‘American Spartacus’: Captain André
Cailloux of the1st Louisiana Native Guards by Stephen J. Ochs
In unprecedented numbers, both slaves and free
people of color lined the principle downtown
streets of Federal-occupied New Orleans on Wednesday, July 29, 1863. 
They
congregated that day, much to the chagrin of most white New Orleanians, to bid
a final farewell to one of their own: Captain André Cailloux of Company E, 1st
Louisiana Native Guards. Cailloux was the first black warrior-hero of the war
and an officer in the first black regiment to be officially mustered into the
United States Army and to engage in a major battle. He had fallen on May 27,
1863, while courageously leading a doomed charge of the Native Guards against
an impregnable Confederate position defending Port Hudson, Louisiana. His body
had lain for forty days in the broiling sun, identifiable after the fall of
Port Hudson on July 8 only by a ring on his finger. A steamer returned
Cailloux’s body to New Orleans where it lay in the hall of the Friends of
Order, a mutual benefit and burial society to which he belonged. After the funeral services, a hearse slowly
transported his casket through the crowded streets to St. Louis Cemetery #2,
where it was interred with full military honors.
The Reverend Claude Paschal Maistre, the pastor of
St. Rose of Lima Parish, presided. 
Maistre,
who had been suspended by his archbishop for “inciting Negroes” (publicly
advocating abolition and urging their enlistment in the Union army), eulogized
Cailloux as a martyr to the cause of freedom. L'Union, a newspaper published in New Orleans by activist free
people of color, declared that Cailloux’s demonstrated valor, patriotism, and
courage had vindicated his race from the charge that it lacked manliness. A
later historian dubbed Cailloux an
“American Spartacus,” who had proved that “the black man is able to fight and
die for his country.” Many northern
newspapers echoed that same theme. Cailloux’s heroism fired the imagination of
people of African descent in New Orleans. Their leaders transformed him into a
powerful, almost mythic figure, whose name they invoked in their campaigns for
emancipation, suffrage, and equal rights
Like
most of the 11,000 free people of color (known as gens de couleur) living in New Orleans
in 1860, Cailloux was Afro-Creole: African, or Afro-French in ancestry, French
in culture and language, and Catholic in religion. He was born the slave of Joseph Duvernay in rural Plaquemines
(civil) Parish down river from New Orleans on August 25, 1825. After the death
of his master in 1828, however, he became the property of Duvernay’s sister,
Aimée Lartet, who brought him to New Orleans. There, he learned the cigar
maker’s trade, most probably hired himself out for wages, and was given his
freedom in 1846 at the age of twenty-one. Less than a year later, at St. Mary’s
Assumption church, he married Felicie Louise Coulon, herself a recently
manumitted slave. The couple thus moved into the ranks of New Orleans' large
population of free people of color who
numbered about 11,000 in 1860 and who occupied an anomalous legal and social
position between whites and slaves within Louisiana’s unique tri-partite racial
caste system.
Though
they could not vote, free people of color could own property, make contracts,
and testify in court. They were easily the most prosperous free black
population in the nation, with a majority working as artisans, laborers, and
shop keepers, and some even owning slaves. 
Their
relative prosperity, however, paled in comparison to that of whites. While most
free people of color were of mixed-race, they ran the spectrum of phenotypes.
Cailloux, for example, took great pride in his ebony complexion, boasting that
he was the blackest man in the Crescent City.
Despite
the increasingly inhospitable political and economic climate in New Orleans for
free people of color in the 1850s, Cailloux carved out a respectable life for
himself and his family as an independent artisan. He worked hard at his cigar
making business, learned how to write (and presumably to read), purchased a
modest house with the help of a $400 mortgage, bought his mother out of
slavery, had his children baptized in the Catholic Church, and educated his
sons at the Institute Catholique, a
school conducted by Afro-Creole intellectuals and a vitally important community
institution. Clearly respected by his peers, Cailloux won election as secretary
of the Friends of Order, one of the many Afro-Creole mutual benefit societies
in the city.
When
the Civil War began, the Louisiana state government authorized the formation of
a militia regiment of free people of color in New Orleans known as the
Defenders of the Native Land, or the Louisiana Native Guards – a regiment that
the governor intended for show and not for combat. While some free people of
color may have enlisted out of a sense of loyalty to their state, most
evidently did so for fear of possible reprisals. They also probably hoped that
service would translate into improved conditions for them at war’s end. The
various companies of the regiment formed around mutual aid and benefit
societies and Cailloux became a fist lieutenant in Order Company. Following the
Federal capture of New Orleans in April 1862, the Native Guards disbanded, but
in August, 1862, General Benjamin Butler, short of troops, acutely aware of the
hostility of most white New Orleanians to the Union cause, and fearing a
Confederate attack on the city, authorized the recruitment of three regiments
of free people of color into the Union army.
The
response of Afro-Creoles was overwhelming, with a vast majority of eligible
males enlisting. The nearly one-thousand man-strong 1st Regiment of
Louisiana Native Guards was mustered into federal service in September 1862,
and two others quickly followed. While the field officers of the new regiments
were white, the company officers were free men of color. 
