone, toward my writing, I dedicate this book to them and to our organization.

There were others who aided me while I researched and revised my work. I would like to personally thank Clifton Theriot, Interim Archivist and Emilie Pitre, Library Specialist, Allen J. Ellender Archives, Ellender Memorial Library, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana. Both individuals always greeted me with a smile and a helpful hand when I sought information or permission to utilize photos from their archives collection. Thanks to Dr. J. Paul Leslie, Jr., Professor of History, Nicholls State University, who critiqued a paper I wrote during the spring of 2002 that chronicled the last two years of the war, in particular, guerrilla warfare in Lafourche. That material became the last three chapters and the appendices of this book. I would also like to thank Denis Gaubert, III, Thibodaux, Louisiana, for allowing me access to some of his research material and for his feedback related to the usage of that material.

In addition to the archival staff at Nicholls State University, I would like to thank the following people for allowing me permission to reproduce specific photos and illustrations that appear throughout the book: Jay A. Graybeal, Photo Archivist and Clifton P. Hyatt, Photo Archives Staff, U. S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pennsylvania; Judy Bolton, Head, Public Services, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana; I. Bruce Turner, Head of Archives and Special Collections, Edith Garland Dupre Library, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; and Mary Michals of the Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois. Many thanks goes out to Penny Gentieu, Brooklyn, New York, for granting me permission to utilize her great, great grandfather’s colored sketch of the 13th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers’ campsite in Thibodaux as the centerpiece of the book cover and jacket. A big hug and much thanks goes out to my daughter, Pamela P., and her husband and my son-in-law, Keith D. Smith, for their tireless effort in generating the photos, illustrations, and maps that appear throughout the book, along with the design for the book cover and jacket. I am forever grateful.

Also, I would like to thank Thomas J. Smith, Metairie, Louisiana, for his suggestions and comments related to word usage, and Angele Davis, Lockport, Louisiana, for her computer assistance in generating a seamless document, which was presented to AuthorHouse for its consideration. Special thanks goes out to Ella Robinson, Pleasant Grove, Alabama, for her meticulous work in editing my work and to Sara Gath, Account Manager, AuthorHouse, for her assistance in making this book a reality.

Last, but not least, many, many thanks to my best friend and wife, Linda, for always supporting me in everything I do.

Christopher G. Pena

May 12, 2004

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INTRODUCTION-THE LAFOURCHE DISTRICT: THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE

Sunday, January 1, 1860

This has been mostly a cloudy day, wind from the north and cold. . . The weather is so cold that I will let the negrows [sic] have holyday tomorrow [.] the bayou is falling pretty rapidly but I do not think it will get too low for boats before there is another rain in the upper river.

Diary of A. Franklin Pugh¹

Life along the banks of Bayou Lafourche in southeast Louisiana at the start of 1860 was no different than that experienced in previous years. The citizens, ever watchful of the changing weather, went about their daily routines isolated from affairs outside their sight. The rise and fall of the bayou and the conditions along its levee created more talk and discussion among the various townspeople, small farmers, fishermen, trappers, and plantation owners, than any crisis brewing in Louisiana or the nation. In the year before secession and nearly two years before the citizens of southeast Louisiana were scarred by war, diseases and inclement weather were often the most talked about subjects in the area. For the most part, by 1860, Louisianians, particularly citizens living in the southeastern portion of the state with their overwhelmingly sugar and slave-based economy, were the most unlikely Southerners wishing for disunion. Only ten years before, Louisiana had opposed any thought of secession by refusing to send state delegates to the Nashville Convention.² Beginning in 1860, the sentiments concerning secession had not changed. The talk about secession and that of eventually war with their northern neighbors was as remote a topic in southeast Louisiana as planning a trip around the world. This would change after the presidential election in November 1860. The war that followed would bring incalculable misery and suffering to all.

Southwest from New Orleans and south of the Mississippi River lies the vast region referred to during the war as the District of La Fourche or simply the Lafourche district or region. Its territory that comprised those portions of Ascension, St. James, St. John the Baptist, and St. Charles parishes, south of the Mississippi, that portion of St. Mary Parish, east of the Atchafalaya River, along with the parishes of Assumption, Lafourche, and Terrebonne constituted much of the region in southeast Louisiana. But the war or its effects were felt in other areas in southeast Louisiana: the adjacent territories along Bayou Teche as far west as Franklin, those lands above Donaldsonville as far north as town of Plaquemine, as well as Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes. This entire region will be the focus of this book though much of the discussion will center upon the happenings in the Lafourche district.

The district’s name was derived from its principal waterway, Bayou Lafourche. It traverses that portion of Ascension Parish south of the Mississippi flowing southeast through the central portions of Assumption and Lafourche parishes. The origin of Bayou Lafourche lies some eighty miles upstream from New Orleans at Donaldsonville on the west bank of the Mississippi River. It flows roughly parallel to the river, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico one hundred ten miles downstream.

Before the war, this area served as a breadbasket for Louisiana. Its principal cash crop of sugar, along with other staples such as corn, rice, and some cotton, helped fuel Louisiana’s economy during the antebellum period. Possession of its territory was necessary for the Union if there was any hope of quenching Southern independence in Louisiana. Besides the agriculture riches of the territory, the Lafourche district could serve as a gateway for Union armies marching into south central Louisiana or further west into Texas.

Between spring 1862 and summer 1863, the Lafourche district often served as a buffer zone. Northern forces concentrated in the New Orleans area beginning in early May 1862 were fearful of a Confederate counterattack to reclaim the city. Southern forces that were brought into the district from central Louisiana and Texas were determined to forestall further Yankee aggression westward.

