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1863 |
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| South America & Caribbean:Mexico City is occupied by French forces where Napoleon III installs Maximilian as emperor. | |||||||||||
| North America:The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect January 1. As president Lincoln changes commanding officers the Union loses at Chancellorsville and wins at Gettysburg. Vicksburg falls giving the Union control of the Mississippi River. Conscription begins, giving exemption from service to any man who can pay $300 to hire another, hundreds, mostly blacks, killed in draft riots. Confederates win in Tennessee, but with heavy cost to both sides. Lincoln at Gettysburg. incresed wool production clothes the Union Army. North halts South's salt production West Virginia secedes from Virginia and becomes the 35th state. The territory of Idaho is formed from other territories: Dakota, Nebraska, Utah and Washington. Arizona territory separates from New Mexico.Navajo, Apache and Nez Perce tribes are active against U. S. Troops. Rockefeller refinery in Cleveland. The Transcontinental railroad is begun in Omaha and Sacramento. First subway in London. Iron production in Michigan, Bethleham, Pa. National Academy of Sciences created. Boston College and U. Mass. begin. Samuel Clemens becomes Mark Twain; poetry by Longfellow; painting by Whistler. Sugar cane production shifts from Louisiana to Hawaiian Islands. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Fiction by George Eliot, Jules Verne; painting by Manet; music by Schubert. | |||||||||||
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January 1863
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February 1863
George Michael Hahn and Benjamin Franklin Flanders are seated February 3 in the 37th Congress which is adjourned March 4, 1863. After the trip to Washington Hahn returns to advise no more representation from Louisiana until it is reconstructed. |
March 1863
The original Ponchatoula railroad depot is burned when Union forces capture the town in March. |
April 1863
April 12-13 General Nathaniel P. Bank’s Union army attacked Gen. Richard Taylor’s Confederate forces entrenched at Fort Bisland in St. Mary Parish. The Confederates repulsed each attack, but the post is evacuated when Union flanking force landed at Irish Bend. General Richard Taylor’s 1,600-man Confederate Army fought a tough delaying battle in Franklin, La. against 4,000 Federals under Gen. Cuvier Grover April 14, 1863, before retreating toward Opelousas. On April 17 Union forces destroy the salt works at Avery Island, Iberia Parish. |
May 1863
Four forts are built by Confederates in May, 1863, to prevent the ascent of Federal gunboats on the Ouachita River. They are abandoned, then reoccupied in 1864. The seige of Port Hudson begins. This longest siege in American military history was also the site of the first major assault by African-American regiments fighting for the Union. Here 6500 Confederates held 30,000 Union troops from May 21 until July 8, 1863. May 4 - Francis T. Nicholls loses his left foot at the Battle of Chancellorsville where he commands the 2nd La. Brigade as a Brigadier General. |
June 1863
The CSN Webb rams and aids in the capture of the U.S.S. Indianola near Vicksburg and is refitted as a cotton-clad for dash to the Gulf of Mexico in 1865. The Confederate ironclad Missouri is built with railroad T-rail armor and guns from U.S.S. Indianola at the Confederate Naval Yard near the mouth of Cross Bayou at the Red River in Shreveport. The Missouri was surrendered in Alexandria in June 3, 1865. Fort Brashear, also known as Fort Star, near Morgan City was the scene of an important military engagement on June 23, 1863, resulting in the confederate capture of 700 Federal troops and immense military stores. June 28,1863 Confederate General Alfred Mouton orders 1,500 Texans and Arizonians under the command of General Thomas Green to attack Fort Butler located at Donaldsonville. The fort, located at the confluence of Bayou Lafourche and the Mississippi River, was defended by about 100 regular Union soldiers and 300 black soldiers of the Louisiana Native Guards and several Union gunboats. The next morning over 300 Confederates were wounded, dead or imprisoned and the Union was victorious. From June to November there is no Federal progress on Reconstruction. |
July 1863
On July 8th Port Hudson falls to Union forces, giving them control of the lower Mississippi River Valley. |
August 1863
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September 1863
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October 1863
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November 1863
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December 1863
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| Lee Christmas (1863- 1924) is born on his father’s plantation on the Amite River in Livingston Parish in 1863. His first job was with a railroad as a brakeman, then fireman and , in 1885 as an engineer. He eloped with his childhood sweetheart and moved to New Orleans where Lee decides that politics, New Orleans style is his future. However his campaigning (mostly in bars) cost him time, money and eventually his job with the railroad. After one such outing he was needed to move a train load of bananas north. His friends poured him into the cab and Lee ended up in a head-on collision with another train and was blacklisted by the Illinois Central for three years. He would have been reinstated eventually, except the I. C. developed a test for color-blindness that he could not pass. He hopped a banana freighter to Honduras where he easily got a job as an engineer, only to be requisitioned, with his engine, by revolutionaries in April of 1897. He convinced the ragged generalisimo that if he was going to be made a target he should be given a gun so that he could shoot back. He also helped the rebels set up armor on the train’s flat cars. His design worked and he was promoted to captain on the spot. He had found a new career helping the multitude of revolutionaries in Latin America. |
Union General U. S. Grant digs a canal connecting the Mississippi River and Lake Providence. This attempt to use bayous and rivers to bypass Vicksburg failed. | Confederate forces under General Richard Taylor and immediate command of General Alfred Mouton, defends the Teche valley at the Battle of Vermilionville (Lafayette). They fight a rear guard action with Federal forces led by General N. Banks near present day Lafayette. | The New Orleans Crescent is be suppressed by military authorities. The New Orleans Times is established in the old Crescent plant. |
An omnibus line is started on Canal Avenue (now Carrollton Ave.) in Carrollton. An omnibus is similar to a mule or horse car but without the steel wheels and rails that allow larger loads. The line stretched from St. Charles Ave. near the river to the New Basin Canal where I-10 is today. In September the New Orleans Times begins publication by Thomas May & Co. It becomes the Times-Democrat 18 years later. |
Thomas Jefferson Wells |
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Go to the year 1864 | Go to the year 1864 | ||||||||||