Gentle Tiger by Charles L. Dufour

Author:Charles L. Dufour [Dufour, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877)
ISBN: 9780807123911
Google: exGydMs-CFIC
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 1999-04-01T03:13:22+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

MAJOR WHEAT’S BATTALION

We understand that our friend, Gen. C. R. Wheat, is about raising a company of Volunteers, to serve in the Army of Louisiana,” commented the New Orleans Crescent on April 12, 1861.

“His headquarters are at 64 St. Charles St., where we advise all friends of a glorious cause to repair and enlist. They will have a brave and experienced soldier for a leader, in whom all reliance and confidence may be placed.”

The colonel of filibusters and general in the armies of Juan Alvarez, William Walker and Garibaldi wanted immediate action when the fighting started. General Wheat was perfectly willing to go out as a company commander if that was the only way he could get action.

He was feverishly busy. When not enlisting men for his company, which he called the Old Dominion Guards after his native state, Virginia, he made frequent speeches at various military meetings. He addressed a gathering of Virginians who met at the St. Charles Hotel to pass a resolution endorsing Virginia’s secession from the Union. He attended the meeting of the Perritt Guards and made “a few happy remarks.”1 This company was made up of gamblers and it was facetiously remarked “to be admitted one must be able to cut, shuffle, and deal on the point of a bayonet.”

One of the first companies organized in New Orleans was the Tiger Rifles, who rallied around Captain Alex White, veteran of the Mexican War who later served five years in the United States Navy. Most of the recruits were young Irishmen, some natives of New Orleans, others newly arrived in the city.

From the beginning, the reputation of the Tiger Rifles was not good. Kate Stone, on Brokenburn plantation in north Louisiana, recorded in her diary: “My brother told us much of the soldiers he saw in New Orleans: the Zouaves, with their gay, Turkish trousers and jackets and odd drill; the Tiger Rifles, recruited from the very dregs of the City and commanded by a man who has served a term in the penitentiary. . . .”2

Captain White had indeed been in the penitentiary for pistol-clubbing a passenger on a steamboat. General Dick Taylor, in whose brigade the Tigers later fought, wrote of him: “The Captain . . . enjoying the luxury of many aliases, called himself White, perhaps out of respect for the purity of the patriotic garb lately assumed.”3

Nevertheless, the Tiger Rifles were a spirited, daredevil company, rakish in the picturesque new Zouave uniforms. A wealthy citizen, A. Keene Richards, was so taken with the Tiger spirit, that at his own expense he outfitted the Tiger Rifles. Their uniform consisted of a scarlet skull cap with long tassel, red shirts and open brown jackets and baggy trousers of blue and white striped bed ticking, tucked into white leggings.

The Tigers, apparently, didn’t feel they were sufficiently decorative, so they painted pictures or mottoes on their hats. Typical slogans were: “Lincoln’s Life or a Tiger’s Death,” “Tiger by Nature,” “Tiger During the War,” “Tiger on

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