During the war, most of the towns and villages in the Lafourche district were located along the banks of Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Terrebonne, or along the tracks of the railroad that cut through the district. Starting at the origin of Bayou Lafourche, Donaldsonville was situated in the left descending bank constituting the largest settlement in the area. With a population of nearly 2,000 inhabitants by 1860, Donaldsonville was one of the largest ports-of-call on the west bank of the lower Mississippi. J. W. Dorr, an agent of the New Orleans Crescent who visited the town during the spring and summer of 1860, described the place as well-built with very pleasant streets and handsome trees everywhere. The homes were described as snug and cozy nestling amid flowers and foliage.³ In the summer of 1862, Donaldsonville was nearly destroyed by Union gunboats shelling the town from the Mississippi River. Across Bayou Lafourche from Donaldsonville at Union-occupied Fort Butler and some three

miles below the town at St. Emma Plantation were the locations of some of the bloodiest fighting in the district.

In Assumption Parish, along the west or right descending bank of Bayou Lafourche, sprang three villages-Paincourtville, ten miles below Donaldsonville; Napoleonville, the parish seat, five miles further south; and Labadieville, nine miles below Napoleonville. In the fall of 1862, the first major engagement between Confederate and Union armies occurred two miles above Labadieville near a boat dock called Georgia Landing. On the east, or left descending bank of the bayou, ten miles below Donaldsonville, lay the village of Plattenville. This village served as a staging ground for a Confederate offensive during the summer of 1863. ⁴

Other areas of settlement in western Assumption Parish included those tracts of high ground called brules located in the back swamplands away from Bayou Lafourche. Settled by mostly displaced small farmers of French descent, the brules of Sacramento, Grand Bayou, Pierre Part, St. Vincent, Big and Little Texas, and Labadie were organized when these settlers (who first occupied lands that paralleled Bayou Lafourche) were bought out by Anglo-American planters who began arriving in the region during the early 1820s. (On the eastern side of the parish two brulé communities were established, Bayou Verret and Sec.)⁵

In the last two years of the war, in the western portion of the parish between lakes Verret and Natchez, a region inundated with small river or bayou inlets and swampland, numerous Confederate raids were organized whose purpose was to menace, disrupt, and, at times, terrorize Union occupying forces or Union sympathizers living in the region. Its effect caused the tie up of hundreds, if not thousands, of Union troops in the Lafourche district, troops that could have been better utilized in other locations in the state.

Lafourche Parish, like Assumption, saw its population migrate along the banks of Bayou Lafourche. The parish seat was Thibodeaux (now Thibodaux), the district’s second largest town of approximately one thousand people. It was located on the right descending bank of the bayou approximately thirty-six miles below Donaldsonville and sixty miles southeast of New Orleans. The state militia of the district established its headquarters in Thibodeaux during the summer of 1862. The following fall, Union-occupying forces established a huge camp south of the town at Acadia Plantation. During the summer of 1863, Confederate forces recaptured Thibodeaux and established their final camp north of the town at Ridgefield Plantation. When they evacuated the district in July 1863, Union forces took control of the campsite.⁶

Though not a town per se, Lafourche Crossing depot, located on the left descending bank of the bayou four miles south of Thibodeaux was, nevertheless, an important rail depot of the parish. It served as a Union campsite at various times during the war. In the summer of 1863, it was the sight of the only major battle in Lafourche Parish.

Following the tracks from the Crossing, the town of Raceland Station or Raceland was located twelve miles below.⁷ During the early days of the war, the town served as the site of a state militia camp referred to as Camp Martin. In June 1862, the first major skirmish in the district occurred along the tracks two miles northeast of Raceland.

Eight miles below Raceland was the last principal village along Bayou Lafourche-Lockport-at the time of the Civil War, though there were other small isolated pockets of people who lived along the bayou below Lockport. The town served as an important port for shipping coming to and from Lake Salvador, and the subsequent construction of locks on the left descending bank of the bayou in the early 1850s help explain the origin of the town’s name.⁸

Terrebonne Parish, the largest of the three principal parishes of the district, was settled later than her sister parishes. As was the case in Assumption and Lafourche, Terrebonne’s population migrated along the bayou waterways. Houma, located on the right descending bank of Bayou Terrebonne, seventeen miles south of Thibodeaux, was the parish seat. In May 1862, Houma was the site of a Federal retaliatory strike against some suspected Houma citizens who ambushed four Union soldiers killing two of them in the process.⁹

Most of Terrebonne Parish during the war consisted of either fresh or saltwater marshes and vast regions of swampland. Though this region did not have the same economic impact as its sister parishes of the district, it came to serve the cause of the Confederacy in other ways. The swampy and marshy terrain made a southern invasion of the district by way of the Gulf of Mexico nearly impossible for the Union.

In other ways this harsh terrain, like that found in the western portions of Assumption Parish, made for excellent staging areas for Confederate guerilla warfare on Union occupation forces. Staging their raids from the swamplands of southern Terrebonne Parish, as well as those swamp and marshes in other regions of the district, bands of guerilla fighters often harassed their Yankee adversaries. Suddenly appearing from nowhere, these Southern patriots inflicted what damage they could upon the unsuspecting and ill-prepared Yankee soldiers. Then just as quickly, they disappeared back into the untraceable wetlands before there was time to mount a counter offensive. It was not until the spring of 1865 before Union forces were able to mount a successful offensive directed at the elusive Confederate raiders. And even then, their success was limited to only driving the Confederates from the area, not capturing or destroying their enemy.

Other communities in the district that were scarred by war lay near or along the rail line that ran from Algiers on the west bank of the Mississippi opposite New Orleans to Brashear City (now Morgan City), the rail terminus, eighty miles southwest. Boutte Station or Boutte, twenty-four miles west of Algiers, was the site of heavy skirmishing during the summer of 1862, resulting in the surrender of the Union garrison eight miles west at Des Allemands. Among the Union prisoners captured at Des Allemands were eight former Confederate state militiamen who were later executed for desertion. Five miles to the north of Boutte along the west bank of the Mississippi near St. Charles Courthouse (now Hahnville), two separate skirmishes occurred in late summer 1862. In both incidences, Union forces routed the Confederate troops. The rail depot at Terrebonne Station (now Schriever)¹⁰, four miles south of Thibodeaux, and Chacahoula, six miles west of Terrebonne Station, briefly saw the stings of battle during the summer of 1863. A plantation house near the depot at Terrebonne served as a hospital during the war. Brashear City, situated on the eastern bank of Berwick Bay (a geographic spot on the Atchafalaya River appropriately fifty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico where the river widens), served as a vital defensive post guarding the entrance to Grand Lake from the south and effectively blocked shipping coming to and from the Gulf.

Brashear, described by one Union soldier as a poor specimen of a squalid southern village, served as a campsite of both armies during the course of the war. Ten of thousands of Union troops occupied the village prior to the spring 1863 offensive through the Teche and later that summer when Union forces attempted in vain to invade Texas by attempting a western push through the central portion of the state. On June 23, 1863, one of the greatest Confederate victories in the state occurred within the limits of the village in the general vicinity of the rail depot. Over a thousand Union troops were made prisoners during the battle and some two million dollars worth of desperately needed supplies and equipment were confiscated.¹¹ Six miles to the west, near the depot at Bayou Boeuf (now Amelia), a Union garrison of over two hundred men surrendered the next day following the defeat of Union forces at Brashear. (The Confederate victory was short-lived, for Union forces would reoccupied the area by late July 1863.) The railroad, which was a vital target during the battles for control of Brashear and Bayou Boeuf in June 1863, served as a conduit for armies coming to and from the district. Control of this important artery was the major contributing factor for why so many battles, skirmishes, and raids took place at or near its tracks.

For decades, Bayou Lafourche was the only important means of transporting goods and services to and from the Lafourche interior. In many ways, it was a slow and cumbersome way of moving commerce. For many citizens of the district, direct access to the waterway was not possible or feasible. The completion of the railroad in the 1850s gave the people of this area a second option. More importantly, it gave virtually all citizens of the district equal access for transporting their wares.

Planning for the rail line began in New Orleans in March 1851 when New Orleans bankers, forwarding merchants, and other businessmen met. The meeting culminated in the group taking the first steps toward organizing the company that a year later would be known as the New Orleans, Opelousas, and Great Western Railroad Company. During the war, the line was referred to in military communiqué as simply the Opelousas Railroad. Laying the tracks across the vast Lafourche region was destined to be an engineering feat of its time. Originally planned to connect Algiers with the communities of Washington and Opelousas, 172 miles to the northwest, rail construction began in late 1852. (Ultimately the rail line would extend into Texas, which entered the Union in 1845, and beyond to California.) Contracts were awarded to several companies that would be responsible for construction work along the line. The completion date was optimistically set for January 1855. Little did the Board of Directors know of the difficulties that lay ahead of them when that completion date was chosen.

Agents for the company probably began arriving in the Lafourche region in late 1851, surveying the land, and eventually purchasing tracks of property for the rail right-of-way. The preliminary survey was completed in April 1852. For many citizens, particularly those planters whose property fronted the railroad, the prospects of having a rapid means of transporting goods to and from the region was looked upon most favorably. Advertising in the New Orleans Delta on October 8, 1852, one contractor, Christopher Brierton, initially sought three hundred able-bodied men. His company offered a wage of $26 a month to be paid semi-monthly. Applications were to be obtained at the Twelve-Mile Point of the Mississippi River.

The probable start date for construction was early October 1852, although the exact date is not known with any degree of certainty. Though the ground between Algiers and Boutte was flat and relatively solid, grading of the rail bed was not going to be an easy task for the construction gangs. Composed of hearty men of Irish and German descent, the workforce often had to battle bad weather, heavy rains, and periodic flooding as they slowly tracked westward from their point of origin at Algiers. Further delays in construction occurred in July 1853 when a yellow fever epidemic, which began in New Orleans, spread throughout southeast Louisiana as far west as Franklin, where quarantine checkpoints prevented the disease from spreading westward beyond that point. The deadly disease decimated construction gangs that were working in the direct path of the epidemic, as well as those people living within the Lafourche region.¹²

With delays in construction came increased cost and financial problems stemming from a lack of readily available cash. Contracts awarded to companies beyond Bayou Lafourche were therefore cancelled. Construction was placed on a month-to-month basis. More than Mother Nature or disease, this had a profound affect on maintaining and subsequently delaying the original time and work completion schedule. As a result, completion of the railroad to Boutte did not occur until the end of 1853. It took an additional six months to reach Des Allemands. Crossing Bayou Des Allemands required the construction of a bridge 475 feet long. By June 1854, it was clear to the Board of Directors that the track would not reach Opelousas as planned.

If Mother Nature, disease, and financial restraints were the primary culprits for the delay in construction during the first year, changing topography further delayed the project in the year to follow. Completion of the railroad from Des Allemands to Lafourche Crossing did not occur until November 1854, after nearly six months of pile driving and footslogging across a ten-mile area of terrain referred to as trembling prairies on maps of the time. Virtually the entire section of rail bed between Des Allemands and Lafourche Crossing had to be crossed on piles and trestle works. Even when the rail bed was completed and felt structurally sound, some passengers refused to board the train, fearing that the track beneath them would sink into the boggy terrain as the train passed through the region.¹³

Once at Bayou Lafourche, the construction of a second bridge was required. The bayou measured 260 feet wide at that locale. Because of the frequent boat traffic coming up and down the waterway, a draw span from 60 to 75 feet in length was required to allow safe passage for the larger boats. Construction of the bridge began on January 1, 1855, and was completed sometime in late spring. Designed by Chief Engineer G. W. R. Bayley, the bridge at Lafourche Crossing was unique among railroad bridges. It had one fixed span and two sliding spans. When a boat approached the bridge, the smaller sliding span was pushed off parallel to the side, using manual labor. This allowed the larger span to be pulled toward the bank, using a series of chains or ropes that were attached to a center post some distance from the bayou’s edge. With a wooden arm extending outward from the center post, parallel to the ground, and ropes extending from the arm to the mid section of a pair of horses or mules, the animals would literally pull the bridge apart by walking in a circle, which turned the post and wrapped the heavy chains or rope around it. The seventy-one-foot gap created by this maneuver would be sufficient to allow the largest of bayou craft to pass through the bridge’s center.¹⁴

