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The Calcasieu
and Mermentau Jayhawkers
There
was much enthusiasm in Louisiana when the American Civil War first
began. The wealthier cotton and sugar planters usually owned many
slaves, and the war was seen by them as the only way to preserve the
plantation manner of life. Many young men flocked to the colors, seeking
the glory and fame that a soldier’s life might bestow upon them, unmindful
that war’s most frequent ‘gifts’ were death and severed limbs instead
of fame. Many youths enlisted, fearing the war would end before they
could see action, and almost no one foresaw a war that would last
for four years.
A year later, though, it became increasingly obvious that the war
would last much longer. However, events of April, 1862, were soon
to dampen enthusiasm for the war among Louisianans. In that month,
the Confederate Congress passed a military draft for all men ages
18 to 35, later extending the years from 17 to 50 for three years
of service. Also in April, 1862, Admiral David Farragut’s West Gulf
fleet ran passed the Lower Mississippi River forts to capture New
Orleans, leaving only Port Hudson and Vicksburg to block the Union’s
Navy’s advance along the entire river.
Very quickly thereafter, the Civil War became known as "a rich man’s
war and a poor man’s fight." While the Confederate government championed
the cause of States Rights, many poor Southerners soon viewed it as
a war to preserve the institution of slavery, and hence the way of
life of the wealthy planter class that slavery permitted to flourish.
It is believed that only one out of each twenty Confederate soldiers
actually owned slaves. While a few of South Louisiana’s French Acadians
belonged to the planter class, most of them were poor farmers, who
depended for farm labor on their own large families, and who regarded
the conflict as "the American war" (la guerre de les Americains).1
The first evidence of Louisiana’s Jayhawkers appeared with the Union
invasion in May, 1863 of the Bayou Teche country between Opelousas
and Brashear (Morgan) City. And very quickly three groups of men could
be identified, all of whom the Confederates labeled as "Jayhawkers."
The first of those were draft dodgers and conscripts, who hid out
in the swamps. One writer explained their intents and way of life
as follows: |
| ...Many honest
and hard working men deserted or evaded the draft because they never
owned a slave, never participated in the planter’s way of life, and
decided not to defend it. They are not to be confused with the bands
of lawless men, composed of deserters and draft dodgers, who organized
into bodies which they called...guerrillas. They were mounted and
armed...2 |
A third group
whom the Confederates also called Jayhawkers were Unionists, whom
General Nathaniel Banks permitted to take the oath of allegiance,
and he organized them into a regiment known as the First Louisiana
Scouts, who did little in 1864 except exact "revenge against their
former neighbors..."3 More about the Louisiana Scouts will be recorded
later.
In May, 1863, a half dozen or more Texas Confederate units were transferred
to General Taylor’s command to help defend against the new Union threat
advancing north along the Bayou Teche. And the principal supply route
from Texas moved by train from Houston
to Beaumont,
by steamboat from Beaumont
or Sabine Pass
to the Niblett’s Bluff Quartermaster Depot, and then by wagon from
the depot to Opelousas. Wagon traffic along that artery was two-way,
loaded wagons moving to the east and empty wagons returning to Niblett’s
Bluff to reload. And that route’s adjacency to the bottomlands of
the Sabine, Houston, Calcasieu, Mermentau, and Vermilion rivers, as
well as Bear Head and Beckwith creeks and Bayous Serpent, Nezpique,
des Cannes, and Plaquemine Brule, made it an ideal location for Jayhawkers
to prey on the Confederate supply line. In time many more Texas and
Louisiana deserters, also draft dodgers, free Negroes, and escaped
slaves, joined the many Jayhawker bands along that route.
Two 1863 letters from a Lake Charles clergyman explained the social
disarray that existed in Southwest Louisiana when the effects of the
draft and General Taylor’s retreat before the Union forces were felt.
A lengthy quote from the first letter, dated August 23, 1863, follows:
|
Things in Lower
Louisiana: ...The facts presented to us leave no doubt that there
is a system of wholesale stealing going on in that (Calcasieu) section
of the country that would astonish most of our readers, and we regret
to say that Texans are largely concerned in the thieving operations.
