The Fall of New Orleans

B. F. Tisdale and Eliza Pratt Tisdale
with son William Pratt Tisdale, 1862

This photo of B. F. Tisdale is a Crayon Portrait, an enlargement which was enhanced by the photographer with conte crayon, chalk, charcoal, or watercolor. This type of portrait was made from the 1860s into the early 1900s. Crayon Portraits were often made from one-of-a-kind photos, such as Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, or Tintypes, so that several family members could have a copy. The photo of Eliza and baby Willie Tisdale in early 1862 may have been a Tintype. (Originals, Helen Tisdale Davis family)

Belle's mother gave birth to William Pratt Tisdale at 6 o'clock A. M. on November 1, 1861. He was named after his Grandfather Pratt. His birth was registered on January 20, 1862 by his father B. F. Tisdale and the printed form filled in: “the Twentieth of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty two and the first of the Independence of the Confederate States of America...” The family was living at 234 Calliope Street in New Orleans. (Orleans Parish Birth Records, Volume 29, page 692)

We do not find the Tisdale family in the 1860 census. We do not know if Eliza and the children stayed in New Orleans during the occupation or fled to the Pratt's Oakland Plantation east of Baton Rouge. No stories of the war came down in our branch of the family. There was only a photo of a young man in uniform and an obituary of a cousin to hint at what was to come.

When Major Mansfield Lovell took charge of Louisiana and Mississippi in October 1861, he found “not a gun to spare.” He started on improving defenses at Fort Jackson and St. Philip. Work on construction of a raft and chain barricade across the river between the forts was pushed forward and completed in December 1861. Two new ironclad ships, the Louisiana and the Mississippi, were under construction. There was a shortage of metal at the foundries trying to manufacture cannons. Worst of all were shortages of guns and powder. Lovell complained, “New Orleans is about defenseless.” (Winters, p. 79)

Before secession New Orleans was one of the world's busiest ports, second only to New York City. When Lincoln ordered the blockade of all Southern ports after the surrender of Fort Sumter in April, shipment of cotton ceased. (Winters, p. 44) Even though some vessels succeeded in running the blockade, the drop in trade severely affected the city. Gold and silver disappeared and Confederate Treasury notes became currency. (Winters, p. 53-54) Charles Dufour writes in his book The Night the War was Lost that small coins were so scarce coffeehouses and merchants issued change in the form of tickets good in trade. George Washington Cable, who was working as a cashier, wrote, “The current joke was that you could pass the label of an olive oil bottle, because it was greasy, smelt bad, and bore an autograph- Plagniol Freres, if I remember rightly.” (Dufour, p. 113)

The Union blockade of the Mississippi River tightened and there were massive shortages. Prices rose higher and higher. Miss Clara Solomon wrote in her diary that by September she had only bread and molasses for supper. (Winters, p. 54) There were shortages of needles, thread, and cloth. The Ladies' Sewing Circles that had been making clothes for the Confederate soldiers were now cutting up tablecloths and petticoats to make bandages. “Even little girls were kept busy trotting around their neighborhoods with subscription lists for various companies, some seeking a flag, ,others equipment, and still others uniforms. (Dufour, p. 36) Several newspapers ceased publication and those that remained cut back to one issue a week because of paper shortages. (Dufour, p. 112) The Tisdale family would have a very simple Christmas that year.

At midnight on December 28 Belle's family was awakened by a huge explosion “which shook buildings all over the city, upsetting furniture and shattering windowpanes.” The powder mill in the old Marine Hospital across the river had blown up. The True Delta reported that “A pillar of flame shot up to the sky for an instant illuminating the whole heavens, and then came the noise and the shock. The Crescent said: “The explosion was tremendous, destroying the building and shaking the earth for miles around...” (Dufour, p. 121) The shortage of gun powder was now critical.