Lafourche and Devil’s Swamps, which lay between Lafourche Crossing and Terrebonne Station, delayed construction to that most western point until September 1, 1855. (Bailey explained that these two deep cypress swamps were the worse we have ever had to encounter.) Railroad cars loaded with dirt had to be hauled from more solid ground east of Boutte to create the earth embankment across the Lafourche Swamp, after pilings had been driven into the soggy mire. A separate crew at Terrebonne, working eastward across Devil’s Swamp, hauled dirt in buckets dug from a huge pit near the site of the depot at Terrebonne Station.¹⁵

If the swamp between Bayou Lafourche and Terrebonne Station were thought to be bad, the six-mile-wide Chacahoula and Tiger’s Swamp between the depot at Terrebonne and Tigerville, eleven miles to the east, were viewed as monsters. The earth embankment there had to be raised to a height of nearly five feet in order to exceed the high water mark set in the flood of 1844. Nearly seven hundred men were employed to build the line across that mosquito and alligator infested terrain. Many of the crewmembers fell victim to diseases related to the heat, mosquitoes, and foul swamp water. According to Bailey, Not a foreman escaped without serious illness, and hardly a man on the works, but was prostrated with swamp fever. Nevertheless, grading though the Chacahoula Swamp was completed in a record nine weeks. Tiger Swamp was graded by the middle of June and was ready for rails by July 1855. Heavy rains, however, delayed track laying for weeks. Completion of that span of track did not occur until October 1, 1855.¹⁶

Between Tigerville and Bayou Boeuf, a fifth swamp, Boeuf Swamp, had to be bridged. Construction gangs reached the eastern edge of the swamp on December 1, 1855. It took nearly three months to cross the swamp and reach Bayou Boeuf. At Bayou Boeuf, a third bridge 675 feet long had to be constructed. By then the directors, saddled with debt, were eager to find a water route to Texas. Not abandoning their original goal of connecting the two states by rail, the directors wanted to provide the public with this needed service. The company also hoped to gain additional revenue in order to complete the rail line to the Sabine River. On November 13, 1856, an agreement was signed for steamer service between Galveston and Bayou Boeuf. On April 1, 1856, the first side-wheeler steamer Galveston was placed into service. In early May, a second steamer, the Opelousas, was placed into service extending passage to the tip of Texas at Matagorda Bay.

Meanwhile, the final link of track between Bayou Boeuf and Brashear City was complete and placed into service on April 12, 1857, exactly four years prior to the first shots of the war. A wharf at Brashear City completed the rail line in May 1857, two-and-a-half years behind schedule and less than half the planned distance complete. At the time, the thought of building a bridge across the 1740-foot-wide Berwick Bay was not entertained. Engineers initially thought that it could not be done. Despite this, the Opelousas Railroad, by 1860, had twelve locomotives, twelve cars, five baggage cars, two express cars, and two hundred and nine fright cars rolling along its eighty-mile rail. The company purchased the steamer B. E. Clark in 1857 for use as a ferry between Algiers and New Orleans. Destroyed by fire in 1860, the Clark was replaced by the Cres at a cost of $5,500. By the end of 1861, the railroad was graded between Berwick Bay and Vermilionville (now Lafayette) and ready for track laying. However, by then, the war had started in earnest. Further expansion to the west would have to wait until after the war’s closure.¹⁷

The settling of the Lafourche District came not by a single migration of people, but by a variety of settlers coming into the region at various times. Until about 1810, Bayou Lafourche was referred to as La Riviere des Chetimaches (the Chetimaches River) and La Fourche des Chetimaches (the Fork of the Chetimaches), named after the Native American tribe, correctly spelled Chitimacha meaning men altogether red, who occupied the upper Bayou Lafourche region when European settlers first appeared.¹⁸ The waterway was named Lafourche meaning the fork because of its characteristic break from the Mississippi River. The bayou was likely first spotted by any one of the following European adventurers who explored the lower Mississippi valley during the sixteenth and seventeenth century: the survivors of the Hernan De Soto exploration, led by Luis de Moscoso in 1543, as they traveled south on the Mississippi River from their starting point near present-day Natchez; or the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, better known by his royal title Sieur de La Salle, together with his faithful lieutenant, Henry de Tonti, during their voyage down the river in 1682. [In 1672, the French explorer Louis Joliet and his assistant, Jacque Marquette, a Jesuit priest, (warned of danger) traveled the river no further south than the Arkansas River before returning to Canada.] A third French expedition led by Pierre Le Moyne, better known by his title Sieur d’Iberville, likely saw the bayou during his maiden voyage up the Mississippi in 1699. Iberville’s brother,

Jean Baptist Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, explored approximately thirty miles of the bayou that same year, but made no attempt to settle or colonize the region.¹⁹

Until the turn of the 1700s, the native inhabitants of the Lafourche area were the Chitimacha-speaking tribes: the Chitimacha, Washa, and Chawasha. The Choctaw Indians also settled in the region. The Houma Indians immigrated to the district in the early 1700s and settled just south of present-day Donaldsonville. Tension with early European settlers and a small pox epidemic in 1788 eventually forced the Houma Indians out the upper portion of the district. They came to settle in the high ridges in Terrebonne Parish where present-day Houma is located.²⁰

Although the French colonized the New Orleans region (the Crescent City was founded in 1718), some small pockets in the state (Natchitoches was founded in 1714), and other river communities, and beginning in the early 1720s and later during the 1750s, German and Swiss citizens were invited to immigrate to the Louisiana territory (they settled in what would become the German Coast-present-day St. Charles Parish), the interior of the Lafourche district remained void of European settlers during the French control of Louisiana (1699-1763). The French left the Lafourche district in possession of the Native Americans during their control of the land. This would change when the Spanish government took control of the area beginning in 1764, after the French ceded the area to Spain after its defeat during the French-Indian War (1754-1763).

