History of slavery in Louisiana


Following Robert Cavelier de La Salle establishing the French claim to the territory and the introduction of the name Louisiana, the first settlements in the southernmost portion of Louisiana were developed at present-day Biloxi, Mobile, Natchitoches, and New Orleans. Slavery was then established by European colonists.
The institution was maintained by the Spanish when the area was part of New Spain, by the French when they briefly reacquired the colony, and by the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Due to its complex history, Louisiana had a very different pattern of slavery compared to the rest of the United States.

French rule (1699–1763)

was introduced by French colonists in Louisiana in 1706, when they made raids on the Chitimacha settlements. Thousands of indigenous people were killed, and the surviving women and children were taken as slaves. The enslavement of natives, including the Atakapa, Bayogoula, Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Taensa, and Alabamon peoples, would continue throughout the history of French rule. While Native American peoples had sometimes made slaves of enemies captured in war, they also tended to adopt them into their tribes and incorporate them among their people.
The French introduced African chattel slaves to the territory in 1710, after capturing a number as plunder during the War of the Spanish Succession. Trying to develop the new territory, the French transported more than 2,000 Africans to New Orleans between 1717–1721, on at least eight ships. The death toll for African and native slaves was high, with scurvy and dysentery widespread because of poor nutrition and sanitation. Although sailors also suffered from scurvy, enslaved Africans were subject to more shipboard diseases owing to overcrowding.

Spanish rule (1763–1803)

When Alejandro O'Reilly re-established Spanish rule in 1768, he issued a decree on December 7, 1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves. Although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom and that of other slaves. Spain shipped gypsy slaves to Louisiana.
A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784.

Pointe Coupée conspiracy

On May 4, 1795, 57 slaves and three local white men were put on trial in Point Coupee after a slave insurrection during which several planters' homes were burned down. Planters discovered Theorie de l'impot, a book which included the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 in one cabin. The trial ended with 23 slaves being hanged and 31 slaves sentenced to flogging and hard labor. All three white men were deported, with two sentenced to six years forced labor in Havana.

U.S. Territory of New Orleans (1804–1812)

The demand for slaves increased in Louisiana and other parts of the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin and the Louisiana Purchase. The cotton gin allowed the processing of short-staple cotton, which thrived in the upland areas. It made possible a new commodity crop in northern Louisiana, although sugar cane continued to be predominant in southern Louisiana. The Mississippi River Delta area in southeast Louisiana created the ideal alluvial soil necessary for the growing of sugar cane; sugar was the state's prime export during the antebellum period.
The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1807-08. A brisk domestic slave trade developed; many thousands of black slaves were sold by slaveholders in the Upper South to buyers in the Deep South, in what amounted to a significant forced migration.
Early in 1811, while Louisiana was yet the U.S. Territory of Orleans, the largest slave revolt in American history began about thirty miles outside of New Orleans, as slaves rebelled against the brutal work regimens of sugar plantations. There had been a sizable influx of refugee French planters from the former French colony of Saint-Domingue following the Haitian Revolution, who brought their slaves of African descent with them. This influence was likely a contributing factor in the revolt. The German Coast Uprising ended with white militias and soldiers hunting down black slaves, peremptory tribunals or trials in three parishes, execution of many of the rebels, and the public display of their severed heads.

Statehood & U.S. Civil War (1812–1865)

Slavery was officially abolished by the state constitution of 1864, during the American Civil War. Slavery had theoretically been abolished by President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which provided that slaves located in territories which were in rebellion against the United States were free. In some areas, slaves left the plantations to seek Union military lines for freedom. If such lines were located too far away, they were often held in servitude until the Union gained control of the South.

Differences between slavery in Louisiana and other states

18th-century colonial Louisiana had a completely different slave-trade pattern than that of the Thirteen Colonies. First, the slaves originated from French, and later Spanish, colonies, rather than from British colonies. After the Louisiana Purchase, an influx of slaves and free blacks from the United States occurred.
Secondly, Louisiana's slave trade was governed by the French Code Noir, and later by its Spanish equivalent the Código Negro, As written, the Code Noir gave specific rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture them. It forbade separation of married couples, and separation of young children from their mothers. It also required the owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.
Together with a more permeable historic French system related to the status of gens de couleur libres, often born to white fathers and their mixed-race partners, a far higher percentage of African Americans in the state of Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census. The free people of color were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves.
The Code Noir also forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in New Orleans society. The mulattoes became an intermediate social caste between the whites and the blacks, while in the English colonies the mulattoes and blacks were considered equal and discriminated against equally.
When control of Louisiana shifted to the United States, the Catholic social norms were deeply rooted in Louisiana; the contrast with predominantly Protestant parts of the young nation, where English norms prevailed, was evident. The Americanization of Louisiana resulted in the mulattoes being considered as black, and free blacks were regarded as undesirable.