Arthur W. Bergeron Jr.

            The untimely passing of Art Bergeron marks a truly sad time for Civil War historians, particularly those with an interest in the Trans-Mississippi theater and in Louisiana.  I met Art in 1994 during one of the late Jerry Russell’s legendary battlefield preservation programs—this one covering the Red River campaign.  I was a grad student and I remember approaching Art and asking him to sign my copy of Guide to Louisiana Confederate Military Units.  He did more than simply oblige the request.  Art opened a conversation about my interest in the Civil War, Louisiana, and the Confederacy.  He listened to my story about my ancestors serving in Gray’s 28^th Louisiana Infantry and my work on Dick Taylor & Kirby Smith, and in a warm and conversational tone, he suggested avenues to explore and made me feel like a peer.  Then, he told me to call him at any time if I had any questions about Smith or Taylor or Louisiana or the Civil War.  I was stunned.  Here was this big-time Civil War historian—an expert in my area of interest, no less—and he invited me to contact him. 

            It did not take long for me to take Art up on the offer.  That summer, while conducting research at LSU, I asked one of the librarians if I could see a copy of Art Bergeron’s M.A. Thesis, General Richard Taylor: A Study in Command.  I was shocked when the librarian refused my request and don’t remember the reasons she gave but I stammered out something about how I knew Dr. Bergeron and he’d want me to see it.  She remained resolute and I retreated to a secure location where I proceeded to call Art.  Fortunately, he was in his office at State Parks and took the call.  I explained my situation and Art told me not to worry.  He suggested a place on campus where I could grab lunch and return to the library in the afternoon.  I did what he said, and when I got back to the library, the woman behind the reference desk smiled and handed me a copy of Art’s thesis and said, “Dr. Bergeron wants you to keep this for your files.”  For me, a lowly grad student, there was nothing like calling in the cavalry and having them ride to the rescue to turn the tide of battle. 

            Art was always willing to talk with me about Smith & Taylor and answer any question on Louisiana troops—no matter how trivial the issue.  He knew how a certain battery was positioned along a certain backcountry bayou and which men from which parish manned which guns and what kind of ordnance they fired and how many rounds they expended and what they had for lunch after the battle.  He knew the location of some remote plantation where a colonel made his headquarters and he knew everything about the colonel and his command and his family including the shade of butternut the colonel wore.  He knew Civil War, he knew Trans-Mississippi, he knew Louisiana, and he loved to share it all with anyone who had a passion for history. 

            Last time I saw Art was at a Harrisburg CWRT meeting in the fall of 2008.  We sat together during dinner and over the course of the evening, we talked about Henry Gray and an article I was writing and how he had just heard about some letters in someone’s attic somewhere in Louisiana.  We promised to get together and talk further.  Maybe we would meet up at Gettysburg in the summer and walk Hays’s attack on Cemetery Hill.  He joked about how to interpret the 9^th Louisiana attacking around the water tower and I reminded him that a mobile home stood where Gray’s 28^th advanced at Mansfield.  

            It always came back to Louisiana—it always came back to the experience of the officer, the foot soldier, the gentleman, the common man.  Art was all of those.  When we lose someone like that from our ranks, we are all diminished.  We lose a chance to share his knowledge, we lose an ambassador for our discipline, and we lose a friend.

CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY: Emancipation, Recognition, & Intervention in the Trans-Mississippi

In December 1864, Camille de Polignac, a Confederate general serving in the Trans-Mississippi, requested a conference with department commander Edmund Kirby Smith to discuss a matter of diplomatic importance.  Polignac proposed a mission to his native France “in order to awaken sympathy” on behalf of the Confederacy.  Smith responded positively and arranged to meet with Polignac and Louisiana governor Henry Watkins Allen.  Together, the three men crafted an agenda for Polignac that included a modification of French neutrality to favor the Confederacy and a plan to emancipate and arm Trans-Mississippi slaves.  Despite the nature of the proposal, Smith had neither the time nor the wherewithal to contact Richmond for permission to undertake such a venture.  Instead, he acted unilaterally and ordered Polignac to proceed.[1] 

Allen drafted the formal proposal and in it, he stressed the “strong and sacred ties that bound France and Louisiana.”  He also affirmed that should the Confederacy fall, France would soon find “an immense Federal Army . . . turned toward Mexico.”  Allen’s friend Sarah A. Dorsey read the letter and described a tone of “the most anxious fears, unless there should be foreign intervention in behalf of the Confederacy.”  Meanwhile, Polignac assembled a diplomatic team consisting of his own chief-of-staff Major John C. Moncure and Allen’s aide-de-camp Colonel Ernest Miltenberger.  Thus, the diplomatic team included a representative from a state government and of the Confederate government.  Finally, Smith notified the Confederate commissioner to France, Louisianan John Slidell, of the mission.  “Our cause has reached a crisis to call for foreign intervention.  It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the Emperor of the French that the security of his empire in Mexico and the interests of his own Government all demand immediate interference to restore peace and establish firmly the nationality of the Confederate States.”  As for the slaves, Smith affirmed, “the planters would at this time willingly accept any system of gradual emancipation to insure our independence as a people.”  Polignac went a step further and insisted that the position regarding slaves was not a radical departure from Confederate war aims.  He asserted that “the leading minds” of the Confederacy were “very far from identifying slavery, in the abstract, with the Confederate cause” of independence.[2]

