Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[180] for maintaining, by force of arms, the independence of Georgia. They appointed delegates to the proposed General Convention at Montgomery, and adjourned to an early day in March.

Just one week after the so-called secession of Georgia, the politicians of Louisiana declared the withdrawal of that State from the Union. It was one of the most suicidal acts that madmen ever committed. The prosperity of its great commercial capital (New Orleans, containing one hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants) was a blessing almost wholly derived from the Union. Indeed, no State of the Republic was more dependent on the Union for its permanent growth in population and wealth than Louisiana. The device upon the Great Seal of the Commonwealth was a perpetual acknowledgment of the fact — a Pelican brooding over and feeding her young, emblematic of the fostering care of the National Government for its children, the States created by its will.

We have already observed the early movements of the politicians, of Louisiana, led by Slidell, Benjamin, Moore, Walker of the Delta, and others, in drawing the people into the vortex of revolution.¹ In the Legislature, which assembled at Baton Rouge in special session on the 10th of December, the Union sentiment was powerful, yet not sufficiently so to avert mischief to the Commonwealth. An effort was made to submit the question of “Convention or no Convention” to the people. It failed; and an election of delegates to a convention was ordered to be held on the 8th of January, the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, in 1815. No efforts, fair or unfair, were spared to excite the people against the Government, and elect secessionists.

The activity of the politicians in New Orleans was wonderful. They expected the example of the city would be followed in the rural districts, and they sought to make that example boldly revolutionary by frequent public displays of their disunion feelings. On the 21st of December, they publicly celebrated the socalled secession of South Carolina, with demonstrations of great enthusiasm. They fired cannon a hundred times; paraded the streets with bands of

Custom House at New Orleans.2

musicians playing the Marseillaise Hymn and polkas, but no National air; flung out the Pelican flag of the State from the Custom House and other public buildings; and their orators addressed the excited multitude in favor of immediate secession. Four days afterward, there was a public ratification of the nomination of secession or “Southern rights” candidates, with the accompaniments of cannon, and flags, and speeches. Yet, with all these manifestations of disaffection in the city, the great mass of the