Remembering Professor Dr. Don Shaw, the Chapel Hill professor who assigned this PhD candidate to read the 1830 New Orleans Bee. A good friend and colleague who died recently.
Dr. Shaw was working on a journalism research paper about the origins of Confederate identity as developed in newspapers of that time. The foreign country in the story I read was Texas. The Texas Filibusterers’ ship sailing from New Orleans, headed for Galveston, was boarded on the Mississippi River by members of the Knights of Columbus.
Filibusterer. Not remembering a long-winded senator, or James Stewart playing in the movie—Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or “a freebooter or buccaneer; pirate,” rather recalling the third dictionary definition:
An adventurer who takes part in an unlawful military expedition into a foreign country.
Sword fights ensued. No deaths reported, but reportedly the New Orleans men from the society were repulsed, some with powder burns. The Texas adventurers sailed on. Maybe one filibusterer later made a stand at the Alamo. Didn’t ask Fess Parker, who played Davy Crockett in the movie, the last time I saw him.
Bee report did explain why the good citizens of New Orleans were fighting mad. New Orleans was the principal port for trade sailing from Mexican ports. If Texans won their independence, the Knights feared Galveston—closer to Mexico—would get more Gulf of Mexico trade than New Orleans.
Photo by carlosramos1946 at Shutterstock