Polignac and his team left for France on January 9 and traveled through Texas before entering Mexico.  En route, they met with other Confederate officials including Missouri’s governor in exile Thomas Reynolds.  Reynolds gave Polignac a letter for Napoleon III asking the Emperor to delegate a special envoy to conduct business with the Trans-Mississippi.  Polignac took the letter but considered the request imprudent.  On January 25, the team sailed to Havana on a British steamer and left for Europe on February 28.  They arrived in Spain on March 18 and then traveled through Seville and Madrid to Paris, arriving in late March.[3] 

Polignac was to meet with his friend the Duke De Morny, an advisor to Napoleon III.  De Morny would then secure an audience for Polignac with the Emperor.  Upon their arrival in Paris, however, the Confederates learned that De Morny had recently died.  Polignac called it an “irony of fate.”  He nearly abandoned the mission entirely but another friend, Major De Vatry a member of Napoleon’s military staff, promised to intervene on Polignac’s behalf and arranged a meeting with the Emperor.[4]

Polignac presented his credentials and his case to Napoleon III but the meeting did not go well.  The Emperor remained standing throughout the conversation, which “lasted only a few minutes” while Polignac talked about states rights and the war.  Polignac described Napoleon as courteous but “guarded” and recalled that the Emperor did not address the issue of politics nor did he reply directly to inquiries about French intervention.  When pressed on the topic he responded that he had tried unsuccessfully to get England to intervene with France on two previous occasions but reiterated that France could not act alone.  In addition, he told Polignac “that it was too late to take further action.”  Finally, Napoleon accepted Allen’s letter from Miltenberger but put it on a table unopened.  The meeting ended and the mission had failed.  “The news of General Lee’s surrender reached us almost immediately afterward,” Polignac later recalled.[5]

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[1] Smith to Slidell, January 9, 1865 in OR, 48, pt. 1, 1319-1320; Camille J Polignac, “Polignac’s Mission.” in Southern Historical Society Papers.  32 (1904): 365-367, 370-371; Ibid., 35 (1907):  326-334; Jeff Kinard, Lafayette of the South: Prince Camille de Polignac and the American Civil War (College Station: Texas A & M Press, 2001), 180-183.

[2] Smith to Slidell, January 9, 1865, OR, 48, pt. 1, 1319-1320; Polignac, “Polignac’s Mission,” 365, 369-371; Sarah A. Dorsey, Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, (New York: M. Doolady, 1866), 284; Miltenberger cited in Kinard, Lafayette of the South, 181.

[3] Polignac Letters, Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge; Polignac, “Polignac’s Mission,” 367-368; Kinard, Lafayette of the South, 182-183.

[4] Camille Armand Jules Marie de Polignac Diary, United States Army Military Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, March 18, 21, 1865; Kinard, Lafayette of the South, 183. 

[5] “Polignac’s Mission,” 368-369; Kinard, Lafayette of the South, 183.

Gettysburg Staff Ride Fall 2009

This fall, I am taking my Millersville University Civil War & Reconstruction class on a Gettysburg staff ride.   A staff ride is not a battlefield tour but an academic exercise that began with the Prussian military in the mid-1800’s.    The staff ride differs from a battlefield tour in that the student must prepare for the exercise in advance and, upon reaching the battlefield, becomes a participant in the event.  

Early in the semester, I assign each student a key figure from a particular aspect of Gettysburg.  Some are assigned an officer, others a brigade, and others a regiment or a private soldier.  Depending upon the number of participants, other assignments may include civilians, weaponry, or a farmstead.   In addition to reading assigned secondary sources and attending classroom lectures on Gettysburg, students are required to conduct primary source research into their specific subject.  

Once in Gettysburg, students present their research to the group at the appropriate location on the battlefield.  Students are encouraged to use illustrations such as a photo or map to help explain their subject and their findings.  During the presentation, some students assume the persona of their subject even to the extent of speaking in a Southern accent or wearing a Yankee uniform.  Some students describe the physical descriptions of their soldier including eye color, hair color, height & weight as well as the soldier’s pre-war occupation and marital status.  Others analyze the decisions of their subject in terms of The U.S. Army’s 9 Principles of War or M*E*T*T*T (concepts covered in class).  In all cases, the student discusses what happened to their subject and examines the results of their actions.  The staff ride exercise ties together research using printed primary sources directly to the battlefield itself and creates a “three dimensional analysis” by bringing Gettysburg from the pages of the past into the present.

 I learned the fundamentals of conducting a staff ride while studying the Manassas, Antietam, and Gettysburg battlefields under the tutelage of Dr. Carol Reardon during my 2002 Summer Fellowship at West Point.   I have made certain modifications in my staff ride exercise to meet the needs of civilian college students rather than professional military personnel.  While I leave plenty of room for those with an interest in traditional military history, my staff rides also give students the opportunity to gain insight into social history & the experience of the individual at Gettysburg.