At the invitation of the Spanish government, European settlers began arriving in the district soon after. One particular group who came to dominate the region during the early days of Spanish rule in Louisiana was the French-speaking small farmers, fishermen, and trappers called Acadians. Exiled from British-controlled Acadia or Acadie (present-day Nova Scotia) beginning in 1755, over the course of the next three decades the Acadians were dispersed to various regions of the globe including the mid-Atlantic British colonies, various Caribbean islands, England, and later France before Spain invited them to the Louisiana territory. Beginning in 1765, the first of thousands of exiled Acadians arrived in the Spanish Louisiana colony, first settling near Opelousas and the Attakapas district (south central Louisiana), then immigrating into the southwestern prairies of Louisiana, and at the same time, along the banks of the Mississippi River in present-day Ascension and St. James parishes (the Second German Coast), and later down Bayou Lafourche. By 1785, Acadians who came to settle in the territory had a clear preference for the upper Lafourche region. At that time, Bayou Lafourche was sparsely populated (the lower reaches of the bayou had only been explored thirteen years before); the region had rich alluvial soil along the entire course of the bayou’s length that was excellent for farming; there was an abundance of wild game and fish; and the area’s isolation meant minimal contact and interference with the Spanish government located in New Orleans and with other settlements already established near the region or settlers coming to the territory of Louisiana.²¹

As the upper Lafourche region became saturated with people, the Acadians simply moved downstream, settling in large numbers in the Napoleonville area and eventually as far south as Lockport, with a large concentration of Acadians settling between Napoleonville and Lafourche Crossing. When the bayou had its fill, the Acadians migrated again to other adjacent isolated areas in southeastern Louisiana. By 1793, the entire southeastern region of Louisiana was densely populated with Acadian settlers. Their heritage and culture continue to be a vital asset to the region.²²

The Acadian people were not the only immigrants to come and settle in the Lafourche region during the late 1700s during Spain’s control of the territory. In 1778, the Spanish government established the district of Valenzuela, present-day Assumption Parish, as more and more exiled Acadians began to settle along the banks of Bayou Lafourche. It soon became apparent to the Spanish, however, that they were losing control over the Acadian French-speaking settlers. Spanish-speaking Canary Islanders, or islenos as they were sometimes known, were brought to Louisiana in the hopes of asserting some control over the French culture. They first settled west by northwest of Lake Pontchartrain along the Amite River, but this settlement eventually failed, causing the isleno families to resettle in areas south of New Orleans in present-day St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes and eventually within the Lafourche interior where they thrived as fisherman, trappers, and small farmers. Any attempt by the Spanish government to control the independent and self-reliant Acadian people in Lafourche ultimately failed as the French-speaking settlers increased in numbers and dominance. Despite this, however, the Spanish government continued to support the Acadians.²³

There were others who immigrated to Louisiana during the Spanish era. In 1791, a Haitian slave revolt led by black general Toussaint L’Ouverture, which ultimately led to the establishment of the black republic of St. Domingue, caused many French planters on the island, along with their slaves, to relocate to Louisiana, bringing with them their unique Caribbean brand of French culture. Many of these planters settled along the banks of Bayou Lafourche and introduced the concept of slave labor to the bayou country.²⁴ (An additional influx of planters, along with their slaves, would later come to Lafourche during the 1820s and 30s from neighboring Mississippi and other regions in the South.)

For the most part, the Acadian and Spanish, along with the earlier migrants from Germany, Switzerland, and France who came and settled the southeastern portion of the state, were small farmers, predominately Roman Catholic in faith, and poor. The principal cash crops at the turn of the nineteenth century were rice, corn, and other vegetables, indigo, and some cotton, which the settlers used to clothe themselves. The Acadians largely owned few slaves; there was no need as they were traders, fishermen, and small farmers by trade and economically poor. Nevertheless, there were a few affluent inhabitants in the region, like the slave-owning French from the Caribbean. But most of the affluent came from the French Creoles²⁵-French-speaking descendents of the early Spanish and French colonists who were born in New Orleans. The Creoles, who thought themselves as local aristocrats, often came to look down upon the Acadians as uncultured peasants. Once Louisiana was part of the Union, the Creoles, aided by the Anglo-American sugar plantation owners who flooded the region beginning in the years that followed the War of 1812, clashed with the Acadian people on many regional and state issues as the district expanded and local political brawls spilled into state politics.²⁶ There was also the issue of religious differences to add to the cultural mixture that fuelled, at the very least, disagreements among the various ethic groups that settled in the Lafourche district. For the most part, the Anglo-Americans who settled in the region (such as the Pugh, Tucker, Bragg, and Martin families--families that helped shape local politics in the years before the war) were predominately protestant.

By 1800, the Native American inhabitants of the region had been essentially displaced from their lands and relegated to the back lands of the district. Due to war with the white settlers and diseases brought by European inhabitants, the Native Americans dwindled in number and in significance. In time, only the names of towns, rivers, and bayous would reflect their presence.²⁷

As the Anglo-Americans began to arrive in the district after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from France,²⁸ it became apparent to them that all the rich farmlands fronting the many bayous of the district were in the hands of small landowners, such as the exiled Acadians. With their wealth and ease of credit, the Anglo-Americans began buying up large tracts of property from these people. Many of the poorer landowners, who were forced to sell their property, principally the Acadians, moved further down the bayous of Lafourche and Terrebonne or migrated to the brulés looking for new land to settle and cultivate.²⁹ From these individual plots of farmland in the upper district, the Anglo-Americans were able to fashion huge plantations with sugar as the principal cash crop. In order to manage such vast pieces of property, additional African slaves were needed on a large scale By the time of the war, there were some 21,276 slaves among the three principal parishes of the district (Lafourche, Terrebonne, and Assumption) compared with 19,820 whites, 315 free blacks, and 103 Native Americans. This huge population of slaves owned by relatively few politically powerful planters in the district, namely Anglo-Americans, would help explain why some of these men would not support a presidential candidate (such as Abraham Lincoln in 1860) who openly voiced detain for the business of slavery. Their political power and influence eventually affected the majority of other nonslaveholding inhabitants-principally the Acadians and other small landowners, fisherman, and trappers.³⁰

