Welcome to Bayou Teche Dispatches. . . .

Cypress logging raft on the Teche, ca. 1910 (postcard).

Bayou Teche Dispatches is a collection of my writings about south Louisiana history and culture. Often it consists of material I could not use in my books for one reason or another, but which I nonetheless found fascinating.

Some entries are more scholarly than others, but all should be regarded purely as essays, not as formal academic works (though often I cite my sources and on occasion I solicit informal peer review).

In most instances I wrote merely to organize my own thoughts. In any event, I hope you enjoy reading these articles as much as I enjoyed researching and writing them.

If you publish information from these articles, please remember to cite this blog as your source and, if applicable, to supply a return link. Please do not repost articles in their entireties, but short block quotations that fall within range of "fair use" are acceptable.

~ Shane K. Bernard

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Table of Contents

❧ Why Do Cajuns Identify as Cajuns?

(And Not as Creoles)

❧ Notes on Emancipation in Louisiana, 1863-1865
When exactly did enslavement in the state end?

❧ Banned in the Classroom: Notes on the Outlawing of French in Louisiana's Public Schools

Opening the door to punishing schoolchildren for speaking French

❧ French and Creole in Louisiana, 2010-2022:

A Very Brief Analysis

Graphing language use in Louisiana

❧ Disappearing Cajuns and Creoles? 

Ethnic Identity and the Limits of Census Data

The challenge of storytelling by numbers

❧ Race, Language, and Culture: A Note on Identity 

in Louisiana

When did racialization first occur in Louisiana?

❧ Cajun, Creole, Acadian, Arcadian: Classical World Connections to South Louisiana

Cajun country vestiges of ancient Greek and Roman culture

❧ Petit Manchac: A Tale of Two Lafayettes

Fact or a misreading of source material?

❧ State of the Genre: Swamp Pop Music in the 21st Century

How is this south Louisiana/southeast Texas sound faring 50+ years after its heyday?

❧ Born of "Elite" White Reactionism?: Assessing Claims about the Rise of Cajun Ethnicity 

Disputing statements that Cajuns appeared only about 50 years ago

❧ Of Cajuns and Creoles: A Brief Historical Analysis
A look at the relationship between these ethnic groups

❧ Notes on the Birth of Cajun Ethnic Identity 
An effort to clarify this important topic

❧ Thoughts on Cajuns and "Whiteness"

Were Cajuns always, or did they become, "white"?

❧ "Prairie de Jacko": Source of the Name?
Notes on an 18th-century place name along the Teche

❧ Notes on the Founding of Opelousas
Did it happen in 1720 or not?

❧ When Jimi Hendrix Appeared on My Father's Live TV Show 
in Lafayette, Louisiana, January 1965
The rock-guitar pioneer visited Lafayette

❧ Electronic Cajuns and Creoles: Early Television
as an Americanizing Agent
TV's impact on these two ethnic groups

❧ A Tool for Fighting Fake News & Conspiracy Theories: Teach Critical Thinking in American Classrooms
"Not what to think, but how to think"

❧ Portrait of a Cajun Woman: Andonia Thibodeaux 
of Bayou Tigre
An old tin-type photograph leads to a literary find

❧ Another Civil War Gunboat on the Teche: The U.S.S. Glide, aka Federal Gunboat No. 43

A legal document reveals the presence of one more gunboat on the bayou

❧ Now Available: My New Book about Bayou Teche
A narrative history of Bayou Teche and journal of canoeing the present-day bayou

❧ A Railroad History of Avery Island
An article I wrote for someone else's blog in 2010

❧ Sur le Teche: Exploring the Bayou by Canoe, Stage 1
Port Barre to Arnaudville

❧ Rough Rider Redux: A Photo of Theodore Roosevelt in Downtown New Iberia?
A forgotten photo of Theodore Roosevelt in Cajun Country

❧ A Fiction Interlude: My Short Story "The Phrenologist"
A short story about racism set in antebellum New Orleans

❧ A Floating Dancehall on the Teche: The Club Sho Boat
A riverboat that became a nightclub and restaurant

❧ A Meteor over Cajun Louisiana: Window on Atomic-Age Anxieties
Confusing a meteor for an atomic bomb

❧ A Film Documents South Louisiana's Logging Industry, ca. 1925: Responsible Stewardship or Environmental Disaster?
Digitized film about cypress logging along the Teche

❧ A Glimpse from 1968: Historic Films Looked at Cajuns and Creoles in Epic Year
Digitized French films capture an important year in south Louisiana history

❧ Now Available: My Children's History of the Cajuns in English and French Editions
Buy my Cajun book for kids so I can pay off my credit card

❧ "Cajuns of the Teche": Bad History, Wartime Propaganda, or Both?
A 1942 film with excellent images, horrible script

❧ A Snake, a Worm, and a Dead End: In Search of the Meaning of "Teche"
Searching for the meaning of the word "Teche"

❧ Galaxies, Bowling and Swamp Pop: Johnny Preston and The Cajuns in Escondido
Examining a Cajun reference in a chain e-mail about old gas stations

❧ Serendipity and Fort Tombecbe: Cooperation between Historians and Archaeologists
Accidentally finding a map of a fort coincidentally excavated by my friend

❧ Notes on Two Nineteenth-Century Engravings of South Louisiana Scenes
Vintage magazine images of Cajun and Creole women

❧ Finding History Right around the Corner: Heroism on the Cajun Home Front
A nearly forgotten World War II landmark a block from my residence

❧ My Father's Childhood Autograph Book on the History Channel?
When Dad met Hank Williams, Sr.

❧ My Oddball Collection of Cajun Warplane Photos
Cajun-themed combat aircraft

❧ Elodie's Gift: A Family Photographic Mystery
An old tin type image given to me by a great-aunt

❧ The Nike-Cajun Rocket: How It Got Its Name
A rocket named "the Cajun"?

❧ Middle Name or Clerical Error?: Joseph Broussard dit Beausoleil and "Gaurhept"
Perpetuation of a historical error

❧ Debunking the Alleged Origin of the Word "Coonass"
Finding a word by accident that wasn't yet supposed to exist

❧ More on That Word "Coonass": A Labor Dispute Trial Documents Its Use in 1940
The earliest known use of this controversial word

❧ "To Err Is Human": Errata from My Books
Everyone makes mistakes

❧ An Old Bull Durham Tobacco Ad in New Iberia, or Palimpsests on the Teche
This vintage advertisement has since been destroyed

❧ Remembering Polycarp: A Cajun TV Show Host for Children
Everyone loved Polycarp!

❧ From Jet Fighters to Football: Origin of the Phrase "Ragin' Cajun"
Where this catchy term originated (as far as anyone knows)

❧ The Elusive André Massé, Pioneer of the Attakapas
An almost mythical explorer of the Teche region

❧ More on the Elusive Andre Massé, Early Settler of the Attakapas District
Revelations about him in a historical document

❧ La Chute: A Waterfall on Bayou Teche?
A waterfall in largely flat south Louisiana

❧ Gumbo in 1764?
The earliest known reference to gumbo in Louisiana

❧ On That Word "Gumbo": Okra, Sassafras, and Baudry's Reports from 1802-1803
More on the history of gumbo in Louisiana

❧ La Pointe de Repos — Early Acadian Settlement Site along the Teche
Colonial-era settlement near present-day Parks, Louisiana

❧ A 1795 Journey up the Teche: Fact, Fiction, or Literary Hoax?
It almost fooled me . . . almost

❧ All the Same Place: Isla Cuarin, Côte de Coiron, Île Petite Anse, Petite Anse Island & Avery Island
Evolution of a place name in the south Louisiana coastal marsh

❧ The Grevembergs, Early Cattle Ranchers of the Attakapas
When someone accidentally transposes two numerals

❧ Tracking the Decline of Cajun French
Research behind the language stats in my book The Cajuns

❧ The Secret CODOFIL Papers
I waited how long for the FBI to release these documents?

❧ Agnus Dei Artifact Found on Banks of Bayou Teche
A religious symbol turns up in the mud at Breaux Bridge

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Why Do Cajuns Identify as Cajuns (And Not as Creoles)?

This essay is one of five in which I address current issues in Cajun and Creole studies. The other essays can be found here.

I wrote these works not only as a historian, but as someone who identifies as both a Cajun and a Creole. As I note elsewhere, “[M]any of my ancestors were Creoles of French heritage. My own family tree abounds with tell-tale Creole surnames: de la Morandière, Soileau, de la Pointe, Fuselier de la Claire, Brignac, Bordelon, de Livaudais, and others. . . . As such, I could, if I chose to do so (and sometimes I do), identify as Creole — doubly so because Cajuns themselves are to begin with a kind of Creole.”

I trust those with whom I express disagreement will accept this critique in the collegial spirit it is intended.

I thank Dr. Barry Jean Ancelet, Dr. Marc David, independent researchers Don Arceneaux, Wade Falcon, and Ryan Bernard, and former CODOFIL president Warren A. Perrin for proofing the below essay.

❧

Recently, someone asked me, “Why do Cajuns identify as Cajuns?”

This implied other, related questions, namely “Why don’t Cajuns identify as Creoles? Aren’t they a type of Creole?” — as some, including myself, assert.

The short answer is: Like their Acadian ancestors, Cajuns have always viewed themselves as a distinct people. Even from other south Louisiana Creoles.

Not only culturally distinct, but, as importantly, historically distinct.

Poster in downtown Lafayette, La.
(photo by the author, 2024)

Let’s start with a few definitions:

In its broadest sense, the term “Creole” can mean a native-born Louisianian of French-speaking (less commonly Spanish-speaking) Roman-Catholic heritage — a definition without racial connotations. According to this definition, one can be Black, White, or multiracial and be Creole. “Cajun,” on the other hand, refers to descendants of Acadian exiles in south Louisiana and all the other ethnic groups with whom those exiles and their descendants intermarried.(1)

Some understandably ask “Wouldn’t Cajuns therefore qualify as Creoles?” Because what are Cajuns in their broadest sense but native-born Louisianians of French-speaking, Roman-Catholic heritage? 

A growing number of Cajuns, Creoles, scholars, and activists accept this notion of Cajun ethnicity. They agree that Cajuns are indeed a kind of Creole. 

A kind of Creole — and yet, most would assert, still Cajun.

This might prompt the further inquiry: “Yes, but why do Cajuns continue to see themselves as distinct from other Creoles?” Creoles who today seem eager to welcome Cajuns into their fellowship, but only if, as some Creoles insist, they jettison the “Cajun” label.

In short, the message is “Stop calling yourselves ‘Cajuns,’ start calling yourselves ‘Creoles.’”

The "Flag of the Louisiana Acadians,"
late 1960s.

Some who support this idea imply if not outright assert, without evidence, that Cajuns are not a real ethnic group. That Cajun identity came into being only in the late 1960s as a racist response to the Civil Rights Movement. That “Cajun” is therefore a made-up or fake ethnic label.(2)

Clearly, however, the word means a great deal to a great many people. According to recent census data, over 107,000 Americans (more than 74,000 of whom reside in Louisiana and, to a lesser extent, Texas) identify their primary ethnicity as “Cajun.” (The same census data shows about 14,000 persons in Louisiana and Texas choosing “Creole” as their primary ethnicity.)(3)

Despite the dubious claim that “Cajun” is “a new identity” dating back only 55 to 60 years, researchers (including me) have shown that the word originated as an ethnic label in English as early as 1862 — and in French as early as 1851.(4) Since then, the label’s use has not only persisted but grown enormously.

Google "Ngram" chart showing use of "Cajun" 
in books. Note the uptick spurred by the Cajun fad of the 1980s.
(Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer)

And these findings are based solely on printed references. Who knows when the word “Cajun” (whatever its spelling) first sprang into existence purely as a spoken word? 

Returning to the core issue “Why do Cajuns identify as Cajuns?”: 

Given the size of their population (again, over 107,000), there could be any number of reasons why individuals identify as Cajuns. A theoretical Cajun might have embraced the term because their parents and other relatives identified as Cajuns; because they inherited a surname commonly regarded as Cajun; because they identified closely with other self-identifying Cajuns; because they discovered their Cajun ancestry through family oral traditions, genealogical research, or state-of-the-art DNA testing, among other reasons.

In other words, Cajuns choose to identify as Cajuns for the same reasons other peoples around the globe embrace their identities — whether we speak of present-day Assyrians in the Middle East, the Tagalog people of the Philippines, the Mestizos of Spanish America, or any other group. Including, for that matter, the Creoles of south Louisiana.

Consider, however, one particularly powerful driving force of ethnic identification: history or, less formally, storytelling — both of which play a vital role in creating group identity and cohesiveness. For example, the story of the Acadian expulsion fits into a long tradition of exile narratives, such as the Romans claiming descent from defeated sea-wandering Trojans, the Israelites' forty-year exodus from Egypt leading to the Promised Land, or the Pilgrims departing England for religious freedom in the Netherlands before voyaging to America and founding Plymouth Colony.

Called Le Grand Dérangement (The Great Upheaval), the Acadians’ tragic exile experience occurred when British redcoats (often New England colonists in service to the Crown) sought to expel the region's 12,000 to 18,000 Acadians, including women and children. A third to a half of the exiles died from disease, starvation, exposure, and outright violence. As prisoners, they were shipped to inhospitable locales in England, the thirteen British colonies of North America, the French mainland, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. About a decade later, the first of roughly 3,000 Acadian exiles arrived in south Louisiana, a new homeland they tellingly called Nouvelle Acadie. In time, their descendants would come to be known as Cajuns.(5)

Carl Brasseaux's important study
The Founding of New Acadia.

This exile spread the distinct Acadian identity far beyond Nova Scotia and its environs. As noted by Carl A. Brasseaux, author of seminal works about Cajun and Creole history:

[M]ainstream historians of the past 150 years . . . have clearly established that the French colonists of the Bay of Fundy Basin [i.e., Acadia] had forged a new, collective ethnic identity as Acadians long before their expulsion from Canada in 1755. . . . During the ensuing years of exile and wandering, the Acadians were universally regarded by their reluctant hosts [in the places to which they were deported] as a distinct people with a common ethnic identity. That identity clearly remained intact after successive waves of surviving Acadians made their way to Louisiana between 1764 and 1788.(6)

 

The 1755 expulsion of the Acadians.

