Félicie Cailloux

Louise Félicie Coulon was a free woman of colour in New Orleans who married André Cailloux. Their family belonged to the city’s established Francophone Black Catholic community, whose status and security were transformed by Union occupation and the move towards emancipation.

After André was killed at Port Hudson, Félicie participated in the public memory of his service while supporting their children in a society still marked by racial discrimination. The historical record preserves less about her private experience than about her husband’s military career.

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.