Louisiana

D

2

Statehood

On April 30, 1812, the Territory of Orleans entered the federal Union as the 18th state, the state of Louisiana. It included the annexed part of West Florida. Claiborne became the first state governor, and New Orleans continued as the capital.

Less than two months later the War of 1812 erupted between the United States and Britain. In 1814, near the end of the war, the British launched a campaign to capture strategic points along the lower Mississippi and the Gulf Coast. On January 8, 1815, a large British force stormed heavily defended New Orleans, but was thrown back by forces commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson. The decisive United States victory, though won after the signing of the peace treaty, preserved the boundaries of the young republic. Historical evidence indicates that Britain would not have ratified the treaty if it had won at New Orleans.

D

3

Agricultural and Commercial Development

After the War of 1812, settlers from the United States migrated in a steady stream to Louisiana, mainly from other parts of the South. By 1820, with a population of 153,407, Louisiana was thoroughly settled by whites except for some northern and western areas. One region that remained largely unsettled was the upper Red River valley, where a huge logjam north of Natchitoches made the river unnavigable. In the 1830s the logjam, known as the Great Raft, was cleared. By 1840, when the population reached 352,411, settlement of northwestern Louisiana was well under way. By 1860 the population had grown to 708,002, about half of whom were black slaves.

Between 1815 and 1860 Louisiana’s most prosperous farmers cultivated cotton or sugarcane. Cotton, which was less labor intensive than sugarcane, was grown by many small farmers as well as by proprietors of large plantations with many slaves. By 1850 cotton was grown in most parts of the state, with concentrations in the Mississippi Valley, and, to a lesser degree, the Red, Ouachita, and Tensas river valleys. Sugar plantations predominated in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. Sugar was consistently more profitable than cotton before 1860, but the climate kept it from becoming a staple crop in the northern parts of the state. Rice, grown at first along the Mississippi and in the bayou country as food for slaves, became a major commercial crop in the late 19th century, following the introduction of steam technology and irrigation techniques into the prairie country of southwestern Louisiana by Midwestern immigrants.

---

---

D

4

Growth of New Orleans

During this period, New Orleans developed into one of the nation’s leading commercial centers. Between 1830 and 1860 it was also the second leading American port of entry for immigrants. New Orleans was the major market for Louisiana and other Gulf Coast areas and also for vast portions of the rapidly developing Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. By 1820, with a population of 27,176, New Orleans surpassed Charleston, South Carolina, as the largest city in the South; by 1860 its population reached 168,675. This growth was in spite of frequent yellow fever epidemics that were especially lethal to the European immigrants, who were most responsible for the city’s rapid growth.

Between 1815 and 1840 the volume of the city’s commercial traffic swelled astoundingly from $20 million to $200 million as New Orleans moved into second place, after New York City, as the nation’s leading port. Enormous quantities of cotton, tobacco, grain, and meat came down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers by steamboat, while sugar, coffee, and numerous imported manufactured items were shipped upriver to pioneer settlers.

Beginning about 1835 the building of canals and railroads connecting the Midwest with the Northeast resulted in the diversion of much of the Midwest’s grain and meat produce to Northeastern cities. As a result, New Orleans came to rely increasingly on cotton and sugar as export commodities. Another indication of the city’s closer ties with the South was that the slave trade became increasingly important in the city’s commerce.

The growing political and economic power of New Orleans proved a liability because the remainder of the state pressured politicians to relocate the state capital. In 1849 the capital was moved to Baton Rouge.

D

5

The Civil War

Slavery was one of the most divisive political issues in the Congress of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Many Congress members from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because they considered it immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. Members from the Deep South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida) believed that slavery was essential to their agricultural system and that the North was trying to dominate the national economy. By the 1850s, Southerners saw their power slipping in Congress, the clamor for abolition of slavery was at a high pitch, and many in the South came to believe that secession from the Union was the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves.

Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Other Southern states began to follow, and war looked imminent. Louisiana withdrew from the Union on January 26, 1861, the sixth state to do so. Shortly thereafter the seceded states formed a confederacy, the Confederate States of America, and began mobilizing for war. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded a federal fort in Charleston harbor.

Louisiana was remote from most of the action in the war, which occurred to the north and east. The Confederates erected forts on the Mississippi below New Orleans to protect the city and keep the port open. One year later, in April 1862, a fleet of Union Navy ships under Captain David G. Farragut entered the mouth of the Mississippi. After bombarding the forts, Farragut slipped past them and occupied the city without a struggle on April 26. This was a costly loss to the Confederacy, for New Orleans was not only the South’s largest city, it had also been an important supply center.

