Placide Bossier was an American from Louisiana who died in the American Civil War. A Catholic Creole person who lived a privileged life in high society, for Clement Eaton he exemplified that lifestyle, "a gay life of parties, hunting, fishing, dancing, serenades, and constant fishing".[1]
Bossier came from Louisiana, the Natchitoches area, and was a Catholic Creole; historian Clement Eaton described him as a "young Creole of fashion". He attended Georgetown University in 1850-1851.[2] Around 1860, he briefly kept a diary (written in English, and corrected by the family's governess); apparently the study of law bored him, and he spent his time in a rocking chair, thinking about billiards, dinner parties, and the woman he was in love with. The American Civil War was approaching and he exercised with a cavalry company. In January 1861 he voted to secede.[1]
Bossier joined the 3rd Louisiana Infantry Regiment (Confederate). He was killed on the morning of August 10, 1861, during the Battle of Wilson's Creek,[3] and died shortly after being wounded. His friend and cousin Alphonse Prud'homme, likewise the son of a slaveholding planter, described his death, and said he met his fate "like a man and a Christian".[4] News of his death reached his friend in Maryland, James Ryder Randall, that same month.[5] Randall, who attended Georgetown University with Bossier, wrote a poem named for Bossier in his honor, comparing him to a Crusading knight and citing the motto of Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, "sans peur et sans reproche".[6] Father Pierre Dicharry, a chaplain, gathered a lock of Bossier's hair in his prayer book, and brought it back home.[7]
References
edit- ^ a b Eaton, Clement (2021). Kirwan, Albert D. (ed.). The Civilization of the Old South: Writings of Clement Eaton. UP of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813194493.
- ^ Officers and Students of Georgetown College, District of Columbia, for the Academic Year 1850-51. Baltimore: John Murphy. 1851. pp. 26, 27, 30, etc.
- ^ The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Part 1. Vol. 3. United States War Department. 1881. p. 115.
- ^ Haynie, Sandra Prudhomme (2001). Legends of Oakland Plantation. Shreveport. p. 47.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link), cited in Brennan, Thomas M. (2012). "A Planter's Son Goes to War" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved July 5, 2024. - ^ Ruby, James Star, ed. (1961). Blue and Gray: Georgetown University and the Civil War (2 ed.). Georgetown University Alumni Association. p. 5.
- ^ Randall, James Ryder (1910). Andrews, Matthew (ed.). The poems of James Ryder Randall. New York: Tandy-Thomas. pp. 118, 217.
- ^ Romero, Sidney J. (1961). "Louisiana Clergy and the Confederate Army". Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association. 2 (3): 277–300.