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re: Civil War nicknames for SEC states..

Posted on 6/27/12 at 12:16 pm to
Posted by mizzoukills
Member since Aug 2011
40686 posts
Posted on 6/27/12 at 12:16 pm to
quote:

theGarnetWay


True. It's would've been difficult for the CSA to exist independently when their crop was mostly cotton, tobacco, and perhaps beans and peanuts.

Not to factor in lumber issues.

The North would have starved the south of resources, which is what happened during the war anyhow.
Posted by WildTchoupitoulas
Member since Jan 2010
44071 posts
Posted on 6/27/12 at 2:03 pm to
Meanwhile, back to the topic at hand...

On Texans in Louisiana:

During the Civil War, regiments from opposing armies frequently faced each other on numerous battlefields, the encounters oftentimes engendering a sense of deadly rivalry. Soldiers in the ranks guarded regimental reputations jealously, and fought for the integrity and honor of their units as strenuously as for country and cause. Two such rival units squared off against each other in Central Louisiana in late spring, 1863.

In August 1862, Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler ordered Union officers under his command to collect several companies of cavalry from among white Unionists and other pro-Northern refugees in New Orleans and the surrounding region. In desperate need of horse soldiers for scouting and courier duty in the Louisiana lowlands, Butler took applications from junior officers eager to raise these units, endeavors for which they would possibly earn promotions in rank. Capt. John Franklin Godfrey, formerly a second lieutenant with a Maine artillery battery, went into the Crescent City, opened a storefront recruiting office, and began assembling his command. “The recruits are mostly foreigners, or men of Northern birth,” he wrote home about his enlistees. They will fight as well for one side as another.” By October, four companies of New Orleans recruits took the field. “I recruited my company in a little over three weeks,” Godfrey noted. “The men are nearly all Germans, a few Irish, and some Americans.”

This odd assortment of troops learned the art of war in the fall of 1862. Armed with Sharp’s carbines, revolvers, and sabers, these independent cavalry companies saw their first action in Brig. Gen. Godfrey Weitzel’s Lafourche campaign. When Nathaniel P. Banks arrived in December and replaced General Butler, part of his reorganization plan included ordering Maj. Harai Robinson, described by one Confederate as a “renegade Texan,” to assemble these independent companies, raise additional scouting units, and create the 1st Louisiana Cavalry.

Of the company commanders in the 1st Louisiana, Capt. Richard Barrett of Company B had risen to the fore as an active and aggressive officer. His specialty was picket skirmishing, and he and his men were proud of their ability to best Rebel horsemen and to bring in prisoners for interrogation. Weitzel had leaned heavily on the services of the independent Louisiana cavalry companies, and after their consolidation Major Robinson would rely strongly on Barrett. “This officer and his company” a Confederate officer noted, “were the especial boast and pride of the enemy.”3

Opposing these blue-clad Louisianans on many fields were the troopers of Lieut. Col. Edward Waller’s 13th Texas Cavalry Battalion, raised at almost the same time as their nemesis. Recruited from counties in southern and western Texas, these men were experienced horsemen but unseasoned soldiers. On September 8, 1862, when Waller’s troops had fought the Federals for the first time at Bonnet Carre, near St. Charles Parish Courthouse along the Mississippi River, the Texans had suffered a disastrous defeat, in part, at the hands of the independent companies that became the 1st Louisiana. The Texans lost most of their mounts and a good deal of their arms and equipment as they fled into the chackbay swamp to escape a superior force of cavalry and infantry supported by gunboats. Effectively neutralized as a military force, the regiment was removed from the Lafourche region until they could reorganize. The retreat took them to Lake Charles and Petit Anse Island, Louisiana Traveling to the rear in improvised transportation, the once proud Texans horsemen and cowboys suffered humiliation at the hands of Brig. Gen. Jean Jacques Alfred Mouton’s Louisiana infantry, who dubbed their Lone Star allies the “cane cart cavalry.”



ETA source:
“The Carnival of Death:”
The Cavalry Battle at
Cheneyville, Louisiana,
May 20, 1863

This post was edited on 6/27/12 at 2:50 pm
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