On May 15, 1862, two weeks into the federal occupation of New Orleans, Major General Benjamin Butler issued General Order No. 28. The order disciplined gestures and ignited a propaganda war. This is the documented record.
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Marguerite Scypion: The Louisiana Decree That Outlasted Three Sovereigns
Marguerite Scypion’s freedom argument rested on a 1769 decree by the Spanish Governor of the Province of Louisiana against Indian slavery. Her family fought thirty-one years to make the courts read it as the freedom of every descendant of an Indian woman.
The Traditional Birthday of New Orleans: May 7, 1718
May 7 is the traditional anniversary of the founding of New Orleans, but the actual day is not in the documentary record. The land carries an older name still. This is what the record shows.
Marguerite and the Margarita Case: A Legal History of One Woman’s Fight for Her Children in Colonial Louisiana, 1764–1808
Marguerite was born in Africa, transported to colonial Louisiana, given a fraudulent emancipation, and re-enslaved. In 1782 she filed her own lawsuit. She won the freedom of four children. This is her documented record.