"In this fascinating work, Stephen J. Ochs illuminates the lives of two men whose paths intersected during the Civil War.  Andre Cailloux, a free man of color from New Orleans, became the Union’s first black warrior-hero following his death at the Battle of Port Hudson.  Claude Paschal Maistre, a French-born abolitionist priest who had created a special ministry to black Catholics, officiated at Cailloux’s funeral.  In part a biography of the two, A Black Patriot and a White Priest is also a sensitively crafted treatment of the relationship between black Louisianians and the Catholic Church in a time of profound social and political upheaval.  While making highly original contributions to scholarship, the book also has a broader appeal.  For in the end, it tells a deeply human tale of how two ordinary men, immersed in struggle against their own internal doubts and fears and the machinations of their fellow men, became extraordinary."

--Joseph P. Reidy, author of Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War

"For any serious student of race relations, one of the great merits of A Black Patriot and a White Priest is the extent to which Ochs documents the fascinating permeability of the boundaries separating slave from free and white from black in mid-nineteenth-century New Orleans.  But the volume also succeeds in achieving another, larger objective which the author sets for himself in lively and forthright language: ‘By sharing the collective stories of our past,’ Ochs writes, ‘we come to a better understanding of our common humanity and of our identity, both individual and societal.’  Indeed we do in this powerfully written study of human resiliency and fortitude in even the most devastating of circumstances."

--Caryn Cosse Bell, author of Revolution, Romanticism, and Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718-1868

"This book tells the rest of the story.  So often, books about the civil War focus on the glory side of the conflict and neglect the hard realities of what it was like back home.  Stephen J. Ochs has filled the void.  His book is especially important because he helps us understand what the first black soldiers in the Union Army had to face.  He also explores the social and spiritual ramifications of that service.  A Black Patriot and a White Priest breaks new ground and provides a context for appreciating what it really means to be brave."

--James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., author of The Louisiana Native Guards

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