Prisoner of Desire (55 page)

The Vigilance Committee as described in
Prisoner of Desire
was an actual organization. It was formed in the early spring of 1858 in response to the corruption of the Know-Nothing party, and numbered approximately a thousand members. The known leader was a former officer of the United States Army, Captain Johnson Kelley Duncan, age thirty-two, and many officers and members had served with William Walker in Nicaragua. The group engaged in an armed altercation with the New Orleans city government on June 1, 1858, following the seizure of the lists of registered voters by Know-Nothing rowdies for the purpose of striking from them the names of opposing voters. Incensed by this flagrant act, the committee gathered in the Vieux Carré at midnight on June 2, where they took possession of the Cabildo, the city jail, and the arsenal on St. Peter Street to the rear of the Cabildo. They armed themselves with the muskets and other weapons from the arsenal, hauled several pieces of artillery into place commanding the approaches to Jackson Square, and formed entrenchments of cotton bales and paving stones.

On the following morning, notices appeared in the papers urging men to join with the committee to inflict “prompt and exemplary punishment upon well-known and notorious offenders and violators of the rights and privileges of citizens,” and to help free the city of the “thugs, outlaws, assassins and murderers” who infested it.

Waterman, the mayor of New Orleans, sent the police with warrants for the arrest of the committee, but the members refused to submit. An attempt was made to call out the state militia, but the number of men responding to the call was insufficient to dislodge the committee. The mayor, conceding defeat, met with Captain Duncan and accepted the demands of the committee, granting them legitimacy by appointing them special police for the purpose of keeping order and guarding the polls on Election Day. Waterman then took up residence in the Cabildo for his own protection.

In the meantime, a large mob of Know-Nothings and various other rowdies had gathered. They were sanctioned as a special army by the city government and given permission to take weapons from a sporting goods store. After a great deal of milling around Lafayette Square and firing into the air to work up their courage, they charged the defenses of the committee. They were quickly routed.

The situation remained volatile, however. The two groups of armed men faced each other in the streets for five days as pledges were made and rescinded and speakers alternately urged peaceful disbandment or war to the finish. Eleven men were killed, five in various clashes, six from mysterious causes that may have stemmed from the pledge of the committee to rid the city of undesirables.

The election, held on June 7, was one of the most peaceful on record, though the result was as expected, with the Know-Nothings carrying the day. Shortly thereafter, the Vigilance Committee put down their weapons and abandoned their posts. A few were arrested but were soon released; others left the city for a time before returning and taking up their lives. Captain Duncan remained in New Orleans where he was active as a civil engineer, surveyor, and architect. When the Civil War began, he joined the Confederacy as a colonel, but was almost immediately promoted to the rank of brigadier-general
and given the command of Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans on the Mississippi River. He was taken a prisoner of war when New Orleans fell in 1862, and died a year later.

The second parade of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, with the theme
The Classic Pantheon,
took place on February 16, 1858, and occurred substantially as related. This parade should be recognized as the first of the great processions that have evolved into the parades as we know them today. The march of Comus the year before, in the costumes of characters from Milton’s
Paradise Lost
and with a single tableau cart, or float, was a forerunner, but lacked the size and magnificence that would qualify it as the prototype.

The second parade of Comus contained more than thirty floats representing the “heathen gods,” as a contemporary newspaper account called them. Among the gods depicted was Pan, though there is some doubt as to whether the man costumed as a pagan god of love rode on a cart or walked among his fauns. Lacking a reliable guide, the descriptions of the costume worn by Ravel and his bower of greenery on a cart pulled by white goats are my own invention. Under most circumstances, I am a willing slave to provable fact, but, being inescapably romantic and reposing implicit faith in the lenient and gracious spirit of Mardi Gras, I feel that the shades of maskers past will forgive the substitution and even, perhaps, agree that if this isn’t the way it was, it’s the way it should have been…

Jennifer Blake

Sweet Brier

Quitman, Louisiana

Since publishing her first book at age twenty-seven,
New York Times
bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Blake has gone on to write over sixty-five historical and contemporary novels in multiple genres. She brings the story-telling power and seductive passion of the South to her stories, reflecting her eighth-generation Louisiana heritage. Jennifer lives with her husband in northern Louisiana.

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Much of Jennifer’s backlist is still available in print and/or digital format. In the latter half of 2012, thirty-six novels are being re-released in new-edition ebooks.

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Spanish Serenade

“Oh, yes,” Refugio Carranza y Leon said softly as he watched her there in the moonlit stillness. “I’ll take you.”

Pilar will pay any price to be abducted on the journey that is to deliver her to a convent. She is determined to defy Don Esteban, her vicious stepfather who murdered her mother and expects to shut Pilar away while he takes up an office in the Spanish Louisiana. The man she chooses for this desperate rescue is El Leon, the lion, a former nobleman turned brigand in the hills of Spain.

Refugio needs the nun’s dowry of gold Pilar promises, but more tempting is the chance for vengeance against Don Esteban who destroyed his family honor. He agrees to her plan — but nothing goes as it should. The gold disappears and Pilar is left to his uncertain mercy.

As Pilar and Refugio embark for the New World on the trail of Don Esteban, passion flares between them. But will the fire of revenge bind them together or destroy them?

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Fierce Eden

What has he done with his devil’s bargain…?

Reynaud, of both French and Natchez Indian blood, endures a deadly slur from the lovely widow, Elise Laffont. Because of it, he demands she become his bedmate in return for saving her and her friends during a dangerous uprising. How was he to know she dreaded a man’s possession?

Elise expects the same brutal treatment from the half-breed brother of the ruler of the Natchez that she received from her dead husband. Instead, she is presented with a dubious bargain: Reynaud will not touch her — as long as she explores his magnificent body each night instead.

Their sensual pact turns to fiery desire, forging a bond as tender as it is strong. But the war between French and Natchez escalates, forcing desperate choices between honor and duty, loyalty and love.

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Embrace and Conquer

The handsome mercenary demands her surrender…

Félicité despises the Spanish and their mercenaries who march into New Orleans to subdue the French Creoles revolting against Louisiana’s transfer to Spain. Still, she is not foolish enough to insult them. It’s her adoptive brother Valcour who does that, though she gets the blame. Because of it, and in a desperate bid to prevent the execution of her father for treason, she becomes the mistress of ruthless Irish privateer and Spanish officer, Lt. Colonel Morgan McCormack.

Morgan regrets his misjudgment of Félicité but cannot let her go, not even after her father faces a firing squad. When she flees New Orleans to join brother following the tragedy, he sails in her wake aboard his vessel, the
Black Stallion.