Gangs of Negroes have been enticed away from their owners by various
false representations, and brought into different parts of Texas and
sold... Some of them have run away from their seducers while being
brought into Texas, and being unacquainted with the country, are now
occasionally seen in gangs, wandering about, nearly starved to death...
Indeed their statements are often confirmed. Texas officers and soldiers,
as well as private citizens, are often implicated in these disgraceful
operations...
...We fear many of our citizens have been badly swindled by buying
slaves thus stolen from Louisiana plantations... It is further stated...
that a large amount of the property captured by our troops after the
retreat of (Gen. Nathaniel) Banks has been appropriated, by wagon
loads, by certain officers and individuals, and we have reason to
believe that some of this property has been sold in the (Houston)
black market...
...It is stated that the Louisiana deserters who ran away to escape
the service are now in the Calcasieu River bottom, and with the few
Negroes in their company, number about 700. They are said to be very
desperate and are perpetrating the most horrible outrages from time
to time, which are retaliated on them occasionally by our troops in
a manner almost too shocking to relate...4 |
| Another letter
written from Lake Charles on September 16, 1863, confirmed that considerable
Jayhawker problems had arisen in Imperial Calcasieu and neighboring
parishes, as follows: |
Things in Lower
Louisiana:...The number of deserters and others rendezvousing in the
swamps of the Calcasieu are sometimes stated... as seven or eight
hundred... The best information I can get shows that... about September
and October, 1862, some persons residing in the north of Calcasieu
and the west part of Rapides parishes, who were subject to the Conscript
Act of April, 1862, absented themselves from home in order to avoid
being enrolled and formed in camps in the woods - on the Sabine; one
on the Calcasieu, near the boundary line between this parish and Rapides;
and one on Beckwith Creek in Calcasieu Parish...
...I obtained information of these camps, numbers, etc. and communicated
to an officer in the Confederate States service...He did nothing to
disperse them. Encouraged by the immunity enjoyed by these, others
were emboldened to join them. As soon as the exemption law was made
public, this sent their hide-outs many more recruits. It was soon
observed that the immediate neighbors of the enrolling officer were
staying home. Young men, his intimate acquaintances, were in daily
attendance upon their ordinary vocations in the near vicinity of the
enrolling officer’s residence...
...Persons whom everyone knew had no lawful exemptions were returned
home from Camp Pratt, exempted from military servic. Public officers
shelter their kindred under various fraudalent pretenses. By April,
1863, deserters came and went with the same freedom in the parishes
of Rapides, Vermilion, Calcasieu and St. Landry. Nothing is being
done to suppress them, and others, who would cheerfully enter our
service, are deterred from doing so by fear of the injury that may
be done by the Jayhawkers to their families. Indeed we are here without
protection of law, with stealing and plundering by passing soldiers
and others as the general order of the times...5 |
In October, 1863,
Colonel Augustus Buchel’s First Texas Mounted Rifles were stationed
at Niblett’s Bluff and were patrolling throughout Imperial Calcasieu
Parish. Buchel did not report breaking up any Jayhawker bands, but
he did note the capture of some Unionists - "William Griffith, the
bridge burner, and Desire Labove, a deserter from Fournet’s Regiment;
and Joseph Ritchie, a very dangerous character, and supposed to be
one of their spies, will be forwarded to the provost marshal in Houston..."6
Also in October, 1863, one of Buchel’s troopers, Captain Matt Nolan,
wrote about two blockade-runners, loaded with gunpowder, that were
at anchor in Mermentau River. Nolan reported that: |
| ...Lieutenant
Aikens is of the opinion that the (Mermentau) Jayhawkers are watching
the two schooners in the Mermentau, and that the moment they attempt
to unload their powder cargoes, they (the Jayhawkers) will seize them.
