Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division

In May 1863 General Banks was ordered to take Port Hudson, Louisiana, one of the last two Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi River. On May 27, Captain André Cailloux, an Afro-Creole of French West Indian descent, led his company of Native Guard soldiers in repeated but unsuccessful assaults on Confederate lines. With his left arm shattered by rebel fire, Cailloux rallied his men in both English and French until a fatal shot struck him down. Confederate sharpshooters prevented repeated attempts by his comrades to recover his body until the fort fell forty days later. Cailloux was buried in New Orleans with full military honors amid a huge crowd of mourners. Port Hudson was the first major engagement by black combat units in the Civil War, though less famous than the exploits of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment three weeks later at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Taken together, the two engagements decisively ended doubts about the willingness of black soldiers to fight.