Baton Rouge East Baton Rouge Louisiana United States
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The Houma are in a border conflict with the Bayougoula over hunting grounds by 1700.
Mediation by Iberville’s brother, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, settles the conflict in March of this year.
The tribes place a great red pole in the ground on the bank of a bayou, at a place now known as Scott’s Bluff, establishing a new border between their peoples.
Called Istrouma by the natives and Baton Rouge by the French, this marker, some five miles above Bayou Manchac on the east bank of the Mississippi, is the site of modern Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Spain had officially entered the American Revolutionary War on May 8, 1779, with a formal declaration of war by King Charles III.
This declaration is followed by another on July 8 that authorizes his colonial subjects to engage in hostilities against the British.
When Bernardo de Gálvez, the colonial Governor of Spanish Louisiana, receives word of this on July 21, he immediately begins to secretly plan offensive operations to take British West Florida.
Gálvez, who has been planning for the possibility of war since April, intercepts communications from the British at Pensacola indicating that the British are planning a surprise attack on New Orleans; he decides to launch his own attack first.
To this end, he conceals from the public his receipt of the second proclamation.
Gálvez had originally planned to march from New Orleans on August 20.
However, a hurricane sweeps over New Orleans on August 18, sinking most of his fleet and destroying provisions.
Undeterred, Gálvez rallies the support of the colony and on August 27 set outs by land toward Baton Rouge, using as an explanation for the movement the need to defend Spanish Louisiana from an expected British attack.
He leads a force that consists of five hundred and twenty regulars, of whom about two-thirds are recent recruits, sixty militiamen, eighty free blacks and mixed race people, and ten American volunteers headed by Oliver Pollock.
The force grows by another six hundred men, including natives and Acadians, as they march upriver.
The force at its peak numbers over fourteen hundred, but this number is reduced due to the hardships of the march by several hundred before they reach Fort Bute.
Galvez’s force attacks Fort Bute, a decaying relic of the French and Indian War that is defended by a token force, at dawn on September 7.
Most of the garrison surrenders after a brief skirmish in which one German is killed.
The six who escape capture make their way to Baton Rouge to notify the British troops there of the fort's capture.
After several days' rest, Gálvez advances on Baton Rouge, only fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) from Fort Bute.
When Gálvez arrives at Baton Rouge on September 12, he finds a well-fortified town garrisoned by over four hundred regular army troops and one hundred and fifty militia under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Dickson.
The troops consist of British Army regulars from the 16th and 60th Regiments, as well as some artillerymen, and several companies of Germans from the 3rd Waldeck Regiment.
Gálvez first sends a detachment of men further up the river to break communications between Baton Rouge and British sites further upriver.
Unable to directly advance his own artillery before the fort, Gálvez orders a feint to the north through a wooded area, sending a detachment of his poorly trained militia to create disturbances in the forest.
The British turn and unleash massed volleys at this body, but the Spanish forces, shielded by substantial foliage, suffer only three casualties.
Gálvez digs siege trenches while this continues and establishes secure gunpits within musket range of the fort.
He places his artillery pieces there, opening fire on the fort on September 21.
The British endure three hours of shelling before Dickson offers to surrender.
Gálvez demands and is granted terms that include the capitulation of the eighty regular infantry at Fort Panmure (modern Natchez, Mississippi), a well-fortified position that would have been difficult for Gálvez to take militarily.
Dickson surrenders three hundred and seventy-five regular troops the next day; Gálvez has Dickson's militia disarmed and sent home.
Baton Rouge will remain in Spanish hands for the rest of the war, and Britain will cede both West and East Florida to Spain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
It will not become American territory until 1810.
The rebels unfurl the flag of the new republic, a single white star on a blue field.
After the successful attack, organized by Philemon Thomas, plans are made to take Mobile and Pensacola from the Spanish and incorporate the eastern part of the province into the new republic.
Thomas, born in Virginia, had served in the American forces during Revolutionary War and later moved to Kentucky.
He was a member of Kentucky's Constitutional Convention and served in the state House and state Senate before moving to Louisiana in 1806.
Their commander is John Ballinger, who upon the assurance of Holmes that his troops would not be harmed, had agreed to surrender the fort.
The Orleans Territory governor, William C. C. Claiborne and his armed forces from Fort Adams, land two miles above the town.
Holmes reports to Claiborne that "the armed citizens ... are ready to retire from the fort and acknowledge the authority of the United States" without insisting upon any terms.
Claiborne agrees to a respectful ceremony to mark the formal act of transfer.
Thus, at 2:30 p.m. this afternoon, December 10, 1810, "the men within the fort marched out and stacked their arms and saluted the flag of West Florida as it was lowered for the last time, and then dispersed."
Louisiana secedes on January 26th.
According to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002.
The strong economic interest of elite whites in maintaining the slave society contributes to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union.