Cajuns aware of their history regard the expulsion and its aftermath as a painful but defining legacy, one that serves to further distinguish them from other ethnic groups. Even from those who endured their own diasporas, as in the case of Creoles of African heritage.(7)

Brasseaux moreover observes, “At the time of their arrival [in south Louisiana] and for decades afterward, the exiles’ ethnicity was clearly and unequivocally recognized by established Louisianians, including proto-Creoles, who clearly viewed the immigrants as the ‘other.’” 

Another book by Brasseaux (et al.).

Indeed, Creoles in the l9th and early 20th centuries — white Creoles, but Creoles nevertheless — worked to distance themselves from, and exclude, Cajuns. As an 1881 federal census study maintained, “The Creoles proper will not share their distinction with the native descendants of those worthy Acadian exiles who . . . found refuge in Louisiana. These remain ‘cadjiens’ or ‘cajuns’. . . .” And as one scholar observed in 1939, “[The Creoles] often had a word for the poorer Cajuns: ‘Canaille!’ — that was their way of saying poor-white trash.”(8)

Brasseaux adds, “This does not mean that, after centuries of evolutionary adaptation to the same physical and cultural landscapes, there were not similarities” between Cajuns and other Creoles.

So, yes, Brasseaux says, the Cajuns are similar to other Creoles. Similar, yet distinct.

UL Lafayette sociologist Jacques Henry concurs, asserting, “[B]y the turn of the [20th] century, Cajuns/cadiens are a group symbolically discrete. . . . [and] a breed apart.”(9)

Furthermore, modern evidence reveals legal and genetic proof of Cajun separateness. In 1980 a U.S. federal court, per the lawsuit Roach v. Dresser, established that Cajuns are a federally recognized ethnic group of “foreign descent” and therefore protected from discrimination by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As the presiding judge stated, “By affording coverage under the ‘national origin’ clause of Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act] he [the Cajun] is afforded no special privilege. He is given only the same protection as those with English, Spanish, French, Iranian, Czechoslovakian, Portuguese, Polish, Mexican, Italian, Irish, et al., ancestors.”(10) 

My 2003 book The Cajuns:
Americanization of a People.

Meanwhile, scientists identified a distinctive “Cajun genotype” traced to the early Acadians’ common origins in southwest France. Acadians and Cajuns compounded this trait through intermarriage, a practice encouraged by generations of remote settlement patterns.(11)

So there you have it: Cajuns identify as Cajuns because they have always viewed themselves as a distinct people. And the reason they have viewed themselves as distinct is not merely cultural, but historical — a history in which observers not only categorized them as separate, but, as Brasseaux notes, in which Creoles abetted Cajun separateness by casting them as undesirable “others.” The Cajuns’ resulting sense of distinct identity has only been reinforced by modern legal and genetic evidence.

As I have written before, today’s moral consensus demands we respect others’ professed identities and reject erasure in all its execrable forms. Is it therefore fitting that some would tell Cajuns that their identity — one existing in the historical record for at least 175 years — is incorrect and should be changed? Or should we respect how others choose to identify, put aside past and present enmities, and work together for mutual benefit, as many scholars, activists, and others in Cajun and Creole south Louisiana have already done for decades?

Notes

(1) For more information, see my previous essay: Shane K. Bernard, “Of Cajuns and Creoles: A Brief Historical Analysis,” Bayou Teche Dispatches, 13 February 2022, http://bayoutechedispatches.blogspot.com/2019/06/of-cajuns-and-creoles-brief-historical.html, accessed 22 September 2025.

My definitions of “Cajun” and “Creole” are merely working definitions for my purposes and I would not presume to impose them on anyone. Ultimately, ethnicity resists definition. 

(2) Shane K. Bernard, “Born of ‘Elite’ White Reactionism?: Assessing Claims about the Rise of Cajun Ethnicity,” Bayou Teche Dispatches, 5 May 2022, https://bayoutechedispatches.blogspot.com/2022/05/born-of-elite-white-reactionism.html, accessed 22 September 2025.

(3) Shane K. Bernard, “Disappearing Cajuns and Creoles? Ethnic Identity and the Limits of Census Data,” Bayou Teche Dispatches, 20 June 2024, http://bayoutechedispatches.blogspot.com/2024/06/cajuns-creoles-and-limits-of-census-data.html, accessed 22 September 2025.

