USA > Louisiana > Orleans Parish > New Orleans > Creole families of New Orleans > Part 30
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30
In 1860, he was appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy of West Point, but filled the position only a few months. Resigning in 1861 from the service of the United States he returned to New Orleans and volunteered as a private in the old Creole Corps, the battalion of the Orleans Guard, composed of the élite of the Creole population. When the Louisiana State forces were organized, he was appointed Brigadier-General.
He had married shortly after his graduation Laure Marie Villeré, the granddaughter of the patriot who had been shot by the Spaniards, and the daughter of Jacques Villere, the first Creole Governor of Louisiana. Three children were born to him: two sons, Henri and René, and a daughter, Laure. The sons, while mere boys, became officers
456
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
on his staff during the Civil War. Henri passed from New Orleans eventually. René became a judge in the parish of St. Bernard, and for many years filled the office with distinguished ability. Laure married Mr. Charles B. Larendon, of Atlanta. She died before her father, leaving one daughter, Laure, who resides in Atlanta. Judge René, Beauregard's son, is the sole male survivor of the family; he bears his grandfather's name.
After the death of his first wife, General Beaure- gard married Caroline des Londes, daughter of one of the prominent planters of the State (her sister had married John Slidell, the Confederate Commis- sioner to France). His second wife died during the war.
At the invitation of the Louisiana Historical Society, René T. Beauregard wrote a short sketch of his father in his social and domestic life the simple, tender and frank memory of a son.
"My first recollection of my father," he says, "is when he left Louisiana for the Mexican War. I remember his disappearing figure and rapid footsteps down the stairs of our old St. Louis Street home, and my mother's tears as she stood with her two children at the head of the staircase."
When General Beauregard returned to New Orleans, after the surrender of the Confederacy, he had been a widower for more than a year. Moreover, he found society disorganized, families extinct, and business paralyzed. It is a painful memory that is tacitly now ignored. He became a mendicant for work at doors that were shut in his face (even as Charles Gayarré was then making the experience).
"Condemned to forced inaction," proceeds the son's relation, "and to wait the unknown results the victor had prepared for the
I.Woodward
Rampart and St. Peter Streets.
459
BEAUREGARD
vanquished," he began, "while the facts were still fresh in his mind to write the historical outlines of the great drama in which he had played a leading part, primarily, to safeguard his reputation from the imputation of errors that he had not committed, the recollection of which rankled in his mind still suffering and sore from the after- war conditions. After much labor and time consumed in collecting and verifying the documentary evidence of what took place. . . . "
(evidence which has cleared his name and reputation beyond even the suspicion of military errors) two compendious volumes were published : "The Military Operations of General Beauregard," by Alfred Roman, a friend to whom he modestly committed the writing of the book.
As a guide to the understanding of the confused condition of military affairs in the South during the first years of the Confederacy it has attained a first rank in such publications; but at the time his son frankly confesses the volumes did not please or satisfy all. Gayarré, who made a study of the work and reviewed it in a masterly way, gives his opinion that "no future history of the war can be written without the study of it."
The General descended to the rank of a private citizen, practising "the dignified submission to defeat" that he had counselled others. He accepted with soldierly acquiescence the penalties he had incurred, and drank his cup of humiliation with even courtly grace.
During the long life that followed, he mingled in simple cordiality with his fellow citizens, enjoying social intercourse and the pleasures that chance threw in his way, banishing from his face any trace of the bitterness that must have welled from his heart. He became a familiar figure on the streets and in the theatres and popular meetings. Parents
460
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
used to point him out to their children, who will transmit to their children the tradition of the sol- dierly figure of the old gentleman with white hair and mustache, carrying his head like a marshal of France always simply dressed, always gracious of manner, smiling kindly in response to even the shy salute of a newsboy. For eleven years he conferred upon the Athénée Louisianais the honor of serving as its president; and he punctiliously and generously fulfilled all the duties required by the position. His official addresses, delivered in the perfect French of an academician, remain models of amiable and enlightened scholarship, restricted by the terse eloquence of the soldier.
He died in 1893, and was accorded that belated compliment of a grand funeral. His body lay in state at the City Hall, while great throngs paid obeisance to it. He was buried in a simple tomb in the vault of the Army of Tennessee, a soldier among soldiers. His son, René, lies near him in the same vault, his daughter Laure not far away.
A monument has been raised to him at the entrance of the City Park, where ends the old road which was used by the Indians as a portage, and which Bienville traversed on his way to found the city-the road that was trod by all of Bienville's followers, the sons of France and Canada, the makers of the city. Old forest oaks are still standing that were alive then. The gray stone figure, mounted on a battle charger, looks steadily ahead, bidding as once in a battle charge, "Not go but follow." Not far away, within bugle sound, is the home for old Confederate soldiers a vanishing wisp of gray cloud after the storm- but they were the soldiers of Lee, Jackson and Beauregard.
CHAPTER XL
ALCÉE FORTIER
TTE does not yet belong to the past of New Orleans. His place among us in the family of its citizens is still warm. His face and figure are still familiar to the eye, his voice, distinct to the ear. The time for the cool, detached historical apprecia- tion of him has not yet arrived. It belongs to the future to which he can confidently be remanded. In truth, his life was a compact one of work; to make a succinct account of it requires but small assistance from personal detail. The name appears in Louisiana in 1740 for the first time, in the person of Michel Fortier "armurier du roi," a man evidently of force- ful character, who took part in the Galvez exploits.
He married Félicité La Branche, a daughter of an old and distinguished Creole family; and in 1803 he was appointed by Laussat a member of his municipal council, and was one of the four commissioners who did the honors of the beautiful ball offered to Madame Laussat by the City Council during which the pretty incident, unique in American festivities, took place. In the midst of the supper, a turtle- dove alighted on a branch of roses before Madame de Laussat with a note in its beak containing the verse, written by one of the commissioners entitled, "Portrait de Madame de Laussat."
461
462
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
"On voit en elle
Les vertues et les attraits;
On voit le portrait fidèle De son ame dans ses traits, .
Affable, sensible et bonne.
Vertueuse sans fierté
Et belle sans vanité,
Tout est charme dans sa personne."
He was one of those selected by Laussat on the eve of his departure from the province to receive the curious testimonial of his regard. "Knowing,"* says the record, "that they were all ardent hunters and preferred French powder, he distributed among them the supply of powder left, belonging to France; giving it away in small presents ranging from thirty to forty-five pounds."
In 1814 he served on the Committee of Veterans who were mentioned in General Jackson's report as "attending to the preservation of police and civil order in the city and contributing to dissipate the alarm created by the approach of the enemy; besides affording relief to the sick and wounded and procuring subscriptions for the purchase of clothing for the soldiers who had left their homes unprovided for a winter campaign."
His son, Michel Fortier, Jr., a Colonel of Militia in the army under Jackson, was the father of Florent Fortier, who is mentioned gracefully and gratefully by his son Alcée in his book "Louisiana Studies" as "a true representative of our Creole planters, whom the war had ruined, but who were to the last energetic and noble." Alcée Fortier includes him among Louisiana poets, citing some of his verses to La Salle.
* Fortier's History of Louisiana. Vol. II, pp. 292.
463
ALCÉE FORTIER
Florent Fortier married Edwige Aime, the daugh- ter of Valcour Aime, one of the richest sugar planters of St. James Parish. Their son, Alcée, was born on the great plantation in 1856, the source of his first childish memories, which he was fond of incorporat- ing into the relations of his later life. The date of his birth fixed his destiny as a later generation sees it that of a child born in the luxury of wealth and plunged by the results of the Confederate War, into poverty. In one of his pages he gives some of his earliest experiences of the war:
"After the fall of New Orleans, the Federal gun- boats ascended the river, and being attacked by the Confederate batteries, as they passed bombarded the plantations on the bank. How well do I remem- ber the flight of our whole family to the river front to seek the protection of the levee whenever a gun- boat was coming. There we stood behind the levee, my sisters and myself, our schoolmistress and our nurses, while our father stood on the levee to look at the gunboats and at the shells that generally passed over our heads but occasionally were buried in the levee and covered us with dust. Our house was never touched by the shells, but the houses of a number of people our relatives were considerably damaged. I remember seeing cart loads of shells strewn in the yards. I remember also the holes dug in the ground covered with thick beams and several feet of earth, the inside arranged like a comfortable room and filled with provisions of all kinds. Then came the Federal soldiers in garrison on the planta- tion . the insolence of some of the liberated slaves, the temporary arrest of my father and grand- father the serio-comic scenes at the pro-
464
OLD FAMILIES OF NEW ORLEANS
vost marshall's court then the flight of the family to the Teche and the pillaging by the con- quering army; the return home, and then complete ruin. From this ruin, we sons of rich planters have now partially recovered, and the men of 1894 who were boys in 1862 do not keep any unkind remem- brance of war times."
Like most patriots of his time, Florent Fortier feared poverty only as it would affect the future of his children; and like them he made heroic efforts not to replace the vanished luxuries of wealth but to educate his children. Alcée was given the oppor- tunity of attending the University of Virginia, but unfortunately could not complete his course there owing to ill health. Returning, however, he put his shoulder to the work of educating others; he became an instructor and then principal of the preparatory department of the University of Louisiana. In 1880 he was chosen as professor of French in the univer- sity and retained the position when the University of Louisiana became the Tulane University, and then he became also professor of Romance languages. This was his great work in the State, giving the French language a standard place in education. He will always be accounted one of the foremost educa- tors of the South. In New Orleans he was active in all intellectual work. He became President of the Athénée Louisianais and was President of the Louisiana Historical Society from its reorganization in 1894 until the time of his death; President of the Modern Language Association; member of the State Board of Education, and of the State Museum Board.
His work as a writer and as a lecturer proceeded from his educational reputation; he became an assidu-
465
ALCÉE FORTIER
ous worker in both fields, contributing many publica- tions to general literature and philology. His most valuable contribution, according to the estimation of contemporary beneficiaries, is his "Louisiana Studies," published in 1894, which) contains frag- ments of his folklore and personal reminiscences and his original researches into the literature of Louisiana, compiling with precise accuracy the list of all authors, French and American, from the beginning of the colony to the time of his writing. 1
For school purposes he made incursions into the history and literature of France, and produced therefrom the good educational papers on "Le Château de Chambord," Sept grands auteurs "du XIX Siécle"; "Histoire de la Littérature Française"; "Précis de l'Histoire de France." His last work is monumental: "The History of Louisiana" in four volumes, published in 1894 by Manzi, Joyant & Co., New York.
He died in 1914 and lies buried in his old family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT.
OWED
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days prior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
:low, or
REC'D LD NOV 6 $73 -8 PM ecall.
MAR 21 19747 5 85
REC'D CIRC DEPT
MAR OTTA1 1
M
KEV. CIR. NO 1 6 73
REG, CI
MAY 1 678
Returned by
JUN 28 1982
MAY 1 6 1978
URES CIR, MAY 2511 1982
Santa Cruz Jitney.
A
NOV 15 1982
REG CIR OCT 6'82 recd AN. F3: 1983983-
LD21A-30m-10,'73 (R3728s10)476-A-30
General Library University of California Berkeley
LD 21A-50m-4,'60 (A9562s10)476B
OCT 1 0.1General Lib University of Ca Berkeley
GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 8000928852
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.