Among the last ethic group to settle in the district prior to the war were the Irish, who came to the United States in large numbers during the late 1840s and early 1850s. The disease that devastated their principal crop, the potato, between 1845-47 led to the death of nearly 750,000 Irishmen from starvation and caused hundreds of thousands of others to flee their native land, hoping to find a better life in the United States. Poor and jobless, many of the Irish settled in New York City or along the Atlantic seaboard or came by way of the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans where they filtered down into the Lafourche region. It was those Irish immigrants, along with the Germans who settled in southeastern Louisiana a century before, that dug canals and ditches, drained the marshes, and built the

Opelousas Railroad that traversed the heart of Lafourche.³¹

The topography, as it was in the 1860s, divided the district into two basic types of terrain-farmland and marsh or swampland. For the most part, the land that paralleled the waterways for a distance of forty arpents (roughly a mile) outward from the water’s edge was where the rich farmland was located in the district. It was the land that was most appealing to sugar plantation owners who came to this region wishing to expand their holding in the territory. As a result, by the start of the war, from Donaldsonville to Lockport, one sugar plantation after another was developed. By 1861, as many as one hundred and eighty sugar-producing plantations were located along Bayou Lafourche, and an equal number of plantations were located along the many tributaries of the bayou or along Bayou Terrebonne or in sister parishes. Starting from Donaldsonville, one could not walk down Bayou Lafourche without constantly traversing the front acreage of someone’s sugar plantation or small farm. One soldier during the war to do so was Corp. James K. Homer of the 52nd Massachusetts Volunteers. His regiment marched through the heart of the district during the spring of 1863. While briefly camped at Donaldsonville, Hosmer compared the landscape there to Holland-flat and at the mercy of the grand bayou deep and swift. Walking atop the clear-cut dirt levee that paralleled the bayou and kept the waters from flooding the region during the high-water seasons of spring and early summer, Hosmer called the region as thickly peopled; the plantations succeeding one another as do the farms in any populous agricultural region of the North. He was especially impressed with the vast numbers of plantation homes he passed. Plantation after plantations! he recalled. And he marveled at their architecture and the surrounding gardens adorned with every topical flower imaginable. Such tropic luxury of air and vegetation! Hosmer proclaimed. He called the fertile and plush region of Lafourche The Garden of Louisiana.³²

Those farmlands had come by no special design of nature or divine providence. Bayou Lafourche had a long history of seasonal flooding, having the Mississippi as its prime source of water. Rich silt deposits dumped into the river from northern lands and carried downstream into Bayou Lafourche and later deposited over the millennia across the landscape of Lafourche during periods of flooding left the region ripe for agriculture ventures. Lafourche’s hay-day would come during the first half of the nineteenth century as these lands were developed and farmed. By the time of the Civil War, sugar and slaves had transformed the region into an economic powerhouse and ironically doom it during the War Between the States. The Lafourche region would not fully recover from the aftermath of the war until fifty years after the war’s closure.

Though there was an abundance of farmland in the Lafourche region, marsh and swampland comprised the vast majority of the region. Building a railroad through the region had proved that fact to many an Irishman or German who slaved through the muck, attempting to turn the ground beneath them into solid earth. There were literally thousands of miles of shore in the district from the many lakes, rivers, canals, and bayous that cut across the region, together with hundreds of square miles of marsh and swamps. By 1864, the Yankee army had come to appreciate the difficulty of patrolling the region that they had freed from Confederate forces that had occupied the district during the three proceeding years. The topography of the district would turn out to be the Yankee’s greatest source of stress while in command of the area, for they were never able to completely eliminate the threat of Confederate guerilla fighters who used the vast unexplored and thinly populated marsh and swamplands of the district to harass their adversaries.

The marshy terrain that inundated the region was not the only enemy to the northern invader. Mosquitoes that bred by the billions, spreading diseases such as malaria, reaped havoc among the soldiers on both sides. Their stinging bites over the course of a night might leave its victims as if they were infected with small pox. Poisonous snakes by the thousands and alligators six-to twelve-feet long were among the chief antagonists in the region.

The absence of fresh water was another sore reality for many a "visitof’ from the North, though the local citizens had long adapted to that shortcoming. Soldiers, particularly from the New England area, unaccustomed to such nuances developed diarrhea or contracted dysentery from drinking the stagnant, slime-covered pools of swamp water that inundated the region. Acute and chronic diarrhea that struck Union troops stationed in southeastern Louisiana on a regular basis caused more suffering and misery, and caused more of a drop in productivity within the army than any other anomaly recorded during the war. In any given month, thousands of men were incapacitated with these debilitating disorders. In Louisiana, there were over 100,000 cases of acute and chronic diarrhea reported by the Federals. Fortunately for the Union army, deaths directly contributed to these two categories of diarrhea were considerably less. During the occupation years in southeastern Louisiana between April 1862 and June 1865, only 1,358 deaths attributed to acute and chronic diarrhea were recorded within the military department headquartered in New Orleans.³³

The climate of southeast Louisiana was another harsh reality to many northern neighbors who ventured to this region during the war. Often clothed in

long-sleeved wool uniforms, the standard issue attire for both sides during the war, the summer’s heat and high humidity could be as deadly as any enemy fire directed toward them. Heat prostration or exhaustion caused as many battlefield causalities as bullets among those armies slugging it out among the bayous and rivers in Lafourche. This was especially true during the heated summer 1863 campaign that culminated in four major battles fought within a three-week period. Soldiers, clothed in wool, maneuvering through cornfields or swamplands with no breeze, bad water, swarms of mosquitoes, and suffocating heat and humidity fell victim to the elements.

For the Union soldier passing his winter quarters in the Lafourche district, the hopes of a mild winter was often shattered by stinging northern winds and freezing temperatures that often suddenly befell the region. One such climatic event occurred in late October 1862, during the eve of the three-prong Union offensive through the district. In a matter of hours, temperatures dropped below freezing catching many of the soldiers off guard.

If the cold weather did not make the soldiers miserable during their winter stay in Lafourche, the unrelenting rain did. Short of a humiliating defeat in battle, there was nothing that caused the spirit to plummet more than for a soldier to bed down for the night, cold and wet, sleeping atop a muddy plot of ground, or maneuver through the muddy glue which often caused the soldier to sink beneath the ground to his mid-calf or higher. It was a scenario often played in the war for those who came to do battle in Lafourche.

As winter gave way to spring 1860, political clouds were already gathering across the nation as candidates for president of the United States began to articulate their views. In the Lafourche district, planters and farmers prepared their fields for that year’s crop. The hustle of boat and rail traffic continued to energize the community. The district’s future looked bright and promising. Even the most pessimistic individual of the day could not have foreseen the building storms that would erupt into the greatest crisis the young nation had ever experienced. In less than twenty-four months, northern armies would come knocking at the doors of Lafourche. The times would never be the same. The death of an era was at hand.

CHAPTER ONE: 1860-THE YEAR OF DECISION

Sunday, November 18, 1860

. . . all the talk now is disunion. The Governor is to call the Legislature to together this week, which is to take into consideration the property of calling a Convention to take the matter of Secession into consideration.

Diary of A. Franklin Pugh¹

On January 23, 1860, Thomas Overton Moore was sworn in as the seventeenth governor of Louisiana. Born in Sampson County, North Carolina, on April 10, 1804, Moore migrated to Louisiana at the age of twenty-four, settling in Rapides Parish with a desire to become a cotton planter. Within a year of his arrival in Louisiana (1830), Moore was managing his uncle’s plantation and bought his own plantation eventually becoming one of the most successful planters in Louisiana. (Moore’s uncle was Gen. Walter H. Overton, an aid to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.) That same year, Moore married Bethiah Jane (Bertha) Leonard, and the couple had five children. As a leading Democrat from central Louisiana, by the time he became governor in 1860, Moore had served several terms on the Rapides Parish Police Jury (parish council), the state House of Representatives (starting in 1848), and state Senate (1856-1860).²

In a clear unmistakable address, especially to the gathering political forces in Washington, Moore stated, Louisiana has always been moderate and conservative in her sentiments. She has never at any period of our history countenanced extreme opinions or violent measures. Her citizens have ever been loyal lovers of the Union of these States . . . . If her devotion to the Union shall be weakened, it will be because of the intolerance of a sectional majority; and if it be ever obliterated it will be because that intolerance had resulted in practical oppression, or produced a state of things to which no sensitive people can submit. Moore, of course, was talking about the gathering political storms enveloping Washington, spearheaded by the emerging so-called (by pro-slavery forces) Black Republican Party of the North and West whose supporters opposed any form of slavery or its extension into United States territories. In the worse case scenario, Moore rightly believed that the Republican Party, if it got its way, would force upon the existing fifteen slave-holding states a total band upon slavery, which would destroy the rights of slaveholders currently guaranteed by the Constitution and protected by acts of Congress. Moore, who wrote that slavery was a great social and political blessing, thought this spreading fanaticism expressed by the opponents of slavery was poisoning the very mindset of the Union, and creating wide-spread sympathy for such felons as John Brown³ and deepening the distrust in the permanency of [the] Federal Government, and awakening sentiments favorable to a separation of the States. The governor opposed the idea of secession when he gave his inaugural address and expressed sincere hope that disunion would not befall the nation, and that harmony and peace [would] be restored to [the] people on both sides of the slavery issue, without a sacrifice of interest or a loss of honor. But Moore probably suspected otherwise and braced for the inevitable clash between the North and South over the future of slavery and what the South (by the end of 1860) thought was its only viable option-secession.⁴

By the spring of 1860, the political die was cast. The governor, as well as other leaders in Louisiana and throughout the South, would not tolerate any political force whose aim was the disenfranchisement of white Southern rights. As the North increased in population and representation in Congress and the South felt more and more isolated and cut off from the political arena, Southern doctrine, which had a long-established history in American politics, was losing favor among the driving forces in Washington. Among the Southern creeds, the right to own slaves and transport that property anywhere in the Union without prejudice, the right to self-rule, where slave capital or any other economic, social, or political asset was free from Federal intrusion, and the doctrine of state superiority over Federal rule was for most Southern leaders of that time the defining issues in the fall 1860 presidential election. In the coming months of 1860, candidates for the presidency to the United States would be chosen. Their positions on the issue of states’ right and slavery would be articulated and clarified. Whatever the final outcome of the election, the year 1860 would be forever known as the Year of Decision. If Southern candidates failed to obtain a simple majority of the Electoral College, could the South abide by a national decision that could erode white liberties? If not, would they seek separation from the Union? The November election for president would forever decide the issues at hand. Until then, the South prepared its candidates and waited for the final vote.

A little over a month and a half after Moore was sworn in as governor, the State Democratic Convention met in Baton Rouge to select delegates for the national convention, which was to be held the third week of May at Charleston, South Carolina. The twelve delegates elected were not surprisingly men with cotton and sugar connections, and slavery, which was necessary to grow and harvest the two crops. Individuals, who did not own slaves, which was the vast majority of people in the state, could expect little from this adherent group of wealthy and privilege citizens. However, in spite of this common denominator among the Louisiana delegates, by convention time, there was a decisive split within the National Democratic Party regarding a unifying candidate. The South’s favorite son was the current vice president of the United States, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Breckinridge supported the Southern position regarding slavery. His platform called for the protection of the right to own slaves. Among his political backers in the state, so-called old-liners (Breckinridge’s platform was nearest of kin to Jacksonian Democracy) was Senator John Slidell from New Orleans. (Slidell’s people, not surprisingly, carried the state convention and the twelve delegates selected supported Breckinridge at the national convention.) The North’s leading contender for the nomination was U. S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who was backed by another political heavyweight from New Orleans, Pierre Soulé, a member of the new-liners. Douglas favored the concept of popular sovereignty-that is, allowing the states or territories to decide for themselves if slavery would exist within its borders. For Breckinridge supporters in the state, as well as at the national convention, popular sovereignty was already a dead issue that had been nullified by the U. S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857.⁵ Nevertheless, the two sides battled for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.⁶