He says they can raise 200 men, well-mounted, in two hours time...7 |
| First Sergeant
H. N. Conner, whose four-year diary records his participation in twenty
battles and skirmishes between Opelousas and Morgan City in 1863,
also reported the presence of Jayhawkers on several occasions, as
follows: |
| ...Regiment sent
to catch jayhawkers. Found their nest, but no birds in it... Near
Flat Town, (La.), two of our men were captured by jayhawkers not more
than 500 yards from camp, were disarmed, then taken 5 miles from camp
and turned loose. A few days before, the jayhawkers had taken two
men of the 2nd Louisiana Cavalry (Colonel W. Vincent’s Regiment) and
they murdered them in a most horrible manner... While en route to
Texas for clothing on the Alexandria and Burr’s Ferry road, about
50 miles from the ferry, we were taken prisoner by the jayhawkers,
but were released in about half an hour...8 |
| The brutality
perpetrated by the Jayhawkers against the 2nd Louisiana Cavalry soldiers
perhaps accounted for why Colonel Vincent hunted and hounded the Jayhawkers
with such a vengeance in Vermilion, Lafayette, and St. Mary parishes.
One such example was reported in a letter of Captain W. J. Howerton,
as follows: |
| ...I have just
learned from Doctor (Milledge) McCall, who is down from Grand Chenier,
that the commander of Louisiana District has sent a force into the
(Mermentau) Jayhawkers, and that force is capturing and killing them
off, hanging the scoundrels. When the doctor left up there, some 9
or more had been captured, a good many more killed, and they were
then hemmed in a place called Toussand’s Cove, and still fighting...9 |
Doctor McCall
had ample reason to hate the Jayhawkers, for his son, Milledge, Jr.,
had been killed in a fight with the Mermentau Jayhawkers. Dr. McCall
also lost another son, Lt. Bill McCall, at the Battle of Mansfield.
The writer’s grandmother, Ellen Sweeney, was a teenager on Grand Chenier
during the war, and having no glass windows, she observed that they
barred the wooden shutters not only to keep out the mosquitoes, but
also the black panthers from the marsh and the Jayhawkers, who rode
up and down the ridge at night.
Another story about the Calcasieu Jayhawkers was published in Lake
Charles American Press about 1910, and was told by Mrs. Babette Goos
Fitzenreiter of Lake Charles. She too was a teenager in the Daniel
Goos home at Goosport in 1863 when Ewell Carriere and his Jayhawker
band came for a visit. Her story continues: |
...During the
war, my father, Captain Goos, operated a hospital for wounded Confederate
soldiers in our home in Goosport...10 He was also engaged in the highly
profitable business of blockade-running, buying cotton around this
country, and taking it down to Matamoras in the old Lehmann. He received
$30,000 a cargo for the cotton, and the schooner ran the blockade
four times.
...One day a young man about 25 or 30 years of age, very handsome
and debonaire, and attired in the uniform of a Confederate officer,
came to our home. He had with him about 25 or 30 men. Father told
him to come in, provided quarters for his men, and brought the officer
into the house... We entertained the officer at dinner... I played
the piano, and we sang, and had an enjoyable evening...
...In the morning after breakfast, the young officer gathered together
his men... As they started to ride away, the young officer turned
around. "Do you know who I am?" he asked. "I am Carriere, the Jayhawker."
We all started back in great alarm. We had heard terrible things about
Carriere and his band. "Last night I came here to rob you, Captain
Goos. You have $30,000 in gold in a chest under your bed. I came after
that gold, and I would have burned your house and killed you to get
it. I might also have burned your mill. But you have entertained us
so royally that we decided not to take your money.
...With that, he and his men rode off. That night father and mother
got a spade, and he and mother took the chest out some where and buried
it. Three days later a man from Texas passed our way on the way to
Opelousas, where his daughter attended a convent. He was driving a
fine horse, hitched to a new buggy. That man fell in with the Jayhawkers
and was never heard from again...11 |
Whether or not
Mrs. Fitzenreiter had Ewell Carriere mixed up with Ozeme Carriere
of St. Landry Parish is unknown. Ozeme Carriere also had two brothers
who were Jayhawkers (although none named Ewell), and perhaps some
nephews, Hilaire Carriere, a convicted murderer, being one of them.
