Second Tuesday History Lecture - Metairie During the Civil War

Lt. Col. James M. Larkin, USAF (ret.) will discuss “title” at 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 10 at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie. This event is free of charge and open to the public. 

Col. Larkin’s talk will cover the Camp Parapet fortifications, which ran along what is now Causeway Blvd, the gun emplacements on the 17th Street Canal, the military railroad which paralleled Metairie Road, and the Army Depot in Old Metairie that supported the Parapet Line for much of the war.

He will also discuss the Confederate military units, like the Jefferson Mounted Guard Cavalry and Jefferson Rifles, that were recruited from Jefferson Parish and fought in all the major battles of the war. The talk will also touch on the Contraband Camp, now occupied by Ochsner Hospital’s parking lot, and the neighboring Todd mansion on River Road that was owned by President Lincoln’s brother-in-law. 

The talk will also cover the tens of thousands of Union troops stationed in Metairie, and the raising of the first black regiments, their torturous beginning under Union General John Phelps, resulting in his resignation, and their ultimate acceptance into the regular US Army. A number of these men would later form the nucleus of the famous Buffalo Soldiers.

James Larkin grew up in Metairie and has been interested in what took place in the New Orleans area during the Civil War, the most tumultuous period in the region’s history.  Since 2010, after retiring, he has been pouring through regimental histories, the Compendium of the War, soldier diaries and military maps at the National Archives to get a picture of the people and events that occurred in the New Orleans region during the conflict.

For more information regarding this presentation, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.