Self-identification is by far the most common method of declaring one’s ethnic affiliation. Indeed, short of genetic testing and meticulous genealogical research — which some people consider deeply personal and extremely private — what other method of ethnic identification is there? Reliance on self-identification — practiced routinely, for example, by the U.S. Census Bureau — admittedly carries the possibility of error, even deception. It assumes, however, that most claimants respond in good faith and with some degree of accuracy.

(4) Shane K. Bernard, “Notes on the Birth of Cajun Ethnic Identity,” Bayou Teche Dispatches, 12 February 2022, http://bayoutechedispatches.blogspot.com/2020/09/notes-on-birth-of-cajun-ethnic-identity.html, accessed 22 September 2025. 

Some counter that “Cajun” was used in south Louisiana solely as a negative term prior to the birth of the Cajun pride movement in the 1960s. They also claim “Cajun” was used solely as a catch-all term for any poor White French-speaker, no matter their culture or heritage. Yet analysis of 19th- and 20th-century primary-source evidence reveals a more complex, more nuanced use of “Cajun.” While negative occurrences of the word “Cajun” certainly exist — some of them scathing — so, too, do positive and neutral ones. Likewise, while “Cajun” was sometimes applied to all poor French-speaking Whites, it also commonly denoted those who descended from Acadian exiles. In short, the issue of how “Cajun” was used in the past is by no means monolithic.

Evangeline.

(5) John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from their American Homeland (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), pp. 469-471. Faragher writes, “The Acadian entry in the book of the dead is staggering: in July 1755 they numbered eighteen thousand persons in the maritime region. Over the next eight years an estimated ten thousand exiles and refugees lost their lives as a direct result of the campaign of expulsion” (pp. 470-71).

Carl A. Brasseaux, “Scattered to the Wind”: Dispersal and Wanderings of the Acadians, 1755-1809 (Lafayette, La.: The Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana [now University of Louisiana at Lafayette], 1991), pp. 4, 67, Table VI; ____________, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765-1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), p. 91. In the former source, Brasseaux places the pre-expulsion population of the Acadians at 12,000 to 18,000 and the number of Acadian exiles eventually arriving in colonial Louisiana at about 2,600. In the latter source, he places the number arriving in colonial Louisiana at “2,600 to 3,000.”

Faragher's Great and Noble Scheme.

(6) All Brasseaux quotes in this essay derive from Carl A. Brasseaux, Lafayette, La., to Shane K. Bernard, New Iberia, La., 9 May 2022, email correspondence in Bernard’s possession. 

(7) One might ask “What about persons of African heritage who, because of interracial relations, share the Cajuns’ genetic fingerprint and possibly also their language, music, foodways, and other cultural markers, right down to their Cajun surnames? Should they not be considered ‘Cajun’?” There is no denying a racial element to Cajun identity. As I have shown, despite claims to the contrary, Cajuns and their Acadian ancestors have historically been considered “White.” Regardless, I believe someone of both Acadian and African ancestry should be free to identify as Cajun. Indeed, there is no legitimate reason they should not identify as Cajun, if they so choose. I would, however, never tell someone how to identify: that is a choice they should decide for themselves, and their decision should be respected.

(8) George E. Waring Jr. and George W. Cable, History and Present Condition of New Orleans, Louisiana: Social Statistics of Cities, Tenth Census of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior/U.S. Government Printing Office, 1881), 10; Shields McIlwaine, The Southern Poor-White from Lubberland to Tobacco Road (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), p. 143.

(9) Jacques Henry, “From Acadien to Cajun to Cadien: Ethnic Labelization and Construction of Identity,” Journal of American Ethnic History 17 (Summer, 1998): 39.

(10) Shane K. Bernard, The Cajuns: Americanization of a People (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), pp. 136-37; ____________, “Calvin J. Roach v. Dresser Industrial Valve and Instrument Division,” 64 Parishes, 19 January 2023, https://64parishes.org/entry/calvin-j-roach-v-dresser-industrial-valve-and-instrument-division, accessed 22 September 2025; James Harvey Domengeaux, “Native-Born Acadians and the Equality Ideal,” Louisiana Law Review 46 (July 1986): 1152, 1158, 1159-60, 1194-95, passim.

(11) Bernard, The Cajuns, p. 147.

Notes on Emancipation in Louisiana, 1863-1865

I have been asked a number of times “When did slavery in Louisiana end?”*

The short answer is that slavery in Louisiana ended between the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6, 1865.

Enslaved sugarcane field workers in south Louisiana.
Source: Harper's Monthly (1853)

Yet the question demands a more complicated response.

While the U.S. government dealt with the status of enslaved persons in the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862 and the Captured and Abandoned Property Acts of 1863, those measures permitted Union troops to seize and free enslaved persons only under very specific conditions.(1) It was the Emancipation Proclamation, however, that aimed to free enslaved persons en masse. Yet a reading of the Proclamation reveals — much to the surprise of many who have never examined it, at least not in detail — that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln excluded from its effects by name the Louisiana parishes (counties) of, to quote the Proclamation itself, “St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans. . . .”

