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1861 |
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| South America & Caribbean:British, French and Spanish troops invade Mexico at Vera Cruz to force president Benito Juarez to honor financial payments he has suspended. Railroads appearing in Chile and Paraguay | |||||||||||
| North America:Kansas is admitted to the United states as a free state. Lincoln is inaugurated March 4. South Carolina which seceded late last year is followed by Alabama. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. A provisional government of the Confederate States is formed, Federal funds are seized and Jefferson Davis (52) is confirmed as the new confederation's president. The Civil War begins on April 12. Winfield Scott, now 75, commands an army of 30,000 by July. At the first Bull Run Beauregard again leads the South. General Benjamin Franklin Butler takes confederate forts in North Carolina in August. Colorado, Dakota, Nevada, Arizona form territories. New Mexico is divided between Colorado and Arizona territories. Cochise leads Chiricahua Apaches, causing troubles in Arizona Territory. MIT, Vassar College, University of Colorado and the University of Washington (Seattle) have beginnings. Western Union line completed between New York and San Francisco despite odds. First U. S. income tax levied by Congress. Work begins on the Central Pacific railroad using 9,000 Chinese laborers due to labor shortage. Gatling gun will see service before the end of the war. Northern troops supplied with Borden's Condensed milk and Van Camp Pork and Beans | |||||||||||
| Europe: Opposition to Napoleon III grows as he implements magnificent plans of public works amid a financial crisis. Italy is united as a single nation under Victor Emmanuel II. I. M. Singer selling more sewing machines in Europe than America. First true bicycle in France. Louis Pasteur publishes germ theory of disease. Fiction by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope; music by Liszt, Bach, Brahms. | |||||||||||
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January 1861
January 23, 1861 to March 26, 1861; The Secession Convention meets and approves an ordinance of secession on January 26. Governor Thomas Overton Moore appoints Brigadier General Braxton Bragg to head the state army and supports the formation of the Confederacy. On January 23, 1861 P. G. T Beauregard is appointed superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. A few days later his brother-in-law Senator John Slidell makes an impassioned secession speech and Beauregard is obliged to relinquish his command, On February 2nd he resigns from the U. S. Army. Following other states, Louisiana secedes from the Federal Union. Colonel Henry Marshall is a signer of the Louisiana Ordinance of Secession and Confederate Constitution. He will also be a Member of the Confederate Congress. |
February 1861
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March 1861
The state legislature votes to join the Confederate States of America. |
April 1861
General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard commands the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina and accepts its surrender on April 12, starting the Civil War. He served throughout the war from Manassas to the defense of the Carolinas under General Joe Johnston before surrendering to Sherman in the war’s closing weeks. His second wife Caroline Deslonde had died in 1864. They had honeymooned briefly in what is today called the Beauregard-Keyes House at 1113 Chartres Street. He also lost a much loved daughter in childbirth and a young grandchild soon followed in death. After the bombardment of Ft. Sumter, Thomas Overton Moore calls for 5,000 more troops. New Orleans, the South’s largest financial center holds a large reserve of gold and silver. Moore halts bank payments in specie and they start to produce Confederate Treasury notes. Moore urges the Confederate government to build a strong defense around New Orleans. |
May 1861
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June 1861
June 8, 1861; Francois Duplessis establishes a school at the site of the former St. Philip Theatre and Washington Ballroom. The Jefferson Davis Boy’s High School opens in the Second District after extensive remodeling. The city buys the building in 1865 and the confederate president’s name is dropped. The old building is finally demolished in 1931 when McDonogh 15 is moved from Barracks Street to the new building. |
July 1861
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August 1861
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September 1861
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October 1861
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November 1861
Captain Charles Wilkes, an Artic explorer and commander of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stops a British packet S. S. Trent and seizes former U, S, Senators John Slidell and John Murray Mason. They are Confederate commissioners bound for Britain and France. They will be released by Secretary of State William Seward next year. |
December 1861
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Judah P. Benjamin, U.S. Senator from Louisiana makes an emotional farewell speech from the floor of the Senate. He had tried to warn his fellow southerners and stall secession. Although their relationship is not always harmonious, his fellow ex-senator Jefferson Davis chooses him as Attorney General of the new Confederacy. After the first battle of Manassas he is shifted to Secretary of War and later Secretary of State. In reality he was the alter ego, speech writer and confidant of Davis. Benjamin urged a process of freeing slaves to gain support from Britain and France, who had outlawed slavery long ago, but found little support among southerners. After the War he fled to Bimini, then London where he started anew by studying law. He went on to become a noted scholar and practitioner there. When he retired he moved to Paris where he died in 1884 and was buried in Pere Lachaise. (near Jim Morrison). He was born in the West Indies and grew up in Charleston, S.C. He studied for a short time at Yale University then came to New Orleans where his political fortunes rose with his practice and he became the first Jew to join the U. S. Senate. His plantation was located in Belle Chasse, but the house was razed in the 1960s. |
One of the principal Louisiana Confederate
induction centers and training camps during the War for Southern Independence
is Camp Moore in Tangipahoa, La., named for Governor Thomas
Overton Moore. Over 400 soldiers are buried in the camp cemetery.
Military groups during this period are big among the Creoles. Some, known as Zouaves wore uniforms that wore a colorful combination of short open jacket, wide red pantaloons and tasseled fezes. |
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