According to one writer, Colonel William Vincent’s 2nd Louisiana Cavalry
had perhaps the highest ratio of French Acadians mustered into it
than any other known Louisiana unit. There is one other record of
Vincent’s punitive expeditions against the Mermentau Jayhawkers in
March, 1864, as follows: |
| ...A few days
past, some of Col. Vincent’s cavalry came in sight of Captain Cady,
a Jayhawker chief, and eighteen of his company. They were hotly pursued
and driven to the Mermentau, and all captured. A drum head court martial
was at once formed, the party tried, found guilty, and sentenced to
death. The sentence was executed without the least delay...12 |
| Following the
Battle of Gettysburg and the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg, it
became ever harder to obtain Confederate conscripts in South Louisiana.
The following quote describes Duncan Smith’s (the writer’s great grandfather)
encounter with an enrolling officer at Leesburg (now Cameron), despite
the fact that Smith was 53 years old and supposedly exempt from conscription.
The article continues: |
...On August
2, 1863, a conscripting vessel sailed to the mouth of the Calcasieu
and read the Declaration of the Confederate Congress at Leesburg.
Many called it a recruiting vessel...but (it was) identical with the
British press gangs of the War of 1812...
...The conscriptor was after troops - and did not care how they were
gotten. At any rate Duncan Smith was on the west side of the river,
and he immediately took to the water to get to his home on the east
side... It takes a good man to keep on rowing with one leg shot to
pieces... When Smith was nearing the shore, a woman came running from
the village and met him at the water’s edge... And when the woman
appeared, the firing stopped....13 |
| Duncan Smith
escaped that time with a minie ball in his leg, but if drafted, he
would have deserted anyway. Although born in North Carolina and reared
in Mississippi, he was an Abolitionist that hated slavery with a passion.
In April, 1864, he was "go-between" for the Mermentau Jayhawkers for
the sale of 450 stolen cattle and horses to the Union Navy for $9,000
in gold. As a result, two Union gunboats, the Wave and Granite City,
anchored in the river to load the herd of livestock, when the Confederate
Sabine Pass garrison of about 300 soldiers and four pieces of artillery
attacked the gunboats on May 6, 1864. Following a 90-minute battle,
the gunboats surrendered, and when the Confederates searched Smith’s
home, he escaped capture again by hiding under his wife’s hoopskirts.
Smith was the principal Union spy in Southwest Louisiana, rode aboard
the offshore blockaders at will, and at the end of the war, had a
$10,000 Confederate price tag on his head. In the meantime, the Mermentau
Jayhawkers, who had driven their herd to the Calcasieu, galloped away
into the marsh canebrakes and were not heard from again before the
war ended.14 |
Ozeme Carriere
and the St. Landry Jayhawkers
Without
a doubt, the best known of the Louisiana Jayhawkers, was Ozeme Carriere,
who in 1860 was a 29-year-old male, residing in the household of two
Mulatto sisters, Mary and May Guillory.15 It does not appear that
Carriere began mustering his Jayhawker followers until the summer
of 1863, so who the earliest bands of St. Landry Parish were in 1862
is uncertain. One writer noted that women around the Bayou Chicot
area, northwest of Ville Platte, appealed to Governor Moore as early
as late 1862, as follows: |
| ...We could not
fare worse were we surrounded by a band of Lincoln’s mercenary hirelings.
These men pillage homes, stealing anything they can find. And if you
asked these lawless wretches, their reply is that they are carrying
out the orders of their Captain Todd...16 |
Another writer
observed that in 1859-1860, western St. Landry Parish was already
the scene of brigandage and various vigilante groups engaged in guerrilla-like
warfare. In the summer of 1863, it was left to Carriere to recruit
the disgruntled deserters and draft dodgers, many of whom were Acadians
or ‘prairie Creoles,’ into a group that some called "Carriere’s Battalion"
of about 1,000 men. Their ranks also included some Mulattoes, free
Negroes, and escaped slaves.17 Apparently Carriere kept his forces
broken up into much smaller groups, since complaints about them always
reported the plundering of horses and arms by smaller groups of men.
Bands of less than fifty men could probably hide out in the forests
and bottomlands without attracting so much attention or retribution,
although Carriere certainly had the ability to communicate quickly
with his other Jayhawker bands by horseback.
