For 74 days in 1810 the current-day parishes of East and West Feliciana in New Orleans were part of the independent Republic of West Florida, which flew a lone star flag. By that point the residents of the Felicianas, including a large enslaved population, living on land that had been stolen from indigenous people, had been part of three different empires. The republic ended with the parishes annexed into yet another country, the United States, though fifty years later they would be part of still another attempted breakaway republic, the Confederate States of America. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Rashauna Johnson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of Sweet Home Feliciana: Family, Slavery, and the Hauntings of History.

Our theme song is “Frogs Legs Rag,” composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Louisiana,” composed by Oliver Wallace with Lyrics by Arthur Freed and performed by the Sterling Trio on December 27, 1920, in Camden, New Jersey; the recording is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a lithograph believed to be of drawings that artist Lewis Henry made on the Mississippi River around 1846-1848 with Bayou Sara in the foreground and St. Francisville on the bluff in the background; the lithograph was published in 1857 and is in the public domain in the United States and available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “Native Americans: the First Families of Louisiana on the Eve of French Settlement (Online Exhibition),” Louisiana State Museums.
• “Louisiana Purchase Treaty (1803),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “West Florida Revolt,” by Samuel C. Hyde, 64 Parishes.
• “The History of the Short-Lived Independent Republic of Florida,” by William C. Davis, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2013.
• “The West Florida Republic,” by Anne Butler West Feliciana Historical Society and Museum.
• “The Siege of Port Hudson: ‘Forty Days and Nights in the Wilderness of Death’ (Teaching with Historic Places),” National Park Service.

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