The Last Harvest

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

            Uncompromising disagreements between the free and slave states about the national government's authority to outlaw slavery in the territories that had not yet constituted states led to the start of the Civil War. Seven slave states in the deep South seceded to form the Confederate States of America after Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, won the 1860 election on a campaign promising to keep slavery out of the territories. The majority of Northerners and the incoming Lincoln administration refused to accept the legality of secession. They were concerned that it would tarnish democracy and set a dangerous precedent that would ultimately lead to the dissolution of the United States into several tiny, quarreling nations. On April 12, 1861, a conflict began at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay. The Confederate army began to fire on the federal garrison that day, claiming ownership of the American fort and forcing it to lower the American flag in surrender. To put down this "insurrection," Lincoln summoned the militia. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy after seceding. By the end of 1861, a line spanning 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri saw the confrontation of almost a million armed men. Several engagements had previously occurred, including those at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, Cape Girardeau in Maryland, and Manassas Junction in Virginia, where Union wins allowed for the establishment of the new state of West Virginia. However, the actual combat started in 1862. In the years that followed, even larger campaigns and battles, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia, were foreshadowed by massive engagements like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas, and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland. As President Lincoln put it in his speech at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there, the original Northern goal of limited war to restore the Union had by 1864 given way to a new strategy of "total war" to destroy the Old South and its fundamental institution of slavery and to give the restored Union a "new birth of freedom."

The South was also called the Southern Confederacy and refers to 11 states that renounced their existing agreement with others of the United States in 1860–1861 and attempted to establish a new nation in which the authority of the central government would be strictly limited and the institution of slavery would be protected. Louisiana, which controlled the prosperous trading center of New Orleans and contributed the French Creole and Cajun communities to the demographic makeup of a largely Anglo-American nation, was a significant population center in the southwest of the Confederate States of America. Louisiana was a slave state in the antebellum era; during the French and Spanish occupations of the eighteenth century, enslaved African Americans made up the majority of the state's population. Slavery had already been entrenched by the time the United States took control of the region (1803) and Louisiana became a state (1812). Despite having one of the greatest free black populations in the country by 1860, the state still had 47% of its inhabitants as slaves. Slavery was supported by a large portion of the white people, especially in the cities. On January 26, 1861, Louisiana declared its secession from the Union. Due to its southernmost position on the Mississippi River and its access to the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War, New Orleans, the largest city in the South, was strategically significant as a port city. Early on, the American War Department had plans to conquer it. On April 25, 1862, American Army forces entered the city. The U.S. government took the unusual step of designating the regions of Louisiana that it was then in control of as a state within the Union.

The first year was a bit rough for Jean, just turning twenty-two, the young lad had to grow up pretty quickly. His Southern charm, education, and wits helped him move up in the ranks as well as gain a reputation. He was an excellent sharpshooter, and his passion to find and kill this Charlie was uncanny. Jean was often described as a lone wolf. He strayed away from the units and fought in a guerilla warfare type of way, often alone. Some of the other Cajuns in his group called him Roux or roux-ga-roux. The word "rougarou" is an alternative spelling and pronunciation of the French word loup-garou. The rougarou folklore is a well-known one in French Louisiana. Southern Louisiana uses both terms interchangeably. The monster is known by various names, including rougarou and loup-garou. For many generations, the rougarou tradition has been passed down, either directly through the French settlers in Louisiana (New France) or through the centuries-old French Canadian immigrants. According to Cajun folklore, the monster prowls the swamps surrounding Acadiana and Greater New Orleans, as well as the local sugar cane fields and wooded areas. Similar to the werewolf, the rougarou is most frequently characterized as a being with a human body and a wolf or canine head. Much like the roux-ga-roux, Jean was a victorious fighter. His silence and scowl even made some of his men afraid of him. He did not care for this war, or what the South was fighting for. All he cared about was finding and killing Charlie with the scar. The painful memory of that day haunted him daily, the sight of his dead wife and the scar on his palm was a harsh reminder of his reality. Even his dreams were not safe. Nightmares of not only his wife but the men he slain in battle began to haunt him causing him to receive little to no sleep. Jean was always on edge and even the slightest loud noise or even fire sent him into attack mode. Jean had PTSD due to the carnage of war, but he didn't let that stop him. His passion to find and slay the wrongdoers was strong and his commander knew this. The commander often gave him false hope by saying the sighting of the scared man was recent. The man fueled Jean's mission of revenge all the while keeping the commander well pleased. Soon this came to an end.