First Louisiana National Guards
New Orleans, LA   July 29, 1863

The Funeral of André Cailloux

Since its founding 150 years earlier, New Orleans
had never seen anything like it: immense crowds of
black residents, including members of thirty-some
mutual aid societies, thronging Esplanade Avenue
for more than a mile to witness the funeral
procession of André Cailloux, an African-American
Union captain who had fallen during the initial
assault against Confederate ramparts at Port
Hudson, a hundred miles upriver from the
Union-occupied city. The charge was prelude to a
protracted siege, a downstream complement to
U.S. Grant’s more famous strangulation of
Vicksburg. For six weeks Cailloux’s body rotted in
Louisiana’s liquid heat, as rebel sharpshooters
repulsed Union burial details. Not until Port Hudson
surrendered on July 8th were Cailloux’s remains
retrieved. By then the only identifying mark was a
ring on a skeletal knuckle signifying his membership
in the “Friends of Order,” a black self-help society he
had helped found.
A former slave and self-employed cigar maker who
had gained his freedom in 1847, Cailloux exempli-

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fied the complexities and cohesiveness
of
New
Orleans
mixed-race community of free
people of color. Residing below
Canal Street, they were artisans,
boarding house proprietors, and
small shopkeepers for the most
part. They owned property. A few
accumulated real wealth. They
established schools, chartered
mutual aid societies, sponsored
cultural institutions. Cailloux, who
was very dark-skinned and proud
of it, stood tall in this community.
He was one of the early organizers
of the first all-black Union regiment to fight in the Civil War—the
First Louisiana Native Guards.
Cailloux’s body lay in state on a
raised platform in his New Orleans
fraternal hall, his sword and uniform resting on the American flag

that draped his casket. Two black Union privates assisted Athe abolitionist priest, Father Claude Paschal
Maistre, to deliver the last rites of the Catholic
Church because the city’s pro-Confederate archbishop threatened with excommunication anyone
caught ministering to former slaves. Two companies
of the Sixth Louisiana (colored) regiment escorted
the hearse. Six black captains of the Second Louisiana Native Guards served as pallbearers. And playing
the dirge accompanying the procession to the Bienville Street cemetery where Cailloux was laid to rest
was a white regimental band from Massachusetts.
The immense outpouring of black respect sprang
from the deepest wells of gratitude. André Calloux’s
martydom in defense of African American liberties
and universal human dignity was instrumental in
transfiguring a war for union into a war for freedom.
It also radicalized this distinctive community, girding
them for the no less challenging fight for equal
citizenship that lay ahead.
ARTIST : LANGSTON ALLSTON
NARRATIVE : LARRY POWELL

Paper Monuments is a project designed to elevate the voices of the people of New Orleans in
the process of creating new symbols for our city that represent all of our people. During the
process, you’ll see posters and flyers across New Orleans showing some of the people, places,
events, and movements that have shaped our city over the past 300 years. We reached out to
some of New Orleans greatest activists, historians, storytellers, and artists to honor these
erased histories as we look towards the future.
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