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
with exempted parishes highlighted.
Source: Lincoln Presidential Library
(click to enlarge)

The question then arises, “Why did Lincoln exclude these parishes from the Proclamation?”

Many American historians declare that Lincoln excluded these parishes because they were “Union-held” and, as is commonly known, the Proclamation freed the enslaved only in areas held by Confederate forces. Thus, as one historian notes, “Lincoln’s critics were quick to . . . claim that the Proclamation had never freed anyone at all. ‘Where he has not power Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free; where he retains power he will consider them as slaves,’. . .” Others, the same historian observes, strongly disagreed: “No one should ‘for a moment imagine that the Emancipation Proclamation had no force in law,’ warned one abolitionist. ‘By that instrument three millions of slaves were legally set free.’”(2)

It is telling that contemporary observers expressed such opposing views about the document’s impact. Today, historians continue to evaluate the Proclamation. Yet the reason for Lincoln’s exclusion of those thirteen Louisiana parishes has been overlooked or explained away rather dubiously.

Section of the Emancipation Proclamation
exempting certain south Louisiana parishes.
Source: National Archives & Records Administration

As noted, some sources claim Lincoln excluded those thirteen parishes because they were Union-held and thus beyond the Proclamation’s stated intent of freeing the enslaved only in “the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion.”

“This day” meaning January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Here a problem arises: on that date those thirteen parishes were not entirely Union-held.

While Orleans Parish (including the city of New Orleans) and other parishes along the Mississippi River were wholly or largely Union-held, others of those thirteen parishes were not Union-held. Take, for example, St. Martin and St. Mary parishes.(3) At the time of the Proclamation’s enactment, neither St. Martin Parish nor the majority of St. Mary Parish were Union-held,(4) despite the ability of Union gunboats to ascend their meandering rivers and bayous.

Map of the exempted parishes,
by the author.

When in the middle of that very month, for instance, a Union flotilla dared to steam up Bayou Teche — a vital 125-mile waterway of both strategic and economic importance — it encountered a withering barrage of enemy fire hailing from sharpshooters on land and a Rebel gunboat on water. Both sides suffered losses (among them the flotilla’s commander), but it was the Union that withdrew, leaving Rebels in command of the entire Teche.(5)

Again, why did Lincoln exclude those thirteen parishes from the Emancipation Proclamation when some were demonstrably not Union-held?

Two present-day historians, Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University and Martin Ruef of Duke University independently put forth the idea that Lincoln excluded those parishes because he (correctly or not) believed them to be bastions of pro-Union sentiment.(6) In other words, Lincoln did not wish to spoil the goodwill he thought existed in that alleged pro-Union enclave.(7)

Granted, the two historians do not overtly state why Lincoln excluded those parishes. They do strongly imply he did so because he viewed them as pro-Union. McCurry, for example, observes, “Nor did the Emancipation Proclamation resolve the dilemma [of enslavement], because the southern Louisiana parishes, with their cohort of Unionist sugar planters, were officially exempt from its provisions” [my italics].

Regardless, McCurry and Ruef confirm my interpretation of their writings. To my query McCurry responded, “[Y]our reading accords with my own,” while Ruef likewise replied, “[M]y understanding certainly dovetails with yours. In the book [his Between Slavery and Capitalism], I suggest that the exclusion resulted from efforts by Union authorities to maintain the support of sugar plantation owners.”(8)

Another present-day historian, John C. Rodrigue, formerly of Louisiana State University, now of Stonehill College, offers a similar if slightly qualified view of Lincoln’s motivation. As Rodrigue states in his Reconstruction in the Cane Fields, “[T]he proclamation specifically exempted from its provisions the sugar parishes. . . . [I]n addition to Lincoln’s refusal, on grounds of constitutional scruples, to attack slavery in areas not in rebellion, he also hoped to win the support of loyal slaveholders for a Unionist government for Louisiana” [my italics].

Like McCurry and Ruef, Rodrigue further explained his outlook in correspondence with me. In that exchange, he noted

I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that Lincoln excluded those areas because they were “pro-Union,” or even because he thought they were pro-Union [my italics]. I think it would be more accurate to say that [there] were some slaveholders (and other whites) who were loyal [to the Union], or there were slaveholders in those parishes who had previously supported the Confederacy but who were now willing to resume their allegiance [to the North] if doing so would help them to keep their slaves. . . . But in terms of the political loyalties of the majority of the white populations, these were not pro-Union areas. . . . Again . . . I would not necessarily concur in the statement that the excluded areas were “pro-Union” in their sentiment. But they did have potential Unionist elements that Lincoln was hoping to build on.

In other words, Rodrigue avers that Lincoln excluded those thirteen south Louisiana parishes not because he viewed them as significantly “pro-Union,” but because they harbored a population of sugar-planter slaveowners whom the President viewed as “potential Unionist elements.”(9)

Notably, those thirteen excluded parishes made up the entirety of Louisiana’s first and second U.S. Congressional districts, which — despite the ongoing conflict — sent two congressmen to Washington in early December 1862. That Lincoln should one month later exclude those parishes, and only those parishes, from the Emancipation Proclamation hardly seems coincidental. As one of those congressmen shortly observed, “[I]n the first and second congressional districts . . . those people have always in every election, and under the most trying circumstances, shown their fidelity to this [U.S.] Government.” Lincoln, in short, had no wish to derail pro-Union sentiment in two south Louisiana congressional districts still active in the U.S. political system, even as the rest of the state deferred to the Confederacy.(10)

Whatever its impetus, the exclusion clause in the Emancipation Proclamation had real consequences. This is demonstrated by a circular printed by Union troops on capturing the town of New Iberia (located at the time, April 1863, in St. Martin Parish). Preserved in the Library of Congress, that circular declared, “The generally received impression, that the slaves of this Parish, are free, by force of the presence of the Union army is erroneous [original italics].” It continued, “This Parish . . . is excepted by name, in the Emancipation Proclamation, of President Lincoln, issued at Washington, D.C., January 1, 1863. . . . No farther [sic] interference, with the institution of slavery will be allowed by the Army Authorities, than may necessarily result from the police regulations.”(11)

Union circular stating that enslaved persons
in occupied St. Martin Parish were not free.
Source: Library of Congress

Putting aside the Proclamation, the question remains, “When did slavery in Louisiana end in actuality, including in those thirteen excluded parishes?”

A reasonable answer might be that it ended months after the Civil War’s conclusion, when on December 6, 1865, the various states ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Yet the Union-held part of Louisiana had already abolished slavery as early as September 5, 1864.(12) On that date the state’s Union-controlled parishes ratified a new state constitution, the first article of which declared, “Slavery and involuntary servitude . . . are hereby forever abolished and prohibited throughout the state.”(13)

Detail of the 1864 Louisiana state constitution
abolishing slavery (ratified September 1864).

Like the Emancipation Proclamation, this article was unenforceable in most of Louisiana, where the Confederate government remained in control. But with the South’s defeat in April 1865, the entire state fell under the rule of this new constitution and its vital antislavery article.

One could argue, however, that the Union-backed state government ended slavery even earlier than September 1864. On May 11 that year, the same state government issued an ordinance outlawing slavery within its borders.(14) Like the state constitution ratified months later, this May ordinance was unenforceable throughout most of Louisiana.

Louisiana ordinance
abolishing slavery (May 1864)
Source: Library of Congress

A mere ordinance might be said to lack the gravitas of a law framed in a state constitution. Yet an ordinance offered a notable benefit over a constitution and its complicated ratification process. As an abolitionist wrote of Louisiana’s new antislavery ordinance, “This important act, passed almost unanimously by the only legislative power in the State, does not need the ratification of the people to make it law. . . . [I]t no more stands in need of popular ratification than any other ordinance. . . . [W]ithout waiting for that endorsement, it is the law.”(15) In other words, the ordinance served as a feasible stop-gap measure pending ratification of the new antislavery state constitution.

This attempt to answer the broad question “When did slavery end in Louisiana?” demonstrates how messy history can be — even when dealing with a major well-documented event that occurred only 160 years ago.

To summarize, we might consider several possible dates for the end of slavery in Louisiana:

• January 1, 1863: when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (covering only Rebel-held parts of Louisiana);

• May 11, 1864: when the Union-backed Louisiana state government issued an ordinance banning slavery statewide (including both Union-held and, if symbolically, Rebel-held territory);

• September 5, 1864: when voters in Union-controlled parts of Louisiana ratified a new antislavery state constitution (effective in Union-held and, if symbolically, Rebel-held territory);

• December 6, 1865: when the various states ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning slavery nationally.

As to the question of when slavery ended in those thirteen parishes excluded by the Emancipation Proclamation: it could be asserted the ordinance of May 1864 ended slavery in those places, either in theory or practice, depending on whether Union or Confederate forces locally held sway. Some four months later the newly ratified state constitution affirmed that ordinance. Moreover, that constitution became statewide law when the war ended in spring 1865. Finally, ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on December 6, 1865, declared on the federal level — and thus more commandingly — what Louisiana had already decided two summers earlier: that slavery was at long last a defunct institution.

NOTES

*I thank historian Daniel H. Usner of Vanderbilt University, independent geographer Lucy W. Osborn, and educator Tom Richey for critiquing my essay. I also express gratitude to Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University, Martin Ruef of Duke University, and John C. Rodrigue of Stonehill College for their substantive feedback on Lincoln’s reasons for excluding certain parishes from the Emancipation Proclamation.

(1) For example, enslaved persons could be seized if they had been used for “aiding, abetting, or promoting . . . insurrection or resistance to the laws” or when they had belonged to persons who “commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof. . . .”

(2) Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 257, 258.

(3) I do not refer to Iberia Parish, which sits between St. Martin and St. Mary, because it did not exist in 1863.

(4) A Congressional document published in early February 1863 referred to the thirteen-parish region as “entirely within the federal lines [original italics], with the exception of the parish of St. Martin and a portion of St. Mary" [my italics]. Even then, the word “entirely” might have been an exaggeration. “Report No. 22,” House of Representatives, 37th Cong., 3rd Sess., 3 February 1863, in Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives and Court of Claims . . . 1862-’63 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863), p. 1.

(5) Shane K. Bernard, Teche: A History of Louisiana’s Most Famous Bayou (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), pp. 81-83.

(6) As for the issue of why those parishes would have been pro-Union: their loyalty might have stemmed from a reliance on protective federal tariffs as well as on northern industry for refining their sugar. South Louisiana sugar planters produced brown sugar (and molasses), but left the commodity to others, outside the South, to refine into granulated white sugar.

(7) General Banks’ northern troops did much to dispel this pro-Union goodwill during their three Teche Country invasions of 1863-1864, burning and looting extensively. This fact stems not only from Confederate propagandists, but more importantly from Union soldiers who witnessed such behavior and condemned it. See Bernard, Teche, pp. 93-94.

(8) Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 254; Martin Ruef, Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 44.

    McCurry, to Shane K. Bernard, 25 and 26 June 2025, email correspondence; Ruef, to Shane K. Bernard, 25 June 2026, email correspondence.

    I thank Dr. Stephanie McCurry of Columbia University and Dr. Martin Ruef of Duke University for their feedback on this topic and for permitting me to quote their correspondence.

(9) John C. Rodrigue, Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana’s Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), p. 38; Rodrigue, to Shane K. Bernard, 15 July 2025, email correspondence. See also Rodrigue, Lincoln and Reconstruction (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013), pp. 37, 42, 51-52.

    I thank Dr. Rodrigue for his feedback and for permitting me to quote his correspondence.

(10) The First Congressional District of Louisiana consisted of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, and part of Orleans Parish, including a section of the city of New Orleans.

    The Second Congressional District consisted of Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Martin, and St. Mary parishes, as well as, again, part of Orleans Parish and a section of New Orleans. “Report No. 22,” p. 1.

    Congressman Michael Hahn, Second Congressional District, State of Louisiana, in “Louisiana Elections,” The Congressional Globe, 17 February 1863, p. 1030. See also “Report No. 22,” pp. 1-3.

    I am indebted to Dr. Rodrigue for suggesting a link between the parishes in the First and Second congressional districts and those excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation. Rodrigue, to Bernard, 15 July 2025. See also Rodrigue, Lincoln and Reconstruction, p. 47.

(11) This did not prevent enslaved persons from seizing de facto freedom for themselves. In south Louisiana many fled sugar plantations to seek protection with sometimes ambivalent Union troops.

    A. B. Long, Captain and Provost Marshall, Commanding Post, [Union Army], New Iberia, La., 24 April 1863, PD [digitized image], Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2020770803/, accessed 27 June 2025.

(12) I originally viewed 23 July 1864, the date of the constitution’s passage by the Union-backed state legislature, as a vital emancipative date. Dr. Rodrigue reminded me, however, that the constitution would not have become law until voters ratified it on 5 September 1864. See “Cases of Contested Elections in Congress from 1834 to 1865, Inclusive,” comp. D. W. Bartlett, Misc. Doc. No. 57, 38th Cong., 2nd. Sess., in Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives, 1864-’65, Vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865), p. 585.

(13) Title I. Emancipation, “Constitution of the State of Louisiana, Adopted in Convention, July 23, 1864,” in Louisiana Annual Reports (Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, for the Year 1865), Vol. XVII, (New Orleans: Bloomfield & Steel, 1866), Appendix, p. i.

(14) Ordinance Abolishing Slavery in Louisiana, 11 May 1864, ALS [digitized image], in Abraham Lincoln Papers: Series 1, General Correspondence, 1833-1916: Louisiana Constitutional Convention, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.3298800/?r=-0.945,-0.038,2.889,1.725,0, accessed 17 July 1863.

(15)“Is the Black Code Still in Force?” New Orleans Tribune, 21 July 1864, p. 1.