During the fall of 1863, Carriere united his Jayhawkers into a close-knit
and cohesive group.18 His first haunt was the Mallet Woods, but certainly
by 1864 Carriere’s raids extended into parts of Rapides, Lafayette,
and Vermilion parishes. At first Carriere became popular with the
residents because of his defiance of the Confederate Army and the
Conscription Act. But during General Taylor’s general retreat along
the Red River in 1864, his band drew more deserters, and his Jayhawker
brigandage increased to much thievery and murder against civilians.19
In February, 1864, several residents of St. Landry Parish executed
depositions that small bands of Carriere’s Jayhawkers raided throughout
the parish, stealing horses, weapons, saddles, blankets, cattle and
food.20 Terry Jeansonne complained that after impressing 500 beeves
for the depot commissary at Cheneyville, he was robbed by a number
of Carriere’s plunderers. T. P. Guidry deposed that seven Jayhawkers
robbed him and his mother of a wagon load of corn, 2 horses, and other
property, and Guidry recognized five of them to be Don Louis Godeau,
Agile Myers, Edouard Simon, Maxmilien Guillory, and --- Ardoin.21
Francois Savoy deposed that while he was gathering beeves in Prairie
Hayes, he was accosted by an armed band of Carriere’s men, as follows: |
| ...(Savoy) replied
that he was not a soldier and belonged to no company. They then told
him they would let him go if he promised not to inform on them. They
further told him that they were acting under orders from one certain
Ozeme Carriere; that in letting him go, they would have to keep it
a secret from Carriere to keep him from punishing them...22 |
| During the same
month the St. Landry enrolling officer reported to General Taylor,
as follows: |
...The Jayhawkers
swept over the country known as Plaquemine Ridge, robbing the inhabitants
in many instances of...all their fine horses and good arms they could
find...These lawless bands are daily increasing in numbers; not only
are they collecting the discontented white and the free Negroes, but
the slaves...are going over to them every day...
...I speak from my own knowledge when I say that Carriere is daily
becoming more and more popular with the people, and every day serves
to increase his gang. These men are making the ignorant and deluded
suppose that they are their champions...that their object is to bring
the war to a close...
- ...The few men who report declare that they will never leave home
until some steps are taken to afford some security for the defenseless
ones they leave behind them...23 |
| Captain M. L.
Lyons of "Headquarters, Paroled Prisoners," reported to General Taylor
that it would take 200 well-armed men to subdue Carriere and his band.
Lyons added that: |
| ...those prisoners
of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, of which there are large numbers in
this (St. Landry) parish, have in many instances gone inside the Jayhawker
lines and cannot be gotten out of them...24 |
One writer believed
that the Jayhawker chief, known as a Dr. Dudley, received a commission
from Union General William Franklin, probably in the Louisiana Scouts,
and that Carriere had been offered one, but refused it.25 It was after
General Taylor defeated the Union advance at the Battle of Mansfield
and Generals Franklin and Banks began a slow retreat down the Red
River, that a major effort was made to destroy Carriere’s brigands.
General Taylor assigned the duties of clearing out the St. Landry
and Rapides Parish Jayhawkers to Colonel Louis Bush’ 4th Louisiana
Cavalry, who in turn directed Lt. Colonel Louis A. Bringier to complete
the task.26
Colonel Bringier conducted a totally repressive campaign against Carriere’s
Jayhawkers for next year, until May, 1865, during which time the latter
doubled their efforts to burn houses, pillage, and murder civilians
with a vengeance. When conscription laws ended, Carriere’s men deserted
and went home until only fifty remained in May, 1865, when Colonel
Bringier’s cavalry attacked them. During the onslaught, Carriere was
killed and Martin Guillory, Carriere’s chief officer, was mortally
wounded, thus concluding St. Landry Parish’s ugly struggle with the
Jayhawkers.27 |
The ‘Louisiana
Scouts’
and the Other Parish Jayhawkers
When
the armies of Union Generals William Franklin and Nathaniel Banks
reached Alexandria late in March, 1864, hundreds of Unionists or ‘loyalists,’
whom the Confederates also called Jayhawkers, began emerging from
the forests and swamps, seeking to take the oath of allegiance to
the United States. One Union soldier described them as looking "more
like ragamuffins than men..." General Banks organized them into a
regiment, and he gave to Dennis Haynes command of Company B, 1st Louisiana
(Union) Battalion of Cavalry Scouts. Haynes managed to enroll 118
men into his cavalry company.28 The life of the ‘Louisiana (Union)
Scouts’ was relatively short after the Battle of Mansfield. Although
several of the companies retreated south with Banks’ Union Army, four
companies remained in Rapides Parish, and one company entered the
swamps near Catahoula Lake.29 The Scouts principally sought revenge
from persons loyal to the Confederate States. A person living in Alexandria
noted that the Louisiana Scouts committed against: |
| ...individuals
their vengeance and vindictiveness. This irregular force entered the
residences of planters, carrying off whatever they needed...In remote
parts of the parish, they burned buildings...30 |
| One of those
who was commissioned a Louisiana Scout was a Dr. Dudley, also known
as "Colonel" Duley, against whom "all manner of outrages" were charged.
Those included "houses...burned, livestock killed or stolen...," and
even assassinations. There is a discrepancy about his ultimate fate
though. One source noted that Dr. Dudley retreated to New Orleans
with Banks’ army, only returning to Rapides Parish after the war.31
Another source observed however that Dr. Dudley, "a chief of the Jayhawkers,"
had been captured in January, 1865, and executed. The same source
reported the capture of some Jayhawkers, location not shown, as follows:
|
| ...a band of
them were routed in the swamps, and two were sentenced to be shot.
One of them had a wife and children who came to see him, and oh! It
was piteous to hear the weeping...!32 |
In February,
1864, Major R. E. Wyche and Captain G. W. Smith’s company of cavalry,
Louisiana State Troops, were ordered to flush out the Jayhawkers in
East Rapides and adjoining parishes, particularly in the swamps between
Lake Larto and Catahoula Lake. Their instructions were to: "...hunt
the Jayhawkers down with the utmost severity, and shoot any with arms
in their hands, making resistance..."33
Another soldier active in the swamps of East Rapides and Concordia
parishes was David C. Paul, captain of Paul’s Rangers. One description
of him was that: "...Jayhawkers were killed wherever found and without
consideration..." Paul’s reputation for severe retribution against
the Jayhawkers enabled him later to be elected sheriff of Rapides
Parish.34
Apparently a large area northeast of Alexandria, probably including
swamp areas in LaSalle and Catahoula parishes between Little and Black
rivers, were "infested with recusant conscripts and jayhawkers," and
two letters to General C. J. dePolignac ordered: "...If Jayhawkers
are taken in arms, they will be summarily executed..." Some of their
locations were localized names difficult to identify, such as Big
Creek, Holloway’s Prairie, and David’s Ferry.35
There were other parishes that were periodically molested by Jayhawkers.
As early as September, 1863, General P. O. Hebert at Monroe was ordered
to dispatch five companies of Colonel W. H. Parsons’ brigade into
Winn and Jackson parishes to "...break up the bands of jayhawkers
infesting that section of the county..."36 In March, 1864, General
J. L. Brent reported that: "...bands of deserters and jayhawkers are
infesting the country north of Red River and between Black and Mississippi
rivers. I have ordered Lt. Griffin with a detachment of cavalry into
that section of country..."37
Another letter of April, 1864, reported an infestation of Jayhawkers
in Marion County, Mississippi on Pearl River, as well as in Washington
Parish, Louisiana. The writer added: |
| ...In fact it
is dangerous to travel in that part of Louisiana...they (the Jayhawkers)
are banded together in large numbers, bid defiance to all authorities,
and claim to have a government of their own in opposition to the Confederate
government...38 |
| Even the Union
forces that occupied the LaFourche District around Assumption and
Terrebonne parishes had their own troubles with the Jayhawkers, who
did not care from whom they stole food, horses, or weapons. General
Cameron, a Union general, reported in February, 1865, that: |
| ...There is but
one way to get rid of the guerrillas, who infest and almost hold undisputed
possession of the country from the (Bayou) LaFourche to Grand Lake.
