History of Louisiana

[ 2262 print pages ]

Charles Gayarré's History of Louisiana, written over a span of years from 1846 to 1864, provides in‑depth coverage of the early life of the state and territory. The author, having served as Louisiana's Secretary of State, was himself an actor in her history in the latter part of that period, and is unabashed in his support of slavery as a positive good, thus adding to the work a personal dimension of some interest.

[ 6/1/06: over 1300 print pages
presented in 71 webpages, 55 photos, 110 engravings, 10 maps ]

The core of this site, for the first year, was a large section on the City of New Orleans: it contains two complete books on the city's history; a largish section of source documents on its unusual water management problems; and other material on its architecture and public health.

[ 4/19/06:
15 articles, 4 illustrations ]

From time to time, I expect to add to the site some of the more interesting items to be found in the Louisiana Historical Quarterly — or at least only those in the public domain, of course. Among the items onsite are the Diary of Bernardo de Galvez on the Operations against Pensacola (1780‑1781), a defense of Gen. James Wilkinson, an official Mexican Report on the Texas-Louisiana boundary (1828), some excerpts from Bossu's Travels in North America (1768), and the story of General Victor Collot's arrest for espionage (1796); there are others.

[ 3 webpages ]

Address of Citizens of Louisiana to the People of the United States is a memorial by a committee of citizens on what they viewed as fraud in the 1872 elections for state government; it's an interesting window into the crisis that was "Reconstruction" in the South.