Ruined by This Miserable War: The Dispatches of Charles Prosper Fauconnet, a French Diplomat in New Orleans, 1863–1868

Preface

PrefaCe Because of the highly fragmentary nature of the relatively large and rapidly growing body of secondary literature relating to Louisiana’s Civil War experience , it is difficult for nonspecialists to obtain a comprehensive view of that topic. John D. Winters’s standard overview, The Civil War in Louisiana, though still serviceable for basic factual information, is badly dated and in desperate need of replacement by a more analytical work incorporating the scholarship of the last half-century. A synthesis of the new scholarship, however, fails to provide a truly comprehensive representation of wartime Louisiana. Although scholars have duly noted and analyzed the national significance of Louisiana’s Reconstruction-era political and social upheavals, students of the war have failed to fill several glaring omissions in the secondary literature—ranging from the era preceding Union occupation, to widespread Confederate disaffection, to the medical, environmental, and cultural consequences of the conflict, to Louisiana’s multifaceted, transnational role in the war. With regard to Louisiana ’s transnational impact, Civil War scholars have particularly neglected the state’s important “French connection,” especially during the period of France’s intervention in Mexico.1 This lacuna in the secondary literature stems in part from the traditional inability of Civil War historians to utilize French primary source materials and in part from the dearth of conventional primary sources on the topic itself within Louisiana’s borders, thanks in large part to the scorched-earth policy of the region’s Union invaders.2 Recently, this gap in the documentation closed significantly with Yale University’s late-2007 acquisition of the Charles Prosper Fauconnet manuscript.3 Consisting of copied diplomatic dispatches and related official commentaries from career diplomat Charles Prosper Fauconnet, the acting French consul at New Orleans from 1863 to 1865 and again in 1868, the 316-page manuscript, now housed in Yale’s Beinecke Library, is unquestionably the most important document regarding the Gulf and Trans-Mississippi theaters to come to light in the past decade. The manuscript is breathtaking in its geographic scope and topical breadth, thanks in part to the multifaceted professional background and the acute PrefaCe x observational and reporting skills of its author, a seasoned diplomat who had risen slowly through the ranks throughout his early career in Latin America and the United States. Fauconnet’s personnel dossier indicates that his career began on March 29, 1845, when the French state department appointed him “chancelier” (chief secretary) of the consulate at Mazatlán, Mexico. Fauconnet assumed that role at the Tampico consulate on November 29 of the following year, before moving to Charleston, South Carolina, on June 11, 1849. He became gérant (office manager) of France’s New Orleans consulate on March 31, 1860, and served in that capacity until General Benjamin F. Butler, Union commander of the Department of the Gulf, demanded the recall of Count E. de Méjan, the French consul-general and an unabashed Confederate sympathizer. Following Méjan’s departure, Fauconnet assumed the duties of acting consul, although he continued to hold the more modest official title of gérant.4 As acting consul, Fauconnet quickly and effectively repaired the rift between local French and American authorities while striving valiantly to safeguard the interests of his government and the French nationals who found themselves literally and figuratively in a crossfire; his distinguished service to la mère patrie under very trying circumstances earned him admission to the prestigious Legion of Honor on April 29, 1863. Although the United States government officially recognized Ernest Napoléon Marie Godeaux5 as Fauconnet’s successor in early 1865, the former acting consul apparently remained at the New Orleans consulate as Benjamin Franklin Butler. From Alcée Fortier, A History of Louisiana, 4 vols. (New York: Manzi, Joyant & Co., 1904), vol. 4, facing p. 38. PrefaCe xi France’s representative throughout the year, perhaps until shortly before his appointment as “vice-consul” at Galveston, Texas, on July 27, 1866.6 He returned to the Crescent City as acting consul by mid-June 1868, though he evidently did not receive a formal appointment as consulate “manager” there until May 19, 1870. His exemplary service at New Orleans warranted promotion to consul second-class at Panama on October 30, 1873. By 1877, he had risen to the rank of consul. On February 19, 1878, Fauconnet received his final diplomatic appointment as consul at Melbourne, Australia.7 Although his diplomatic career spanned five...