If we pursue them with cavalry, they take to their canoes and small
boats. If we undertake to cut them off with a gunboat, they run into
a chain of smaller bayous where a gunboat cannot follow them. The
only plan left by which we can insure success is to gather together
what small boats we can at Bayou Bouef, and build enough more to carry...125
picked men and fight them in their own way...39 |
| There is, however,
one incorrect statement, that logic maintains is in error, because
no Jayhawker band would venture too far from its safe hiding place
in the forests or swamps, nor permit itself to have to fight on the
open prairie. One article reported that: "...Jayhawkers sometimes
stole children and sold them in Texas. Sarah Dorsey told of 500 such
children..."40 An earlier page noted that slaves stolen on Louisiana
were being sold in Houston in 1863 by Texas soldiers returning from
the fighting around Opelousas. Hence the slave children were being
sold or traded by the Jayhawkers to the passing soldiers en route
to Texas. The one exception might have been Jayhawkers hiding out
in the Sabine River bottoms. |
Summary
Obviously
the American Civil War as fought in Louisiana was accompanied by as
much heartache, military action, civil disobedience, and bloodshed
as in any other Confederate state, except Virginia. The writer has
an unpublished participant account of some twenty battles and skirmishes,
fought by a Confederate cavalryman between Opelousas and Brashear
(Morgan) City between June-November, 1863, that exemplifies some of
the worst fighting and dying similar to that at Gettysburg. As was
stated near the beginning, many Acadian farmers who owned no slaves
quickly reasoned that it was not their war that was being fought,
despite the knowledge of thousands of other Acadian Frenchmen who
served the Confederacy with distinction. The ranks of the Louisiana
Jayhawkers reached their peak around March, 1864, and included recruits
of every persuasion - deserters from Texas and Louisiana, draft dodgers,
free Negroes and escaped slaves, some of whom continued to fight even
after General Lee surrendered. It appears that every Confederate state
had some Jayhawker bands within its borders, yet it has generally
been those guerrillas of Quantrell’s stature that have drawn the most
historical attention. Hopefully that field will attract other historians
in the future.
Many times the writer’s grandmother, Ellen Sweeney, recalled that
night riders or vigilantes continued to ride up and down the Grand
Chenier ridge, occasionally shooting or hanging people, for many years
after the war had ended. |
Endnotes
- Gercie D.
Daigle, "The Robin Hood of Mallet Woods," Las Voix des Prairies,
XI, No. 41 (Apr. 1990), 33. The writer is also indebted to Ms.
Daigle for furnishing the census, genealogical, and succession
data for Ozeme Carriere.
- E. Taylor,
"Discontent in Confederate Louisiana," Louisiana History, II,
No. 4 (Fall, 1961), 424-425.
- A. W. Bergeron,
"Dennis Haynes and his Thrilling Narrative...of Western Louisiana,"
Louisiana History, XXXVIII, No. 1, 36-37.
- "State ofThings
in Lower Louisiana," Galveston Weekly News, Sept. 2, 1863, p.
1.
- "Letter
From Lake Charles-Things in Lower Louisiana," Galveston Weekly
News, Sept. 30, 1863, p. 1.
- Buchel to
Turner, Official Records, Armies, in The War of The Rebellion,
Ser. I, Vol. XXVI,Pt. 2, p. 400.
- Ibid., Noland
to Livesay, Ser. I, Vol. XXVI, Pt. 2, p. 347.
- H. N. Connor,
"Diary of First Sgt. H. N. Connor, 1861-1865," Unpublished, copies
in various Louisiana university Libraries.
- Letter,
Howerton to Smith, Official Records, Armies, Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV.
Pt. 2, p. 1025.
- In May,
1864, Capt. Daniel Goos opened his home for one month for both
Confederate and Union wounded aboard the captured gunboat Wave,
which had been brought up the river to Lake Charles, where some
local persons did not wish to succor the "Yankee" wounded. The
men were survivors of the Battle of Calcasieu Pass on May 6, 1864.
Their wounds were attended to by Union Assistant Surgeon Vermuelen,
who was a Confederate prisoner.
- Babette
Goos Fitzenreiter,"Incident of The Early 1860s," undated clipping,
but about 1910, of Lake Charles American Press, furnished to the
writer by Mrs. Fitzenreiter’s great granddaughter, Mrs. J. G.