Cailloux
received a commission as captain of E
Company of the 1st Regiment and proved an effective recruiter. Like
the other black officers, he welcomed both free people of color and runaway
slaves into the ranks, both groups apparently sharing a common agenda of
freedom and liberation and recognizing that military service would enhance their
claims to greater equality. Respected in his community, polished in manners,
athletic, and charismatic, the thirty-eight year-old Cailloux exuded confidence
and authority and cut a dashing figure that debunked the stereotype of black
servility and inferiority.
Cailloux
and the men of the 1st Regiment, however, faced daunting challenges.
White New Orleanians insulted the troops in the streets, while white landlords
harassed their families, and slave owners refused to allow soldiers to have
contact with wives who were slaves. In addition, the government failed to
deliver on Butler’s pledge of bounties, equal pay, and rations for soldiers’
families. White officers snubbed their black counterparts while white enlisted
men refused to salute or obey black officers and showered insults on rest of
the Guards. The 1st Regiment had difficulty procuring supplies and
equipment, and once in the field spent most of its time on guard or fatigue
duty. 
The
latter involving back-breaking manual labor, which stigmatized black troops and
left little time for drill and training. To make matters worse, General
Nathanial P. Banks, who replaced Butler in December 1862, mounted a campaign to
remove the black officers of the Native Guards, focusing his initial efforts on
the 2nd and 3rd regiments. But in the spring of 1863,
Cailloux remained at the head of his company, yearning for an opportunity to
demonstrate his own and his men’s martial valor.
That opportunity came in May 1863,
when the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards were
assigned to General Banks’ forces
besieging the Confederate bastion of Port Hudson, one of two remaining
Confederate strongholds (the other was Vicksburg) on the Mississippi River. On the morning of May 27th., the 1st
and 3rd regiments, which were stationed on the far right of the Union line,
received orders to participate in the general assault on Port Hudson by
storming a virtually impregnable position of bluffs and rifle pits protected by
a swamp and a Rebel engineered backwater from the Mississippi River. Cailloux’s
company E, designated as the color company to bear the regimental standards,
would man the center of the regimental line and spearhead the assault over an
area fully exposed to rebel fire.
As
his regiment advanced into place, Cailloux calmly moved along the line
encouraging his men in both English and French. At 10 A. M, the bugle sounded
and the Native Guards emerged from the woods in good order, advancing toward
the bluff about 600 yards away. The 1st Regiment led off, followed closely by
the 3rd, with each regiment forming a long line, two ranks deep.
From a distance of about two hundred yards, the Confederates directed withering
musket and artillery fire at the advancing troops. The barrage threw the
leading elements into confusion and they broke and ran to cover among willow
trees. Cailloux and other officers rallied their men several times. Finally, Cailloux led a charge of screaming
and shouting men that reached the backwater, about two hundred yards from the
bluffs. At that point, the Guards fired their first and apparently only volley.
Confederate artillery then opened up on
them with solid shot, grape, and canister and the infantry rained down
lead. Only the availability of trees,
stumps and other obstacles prevented a complete slaughter.
In the midst of the pandemonium, Cailloux
sought to embolden and rally his men. His face ashen from the sulfurous smoke,
his left arm broken and dangling by his side, Cailloux held his unsheathed
sword aloft in his right hand and hoarsely exhorted his soldiers to follow him.
As he moved in advance of his troops across the flooded ditch, a shell struck
him in the head and killed him. 
At
that point, the 1st Regiment broke and fell back. Under a hail of Confederate
artillery fire, both regiments sought shelter in the nearby willow forest until
night fall. All along the Confederate line that day, Union forces were repulsed
with heavy losses. Black troops, however, had shown that they would fight in
the most unpromising of circumstances. Journalists, soldiers, and politicians sympathetic to the cause of
black troops hailed the battle of Port Hudson and Cailloux’s heroism in
particular as evidence of the martial capacity of blacks and urged increased
recruitment of them. Shortly thereafter, the Battle of Millikens Bend and then the widely
publicized charge of the Massachusetts 54th at Ft. Wagner gave added
impetus to the movement for black troops. By war’s end, approximately 180,000
African Americans had served in the armed forces of the United States.
More
than a year after Cailloux’s public funeral, in October 1864, the National
Negro Convention, presided over by Frederick Douglas, met in Syracuse, New
York, and literally took up Cailloux’s standard. For the regimental flag of the
1st Regiment, “stained with the blood of the brave Cailloux,” was
borne into the convention by James H. Ingraham, a veteran of Port Hudson who
had taken over command of Company E after Cailloux’s death. The banner hung in honor
over the platform as speaker after speaker recounted Cailloux’s heroism. The
Convention eventually created a National Equal Rights League that launched a
campaign for black suffrage. Both in
life and in death, Captain André Cailloux, whose last name translated as “the
Rock,” inspired and united people of color to fight for freedom and equality.
Adapted
from Stephen J. Ochs, A Black Patriot
and a White Priest: André Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New
Orleans (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2000)
Stephen
Ochs lives in Silver Spring, Md. He teaches U.S. history and chairs the Social
Studies Department at Georgetown Preparatory School. He is the author of two
other books.