When the Democratic Party Convention convened on April 21, sheer chaos prevailed among the delegates. By April 30, after a week of bickering between northern and southern faction (Northern Democrats defeated a platform written by Southerners that would have advocated protection of slavery in the territories), delegates from Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, along with scattered individuals from the remaining slave states, withdrew from the convention. This anti-Douglas faction also refused to accept the idea of popular sovereignty. For those delegates who remained at the convention, no one candidate could be agreed upon. Thus, after fifty-seven fruitless ballots, the convention adjourned to be resumed in Baltimore.

While the forces of Douglas and Breckinridge jousted for political control of the Democratic Party, the remnants of the old Whig and American parties met in Richmond and formed the Constitutional Union Party. On May 10, the party delegates nominated John Bell of Tennessee, a former Whig Congressman and U. S. Senator, as their candidate. The party’s platform favored the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of its laws, but it avoided taking a clear position on the issue of slavery, which was an unacceptable stand for many staunch pro-slavery individuals. Nevertheless, Bell would fair much better among Louisiana’s voters than Douglas. (Abraham Lincoln, who was nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate on May 18, 1860, did not appear on the Louisiana ballot. The Republican Party at that time was a sectional party with no strong root-base nationally. Its political support came exclusively from the heavily populated North and some western communities.)

Even though Lincoln believed the institution of slavery was inherently evil, he agreed that the Federal government lacked power in interfere with slavery in any particular state where it currently existed. Nevertheless, he was unequivocally opposed to the expansion of slavery into the territories. For Southern leaders, Lincoln’s potential election as president in the fall spelled disaster. (Lincoln’s aversion toward slavery, which was incompatible with the Southern elite, was one reason why he lacked political supporters in the South, and why his name did not appear on the Louisiana ballot, an unwise move according to one Louisianian. The battle all over the country seems to be raging between Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge, while poor Lincoln remains almost unnoticed [in Louisiana], Phoebe Farmer wrote in September 1860, while living in New Iberia. And if, by chance, he should slip into the Presidential [sic] chair while the others are fighting, we shall, for a wonder, have a President whose faults have not been blazoned before the world.)⁷

With Democrats split over their regional candidate, the National Democratic Party (code name for the northern wing of the Democratic Party) met in Baltimore on June 18 where they shortly nominated Douglas. When some of the Southern delegates applied for admission to the convention, pro-Douglas forces rejected them. This caused another walkout by Breckinridge sympathizers from California, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia, who, together with other pro-Breckinridge supporters, met across town and shortly afterward nominated the vice president as their candidate under the label of the Constitutional Democratic Party (code name for the southern wing of the Democratic Party). The Democratic Party that had controlled the presidency for twenty-two of the last thirty years, by its splintering into two factions, assured the election of Lincoln in the fall of 1860.⁸ By July, the campaign for president of the United States was in full swing with four candidates in the running. For many observers, Lincoln and Breckinridge represented the extremes on either side of the political spectrum, with Douglas and Bell labeled as the moderate candidates. In Louisiana, in some quarters, moderation was not within its political psyche as summer’s campaigning heated up. With Lincoln labeled by the New Orleans Crescent as the dirtiest and meanest abolitionist alive, and not on the ballot anywhere in the South, for some Louisianians their only choice for president was Breckinridge. But the vice president would not take Louisiana’s six electoral votes as easy as some of his supporters in the state thought. His chief rival would be none other than Bell, who had a broad base of support in New Orleans and faired well among voters in the Lafourche district. For the most part, the Lafourche district was moderate in its political beliefs regarding secession. (This would change, of course. A matter to be discussed shortly.) The Lafourche district, like New Orleans, was tied economically to the North. As sugar barons, Lafourche’s planter elite depended upon Federal tariffs as a means of controlling the price of sugar, tariffs that would likely not be embraced in a coalition of Confederate states who opposed Federal controls. In addition, most of the sugar planters were former members of the Whig Party and did not take too kindly to any threats to national unity. But even among those men who supported Breckinridge, a vote for the vice president was not an automatic vote for disunion, though clearly that was the case among some secessionist fire-eaters, like Assumption Parish sugar planter, Alexander F. Pugh. Nevertheless, the choice for the people of Lafourche was not so black or white as might have been the case among some of the people hell-bent on secession if Breckinridge failed to muster enough votes in the Electoral College. ⁹

During the summer and fall campaign, Lafourche slowly began to energize politically. Barbecues, picnics, and other political gatherings attempted to stir the hearts and souls of the voters. All political camps were heard, save Lincoln, in an attempt to sway the voters to their candidate and his ideology. On a warm Tuesday morning, Lafourche district voters began arriving at the polls. All total, in the parishes of Assumption, Lafourche, and Terrebonne, a little over 3,000 voters cast their ballots on November 6. For some, it would be their last presidential vote. For all, it would be the last vote for the status quo. In the end, moderation prevailed in the district, and across the state, but Breckinridge won a plurality of the vote and grabbed Louisiana’s six electoral votes, beating out Bell by less than 1,500 votes out of over 50,000 votes cast statewide. If Bell and

Douglas (Douglas ran a very distant third statewide) were to combine their votes, fifty-five percent of voters cast their ballots for moderation. Among the three principal parishes in the Lafourche district, Breckinridge failed to win a simple majority in any of them, and only carried Terrebonne Parish by the narrowest of plurality, a one-vote majority (441 to 440) over Bell. (Douglas received 84 votes.). Lafourche and Assumption parishes, along with neighboring Ascension Parish, were the only parishes in Louisiana that Douglas won, and, like