Miltner of Lake Charles.
- "Military
Movements in Louisiana," Galveston Weekly News, May 16, 1864,
p. 2, c. 3.
- "How Cameron
Parish, La., Received the Name It Bears," (Beaumont, Tx.) Enterprise,
June 30, 1907.
- W. T. Block,
"Annals of Duncan Smith," Cameron Parish Pilot, July 25 and Aug.
1, 1996; see Smith’s participation in the Battle of Calcasieu
Pass in Letter, Lt. Loring to Sec. Navy Gideon Welles, in Official
Records, Navies, Ser. I, Vol. XXI, pp. 256-259; also see W. T.
Block, "Calcasieu Pass Victory," East Texas Historical Journal,
IX No. 2 (Oct. 1971), pp. 139-144
- Eighth Decennial
Census, 1860, St. Landry, La., Parish, p. 130.
- E. Taylor,
"Discontent in Confederate Louisiana," Louisiana History,II No.
4 (fall 1961), 425.
- C. A. Brasseaux,
"Ozeme Carriere and The St. Landry Jayhawkers," Attakapas Gazette,
XIII No. 4 (Winter 1978), 185-186.
- Ibid., 187.
- Ibid., 188;
G. D. Daigle, "The Robin Hood of Mallet Woods," La Voix des Prairies,
XI No. 41 (April 1990), 33-34.
- Depositions
of Dejean, Guidry, Young, Jeansonne, and Savoy , Official Records,
Armies, Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV. Pt. 2, 963-965.
- Ibid., 963-964.
- Ibid., 965.
- Ibid., 965-966.
- Ibid., 966-967.
- Ibid., 978;
Brasseaux," Ozeme Carriere and the St. Landry Jayhawkers," 188
.
- Officials
Records, Armies, Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV, Pt. 2, 962; also Brasseaux,
"Ozeme Carriere," 188-189.
- Gercie D.
Daigle, "Robin Hood of Mallet Woods," La Voix des Prairies, II,
No. 41, 34; Brasseau, "Ozeme Carriere," 189.
- A. W. Bergeron,
"Dennis Haynes and His Thrilling Narrative ...of Western Louisiana,"
Louisiana History, XXXVIII, No. 1, 36-37.
- Official
Records, Armies, Ser. I, Vol. XLVIII, Pt. 1, 1431.
- Bergeron,
"Dennis Haynes," 36-38.
- G. P. Whittington,
Rapides Parish, Louisiana: A History (Baton Rouge: 1932), 146.
- Lt. John
C. Sibley Diary, quoted in Shreveport Times, November 3, 1957.
- Three letters,
Official Records, Armies, Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV, Pt. 2, 972-973.
- Whittington,
Rapides Parish, Louisiana: A History, 146; J. O. Swanson, "White
Man’s Failure: Rapides Parish etc.," Louisiana History, XXXI,
No. 1, 53.
- Letters,
Surget and Elgee to Gen. dePolignac, Official Records, Armies,
Ser. I, Vol. XXXIV, Pt. 2, 944-946, 976.
- Letters
to Hebert and Col. Burleson, Official Records, Armies, Ser. I,
Vol. XXVI. Pt. 2, 194-195.
- Official
Records, Armies, Ser. I, vol. XLVIII, Pt. 1, 143.
- Ibid., Ser.
I, Vol. XXXII, Pt. 3, 755.
- Ibid., Ser.
I, Vol. XLVIII, Pt. 1, 775-776.
- E. Taylor,
"Discontent in Confederate Louisiana," Louisiana History, II No.
4 (Fall 1961), 426. Four sets of the writer’s great granparents
lived in Imperial Calcasieu during the Civil War. The war was
utter heartbreak on both sides of his family, with some being
Union sympathizers and others, including his Grandfather Block
and his 3 brothers who were Confederate cannoneers at Sabine Pass,
Also three great uncles, two by marriage, in the Confederate Army
were killed in the fighting in Louisiana, including Pvt. Isaac
Bonsall of Mouton’s Div. at Mansfield. Two great uncles and a
great grandfather, Duncan Smith of Cameron, were Union spies in
Calcasieu Parish.
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