The First Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards disembarking
at Fort Macomb, Louisiana, from Harper's Weekly, February 28, 1863.
Courtesy of the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collection, LSU Libraries.

The First and Third Regiments of the Louisiana Native Guards eventually received recognition for their role in the battle at Port Hudson in May 1863. But what of their brother unit, the Second Louisiana Native Guards? Where were they? Why weren't they involved?

Actually, the Second beat the First and Third in proving to themselves, and to white "sneerers" opposed to black troops, that blacks COULD and WOULD fight. On April 9th, six weeks before the Port Hudson assault, a portion of the Second Regiment saw action at Pascagoula, Mississippi, where a small force of Confederates was in control. Though eventually outnumbered after a four hour running battle and forced to retreat, the men fought valiantly: "my men fought nobly and whipped as fair a fight without cover -- whilst the enemy were in houses and the woods, five times their number," stated their colonel, Nathan W. Daniels.

Daniels kept a journal during his command of the 2nd LaNG. This diary, found in the attic of a Massachusetts house, has recently come to light giving us details of what it was like as a white commanding officer of one of the earliest black regiments in the War. With remote duty at Forts Pike and McComb as well as on Ship Island, Mississippi, ten miles off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico, Daniels's troops were basically forgotten -- including their "fifteen minutes" of glory at Pascagoula. Their assignment was to maintain the post and its Fort Massachusetts in a "defensible condition," monitor ship activity during the North's blockade of Southern ports, and guard prisoners sent out from the mainland.

Though overshadowed by the First and Third Regiments, and generally ignored by historians, it is interesting that of the seventy-six black officers who served in the Native Guards, the majority of those active in the pursuit of their civil rights after the war, came from Colonel Daniels's regiment.

The previously forgotten Second Louisiana Native Guards have a tale to tell.

More Information on the "Forgotten Command."

A Union Colonel's reaction to the 2nd Regiment when it disembarked.

  An aerial view of Fort Massachusetts in the 1950s. 

Colonel Daniels' diary.

  Colonel Daniels' speech after the skirmish at Pascagoula on April 9, 1863.
 
 

Return to the Native Guards' home page.