More on "Jayhawkers" and Texans in Louisiana:

The first evidence of Louisiana’s Jayhawkers appeared with the Union invasion in May, 1863 of the Bayou Teche country between Opelousas and Brashear (Morgan) City. And very quickly three groups of men could be identified, all of whom the Confederates labeled as "Jayhawkers." The first of those were draft dodgers and conscripts, who hid out in the swamps. One writer explained their intents and way of life as follows:

...Many honest and hard working men deserted or evaded the draft because they never owned a slave, never participated in the planter’s way of life, and decided not to defend it. They are not to be confused with the bands of lawless men, composed of deserters and draft dodgers, who organized into bodies which they called...guerrillas. They were mounted and armed...2

A third group whom the Confederates also called Jayhawkers were Unionists, whom General Nathaniel Banks permitted to take the oath of allegiance, and he organized them into a regiment known as the First Louisiana Scouts, who did little in 1864 except exact "revenge against their former neighbors..."3 More about the Louisiana Scouts will be recorded later.

In May, 1863, a half dozen or more Texas Confederate units were transferred to General Taylor’s command to help defend against the new Union threat advancing north along the Bayou Teche. And the principal supply route from Texas moved by train from Houston to Beaumont, by steamboat from Beaumont or Sabine Pass to the Niblett’s Bluff Quartermaster Depot, and then by wagon from the depot to Opelousas. Wagon traffic along that artery was two-way, loaded wagons moving to the east and empty wagons returning to Niblett’s Bluff to reload. And that route’s adjacency to the bottomlands of the Sabine, Houston, Calcasieu, Mermentau, and Vermilion rivers, as well as Bear Head and Beckwith creeks and Bayous Serpent, Nezpique, des Cannes, and Plaquemine Brule, made it an ideal location for Jayhawkers to prey on the Confederate supply line. In time many more Texas and Louisiana deserters, also draft dodgers, free Negroes, and escaped slaves, joined the many Jayhawker bands along that route.

Two 1863 letters from a Lake Charles clergyman explained the social disarray that existed in Southwest Louisiana when the effects of the draft and General Taylor’s retreat before the Union forces were felt. A lengthy quote from the first letter, dated August 23, 1863, follows:

Things in Lower Louisiana: ...The facts presented to us leave no doubt that there is a system of wholesale stealing going on in that (Calcasieu) section of the country that would astonish most of our readers, and we regret to say that Texans are largely concerned in the thieving operations. Gangs of Negroes have been enticed away from their owners by various false representations, and brought into different parts of Texas and sold... Some of them have run away from their seducers while being brought into Texas, and being unacquainted with the country, are now occasionally seen in gangs, wandering about, nearly starved to death... Indeed their statements are often confirmed. Texas officers and soldiers, as well as private citizens, are often implicated in these disgraceful operations...

...We fear many of our citizens have been badly swindled by buying slaves thus stolen from Louisiana plantations... It is further stated... that a large amount of the property captured by our troops after the retreat of (Gen. Nathaniel) Banks has been appropriated, by wagon loads, by certain officers and individuals, and we have reason to believe that some of this property has been sold in the (Houston) black market...

...It is stated that the Louisiana deserters who ran away to escape the service are now in the Calcasieu River bottom, and with the few Negroes in their company, number about 700. They are said to be very desperate and are perpetrating the most horrible outrages from time to time, which are retaliated on them occasionally by our troops in a manner almost too shocking to relate...4

Some Notes on the Civil War Jayhawkers of Confederate Louisiana

Southwest Louisiana has ALWAYS been an exceedingly lawless place.