Felix Pierre Poché

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Felix Pierre Poché (born May 18, 1836 in St. James Parish , † June 16, 1895 in New Orleans ) was an American lawyer and politician . He is known nationwide for his participation in the founding of the American Bar Association and for the posthumous publication of his diary on the Civil War .

Life

Poché's parents were Pierre (1809-1859) and Marie Alzine Poché, b. Melancon, who married in 1835. They spoke French and belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The family ran a small sugar cane plantation and had five slaves around 1860.

Education and employment

In 1852 the son was sent to Jesuit- run St. Joseph's Colegge in Bardstown , Kentucky , where he graduated from high school in 1855. He then studied law at Bardstown College . At that time, the former governor of Kentucky, Charles A. Wickliffe , became aware of him during a speech by Poché about John C. Calhoun and became his mentor. 1858 Poche was as a lawyer at the Bar Association Kentucky Bar registered. For a short time he worked under judge JJ Romain in Thibodaux . At times he also taught there at Thibodaux College . After his father's death, he moved back to St. James Parish in 1859 and practiced there until 1863.

War participation

After the outbreak of the civil war, Poché set up an infantry company for the Confederate Army in June 1862 , which he led as captain and the Colonel Louis Jean Bushs (1820-1892) 18th Louisiana Infantry was subordinated. This company was disbanded in October of that year. Poché volunteered for the Commissary Department ( Commissary Department , in function as Commissary-subsistence officer ) with the staff of Major General Alfred Mouton (1829-1864). Under his successor Henry Gray he served in the Trans-Mississippi Department until September 1864. In December he took over a partisan company ( Partisan rangers ), which operated in the Mississippi area (in the Parishs of Ascension , Livingston , St. Helena and St. James) . He fought with this unit until the surrender in May 1865.

Political career

After the war ended, Poché returned to St. James Parish and resumed his practice as a lawyer. He also began to get involved in the Democratic Party . In January 1866 he was elected to the Louisiana Senate, where he replaced a resigned senator. He remained in this capacity until 1868, when a new constitution for Louisiana was adopted. From 1868 to 1876 he attended the semi-annual nomination convention of the Democrats in Louisiana; at the party convention in 1879, at which Louis A. Wiltz was nominated, he was chairman. Poché took part as a delegate at two national Democratic nomination conventions : in 1872 in Baltimore , in which Horace Greeley was nominated, and in 1876 in St. Louis , in which he voted for the nominee for the presidential election in the United States in 1876 , Samuel Tilden .

In 1877, Poché was a founding member of the American Bar Association . In 1880 he was appointed judge on the Louisiana Supreme Court ; In 1890 he ended this activity. With the appointment as judge, he moved from St. James Parish to New Orleans . Poché helped shape the constitution of Louisiana; at times he was chairman of the Constituent Assembly of Louisiana. He died in New Orleans in 1985 at the age of 59.

family

In 1860 Poché married the Catholic Sélima Deslattes (1838-1925), daughter of a plantation owner from St. James Parish. His wife survived him, she died in 1925 at the age of 88. He was buried in the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. The couple had eight children; the first child, the daughter Marie Marguerite, was born in February 1862. One of his sons, Oskar Poché, joined the Jesuits and became a priest and pastor of St. John's Catholic Church in Shreveport .

War diary

Poché kept a diary during his participation in the civil war. The recordings begin on July 8, 1863 and end on May 12, 1865, the day he was released from short-term captivity. An entry is only missing on two days. The marches and combat missions of the brigade under General Henry Gray from July 1863 to September 1864 are described in great detail. The fluently bilingual author wrote the total of nine notebooks partly in English, partly in French. They were born in June 1967 by Poché's granddaughter, Eugenie Dewey Somdal, b. Watson, transferred to Northwestern State University ; today they are in the archives of the University's Russell Library . The diaries were published in 1972 by the military historian Edwin C. Bearss under the title "A Louisiana Confederate, Diary of Felix Pierre Poche".

The diary is one of the few surviving civil war diaries and is therefore an important source for war historians as well as because of its level of detail. It contains unique descriptions of the Battle of Mansfield and the battlefield immediately after the Battle of Pleasant Hill from a Confederate perspective. His eyewitness accounts of the functioning of a Confederate Resupply Division and the operations of a partisan company in the Mississippi River, Amite River, and Lake Maurepas area have contributed greatly to understanding the war in the east of the Mississippi.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louisiana Supreme Court Justices: 1813-Present , Louisiana Supreme Court (in English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Poché, Felix Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH St. James Parish , Louisiana
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1895
Place of death New Orleans , Louisiana