Charles D. Dreux, so early killed in the war, was mourned in the city which knew him best as a loss both as a citizen and soldier. In New Orleans and Shreveport, Confederate crape was first displayed in Louisiana. The battalion had enlisted for a year. The enlistment was made at the time when Hon. W. H. Seward, of New York, was proclaiming that the war would not last three months. The command had received from General Magruder, in consideration of their being the pioneer volunteers from their State, an assurance that at the expiration of the time of enlistment the battalion would be permitted, as its members should prefer, either to re-enlist or to return to New Orleans. In April, 1862, the Confederate Congress had already legislated the conscript law. At the crossing of the ways the battalion was divided in mind. A few of them left. The vast majority, with their faces looking to the misty ‘front,’ enlisted for the war. Their martial character, so triumphantly displayed under all the monotony of a tedious and foot-weary service, went with them from Yorktown to the fields to be made memorable by the Louisiana contingent in the armies of Northern Virginia and Tennessee. The whole military land was before them ‘where to choose,’ and wherever he chose to plant himself, the reports of his superior officer showed that each man of the Louisiana battalion did his duty in camp and on the field. Most of the Louisiana regiments were ordered direct from New Orleans to Richmond. There, the voice of a
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