| |
Some Notes
on the Civil War Jayhawkers of Confederate LouisianaBy
W. T. Block | |
The Calcasieu
and Mermentau JayhawkersThere
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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