Gov. Moore regretted that he had sent off so many of his Louisiana volunteers. A new militia act was passed on January 23, 1862 ordering all free white males between 18 and 45 years of age capable of bearing arms to enroll in the State Militia. (Winters, p. 72) B. F. Tisdale was 38 years old. His service record says he enlisted as a Private in Company B of the Confederate Guards Regiment, Louisiana Militia, on March 8, 1862. His brother in law, Marion Pratt, joined the same regiment and they were among those “transferred by Gov. Thomas O. Moore to Major General Mansfield Lovell, C. S. A., for local defense of the City of New Orleans.” (Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Louisiana, NARA M320, 586957, Record Group 109, Roll 0376, familysearch.org, accessed 9/13/2014)

On the same day that Belle's father enlisted Union troopships arrived at Ship Island off Biloxi. Rumors of invasion spread through the city. The river was at flood stage and a windstorm damaged the raft barricade at the forts below New Orleans. The biggest fear was that the gunboats would succeed in passing the forts and attack the city. The barricade was soon repaired. Martial Law was declared in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, and Plaquemine Parishes. (Winters, p. 80)

Many soldiers from Louisiana took part in the early battles of the war and spirits were running high with reports of victories, but in April 1862 after the battle at Shiloh, “the reality of war was brought home to the state. For two weeks after the battle, trains arrived in New Orleans carrying dead and wounded from that battlefield....”(Taylor, p. 90)

Lovell's appeal to Gov. Moore for 10,000 militia for defense of New Orleans was answered by only 3,000 men, the rest having been sent to P. G. T. Beauregard. Less than 1,200 were armed with muskets. The rest had shotguns or were unarmed. Some were ordered to Fort Jackson. Most were stationed at Chalmette. There they had a battery of ten 32 pound 28” cannon, half on each side of the river, but only enough ammunition for 20 rounds per gun. (Winters, p. 84) That may be where B. F. Tisdale and Marion Pratt were sent.

On April 18 Flag Officer David Farragut with 17 warships, the largest fleet the U. S. had ever assembled, began bombardment of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Mallory, ordered most of the ships at New Orleans up river, convinced that the forts were strong enough and that New Orleans would not fall. (Winters, p. 82) (Dufour, p. 216)

“After three days of intense anxiety, New Orleans on Easter Sunday was full of agitated, nervous people ready to believe almost any rumor...” (Dufour p. 241) “When the air was clear and the wind was right,” the rumbling of the mortars bombarding the forts could be heard like distant thunder in New Orleans. After four days and nights of mortar bombardment, the Union ships, under cover of darkness, cut the chains and began passing through the barricade and headed up river for New Orleans.

Early on April 24, word reached the city. The bells of all the churches began ringing. “Fearfully the people counted the methodical strokes of the clappers – one, two, three . . . ten, eleven, twelve. It was the signal of alarm, the signal for all military organizations to hasten to their armories.” (Dufour, p. 289)

Young Zoe Campbell heard the news from her friend Cecile Moise, daughter of the attorney general, that “the Yankees had passed the forts … the Federals were in the river.” Zoe wrote in her diary: “Our hearts stood still, fright overpowering us.” Teacher Mary Newman heard the tolling of the bells in her schoolroom: “I...dropped my books, snatched my bonnet & fairly flew home,” she wrote her sister. “I found everything and everybody in commotion.” Annunciation Square, where the Confederate Guards were encamped, was a scene of confusion... “some were packing up clothes, others tearing down tents, and still others hurrying to and fro, all eager for orders to start for the Jackson Rail Road.” (Dufour, p. 289) Was B. F. Franklin one of those men?

On the levee cotton bales were set on fire. Huge supplies of sugar, molasses, corn, and rice were also thrown on the fires. The True Delta reported: “Someone invited the women and children who thronged the levee to help themselves, which they did with a will. Men joined in the scramble, but they soon became disgusted with a retail operation and began to roll off sugar and molasses by the hogshead and barrel...”

Carts and wagons of military stores crowded the street to the Jackson Railroad station, where “every available car, freight and passenger, was on the tracks. Soldiers swarmed all over the cars - inside, on the vestibules, on top of them...Every moment the milling crowd grew as hacks dashed up and deposited terror-stricken women, children, and servants eager to flee the city.” (Dufour, p. 290-291)

George Washington Cable, clerk in a store whose owners had fled the city, closed up shop and joined the crowd on the Levee. He later wrote that he asked a man “Are the Yankee ships in sight?” The man pointed across the crescent bend of the Mississippi and Cable could see the masts of Farragut's vessels, engaged in silencing the Confederate batteries at Chalmette.

