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Historical person
1825–1863
André Cailloux was a free Black cigar maker and community figure in New Orleans. After Union occupation he became a captain in the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, one of the Black regiments organised for United States service in Louisiana.
Cailloux led his company during the assault on Port Hudson on 27 May 1863 and was killed near the Confederate works. The delayed recovery of his body and his large funeral in New Orleans made him a nationally reported symbol of Black military courage and sacrifice.
In Doug Peterson’s The Dixie Devil, André Cailloux joins the Louisiana Native Guard while his wife Félicie confronts the risks placed on their family, and the city’s Catholic institutions become entangled with arguments over abolition, loyalty and Black military service.
Series
The North-South Series is a five-volume sequence of biographical historical novels about Black resistance to slavery and service during the American Civil War. Its first three books reconstruct the escapes of Ellen and William Craft, Henry “Box” Brown and Harriet Tubman; the final two turn to John Scobell’s…
All books in this series
