<P> As the Creole elite feared, the Civil War changed their world . In 1862, following the occupation by the Navy after the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, led by Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, a respected state lawyer of the Massachusetts militia, Northern forces occupied the city . Later New Orleans residents nicknamed him "Beast" Butler, because of a military order he issued . After his troops had been assaulted and harassed in the streets by Southern women, his order warned that such future occurrences would result in his men treating such "ladies" as those "plying their avocation in the streets", implying that they would treat the women like prostitutes . Accounts of this spread widely . He also came to be called "Spoons" Butler because of the alleged looting that his troops did while occupying the city . </P> <P> Butler abolished French language instruction in city schools . Statewide measures in 1864 and, after the war, 1868 further strengthened the English - only policy imposed by federal representatives . With the predominance of English speakers, that language had already become dominant in business and government . By the end of the 19th century, French usage had faded . It was also under pressure from Irish, Italian and German immigrants . However, as late as 1902 "one - fourth of the population of the city spoke French in ordinary daily intercourse, while another two - fourths was able to understand the language perfectly," and as late as 1945, many elderly Creole women spoke no English . The last major French language newspaper, L'Abeille de la Nouvelle - Orléans (New Orleans Bee), ceased publication on December 27, 1923, after ninety - six years . According to some sources, Le Courrier de la Nouvelle Orleans continued until 1955 . </P> <P> As the city was captured and occupied early in the war, it was spared the destruction through warfare suffered by many other cities of the American South . The Union Army eventually extended its control north along the Mississippi River and along the coastal areas . As a result, most of the southern portion of Louisiana was originally exempted from the liberating provisions of the 1863 "Emancipation Proclamation" issued by President Abraham Lincoln . Large numbers of rural ex-slaves and some free people of color from the city volunteered for the first regiments of Black troops in the War . Led by Brigadier General Daniel Ullman (1810--1892), of the 78th Regiment of New York State Volunteers Militia, they were known as the "Corps d'Afrique ." While that name had been used by a militia before the war, that group was composed of free people of color . The new group was made up mostly of former slaves . They were supplemented in the last two years of the War by newly organized United States Colored Troops, who played an increasingly important part in the war . </P> <P> Violence throughout the South, especially the Memphis Riots of 1866 followed by the New Orleans Riot in the same year, led Congress to pass the Reconstruction Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, extending the protections of full citizenship to freedmen and free people of color . Louisiana and Texas were put under the authority of the "Fifth Military District" of the United States during Reconstruction . Louisiana was readmitted to the Union in 1868 . Its Constitution of 1868 granted universal male suffrage and established universal public education . Both blacks and whites were elected to local and state offices . In 1872, lieutenant governor P.B.S. Pinchback, who was of mixed race, succeeded Henry Clay Warmouth for a brief period as Republican governor of Louisiana, becoming the first governor of African descent of an American state (the next African American to serve as governor of an American state was Douglas Wilder, elected in Virginia in 1989). New Orleans operated a racially integrated public school system during this period . </P>

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