Coppens Louisianna Zouaves - Work Sited-

LEE A. WALLACE, JR. is a historian with the National Park Service, Washington, D.C., and managing associate editor of the Military Collector & Historian.

[1] Gaston Coppens to LeRoy Pope Walker, Apr. 23, 1861, packaged with muster rolls of the unit. See Battalion of Confederate States Zouaves, Louisiana Commands, War Records Group 109, National Archives.
[2] New Orleans Bee, Mar. 28, 1861. A battalion of two companies under Gaston Coppens appears to have been formed in Jan., 1861. One company was under Alfred Coppens, the other under Fulgence de Bordenave. See New Orleans Daily Crescent, Jan. 29, 1861.
[3] U.S. War Dept. (comp.), The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880-1901), Ser. I, I, 451. Hereafter cited as OR; unless otherwise stated, all references will be to Ser. I.
[4] New Orleans Daily Picayune, Mar. 25, 1861.
[5] Edward S. Joynes to Judah P. Benjamin, Sept. 27, 1862, Fulgence de Bordenave Papers, in possession of de Bordenave’s grandson, the Rev. Ernest A. de Bordenave, Middleburg, Va., to whom the writer is grateful for making them available for this study.
[6] Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, 1945), p. 102; Richmond Daily Dispatch, Apr. 1, 1862; New Orleans Bee. Mar. 28, 1861.
[7] Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 8, 1861.
[8] Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Fletcher Pratt (New York, 1954), p. 119.
[9] New Orleans Daily Crescent, Jan. 29, 1861; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Mar. 28, 1861.
[10] OR, I, 451; Richmond Daily Dispatch, Mar. 26, 1861; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Mar. 28, 1861.
[11] New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, Apr. 5, 1861.
[12] New Orleans Daily Picayune, Apr. 14, 1861.
[13] New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, Apr. 18, l86l; New Orleans Daily Delta, Apr. 20, 1861.
[14] Coppens to Walker, Apr. 23, 1861, Records Group 109.
[15] William Howard Russell, Pictures of Southern Life, Social, Political and Military, (New York, 1861), p. 48.
[16] Thomas C. DeLeon, Four Years in Rebel Capitals, (Mobile, 1890), pp. 70-72.
[17] Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 8, 1861. See also Felix G. Fontaine, Army Letters of Personne (Charleston, S.C., 1897), I, 90.
[18] Russell, Pictures, p. 48.
[19] Coppens to Walker, Apr. 23, 1861, Records Group 109; Harper's Weekly, July 27, 1861.
[20] Russell observed that “note for note” the calls were the same as heard in the Crimea, Diary, p. 210.
[21] Ibid., p. 119.
[22] DeLeon. Four Years, pp. 72-74.
[23] Muster roll, Co. F, June 21, 1861, Records Group 109; Harper’s Weekly, July 27, 1861; Montgomery Weekly Post, June 11, 1861; DeLeon, Four Years, p. 80.
[24] Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 8, 1861.
[25] Muster rolls, Cos. A, B, and D, Mar. 30-Ju1y 1, 1861, Records Group 109. On the other hand, the New Orleans Daily Delta of Sept. 14 reported the red caps of the Zouaves still in evidence in and around Williamsburg.
[26] OR, II, 938, 951, 957-958.
[27] Ibid., Ser. IV, I, 278; Coppens to Walker, Apr. 23, 1861, Records Group 109; New Orleans Bee, Aug. 23, l861.
[28] Coppens to Walker, July 23, 1861, Records Group 109.
[29] New Orleans Bee, Aug. 23, 1861.
[30]Ibid., Aug. 31, 1861.
[31] De Gournay’s unit was first designated as the Orleans Independent Artillery, then became the 12th Bn., Louisiana Heavy Artillery. The battalion served in the lower South and was present at the surrender of Port Hudson. De Gournay was subsequently captured and imprisoned in Fort Delaware. OR, XV, 276, 971, 1033, 1062; New Orleans Daily Delta, Sept. 14, 1861; New Orleans Daily Picayune, Jan. 19, 1862; Richmond Daily Dispatch, Apr. 1, 1862.
[32] Dupeire’s battalion participated briefly in the Vicksburg campaign as part of Col. Thomas N. Waul’s Texas Legion. Late in the fall of 1863 Waul was ordered to collect the remnants of his command and organize a mounted infantry unit. Yet on Nov. 23, 1863, Federal cavalry made a surprise raid on Dupeire’s camp near New Iberia, La., and captured the colors, battalion papers, an officer, and twenty-five enlisted men of what the Federals termed the “First Louisiana Mounted Zouaves.” OR, XXVI, pt. 1, 370, 377; pt. 2, 427-428.
[33] It was probably during this period that the ladies of Williamsburg made and presented to de Bordenave’s Co. B a silk and satin flag of the Stars and Bars design. The captain carefully preserved the flag through his lifetime, and on Nov. 24, 1948, it was presented to the Confederate Museum in Richmond by the Rev. E. A. de Bordenave.
[34] Battalion returns for Jan. and Feb.. 1862, Records Group 109.
[35] “Roster of the Louisiana Zouave Battn., now C. S. Zouave Battn. From reorganization, November 10, 1862; for the war,” Records Group 109. Adjutant Charles Arroyo of the Zouaves prepared a historical sketch of the unit in late Dec., 1864, or early Jan., 1865. This summary is included in the roster and is hereafter cited as Arroyo, “Zouaves.”
[36] Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York, l904), p. 172.
[37] OR, XI, pt. 2, 503. 780.
[38] Ibid., XIX, pt. 1, 842. The Arroyo report contains the only record found of Gaston Coppens’ appointment as colonel of the 8th Florida.
[39] Arroyo, “Zouaves.”
[40] Ibid.; OR, LI, pt. 2, 669; Morning Report, Jan. 3, 1863, Records Group 109.
[41] Invitation to Mattie Pipkin (who later married de Bordenave), de Bordenave Papers.
[42] Arroyo, “Zouaves.”
[43] Alfred Coppens drowned in 1868 while bathing in Galveston Bay, Texas. DeLeon, Four Years, p. 330; Alfred Hoyt Bill, The Beleaguered City (New York, 1946), pp. 14, 78, 85.
[44] After the war de Bordenave settled in Franklin, Va., became a staunch Republican and actively supported Gen. William Mahone’s “Readjustment.” He died in Franklin in 1904.

The above article is from:

Wallace, Lee A. "Coppens’ Louisiana Zouaves." CW Hist 8 (Sep 1962): pp. 269-81