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2. Confederate New Orleans, February 1861 to May 1862
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2 confederate new orleans, february 1861 to may 1862 Most of the Fort Jackson mutineers enlisted in New Orleans, and any search for their motives must start with a long look at the Crescent City. Civil War historians have increasingly focused on the connections between soldiers at the front and their families and communities at home—links continually reinforced by letters, gifts, newspapers, and men and women traveling back and forth between the army and home. At Fort Jackson, soldiers, whether on leave, discharged on account of sickness, or detailed home to recruit, carried messages and physical reminders from the men at the front. Visitors also came to the fort from New Orleans, including new recruits, civilian and military guests, and, one suspects, a healthy number of fishermen, boat crews, and peddlers. So, even though many of the men who mutinied probably did not see New Orleans again after being posted downriver, they still would have heard about how the war affected their 36 Confederate New Orleans friends and families. In order to understand why the men in Fort Jackson mutinied, we need to look at how their lives, and those of their intimates, had been changed by the war. The soldiers in the garrison had been Confederates for a full year by the time they rebelled, and this period had given them a good opportunity to size up what the new nation would offer them. Many of the soldiers in Fort Jackson had chosen to immigrate to the United States. Had the Confederacy treated them so well that they would consider the southern republic an even better choice? Or was living in the Confederacy perhaps worse than life in the United States had been, making them eager to be part of the Union once again? The possibility that the mutineers might have made a conscious choice to support the United States instead of the Confederacy has a direct bearing on which of the explanations for the mutiny might hold the most weight. If the Union commanders are correct, then the mutineers acted because they had become disheartened about their ability to resist the Union onslaught any longer. Either Porter’s mortars or Farragut’s and Butler’s movements to cut them off convinced them that further defense was pointless. The Union commanders’ explanations imply no larger political motives for the mutineers. But the Confederate commanders suggested something different. They implied that the mutineers were not wholeheartedly Confederate—that, as immigrants, they did not care whether the Confederacy won the Civil War. By looking at how New Orleans fared during its year in the Confederacy, we might well advance another theory for why the mutineers struck. New Orleans, especially the white working class from which the Fort Jackson soldiers were overwhelmingly drawn, had suffered grievously during its Confederate year. The economy had withered, employment had dropped, political repression had climbed, and for what? The men serving in Fort Jackson certainly knew the full extent of the economic collapse, even if they lived sixty-five miles away. Perhaps they mutinied not out of indifference to the Confederacy but out of an active dislike. They may have heartily wished to return to their old allegiances . Examining New Orleans in its Confederate year will not only show that white workers had reasons to deplore the consequences of secession but will also reveal that opposition to the Confederacy existed among whites even as the government did everything it could to suppress that dissent. [44.222.220.101] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:14 GMT) Confederate New Orleans 37 william howard russell and the dawn of confederate new orleans William Howard Russell came to New Orleans just as the Civil War was starting, and his writings are a sound introduction to the city. Russell was a veteran English correspondent, having reported on conflicts in Ireland , the Crimea, and India. He found great enthusiasm for the new nation but also saw signs of weakness that would come to full fruition before April 1862. William Russell crossed the Atlantic in early 1861 to report on the dissolution of the American Republic for the London Times. Aristocratic in his bearing, he was not inclined to give his full approval to the United States or to its democratic form of government. The dispatches he filed concerning Lincoln and his cabinet are reasonable portraits untinted by any particular bias. After seeing Lincoln’s inaugural, Russell rode through much of the South, watching the Confederate States of America come...