Remembering New Orleans’ First Freedom Fighters

27th January 2020   ·   0 Comments

New Orleanians know the pivotal role the city played in the modern Civil Rights Movement. However, the City Council’s recent passage of Ordinance 32,879 on January 16, to rededicate the triangle of ground bounded by North Dorgenois Street, Bell Street, and Bayou Road, as “André Cailloux Park,” is not only admirable but an essential reminder of the sacrifices of Cailloux and other brave Black New Orleanians who fought against and defeated the Confederate States of America in Louisiana during the Civil War.

“Captain André Cailloux was one of the first Black officers in the Union Army to be killed in combat during the American Civil War. His legacy will continue to live on in the City of New Orleans through this portion of the roadway renamed in his honor,” according to a City Council statement.

Some historians and Civil War proponents deny that the war was fought over slavery. They say it was about economics, about a way of life, and freedom to leave the U.S. and form an independent government. But American Civil War between the northern and southern regions of the United States was fought over slavery, period.

This fact was confirmed by Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, who described the Confederacy’s ideology as being based “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

Initially, seven slave-holding states South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined the Confederate States of America (CSA) in 1861. The war began April 12, 1861, when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. After the war started, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina also seceded. The Confederacy later accepted Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither officially declared secession.

When Louisiana seceded from the United States on January 26, 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America, Louisiana Governor Thomas Overton Moore issued pleas for troops on April 17 and April 21, 1861. Moore’s call went out for Blacks to enlist, as well.

Much has been written about the eagerness and the agreement of New Orleans’ African Americans to fight for the Confederacy. Historian Charles Vincent disputes those claims. Many free men of color were forced to join the Confederate cause and did so to save their lives and property, Vincent relates in “Black Legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction.”

Furthermore, when Confederate soldiers cut and ran upon the arrival of Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler and his 12,000 man Army in the Gulf near New Orleans, the Black soldiers refused to leave their homes and fight elsewhere with the Confederate forces and “It is doubtful that they had wanted to join the Confederate service in the first place.”

André Cailloux was born a slave on a plantation owned by Joseph Duvernay near Pointe a la Hache in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. He emancipated at age 21 and became a cigarmaker. By 1860, he owned a shop in Faubourg Marigny. Cailloux was 36 when the war began.

He fought on both sides of the Civil War. He joined the1st Louisiana Native Guard (CSA), like many of his contemporaries but the Confederacy never used them. It was made up entirely of free men of color who had served in the state militia during the French colonial period before the war.

When New Orleans fell to the Union forces in April 1862, the Native Guards disbanded. In the summer of 1862, a delegation of its officers, including Octave and Henry Louis Rey, Eugène Rapp, and Edgar Davis, met with Gen. Benjamin Butler in New Orleans to swear their loyalty to the Union and tender their services to the army.

Butler initially declined the offer of the Native Guards’ officers. He changed his mind when he realized the scarcity of manpower in southeastern Louisiana and the possibility of losing to the Confederates.

He organized the Union Army’s 1st Louisiana Native Guard regiment in New Orleans on September 27, 1862. It was one of the first all-Black regiments to fight in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In November 1862, the number of escaped slaves seeking to enlist became so great that the Union organized a second regiment and, a month later, a third regiment.

The 1st Louisiana Native Guard played a prominent role in the Siege of Port Hudson in East Baton Rouge. Captain Cailloux’s Company E was 100 men strong and included slaves and free Black men. They carried the banner for the 1st Regiment.

Much like in the movie “Glory,” Cailloux and his soldiers embarked on a suicide mission on May 27, 1863, during the Siege of Port Hudson. Many of the brave soldiers of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard died that day. Cailloux continued to lead the charge until a Confederate artillery shell killed him.

One civil war blog quoted historian George Washington Williams — himself an African American Civil War veteran — who described the arduous, suicidal charge toward entrenched Confederate sharpshooters and artillery:

“Captain Andre Cailloux, of Company E, First Regiment Native Guards, won for himself a proud place among the military heroes of the Negro race for all time. He was… a man of fine presence, a leader by instinct and education. He was possessed of ample means, and yet was not alienated from his race in any interest. He loved to boast of genuine blackness, and his race pride made him an acceptable, successful, and formidable leader. It was the magnetic thrill of his patriotic utterances that rallied a company for the service of his country the previous year. Upon all occasions he had displayed talents as a commander and gave promise of rare courage when the trying hour should come. It had come at length: not too soon for this eager soldier, if unhappily too early for the cause he loved! During the early part of this action the enemy had trained his guns upon the colors of these Negro troops, and they especially received the closest attention of the sharp-shooters.

“Captain Cailloux commanded the color company. It had suffered severely from the first, but the gallant captain was seen all along the line encouraging his men by brave words and inspiring them by his noble example. His left arm was shattered [struck by a Minié ball above the elbow], but he refused to leave the field. Now in English and then in French, with his voice faint from exhaustion, he urged his men to the fullest measure of duty. In one heroic effort he rushed to the front of his company and exclaimed, “Follow me!” When within about fifty yards of the fort a shell smote him to death, and he fell, like the brave soldier he was, in the advance with his face to the foe. It was a soldier’s death, and just what he would have chosen.”

Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes was a civil rights activist, poet, historian, journalist, and customs officer, African-American historian, Civil War veteran, and New Orleanian. He wrote a definitive history of notable New Orleanians called “Our People, Our History. Desdunes wrote described Cailloux courage based on the eyewitness account from his younger brother, Aristide, who served under Cailloux:

“The eyes of the world were indeed on this American Spartacus. The hero of ancient Rome displayed no braver heroism than did this officer who ran forward to his death with a smile on his lips and crying, ‘Let us go forward, O comrades!’ Six times he threw himself against the murderous batteries of Port Hudson, and in each assault, he repeated his urgent call, ‘Let us go forward, for one more time!’ Finally, falling under the mortal blow, he gave his last order to his attending officer, ‘Bacchus, take charge!’ If anyone should say the knightly Bayard did better or more, according to history, he lies.”

Historians note that because Confederate sharpshooters shot at Union troops trying to retrieve African-American casualties, Cailloux’s body, as well as those of the other members of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard who fell with him, was left on the field of battle until the surrender of Port Hudson on July 9, 1863. Cailloux received a hero’s funeral in the city with a large procession and thousands of attendees along the route on July 29, 1863.

The New York Times wrote that Cailloux “had sealed with his blood the inspiration he received from Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.” According to the newspaper, his sacrifice convinced witnesses that “the struggle must go on until there is not legally a slave under the folds of the American flag.”

The Siege at Port Hudson is often considered to be a major turning point in the war. It was the final engagement in the Union campaign to recapture the Mississippi River in the American Civil War.

The 3rd Louisiana Regiment Native Guard was organized in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 24, 1862, and remained there until May 1863. Between May and July, the regiment was involved in the Siege of Port Hudson. The name of the group was changed to 3rd Regiment, Corps d’Afrique on June 6 at Port Hudson. The Confederate garrison at Port Hudson surrendered on July 9, five days after the fall of Vicksburg farther up the Mississippi River.

All the Native Guard regiments became the 73rd Regiment Infantry of the United States Colored Troops.

Many other brave Black men, contemporaries of Cailloux, stepped up, both free and enslaved, to protect the state of the Union.

P.B.S. Pinchback, a free man of color, was captain of Company A, and later reassigned as company commander of the 2nd Regiment. He also served in the 3rd Regiment, Corps d’Afrique and fought at Port Hudson. Like many of his fellow Black Union captains, Pinchback would resign in 1863 due to the ill-treatment of the Black troops by white commanders. Pinchback later became governor of the state and as a U.S. Representative and Senator.

James Lewis, a mixed-race, former steward on the Confederate river-steamer De Soto, was captain of Company K.

Major Francois (Francis) Ernest Dumas of the 2nd Regiment was the son of plantation owner Joseph Dumas and an octoroon mother. He spoke five languages and had lived in France for some time, inheriting the sugar plantation upon his return.

When the civil war began Dumas freed over 100 of his slaves and enlisted them as a company in the Union Army. He served as Captain of Company B of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards and received a promotion to Major in the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, one of the highest ranks achieved by an African American during the war. He resigned his commission over disputes on July 3, 1863.

Dumas was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 1868 on a ticket backed by publisher Louis Charles Roudanez. He turned down a nomination to be Louisiana’s Republican Party nominee for Lieutenant Governor after losing the nomination for governor to Henry C. Warmoth by a few votes on the second ballot after leading the first.

Jordan Bankston Noble is best known as a drummer in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. However, Noble also served in the Seminole Wars, Mexican-American War under Zachary Taylor, and the American Civil War for both the Confederacy and the Union.

Capt. Jordan Noble commandeered 100 men of the Plauche Guards for the Confederacy during the Civil War but he then raised a new regiment that fought for the U.S.A. when Butler took control of New Orleans from the Confederacy,

Oscar J. Dunn was born into slavery in 1826 in New Orleans. He was bought by James H. Caldwell of New Orleans, who founded the St. Charles Theatre and New Orleans Gas Light Company. Dunn worked for Caldwell as a skilled carpenter for decades, including after his emancipation by Caldwell in 1819.

Dunn fought in the Union Army for the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, rising from Private to Captain and resigned his commission after being passed over for a promotion in favor of a less qualified white officer. In 1868, Dunn became one of only seven Black men in Louisiana’s Senate and the only former slave elected to that body. He also served as Louisiana’s first Black lieutenant governor.

Several other Black-owned and operated businesses and institutions supported the soldiers and Union forces. Among them were Louis Charles Roudanez, M.D., a physician and the founder of the first African-American newspaper in the American South, the first Black daily newspaper, and the first bilingual newspaper for African Americans in the United States. In 1862, Roudanez founded L’Union, a newspaper published in both French and English and primarily serving the free Black community of Louisiana. He followed it with La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans (The New Orleans Tribune), the first daily. Paul Trevigne was the editor of L’Union, which advocated abolition and complete equality for African-Americans.

Central Congregational United Church in Christ on Bienville Street in New Orleans Central Congregational Church provided spiritual guidance and support to many of the Native Guard leaders and played a pivotal role as a meeting place for politicians during Reconstruction and civil rights campaigns post-Reconstruction.

Some of its original congregants were Civil War leaders, including Captain James H. Ingraham, who led the effort to establish Central, Colonel James Lewis, brothers and Native Guard Captains Robert H. Isabelle and Thomas Isabelle, and Cesar and Felix Antoine among others. Lewis, Cesar Antoine and the Isabelle brothers were among the first African Americans to serve in the Louisiana Legislature. They fought for the right to vote and for integration of public schools.

This article originally published in the January 27, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.