A Ladies Voyage; From The Bonny General Banks Of Lake Pontchartrain

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
trip oath1.jpg

' Registered enemies ' didn't look that way and scenes like this further dispelled hostile intent, as an oath discouraged open revolt. Banks knew, however, what havoc could still be his, were sleeping tigers awakened. Those refusing to take the oath were escorted, in great ceremony, to ' occupied ' shores.

To the other side. " Such adieus and kissing of hands I never saw before ", writes Frank Leslie's artist-correspondent-on-the-spot, traveling with New Orleans citizens under General Nathanial Bank's flag of truce, on steamer JD Brown. Said citizens were composed on a 5-1 margin of ladies who, refusing to take the oath, were offered honorable escort into Sessesionland, as the journalist so named their destination.

You hear nothing of Beast Banks, Butler's successor by January, 1863, in New Orleans. Why? This will violate all, sound, military reasoning but if opinion counts- he managed to stay on the right side of The Ladies. No fool, General Banks. Without the slightest wish to have his image superimposed on chamber pots 150 years later, he knew this hardened, perfumed, lace-bedecked kernel of resistance was more a threat to his tenure in New Orleans than the Louisiana Tigers.

A collision, and another bad one was inevitable. With an entire war on his hands, having offered the Oath of Allegiance along with a very clean city and ample provisions to this belligerent core, what's a fellow to do? It's an opinion. He avoided another series of running skirmishes. Sending these hardened veterans where they could do least harm was brilliant. Maybe Banks is indeed under rated.

Commission a couple of steamers, designate said ladies ( and a few men who, you feel, had little choice given some conversation picked up along the way ) " Registered Enemies ", which they'd have treasured, be sure, and send them to Madisonville. Situated a few hour's water distance across the great lake Pontchartrain, considered enemy territory, a delegation was mustered to meet them. In great ceremony, fanfare and with much distinguishing attention- this is exactly what occurred.
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The London News recorded a scene where officers and men of both armies mingled, soldiers jumped-to in the bustle, enemies became neighbors who lived across a large lake for a just a few hours and a steamer puffed at a dock.

What no one recorded save Leslie's excellent artist and the London paper seems to have picked up on, is the atmosphere that day- February 2? 3rd? 1863. Port Hickok, on the Southern shore.

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Men of both armies, under Flag of Truce, and I'm sorry, hysterically waiting for women, do what they've always done- waited, chatted, and forgot those uniforms. I really liked this story- obviously a war on, obviously some of these women harbored awful thoughts. But. There was this, carefully recorded.

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Also this- as noted, a war on. And really, do not ask a female whether or not her waist is large because she is hiding smuggled goods. If she is- my advice is to let it slide. If she is not? You're in a lot of trouble.

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The artist-writer did a nice job. It was a stupid war, for driving us so, so far apart we couldn't see ourselves any more. This was helpful.

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Please no one go up in smoke. A war was on.

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One is the JD Brown, unclear which. No ' prisoner exchange ', dreary handover, this.
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Madisonville, across that ancient lake, scene to so much- still under Flag of Truce.Each drawing makes a point of illustrating troops mingling. Cool stuff.

Yes, rough, having to leave. No, I sure will not become in an argument. Create another thread, please. Been looking at this article and sketches for years without coming to firm conclusions. Recently decided to go with one- Peace broke out, on a nearly unrecognizable day in February, 1863. None of these registered enemies took the Oath and Peace broke out, anyway.

Almost a normal day, on Lake Pontchartrain.

More in the article on Hathi, in Harper's and elsewhere, like Internet Archives, all Public Domain. Eyewitness accounts are good, although I'm sure those who wished could make it seem just awful.
 
I love this post, Annie, and the phrase, "peace broke out".


Ha! It seems to have, for the moment? Those Flag of Truce moments are worth inspecting ( for an author..... ), you know? Guessing they were various but when you throw ladies in the mix, and from this source, the result is inevitable. Author writes on board, the ' Three Cheers ' called for included Bank's aid- not greeted with huge enthusiasm by hardened ' enemies ' but the women were a little disoriented, perhaps. For a little while, gentlemen and ladies mingled on a lovely day, rubbing elbows of necessity. It was a little hard, remembering who was an enemy and who a polite and attentive man.

And no tension, on the other shore, either. Like I said, worth inspecting, if one happened to write books. :angel: And knew one's subject matter extremely well.
 
Those Rebel ladies.....They had something up their sleeves. Actually, up their skirts...:bounce:


OH goodness, it took a brave man to ask. No idea where this wilting, fainting, belle image came from. Those ladies were intimidating, be sure! You just know picket duty was preferred over " Excuse me, ma'am, about your skirts? "

Of course, I've never been happy with the whole complete Blockade thing- when it came to getting medicine through to wounded, seems to me they did the right thing.
 
OH goodness, it took a brave man to ask. No idea where this wilting, fainting, belle image came from. Those ladies were intimidating, be sure! You just know picket duty was preferred over " Excuse me, ma'am, about your skirts? "

Of course, I've never been happy with the whole complete Blockade thing- when it came to getting medicine through to wounded, seems to me they did the right thing.
I can't even imagine being the soldier whose duty was to inspect for "contraband". "Pardon me, I need to see up your skirt". Some of those war harden veterans would have relished the duty, to be sure, with absolutely no shame. But as for me, I think I would have been mortified.
 
I can't even imagine being the soldier whose duty was to inspect for "contraband". "Pardon me, I need to see up your skirt". Some of those war harden veterans would have relished the duty, to be sure, with absolutely no shame. But as for me, I think I would have been mortified.


Right? Looked for how the er, ' Inspection Station ' may have been set up? It would indeed have been just dreadful for soldiers. I do realize barbarities occurred through the war- it was ugly sometimes. This wasn't one of them, guessing a ridiculously awkward business for all of them.
 
In the 80's I worked in New Orleans and we lived in Mandeville, which is the next town south from Madisonville. If you take the Pontchartrain bridge north out of New Orleans and over the lake, (I think it may be the world's longest bridge), it empties n the North shore. If you turn left you go to Madisonville, go straight you go to Covington, and turn right and you go into Mandeville. These towns all have very beautiful antibellum homes with moss covered live oak trees-- it's well worth the drive. These town were built by the wealthy of New Orleans as a place to escape the yellow fever epidemics.
I remember that Madisonville had a real good cajun seafood restaurant on the banks of the chafunta river.
Thanks for the post-and the memories!
 
In the 80's I worked in New Orleans and we lived in Mandeville, which is the next town south from Madisonville. If you take the Pontchartrain bridge north out of New Orleans and over the lake, (I think it may be the world's longest bridge), it empties n the North shore. If you turn left you go to Madisonville, go straight you go to Covington, and turn right and you go into Mandeville. These towns all have very beautiful antibellum homes with moss covered live oak trees-- it's well worth the drive. These town were built by the wealthy of New Orleans as a place to escape the yellow fever epidemics.
I remember that Madisonville had a real good cajun seafood restaurant on the banks of the chafunta river.
Thanks for the post-and the memories!


No way! There's a bridge now, covering the distance? Very cool- and how in blazes engineers pull this kind of thing off always, always flattens me. Such a massive undertaking!

Love to see some of the old homes. We lost an awful lot, between being torn down as cities encroached and families not being able to maintain them- ' we ' meaning this country. Love to see New Orleans anyway- must be our most fascinating city, hand's down.
 
Very often, the women who evacuated from a Union occupied area were wives of Confederate officers who were allowed to depart, or sometimes ordered to. It makes sense that they would be anxious to leave as they were often suspected of being spies or of fostering or inciting anti-Union sentiment. I've read accounts of various Union commanders in the Western states who allowed the wives of their counterparts to depart, but it doesn't get much overall publicity.

When the requirement to take the oath began, many New Orleans men feared that doing so would ruin them when the war was finished, so they transferred their property into their wive's names and let them take The Oath.
 
No way! There's a bridge now, covering the distance? Very cool- and how in blazes engineers pull this kind of thing off always, always flattens me. Such a massive undertaking!

Love to see some of the old homes. We lost an awful lot, between being torn down as cities encroached and families not being able to maintain them- ' we ' meaning this country. Love to see New Orleans anyway- must be our most fascinating city, hand's down.

YES WAY! You doubted me?
They first build a two lane bridge in the 60's ( I think). then they came back around 10 years later and added another two lane bridge along side of the first one and every 5 miles or so there's a place where you can turn around and head back in the other direction. The bridge is only 20 feet or so over the water with one section where it does rise up high enough for larger boats to pass under. It's approximately 24 miles long and is the world's longest bridge "over water." There is now a bridge in China that's longer but some of it is over land.

check out this photo: (from wikipedia)
1024px-Landsat_new_orleans_nfl_lrg.jpg


That big line going approx. north-south is (official name) The
Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, from Metarie in the south,(a suburb of NOLA) to Mandeville on the North shore. The first plan was to build a series of Islands and bridges to the north shore, where they would sell building sites on the islands to finance the building of the bridges. What could possibly go wrong with that? Instead they built a bridge across the lake. The lake isn't very deep, but the bottom is made of silt so they had to drive the pillions down to where it hit something firmer.
OK, a little history lesson: If you look at the picture you can easily see the Mississippi River as it snakes it's way past New Orleans (NOLA). Look at the right half of the picture and you'll see where the river turns north and to the west just a little then turns to southeast and makes a big turn back around to the northwest then a real sharp turn to the southwest. The first turn I mentioned is where the French Quarter is located, and the bend in the river is so sharp that the river actually form a whirlpool effect where part of the river ,the water along the north bank, flows downstream while the water along the south bank flows upstream. It's also the deepest part of the whole river system at somewhere around 200 feet deep. the second bend that I mentioned, (the last real tight bend before the river runs off the picture), this is known as "English Bend." Just a tad south of this bend and on the east bank of the river is where the Battle of New Orleans took place. Further south and not in the picture is where fort Jackson and Phillips is/was and the mouth of the river is about 90 miles southwest from NOLA. Where the mouth of the river splits into three (or more) outlets to the gulf is known as the "Head of Passes" and the army Corp of Engineers maintain a 46 foot draft here, meaning if you load a vessel with a draft of over 46 feet it will hit the bottom of the river.
Also note how lake Pontchartrain is almost totally enclosed from the gulf. That's because at one time, the mouth of the river was located there, and then shifted to it's present location.
Back to your original post--go north along the bridge to where it hits the north shore then go to the left until you see where a river empties into the lake--That's where Madisonville is located along the Tchefuncta river. At the time of the Civil War, it was the one of the few spots on the north shore where a boat could land along side a warf. In 1837 a lighthouse was built at the mouth of the river. Here's a modern picture of the harbor in Madisonville to give you an idea of how large the river is. I've eaten seafood at the restaurant many times, (it's some kind of good, ya cher!).
1920px-Madisonville_Louisiana_waterfront_west_side_north_from_LA_22_bridge.jpg


We moved from NOLA (to Singapore!) in 1989, and have not been back. I can't imagine how much it's changed since then. I do know that home values soared after Hurricane Katrina and a lot of Madisonville was damaged due to the storm serge. I've looked at our house in Mandeville and it's still there and a few years ago it was for sale, so I got the chance to tour the house via the internet--that was interesting.

And you're correct about New Orleans being a most unusual city. It's such a blend of cultures, that no other city in the U.S. can match.
 
Very often, the women who evacuated from a Union occupied area were wives of Confederate officers who were allowed to depart, or sometimes ordered to. It makes sense that they would be anxious to leave as they were often suspected of being spies or of fostering or inciting anti-Union sentiment. I've read accounts of various Union commanders in the Western states who allowed the wives of their counterparts to depart, but it doesn't get much overall publicity.

When the requirement to take the oath began, many New Orleans men feared that doing so would ruin them when the war was finished, so they transferred their property into their wive's names and let them take The Oath.

I can't think of an area of the country where what you said is more true than here in Missouri. Persons with "Southern-leaning sentiments" were forced out of the state from 1862 onward to the degree that the population of the state fell by 300,000 persons from 1860 to 1864. Not all of these would have been southern leaning people but I can't think of an area of the country that was treated as harshly by the Federal Government as Missouri. We have "The Burnt District" an area of 3 1/2 counties along the Missouri-Kansas border that was essentially evacuated in Sept. 1863. The area was left open for Kansas jay hawkers to come in an steal and burn what ever was left. This was the results from General Order No.11. where Gen. Ewing ordered all the people from these counties to evacuate the area to deprive the guerrillas' of sanctuary.
Gen. Ewing had been contemplating issuing the order prior to the "Lawrence Massacre," and had already issued Gen Order No. 10, which commanded all southerners from the counties, but as a result of the raid, he expanded the order to include all people 10 days to leave. Of course, the Lawrence Massacre was prompted by the Kansas City jail collapse which killed 5 women who were relatives of the Guerrillas.' These are the worst examples I can find of how a government treats the people of a state that never succeeded.

As an example on a local level, here in Boonville during the war we had a "Ladies Academy," and they held a ceremony, perhaps to celebrate the graduation of some of the young women. The girls dressed in patriotic dresses, some in red and white and some in blue with stars. One of the young girls who wore a red and white dress took the dress with her when she visited friends in Marshall, Mo. a small town about 20 miles from Boonville. She was wearing the dress in the front parlor of her friends home when a stranger walking by saw her and reported her to the local Provost. She was arrested and sent to prison in St. Louis for wearing a "Succession" dress. Her father, a staunch Union man, found out about the arrest and it took him months to get his daughter released. I wonder if she ever wore a red and white dress again, but such was the war here in Missouri.
 
We moved from NOLA (to Singapore!) in 1989, and have not been back. I can't imagine how much it's changed since then. I do know that home values soared after Hurricane Katrina and a lot of Madisonville was damaged due to the storm serge. I've looked at our house in Mandeville and it's still there and a few years ago it was for sale, so I got the chance to tour the house via the internet--that was interesting.


Just ' replied ' to a small part of this terrific post to save space- thanks you so much for adding this level of information to the thread! Crazy good stuff here, enough to keep anyone ( ok, me ) tracking down more for the rest of the day- in imaginary spare time. ( The ' no way ' is a very cold left-over, like moldy meat loaf, from graduating high school in 1976. By college, idiotic phrases were carefully avoided but somehow, I continue to fish this old meat from the back of the fridge ).

And again, so sorry! You just cannot post these things around here without provoking an awful lot of interest.
The aerial map is splendid, thank you! It's still insane, these bridges- like those in our Florida Keys, too, can be engineered. Heck, I'm still smitten by pontoon bridges. And thanks for bringing Metarie in- good friend from there, who had to get out in Katrina. Remember for years before Katrina, she said that city was just waiting for the right storm, hitting the right place. Genuinely appreciate so much information- especially on this thread, it's hugely helpful!


As an example on a local level, here in Boonville during the war we had a "Ladies Academy," and they held a ceremony, perhaps to celebrate the graduation of some of the young women. The girls dressed in patriotic dresses, some in red and white and some in blue with stars. One of the young girls who wore a red and white dress took the dress with her when she visited friends in Marshall, Mo. a small town about 20 miles from Boonville. She was wearing the dress in the front parlor of her friends home when a stranger walking by saw her and reported her to the local Provost. She was arrested and sent to prison in St. Louis for wearing a "Succession" dress. Her father, a staunch Union man, found out about the arrest and it took him months to get his daughter released. I wonder if she ever wore a red and white dress again, but such was the war here in Missouri.


If you have have time, that would be a terrific thread. The war in Missouri seems so separate, somehow- things were almost tolerated there which would have caused riots in the east. Had no clue on any of it, until joining here. Perhaps because things were so barbaric, it's a terrible topic ? 18th Virginia has had a few threads on women who managed to live through it. It was all so appalling you can't believe it's the same war- not that things were wonderful elsewhere but you didn't hear the same level of sheer savagery .
 
Just ' replied ' to a small part of this terrific post to save space- thanks you so much for adding this level of information to the thread! Crazy good stuff here, enough to keep anyone ( ok, me ) tracking down more for the rest of the day- in imaginary spare time. ( The ' no way ' is a very cold left-over, like moldy meat loaf, from graduating high school in 1976. By college, idiotic phrases were carefully avoided but somehow, I continue to fish this old meat from the back of the fridge ).

And again, so sorry! You just cannot post these things around here without provoking an awful lot of interest.
The aerial map is splendid, thank you! It's still insane, these bridges- like those in our Florida Keys, too, can be engineered. Heck, I'm still smitten by pontoon bridges. And thanks for bringing Metarie in- good friend from there, who had to get out in Katrina. Remember for years before Katrina, she said that city was just waiting for the right storm, hitting the right place. Genuinely appreciate so much information- especially on this thread, it's hugely helpful!





If you have have time, that would be a terrific thread. The war in Missouri seems so separate, somehow- things were almost tolerated there which would have caused riots in the east. Had no clue on any of it, until joining here. Perhaps because things were so barbaric, it's a terrible topic ? 18th Virginia has had a few threads on women who managed to live through it. It was all so appalling you can't believe it's the same war- not that things were wonderful elsewhere but you didn't hear the same level of sheer savagery .

Thank you so much for your very kind response.
I lived in NOLA for 6 years or so and all I can say is that that city and area of our country is so much different than any other place that I've lived. I'd like to go back for a visit just to see how things have changed in the almost 30 years since I left.

The Civil War in Missouri.........................
I have no idea where to begin. It's difficult on this forum sometime to discuss things without it going "partisan" pretty quick and once that happens, the learning stops. I happen to be very interested in the guerrilla activities that occurred here and what motivated them, and after years of studying the CW, this is where my interest lies, as it's local history to me. But by no means do I consider myself "pro southern;" I'm pro Missouri and there's enough local history here to satisfy me.
What happened out here was a sideshow to the bigger events to the East of us, but they were so devastating to the people and state of Missouri. For example, you could be thrown into prison for giving aid and comfort to the enemy if you were caught burying a dead guerrilla you found along the road. Within a ten minute drive from my house I can take you to the graves of some guerrillas who had to be buried at night, in unmarked graves, so those that buried them would not be thrown into prison. I feel one would be hard pressed to find any other state that was as ruined by the war than Missouri. Remember, the state never succeeded. We lost 1/4 of our population by 1864, with many of them never to return, and I think this may be one reason why the story of the war here is not better known.

As time permits I'll be happy to post more about Missouri/guerrilla topics if you think you'd find them interesting. And thank you for allowing me to take over your post. I now return it to you.
 
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