If B. F. Tisdale was one of the men at the Chalmette battery he would have been helping to fire one of the five big cannons. They fired until the ammunition ran out and then made their way through the surrounding swamps back to New Orleans to board the trains to Camp Moore. Cable watched the Federal ships approach. “Ah me! I see them now as they come slowly round Slaughterhouse Point into full view, silent, grim, and terrible; black with men, heavy with deadly portent; the long-banished Stars and Stripes flying against the frowning sky...” The occupation of New Orleans had begun.

Most histories of the Civil War spend few sentences on the bombardment of the forts and the breaking of the barricade. Joe Gray Taylor in Louisiana: A History writes one paragraph. John Winter in The Civil War in Louisiana writes twelve pages. Twelve of the sixteen chapters of Chester G. Heart's The Capture of New Orleans describe the events in meticulous detail. The bombardment and passing of the forts take up more than half of Charles L. Dufour 's 354 page The Night the War was Lost. His book was invaluable in getting an idea of what life must have been like for the Tisdale family in New Orleans.

Civil War Comes to Louisiana

Cased Tintype
Belle and Frank Tisdale, c1862

A New Baby Brother

In 1860 Belle Tisdale had a new baby brother. Her mother Eliza gave birth to twins on 15 March 1860, but only one infant survived.  Eliza's older sister, Frances Ann Pratt McCaughey, registered the birth of Benjamin Franklin Tisdale, always called Frank, on July 21 in New Orleans, recorded in Volume 26, page 749, Orleans Parish, Louisiana Birth Records. 

Perhaps Belle's Grandma Bernice Pratt and her Aunt France came down from Baton Rouge to help Eliza. Eliza's widowed sister, Frances Pratt McCaughey, was remarried sometime after 1860 to Henri Anthoine of New Orleans. Eliza's older brother, Marion Franklin Pratt, was also living in New Orleans at the time with his new bride, Emily Doyle. 

Tin Type plate
Belle and Frank Tisdale, c1862

Judging from the ages of the children, this cased tintype was probably made in early 1862 when Belle was 7 and Frank was almost 2.  Tintypes were made using the same collodion process as the Ambrotype. (See last week's amended blog post.) It is a silver image on blackened iron. They were made as early as 1856, but peak years were 1860-1863. It never caught on in Europe and was known there as "The American Process." Tintypes were durable, light, cheap, and popular with Civil War soldiers. (Original in possession
of J. S. Sarradet)

I cannot find B. F. and Eliza Tisdale in the 1860 census, but B. F. Tisdale is listed in the 1861 New Orleans City Directory which was printed in December 1860. He is working for John B. Murison & Co., Commission Agents, located on Calliope Street north of Dryades. His brother N. O. J. Tisdale is also listed in the 1861 city directory as
Treasurer of the New Orleans Gas Light Company.  
Belle's cousin Nathan Tisdale is listed as living across 
the river in Algiers.

The 1860 Presidential Election

That summer New Orleans was full of parades and fireworks displays put on by supporters of the three candidates for President, Stephen Douglas, the Democrat; John Breckenridge, the Southern Democrat; and John Bell, the newly formed National Constitutional Union party. The Republican Abraham Lincoln was not on the Louisiana ballot. (Winters, p.5)

We don't know who Belle's father or her grandfather supported, but the winner in Orleans and East Baton Rouge Parishes was John Bell, the co-operationist candidate. He won nine of the more populous parishes, but only 20,204 statewide votes. John Breckinridge, the Southern Rights candidate, won the state with 22,681 votes. Stephen Douglas, the Unionist, was a distant third with 7,625 votes. (Winters, p. 6-7)

When word reached Louisiana that the winner was the Republican Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the most radical and dreaded political faction, talk immediately turned to secession. The only question was how and when to secede. Military companies, often referred to as Minute Men, began to form and the governor called a special session of the legislature in Baton Rouge. (Winters, p. 8-9)

The above information comes from the book The Civil War in Louisiana by John D. Winters. It was originally published in 1963 for the centennial of the war and republished in 1991
by Louisiana State University Press for the war's 150^th anniversary. I started reading this book to get an idea of what life was like for Belle and her family during the Civil War, but my interest was soon captured by the author's in-depth research and writing style. This is not just an account of military events but also the political and social effects of the war on the lives of the people in Louisiana. It begins in 1860 with the first talk of secession and ends with surrender and occupation by Federal forces in 1865.

