Unlike in the rest of the United States, Black military service in Louisiana spans three centuries. Free Black people and armed enslaved Africans fought alongside the French in the early 18th century, helped Spanish Governor Bernardo de Gálvez drive the British from the Gulf South during the American Revolution and distinguished themselves with Choctaw warriors at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Louisianians became the first officially organized Black regiments in the U.S. Army, the first engaged in major combat, and the first to commission Black officers.
Louisiana had often rejected radical Southern calls for secession in the prewar years, in part because of its economic ties to Northern trade via the Mississippi River and the Port of New Orleans. It was only after Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery expansion, was elected that the state joined the Confederacy in January 1861.
In response, Jordan Noble, the famed Black drummer boy of Andrew Jackson’s 1815 New Orleans campaign against the British, called for volunteers to help defend the city again. About 2,000 free People of Color gathered at the Couvent School for Orphans of the Catholic Faith, to form the Native Guards. Fearing Confederate retaliation and eager to protect families and property, the men initially offered their services to the Confederacy but would eventually fight on the side of the Union…