Decline and Civil War, 1830-1865

Many southerners, already on the defensive in regard to slavery, worried that free people of color would collaborate with abolitionists.  In addition, with southerners' perceived threat to slavery, race-based distinctions became more important than one's legal status. As a result, Louisiana's "golden age" of free people of color fell into decline around 1830, the beginning of an era of particularly harsh legislation regarding African Americans, both slave and free. It became a crime to publish anything criticizing white supremacy; masters wishing to free their slaves had to post a $1,000 bond guaranteeing that freed slaves would leave the state within thirty days; and all blacks were prohibited from testifying against whites in court. In 1855, free people of color were banned from assembling or forming any new organizations or societies. The emancipation of slaves was outlawed entirely in 1857, and, as during the territorial period, free persons of color were required to carry passes, observe curfews, and have their racial status designated in all public records. 

Other factors also played a part in free blacks leaving Louisiana. An influx of Irish and German immigrants, who displaced free black tradesmen and were willing to work at unskilled jobs for low wages, began in the 1830s. The Panic of 1837 severely affected the state and pressured some wealthy blacks to sell property. Due to multiple factors, Louisiana's free black population shrank over the next twenty years.  Many left to seek a better life in the North, France, Haiti, and Latin America.  Some, no doubt, were able to "pass" as white, and so no longer were counted among free people of color.  Others still were resettled in Africa and Mexico by colonization societies. On the eve of the Civil War, free people of color represented just 2.6 percent of the population of Louisiana, a decline from 7.7 percent in 1830.

Those who remained faced divided loyalties when the Civil War broke out in 1861. In May of that year, about 1,500 free black New Orleanians responded to Confederate governor Thomas Overton Moore's call for troops, forming the Louisiana Native Guard. Although its colonel was white, it was the first military unit in American history to have black officers. In the Cane River region of northwest Louisiana, two free black units were formed, the Augustin Guards and Monette's Guards, but both were rejected for service. Why free people of color volunteered to defend the Confederacy is a matter of debate. Some may have seen it as a way to enhance their position in society. Others probably feared that they or their property would be harmed if they did not conform. After the fall of New Orleans, some Native Guard members formed a new unit as part of the Union Army. Swelled by runaway slaves, it was soon divided into three regiments, two of which participated in the siege of Port Hudson. Captain André Cailloux, a respected businessman before the war, was killed in the action. His death, widely reported in the press, became a rallying cry for African American recruitment.

For free people of color who owned plantations and slaves, the war was a mixed blessing, bringing greater freedom, but destroying the state's economy and causing significant property loss. A string of droughts and crop failures, together with the need to grow food rather than cash crops during the Union blockade, contributed to the economic turmoil. Plantations owned by free people of color, moreover, were not spared the ravages of Union troops, who carried off livestock, crops, farm implements, and household items. With no capital, slaves, or money to hire workers, free black planters had to work their own fields. As historian Gary Mills has written, "Instead of elevation to a position of full citizenship and equality, the once influential families of color were now publicly submerged into the new mass of black freedmen—a class and a culture with which they had no identification and one that harbored much resentment toward them."