Continuing upriver after taking New Orleans, Farragut’s forces captured Baton Rouge. The Confederate state government withdrew to Opelousas and later to Shreveport, where it remained for the duration of the war. Baton Rouge did not become the capital again until 1882.

The Union made New Orleans the capital of all federally held territory in Louisiana and placed it under martial law, enforced by the controversial Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler. Butler’s arbitrary rule provoked charges of corruption, earned him the nickname Beast Butler, and caused his dismissal as governor.

In August 1862 Confederate troops attempted to recapture Baton Rouge. Failing, they entrenched themselves at Port Hudson, 32 km (20 mi) upriver from Baton Rouge. Port Hudson fell to Union forces in July 1863, by which time it was the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. However, western and northern Louisiana remained under Confederate control for the remainder of the war.

D

6

Reconstruction and Its Aftermath

Under the terms of Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction of December 1863, a civil government was established over the federally held parts of Louisiana in 1864. A new state constitution was drafted, abolishing slavery.

The civil government, which assumed statewide jurisdiction at the war’s end, came to be dominated by ex-Confederates. Blacks were denied the right to vote. In addition, numerous laws were passed, including the notorious Black Codes, that sharply restricted the rights and freedoms of Louisiana’s black population.

A bloody race riot in 1866 induced the federal government to impose political changes in Louisiana. In 1867 and 1868 Congress passed so-called Reconstruction Acts over President Andrew Johnson’s veto. The Reconstruction Acts restored federal military rule over ten ex-Confederate states, including Louisiana, and made readmission to the Union conditional on the adoption of state constitutions acceptable to Congress. Thus, in March 1868, a new constitution was drafted in New Orleans; it provided voting rights for adult males of all races, and guaranteed full civil rights to blacks. It also disfranchised (denied the vote to) many ex-Confederates. It was approved by the Louisiana voters, a majority of whom were black, and Louisiana was formally readmitted to the Union on June 25, 1868. Whites would have been a majority if they had registered but, perhaps because of apathy, racism, or official dissuasion, about one-half of eligible whites had stayed away from the voter registration offices in 1867 and 1868.

For about eight years following readmission, the majority of officeholders in the state were former slaves, pro-Union white Southerners, and white Northern immigrants, who banded together under the banner of the Republican Party. The latter two groups were labeled scalawags and carpetbaggers, respectively, by their enemies. Blacks who were prominent in this period included Blanche K. Bruce, the first black U.S. senator; P. B. S. Pinchback, the first black state governor; Joseph H. Rainey and Jefferson Long, U.S. congressmen; Oscar J. Dunn, lieutenant governor; and Antoine Dubuclet, state treasurer.

Many white Louisianians worked to undermine Republican rule by political and economic action, as well as by violence through organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (northern Louisiana), the Knights of the White Camellia (southern Louisiana), and the White League. These organizations engaged in such tactics as burning of homes and flogging or lynching of blacks considered dangerous. The White League was particularly vicious, assassinating Republican officials and driving black laborers from their homes. The league’s activities culminated in the bloody Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans in 1874, where 3,500 league members took over the city hall, statehouse, and arsenal, and left only when federal troops arrived. As a consequence, a federal army of occupation remained in the state until the end of the Reconstruction period in 1877.

In the early 1870s the Republican domination of state politics became increasingly precarious. Many Republican supporters, particularly blacks, were intimidated into not voting. In addition, presidential and congressional pardons gave the vote back to many Louisiana ex-Confederates. In the election for governor in 1876, Stephen B. Packard, a Republican, opposed Francis R. T. Nicholls of the Democratic Party. Following the vote counting, both sides claimed victory. Louisiana’s electoral votes for president were also claimed by both sides. The Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, needed those votes and also those of two other Southern states, Florida and South Carolina, to win the presidency.

It is thought that the Republicans and the Southern Democrats struck a deal to settle the election. Whatever the agreement may have been, the Republicans did not challenge the seating of Nicholls as governor, and the Democrats did not challenge the awarding of the electoral votes to Hayes. Then, when Hayes took office in 1877, he called off the federal troops that had been on station in New Orleans. Reconstruction was over. Louisiana was under one-party rule by the Democrats, which did not end until Republican David C. Treen became governor in 1980. The party took various measures to consolidate its power, largely at the expense of the state’s black population. Eventually, a new state constitution in 1898 made most blacks ineligible to vote through a combination of poll taxes, literacy tests, and property qualifications.

	More from Encarta
	•  Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be discontinued. Learn more. •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain