The Louisiana in the Civil War Message Board

Louisiana Native Guards

This post is, in part, simply a means of my letting off steam on a subject that frequently iritates me and a means of trying to set the record straight. The trigger this time was something I found recently on the Internet. In a talk titled “The Social Dimensions of the U. S. Civil War,” presented on March 25, 2007, at a history institute for teachers sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, Professor Mark Grimsley of Ohio State University described the Louisiana Native Guards Regiment as “a militia unit composed of well-to-do Blacks living in New Orleans.” Grimsley went on to state, “...after the Union capture of New Orleans in April 1862, the Native Guards switched sides, and became a Union regiment for the rest of the war.”

Although there were some other statements in Grimsley’s speech with which I could take issue, I will limit my comments to these two. First, there were not enough “well-to-do Blacks” in New Orleans to form more than a company, much less form a regiment. In my research on the Native Guards Regiment of the Louisiana Confederate militia, I was able to determine that it numbered approximately 1,035 men. An independent company associated with the regiment had in it an additional 100 men. The great majority of these men were not wealthy but held jobs as clerks, artisans, and skilled laborers. Only a few were merchants or had pretensions of being “well-to-do.”

The second quote is one that reflects a more repeated piece of misinformation. Grimsley is just the latest to throw it out as holy writ. The men of the regiment in the Louisiana Confederate militia did not simply change uniforms from grey to blue when New Orleans fell to Union troops. James G. Hollandsworth has written the definitive work on the unit: "The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War" (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). He states: “Only 11 percent (108 men) of the 1st Regiment of Butler’s Louisiana Native Guards had served in the militia. Although some free blacks who had avoided service in the Louisiana militia did join, Butler’s Native Guards were primarily contrabands who found their way into Union lines.”

This myth that the entire regiment quickly “switched sides” in late 1862 seems to be used most frequently to try to show that the men who formed the Louisiana Native Guards Regiment for the Louisiana Confederate militia were not really supporters of the Confederate war effort. The fact that 1,027 of them chose not to join the Union army certainly argues against that conclusion.

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