BATTLE FOR THE BAYOUS - 151ST ANNIVERSARY OFTHEBATTLE OF FRANKLIN (IRISH BEND)

As Les Familles Baudin/Bodin reunites in Franklin on March 29, 2014, let us remember the “forgotten Civil War” in Louisiana which dramatically disrupted the lives of our Bodin ancestors 151 years ago. One hundred and fifty one years ago Union troops were advancing towards Franklin by the thousands. And our Bodin ancestors were hiding their valuables, packing up and trying to get to safety.

LES FAMILLIES BODIN

Jean -Louis Bodin, a French citizen, settled in Spanish Louisiana in the 1780s. Louisiana was purchased by the United States in 1803. Within nine years Louisiana became the 18th state, on April 30, 1812.

The Bodins, being French speaking citizens of the United States living in the bayou parishes of Louisiana, probably saw little evidence of their new country. They certainly noticed many more English speaking Americans moving into the area, perhaps the postal service of the new government, the first Fourth of July celebrations, the U.S. censuses, and after statehood, elections for national offices. The only country they really knew was “Louisiana”, and there was little connection with far-off Washington.

However, Jean-Louis’ son, Gregoire Bodin, only 17 years old, took the call of his new country to volunteer to serve in the Louisiana militia in the War of 1812. Records show that he served from January 3, 1815 to March 13, 1815 (his service began in December according to his petition for a land grant which he did receive years later). No doubt his enlistment was due to the invasion of the only “country” he knew, Louisiana, near New Orleans on December 12, 1814. Whether he made it to New Orleans to participate in the January 8, 1815 victory over the British is not known.

Back in the bayous, the Bodins prospered and multiplied. Gregoire became a prosperous farmer and rancher. Gregorie would have been the equivalent of a millionaire today, and Simon, his brother, and Ursin Provost, husband of his sister, Josephine Bodin, would have been quite rich for their times!

BODINS IN THE CIVIL WAR

From LES FAMILLES BAUDIN/ BODIN, it appears there were approximately 10Bodin men of military age (18 to 40), the sons of Gregorie and Simon and the grandsons of Jean Louis Bodin, in 1860. It does not appear that any of the sons of their sisters, or Gregorie and Simon’s daughters, would have been of military age. Many young men in the Franklin area mustered into the local militias and C.S.A. units, and by 1863 many had gone off to fight in Virginia or other theaters. However, it appears that all of the men surnamed Bodin served in Louisiana.

Eleven men surnamed Bodin appear in the records of Louisiana Confederate Soldiers and Commands. See LES FAMILLES BAUDIN/BODIN page 711. All of these Bodin men were captured during the war and all probably survived the war, as most were paroled in May and June 1865. Several were paroled at New Iberia June 11 or June 13, 1865.

SECCESSION!!

Cotton was indeed “king” and sugar did very well before the war. The great plantation owners along the Mississippi became fabulously wealthy with thousands of slaves. The majority of the residents of Louisiana, including the Teche area, were slaves. In 1860 the majority of the millionaires in the entire United States lived on plantations between New Orleans and Natchez. Louisiana was one of the wealthiest states in the Union. Slaves were valuable property and a great amount of the net worth or wealth of the South was the value of the slaves.

The issue of slavery and other issues regarding the relationship of the states to the Federal government had been a festering sore in the Union since the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of our Constitution, but the South’s fear of the national government erupted on November 4, 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, and other southern states followed, with Louisiana seceding on January 26, 1861. The Confederate States of American was formed in Birmingham, Alabama on February 4, 1861.

On April 14, 1861 General Beauregard, a Mexican War hero from Louisiana, ordered the bombardment of Fort Sumter. The fort surrendered a day later on April 15, 1961, and hostilities of the Civil War or “War for Southern Independence” began. Both sides thought it would be over in a matter of weeks.

LOUISIANA INVADED!!!

Since New Orleans and the Mississippi controlled all of the trade from the western United States including the Ohio valley, the control of the Mississippi became a priority for the Union. President Lincoln ordered a blockade of all southern ports, and almost immediately the war was felt in Louisiana.

The Union blockade shut down the Mississippi, and New Orleans fell on April 25, 1862. The capitol at Baton Rouge was abandoned and moved to Opelousas. New Orleans was subjected to a very brutal, corrupt, and degrading occupancy by Union forces commanded by General “Brute” or “Spoons” Butler, called so because of his brutality and his theft of silverware and valuables from the citizens.

To control the Mississippi,the Union needed to take Vicksburg, Gibraltar of the South, and Port Hudson just north of Baton Rouge,which also blocked the river. In late 1862 Grant embarked south to capture Vicksburg. General Banks, who replaced Butler, planned to attack Port Hudson by first invading south Louisiana to divert the forces of General Richard Taylor (son of President Zachary Taylor and a prominent Louisiana planter) away from the west bank near New Orleans and Port Hudson.

While hostilities had not yet reached Franklin in 1861 or 1862, the occupation of New Orleans and the blockade of the mouth of the Mississippi were affecting all of Louisiana. The lives of our ancestors had been severely disrupted, and things were about to get a lot worse.

THE FORGOTTEN CAMPAIGN

It has been called the “forgotten Civil War” because most remember only the major campaigns in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, or even nearby Vicksburg. I was unaware of the Teche Campaign, The Forgotten Campaign, until I picked up James Lee Burke’s In the Electric Mists with Confederate Dead a few years back.

Over the four years of the Civil War, there were hundreds of engagements in Louisiana by land and gunboat,and several significant battles. The total killed and wounded on both sides was probably well over 15,000. Thousands from both sides were captured, and thousands died of disease within Louisiana.

For a very interesting history of this period, see DARK AND BLODDY GROUND, The Battle of Mansfield and the Forgotten Civil War in Louisiana by Thomas Ayres. Also, go to for a more detailed description of the main battles in Louisiana.

Here, then, is a much abbreviated progression of the Teche Campaign in the spring and summer of 1863 which really does not do justice to the terrors and turmoil our ancestors experienced 151 years ago:

February 14. Federal gunboats moving up the Red River to capture Alexandria were turned back at Fort De Russy. March 13. General Alfred Mouton and his troops along with Confederate gunboats repulse Union gunboats at Fort Bisland, earthworks on each bank of the Teche. March 28. Louisiana troops capture the Union gunboat Diana on Grand Lake above Berwick Bay.

April 12 - 13. General Banks, with over 12,000 Union troops supported by gunboats, attacked Fort Bisland,which was manned by less than 3,000. After two days of heavy firing, Confederate forces retire, and Banks’s troops march up the Teche on both sides of the bayou, supported by gunboats, in an effort to trap General Richard Taylor and his Confederate army between another Union regiment crossing the Atchafalaya.

April 14. The Union and Confederate forces meet at the Irish Bend of the Teche about one and a half miles above Franklin. General Taylor, still heavily outnumbered,met Banks’s two regiments in a sharp fight on land and water. After learning of the landing of another Union regiment from the Atchafalaya, Taylor retreated and the Teche was lost. A bridge which Taylor ordered burned to impede the Union advance was destroyed before all of his troops could cross, and over 400 are captured.

Records reflect that Privates Alcie Bodin and Joseph Bodin of Company F of the 10th Battalion Louisiana Infantry, and Private Ulysses Bodin of the Lowells Scouts, were captured on April 14th at Bayou Teche. It is likely they were among those stranded when the bridge was burned.

April 16. New Iberia was occupied and much of the town was put to the torch.April 18. Vermillionile (now Lafayette) was occupied. April 20.The capital of Louisiana was moved to Shreveport and Opelousas was captured. May 8. Alexandria was occupied until late May. General Banks then turned back and proceeded down the Red River to attack Port Hudson on the Mississippi.

June 23. The always aggressive General Taylor, seeing an opening, sent Colonel James P. Major back down the Teche and Atchafalayato drive Union forces out of the Teche. Confederate troops collected all of the boats they could find at New Iberia, The Mosquito Fleet, and surprised the Yankees at Brashear City (Morgan City), retook this rail center, and captured over 2,000 Union soldiers.

(Coincidentally, my maternal great-great grandfather, Argalus McMayon, with Spraight’s Battalion, C.S.
A. of Newton, Texas found a Bible on this battlefield. It had been given to a “George Theriot”,probably George Theriot of the 4th Minnesota Infantry. I wonder if Argalus tromped across a Bodin plantation during his war years in Louisiana. His granddaughter, my mother, Kathleen McMahon,married my father, Tolbert A. Greenwood, the grandson of Desire Bodin, one of Gregorie’s grandsons.)

July 1 - 3. After 3 days of the bloodiest fighting of the war, General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia is defeated. July 4. Vicksburg surrenders to Grant.July 9. Port Hudson surrenders to Banks.July22. General Taylor abandons the lower Teche, and south Louisiana remained under Union control until the end of the war.

March and April 1864. General Banks’s Red River Campaign to capture Shreveport is repulsed at Mansfield or Sabine Crossroads on April 8 with substantial casualties on both sides, including General Alfred Mouton. Banks retreated to Pleasant Hill where the fight continued on April 9. Banks retreated back down the Red, abandoning his efforts to capture Shreveport.

April 9, 1865. Lee surrenders at Appomattox, and although a few minor hostilities continued, the Civil War was over and the Union had prevailed. It has been recently estimated that over one million Americans, Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors, had died on the battlefield or from disease during the four-year war!

DEVASTATION OF THE BAYOU COUNTRY

During the Bayou Teche Campaign of March through June 1863, from the Gulf to Opelousas along the Teche and the Atchafalaya, thousands of infantry, cavalry, and artillery of both Union and Confederate troops, supported by their gunboats on the rivers and bayous and followed by thousands of horses and mules pulling their supplies, munitions, and cannons, marched and fought up and down the Teche, Atchafalaya, and roads and bayous in central Louisiana.

In addition to New Iberia being put to the torch and most of its buildings destroyed, most of the horses, mules, cattle and other farm animals were confiscated, and many of the plantations and factories were destroyed or damaged throughout the entire Tech area. Homes were ransacked and most of the slaves “freed” or confiscated as contraband of war. Renegades, deserters, and outlaws also preyed upon the residents. Total pandemonium faced the residents for months.

Other than their land and strong resolve, most had lost nearly everything they owned, and many had lost loved ones. It seems that the Bodins were fortunate in that regard, as 11 Bodins were captured in Louisiana and apparently survived to be paroled at New Iberia or other places in Louisiana in June 1865.Whether they made it back to Vacherie to visit their father or grandfather, Gregroie Bodin, who died June25,1865, is not known. Hopefully, he got the news that his loved ones survived and made it back home.

RECONSTRUCTION

Once the war was over in April 1865, there were many years of a harsh, corrupt Reconstruction and tremendous economic issues. From the prosperous times of the 1850s, Louisiana became one of the poorest states in the Union. The value of land and other property dropped more than half by the late 1860s, and with a corrupt government and the debt many accrued before and during the war, many plantations and farms were lost, and many had to turn to tenant farming to survive.

Gregorie’s estate was the subject of a sheriff’s sale in 1867. Whether this was a sale to satisfy debts of his estate or to settle the estate between his surviving wife and heirs cannot be determined. Although the estate was valued in excess of $50,000, still a significant amount, even if there were no outstanding debt against the estate, its value was probably a small fraction of what his estate would have been worth prior to 1860. Still, the fact that other family members were able to acquire most of the land and the plantation house at Vacherie indicates that not all of the family wealth had been lost in the war.

As strong-willed,hardworking people of their times, they rolled up their sleeves, got back to work, and got on with their lives. They dealt with the war and the hard times after the war the best that they could. They helped other family members when they could. Some moved to Texas or other states for better jobs and opportunities, and others stayed near Franklin and nearby Louisiana towns. And after one hundred and fifty years and several generations of Bodins, Les Famillies Bodin is a family of good Americans.

Tolbert L. Greenwood

February 15, 2014

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