In the forward Professor T. Harry Williams mentions Charles L. Dufour's “vivid description of the fall of New Orleans, The Night the War was Lost...” I remember Charles “Pie” Dufour with fondness. He was my American History teacher when I was attending night classes at Tulane University in New Orleans. He was the first history teacher I had who truly made the past come to life. He was a dynamic speaker with piercing blue eyes and he paced up and down the floor while lecturing. He also wrote a column in the Times-Picayune newspaper. I still have some of them that I clipped out and saved. I ordered his book and it came yesterday. It was originally published in 1960, around the time I took his course at Tulane, and was reprinted in 1988 and 1990 by University of Nebraska Press. All proceeds from this latest volume go to the Confederate Museum of the Louisiana Historical Association.

Secession

On 7 January 1861, Belle's male relatives went to the polls again to select delegates for a convention to decide the secession question. There must have been much discussion of the event in the Tisdale and Pratt households because one of the delegates was Gilmore Franklin Connely, Belle's Grandma Pratt's cousin.

Roger Connelly writes in his Connelly Family newsletter, Connelly Connections, Volume 1, Number 2, April-June, 1980, page 3:

“A surveyor, lawyer, and plantation owner, Gilmore played an important role in Louisiana's history. On January 7, 1861, he was elected as a representative from Terrebonne Parish to a State Convention called to consider whether or not Louisiana should secede from the Union. Gilmore was one of 130 delegates elected that day; 83 were Secessionists and 47 were Cooperationists (Gilmore was numbered with that minority). The State Convention convened at Baton Rouge on January 23, 1861, and 3 days later an Ordinance of Secession was adopted. Before the vote on secession was called, the Cooperationists consulted, and when the vote was taken a number of them explained that although they were elected as Cooperationists, they felt that no other course but that of immediate secession could be pursued. The vote on secession was 113 for, 17 against; Gilmore voted with the majority. (When the ordinance was signed a short time later, 8 of the 17 affixed their signatures also.) For the next 2 months, Louisiana was an independent state.”

Governor Moore in Baton Rouge had wasted no time and ordered Louisiana Militia troops to seize the U. S. Arsenal. On January 10 the skeleton crew at the Arsenal surrendered. Also on January 10, Louisiana militia was sent downriver to demand surrender of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Fort Pike was surrendered a short time later. The U. S. Mint and Customs House in New Orleans was also seized. (Winters, p.10-11)

On January 29, 1861 the convention met in New Orleans to choose six delegates to attend the February 4 meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, to create a confederate government of Southern states. (Winters, p. 14)

Joe Gray Taylor in Louisiana, A History writes, "There was an exceptionally gala Mardi Gras that year; speeches, band music, the recruitment of unarmed men, and drilling by officers whose ignorance of drill was matched only by that of their men went on almost incessantly." (Taylor, p. 89) 

On March 4, 1861 the convention resumed in New Orleans and created a state army headed by Braxton Bragg. On March 21 the Constitution of the Confederacy was ratified by a vote of 101 to 7. Gilmore Connely signed with the majority. 

The first call for troops to serve in the Confederate army came on March 9. Old Metairie Race Course was converted into a military camp. At Camp Moore on the Amite River, thousands of volunteers were in training not far from the home of Bernice and William Pratt. 

Civil War

In New Orleans business was brought to a standstill by news of native son Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard's bombardment and capture of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 14, 1861. The Civil War had officially begun.

Social life in New Orleans consisted of "attending drill, watching parades, visiting camp, seeing the soldiers off, and promoting military benefits..." In May the Washington Artillery departed for Virginia. Businesses closed and ladies thronged the galleries and balconies. Cheering crowds lined the street as brass bands marched by. On the Fourth of July, 10,000 visitors rode out on the Carrollton Railroad for a Grand Review by the soldiers at Camp Lewis. (Winters p. 27)

By July 1861 Louisiana had sent 2,100 troops to Pensacola, 2,300 to Virginia, 1,000 to Arkansas, and 1,950 men for seacoast and harbor defenses. There were 4,000 still at Camp Moore and 5,000 in New Orleans for home protection.  Besides sending most of her troops out of state, Louisiana sent most of the guns and ammunition from the U. S. Arsenal to the CSA leaving the state vulnerable to attack. (Winters, p. 20 and 28)