Louisiana: A History

Covering the lively, even raucous, history of Louisiana from before First Contact through the Elections of 2012, this sixth edition of the classic Louisiana history survey provides an engaging and comprehensive narrative of what is arguably America’s most colorful state.

• Since the appearance of the first edition of this classic text in 1984, Louisiana: A History has remained the best-loved and most highly regarded college-level survey of Louisiana on the market
• Compiled by some of the foremost experts in the field of Louisiana history who combine their own research with recent historical discoveries
• Includes complete coverage of the most recent events in political and environmental history, including the continued aftermath of Katrina and the 2010 BP oil spill
• Considers the interrelationship between Louisiana history and that of the American South and the nation as a whole
• Written in an engaging and accessible style complemented by more than a hundred photographs and maps

Covering the lively period from before First Contact to the present, Louisiana: A History provides an overview of the colorful history of this unique state. Now in its sixth edition, the classic text has been updated and revised to include the very latest scholarship in the field, as well as coverage of recent events, including the 2010 BP oil spill and its ensuing economic and environmental effects.

Incorporating the latest historical literature, the text focuses not only on political but also social, economic, cultural, intellectual, and artistic history within the Pelican State. Organized in four parts, Louisiana: A History explores how events outside the colony, territory, and ultimately state of Louisiana shaped not only Louisiana’s destiny, but that of the American South and the United States itself.

Editors:

Bennett H. Wall (deceased) was Professor of History at the University of Georgia, and instrumental in the founding and operation of the Louisiana Historical Association and the Southern Historical Association. He was a renowned scholar in southern and U.S. business history.

John C. Rodrigue is Lawrence and Theresa Salameno Professor of History at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachusetts. He previously taught Louisiana History and other courses at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of several books and scholarly articles on nineteenth-century U.S. and Southern history.

Authors:

Light Townsend Cummins is the Bryan Professor of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and a leading expert on the history of the Spanish Borderlands. In 2009 he was appointed as the official State Historian of Texas.

Judith Kelleher Schafer teaches American legal history at Tulane University and has published two prizewinning books: Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (1997) and Brothels, Depravity and Abandoned Women (2011), as well as Becoming Free, Remaining Free (2003).

Edward F. Haas is professor of history at Wright State University in Dayton Ohio. He was named a Fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association, which in 1999 awarded him the Garnie McGinty Lifetime Meritorious Service Award. He has published numerous works on Louisiana and New Orleans history and has twice won the L. Kemper Williams Prize for excellence in Louisiana scholarship.

Michael L. Kurtz is Professor Emeritus of American History at Southeastern Louisiana University. His publications include Earl K. Long: The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics (1990), Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian’s Perspective (1993), Louisiana Since the Longs (1998), and The JFK Assassination Debates (2006).

Map 1 Louisiana     viii

Map 2 The United States, with Louisiana highlighted     ix

Introduction by John C. Rodrigue     1

PART ONE    7
by Light Townsend Cummins

1 Native Peoples and European Contact     9

2 The Founding of French Louisiana     32

3 Louisiana as a French Colony     52

4 Spanish Louisiana     68

5 The Final Years of Colonial Louisiana     85

Suggested Readings     101

PART TWO     105
by Judith Kelleher Schafer

6 The Territorial Period     107

7 The Political Development of Antebellum Louisiana     127

8 Life and Labor in Antebellum Louisiana     156

9 Civil War and Reconstruction in Louisiana     197

Suggested Readings     227

PART THREE     233
by Edward F. Haas

10 Uneasy Interlude, 1877–1892     235

11 Bourbonism, Populism, and a Little Progressivism, 1892–1924     256

12 The Time of the Kingfish, 1924–1935     280

13 The Struggle to Catch Up, 1877–1935     301

Suggested Readings     322

PART FOUR 325
by Michael L. Kurtz

14 Corruption, Reform, and Reaction, 1936–1950     327

15 Reform and Race, 1950–1960     351

16 The Decline of Racism, 1960–1972     376

17 The Era of Edwin Edwards, 1972–1987     393

18 Louisiana at the End of the Century, 1987–2000     418

19 Louisiana in the New Millennium     454

Suggested Readings     478

Appendix I     481

European Rulers with Relation to Louisiana during the Colonial and Territorial Periods     481

Military Commandants and Governors of Louisiana     482

Appendix II     486

A Selective Chronology of Louisiana History     486

Index     493