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.

    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.

(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.