There is a widespread impression in the North that a popular vote would have carried Louisiana against secession and for the Union party. Nothing is further from the truth. However, as there is believed to be great virtue in mere majorities, it seems a pity that the Ordinance of Secession was not submitted to popular vote in Louisiana, as it was in Tennessee and Texas. It was carried by overwhelming majorities in both States,1 and there is every reason to believe that it would have been carried by a substantial majority in Louisiana after the convention had decided almost unanimously that it was a wise measure. Six months before, the vote might have been against immediate secession, but one must beware of confounding August 1860 with January 1861.2

The fact that the ordinances were not submitted to popular vote except in two States has enabled northern writers to say that the South was hurried into secession by ambitious fire-eaters, who were really conspirators, afraid to consult their constituents. It is also claimed by northern writers that as the representatives in legislatures and conventions were apportioned according to representative population (i. e., three fifths of the slave population being counted in), the large slaveholding sections of each State had a disproportionate representation, and if the ordinances of secession had been submitted to the popular vote, the whole mass of white voters, who alone had the franchise, and the majority of whom had no slaves, would have voted down the ordinances, and thereby shown that the representatives in the conventions did not really represent the majority of white people. The argument is plausible but by no means conclusive. It is flatly contradicted in the cases of Tennessee and Texas, and there seems to be no

Picayune, January 29, 1861. Some cooperationists now said that, whatever their previous convictions, they felt that the emergency called for straight-out secession.

In Tennessee, 104,019 to 47,238; in Texas, 34,794 to 11,235. 2 Senator Jonas says that he, though a Whig and a Bell man, would have signed the Ordinance of Secession.

Lalor, Cyclopaedia, subject "Secession," p. 698.

reason to suppose that it would have met with a different answer in the other seceding States.

As there was no popular vote in Louisiana, let us consider what was the will of the voters as expressed in the election of the members to the secession convention. We have seen that out of 130 members 121 signed the Ordinance of Secession, though the vote for the cooperationist members was at least 17,256, while the secessionists claimed only 20,448. Nay, it was asserted by the newspapers of the time that the official returns of the election were suppressed. The Picayune of February 17, 1861, published a letter signed "C. B." which says, "I understand from a gentleman just from Baton Rouge that the popular vote in the recent election was in favor of the cooperationist ticket by a majority of 320." Again, the Picayune of March 19, 1861, says: "The Picayune has been accused by a contemporary of joining in the humbug cry of suppressing the popular vote, but last Saturday the Convention was asked by Mr. Bienvenu and Mr. Rozier to bring the election returns before that body, as it was necessary to know what the popular vote was on the cooperation and secession. tickets. The Convention refused to suspend the rules and consider the question raised, by a vote of 72 to 23." Several years later it was a common thing for Republicans in Louisiana to maintain that the official returns were suppressed, and that the State "really voted against secession." A surviving member of the convention1 writes the author on this point: "In regard to the letter published in the Picayune, February 17, 1861, alleging that the Co-operationists had a majority, but the correct returns had been suppressed in the Convention, I do not remember to have seen it, though I was a Co-operationist myself; but it is incredible that such strenuous and determined opponents as were Christian Roselius, J. A. Rozier-not to mention others would have permitted such an outrage to have been perpetrated without raising a tempest long to be remem'Hon. S. S. Conner.

bered." Still the report that the cooperationists had been elected by a majority of the votes was rife at the time and is clearly stated in the diary of Mr. John Purcell, then a resident of New Orleans, under date of February 4, 1861;1 and the refusal of the convention to lay the returns before that body brings out the fact that at least twenty-three cooperationists thought it worth while to demand the returns, even after the majority of them had signed the Ordinance of Secession three weeks before.

Even, however, if we should accept the theory that the cooperationists had been elected by a majority vote, we must avoid sharply the error of supposing that the majority of the voters in Louisiana were opposed to the secession of the State. This would be to misunderstand the general position of the cooperationists. They were not battling against secession. Their position is clearly stated in the motion of J. A. Rozier, given above. Only a few members of the convention seem to have agreed with James A. Taliaferro, who declared that "the proper status of Louisiana is with the border States with which nature has connected her by the majestic river which flows through her limits; and an alliance in a weak government with the Gulf States east of her is unnatural and antagonistic to her obvious interests and destiny." While he held the true theory from a commercial standpoint, he completely ignored the slavery question -the great inciting cause of secession-which bound Louisiana most closely to the Gulf States. Moreover, it is clear that both inside and outside the convention the illogical character of the cooperationists' position became more apparent every day, and the cooperationist members of the convention, except in a few cases where they had pledged themselves to their constituents not to change, were won over to their opponents' views and signed the ordinance.

1

The enthusiasts for immediate secession had begun, too,

"It now appears that the popular vote in Louisiana is some 300 or 400 majority against secession, and yet the Secessionists are two to one in the Convention." Purcell, MŠ. Diary. Lent the author by Mr. Purcell.

to link the title of "Cooperationist" with that of "Submissionist," and though Christian Roselius protested against the confounding of two distinct things, the slur had an important influence on public opinion. Already, on January 9, the New Orleans Delta was quoting a letter recently written by Senator Judah P. Benjamin in which he said: "The North means war. I trust our Convention will not hesitate a moment about immediate secession. That is Cooperation now." Among the newspapers the Picayune had rung the changes on cooperation, but by January 12 the Picayune, the Bulletin, the Crescent, the Bee, and the Delta were a unit against every form of coercion;1 and the Creole Bee,2 quoted in the Delta of January 8, had struck the true note when it declared: "Whether the Cooperationists or Secessionists win in the elections now going on, it will not strengthen the Union a tithe of a hair. The destiny of Louisiana is linked with that of her sisters of the South." The formation of the immediate secession sentiment had been hurried on by the logic of events. The voice of Roselius was "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." It was the voice of a Whig when the Whigs had ceased to exist.3 If any one, after considering the facts just mentioned, still doubts whether the majority of the white people in Louisiana were ripe for secession in one form or another in February, 1861, his doubts will vanish when he reads of the wave of enthusiasm for separation from the Union which swept over the whole State after the fall of Fort Sumter, in April, 1861. Not to follow Beauregard, a favorite son of the State, in that momentous step was treason to Louisiana. As early as January 29 even Mr. John Purcell, a Unionist, and later a member of the Republican convention of 1864, was writing in his diary, "I am myself drifting into secession ideas." Public opinion, halting at first on account of the love of the Union, was rushing

1 Delta, January 12, 1861.

L'Abeille, published in French.

3 Speech of May 30, 1860, in the Picayune of that date.

rapidly toward States' Rights doctrine in the late winter and early spring of 1861.

There seems to have been a general impression in Louisiana that the Federal government would not resist the withdrawal of the Southern States, that "the erring sisters would be allowed to go in peace," but such was not the belief of Governor Moore. He believed coercion would be tried; and some days before the convention met he thought it would be wise to take possession of the United States military depot at Baton Rogue, and to occupy with state troops Fort Pike on the Rigolets and Forts Jackson and St. Philip on the Mississippi. In every case, he stated to the legislature, he had given receipts for the property found, in order to protect the officer dispossessed and to facilitate the future settlement with the Federal government. The South properly held that the forts and their stores belonged partly to the South, and to leave them to the North would be unfair.2 On March 7 the convention passed an ordinance transferring the specie in the mint to the Confederate government. The amount was $536,000.

The view taken by Governor Moore, that there was danger of coercion on the part of the North, was shared by Major P. G. T. Beauregard, of Louisiana, who returned to his native State from the North about this time. Beauregard had been appointed superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point in November, 1860, but he had announced that if Louisiana seceded, he would resign his position in the army. After he had discharged his duties as superintendent for a few days, in January, 1861, he was ordered back to New Orleans by the secretary of war. Here he found excitement and enthusiasm on every hand but a general feeling that there might be a peaceable withdrawal. Beauregard, fresh from the North, where he had

1 Roman, Military Operations of General Beauregard, I, 16.

2 The governor of Mississippi asked that the spoils of Baton Rouge be divided; and Louisiana sent him 8000 muskets, 1000 rifles, 6 twenty-four pound guns, and a considerable amount of ammunition. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, p. 9.

3 S. S. Cox, Three Decades, p. 115.