Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 67)

new Confederate State of Louisiana. Unity, at least in minds of the radical secessionists, triumphed over good accounting practices. All of this should have been a single, straightforward process. And yet, in typical Louisiana tradition, it became convoluted, contorted and as complex as the characters and concepts represented. The Southern press hailed Louisiana’s joining the new cadre of seceding states. Governor Moore created the nascent republic’s government by simply laminating new titles onto the former state system. Among his first tasks was the seizure of federal property, including the Custom House, the U.S. Mint, and the forts below New Orleans. He vastly increased military spending to prepare for a possible invasion and began raising troops to defend the new regime. Louisiana joined the Confederacy as a sovereign state two months after declaring independence. Throughout the United States and Confederacy, citizens believed that if there was to be a war, it would end after one grand battle, probably near Washington. Louisiana’s citizens had another thought: If the Yankees tried to come up the Mississippi and take New Orleans, they would meet the same fate as the British in 1815. The grand battle was fought at Manassas, Virginia, and was a Southern victory. It proved nothing. In April 1862, the Yankees pushed up the Mississippi, and, after fierce artillery and naval duels at the forts below New Orleans, took the Crescent City without firing a shot. Many historians agree with the late Charles Dufour who wrote that the fall of New Orleans was “the night the war was lost.” The war would continue for three more years. The old order was destroyed, never to rise again in its prior form. The antebellum world of the wealthy planters and the old order they personified was destroyed forever. Vestiges would arise later during the period known as Bourbonism. The wealthy aristocrats ruled again but without the economic benefits of slavery. LCV Gary D. Joiner, Ph.D., is chief operating officer of Precision Cartographics in Shreveport, and director of The Red River Regional Studies Center at LSUShreveport. He is the author of Through the Howling Wilderness: The Red River Campaign and Union Defeat in the West. Celebrating the wealth of community Subscribe today! Visit www.imaginelouisiana.com Call 225.201.0222 Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 67 http://www.imaginelouisiana.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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