Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy in Louisiana's Florida Parishes, 1810–1901

3 An Education in Violence

3 AN EDUCATION IN VIOLENCE Liberty's what we're marchiri for, boys, but we ain't gettiri nearer to it. —Confederate soldier, Fourth Louisiana Infantry Regiment, marching to Liberty, Miss. On a cool spring morning in April, 1862, the Fourth Louisiana InfantryRegiment , C.SA., received orders to abandon its encampment near Corinth, Mississippi, and move forward in support of the Confederate advance against Union positions in the vicinity of Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. The rapid advance was occasioned by the Confederate high command's awareness that the evenly matched opponents would not remain that way for long. The approach of a second Union army would give the combined Federal forces the strength to overwhelm by sheer force of numbers the hastily assembled Confederate army. As the Fourth Louisiana approached the front, a Tennessee regiment mistakenly fired on them from the rear, creating temporary disorder in the ranks. Once reformed, the Louisianians, ranging in age from fifteen to forty-eight, received orders to assault a virtually impregnable Union position later named the "Hornets' Nest." Under orders from General Braxton Bragg, they gallantly launched three frontal attacks against the position, sustaining horrific losses. When the day ended, few among the regiment realized that for them this was only the beginning. Of the more than one thousand men who initially enlisted in the regiment, forty survivedthe war unscathed.1 The decimation of the Fourth Louisiana Regiment symbolized the implications of the war for the Florida parishes. Without an awareness of the uni . Eugene Hunter to Stella Hunter, March 15, 19, 1862, in Hunter-Taylor Family Papers; E. John Ellis Diary, 15-16, in Ellis Family Papers; John S. Kendall, "Recollections of a Confederate Officer," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIX (1946), 1055-70; John S. Kendall, ed., "Muster Rolls of the Fourth Louisiana Regiment of Volunteers, Confederate States Army," LouisianaHistorical Quarterly, XXX (1947), 481-82. AN EDUCATION IN VIOLENCE • 103 mitigated catastrophe the war represented in seemingly insignificant areas of the South, it is impossible to explain the tumultuous conditions that convulsed these regions in the late nineteenth century. The great struggle between North and South disrupted the process of societal transformation occurring in eastern Louisiana, destroyed the sources of stability, demonstrated the effectiveness of violence, and fostered chaos by creating a sociopolitical vacuum where order, however much the form it took was resented by most, once prevailed. During the course of the war, Federal raiders repeatedly visited the Florida parishes, devastating the area with increasing thoroughness as the combat persisted. In the later stages of the fighting, some Federal troops, frustrated by their inability to subjugate the region effectively, waged a war of terror on the civilian population. In response, exasperated residents initiated guerrilla operations against the Federals. The cruel tactics of the guerrillas proved exceptionally effective and, combined with the equally aggressive actions of the Yankees, served to intensify the horror for southerner and northerner alike. The Florida parishes shared the social and economic disorder the war occasioned in large areas of the South, but unlike many other regions that enjoyed the prompt return of a relative state of equilibrium , in eastern Louisiana the effects were enduring. In the Florida parishes the war promoted a determined contempt for authority and, more importantly , provided a lesson in the effectivenessof violence that would shape developments in eastern Louisiana for the remainder of the century. The Fourth Louisiana Infantry Regiment, C.S.A., represented one of the first Confederate units recruited in the Florida parishes. Organized in the fall of 1860, this regiment embodied the jubilation that characterized the secession winter in the Florida parishes. The election of a presidential candidate whom many southerners regarded as hostile to their interests provoked the withdrawal of the states of the Deep South. In the same month that Abraham Lincoln secured election as president, the nucleus for the Fourth Louisiana emerged.2 Yet many Louisianians lamented the collapse of compromise and the triumph of fanaticism. Large numbers of voters in the Florida parishes had demonstrated their unionist sympathies by supporting the Constitutional Union party and the national Democrats. Headed by John Bell, the Constitutional Unionists carried East Baton Rouge and St. Tammany Parishes out2 . Greensburg Imperial, February 2, 1861; Kendall, ed., "Muster Rolls of the Fourth Louisiana," 483-522. IO4 • PISTOLS AND POLITICS right. In East Feliciana, the combined vote for Bell and the national Democrat Stephen Douglas exceeded that for southern Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge...