The Rock of New Orleans On Wednesday, July 29, 1863, an unprecedented crowd of slaves, runaways and free people of color gathered along the downtown streets of federally occupied New Orleans. They did so not only to honor and bid farewell to one of their own, Capt. André Cailloux of the 1st Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards, who had fallen at the siege of Port Hudson, La., but also to send a message of defiance to white New Orleanians, most of whom favored the Confederate cause. Indeed, Cailloux's funeral, complete with full military honors, served as a black unionist counterpoint to an earlier public tribute on July 15, 1861, when a predominantly white crowd of about 30,000 people turned out to pay tribute to Col. Charles Didier Dreux, the first rebel Louisiana officer killed in the war. Indeed, Cailloux's military funeral, orchestrated by Union military authorities and activist free people of color associated with l'Union newspaper, was a mirror image of the earlier obsequies - an affirmation of black military valor every bit as heroic as anything to which the Confederates could point. Captain Cailloux, the first black warrior-hero of the Civil War, was an officer in the first black regiment to be officially mustered into the United States Army and the first to participate in a significant battle. Both in life and in death, he did much to inspire, embolden and unify people of African descent in New Orleans. They elevated him to a near-mythic status, and they invoked his name in their campaigns for emancipation, equal rights and suffrage. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to New Orleans, since the city had fallen to Union forces in the spring of 1862. Cailloux's influence extended far beyond New Orleans to include blacks nationwide and their white radical allies as well. His heroic death on May 27, 1863, while leading Company E of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards on a doomed charge against Confederate positions defending Port Hudson, drew widespread national attention. Northern newspapers like The New York Times, The New York Herald and Harper's Weekly, which had urged the use of black combat troops, gave extensive coverage to Cailloux's battlefield courage and to his funeral. Like most of the 11,000 free people of color (known as "les gens de couleur libre") living in New Orleans in 1860, Cailloux was Afro-Creole: African and French in ancestry, French in culture and language, and Catholic in religion. He was born a slave on Aug. 25, 1825, in rural Plaquemines Parish, down the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Brought to New Orleans several years later, he learned the cigar-making trade, hired himself out for wages and in 1846, at 21, received his freedom from his owner. Less than a year later, he married Félicie Louise Coulon, herself a recently manumitted slave. The couple moved into the ranks of New Orleans's free people of color, who occupied an anomalous legal and social position between whites and slaves within Louisiana's unique tripartite racial caste system. Though they could not vote, free people of color could own property, make contracts and testify and sue in court. They were the most prosperous and literate free black population in the nation, with a majority working as artisans, laborers and shopkeepers. While most free people of color were of mixed-race, they ran the spectrum of skin color. Cailloux, for example, took great pride in boasting that he was the blackest man in the Crescent City. He carved out a respectable life as an artisan, learning to read and write, purchasing a modest house and sending his daughter and two sons to school. Nevertheless, during the 1850s, Afro-Creoles in New Orleans had experienced an increasingly inhospitable political and economic climate. When the Civil War began, the Louisiana state government authorized the formation of a militia regiment of free people of color in New Orleans known as the Defenders of the Native Land, or the Louisiana Native Guards - a regiment that the governor intended for show and not for combat. While some free people of color may have enlisted out of a sense of loyalty to their state, most evidently did so out of fear of possible reprisals if they did not. They also probably hoped that their service would translate into improved conditions for them at war's end. Whatever his reasons, Cailloux became a first lieutenant in the Guards. Following the Federal capture of New Orleans on May 1, 1862, the Defenders of the Native Land disbanded. In August, however, four officers of the now defunct regiment affirmed their loyalty to the Union cause and urged Gen. Benjamin F. Butler to raise regiments of free people of color. Butler was acutely aware of the hostility of most white New Orleanians to the Union cause, and of ominous military developments that seemed to presage an attack by Confederate forces on the city. He was also cognizant of the recently passed Militia Act that authorized President Lincoln to enroll blacks "for any military or naval service for which they may be found competent." After receiving no response from Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to his repeated messages seeking permission to enroll free blacks, Butler concluded that he had received tacit permission and proceeded to authorize the recruitment of three regiments of free people of color into the Union Army. The vast majority of eligible free men of color in New Orleans joined up. Many bore the same surnames as the men who had enlisted in the Defenders of the Native Land, but these Union recruits represented a new generation. The thousand-man 1st Regiment of Louisiana Native Guards was mustered into federal service on Sept. 20, 1862, and two others quickly followed. These regiments were unique among all of the black units that served in the Civil War, for while the field officers of the new regiments were white, the line, or company, officers were free men of color. Cailloux was commissioned a captain and took command of E Company of the 1st Regiment. The 38-year-old captain exuded confidence and authority, cutting a dashing figure that debunked the stereotype of black servility and inferiority. Despite orders that only free men could be accepted for enlistment, Cailloux, like the other black officers, turned a blind eye to the status of recruits, welcoming both free people of color and runaway slaves into the ranks. This action further eroded the institution of slavery in Louisiana while also helping to erode racial, religious, cultural and linguistic barriers that had previously divided people of African descent in the city. Cailloux and the rest of the Native Guards faced daunting challenges in the face of bitter white racism. White New Orleanians insulted them in the streets, while white landlords harassed their families and slave owners refused to allow soldiers to have contact with wives who were still slaves. In addition, the federal government failed to honor General Butler's pledge of bounties, equal pay and rations for soldiers" families. White officers snubbed their black counterparts, and white enlisted men refused to salute or obey black officers and showered insults on the enlisted men of the Guards. Moreover, the 1st Regiment had difficulty procuring supplies and equipment, and once in the field spent most of its time on guard or fatigue duty, the latter involving back-breaking manual labor that stigmatized black troops and left little time for drill and training. To make matters worse, Gen. Nathanial P. Banks, who replaced Butler in December 1862, mounted a campaign to remove the black officers of the Native Guards, focusing his initial efforts on the 2nd and 3rd regiments. But in the spring of 1863, Cailloux remained at the head of his company, yearning for an opportunity to demonstrate his own and his men's martial valor. That chance came in May 1863, when the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards were assigned to General Banks's forces besieging Port Hudson, one of the two remaining Confederate strongholds blocking the Mississippi river. Vicksburg to the north was the other. On the morning of May 27, the 1st and 3rd regiments received orders to participate in a general assault on the fortifications surrounding Port Hudson. Their objective was to storm a position on the bluffs protected by rifle pits, a swamp and a rebel engineered backwater from the Mississippi River. Cailloux's company would bear the regimental standards and spearhead the assault over an area fully exposed to rebel fire. At 10 a.m. the bugle sounded and the Native Guards, forming a long line two ranks deep, emerged from the woods in good order, advancing toward the bluff about 600 yards away. At a distance of about 200 yards, the Confederates began to unleash withering musket and artillery fire at the advancing troops. The barrage threw the leading elements into confusion and they broke and ran to cover among willow trees. Cailloux and other officers rallied their men several times. Finally, Cailloux led a charge of screaming and shouting men that reached the backwater, about 200 yards from the bluffs. At that point, the Guards fired their first and apparently only volley. By then Cailloux had been hit in the left arm, but he kept going. His arm dangling by his side, Cailloux held his unsheathed sword aloft in his right hand and in French and English hoarsely exhorted his soldiers to follow him. As he moved in advance of his troops across the flooded ditch, Confederate artillery opened up with solid shot, grape and canister, while the infantry rained down lead. In the maelstrom of fire, Cailloux was struck in the head and killed. Only the availability of trees, stumps and other obstacles prevented a complete slaughter of the rest of the troops. At that point, the 1st Regiment broke and fell back, seeking shelter from Confederate artillery in a nearby willow forest until nightfall. All along the line that day, the Confederates repulsed Union forces, inflicting heavy losses. The 1st Regiment, inexperienced and untested in battle and with less training than most white units, had performed honorably under desperate circumstances. The Anglo-African newspaper, published in New York City, editorialized that "The deeds of heroism performed by these colored men were such as the proudest white men might emulate. Their colors were torn to pieces by shot, and literally be-spotted by blood and brains. The battle had shown definitively and affirmatively that black men would fight: "Nobly ... have they acquitted themselves, and proudly may every colored man hereafter hold up his head." Shortly after the Battle of Port Hudson, two other battles - Millikens Bend, La., in June and the much more widely publicized assault by the Massachusetts 54th at Ft. Wagner on Morris Island near Charleston, S.C., in July - provided further vindication of the use of black troops in combat. In October 1864, more than a year after Cailloux's public funeral, the National Negro Convention, presided over by Frederick Douglas, convened in Syracuse, N.Y. Its objective was to support ratification of the 13th Amendment banning slavery throughout the nation and to launch a national campaign for black suffrage. The convention literally took up Cailloux's standard and figuratively wrapped itself in it. James H. Ingraham, a veteran of Port Hudson who had taken over command of E Company after Cailloux's death, carried the regimental flag of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards regiment, "stained with the blood of the brave Cailloux," into the hall. The effect on the delegates was electric as they stood and cheered Ingraham and the standard. They insisted on hanging the banner over the speaker's platform and then one delegate after another took the floor and extolled the fallen black captain. The convention created a National Equal Rights League to push for black suffrage. Back in New Orleans, "Cailloux Leagues" were formed in neighborhoods to support the aims of the Equal Rights League. Both in life and in death, the strength and courage of Capt. André Cailloux, whose last name could be loosely translated as "the Rock," inspired and united people of African descent in their struggle for that new birth of freedom that Lincoln had so eloquently proclaimed. They could draw hope from words attributed to him: "Man falls! Principles persist! Sources: Sources: Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes, "Our People and Our History," ed. and trans., Sister Dorothea Olga McCants; David C. Edmonds, "The Guns of Port Hudson: The Investment, Siege, and Reduction," Vol. II; James G. Hollandsworth, "The Louisiana Native Guards: The Black Military Experience During the Civil War," and Stephen J. Ochs, "A Black Patriot and a White Priest: André Cailloux and Claude Pashal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans"; Marcus Christian, "Captain André Cailloux: The Rock," Parts I and II, Louisiana Weekly, Aug. 3 and 10, 1957; The Anglo-African, Aug. 15, 1863; National Anti- Slavery Standard, Aug. 15, 1863; Daily Picayune (New Orleans), July 30, 1863; The New York Times, Aug. 8 and 9, 1863; Harper's Weekly, Aug. 29, 1863. Stephen J. Ochs, the Lawler Chair of History at Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Md., is the author of "A Black Patriot and a White Priest: André Cailloux and Claude Pashal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans," "Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Catholic Priests, 1871-1960" and, most recently, "A Cause Greater Than Self: The Journey of Captain Michael J. Daly, World War II Medal of Honor Recipient."