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1862 |
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| South America & Caribbean:Last years invasion of Mexico by British , Spanish and French troops becomes a French attempt to establish empire there, but Mexican troops resist. Paraguay's dictator dies but is replaced by his even more brutal son.. | |||||||||||
| North America:Grant takes forts in the Tennessee Valley. Ironclads in Hampton Roads. Battle of Shiloh is a bloodbath for both sides. Confederates claim victories on Virginia peninusula, in the Shenandoah Valley and second Bull Run. Lee makes his first attempt to take the War north. Congress abolishes slavery in the District of Columbia and in U. S. Territories. Lincoln sets January first as the dates of emancipation of slaves in the rebellious states. A regiment of former slaves is formed in Massachusetts. Land granted to rail companies that will connct the Mississippi River to the Pacific and Gulf Coasts. The Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe; waltzes by Strauss; popular songs by Stephen Foster; Taps becomes bugle call. Cast iron facade department store building in New york is world's largest and employes elevators by Otis. Homestead Act will provide land for over 400,000 in the next 18 years.. Department of Agriculture. Confederate salt works on Chesepeake are distroyed.Distillation of alcohol without license becomes illegal and Navy abolishes rum ration.Internal Revenue Act. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Britain chooses the North's grain over the south's cotton in the American war. Textile mills become silent. British crops fail and hunger is widespread. Victor Hugo fiction Les Miserables; painting by Millet, Manet and Church; opera by Berlioz and Verdi. First Monte Carol casino. | |||||||||||
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January 1862
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February 1862
This year’s muted revelry is followed by four years of silence as the Civil War and Federal occupation temporarily halt Carnaval festivities. |
March 1862
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April 1862
Captain David Glasgow Farragut and David Dixon Porter bombard Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip for five days before they fall, allowing them to take of New Orleans. New Orleans falls to Flag Officer David G. Farragut in late April |
May 1862
May 1, Union troops occupy New Orleans after capture by David Farragut’s Union fleet. The fleet includes a side-wheel steam frigate Mississippi which is the largest ship to enter the Mississippi up until this time. Thomas Overton Moore will move the state capital to Opelousas, then to Shreveport. After visiting Camp Moore in Tangipahoa Parish, Moore begins issuing war-time directives including appeals for resistance, forbidding trade with the enemy, burning of cotton crops, placing state militia until Confederate troops arrive and the formation of partisan rangers. Workmen enlarging brine springs on May 4th on Avery Island, Iberia Parish to produce salt for the Confederacy hit solid salt at a depth of 16 feet. Mining operations at the Avery Island Salt Works, the first of this type in North America, are begun and continued until destruction of the salt works on April 17th, 1863 by Union forces. May 25 - Francis T. Nicholls loses his left arm at the Battle of Winchester. |
June 1862
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July 1862
General Richard Taylor, son of President Zachary Taylor, assumes control of Confederate troops in Louisiana. Thomas Overton Moore persuades the legislature to appropriate money for defense fortifications using slave labor. |
August 1862
August 5 - some of the heaviest action of the war in Louisiana occurs at the Battle of Baton Rouge. The site of is now a cemetery near Magnolia Mound plantation house. |
September 1862
The town of Des Allemandes is the scene of numerous skirmishes resulting in capture of an entire detachment of Union soldiers on September 4. A Union train with sixty men ambushed at the Boute station by a Confederate force of Louisiana militia and volunteers on September 4. The train escapes to New Orleans. Fourteen Union soldiers are killed and twenty-two wounded in the skirmish. |
October 1862
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November 1862
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December 1862
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| General Benjamin Silver Spons Butler (1818-1893) controls martial law in the city As Commander of the Fifth Military District. He is called Silver Spoons because of his habit of keeping the silverware when invited to diner. After the war he will represent Massachusetts as a Republican congressman from 1866 to 1875. | Opelousas is the temporary site of the State Capital 1862-1863 Benjamin Franklin Flanders and George Michael Hahn are elected the 1st and 2nd District Representatives to Congress from Louisiana. |
Near the location of Lake Bistineau State Park in northern La., salt is manufactured by some 1500 people during the War between the States blockade. Beginning in 1862 pioneer Baptist preacher and missionary Reverend John Dupree (1806-1899) travels great distances in the state on horseback and baptizes hundreds of converts. He organized many churches in Georgia as well as sixteen in Louisiana east of the Red River. |
A route, Le Chimin Militaire used by Civil War troops leads from the Mississippi River over swamp ridges, Indian trails, through Chackbay (Chegby), Thibodaux and Bayou Lafourche areas, Schriever, Gibson, Morgan City, to Attakapas country. Local militia units took active parts in Civil War engagements. The Williams Bridge in St. Helena Parish is on the Civil War route from Camp Moore to the Mississippi River. A skirmish occurs here on June 28, 1862. Breckenridge’s Confederates crossed the bridge in August 1862 and Grierson’s Federal Raiders on May 1, 1863. |
General Butler chooses the house of John Burnside for his headquarters. Burnside meets him at the door and claims to be a British subject and tells the general that he is trespassing on British soil. It is a bluff but Butler never calls it. The house at 1420 Euterpe St., built in 1847 in the Garden District, is seized by Gen. Butler and turned into the office of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) the first social service of the federal government. The home of General Richard Taylor, Fashion Plantation near Hahnville is plundered by Union Troops. He will command the Confederacy’s Louisiana district, 1862-64 and defeats Banks at battle of Mansfield in 1864. Emma Plantation in Donaldsonville, Ascension Parish is the scene of Civil War skirmish in fall of 1862. The circa 1850 Greek Revival plantation house owned from 1854 to 1869 by Charles A. Kock, a prominent sugar planter. Listed on National Register of Historic Places in 1980. |
In 1862 and 1863 Camp Pratt located at Spanish Lake in Iberville Parish was the official Confederate camp of conscription for South Louisiana. At one time as many as 3,000 conscripts here. A small compound for Union prisoners of war was also located at the camp. Fort Jackson, near Venice in Plaquemines Parish, withstood 5 day siege by Farragut and surrendered after the city fell. In 1898 and 1917-18 it is used as training base. 1961-the fort was declared a national monument. Fort St. Leon in Bellechasse on the West Bank of Plaquemines Parish is destroyed by Adm. Farragut during the Civil War in the Union’s advance up the river. Fort Banks in the area known as Nine Mile Point on the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish is used to blockade the River during the Civil War. The site of Fortier Plantation had one of the area’s first schools, churches and later was the site of a WWI commissary. Once the home of François Quinet, Sr., statesman & early developer in New Orleans. |
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