| General Halbert Eleazer Paine, commanding officer of the
4th Wisconsin Regiment of Volunteers, took part in most of the
significant military actions in the lower Mississippi Valley
during the Civil War. Nearly forty years after the conflict’s
end, Paine—a former schoolteacher and attorney who would
become a three-term congressman—penned recollections of
his wartime exploits, including his involvement in the Vicksburg
campaign, the operations that resulted in the capture of New
Orleans, the Battle of Baton Rouge, the Bayou Teche offensive,
and the siege of Port Hudson. Now available for the first time,
A Wisconsin Yankee in Confederate Bayou Country provides
Paine’s reflections and offer his excellent eyewitness
account of the complexities of war.
Paine describes in detail the antiguerrilla operations he
coordinated in southern Louisiana and Mississippi and his
role in the defense of Washington, D.C., where he commanded
a portion of the line during Confederate General Jubal Early’s
1864 movement against the city. His experiences shed light
on the daily struggle of the common solider and on the political
and legal debates that dominated the times. In one striking
episode, he describes his arrest for refusing to return to
their masters fugitive slaves who entered his lines. He discusses
the occupation of New Orleans and the relations between Federal
soldiers and local slaves and provides definitive commentary
on dramatic incidents such as the burning of Baton Rouge and
the destruction of the ironclad ram C.S.S. Arkansas.
A departure from most accounts by Union army veterans, Paine’s
story includes less celebration of the grand cause and greater
analysis of the motives for his actions—and their inherent
contradictions. He sympathized with the many “contrabands”
he encountered, for example, yet he callously dismissed a
reliable servant for suggesting that the rebels fought well.
Despite expressing kind feelings toward certain southern families,
Paine all but condoned his troops’ “excessive
looting” of local homes and businesses, which he viewed
as acceptable retribution for those who resisted Federal authority.
After the war, Paine also served as commissioner of patents,
championing innovations such as the introduction of typewriters
into the Federal bureaucracy.
With a useful introduction and annotations by noted historian
Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., A Wisconsin Yankee in Confederate
Bayou Country reveals many of the subtle advantages enjoyed
by the troops in blue, as well as the attitudes that led to
behavior that left a violent legacy for generations.
Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., is a professor of history
and the Leon Ford Endowed Chair at Southeastern Louisiana
University. He is also the director of the Center for Southeast
Louisiana Studies and the author or editor of several books,
including Pistols and Politics: The Dilemma of Democracy
in Louisiana’s Florida Parishes, 1810–1899.
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