The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre

by C. Dier

  The inhabitants of the parishes of Plaquemines and St. Bernard regard with pride the able and honorable manner in which Lieut. Beauregard has fulfilled his duties as an officer of the Topographical Engineers in the American army, and the coolness, intrepidity and talents displayed by him in various battles in which he participated from Vera Cruz to Mexico.57

  New Orleans was an epicenter of global trade and by far the most populous city of the Confederacy. The city was vital for the South to protect and necessary for the Union to capture. Camp Chalmette, located on the grounds of the Battle of New Orleans, was commissioned in late 1861 to protect advancements from the river and provide supplementary training to troops. The camp had ten thirty-two-pound guns facing the river. Between the cannons and the river was a ditch approximately thirty feet wide and eight feet deep. One lieutenant stationed there proudly commented, “Woe be the Yankee that ever attempts to invade the Crescent City.”58

  Due to inactivity, there was an excess of leisure time at Camp Chalmette. Many troops passed the time by drinking heavily and playing poker, a game that originated in New Orleans. It was not unusual for men to sneak away from camp and take the short excursion to New Orleans for a night of drinking, gambling and visiting brothels. If they were caught upon arrival at Camp Chalmette, a strike to the face with a rifle by an officer was a common punishment.59

  Two main forts in lower Plaquemines Parish, Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, were stockpiled with cannons to thwart a Union attack. Fort St. Philip notably resisted nine days of British bombardment in 1815. Fort Jackson, named after Andrew Jackson, was built in 1822 to create additional protection for New Orleans in case of another invasion attempt by a foreign enemy.

  THE WAR IMMEDIATELY impacted the South’s economy, and special laws passed in response to the war disproportionately impacted many poor, rural whites in favor of wealthy plantation owners. Slave owners who owned more than twenty slaves were exempt from drafts, while other wealthy men were legally permitted to purchase substitutes to fight in their place. Higher taxes on agricultural produce were felt hardest among poor farmers as opposed to large plantation owners. Inflation caused prices of basic necessities to skyrocket.60

  These issues created backlash and resistance among some whites, who began to view the war as a rich man’s war. Many whites in St. Bernard Parish and throughout rural areas in Louisiana, especially those living on the water’s edge, started to ignore the new pleas of conscription from the Confederacy. Resistance was particularly high among Acadian communities throughout southern Louisiana. As the war continued, desertion increased among Confederate ranks.61

  INVASION

  The Union invaded New Orleans and the surrounding area in 1862. Unlike the British, the Union would not arrive via the lakes and bayous but attacked directly through the river. David Farragut was chosen to lead the largest naval fleet ever assembled in U.S. history to date. Farragut, a son of a Revolutionary War veteran, had lived in New Orleans throughout most of his childhood. At nine years old, he joined the navy and fought against the British aboard the Essex. He was captured in Chile at the age of fourteen. Although there were doubts of his Union loyalty, Farragut was granted the enormous task of capturing his childhood home, now a heavily fortified major Confederate city.62

  Farragut first blockaded New Orleans, and the Confederacy resisted in a struggle known as the Battle of the Head of Passes. The Confederacy withdrew upriver after unsuccessfully challenging the Union fleet. Notably, the nearby disturbances did not completely detract from New Orleanians’ Mardi Gras celebrations. Residents held seven huge carnival balls, and parades meandered through crowded city streets, though street masking was banned for fear of Union spies. Although the city celebrated, economic stagnation and the knowledge of a massive Union fleet dampened moods. One newspaper claimed that the holiday had “passed off with a quietness probably never before known to New Orleans. No masks on the street, no revelry or intoxication, as is to be seen by the absence of all serious cases from our police records.”63

  On March 15, Major General Mansfield Lovell declared martial law in New Orleans and neighboring parishes, including St. Bernard Parish, just as Andrew Jackson had decades earlier. The martial law decree was deemed so draconian that the Louisiana governor submitted a grievance to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, regarding the “persistent complaints” he had received from his constituents. Lovell’s goal in declaring martial law had been to rule out sympathizers and to coerce all “white male residents” to take up arms. Three weeks after martial law was decreed, only 12,984 white males—a small minority of the demographic overall—had pledged oaths. Many had either realized the impending doom before them or were discontent with the Confederacy. Reports of “sabotage, trade with the enemy, and verbal dissent” were widespread.64

  The turnout for Lovell’s calls for conscription of all white males represented an enormous disappointment for the Confederacy. The New Orleans Bee claimed the region was run amok with “apathy and indifference” to the Confederate cause. Parishes were ordered to form militias of white men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. St. Bernard Parish, along with five other parishes in southern Louisiana, did not heed the call and sent no companies to New Orleans.65

  The convergence of unique circumstances did not benefit the Confederacy, as these two forces were about to exchange blows. No matter the victor, the lasting repercussions would be felt harshest among the most vulnerable. Those repercussions would manifest themselves in a dangerous way in postwar St. Bernard Parish.

  IN APRIL 1862, the Union fleet advanced upriver and attacked Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson. Citizens from the parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines felt the relentlessness of the bombardment. According to Harnett T. Kane’s Deep Delta Country, “Sun-darkened trappers and blue-clad oyster-tongers gazed at vessels—wooden gunboats and mortar schooners—such as they had never seen or imagined, sending high waves toward the shore, forcing small floods over the low-lying field here and there.” Kane claimed houses collapsed from ricocheting cannonballs while some took to their boats to retreat to nearby islands as the battle raged. One local man noted that “it was like a big paw hitting at us, all the time.”66

  Albert Patterson, a former slave interviewed by the WPA in 1940, was tasked to carry the wounded to the hospital. He vividly recalled the attack:

  I remember when de gunboats come up de river and took [Fort] Jackson and St. Phillip’s Fort, and General Butler took New Orleans [May 1, 1862]. I seen some bad things. I seen de Rebel soldiers run wid their leg ’most cut off to de knee, or de arm hangin’, de blood pourin’. De Colonel, he make me carry dem in de buggy so they could come here to de hospital. And then some of them start cussin’, and insist they goin’ right back to de battlefield even with their arm cut off so they can’t carry a gun.67

  Many of the enslaved in St. Bernard Parish probably considered the Union fleet as a liberating force. If not liberation, the Union fleet provided aspirations for a better life, a life of hope free of servitude and bondage. Most probably recognized the Union occupiers would not bring complete jubilation but would perhaps usher a new wave of progress for black Americans that had been historically denied in the South. This mentality was in stark contrast to many of their white neighbors, especially the wealthy slave-owning elite.

  On April 24, after skirmishes with both forts, Farragut’s fleet triumphantly proceeded upriver to New Orleans. The Union fleet easily overpowered the Confederate fleet tasked with defending the city. According to John D. Winters in The Civil War in Louisiana, “Self-destruction, lack of co-operation, cowardice of untrained officers, and the murderous fire of the Federal gunboats reduced the fleet to a demoralized shambles.” One of the first Union vessels to anchor coerced a camp of Confederates led by Ignatius Szymanski to surrender. In total, the Union lost thirty-nine men and the Confederacy lost eleven.68

  Desertion was common in nearby forts as word spread of the Union victory. An all-out mutin
y occurred at Fort Jackson, in which lower-ranked soldiers forced the officers to surrender. The city itself was in havoc. The Confederacy burned bales of cotton and sugar and other valuable supplies. Mobs took advantage of the chaos and looted. Molasses dumped from the port flooded Canal Street. Some Confederate supporters lined the levees and fearlessly cursed the docking Union ships. Farragut ordered two officers to administer the surrender. George Washington Cable, a famed novelist from New Orleans, witnessed the event and wrote: “So through the gates of death those two men walked to the City Hall to demand the town’s surrender. It was one of the bravest deeds I ever saw done.” An overwhelmed Mansfield Lovell did not officially surrender, but he evacuated all Confederate troops within his power. The decision spared New Orleans the brutal destruction faced by other Southern cities.69

  The capitulation of New Orleans was a major turning point for the war. The Confederacy lost its largest city and its robust industry and lavish revenues. Most importantly, it surrendered vital access to the mouth of the Mississippi River. South Louisiana was one of the Union’s first major strongholds of the Civil War. The Confederacy would never recover from the loss.

  RECENTLY ABANDONED CONFEDERATE camps in the area were converted into Union camps. Union troops took over Camp Chalmette on January 5, 1863. Perhaps the most detailed account of Camp Chalmette is from the diary of Lawrence Van Alstyne, a Union soldier. He noticed the quick withdrawal of Confederate troops upon arrival to the camp:

  We have put up our tents, and have been looking about. It is a large camp ground and from all signs was lately occupied and was left in a hurry. Odds and ends of camp furniture are scatted about, and there are many signs of a hasty leave-taking. A few of us went back across the country to a large woods, where we found many trees covered with long gray mass, hanging down in a great bunches from the branches. We took all we could carry to make a bed of, for it is soft as feathers.70

  He subsequently noted the doctor would not allow them to use the moss for bedding because it caused sickness. Alstyne was ecstatic to be on the grounds where the Battle of New Orleans was fought. He wrote a short entry about the celebration on January 8, 1863, the anniversary of the battle, and the sickness of the camp to perform drill: “To-day is the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans and is celebrated here like the Fourth of July at home. Drill has been attempted, but only about 200 men were fit for it and our camp duties are about all we are able to do.”71

  The conditions at Camp Chalmette were brutal. Alstyne frequently referenced his cough in his journal. On January 17, he noted a suicide attempt, the first of many, in which he intervened to save a life. Two days later, smallpox was discovered, and the carrier was isolated and left to die. On January 27, he wrote about the death of a friend who had kept “up the spirits” of Camp Chalmette: “Brown died this forenoon and I shall never forget the scene. He was conscious and able to talk and the last he said was for us to stick and hang. ‘But boys,’ said he, ‘if I had the power, I would start north with all who wanted to go and as soon as we passed over four feet of ground I would sink it.’”72

  Disease and death ravaged Camp Chalmette. The conditions were unbearable. Nonetheless, after the fall of New Orleans to the hands of the Union, African Americans quickly offered their military services to Major General Benjamin Butler. The First Louisiana Native Guard, initially a Confederate unit that saw no action, was the Union’s first formally sanctioned all-black unit. The regiment included runaway slaves and free men of color. Although the Confederacy in Louisiana did not utilize any African American troops in combat, the Union used the troops during the Siege at Port Hudson. It was the first usage of African American troops in the Union army, three months prior to the famous Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. Port Hudson, the last Confederate stronghold in Louisiana, was the concluding engagement by the Union to fully capture the Mississippi River in Louisiana. By the end of the Civil War, over twenty-four thousand black Louisianans had joined the ranks of the Union. Seven thousand white men from Louisiana also enlisted in the Union army, more than the number of whites who enlisted in the Union army from North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Florida or Georgia. Louisiana was a deeply divided state.73

  One of the recently freedmen to join the Union army was Ceceil George’s father. George told the story of a white man who approached with news about the events that led her father to fight:

  In de field de people was workin’ and my uncle was de driver. We was in de road playin’, and de man got to like the corner. We say, “Who dat comin’?” When he got close we break and run to the quarters. He say, “Don’ run! Come back! I am yo’ friend. How yo’ all do?” But we ready to run, an’ he reached in his sack, break up some “hard tack,” dey call it, an’ give us all a piece. When he done, he wrote on a piece of paper an’ give it to my uncle, de driver. Den he say to us, “Can yo’ keep a secret an’ don’ repeat?” We say, “Yes, sah.” He say, “I come from yo’ friend Abraham Lincoln. He say ‘hold yo’ peace.’” He took de map of de parish, an’ I don’t know when he walked back—maybe at night—but we don’ see him no more.

  Den my father run off de plantation to de barracks to go to war. He was killed three months before we knew it, an’ was buried in Chalmette. After that a uncle brought us up, and we had to stay in that heathen place till freedom come.74

  The Union victory and the tide of the war in favor of the Union promised hope for the enslaved. Insubordination from those locked in bondage was rife. In April 1862, tensions rose between laborers and the overseers at the Millaudon Plantation in lower St. Bernard Parish due to grave disagreements on how harsh overseers should punish the laborers as Union troops occupied the region. Henry Clement Millaudon, the son of the plantation owner, paid a visit to George Windberry, the supposed “ringleader” inciting insubordination among the workforce. Millaudon lashed at Windberry with his whip, but to his dismay, Windberry struck back and caused Millaudon to fall. Windberry then fled to the cane fields after Millaudon fired a few rounds from his pistol. Millaudon gave William MacKay, the tough overseer, strict orders to use lethal force to establish order if necessary. The next day, MacKay shot two men who would not comply. He later attempted to shoot Freeman Washington, a slave, for the same reason, but Washington was armed and shot MacKay dead. Over 150 of Millaudon’s enslaved workforce abandoned the site en masse in search of freedom. The Millaudon family eventually abandoned its property.75

  The events at Millaudon Plantation were not an anomaly. Thousands abandoned nearby plantations via any transportation available in Union-occupied territory in hopes of freedom. One planter referenced the departure of the enslaved in his journal as a “perfect stampede.” By the summer of 1862, hundreds of the formally enslaved amassed in Union camps, including Camp Chalmette, while planters demanded back what they considered their rightful property. The issue compelled the Union government to adopt policies to address the situation.76

  Major General Benjamin Butler devised a compromise to appease both the recently freed and their old slave owners. Butler needed the cooperation of former slave owners to establish a reliable government and reap the profitable benefits of the local agricultural economy. In 1859, over 60 percent “of all sugar made in the United States that year” came from the sugar-producing region surrounding New Orleans. In St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes, freedpeople were to return to their plantations and planters were to pay fair wages. Planters consented to pay a monthly wage of ten dollars, and if the planter provided basic necessities, he had the right to deduct three dollars. Women were paid less.77

  Under these new contract agreements, laborers had to work ten hours a day for twenty-six days per month. Butler outlawed corporal punishment from the planters, but in order to appease their requests, he provided plantations with Union soldiers to oversee discipline and ensure laborers stayed on the plantation. The formally enslaved soon realized some of the new occupiers were cracking the same whips they hoped to escape. Butler ac
knowledged the claims of slaveholders while providing token rights to the recently freed and appeasing those who questioned the institution of slavery. The plan benefited ex-slaveholders more than the recently freed. In many cases, conditions were probably not much different than slavery.78

  Fleeing from the Land of Bondage.—On the Mississippi River in 1863. Recently emancipated African Americans board a steamboat as a Union soldier stands guard. Courtesy of the New Orleans Historic Collection.

  Plantation police checking the papers of freedpeople in St. Bernard Parish in 1863. Movement for freedpeople was limited even after the abolishment of slavery. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  On January 1, 1863, less than a year after the Union capture of New Orleans, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to abolish slavery in the South. The proclamation exempted federally occupied parts of Louisiana, including “the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines.” Although slavery was legally allowed to persist, Butler’s plan already addressed the situation, at least temporarily.79

  Throughout the remainder of the war, there was seemingly no resistance from St. Bernard Parish. Many plantation owners either left or adapted to the new system, which still allowed for significant profit. Antonio Marrero abandoned his plantation and rented his land to freedmen. According to 1865 tax roll reports, Marrero was still the wealthiest Isleño in the parish. Radical Republicans—dubbed “carpetbaggers” by local Democrats, a pejorative for Northerners who moved to the South during or after the Civil War—purchased and operated some of the plantations.80

  The lack of resistance spared St. Bernard Parish any destruction. Resistance in other regions resulted in complete devastation. The once thriving town of Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish was reduced to rubble, and numerous plantations were set ablaze by the Union military due to Confederate partisans resisting occupation.81