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Soldiers, Rebels, and Pirates
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The Historic New Orleans Collection [1958.41]

Plan of New Orleans

This detail from an 1803 map of New Orleans at the time of the Louisiana Purchase shows the city's colonial defenses. After France ceded Louisiana to Spain in 1763, the Spaniards gradually strengthened the city's walls and forts and expanded the size of the city's interracial militia. Throughout the Americas, both the French and the Spaniards recruited enslaved Africans to their colonial military forces. On battlefields in both Saint Domingue and in Louisiana, black soldiers won their freedom as a reward for their service. In New Orleans in 1797, African Americans manned the three forts at the rear of the city. Captain Noël Carrière, a free African American, commanded fifty free black soldiers at Fort San Fernando. In 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans, former members of the city's Spanish black militia fought side by side with Haitian refugees who had served in similar militia forces in colonial Haiti.

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Image ID: 1165416
Title: Plan of New Orleans.
Location: The Historic New Orleans Collection [1958.41]

Keywords: Battle of New Orleans
Carriere, Noel
Maps - New Orleans
Slavery - Louisiana
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